Jedidiah Collins: Triple Your Chances of Scaling to Nine Figures With This One Mindset Shift | E11

Business MVP

NFL veteran and financial educator Jedidiah Collins shares his journey from being cut 13 times to becoming a leading voice in personal finan

Key takeaways

• Failure is not an endpoint but 'F-A-I-L'—First Attempt In Learning.
• Entrepreneurs should focus on continual improvement over work-life balance, embracing daily effort as a long-term strategy.

Main topics

• Mindset shift from failure to progress
• The importance of daily habits and systems in scaling businesses

Notable quotes

"F-A-I-L: First Attempt In Learning."

"You're not going to succeed as an entrepreneur. It's just too damn hard."

Conclusion

Jedidiah Collins emphasizes that true success comes from a relentless mindset focused on growth, learning

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) You're most likely not going to succeed as an entrepreneur. It's just too damn hard. Just like athletes do. There's a two and a half percent chance to get a college scholarship, a one percent chance of going pro. You got to be comfortable with those odds. Speaker 1 (0:12) My next guest went undrafted, was cut 13 times, and still became the starting fullback for the New Orleans Saints. Speaker 2 (0:17) One of my coaches used to call me Freddy Krueger, and he just said, Jet, 13 times, man, you're a tough man to kill. Speaker 1 (0:23) While still playing in the NFL, he earned his certified financial planner certification. because he realized he had no idea what to do with his own paycheck. I Speaker 2 (0:31) grew up in Orange County, California, around a lot of money. And I looked in the locker room and I said, man alive, if I have no idea what I'm doing with this paycheck, what's the likelihood these non-accounting majors have any idea? Speaker 1 (0:45) Today, he's known as the fullback of finance, the founder of Money Vehicle, a bestselling author, and he's teaching thousands of athletes and students nationwide. how to speak the language of money. I'm Speaker 2 (0:55) not an advisor. I have no clients. There's no account. I'm never going to ask you for your money. I'm here to just allow you to speak the language and start to fish on your own. Speaker 1 (1:04) So you don't believe in work-life balance. Why should entrepreneurs stop chasing balance? Oh Speaker 2 (1:10) my gosh. Speaker 1 (1:14) My next guest won undrafted, was cut 13 times, and still became the starting fullback for the New Orleans Saints. But what Jed Collins built after football might be even more impressive than what he survived on the field. While still playing in the NFL, he earned his certified financial planner certification because he realized he had no idea what to do with his own paycheck. Today, he's known as the fullback of finance, the founder of Money Vehicle, a best-selling author, and he's teaching thousands of athletes and students nationwide. How to Speak the Language of Money. Jedediah Collins, welcome to Business MVP. Speaker 2 (1:47) Sammy, appreciate the opportunity. Obviously, a quote I love to live by is never delay gratitude. So thank you for the opportunity to share my message for the listeners. I'm just truly grateful for your time. I know we are competing with literally everything in the world. So hopefully this is going to bring some value to you today. Speaker 1 (2:05) I agree. Thank you. So Jed, you were cut 13 times in the NFL. 13. Most people here cut once and they're like, I'm out, right? Assume the dream is over. What made you keep showing up? Speaker 2 (2:18) Yes, a baker's dozen. I attribute this back to my childhood. We were just talking before. You got three boys. So I grew up one of five children, but the middle three were all boys. And we had five and seven years. So there was a lot of kids running around very close in age. In our backyard, my dad, despite my football background, I'm a basketball family. Both brothers actually ended up playing Division I college basketball, as well as my father playing college basketball. So we grew up in the backyard playing basketball, never even touching a football, never even considering it. And my dad created a game called King for a Day, where the three brothers would play one-on-one-on-one basketball. And the victor, the winner, would be king for that day, getting to boss the other two brothers around. I'm thirsty. Go get me a drink. My dad would say, hey, you know, take somebody's got to take out the trash. The king would get to tell the two who was taking out the trash. And I remember going to do this. Yeah, this is ah, Speaker 1 (3:17) there Speaker 2 (3:18) are pros Speaker 1 (3:18) and Speaker 2 (3:19) cons to it. We can get into those. Speaker 1 (3:21) I Speaker 2 (3:22) remember very vividly of the hundreds, thousands of times we played King for a day in our backyard, the two days I walked off as King. I was the youngest brother. I was a year and a half to two and a half years their senior. And they were just better growing up. They were physically more dominant. And I just was not winning. I remember going out onto that court and looking and realizing I'm not going to win. Like I'm not going to be king. That's not because I wasn't good. It's just they were better than me. And realizing that my message to myself had to be, even if you're not king, Jed, did you get better? Did you get a steal? Did you get a rebound? Did you get another point? Did you score today? Looking and seeing that the result, the scoreboard wasn't really going to be my reflection, but it was going to be this mindset of continual improvement in myself. That mentality really introduced me to another view of failing. So many people, like you said, they get cut once, they fail once, and they turn around and walk in a new direction. I look at failure very differently. F-A-I-L, my first attempt in learning. And I learned that on that court in my backyard playing king for a day. This was not the end. This was not the result I was looking for, but it was always the progress in myself. So as I got cut, transferred around the NFL, I was looking every time and saying, hey, I failed. I got my garbage bag. I'm cleaning out my locker. They gave me a plane ticket home. But what am I going to take away from this? Where did I improve? Who around me could I steal from that is going to allow me to be a better fullback and eventually a better human being? And so that mentality started when I was just a young kid in a backyard, went through the NFL, you know, earning really the kind of the mentality and messaging behind it. But as you become an entrepreneur, which most athletes today are their own business and are entrepreneurs. you're going to realize you fail every day. That's the part of business. Business is hard. You are always taking the food off somebody's table. And so you have to go into it with that mentality of I can die a thousand deaths. And it's that question of what is it going to ultimately take to break you? And I came to a realization mostly from football and from this mindset is I decide my breaking point. And as long as I'm still alive, I can keep going. To the point, and I'll end here, but one of my coaches used to call me Freddy Krueger. And he just said 13 times, man, you're a tough man to kill. Like you just keep coming back. And that was a mantra of mine, especially being a lead block and fullback. I'm a tough man to kill. Speaker 1 (6:06) Yeah, I love that. But that is a pretty high threshold. I will acknowledge that. Speaker 2 (6:10) It wasn't fun. I'm not going to say. Now, I did journal throughout it. And so I get to look back on it and people tell me like, hey, I don't want to write or capture when I'm down. And I look at them and I say, those are the best times. Like you need to capture when you are losing because it makes the winning that much sweeter. Speaker 1 (6:30) Yeah, no, I agree. And we'll get to that as well. I want to capitalize on something you just mentioned about, you know, stealing from the people around you. So you've said that every time you walk into a new building, your job was to steal from the best in the world. So what does that mean? Speaker 2 (6:45) One, it makes you realize greatness is lonely. The people you admire, the people who are most successful. are doing things that the average person doesn't. And that's what I really wanted to tap into. I would get cut and I would leave a building and I would think to myself, usually on the plane ride home, what was that eight, nine year offense alignment doing? What was that 20 year kicker doing? What was that 15 year safety? What were the skills? What were the attributes that they were doing that I wasn't obviously doing enough that I was asked to leave? And it began to kind of unfold to me in this almost unspoken code. I call it rookie to veteran. It's a mentality and it's Speaker 1 (7:25) a Speaker 2 (7:25) mindset of how do you go from a rookie trying to survive to a veteran finding success? It's all based on your daily principles and habits. Everything is a system. I got to work next to Drew Brees. I got to work next to Megatron Calvin Johnson. But I would also look at guys who were, again, a 20-year kicker is somebody who is historic in my eyes because every year they're trying to replace that guy. A gentleman in Detroit named Don Muehlbach, the Mule, played 20 years as a long snapper. And that means he did not make a mistake for 20 years. There's greatness in that. So even though long snapping may not have been your career path. What can you see around you that you want to steal? And a lot of people hesitate and go, Jed, don't tell young people to steal. Good artists borrow, great artists steal. I wanted to take that action, that little thing, and begin to make it my own. And that's when you start to see who you become. Greats are all a piece of a lot of the things that came before them. You listen to Kobe Bryant, who... studied Michael Jordan like he was his own subject matter and his science. And one of those messages hit me while I was in Kansas City. So we get divided into three groups. You have your skilled guys who everybody knows from fantasy football, your big guys who, if they walked in the room, you'd know who the big guys are. And then this middle group called the big skills who were the hybrids, linebackers, tight ends, fullbacks. I was in this big skill group. which allowed me to work out with the linebackers. And 15-year linebacker, I started studying him and saying, man, how in the heck do you survive 15 years as a middle linebacker? That just baffled me. And I would start watching him out on the field. We would run 40 yards. He'd run 45. We'd run 50. He'd run 55. We'd go in the weight room. We would do a set of 10. He would encourage us. And then he would slide on two and a half pounds and do a set of 11. We would go get two game tapes. He would get a third. And so finally I looked at him and we were in a locker room. I looked at him. I said, I don't get it. Like, is it just hard for you? You're an old man now. Is it hard for you to slow down on the field? Like five pounds on a bench press? What is five pounds ever going to do? And he started to share with me his mentality. He said, every day I come in and I steal. an inch. I steal this little thing. That's the five pounds. That's the five yards. That's the extra thing I don't think the young guys are doing that keeps me here. I am 15 years into this. I'm slower. I'm more expensive. I'm more banged up. But I come in and I steal that because an inch leads to a yard, a yard to a first down, a first down to a touchdown, touchdowns to wins, and wins get us to the Super Bowl. And so what that mentality showed me was everywhere I went, could I steal an inch? And a lot of those inches came from watching greatness and just duplicating what they were until it became who I was. Speaker 1 (10:32) Yeah, I love that. That's a great way to think about things. So you went from undrafted to the starting fullback for the New Orleans Saints, sharing a locker room with Drew Brees, you just mentioned, and some of the best players in the league. So what's it competing at that level building you that translated directly to business? Speaker 2 (10:47) Oh, one. I got a taste of what it was like to be the best in the world. So I actually was rated the number one fullback, making me the best in the world. I was a Pro Bowl player going from getting cut 13 times to that level. What it introduces you to is that quote I already said is greatness is lonely. If you want to be a successful business, you're going to have to do things most people aren't willing to do. As a. 17-year-old business athlete, as a 22-year-old in college or a 27-year-old, you realize that as an athlete, I have to make, we don't call them sacrifices, we call them priorities. My priority is I got to get up in the morning and work out, so I'm not going to that party. That's just the exchange. What it allowed me to do was to go into my entrepreneurial journey and A, accept that I'm going to fail every day. That had to be the, I love talking to young people about starting their own business. I tell them there's a reason they call it crazy genius. You have to be crazy first. Entrepreneurs see something nobody else thinks is really there. That's what an entrepreneur is, is a visionary and a dreamer. If you see something that nobody else sees. That makes you a crazy person. Make it come to fruition and you become a genius, but you were crazy until that reality set in. So the ability that I could see myself as a starting fullback in the NFL before anyone, anyone could see that, that was the quality that you need to start as an entrepreneur. But then you go sit next to a Drew Brees for four years and you realize. This guy is anything if he's a habit. Everything is a process. Everything is a system. And it's focused on the reward. It's focused on the point of why we're doing so many things. And I remember asking Drew, again, I'm a undrafted, no name, got cut a dozen times. So I go into the building like I got to do things that everybody