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Former Utah Governor Gary Herbert
2 Plays2 years ago
In this podcast we talk with former Utah Governor Gary Herbert. We talk about the importance of Sports to the State, we talk about parenting and mental health, the dangers of social media, what he has learned from politics about how we can compete without contempt, how to help the rising generation thrive and so much more.
Especially for Athletes:
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Credits:
Hosted by Dustin Smith & Shad Martin
Produced by Shad Martin and IMAGINATE STUDIO
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Support the show: https://especiallyforathletes.com/podcast/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Interview with Governor Gary Herbert
00:00:00
Speaker
So today we are meeting with Governor Gary Herbert.
00:00:02
Speaker
He was the former governor of the state of Utah.
00:00:05
Speaker
It's a terrific interview.
00:00:07
Speaker
Chad, we just actually wrapped up the interview.
00:00:09
Speaker
We're filming this little intro beforehand.
00:00:12
Speaker
People don't know that when we got off this interview, he spent another probably 20, 30 minutes with us just chatting that we didn't record.
00:00:19
Speaker
So but Chad, tell us what we're going to hear in today's interview with Governor Herbert.
Leadership During Financial Crisis
00:00:23
Speaker
Man, just super unique to have a governor of a state, not only that, but the governor who presided over a state going from the doldrums of 2008 financial crisis to being the number one financial state in the country.
00:00:39
Speaker
He talks about the importance of sports.
00:00:41
Speaker
He talks about the importance of listening to the right voices and how to tune out what you need to tune out and listen to those that you need to listen to in leadership.
00:00:50
Speaker
He talked about
00:00:51
Speaker
some of the things going on right now in our country with vitriol and hatred when we asked him about our compete without contempt principle.
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Speaker
And man, he shared some just enlightening insights into what's going on in our country right now and why we are becoming so tribal and how to overcome that.
00:01:11
Speaker
It was one of the favorite conversations I've had in my whole life.
00:01:13
Speaker
I'm excited for people to hear it.
00:01:15
Speaker
Well, let's jump into it.
Impact of the Sportlight Podcast
00:01:16
Speaker
Today's podcast episode of The Sport Life with Governor Gary Herbert.
00:01:20
Speaker
Welcome to the Sportlight Podcast for parents, coaches, and athletes.
00:01:24
Speaker
The Sportlight refers to the time in an athlete's life when they have increased ability to affect the culture around them and the increased opportunity to learn life's lessons through sports.
00:01:34
Speaker
This podcast aims to help parents and coaches capitalize on their athletes' precious time in the Sportlight.
00:01:40
Speaker
The Sportlight Podcast is brought to you by Especially for Athletes program.
Economic Impact of Sports in Utah
00:01:46
Speaker
So Governor Herbert, thank you for joining us here on the Sportlight podcast.
00:01:50
Speaker
I want to hop right into a question about economics.
00:01:53
Speaker
I first met you at an event with that you did with my brother, Ryan Smith and Mitt Romney.
00:01:59
Speaker
And this was several years ago.
00:02:01
Speaker
And that event was discussing primarily finance and economics, not only in in the United States, but specifically Utah.
00:02:11
Speaker
I'd like to ask you along that same vein of economics, we we've
00:02:16
Speaker
speak with and work with a lot of people in the athletic sports industry.
00:02:21
Speaker
I recently read that a Utah Jazz game will bring in on average around a million dollars a game for the Salt Lake economy between the restaurants and hotels and things in the area, as well as all the business that happens obviously at the stadium or the arena.
00:02:41
Speaker
During your time as governor of Utah, I assume that sports,
00:02:46
Speaker
the Olympics have been here, some of the other things.
00:02:49
Speaker
What did you see and the value of having such a robust, strong sports community in Utah?
00:02:57
Speaker
Well, you know, under the heading of tourism and travel, you know, how can you attract people to come into your community and participate?
00:03:07
Speaker
Certainly an economic driver.
00:03:09
Speaker
And we started years before I came in as governor, but
00:03:14
Speaker
kind of perfected, I think, on our watch, Utah Sports Commission.
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Jeff Robbins, who's our executive director there, is my old tennis buddy.
00:03:22
Speaker
He was a two-time All-American at the University of Utah and played on the pro circuit for a while.
00:03:27
Speaker
But he's taken that Sports Commission, which was started way back in the days of Al Mansell, Mike Leavitt, kind of in anticipation of the Olympics coming in in 2002.
00:03:37
Speaker
That's grown now.
00:03:39
Speaker
So they've, I think, produced now over 500 different events.
00:03:44
Speaker
that they've helped to sponsor or co-sponsor helped to attract to come in the state of Utah.
00:03:50
Speaker
We're gearing up again for another Olympics in 2030 or 2034.
00:03:53
Speaker
And I think it's, it's, we're probably about an 80% chance of getting on one of those dates.
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Speaker
And by the end of this year, it might be a hundred percent.
00:04:03
Speaker
But that's the big granddaddy of them all is the Olympics.
00:04:07
Speaker
But we have, you know, whether it be the world volleyball championships or the high school championships that we've,
00:04:13
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have developed and producing here.
00:04:18
Speaker
Oh, they used to have some airplane races down over the Grand, or excuse me, the Red Rock countries down in Southern Utah and Moab.
00:04:26
Speaker
The triathlon, you know, Ironman series, which we've held world championships in St.
00:04:31
Speaker
George, and everything in between.
00:04:34
Speaker
I know we've got motocross coming up here, which has been a staple in the state of Utah.
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Speaker
They'll fill up Rice Eccles Stadium for motocross,
00:04:43
Speaker
We've had skateboard championships.
00:04:45
Speaker
I mean, it goes on and on and on.
00:04:47
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Our snow sports, we've got two of our national federations, which are here, the Snowboarding Federation, the Ski Federation, now headquartered in Park City.
00:05:01
Speaker
So we're bringing in world championships and competition here in the state of Utah.
00:05:07
Speaker
which again, people come to see.
00:05:09
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And this is tourism, travel, let's go to Utah, let's experience the greatest soul on earth, let's experience these events, and people come and spend money.
00:05:18
Speaker
So under economic development, the heading, there is a slot now for tourism and travel, which the Sports Commission fits in events that we are creating and bringing here.
00:05:29
Speaker
I'm looking forward here in a couple of months to going up and playing in the
00:05:34
Speaker
PGA tournament we have here, which Tony Finau is now joined with us for his foundation.
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Speaker
And that'll be held up at Oak Ridge in the Bountiful area.
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Speaker
We've done this for now, like the last seven years or so at that location.
00:05:49
Speaker
And again, we get national exposure.
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Speaker
It's on television.
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People talk about, you know, Utah, Salt Lake in the area, show the mountains.
00:05:57
Speaker
People get interested in what's Utah like.
00:05:59
Speaker
They understand more about the people and the culture and they come and they're coming in droves.
00:06:05
Speaker
It's right now our tourism and travel industry is over a $9 billion a year industry.
00:06:11
Speaker
Significant economic development.
00:06:13
Speaker
Wow.
00:06:14
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:06:15
Speaker
That's, that's terrific.
00:06:16
Speaker
First of all, and I,
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Speaker
We grew up growing up here in Utah.
00:06:20
Speaker
I know you grew up in the American Fork area.
00:06:22
Speaker
Shad grew up in California, came over here about when he was 21 or so, 22, right, Shad?
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:29
Speaker
Sports really is a staple of our community.
00:06:32
Speaker
Anybody who comes here doesn't take them very fast.
00:06:35
Speaker
Probably the first question you get asked by the neighbor when they knock on your door is who you're cheering for, BYU or Utah, right?
00:06:42
Speaker
Like it's –
00:06:44
Speaker
And if you're a Lakers fan or something, then you get toilet paper that night.
00:06:48
Speaker
You got to be a jazz fan.
00:06:49
Speaker
Well, we coined the phrase, Dustin and Chad, that Utah, the state of sport.
00:06:56
Speaker
I mean, that's the phrase, Utah, the state of sport.
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Speaker
And it's not just a slogan.
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It's kind of a culture.
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Speaker
It's a way of life.
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Everybody participates in some kind of outdoor recreation activity.
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I should say most everybody.
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If you're not an active participant, you're an active fan or supporter or cheerer.
00:07:14
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leader for whatever sport, whether it be high school, it could be peewee league, our professional sports with the bees, the jazz, of course, and who knows what the future is going to bring.
00:07:29
Speaker
But we are really Utah, the state of sport.
00:07:32
Speaker
And I know we're doing really well because we have now many other states trying to copy what we've done here in the state of Utah with our sports commission.
00:07:41
Speaker
So I'm
00:07:41
Speaker
That's the biggest form of flattery is when somebody wants to copy you.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yeah.
Political Discourse and Bipartisanship
00:07:46
Speaker
Amen.
00:07:47
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:07:47
Speaker
Governor Herbert, we've been anxious to ask you a few questions because of your experience.
00:07:52
Speaker
We have four key principles that we go around.
00:07:54
Speaker
We meet with all the high school athletes in Utah, many of them, a lot of the colleges and down to Pee Wee League.
00:08:01
Speaker
And one of the principles that we teach is compete without contempt, to compete without hatred, to
00:08:10
Speaker
And though it's a different realm, politics can sometimes obviously become very, very nasty.
00:08:19
Speaker
But we haven't seen some of the same nastiness here in Utah that we've seen maybe nationwide.
00:08:25
Speaker
And I would just love to hear your insights on how is it that you can...
00:08:33
Speaker
You can compete against someone in an election without hating that person and still have respect for them and still govern yourself by principles that you hold strong.
00:08:45
Speaker
What have you learned as governor and running for office that would help our athletes to compete against their rival without hating them?
00:08:54
Speaker
Well, that's a great question because politics does bring out kind of the worst in us.
00:09:00
Speaker
And that's unfortunate.
00:09:02
Speaker
Maybe it's because the stakes are so high, the ability to be a senator, a governor, a congressman, even local elected officials, mayors and county commissioners and council members, the school board.
00:09:17
Speaker
I mean, when you have a difference of opinion, sometimes those differences really become things to really have strong disagreement on.
00:09:26
Speaker
And that becomes personal sometimes in your zeal to win election.
00:09:30
Speaker
It's always easy to justify
00:09:33
Speaker
I've got to do this.
00:09:34
Speaker
I've got to run a negative campaign because if I don't win, I can't do all the good things that I plan to do as an elected official.
00:09:42
Speaker
So it sometimes becomes a little bit of a cloudy issue.
00:09:45
Speaker
And we do view the opposition sometimes with too much contempt.
00:09:51
Speaker
We've talked about this a number of times in Utah.
00:09:55
Speaker
And we may not be as bad as other states.
00:09:57
Speaker
That's the good news.
00:09:58
Speaker
The bad news is
00:10:00
Speaker
We are becoming like other states and we contribute to the national, you know, concerns of contempt.
00:10:08
Speaker
We support our candidates with such zeal that we now have politics being referred to as a blood sport.
00:10:17
Speaker
Politics, the blood sport.
00:10:19
Speaker
It's the gladiators in there pummeling each other and drawing blood and saying things that are just nasty and mean and personal.
00:10:29
Speaker
I worked with a guy named Tim Shriver, who's a solid Democrat.
00:10:33
Speaker
You might not know Tim.
00:10:35
Speaker
You'd know his sister, who was married to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver.
00:10:41
Speaker
And he runs the Special Olympics for the Kennedy family.
00:10:43
Speaker
He has a Kennedy.
00:10:43
Speaker
Ethel Kennedy was his mother.
00:10:48
Speaker
Really a nice guy.
00:10:49
Speaker
And I first met him a few years ago, and he said, he says, Gary, I really long for the days when we had
00:10:56
Speaker
Ronald Reagan would sit down with Tip O'Neill, a Republican president with a Democrat Speaker of the House, and say, what can we do together?
00:11:07
Speaker
And they worked together and created a very great environment for economic growth.
00:11:12
Speaker
They had the largest tax cut at the time.
00:11:15
Speaker
It spurred the economy.
00:11:16
Speaker
We had probably the longest peacetime prosperity we've had in our history, thanks to Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill, that got together and said, yeah, let's cut taxes.
00:11:25
Speaker
The taxes are too high.
00:11:28
Speaker
People are paying over 70% of their income in taxes, if you can imagine that today.
00:11:34
Speaker
And so that led to a great relationship and getting good things done.
00:11:40
Speaker
And kind of a bipartisan doesn't mean they changed their principles or their policy or what they want to see happen, but they learned how to work together and compromise.
00:11:49
Speaker
Then he said to me, he said, I long for the days when your Orrin Hatch
00:11:53
Speaker
Senator Hatch would work with my uncle Ted Kennedy, the two lions of the Senate, and they would say, what can we work on together and get some things done?
00:12:01
Speaker
So I just sit here and fight.
00:12:03
Speaker
Nothing ever happens.
00:12:04
Speaker
It's a stalemate.
00:12:05
Speaker
Let's see if we can work together and get some things done.
00:12:08
Speaker
And because of that, what Tim has done is he's created a group called Unite, which means can we come together and work together?
00:12:18
Speaker
Let's understand that compromise is not a dirty word.
00:12:22
Speaker
Our founding fathers found it very successful in preparing the Constitution.
00:12:26
Speaker
That came about because of significant compromise.
00:12:29
Speaker
And we venerate those founding fathers as the brilliant men that they were.
00:12:34
Speaker
Why don't we try to emulate that aspect of it?
00:12:37
Speaker
And they've also created what's called the Dignity Index.
00:12:42
Speaker
So rather than treat each other with contempt, let's treat each other with dignity.
00:12:46
Speaker
I respect your opinion.
00:12:47
Speaker
I disagree with it, but that's a point of view that needs to be talked about and considered.
00:12:52
Speaker
That's what we're doing.
00:12:54
Speaker
And this dignity index goes from one to eight, where one is you have just full-on contempt and your opponent is slime and shouldn't be worthy of being in the same arena with you.
00:13:04
Speaker
Number eight, which is you express extreme appreciation for their different points of view and their contribution as a human being to our discourse and recognize they would be a good elected official too, just like you would be if you got elected and had
00:13:22
Speaker
the opportunity to serve.
00:13:23
Speaker
So
Engaging Youth in Politics
00:13:24
Speaker
Utah was kind of a trial basis for that to happen and it worked pretty well.
00:13:32
Speaker
I think if something like that can spread around the country, our political discourse will become much more rational, less emotional, and we'll get more things done on behalf of the people of America.
00:13:45
Speaker
That's going to be, Chad, you may have a follow-up to that, but Chad and I talk a lot
00:13:51
Speaker
Governor, about this.
00:13:53
Speaker
We see it with the young people that we work with.
00:13:57
Speaker
I've even had this conversation with business leaders over the years.
00:14:01
Speaker
The immense amount of tribalism or feeling that you have to be part of a particular group.
00:14:08
Speaker
And even though 99% of what you believe in and think may be the same as the other group, that 1% that's different
00:14:19
Speaker
means you can't associate with them.
00:14:22
Speaker
And we see that everywhere from in religious arguments right now, there's with race and ethnicity, with, you know, gay marriage for against it, like these different things that, but why is it?
00:14:38
Speaker
And how do we, I know this, this dignity index you talked about, I would love to see the way to teach our younger generation, the importance of,
00:14:49
Speaker
you can disagree with people's opinions, but it doesn't mean you have to hate the person.
00:14:53
Speaker
Really, we're a lot more alike than we are different.
00:14:55
Speaker
And I too, I miss those days of political leaders sitting down and realizing that, I mean, they fierce, they battle, they'd argue, right?
00:15:04
Speaker
If you study the history of our country, there were fierce arguments over laws and there were fights over laws.
00:15:10
Speaker
But at the end of the day, they knew something had to get done and they'd make the decision for what's best for the country.
00:15:14
Speaker
But if you were talking to a group of young people,
00:15:18
Speaker
What would be your message to them to how do we respect the differences in other people and still be loyal to our principles or maybe our party in the case of politics?
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
Well, it is something that needs to be kind of taught.
00:15:34
Speaker
It should come from your parents in your home.
00:15:38
Speaker
If your parents are acting like idiots and saying things that are just outrageous, you know, that probably shouldn't be too surprised if our children follow up.
00:15:48
Speaker
suit.
00:15:49
Speaker
And we see that in society all the time.
00:15:51
Speaker
Well, these kids are acting crazy, and then we find out, well, their parents are acting crazy.
00:15:56
Speaker
So it should start at the home.
00:15:58
Speaker
We teach our children about responsibility, civic involvement.
00:16:02
Speaker
That's why we got the Herbert Institute of Public Policy here at UVU, is to have our young people here understand it's important to engage.
00:16:10
Speaker
You need to be involved.
00:16:11
Speaker
Don't sit on the sidelines.
00:16:12
Speaker
We need to hear your voices.
00:16:14
Speaker
And there's a proper way to engage.
00:16:17
Speaker
with respect for a different point of view and listen and with an open mind and try to get deeper understanding about somebody's opposing point of view.
00:16:29
Speaker
Maybe they've got some good points that you ought to consider.
00:16:32
Speaker
And the compromise maybe is a way to get something done.
00:16:36
Speaker
Half a loath is better than no loath.
00:16:37
Speaker
Although we have people in Congress that are just, you know, they won't compromise.
00:16:41
Speaker
They won't give up anything and consequently nothing gets done.
Immigration and Media's Role
00:16:45
Speaker
Now, I don't think that's really a good way to run the railroad.
00:16:51
Speaker
I like Steve Covey.
00:16:52
Speaker
He was a good mentor to so many of us over the years and talking about trying to find the win-win.
00:16:59
Speaker
Find something that's mutually beneficial to both sides of the argument, and we can get some things done.
00:17:04
Speaker
And for me, if I could get a half a loaf, okay, we'll get that done, move that into place, and we'll move on and maybe get the other half a loaf or half of a half later on as we continue to work together.
00:17:16
Speaker
An example of where we are just floundering is on immigration.
00:17:21
Speaker
The Republicans and Democrats all agree we have an immigration problem.
00:17:27
Speaker
Our borders are like civs.
00:17:29
Speaker
People are coming, hopping over the fence.
00:17:31
Speaker
A lot of them, in fact, probably the majority, are people who come here appropriately and then overstay their visa.
00:17:38
Speaker
And so...
00:17:40
Speaker
What do we do?
00:17:41
Speaker
Well, what we're doing is politicizing the issue.
00:17:44
Speaker
So the Democrats politicize it for their benefit to help get minorities to vote for them because we want to have open borders or less restrictions to have people come into the country.
00:17:56
Speaker
And the Republicans are saying we're getting overrun.
00:17:58
Speaker
We've got to protect our borders.
00:18:01
Speaker
They use it for their political needs too.
00:18:03
Speaker
And consequently, nothing gets done.
00:18:05
Speaker
This is an issue that's been around since Ronald Reagan.
00:18:08
Speaker
That's back in the 80s.
00:18:11
Speaker
And we all know we can fix it.
00:18:13
Speaker
And we ought to sit down and do something.
00:18:14
Speaker
But both sides use it for political weaponry.
00:18:17
Speaker
I was with President Obama one day, and we were talking about immigration.
00:18:22
Speaker
And I said to the president, I said, you know, it's a problem we have here.
00:18:25
Speaker
We ought to solve it.
00:18:27
Speaker
And he says, well, you should.
00:18:28
Speaker
And I said, well, Mr. President, we tried to in Utah to take a state approach.
00:18:33
Speaker
We had a way where people could be in society and, you know, pay their taxes, come out of the shadows and participate until such time as the federal government, which has the responsibility, would find some reason to deport them or take them out.
00:18:49
Speaker
And I said, you sued me.
00:18:52
Speaker
You sued the state and you won because the court said the federal government is in charge of immigration, not the state's.
00:19:02
Speaker
Okay, I understand that from a legal standpoint.
00:19:05
Speaker
But then you end up trying to do it by executive order.
00:19:09
Speaker
You try to do the other side by executive order, and you got sued, and you lost.
00:19:14
Speaker
And he says, yeah, the fact of the matter is we can't get the Congress to act.
00:19:18
Speaker
That's the problem.
00:19:19
Speaker
It's not only the problem, but we're attacking the wrong side of the issue.
00:19:22
Speaker
It's not the fence.
00:19:24
Speaker
It's not the wall.
00:19:26
Speaker
We've got to fix the gate so people can come and go.
00:19:30
Speaker
I was raised in Orem,
00:19:32
Speaker
with all the fruit farmers that we had here.
00:19:35
Speaker
We had a lot of migrant farm workers who would come in, help pick with the fruit, work on the farms, and then go back to Mexico or south of the border, wherever they were coming from, and enjoy their stay here, made some money, went back home.
00:19:47
Speaker
Now they come and they stay because they're afraid if they go back home, they won't be able to get back in.
00:19:52
Speaker
So we've got to fix the gate.
00:19:54
Speaker
If you talk to Americans who have married a foreigner and bring them into the country, they will tell you how much of a problem it is to get through that gate.
00:20:02
Speaker
the problems associated there.
00:20:04
Speaker
So we like to fight about it.
00:20:07
Speaker
We find a political advantage on Republicans and Democrats alike.
00:20:11
Speaker
And consequently, the problem doesn't get solved.
00:20:15
Speaker
And the people of America suffer.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, we just talk in circles.
00:20:21
Speaker
I love the leadership principle that before you get critical, get curious, really see where someone's coming from and why they have the strong stance that they have.
00:20:33
Speaker
If both sides of an issue or two teams in sports, if they get curious about one another and learn about one another, the hopes and desires before they
00:20:44
Speaker
they become knee-jerk critical, then we could probably have some answers and come up with some solutions.
00:20:53
Speaker
And that's a great lesson to all of us, I think.
00:20:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:58
Speaker
It's a matter of just wanting to do something and do it in a way that's not offensive to everybody.
00:21:04
Speaker
You know, some people like the notoriety they get, the headlines they get.
00:21:10
Speaker
We know cable news has probably been one of the worst things for us as a society.
00:21:15
Speaker
We've become siloed.
00:21:16
Speaker
If you're Republican, you listen to Fox News.
00:21:19
Speaker
If you're a Democrat, you listen to MSNBC and maybe CNN.
00:21:24
Speaker
And what do they do?
00:21:25
Speaker
They stoke the fires of contempt.
00:21:29
Speaker
They say outrageous things.
00:21:30
Speaker
They only look for the negative.
00:21:32
Speaker
So they get more hits, more people watch their TV shows.
00:21:36
Speaker
If it's newspaper, TV, more people willing to watch their newscasts.
00:21:43
Speaker
It's how they attract and make money.
00:21:46
Speaker
And unfortunately, there's some irresponsibility attached to that.
00:21:50
Speaker
We're seeing that play out now and some of the problems we see with cable news.
00:21:54
Speaker
They're playing for ratings rather than being journalists and being responsible in what they report.
00:22:01
Speaker
And making sure that, you know, the phrase that Fox News used to have was,
00:22:05
Speaker
We report it fair and balanced.
00:22:07
Speaker
We report, you decide.
00:22:09
Speaker
That's a good mantra.
00:22:10
Speaker
Every station ought to be doing that.
00:22:12
Speaker
Unfortunately, Fox drifted to, well, we're going to report all the Republican side of the issue and be an advocate, help Trump get elected.
00:22:21
Speaker
And that's proven to be an unfortunate situation for us where we can't trust the news anymore.
00:22:29
Speaker
I've had a hard time with the news.
00:22:32
Speaker
All of them.
00:22:33
Speaker
I can't turn them on.
00:22:34
Speaker
I get
00:22:36
Speaker
I find myself becoming anxious or just upset, not trusting any of them.
00:22:44
Speaker
So I just, I don't know where to go to just get news, just to get the truth.
00:22:49
Speaker
Well, we would hope that the public will rise up and say, listen, we don't have to have you think for us.
00:22:56
Speaker
We're smart people.
00:22:58
Speaker
You report the facts of the event, of the news issue, whatever it is.
00:23:03
Speaker
Let's report the facts.
00:23:05
Speaker
And that means all the facts, pros and cons.
00:23:08
Speaker
And then let us as a society, as individuals, make a determination on what we want to see happen and how we'll react to that information.
00:23:16
Speaker
We need to get everybody to agree to be a journalist of top quality as opposed to an advocate and have your biases be shown through in your reporting.
Youth Mental Health and Social Media
00:23:27
Speaker
And we see it.
00:23:28
Speaker
We have newspaper editorial pages that are more liberal.
00:23:32
Speaker
Others are more conservative.
00:23:34
Speaker
And the slant that they put not only in the editorial page, but now in the news reporting is palpable.
00:23:39
Speaker
And it's not healthy for us as a society.
00:23:42
Speaker
I wanted to lead in on the mental health aspect of some of this, Chad.
00:23:46
Speaker
I, you know, the more we started talking about that, I started thinking about some of the, some of the parents and some of the kids that I, that I've spoken with, even some of the university kids down at,
00:23:58
Speaker
Southern Utah, I was speaking to 100 or 200 or so of the athletes down there.
00:24:03
Speaker
And the number one thing that they had questions about was how do we, the fact that their mental state was more concerning to how they were performing than their physical condition was.
00:24:14
Speaker
Physically, they felt fine.
00:24:16
Speaker
It was the mental stress that they were dealing with.
00:24:19
Speaker
And I think that we have kids that are being brought up now where if they do turn on the news or if they do sit down, to your point earlier,
00:24:27
Speaker
governor about the, some of the crazy parents, if they sit down at the dinner table, the, the, the truth that they're hearing that they supposed to be truth.
00:24:36
Speaker
They're supposed to trust these adults is so one-sided and so radical that a lot, I have to oftentimes remind these kids that the world's not as bad as we tell them it is that there are things that need to be fixed in the world, but there's also some great things in the world because they're extremely anxious and
00:24:55
Speaker
and uptight and afraid that the end of the world's coming, that World War III is going to happen tomorrow, right?
00:25:00
Speaker
Because of Ukraine and Russia and it stresses them out.
00:25:05
Speaker
The mental health world, Governor, we talk a lot about this current generation being referred to, we refer to them as the I generation.
00:25:14
Speaker
There's studies that show that kids born after 2007 or around 2007, the year that the iPhone was invented,
00:25:23
Speaker
iPods, iPads, I everything, right?
00:25:26
Speaker
This I generation that when they graduate high school, they will have had half as many conversations with other human beings as the generations before them had, before the internet, before iPhones.
00:25:39
Speaker
Because of that, socially, their brains are three years less experienced or less developed.
00:25:46
Speaker
So an 18-year-old senior has the social brain or experience of a 15-year-old.
00:25:52
Speaker
which leads to these studies showing less 18 year olds moving out of the house, less 18 year olds.
00:26:00
Speaker
Kids don't get their driver's licenses as early as they used to.
00:26:03
Speaker
There's more stress.
00:26:04
Speaker
There's more anxiety.
00:26:07
Speaker
I know that you have had efforts because I followed them closely.
00:26:10
Speaker
We were hoping to get more involved.
00:26:12
Speaker
In fact, we still are with the state because that's so much that we're doing behind the scenes with a lot of the kids here in Utah.
00:26:19
Speaker
We'd like to do more with the state of Utah here, but I,
00:26:22
Speaker
I know on the suicide awareness and prevention efforts that you were part of, the mental health, is that something that you've seen as well on the rise since, you know, your time as lieutenant governor to your time now?
00:26:34
Speaker
My guess is you have, and it's become a subject that's crossed your desk more times at the end of your term than it did early.
00:26:43
Speaker
Well, thank you.
00:26:44
Speaker
There's a lot of things that kind of go through my mind as you express the concern that we all have about what is happening to the rising generation.
00:26:52
Speaker
And the mental pressures, we see it in the highest level of sports.
00:26:57
Speaker
You know, world champions in tennis are having mental breakdowns.
00:27:03
Speaker
They have to get away from the game, can't compete anymore, have serious issues.
00:27:10
Speaker
We had Andre Agassi come and speak at Governor's State of Sport Awards banquets one year.
00:27:16
Speaker
And I went down to Las Vegas and actually played tennis with him.
00:27:20
Speaker
And he gave me a book called Open, which was kind of his history of his life.
00:27:26
Speaker
And he talked about in his book about the pressures his father put on him to become a great tennis player.
00:27:34
Speaker
In fact, his dad said, you don't need to go to school today.
00:27:36
Speaker
Why don't you go down to the club and play tennis?
00:27:40
Speaker
I shipped him off to Volatarius Tennis Camp in Florida, which he did not want to go to.
00:27:47
Speaker
It felt like he'd been just shipped away from his home.
00:27:50
Speaker
and turned pro because that when he was like 16 or 17.
00:27:55
Speaker
And the pressures he had, you know, he got so him and his dad were strange for years and years and years.
00:28:01
Speaker
I don't think they've come back together ever.
00:28:05
Speaker
Steffi Graf had the same problem with her father.
00:28:08
Speaker
You know, these parents have put so much pressure on their kids to excel in sports.
00:28:15
Speaker
All you got to do is go down and watch a Pico League football game and watch sometimes the coach
00:28:20
Speaker
rag on these 10-year-old, 12-year-old kids as if they are in the NFL.
00:28:26
Speaker
And they think they're new, Rockne, the new head coach.
00:28:30
Speaker
I mean, it's a little bit embarrassing and sad.
00:28:34
Speaker
Social media, which is compounding the problem.
00:28:39
Speaker
One of my big efforts through Lieutenant Governor and Governor was to put more counselors in school.
00:28:44
Speaker
The first line of defense to have your children be healthy is the parents.
00:28:50
Speaker
My wife's initiative, it was a great initiative, and I hope people continue to talk about this, is parenting.
00:28:58
Speaker
You know, I have six kids.
00:29:00
Speaker
None of them came with any instructions.
00:29:03
Speaker
We had to learn on the way what we learned from our parents, maybe our religious leaders, et cetera.
00:29:09
Speaker
But there's not really a good manual on how to parent.
00:29:13
Speaker
There's books out there you can read.
00:29:15
Speaker
But Jeanette said, let's start talking about parenting.
00:29:18
Speaker
If we get the parenting right,
00:29:19
Speaker
the rising generation is going to be fine.
00:29:21
Speaker
So that's the first place.
00:29:23
Speaker
The second place is when you go to school, you know, there ought to be better counselors.
00:29:27
Speaker
We are woefully short of counselors.
00:29:30
Speaker
We finally, my last two years as governor, we got, I think, $25 and $30 million, respectively, put into counseling where the counselors are there not only to just see how you're doing on your academics and help you find a pathway to post-high school education and
00:29:49
Speaker
into college and a career path, which is very, very important.
00:29:53
Speaker
It's also say, how are you doing?
00:29:55
Speaker
How's your association with your classmates?
00:29:57
Speaker
How are you doing at home?
00:29:59
Speaker
How's your mental health?
00:30:02
Speaker
And check in to see that they're happy.
00:30:05
Speaker
If they're not, find out why and see if we can help them.
Keys to Success: Education, Employment, Family
00:30:08
Speaker
More emphasis now on mental health than ever before, and it's probably way past time.
00:30:13
Speaker
I think that's good.
00:30:15
Speaker
One last story I'll tell you.
00:30:16
Speaker
I wish I could think of the guy's name.
00:30:20
Speaker
He died here a couple of three years ago.
00:30:23
Speaker
He was a guy from Pleasant Grove.
00:30:25
Speaker
He'd go around the state and the Intermountain area and other places in America and lecture on the problems of social media.
00:30:34
Speaker
And we all know cyber bullying, things that happen with the internet, which are just so disappointing.
00:30:41
Speaker
And it causes a lot of grief to people.
00:30:44
Speaker
And he would give these lectures at the high school juniors and seniors, and then they'd write him letters.
00:30:50
Speaker
And he said, I got a letter from this one young lady who said, I'm feeling suicidal.
00:30:55
Speaker
I just don't like my life.
00:30:58
Speaker
It's not enjoyable.
00:30:59
Speaker
I go to school.
00:31:00
Speaker
It's not fun.
00:31:02
Speaker
You know, and I just feel like I need to end it all.
00:31:06
Speaker
Well, he ended up meeting with her and to his great surprise, found out she was the head cheerleader at her high school.
00:31:14
Speaker
Now you think the head cheerleader, you know, is that a pretty prestigious position?
00:31:18
Speaker
the accolades of your peers and being able to cheer on your school and everything.
00:31:23
Speaker
And she's suicidal.
00:31:25
Speaker
And he said to her, let me give you a suggestion after you talk to her for a while.
00:31:30
Speaker
Let me have you get off of social media.
00:31:33
Speaker
No more social media for the next four weeks.
00:31:36
Speaker
And let's see what that does for your self-awareness and your self-appreciation.
00:31:45
Speaker
And she had a
00:31:47
Speaker
Complete change of heart.
00:31:49
Speaker
The best thing she said I ever did was get off social media.
00:31:51
Speaker
I didn't have to worry about some of the things people said, the mean-spirited and the personalized things and the cyber bullying and recognize that I had a pretty good life.
00:31:59
Speaker
And we see so much of that with social media.
00:32:04
Speaker
I see where Governor Cox is now taking issue with some of our social media platforms and say, we're going to sue you.
00:32:12
Speaker
You know, what you're doing to our rising generation, our young people,
00:32:17
Speaker
is unconscionable.
00:32:19
Speaker
And it probably is.
00:32:20
Speaker
Again, the way we fix that really is go back to the parents.
00:32:25
Speaker
What can we do to make sure that the parents are there?
00:32:28
Speaker
We have a stable family life that teaches good principles and values to their children.
00:32:33
Speaker
That's the most important thing we see across the country.
00:32:37
Speaker
And I think you're going to attribute it to the breakdown of the family unit and
00:32:42
Speaker
to find our children are suffering because of it and are not getting good direction.
00:32:48
Speaker
There's uncertainty.
00:32:49
Speaker
They don't know what to follow anymore.
00:32:54
Speaker
They're not getting taught that at home.
00:32:56
Speaker
We're becoming a less religious society, meaning less participation in some kind of denomination, religious worship, which gives us all, no matter what the religion is, some focus of what are good values and good things for you to
00:33:11
Speaker
have as your own personal characteristics.
00:33:15
Speaker
I spoke once to, in Washington, D.C., with a group on this very issue.
00:33:22
Speaker
And they said, Gary, when our studies show us, we can tell you four or five things.
00:33:27
Speaker
If you'll do these things, if our young people do these things, they will have a successful life and virtually none of them will be impoverished.
00:33:37
Speaker
I said, what are the things?
00:33:39
Speaker
He said, one,
00:33:40
Speaker
get a good education, graduate from high school and go on and get some post high school education.
00:33:46
Speaker
That's number one.
00:33:48
Speaker
Number two is to get a job, use that education to get a job.
00:33:53
Speaker
Number three is get married.
00:33:56
Speaker
Marriage is an important aspect of association.
00:34:00
Speaker
And they said marriage is a stabilizing factor where you commit to each other and more and more people are not doing that.
00:34:08
Speaker
And it's almost like, well, if you,
00:34:10
Speaker
You get crossways with me, I'll find somebody else.
00:34:12
Speaker
I can go to the internet and take an app and find somebody just as pretty as you.
00:34:17
Speaker
And, you know, people aren't committing.
00:34:19
Speaker
So one, get an education, post-education.
00:34:22
Speaker
Two, get a job.
00:34:23
Speaker
Three, get married.
00:34:25
Speaker
And four, have children.
00:34:27
Speaker
And then they say, in that order.
00:34:31
Speaker
In that order.
00:34:32
Speaker
Unfortunately, we have too many, particularly some of our inner city folks and minority groups,
00:34:40
Speaker
For whatever reason, either there's not a father in the home, they weren't taught differently, not going to church, not being taught these principles at home, but we have a very high illegitimacy birth rate in our inner cities.
00:34:53
Speaker
It's approaching 70%.
00:34:56
Speaker
And we wonder why we're having problems with society.
00:34:59
Speaker
That is part of the problem.
00:35:01
Speaker
So get a good education, get a job, get married, and then have children.
00:35:08
Speaker
That almost assures and guarantees you'll never be impoverished and you'll have a good life.
COVID-19 Strategy and Conclusion
00:35:16
Speaker
That's powerful.
00:35:17
Speaker
That's great advice.
00:35:19
Speaker
Thank you.
00:35:20
Speaker
I have a question, Governor.
00:35:23
Speaker
First of all, to congratulate you, you've probably had this a lot, but many people who analyzed post-COVID how states did have ranked Utah as being one of the best, most successful states to navigate that very, very complicated time.
00:35:41
Speaker
And
00:35:42
Speaker
And it was a time when all of us remember there were just so many voices, so many opinions.
00:35:48
Speaker
And I think sometimes this question, I'm thinking of coaches, the answer, though it'll be as a governor, apply to coaches where, you know, you have parents talking to you, you have your players talking to you, you have fans and opinions and administrators and everything else.
00:36:05
Speaker
You seem to navigate that very complicated time very well.
00:36:09
Speaker
And I'm wondering,
00:36:11
Speaker
when you're in a position with so many voices coming at you that are contradictory, how is it that you navigate that and that you try to pay attention to either the voices that matter or the principles that matter?
00:36:28
Speaker
How did you govern that time when there was just so many varying opinions so well?
00:36:35
Speaker
Well, it's not by happenstance.
00:36:38
Speaker
I mean, we actually had a plan.
00:36:41
Speaker
And we had a goal and developed a plan to achieve the goal, which was we said in the very outset, which other states did not do, we said we want to protect your health and your livelihood.
00:36:55
Speaker
We knew those are tied together.
00:36:57
Speaker
And so we didn't want to jeopardize your health.
00:37:00
Speaker
We also didn't want to have you be unemployed and have the economy tank either.
00:37:04
Speaker
So the best thing I ever did when I was governor was I surrounded myself
00:37:09
Speaker
with really smart people, a lot smarter than me, and expertise in a variety of different areas of need.
00:37:21
Speaker
And so my senior staff, my cabinet members, brilliant people.
00:37:26
Speaker
So when we have a crisis, it doesn't matter what it was, we had a crisis when I came into office where the depths of the Great Recession and the economy was bad, we're approaching double-digit unemployment rates,
00:37:38
Speaker
foreclosures were up.
00:37:39
Speaker
I mean, it was just all kinds of problems.
00:37:42
Speaker
So we said, what's the goal?
00:37:43
Speaker
The old Steve Covey again, start with the end in mind and then figure out how we're going to get from here to there.
00:37:50
Speaker
We put together a plan and set a goal to become the best performing economy in America.
00:37:56
Speaker
And people laughed.
00:37:57
Speaker
I mean, people literally laughed.
00:38:00
Speaker
New guy on the job, what a crazy man.
00:38:02
Speaker
You know, the small state here and nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
00:38:06
Speaker
And you're going to become the best performing economy
00:38:08
Speaker
in America.
00:38:10
Speaker
Well, five years later, we did it.
00:38:11
Speaker
We actually achieved that.
00:38:12
Speaker
We're still there.
00:38:14
Speaker
It's a long lasting thing what we've done.
00:38:16
Speaker
It's just a joy to see happen.
00:38:19
Speaker
Well, the same thing happened.
00:38:20
Speaker
Also, we have another crisis here with COVID-19.
00:38:23
Speaker
Nobody knows much about it, you know, and we hit it.
00:38:27
Speaker
It came about the first part of March.
00:38:29
Speaker
So, you know, almost, you know, what, 2020 rather.
00:38:34
Speaker
And three years ago, almost to the day here now.
00:38:39
Speaker
And we had a wake-up call.
00:38:42
Speaker
And we ended up having to – teachers didn't want to teach.
00:38:45
Speaker
They didn't want to go to school.
00:38:48
Speaker
You know, it was hard on the seniors that year because we ended up having suspended schools.
00:38:54
Speaker
But we did come up with a plan.
00:38:55
Speaker
We actually got all the smartest people we knew in business and in health and said, let's develop a Utah plan.
00:39:03
Speaker
And that was a plan that we not only used, we're the only state in America, probably the first ones in America to have a written plan, how to address COVID-19.
00:39:13
Speaker
But also, it was able to be modified.
00:39:16
Speaker
And as we learned more, we did change and made some modifications to plan.
00:39:25
Speaker
People ask me all the time, if you had it to do over again, would you do the same thing?
00:39:31
Speaker
And I've said, the answer to that question is,
00:39:33
Speaker
Do I know what I know now when I go back and do it again?
00:39:36
Speaker
Or do I have to go with the same information I had before?
00:39:39
Speaker
Because if it's the same information I had before, I'll do the same thing.
00:39:44
Speaker
We did the best we could with the information at hand.
00:39:48
Speaker
And a lot of nuances out there.
00:39:50
Speaker
And not everybody had all the information they needed to have.
00:39:53
Speaker
And we ended up having to react or worried about running out of supplies.
00:39:59
Speaker
We paid more money than we needed to for supplies.
00:40:02
Speaker
But we got them.
00:40:03
Speaker
We shipped them from around the world to get into Utah.
00:40:06
Speaker
So we didn't have a shortage.
00:40:09
Speaker
We had public that panicked.
00:40:10
Speaker
I mean, if you can imagine, I never did quite understand the logic on this.
00:40:15
Speaker
People would go to the store and they'd buy all kinds of toilet paper.
00:40:20
Speaker
You know, okay, we're sick.
00:40:23
Speaker
We've got COVID, but I don't think it's going to make us go to the bathroom that much more often.
00:40:27
Speaker
Stockpiling toilet paper.
00:40:29
Speaker
You know, and then they started stockpiling water.
00:40:32
Speaker
I'm thinking the faucets still work.
00:40:34
Speaker
We still have reservoirs with water in our water system.
00:40:37
Speaker
Just turn on the tap.
00:40:39
Speaker
Why are we stockpiling water?
00:40:41
Speaker
They just showed kind of the panic mode that people were into.
00:40:45
Speaker
And hence, that's why we went on.
00:40:47
Speaker
I had a press conference every day for a long while.
00:40:50
Speaker
I assigned the lieutenant governor to run a task force.
00:40:54
Speaker
So we got input from all those who were knowledgeable and got the best information we could at the time.
00:41:01
Speaker
And we addressed it in a significantly good way.
00:41:03
Speaker
When we came back, we, again, worked with the Chambers of Commerce, working with Intermount Health Care and other health care associations, the University of Utah and their health care professionals.
00:41:16
Speaker
And we understood as regional what's happening on the Wausau front as it was happening in rural Utah.
00:41:23
Speaker
So we tried to make some allowances and not be punitive in closing everything down.
00:41:28
Speaker
We had to make some changes.
00:41:31
Speaker
We had our young people wear masks.
00:41:33
Speaker
We had parents and some more on their ultra right wing just got, how dare you, you know, have our children wear masks.
00:41:44
Speaker
They defied it.
00:41:46
Speaker
And it really became ugly.
00:41:47
Speaker
I got a lot of really nasty letters from people that I think were just a little bit off of plum, their bubble a little bit far to the left or right.
00:41:57
Speaker
And one day, in fact, a couple of times, we had protesters in my personal residence in Orem.
00:42:04
Speaker
Not the mansion where I was at, not the capital, but my personal home disrupting my neighbors.
00:42:10
Speaker
And people were there packing guns and automatic weapons.
00:42:14
Speaker
And I think, why?
00:42:16
Speaker
What's that for?
00:42:17
Speaker
Are you going to shoot us?
00:42:19
Speaker
You know?
00:42:20
Speaker
And my neighbor came out and had one lady who was yelling at a bullhorn at my house in Orem.
00:42:25
Speaker
And he walked out and he slided up alongside her and said, ma'am, you know that nobody's home, right?
00:42:31
Speaker
She's in my house.
00:42:33
Speaker
But I mean, people became almost, you know, panic mode, irrational, you know, kind of silly in some of their approaches.
00:42:44
Speaker
But we couldn't get the teachers to go back and teach if they didn't feel like the classroom was safe.
00:42:51
Speaker
So we end up doing a compromise, say, okay, we'll put protocol in place.
00:42:56
Speaker
And the schools end up becoming one of the safest places to be during the pandemic for the children and for the teachers.
00:43:06
Speaker
And the end result, as you've already said, is that we've ended up having many publications.
00:43:13
Speaker
Wall Street Journal put it on the front page and University Studies and Glenn Beck
00:43:18
Speaker
you know, who's a libertarian on the right side of the political spectrum, all have come out and said the state that handled the pandemic, the best of all 50, was Utah.
00:43:30
Speaker
And we did.
00:43:31
Speaker
We did a pretty good job of kind of threading the needle and saying, we're not going to close the economy.
00:43:36
Speaker
We're going to protect your health.
00:43:37
Speaker
We're going to do some things.
00:43:38
Speaker
We're going to have to work together on this thing.
00:43:41
Speaker
And most people did.
00:43:42
Speaker
Some people didn't.
00:43:44
Speaker
I went to a store that
00:43:47
Speaker
was famous for selling, all they do is sell meat, really great cuts of meat.
00:43:52
Speaker
And they, as a private owner, said, anybody comes in our store needs to wear a mask.
00:43:59
Speaker
If you don't wear a mask, we're not going to let you in the store.
00:44:02
Speaker
Well, some people went down there purposely just to try to walk into their store and not wear a mask.
00:44:10
Speaker
Why?
00:44:11
Speaker
It's just caused grief and disruption and anger and, you know, just to show, well, you're not going to push me around.
00:44:18
Speaker
Well, it's his store.
00:44:20
Speaker
He can have the requirements on his private property, whatever he wants to have.
00:44:23
Speaker
That's his constitutional right.
00:44:25
Speaker
You don't have to go there, buy your meat.
00:44:27
Speaker
You have no right to come in there.
00:44:28
Speaker
They had to call the cops and escort him off their premises.
00:44:31
Speaker
That's a bad attitude.
00:44:33
Speaker
The good thing for Utah is most people had a good attitude and say, what can we do to help be part of the solution and not be part of the problem?
00:44:40
Speaker
Maybe there's some inconvenience here, but so what?
00:44:43
Speaker
If it makes other people feel more safe and comfortable, if I wear a mask, I'm going to wear a mask to show my respect.
00:44:49
Speaker
But all the churches came together and actually issued a statement of that very thing and say, you know, treat your neighbor as yourself.
00:44:57
Speaker
Be kind, be considerate.
00:45:01
Speaker
and wear the mask or social distance and see if we can't get through this together.
00:45:06
Speaker
And we did.
00:45:06
Speaker
We did very good at it.
00:45:08
Speaker
And that's a tribute to the people, a tribute to the process we went through.
00:45:13
Speaker
We made some mistakes and stumbles along the way, yes.
00:45:16
Speaker
We do it different than what we know now.
00:45:18
Speaker
But knowing then what we knew, you know, we did the best we could with what we had on hand.
00:45:25
Speaker
And as we've seen from the publications post-
00:45:29
Speaker
You know, look back and see what we did.
00:45:33
Speaker
By far, Utah has been named the number one state in handling COVID in 2020 than any other state in America.
00:45:40
Speaker
I'm grateful for that.
00:45:41
Speaker
Grateful for the people of Utah and what they did to help make that to happen.
00:45:47
Speaker
Well, Governor, we appreciate you.
00:45:48
Speaker
And maybe we'll end on that.
00:45:50
Speaker
We're glad you're busy.
00:45:53
Speaker
We hope you'll stay busy and stay involved in helping our state.
00:45:56
Speaker
I have grown up here and think it's the greatest state.
00:45:59
Speaker
in the country and our motto of, of eyes up, do the work.
00:46:03
Speaker
That's the motto that our, this program's built around.
00:46:06
Speaker
It's the wristbands that thousands and thousands of kids, and we get similar emails that you refer to.
00:46:12
Speaker
We get emails from kids and parents that are struggling, um, adults, all ages.
00:46:17
Speaker
And we refer back to keep your eyes up, keep your eyes up and do the work.
00:46:22
Speaker
And eyes up means a lot of things.
00:46:23
Speaker
I think in this examples, you just shared about the COVID crisis here,
00:46:28
Speaker
that you and the people around you had your eyes up.
00:46:31
Speaker
You stayed focused on what was in front of you and what the next thing was.
00:46:35
Speaker
And then you found people that were committed to doing the work, to doing what was necessary to get our people back and make sure that they were happy.
00:46:45
Speaker
And we appreciate you doing that because we know that wasn't the case in a lot of states.
00:46:49
Speaker
So thank you for that.
00:46:50
Speaker
Well, thank you.
00:46:51
Speaker
And I'll just say, you know, we think eyes up.
00:46:56
Speaker
It does have probably a lot of different connotations you could ascribe to it.
00:47:00
Speaker
But I hope that we as a people, not only as Utahns, but as Americans, recognize a number of things.
00:47:07
Speaker
You've talked about we have more in common than we have in difference.
00:47:11
Speaker
That's true.
00:47:12
Speaker
We're all the same race.
00:47:14
Speaker
We're all part of the human race.
00:47:17
Speaker
We might have different colors of pigment on our skin, but we're all Americans here in the United States, and we're all members of the human race around the world
00:47:25
Speaker
And so we have a lot of things in common.
00:47:27
Speaker
We ought to look to see what we can do together to improve the lot of people's lives.
00:47:32
Speaker
And certainly as we have our eyes upward, you know, it reminds me that we ought to all, and I am a man of faith, and most people are, but if you're just a man of, I believe nature's done it, thank nature.
00:47:46
Speaker
Thank God that we have the blessings that we have here in this great country, in this great state.
00:47:52
Speaker
Blessings of freedom, freedom of speech.
00:47:53
Speaker
I mean, we see what's happening in
00:47:56
Speaker
other parts of the country right now with France trying to say you can't picket.
00:48:00
Speaker
You can't have freedom of speech.
00:48:02
Speaker
And, you know, we have such a good way of life here in America if we don't squander it.
00:48:11
Speaker
And so let's spend a little extra time on our knees.
00:48:15
Speaker
My dad had a great saying that he taught me when I was playing Little League baseball.
00:48:21
Speaker
He was the coach.
00:48:22
Speaker
And he brought the team together and he says, I believe in prayer.
00:48:26
Speaker
So before every game, we're going to have a prayer.
00:48:29
Speaker
And we had a prayer.
00:48:31
Speaker
It was mainly about hopefully we'll play well.
00:48:34
Speaker
We'll be protected from harm or danger.
00:48:36
Speaker
We'll have fun.
00:48:37
Speaker
We'll respect our opponents.
00:48:39
Speaker
We'll have a good time playing baseball.
00:48:42
Speaker
I love baseball.
00:48:44
Speaker
And he said, my saying is, let's pray like everything depends on the Lord.
00:48:52
Speaker
Let's get out and work like everything depends on us.
00:48:56
Speaker
And that's the way we ought to treat things.
00:48:58
Speaker
Let's get on our knees, spend a lot of time, say, God, help us.
00:49:01
Speaker
We thank you for our blessings.
00:49:03
Speaker
We've been blessed beyond what we probably deserve.
00:49:06
Speaker
But we're going to go out now and work as hard as we can to make it even better.
00:49:10
Speaker
And if we do that, our state's going to be in great shape and our country's going to be in great shape.
00:49:15
Speaker
Amen.
00:49:16
Speaker
Eyes up, eyes up and go out and do the work.
00:49:18
Speaker
We appreciate you, Governor.
00:49:20
Speaker
Have a great day and tell your wife we appreciate her as well.
00:49:23
Speaker
We need more people like you.
00:49:25
Speaker
Well, thank you.
00:49:26
Speaker
We need people like you too.
00:49:27
Speaker
So we're trying to talk about sports.
00:49:30
Speaker
It all is about team acronym T E A M. I've used when I first came on board was together.
00:49:36
Speaker
Everyone achieves more team.
00:49:38
Speaker
And everybody has a role and a spot on the team, but not the same, but they're all equally important.
00:49:44
Speaker
My role is more than your role.
00:49:46
Speaker
And if the team works together, we can advance that football down the field.
00:49:49
Speaker
We'll score some touchdowns.
00:49:52
Speaker
It's a true concept, true principle.
00:49:56
Speaker
So we need more teams like you guys.
00:49:59
Speaker
Wow, Dustin, what a great conversation with Governor Herbert.
00:50:02
Speaker
Just such powerful insights from someone who's experienced things and made decisions that we've never had to make and just a lot of wisdom there.
00:50:11
Speaker
What were your thoughts to close up?
00:50:13
Speaker
Well, there's only 50 of them, Brad, at any given moment in the country, 50 governors of the United States.
00:50:20
Speaker
And to have one that was one of the best that we've ever had, really, in his time in office,
00:50:25
Speaker
Go look at the numbers.
00:50:27
Speaker
The state of Utah is just under his leadership just thrived.
00:50:31
Speaker
And he led during some unbelievably tough times as well.
00:50:34
Speaker
So to be able to have him spend as much time as he did with us, it's a little bit longer podcast today.
00:50:41
Speaker
It was awesome.
00:50:42
Speaker
I'm glad that we were able to.
00:50:43
Speaker
I hope everybody stayed and listened to the whole thing because there was some great bit of information in there.
00:50:48
Speaker
It's going to be going to be one we probably refer to in the future.
00:50:52
Speaker
Awesome.
00:50:52
Speaker
Well, everyone, thank you for joining us.
00:50:55
Speaker
That was an awesome experience.
00:50:56
Speaker
We appreciate you joining the Sportlight Podcast.
00:50:58
Speaker
Like it, share it.
00:50:59
Speaker
This was a unique episode.
00:51:00
Speaker
Maybe there's some people who would be interested in this one that aren't interested in the typical ones.
00:51:06
Speaker
So share it with them.
00:51:07
Speaker
Let them listen to the great wisdom of Governor Herbert and keep your eyes up and do the work.
00:51:13
Speaker
This has been the Sport Life Podcast from Especially for Athletes, sponsored by Coca-Cola.
00:51:18
Speaker
You can learn more about Especially for Athletes by visiting the website at especiallyforathletes.org.
00:51:24
Speaker
You can also learn more about the book, The Sport Life, by Shad Martin and Dustin Smith at especiallyforathletes.org.