... and sent everything in

... she put, she put the work in.

By the time I got out of AD SEB in February 2025 she sent me the packet and I submitted it.

And once I submitted it I found out that the ACLU of New Jersey and also the ex-head public defender, Joseph Corcor, was representing people for the clemency petitions.

So one of my closest friends that I call my brother, he was represented by Joseph Corcor and I asked him could he reach out to him and see if he would give me a support letter, 'cause I felt like if you representing him that's gonna mean something if their name is on something.

And at first he was like, "I don't know," and then ultimately we had a conversation and he said, "I, I looked at your petition." He said, "I represent you." He's seen everything I accomplished in my 19 years.

So, uh, we, he s- took it from the governor's office and then added what he needed to add it to and then refiled it for me.

You sound like you-

But when you think about partnership with these types of organizations... maybe share a story that comes to mind specific to one of the cause areas that you support that's kind of transcended that checkbook approach and really taken it deeper for you.

Yeah, I would say there's quite a few.

We have probably five or six non-negotiables that we contribute heavily to every year.

And I'd say the consistent feeling towards all of them is we have actually gotten to see firsthand what they do.

I feel like there is this money exhaustion with so many people and not wanting to spend or contribute anymore because they can't see what they're doing.

And unfortunately, in kind of the world we live in, we have a privilege that a lot of people don't get of being able to go to these places.

We have been to St. Jude and seen the research and seen the children and actually met people firsthand that are on a journey no one should ever be on, having benefit to the dollars that people contribute.

It's

Yeah.

And you go deeper than surface level, and you get vulnerable and actually open up to people and have them know you.

And we've, we have found it be very beneficial to our goals and our life and our purpose and our, our depth and our meaning to actually find friendships and relationships with people where they know you.

We'll see y'all Friday.

[singing] Spiritually stronger.

When the waves break over me.

When my heart can barely beat.

I might be on my knees.

Mm-hmm.

And everything on Instagram is gonna tell you, "Don't take a break because you're not gonna reach the top of the mountain," and I think that's a lie.

I think if you can take at least a day a week to...

We literally did this.

We wrote out a long laundry list of all the things that we love.

Uh, mine was like a campfire.

I love, like, making s'mores.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And everything on Instagram's gonna tell you, "Don't take a break because you're not gonna reach the top of the mountain," and I think that's a lie.

I think if you can take at least a day a week to...

We literally did this.

We wrote out a long laundry list of all the things that we love.

Uh, mine was like a campfire.

I love like making s'mores.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And their garage doors were, like, an extension of their house living situation, so every garage had, like, a TV and a couch.

It sounds very strange, but all the parents would always, like, sit in their garages, and all the kids would just run wild through the neighborhood.

So I spent all of my time just, like, playing in our cul-de-sac and truly just being a kid, outside of I did probably, um, three or four days a week of gymnastics training.

But that was just, like, my after-school activity that I did.

Like, you know, people would run track or do something else-

Mm

... it's, it's just made you, it's made us way more selfless and way more self-reflective of what our values are and what we spend time doing and how we are reflecting that to our children and what we're teaching them.

What were you guys up to when you were little kids, when you were eight or nine?

Uh, honestly, I had a very normal childhood.

It sounds crazy to say, because I was so young when I competed, but around, like, eight, nine, I went to public school.

I did after-school play dates with all of my friends.

Um, I lived on a cul-de-sac, and it was kind of just an Iowa, Midwest thing, but everybody in the neighborhood would always have their garage doors open-

Mm-hmm

... and their garage doors were, like, an extension of their house living situation.

So every garage had, like, a TV and a couch.

How do you even commit to a second date or a first date? with a person where you can then move on to the richer, more fuller, more joyful parts of life like you guys talk about really beautifully in the book.

Amazing question, by the way.

And I would argue that I get that and I totally understand it.

I think we are able to speak from experience in the commitment side where like we learned it and we did it.

But stereotypically, if you follow statistics and we both did to a T, elite athletes have a terrible time getting out of their sport.

And I think we lived both extreme ends of the spectrum of commitment where in our professional athletics, we had it honed in and we had the full team and we would show up to practice every day and have someone tell us, do this.

We never really had to make a choice on our own except for getting there.

Like, hey, here you go.

And then, um, so how did this mystery meeting come to be?

Yeah.

Uh, one of the events that I was asked to go cover was a cycling event.

Um, and I was at this cycling event, and I didn't know what I was watching.

[laughs] And they set me up with a USA Cycling, um, athlete, and his name was Guy East.

And he wasn't competing, but he was there with his teammates.

And I remember he was explaining everything to me and how the cycling world worked and what I was watching.

Oh.

And so we kind of break down the how to of figuring out what your values are and what really means a lot to you and how to hone in on it.

And for joy, you know, there's a lot of excitement when you start something new or when you're exploring the variety of life.

But there's a lot of joy that comes when you stick with something and see it all the way through.

And then meaning, you know, we found this in our marriage and parenting and then in our athletic career as well.

There's kind of two ways you can approach it.

You can either say, what can this thing give me? Or what can I do to serve this thing? And then the first part takes care of itself.

And so that's where the meaning comes from.

How can you make sure you're doing that?

but mile wide and into the, hey, we're going a mile deep, it's like, oh man, that is exciting and meaningful.

That's great.

We've done a whole podcast on like the, the one theory- Mm-hmm ... and which I, I still believe is, my personal belief is that it's false.

Because I feel like in the swipe right culture, people think that if they just keep swiping, they'll find the perfect one.

Mm-hmm.

And it's just one more swipe away- Yeah ... or five or 10, or 10 more minutes, or 10 more days.

Yeah.

[laughs]

Curious if you just tell us about it, how you got involved and kind of what your takeaway was.

I have been a part of so many different games since my competition, Wounded Warrior Games, Invictus Games, Special Olympics, and it's such a joy to be able to be a celebrator and a cheerleader for athletes in general, but with the Special Olympics being a part of this documentary and following these three athletes, I truly believe they embody the most pure form of sport, which is undying love and joy for it and to get better on their own and it's so cool to see them and meet them and see their community and upbringing but also to see the Special Olympics no matter if they win or they come in last there's such joy around it and I think it's something our world really needs to see.

I'm sure it impacted them being able to hear from you, but how did it impact you?

I think you said it perfectly.

I think it is sport in the purest form, and as it should be.

I think our world tries to messy up professional athletics a lot in adding too many outside pressures.

And as an athlete, being able to see these athletes strip sport down to what it should be, which is just a joy and a love for an activity, is really special.

And it's infectious.

How do you talk about social media with your kids? Do they know that you guys are, how do you balance it?

I will say we aren't quite there yet, which is great with talking with our kids about it.

But there's a bunch of different things in play.

My husband and I, our approach to social media with everything we post is we post from a parent's perspective.

So it's about parents.

It's about us.

It's not about our children.

What is some, like, postpartum marriage advice that you have? I will take personally, and I'm sure the internet would love as well, but...

Um, why don't you, you know, reintroduce yourself, um, as both Shawn and Get Sauced to the listeners, and maybe talk about, um, your mission and your objective with, with Get Sauced, and then we can jump into it.

Yeah, for sure.

Uh, hi, everybody, uh, Shawn Johnson, uh, Get Sauced, NJ on everything.

Um, just a brief rundown.

I started the channel, I think like a lot of content creators did, uh, during COVID.

Uh, it was mainly just me drunk in my kitchen live streaming.

Um, it then evolved.

Yeah

So.

Um, I think that one of the hardest parts for us in feeling heard and feeling seen, we had someone who came in.

We- we're constantly hiring consultants and advisors to kind of, kind of come in and audit our whole team and make sure we're doing things in an efficient way.

I remember someone came in, and they said, "You need to figure out how to delineate, uh, the hats you're wearing." So are you wearing...

At any given point in time, you could be wearing a husband hat, a father hat, a coworker hat, a CEO hat.

And if you can't figure out where those boundaries lie, that, that dynamic can get very confused.

So a lot of times we, you know, we'll get in an argument or feel like we're not being heard because I'm actually operating as wife, and he doesn't know that.

... talk about that?

Okay.

Yeah, we were acquiring a lot of different media networks and podcast networks, and it was, it was growing very rapidly and we were so excited about it.

And after we had our third kid, it was kind of like we can invest all this time into this company that we had been managing decently well with two kids, and grow it and sell it and have, fulfill this dream, or after we had a third kid, it was like, or we can get rid of that and now invest more into our family life.

And we had to really go back to the, the, the weight scale and say what's most important to us at a foundational level at the end of the day, and it was a very hard decision, but we ended up dissolving that company and just saying, "You know what? Any free time that we have now, we're going to embrace with our family," and it was one of the greatest decisions we ever made.

... to where you got.

I think it was the greatest gift we were given, though, in life, especially in today's world where people are preaching, preaching and teaching so quickly, like, how to hack your life.

People think you can hack your way to success and to happiness and fulfillment and joy, and how to hack your way to finding the perfect spouse, 'cause people also say that if you find the perfect spouse it should be easy and, you know, you won't ever argue or have anything like that.

And I think athletics for us taught us at a very young age that in order to have something very fulfilling with so much depth and so much meaning, you have to work for it, and you have to grind, and you have to get through pain, and you have to get through struggles.

Yeah.

And how can we approach it at every possible way someone could come at me and say, or come at us and say, "But what about this?" So it's, it's why commitment, how commitment, and the what, and, like, all of the structures and processes that we've implemented in our relationship and our business and our...

It's everything our coaches taught us and our mentors, and we've had the fortune of working with therapists and thought leaders and done intensives around the world about finding your values and how to lead a purpose-driven life, and we take all of that and put it into each one.

But it was, it was truly just trying to approach it from every angle.

Totally.

Which was really eye-opening for me 'cause I had to then make the decision on my own.

I couldn't allow someone to make it for me, which I think is what I wanted to do.

But it made me have a lot of thoughts about, do I actually wanna quit? Why do I wanna quit? Why did I start? And usually, I had invested so much time and effort that in my mind, I was like, "I actually can't walk away from this."

... for, uh, for entertaining us.

Um, okay.

To parents who are feeling wishy-washy and, like, they're, they don't know what to commit to and, like, there's so many options, we live in a time where there are more- more voices and more options that we are privy to than any other time in history.

We have so much noise, and I think because of that, we have so many people preaching that...

I mean, we- we learned firsthand with marriage.

They're like, "Oh, just get ready.

As soon as you get married, you're get- you're getting rid of your social life.

"But just let me know what else you're gonna do instead."

What's new? Oh,

gosh.

We are about to buy our fifth building right now in Denver.

Wow.

We are looking to buy a building in Austin.

They need a building.

That campus is doing really well.

Is this your final draft? Is this your final draft?

What about for you, Shawn? Yeah.

I, I was just gonna say it was, it was a fascinating process writing it together.I had written a book or two before this, and so I was familiar with the process solo.

But doing it together was fascinating, 'cause we have very...

We have a, a shared belief in the topic, which is commitment and how it, it works in our life, but we have two completely different voices in how we relate to the topic and how we process it.

And trying to figure out how to put that into a book for the readers was very interesting.

We got to a point where we said, "I don't think it's possible to blend them." So we actually brought in a third writer, and so the book is comprised of, like, us and then Jimmy Sonny, which is the third writer.

And so you have a chapter that kinda shows Andrew's face and it's Andrew's voice, and then you see my face and my voice, and we have separate text to give very different dynamics.

Yeah

Tell us more, if you would, Shawn, about what inspired you to write this book together.

Yes.

Well, thank you.

It's an exciting day.

This has been four years in the making.

We have poured our heart and soul into it, and the why behind it, we live in such an anxious generation.

You see statistics showing that people are more anxious and depressed than ever.

So I'm wondering how you have applied these commitment lessons to your personal ambitions.

Yeah.

It's still very difficult.

I mean, give Special Forces as an exampleWe- we've been talking about this a lot, but like on day one, and day two, day three, day four, 'cause it was a 10-day process, it was fascinating to look around and hear people even vocalize and think.

They're like, "Do I stay today? Do I leave tomorrow? Am I gonna make it to day three? Am I gonna make it to day four?" And myself, on day one, I was terrified.

I was shaking.

I was like...

I was excited on one hand because I love adrenaline stuff, but I w- I was so scared.

... um, that, you know, that are worth it?

You said the club's message of giving every athlete in the world a voice really resonated with you, and I was hoping you could talk to me a bit about that.

Yes.

So we started in LA.

One, we lived there for, like, five years, so I do feel like we have a little bit of a tie.

We miss LA so much.

We ended up moving to Nashville.

My husband and I went to Vanderbilt.

And when you look back on your 2008 experience, like, what emotions stand out the most to you?

Yeah.

And you can still have a beautiful life.

But I think we both kinda did that after our careers for a while, and I will never forget, we've talked about it on podcasts before, but, um, a couple years into marriage, we sat down on, like, January 1st to write down our goals in life, and I thought it was interesting that we both had these blank pieces of paper and we wrote down every category of our life of, like, our personal goals, our marriage goals, you know, goals with friends and business and finances, and everything that we wrote out looked completely different than the life we were living.Like, completely different.

We wanted such different lives than the beautiful lives we were having, which were fun, and we were pl- you were playing in the NFL, and there was so much stuff.

Um, and it made us think that this aimless wandering wasn't actually leading to the life we wanted, 'cause we would look at paper and be like, "How do we get that?" And so when we intentionally started redirecting our life and our choices on a daily basis to go in that direction, it seemed like we were feeling more fulfilled, more purpose-driven, more joy.

And then the commitment kinda started getting easier, because on a daily basis we'd start saying no to things that seemed more like a distraction to the overall arching goal than it was just, like, an impulsive way to have a little fun that day.

So how do you navigate the collateral damage that can come with commitment if you aren't careful?

There's sacrifice to every yes, and you have to, you have to figure out what those are and try to figure out what those are potentially before you make a commitment.

Mm.

So for them, if I ever voiced discomfort, that meant it had gotten to a point where my parents, it, it felt abnormal for them.

So they were like, "We're done." Like, "You're going home.

We're not going to practice.

We're gonna go to Dairy Queen.

We're gonna go shopping.

You're not gonna go back.

... and this is unhealthy and I need to pivot?