Former NFL player Santo Stephens credits his success to his parents' phrase "when you get there." They never dismissed his dreams of playing in the NFL and becoming a DJ, but instead asked at each stage: what are you willing to do to earn this?
What would you say, going through the NFL year after year, season after season, what would you say was the one thing that drove you the hardest to be as, as amazing as you were, uh, during that era?
Well, I think the biggest thing, uh, and it's always been with me, to to want to make the people around me proud, right? Um, one of the stories I tell all the time is I remember being a kid at the park, and I remember, uh, my dad asked me, he says, well, what do you want to be? You know, pretty much like, when you grow up, what do you want?
Right, right.
A lot of times, you know, you always ask your kids that, or the kids around you, you ask that question. Uh, and I told him, I said, listen, I got two things that I want to do. I want to play in the league and I want to be the DJ on the Quiet Storm. And everybody laughs at that part, right? But I love him, you know. And so he had never played, uh, professionally, but in his mind that was a reasonable goal for his son. And so I never heard, oh, it's gonna be tough, or I never heard, oh, it's an impossibility from where we are. 'When you get there.' Those 4 words changed everything for me. Wow. Because earlier we would always have that conversation and he would go, you know, 'When you get there, here's what you're gonna have to do. When you get there, here's what me and your mom's gonna be looking for.' Yeah. And so that type of conversation is the conversations that, that I always wanted, uh, him to know that I value. Right? Well, uh, and that he and my mom had placed me in a position to be successful.
Yeah.
And so I always wanted to honor them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mentally, always mentally first.
Yeah, they instilled in your mind that you already have achieved that success. It's just a matter of paying the dues to get there.
Exactly, exactly. And, and, and, and to ask the question, well, what are you willing to do? Yeah, right. Are you willing to, at this stage in your life, get the grades that you need? Are you willing to go and run when nobody else wants to run, right? When the temperatures are like they are now, are you willing to go and work out? Are you willing to do all of the things that you know it's going to take for you to be successful? But even more importantly, are you willing to run the track that actually is there? So at that time, of course, I don't even know if I was playing organized football just yet. I was still a little kid. I mean, we were in the park just playing, right? Are you willing to play Little League? Like I said before, go Little League, high school, middle school, whatever it is, and then on to have good enough grades to get into college, right? And then when you're in college, all of the things that you have to do in order to stay there, to be able to get, you know, what you need to get, or to get that shot. One of the greatest stories, um, that, uh, that, that I remember is walking out in the neighborhood and, uh, you know, you always think like, man, what am I— what's my family gonna do with me being gone? And my parents, they looked me dead in the face and said, look, there's nothing you can do for us here until you get what's there.
Yeah.
So when they sent me to college, it was like, look, You get that degree, you can help us out here. Don't worry about us, we got this, right? You get going and get that part of— get your— that part of your life started. So yeah, those are the types of things
