WHOA That's Good Podcast - 100% Transparency
Episode Date: March 20, 2019Sadie interviews Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson and her husband and former NFL player, Andrew East. Join them as they discuss how they learned to cultivate 100% transparency in their marriage and... on social media, their story of falling in love, and why they keep their relationship full of laughter! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
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So I don't know if everyone's heard something that the
liverisinal team is so excited about right now.
We started last year the LO box and you may be thinking
what in the world is in an LO box?
Well, the LO box is just the liverisinal Bible study box
and it has everything that you need to equip you to lead a
Bible study right where you're at in your own home.
We have everything from the actual Bible study itself
that I wrote on both confidence to recipes
for what to cook for your girls.
We also have fun activities and so many more things
that partners have sent in.
And so if you are interested at all and being a leader,
go to liverjohn.com and look into the LO box. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Hey fam! Welcome back to the WoW That's Good Podcast! Today I am over the moon because
I'm getting to interview probably my favorite Instagram couple, actually not probably,
they are my favorite Instagram couple. And it's Shawn Johnson and her husband Andrew East.
Shawn and I got to meet on, I was on Dance with the Stars, we shared the same dance partner,
Mark Balla, shout out to Mark, he's the best. But Sean, if you don't know her from her Olympic gold medalist
or her husband from the NFL, you know them from their funny Instagram videos. And if you don't
know that I'm all, then you're really missing out. But we're about to have a great conversation
and give it a listen.
Alright what's up fam welcome back to whoa that's good today. I'm super excited per usual but today extra excited because we have two amazing guests Sean Johnson and her husband
Andrew East welcome to the show guys. Thank you. How are you doing? So good and I'm like so excited about this.
This is kind of shooting in the dark.
I know we met at Dance with the Stars.
I don't even know if you remember that.
It was like very brief.
But yes, I was so excited and then reached out on Instagram.
And here we are.
But no, I'm super excited because I know a lot of people
know who you guys are, but if they
don't follow you on Instagram, they are missing out because y'all are my favorite people
to follow.
I'm not kidding.
So, well done.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
I don't know.
We embarrassed ourselves a lot.
So, it's the best part.
I have like my saved things, you know, you can make like the files and it's like the LL file and y'all are like half of my LL file.
Hey, I love that.
It's so great.
Well, this podcast is so simple. We just kind of started off with this question that actually seems so easy,
but sometimes it stops people in their tracks.
So the question is, what's the best piece of advice that you've ever been given and we can hear
from both of y'all or y'all together or however y'all want to do it.
Okay so you sent this to me earlier as I've had a little bit of time to think
about it and it's a great question but I would say the best piece of advice
came from our marriage counselor right before we got married. And he always said that going into your relationship, make sure you are like you have a hundred
percent transparency with each other.
So approach our relationship almost to a fault in being a hundred percent transparent.
We need space or if we need, you know, the other to like, say something supportive or encouraging, like,
we're, we're too of a full transparent.
No, that's so good.
It really makes for an awesome way to do that.
Well, it's actually funny that you say that because I feel like you can totally see that
even through Instagram and YouTube, like y'all are so transparent.
And I think that's why people, especially me, that's why we love y'all so much, is because what you kind of feel like
what you see is what you would get.
It's like y'all are so real, it's so authentic,
it's the good, the bad, and the ugly,
it's the fun times and the hard times,
and like we've been blessed
from y'all's relationship for that.
So it's cool that that was kind of something
that y'all are rooted in.
That's awesome to hear.
Well, Thank you.
I feel like just us as a couple have found so much value
in doing that with each other and with our social media
presence.
And obviously there's some things that I don't need
to be shared and you don't want to share.
So it's a fine line between that.
But I'm glad you like it, Sadie.
Hey, I do.
I appreciate it.
And I think for me, people say that,
like, you're so vulnerable, you're so open,
and they say, like, how do you feel that you can do that?
And I feel like I've seen this in y'all.
I think when you take the pressure off yourself
to, for people to think that you're perfect,
or for people to think that you're like this
celebrity status person, then you're able to be real.
And y'all don not hold yourselves up too highly
or this idea of being perfect, y'all are like,
actually we're very real.
And here's our life.
And if we can laugh with you and encourage you
and inspire you, then that would be amazing.
But if you don't, then you don't have to follow it, you know?
And y'all aren't afraid of that failure.
You're not afraid of that realness. Andall aren't afraid of that, that realness.
And so it's beautiful, I love that.
That's an awesome piece of advice.
Oh, thank you.
Absolutely.
I feel so honored, oh my gosh.
No, it's so good.
Like, seriously, I know from me,
even just preparing to do this podcast,
I just want to let y'all know,
even being able to study more about who y'all are
and what y'all have done, I'm so inspired,
and I'm so blessed by that. I love it when that happens when you study you know to get
to do a podcast with somebody or interview somebody and then you in return get so blessed
and so much life poured into you just by the people at y'all are and so that's just awesome.
Everybody, everybody go follow, go listen to what they got because it's awesome.
So I wanted to ask you because I think this is so fun. Something we have in common. I was actually
thinking of all the things we have in common. We have a lot in common. I was like,
we got faith in common. We got Mark Ballis in common.
We got Matthew in common. And Nastya Luke and she was on her podcast last season
and I got to do her grander event so many different things in
her world have collided and I saw when I was looking y'all up that y'all met during dancing with the
stars. We did. We did. We did. Like random. It's so crazy to me. I can't even imagine meeting the
person. I was going to marry during that season. What was that like for y'all? Well, oh my gosh. It was it was kind of a hot mess
Because I was I was on dancing with stars and as you know
You get so preoccupied and consumed by
That show that you have you don't have any time for any other like yeah even to think and
My one of my friends is Andrew my husband's oldest, and he set us up on a blind date.
Oh, she was, yeah.
It was after rehearsal one day. I was so tired. I was so just like not in the mood to go on a date.
And I just wasn't feeling it. I was like, he's a nice guy, whatever, but I need to go back to rehearsal.
And I stood him up for, oh my gosh, I think like 10 months
before he, I finally went on a second date with him
and then fell head over heels.
So that is awesome.
Hey Andrew, where did they persist in?
In my face.
That's awesome.
I was so heartbroken because I was just trying to have
a good time on our first date and Shawn's over there.
Like I could tell she was stressed out about,
you know, memorizing whatever dance she had to do that week making sure that
she was staying on her A game with that and I was just I was just there to have a good
time.
That's so funny.
Now that's crazy.
So y'all met then that was when was that like 2000 what year were you on dance with
the stars?
Um so that we 2012.
2012.
Okay nice nice and then when did you on Dance With The Stars? Um, so that, we went 2012.
Yeah, okay, nice, nice.
And then when did you all get married?
In 2016.
Yeah.
I don't know what I was for God.
I was working over there.
I'm 10% more important, right?
You have polished up on that.
No, no, no, that's awesome.
That's just so crazy to me.
Okay, so something I love about YAH's relationship.
Obviously, through Instagram, you'll have so much fun together and not to mention you'll have the best laughs ever.
So, like, what do you think about just the aspect of having fun in a relationship has
that been something that's been super important or is it just kind of, YAH are just fun people
and it just happens?
Well, so first of all, you mentioned our first day and that was, you know, Shawn was stressed
out most of the day, but at the very end of the night, she smiled at me and giggle.
That finally I wanted to joke that.
Yes!
And when I heard that laugh, I was like, that is an angel right there.
And so anyway, I tried to make her laugh every single day.
Some days, I'm successful, some days I'm not. But, you know, we do have a ton of fun together.
I feel like that's super important
because it's so easy when you're married
and you see each other every day
to kind of get annoyed by each other or.
What are you trying to say?
Yeah.
Transfer.
Yeah, but yeah, find and join the little things.
It is important.
I mean, I feel like we all have like that child
like behavior at heart.
We all want to play, we all want to laugh. We want to have fun
And life is just so serious that you have to have someone to laugh with otherwise
Life is too serious and yeah, we try to just play and get going to do really dumb things all the time to keep it light. We do try to
Enforce the idea though that like some of the some of the highest points of joy that you reach
in life are after some of the deepest valleys that you hit.
We do try to share that balance of, hey, we've been going through a hard time, but now
we're able to laugh about it, which is so important to be able to move on and progress.
Wow, that was so good.
That needs to be your best piece of advice right there.
The best joy comes up through that hardest valley. That was so good. That needs to be your best piece of advice right there. That's joy comes up to that hardest valley.
That was awesome.
No, I see that.
I get that.
It's funny that you mentioned that, childlike manner because me and my best friend, we are so
stupid together like literally.
And we started Instagram pageant.
It wasn't even trying.
Like we totally were just doing it for our closest friends and then people started following
it and they always say, you're like children. You're like 12 years old. like we totally were just doing it for our closest friends and then people started following it
and they always say, y'all are like children,
y'all are like 12 years old.
And I'm like, I think everybody kind of is in a sense.
If you just live in freedom
and if you just allow yourself to have that fun
and it's not being naive to the fact that things in life
are hard and it's not being childish in the sense
of trying to just avoid the real things.
It's just like, no, to get through life and live a good life.
It's good to laugh and live in that freedom.
And y'all do that so well.
So I know that both of y'all, y'all used to be your,
your athletes and used to compete and obviously Sean and the Olympics.
And you played an NFL, right?
Yeah, yeah. I was four years in and out of the league.
Oh, wow, that's crazy.
And so now y'all are kind of doing this completely different thing.
And what was kind of y'all's journey from, you know, the transition, I'm sure it's a longer
story, but for both of y'all going from like Olympic gymnast NFL player to where y'all
are now, what was y What was your transition like?
Oh my goodness.
I think that transition is hard for any athlete.
Yeah, I think that's like where my face really played a factor
was trying to figure out how to start over
and not lose myself.
And I think it was similar with Andrew going through the NFL.
But wow, that's cool.
Andrew, would you say kind of the same thing?
Yeah, no, yeah, it's definitely hard, whether you're an athlete
or you just got done with another extra curricular activity
and you're transitioning out, like, to kind of reestablish
what you're spending your time on, what goals you have.
Like, I feel like I was actually just listening
to Donald Miller, who I'm a big fan of, and he's talking about
he's awesome.
And he's talking about how gold, like so often we reach one goal and then we don't know
what to do after that, but we need to have kind of like a more mentality of it being like
monkey bars where you swing from one to the next.
And as an athlete, I actually really struggle with that.
It was like a, I mean, I think two and a half year transition period before I really felt confident outside of my sport with like,
you know, what my identity was and what my purpose was.
Wow. Man, that's so cool. I saw when I was just reading up about you all that you had
gone through like some anxiety and stuff, which was a part of your transition. And I don't
know, if you don't know anything about my story, but
that was a huge part of my story is just anxiety attacks and panic attacks. I ended up writing
a book called Live Fearless about it, but it's cool how after I came out of that is whenever
I truly found my identity, you know, it's when I truly found the things that I was passionate about
and what I felt purpose to do because when you have that anxiety and that fear over you, it's so limiting.
It's so limiting because it tells you what you're good at as you are, tells you stick to
what you know, don't step out in faith, don't step out and try the new things.
And so I just thought it was really cool reading a little bit about your story and how after
that season and after coming out of that anxiety.
It's kind of when you stepped into what you're doing now. And I thought that was awesome, awesome to read about.
Yeah, it's so powerful.
And I thank you for sharing your story.
But like really for me, it was like,
am I worthy enough?
And that was kind of an underlying question.
And anyway, yeah, thank you for writing that book.
It was big tip for Tim.
Yeah.
For sure, for sure.
So for y'all, what major want to start a YouTube channel? Thank you for writing that book. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
So for y'all, what major want to start a YouTube channel?
Oh my goodness.
This is always such a funny question.
So long story short, I ran into a friend who was a YouTuber at the store
and she was like, oh my gosh, congratulations.
You started a YouTube channel. YouTube channel so happy for you.
And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, let's just say I came home
and I found out my husband had started a YouTube channel for us.
Yes.
But it was, I don't know,
I kind of, I lived in the sports entertainment world
for so long, which is similar to like a scripted,
scripted Hollywood show, scripted Hollywood
show or it's just you're, you're very much so told who you are, what you're allowed to
say, what you're allowed to wear, how you're allowed to act. And I had done that for so long.
I got so tired of people being told who I was as a person through a script. And I really
wanted to do the YouTube thing with Andrew and show who we were as
people outside of kind of the scriptedness, just to show them that there was a different
side to us and that they hadn't seen. And there was a more relatable person there than
what people had been portraying.
Yeah, I was really excited to start it for three reasons. One, Sean has, Sean has like
some really amazing fans,
and I felt like YouTube was like a very unique way
to connect with them.
Yeah.
Two, I was, I still think this is so true,
but like I really felt like the more the world got to see
of Sean, I just think she's like such a beautiful,
I'm not trying to be like, you're such a beautiful person
with the more the more people
Are you really were the like the better everything would and then and then we also started
Document our wedding planning process. So so that's why I started that is also okay. I love you all even more
This is awesome
So good that's so funny. That was the same for me. My sister started it and
She posted a video that I had done like just I just thought it was just for me
My sister posted and that's it started my YouTube channel. So hey you gotta you gotta appreciate the ones that love you enough to do
So funny that's awesome
Well, we'll just ask I just asked one more question
I know this is a short podcast,
but I feel like it's just really cool to get to know more about y'all and just about your life.
And kind of like you said, people can know you in a sense from social media, but I always like
to give people an opportunity to really be known, but y'all are already doing that. And I think
that's awesome. But I wanted to ask y'all, ask you know what do you think the value is in allowing people to really know who you are because I
love that y'all push through the idea of like yeah people could have just
known Sean Johnson for the Olympics and honestly they would have known a great
person because you you were perceived as an amazing person as you are and
people could have just known you for NFL or whatever that is but there's so
much more to who y'all are in y'all's. And what do you think the value is not only for people knowing
y'all, but what would you say to other people who may just be known for what
they're doing, but need to be known for who they are? Oh my goodness. You have some
amazing questions. First, wow. Thank you. Hard hitting.
Seat questions. I don't know. I would say just like from personal experience, I spent so many years of my life
trying to be someone that I thought the world would approve of.
I tried to look a certain way, I tried to act a certain way, I tried to be the perfect gymnast
and I tried to like create my identity based off of what society tells us is cool.
And it was exhausting and I just, I lost all heart for who I actually am.
I lost like who I was as a person.
And when I finally got so fed up and exhausted with that and just let my guard down
and became who I was.
God was putting all the puzzle pieces together.
I had a community of people come around me
that was the greatest community I had ever been a part of. I had friends, I had opportunities, I had
all these different things just fallen to place that felt right and it was because I was truly showing
the world and letting the world kind of do its job with who I was as a true person. I feel like when people when you choose to, sorry,
that's our dog. When you choose to kind of hide who you are from the world, you are giving
yourself the opportunity to truly live out. I think the life that God planned for you. Wow, that's so good.
That's awesome.
That's so true too.
So so true.
Andrew, what about you?
I know there's a big question.
No, it's great.
I think that being honest and the power that it can have on
your, not only your immediate friends and family,
like close circle, but also like the wider community.
I think it's just so, so powerful.
I mean, there's so many different things
that people go through, and I think sharing that
and being honest with that is just like,
really the first step to solving whatever problem is there.
Yeah, that's so true, that's so good.
I think, know, I
I have not
Said this so many people. I've actually never so it's anyone, but I think that you'll represent this so well. I've been working on this
Message like a sermon type thing and it was titled what makes this all amazing and the whole idea is that you know
So many times as people we put this pressure on ourself to be the amazing part of the story idea is that, you know, so many times as people, we put this pressure
on ourself to be the amazing part of the story. Like we want to be amazing. And in wanting
to be amazing, it puts this pressure on you, it puts this sense of having to strive, it
puts this idea that you have to be somebody that you're not to make people think that you
are amazing. But when you come under Jesus and when you come under
God and you understand that like he's actually what makes you amazing, you're able to kind of lay
down all the pressure, lay down on the striving and say, you know what? The hardest stuff of what I'm
going through, but yet still having joy, still having peace, still being able to be seen and be known
is actually what makes God so amazing and what makes my story amazing. And working on that message just right now and getting to talk to y'all, it's actually
brought so much life to it because I see that in both of y'all's life.
It's like, you've actually taken off the pressure of people thinking y'all are amazing,
which they do.
And you're amazing people, you know, and you're actually giving back.
You're letting people see God through two people who love each other.
You're letting people experience joy from two people,
making people laugh.
You're making people come together by being vulnerable
and opening up a door that maybe they haven't opened
in their own life to talk about.
And that is so amazing.
And so guys, y'all are awesome.
I love that I love y'all even more now
after getting to actually sit down and talk to y'all
for just 20 minutes.
But thank y'all so much for all the good advice and just being so real.
You're such a good example for our generation to look up to and to follow.
And so thank you all so much.
Thank you.
You I mean, we love you even more too.
Thank you for being such a great Sadie.
On a personal we have to say like, you know, you said that we inspired you,
but your boldness and your perspective is truly amazing. And we really respect that. So thank you said that we inspired you but your boldness and your perspective is truly amazing and we really respect that so thank you for that. Thank you so much
have 6 weeks. Hey listen I'm in Nashville if y'all are in town give me a hug.
I'm a 3D in Nashville. Yeah I'm in here girl. Me too! I didn't
ask that until I just started studying y'all's life so let's actually go to
coffee or something. Hopefully, she loves that.
Alright, y'all are awesome by you guys.
Thank you.
Bye, thank you.
Alright, y'all, you know what time it is?
Time to call Mama.
So we're going to call Mama with our best piece of advice and our worst piece of advice.
Let's see what she has to say. Hey Betty.
Hey hey hey!
Alright, are you ready?
I'm ready.
Okay well actually first of all I had to tell you who I just talked to.
Sean Johnson and her husband Andrew East.
So cool.
That's awesome.
Awesome. They are. That's awesome. Awesome.
They are such an amazing couple.
And so I'm super excited about that.
So great.
Lots of good advice.
And so here's our WoW Let's Go,
what's bad from our WoW Let's Go podcast Instagram account.
Let's see what we got here today.
All right, seek to be worth knowing
rather than well known.
Oh, that's a good one.
I like it.
Really, really, really good.
Now, because you can be very well known,
but not worth knowing.
Uh-oh, watch out.
Shoot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's terrible.
Everybody's worth knowing.
Everybody has a story and a story to tell,
but don't be known.
That's a good point.
Not really let yourself be known.
So good.
Praise to the people.
Deep thoughts.
Also, I always say, you know, we always talk about how like it's just much more important
that the people who like really know you to how they feel about you because they're
the ones who know and love you.
And so that's the people that it really matters what they think.
The people who just like know you from afar,
like they can say whatever, they don't really know you
so it doesn't really matter honestly.
Yeah.
And you know, I loved how, and this was another podcast of ours,
but when Chrissy Metz says it really, really well, she
basically says to all the haters on Instagram, she's like, you know, I have to remember that they don't know me, I know me.
And I think it's so good, because it's like, you kind of forget that you know yourself, you know, and it's like,
that's right.
You know yourself.
When somebody else says something, contradicting to what you know, why would you right. Yeah, when somebody says something contradicting to what you know
Why would you believe that over like
Over what you know to be true when like you live with you, you know
Yeah
You should never let someone shake you and what you know about yourself and what the people who are closest to you
And like I've grown up with you and spend every day with you. You should not never let someone who like has never even met you shake your feeling about
yourself and people do it all the time through social media like it let things get to them.
I remember a time when I let it get to me like whenever people say that's about dad,
this would like whenever first the show first came out and I was like, oh, it made me so
robbed up. Like I don't care if people say anything about it about me, but you know,
say something about about like my husband or my kids. All right, that me so riled up. Like, I don't care if people say anything about it about me, but, you know, say something about it about, like,
my husband or my kids.
All right, that'll get you riled up.
But it's like, it's so dumb,
because I'm like, you don't even know him.
Like, why does that bother me?
What you think?
Because you don't even know him.
So I think we all have to check ourselves at times
and remember that.
Yeah.
So good.
Okay, this is a, well, that's bad.
And this person is admitting that she followed a well
that's bad piece of advice and we're just gonna throw it out there for the whole world to hear it because it's pretty hilarious.
She said my brother once told me to put a dime in the electrical socket because candy would come out like a gum ball machine.
Dot dot dot. I got electrocuted.
What?
No.
That's terrible.
So nobody go out there and put a dime in the electrical socket.
Candy will not come out and your hair will be fried.
Oh my goodness, they're might be a greater piece of advice there about not listening to your
brother.
Whatever.
That's so true.
So true.
Like that.
So true.
Well, thanks mom.
Alright, you're welcome. I love you baby. Love true. Like that. So true. Well thanks, Mom.
Alright, you're welcome.
I love you baby.
Love you.
Bye.
Bye.
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Thanks so much for listening to the WoT that's good podcast.
We got a lot of good nuggets today.
Don't forget to follow me on all the social media platforms of mine.
Instagram, I'm at legit Sadie Rob, Twitter, Sadie Rob, and follow our live original
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You guys are the best, we love y'all and we appreciate you listening.
I'll see y'all soon! you