John Lynch: Making History in Melbourne with the San Francisco 49ers

John Lynch (0:03)

Most guys that make it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, they're starters year one, they're high draft choices. I was a mid-round draft choice, third round. I remember I had a defensive coordinator who did not want to draft me. And I remember a mentor of mine, a guy named Hardy Nickerson, Hardy said, make him love you, and it might take some time. He'll find something wrong with everything you're doing, but there's gonna be a day that you make him love you, and it's gonna be the best day of your career.

And, you know, it took three years, but that happened, and then my career kind of took off. You know, that's a cool part of my journey that I'm really proud of too, because it didn't just come easy.

Aleda (0:40)

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Well, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to a very special Empowering Leaders conversation today. We are just six days away from a historic moment. This is the first official NFL regular season game ever played in Australia, right here in Melbourne, between the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams. Fantastic to have my leader, co-founder, Matty Wotowicz, here, and many members and friends from our leader community. Thanks for joining us today.

And we have an incredible guest I'm sitting alongside of. John Lynch is a pro football hall of fame, one of the all-time greats of his chosen sport, a nine-time pro bowler, a Super Bowl champion, and one of the great leaders of his generation. After 15 years as an NFL player, John spent almost a decade in the broadcast booth before taking the extraordinary leap into the front office, becoming general manager of the 49ers, despite having no previous NFL executive experience. Since then, John has helped build one of the most respected organizations in American sport. From player to captain to broadcaster to general manager, John's career is a remarkable study in leadership, culture and people. John, welcome to Melbourne. Great pleasure to have you here.

John Lynch (2:21)

It's a pleasure to be here, and we're really excited. When they first told us we were playing in Australia against the team that is two hours or an hour flight away from us, really.

But the National Football League, I think the idea is that they've kind of taffed out the growth in within the states. And you know, the whole deal, how do you expand it? Well, you make it more of a global sport. And I can tell you, we've been here now for two days, and our players are loving it. We're loving it. The people are great. I know that about Aussies and never had the opportunity to be here before and really enjoying our time. And so much work went into this trip. So I'm so grateful for our organization. It's times like this when you, it's a monumental task, everything from getting visas for our players and to all the logistics that are involved with the trip like this. But our organization has stepped up and we've taken a different approach than the Rams, getting here early and part of that came from my experience with Aleda. Talking to guys on that call, whether it be Trent Robinson, who's at the Sydney Roosters and really just I've learned a lot from Trent. But they travel internationally on a regular basis and Yannick Sinner's coach Darren Cahill, obviously tennis players travel all over the world. And so there's a practical application of Aleda right there. You know, was able to kind of run that by our group and played along with sports science and all that. But I think we know in day two that we did the right thing now. It will come down to who plays better on that day. It won't come down to who had the better schedule. But we're certainly excited to be here and enjoying Melbourne, which great town. Had a fantastic, my wife came and we, we had such a good dinner last night. The people, coffee, I've never drank so much coffee.