Beyond the Game: NFL Super Bowl Champ Tony Hills On Purpose, Wealth, Resilience, Mentorship & The Power of Reinvention (Inspirational)

In this inspirational and deeply motivational episode, Reginald D sits down with former NFL Super Bowl Champion Tony Hills. Tony shares his raw and powerful inspirational journey from the streets of Alief, Texas to the world’s biggest football stage—and beyond. More than just a motivational speech, this episode is a masterclass in purpose, legacy, financial transformation, and spiritual growth.

Tony opens up about growing up with a single mother, overcoming a paralyzing injury before college, and how his faith and resilience carried him from pain to purpose. Now a financial strategist and founder of Stat Financial, Tony empowers professional athletes and entrepreneurs to build wealth that outlasts the spotlight.

Tony Hills is not only a financial strategist, he's also an author and founder of STATT Financial, where he helps athletes and high performers build lasting financial legacies beyond their careers. After nearly a decade in the NFL, Tony transitioned into the world of wealth strategy—specializing in life insurance, annuities, and alternative investments to create long-term passive income and reduce tax liability.

On this episode, we talk legacy-building, purpose-driven wealth strategies, life after the game, identity shifts, and how your greatest gifts are often bigger than the platforms you stand on. If you're navigating a life transition—whether after success, career change, or personal reinvention—this is the motivational episode you’ve been waiting for.

What You'll Gain from This Episode:

• Motivational mindset tools to rediscover your identity beyond titles or performance.
• Financial wisdom from a pro who teaches athletes how to create generational wealth through life insurance, annuities, and values-based investing.
• A powerful purpose framework developed by Tony - his 4 Tenets of Purpose: (Discover, Design, Dedicate, Deploy) to help you walk in your calling and activate your next season of life. It will equip you to take clear, purpose-driven steps toward your next chapter.

Press play now and let Tony Hills challenge your mindset, ignite your purpose, and inspire you to build a legacy bigger than any game or career.

Tony's contact info:

Tony Hills's Website: https://www.tonyhills.com

Connext with Tony to schedule your financial strategy session

 https://calendly.com/stattfs

STATT Financial is at the forefront of excellence in financial services, specializing in life insurance and annuities. Our expertise lies in crafting customized solutions tailored t

Transcript

Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D.

On today's episode, I have Tony Hills.

Tony is a former NFL player and a Super bowl champion turned financial strategist, author and founder of Stat Financial,

where he helps athletes in high performance build lasting financial legacies beyond their careers.

Welcome to the show, Tony.

Hey, man. Thank you for having me, Reginald. I appreciate you, brother.

Yes, sir, man. Appreciate you. Appreciate you. So, Tony, can you tell me a.

Little bit about where you grew up.

And how your childhood was like.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I grew up in Alief, Texas,

a little place outside of Houston. And, man, childhood, me,

younger brother, and my mom.

Mom worked 70 hours a week, worked really hard. Dad wasn't in her life,

so, you know, she had to provide,

and so she did that.

You know, we grew up in a pretty rough environment, pretty rough neighborhood. But the one thing I will say is that she always kept us grounded in faith. She kept us in church, always had people around us and kept us in that Bible.

And so because of that, me and my brother both formulated a love for reading.

And that's what started, you know, the process and the journey of education and learning and things of that nature. But all in all, love my community taught me a lot of resilience, perseverance.

I had to learn a lot of things at an early age,

but I think that experience grew me up a little bit. And as we go through this journey,

that maturity level and being in that environment allowed me to see things and think of things in a creative and different way.

Yeah, exactly, man. Cause that's one thing we gotta come in, man. Coming from a single parent house, and my mom broke her back, man, working all these jobs and stuff like that.

We grew up poor in projects,

but she had that standard.

She had that standard. You're not gonna be like everybody else around here. So I can really, really, really relate to that.

So, Tony, can you tell us about your journey to becoming an NFL player?

Cause I know the Texas boys now, Texas boys,

they have their football players come out of Texas now.

Yeah,

yeah. No, man. It's an interesting journey, man. I actually started as a basketball player.

And so I was a pretty highly ranked basketball player.

I ended up going to the Junior Olympics in Spain and represented the United States in the Junior Olympics. And it taught me something, though, when I went over there, when I went there, I saw individuals of that seemingly had what we would perceive to be less than what we had,

but they seemed happier.

Right.

And so being in an environment like a leaf, you kind of taught that you are a product of your environment.

But over there, I realized you're not a product of your environment. You're a product of your decisions and your perspective.

So when I came back, man, I came back different. I came back changed.

And so from there,

I put the basketball down,

took the football up, because I decided at that particular point I wanted to go all in on one sport.

And football resonated with me the most.

It allowed me to release some aggression that was pent up because I internalized things.

But it also. I always tell people that football was my father figure because it's through coaches and being around other men. It taught me what, you know, what masculinity was, right?

It taught me how to do the hard things and what it looks like when you do the hard things and you go through adversity and you overcome those challenges, what that reward looks like, and it changes you internally.

And I learned all of those things playing ball. So from there, I was a tight end.

I was the number one tight end in the state of Texas, the number five player in the country. My claim to fame is that I was ranked higher than Vernon Davis.

So every time I see him, I mess with him about that. Now, he ended up being a better tight end than me, hands down, right?

But that was my claim to fame. And so I ended up going, getting a scholarship to the University of Texas.

But prior to me going there, man, I had a really gruesome injury my senior year where I tore up my knee really bad. I got hit crazy,

and it tore every ligament in my bone and every ligament in my knee, and I actually was paralyzed for six months.

I developed a condition called drop foot,

which, you know, at that point in time, I also learned another lesson that,

you know, people's perceived value of you is only as good as the value that they perceive you by, because I had all of these scholarship offers. But when they found out that I might not walk normal again, much less alone, play football,

the only school that truly honored their offer was the University of Texas and coach Mack Brown. And so that's where I ended up going. And the story gets better later.

Changed positions in Texas, became a top end offensive lineman and won some championships there. So it ended up working out.

Yeah, it always do, man, when you don't quit and you don't give up, it always.

Yes, sir.

You gotta meet you there, I'm telling you for sure.

So I'm asking you this tough question.

Take us back to what was the moment like when you became a Super Bowl Champion.

And what did it not prepare you for when the cheering stopped?

That's a great question. So, for me, my super bowl experience was interesting because I won that as a rookie.

So you think about. You go through the entire draft process,

you know, you're working out well. For me, it was getting healed up, then coming back from my pro day, working out, sitting down, getting drafted, OTAs, mini camps, come back in training camp, come back in preseason, come back in full season, come back in playoffs, and all of a sudden,

boom, you're in a Super Bowl.

So at that particular point, from the time my senior year started till super bowl, man, I had been playing football for almost two years straight.

So that in itself was a mentally taxing thing.

But when the confetti reigns and, you know, you're celebrating with the team,

it's amazing how all of that adversity and all of those things that you went through and the struggles that you went through just goes away.

So it was a moment of elation and to know,

like, even, you know, almost 20 years later, at the end of the day, I'm still a Super bowl champion. So that in itself is amazing.

What it doesn't prepare you for is what to do when it's done right. When the lights go out and you're now having to transform into a different aspect of you and not really having an identity outside of the sport hurts not only.

I mean, it hurt me. So I can only imagine how many other athletes that feel paralyzed by that feeling.

So there's the ebb and flow between both of those things.

If in that timeframe, you're able to understand how to capitalize on that and you have a plan,

you go, well.

But if you're moving like the majority of athletes in the football space are moving, where I just want to be the best football player that I can possibly be.

Whether that looks like being a perennial Pro Bowler, a Hall of Famer,

All Pro starter, whatever it is, playing 10 years, whatever success looks like to you,

if that's the only plan that you have,

man, this is a finite opportunity that you have, and there's a lot of life left to live after that. We don't really think about that.

And that can hurt you in the end.

Yeah, I can only imagine that because you get people like to sell,

you know, you get people like yourself, you know, you go in there, you get in the league, and then, boom, I'm in a Super Bowl. Boom, I'm a Super bowl champion.

And then it got in their mind that, hey, man, this is what it's going to be like, this is what I want.

Year after year after year. It really doesn't happen like that. You know, you got only a couple dynasties out there that's out there to get it done like that. But I feel like it could really mess your mind up because, you know, you get that one, that one dose stuff,

you think, hey, man, this is it. This is what I want every year. And then it doesn't happen like that. And then it can crush you.

It can. And my experience,

I mean, listen, it was set up that way. We won in 08. We didn't go to the playoffs in 09. We went nine and seven and missed it by a game.

And then we went back to the Super bowl in 2010.

So I just thought that, all right,

we'll go back every other year we going to the Super Bowl. Hadn't been back since.

Yeah, man, that's a tough mountain to climb, you know, especially the other teams. Got your number.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. You said your gifts are bigger than the game. Can you unpack what that means? How would you help athletes discover what comes next?

Yeah, absolutely. So what I mean by that is I'm very much somebody that believes in the word of God.

And so I believe that when you look in the first book of Genesis, well, Genesis being the first book, when you look in the first chapter of the first verse, God describes who he is.

Within that sentence, it says in the beginning, God created,

Right? So we have the gift of creation. Because when you go further down in the verse, it tells you that we're made in his image. So we're made to be creators.

We have these intrinsic gifts that we're supposed to develop to be able to put into, you know, the market and serve the people that he's aligned us to serve.

But a lot of times what happens is we get locked in with things that we're good at or things that might come simple to us, might not be passionate about, might not feel like a calling.

But hey, you know, I'm good at this, so I'm going to do it.

So we never go on the journey of discovering our gifts. And then when it comes to athletes, you know, I mean, we've seen it in the news, right? Shut up and dribble,

Right?

So when it comes to us, like for we, we get ridiculed if we do anything outside of the sport. But we're more than just that sport.

A lot of us. If you're Myron Roll, you're a doctor. If you're Vic Ballard, you're an aeronautical engineer as well. So there's gifts that God has given us to be able to explore and help people,

that if we were to sit down and kind of take ourselves out of the space of football just for a second and actually identify what we believe those gifts are,

we could now leverage the platform of playing in the NFL to actually develop that gift even further on a higher stage.

Yeah, that's well put, man. That's well put. I like that.

So many athletes struggle with identity after retirement.

How did you personally navigate that shift from the NFL to your next season of your life?

I went on a journey.

That's the only way you can do it.

There's a guy that I listened to by the name of Myron Golden. It talked about a principle called be, do, have.

We all want a particular type of life. We all want to be a particular type of way and do things, do these things.

But in order for us to have that life,

we have to become the person and do the thing that allows us to have that life.

So for me, man, it was okay. I know I want to help people, but I don't know how.

Right? I don't know what.

I don't know what tool I want to use.

Well, go on the journey, do different things.

And that's what I did. And it wasn't until I discovered my mentor, and he told me that your purpose is found at the intersection of your proficiency and your calling.

That was a lesson that he taught.

But for me,

it turned out to be an entire business model. It turned out to be an entire entity for me,

because then I went on a journey and said, okay, well, what is my proficiency?

Well, I'm really good at communicating. I'm really good at seeing things that other people can't see.

Well, what is my calling? Well, I love helping athletes and getting them to think different, giving them wisdom and knowledge and discretion and subtility and skill that they might not have gotten had they not spoken to me.

Because I've done all of these different things in life.

So all these different eclectic aspects of my brain that when I was young, people, like, bro, why you think like that? Bro, why you do that? Like, bro, like, just.

Just chill, like now.

Well, it's. It's a. It's a 360 moment, right? We come all the way back to this process to where the weird things that I was into and the things that I like to study and learn,

those things are now being used to help the market and the individuals that I believe that I was put on this earth to help.

Yeah, man, that's so true. Because here's the thing and the one thing I've learned in life,

never been judgmental of nobody.

You know, people see some of these athletes come from,

you know,

projects or single parent homes. The struggle when they get in the NFL, they make all this money that they do detrimental things that cost them,

you know, cost them their careers. It cost them a bunch of money, you know, just. It just cost them.

My thing is, you know, like I say I don't want to be judgmental on people, but then sometimes,

like yourself,

you know, you have to think, what's next? For me, not the moment. And I think they think a lot about that moment there. And, you know, I'm got this, I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna be able to do this, I'm gonna be able to do this.

And you know, I got the title, I get the respect.

And then they make decisions based off that kind of stuff, and then they end up making bad decisions.

So I think a lot of it for me personally,

I mean, I look at the NFL and I look at things like that and I say, man, they need more people just like you, man.

These heaters come off the street, man, they come in here and start getting all this money. They're not used to this stuff and they're not used to the, the carriage away.

What you do, what you not do. This is where you're supposed to act. You know, they don't have a father in their life to teach them stuff. I think it's big that people like you in this world that knows it, you've been there and you knows how to navigate.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of them are me, man. Like, I grew up that way. I grew up in a rough environment.

You know, there was gang members. I grew up where I've lost individuals at a young age because of the decision making.

Right.

And if I can get any point across to these young men, it's that, it's just that, like, listen,

don't let the game be your identity. Like, that's just the platform that you use.

Discover who you truly are, who God created you to be, and we can go on that journey together. Right? There's, there's different ideations and frameworks and things that we can leverage to find what your true purpose is outside of this sport.

But because what happens is it becomes a dangerous thing, Reginald, man. And I've seen this in military too,

where I've done something for so long that I truly believe that this is who I am.

Right. And when you go from a platform and an entity like that, that's going to end,

and you align your mind to think that this is who you are, as opposed to, this is just what I do.

It becomes very dangerous when that thing is removed from you,

especially if it's removed from you and you didn't have any control of it. For me, I retired at year 10.

I. I got to walk away on my own terms.

So I have a different perspective about leaving the game than somebody that might have had talent but made a bad decision. Now they're no longer playing somebody that might have had talent, but they got hurt, and now their body didn't hold up, and so now they're not playing somebody that had a lot of talent,

but they were in a situation to where the front office or the coaching staff didn't really like who they were as a person or whatever, for whatever reason,

and they didn't give them,

you know, the opportunity to truly get out there and show what they can do. And then nobody gave them that right.

There's so many different stories like that that I know that I didn't have to deal with,

so I'm sensitive to that. But yet. And still, I still come from the standpoint of, bro, there's a whole lot of life left to live, and there's so much more that you can do and so many more people that you can impact.

And if we look at it from a space of servitude, man, that's when our cup is filled the most, when we're serving other people.

So just getting them to shift their perspective in that space, man, I love doing that. So I know I'm right where I want to be. Because how I am to you now is how I wake up every day, bro.

Like, it's. I. I can't believe this is what I do for a living.

Yeah, man, that's awesome. And that's what you want to be, man. You do it on your own terms. And call to do. That's the ultimate. That's the ultimate call in life when you're doing what you're called to do at the end of the day.

So let's talk about this. Let's talk about financial.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That financial motto is Strength in every Season. What does that look like for someone who just left professional sports or is entering retirement?

Yeah, it goes back to the same thing.

In order for you to find that strength, you have to find the reason why you were placed on this planet and to Me, that's purpose. So you have to discover your purpose.

Once you discover your purpose, you. You have to design your purpose. Design. And what I mean by design, I mean, okay,

all right, I understand what I'm supposed to do. How am I supposed to do it? Then that comes to dedication. So you continue dedicate yourself to that. Meaning, I'm going to align my environment,

I'm going to align the things that I listen to, I'm going to align the people that I hang out with that ultimately deal in the space of where it is that I'm living at this particular point when it comes to purpose.

And then once you've dedicated yourself to that,

then you deploy it into your market. And I think that's the coolest thing about that entire process, is that you're going in a discovery mode, man. Just be curious about life.

Like, if we understood the power of words, Reginald. Like, this whole planet was created with words.

So if we understand that, like the scripture says, like death in life, we have two choices, death or life.

But we have the power within our words to be able to describe which one we want.

So. So all we have to do is put positivity into the space and then work in that alignment. It's not to say we're not going to run into anything.

It's not to say we're not going to have challenges.

We will.

But instead of looking at the challenge of this is happening to me,

words, oh, this is happening for me.

How is this strengthening me? How is this challenging me? How is this changing my intrinsic belief system?

So once we've done all of that and we're grounded and rooted in that now, we can go out because we've discovered our market. We can go out and serve them.

Because I truly believe, with everything in my heart, I truly believe that God has designed people for us to serve.

And if we don't bec