How to Stop Being Realistic and Shoot for the Moon | Jesse Itzler on Impact Theory

the people that you meet in your twenties rise up in their 30s earn great positions of power in their 40s you don't know when you're 20 in your 20s who's gonna who's gonna make it and who's not so you know you treat everybody properly and respectfully and you stay in touch and very often those relationships merge their heads years later decades later everybody welcome to impact Theory our goal with the showing company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams all right today's guest is a wildly successful entrepreneur with a net worth measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars but trying to understand him by his financial success would be to entirely miss the mark what makes him fascinating isn't just that he managed to turn a 900 on his SATs and no formal business training into a business empire this man's travel food and beverage music and even sports it said he has one of the most fascinating life resumes on the planet here are just a few of his highlights he's a former MTV rapper who used to be label mates with 80s hip-hop icons tone loke and young MC and despite being white he convinced said record label to listen to his demo by first pretending to be a well known black rapper he co-founded and built the world's largest private jet card company Marky jet with no previous experience in aviation and when he launched it he got sales by hoarding muffins I'm not kidding he's rented an entire Mountain hired a Navy SEAL to toughen him up turned his failed career as a rapper into a successful company writing theme songs for sports franchises and now he's actually a co-owner of an NBA franchise himself he helped launch the coconut water craze wauzeka which later he sold the coca-cola and he's run 100 miles in a single day he's also climbed the vertical equivalent of Mount Everest over a weekend and actually summited the most deadly mountain in the u.s. Mount Washington in short this guy does not take the easy road anywhere and he's proven that fearlessness and tenacity count for a lot more than experience or family money so please help me in welcoming the new york times best-selling author of living with a seal the man who introduced the world to the legendary david Goggins the author of the upcoming living with monks Jessie its lair thank you my pleasure that was an amazing intro your life is crazy absolutely crazy and this whole concept of the life resume you really sucked me in and I I had written an original draft of the intro where it was my more typical like he does this and then this and then this and I thought that's really to miss the point and so let me start over and really look at it from that resume perspective right and the crazy like broad stuff that you've done almost always with the no experience is really pretty incredible when did you start thinking about that well I realized that experience takes too long I don't have enough time for everything I want to do to get experience no I just realized that I'm an adrenaline junkie I love newness I love challenges I mean that's what makes me feel most alive and I discover that early on when I was trying to get a record deal and just getting rejection and I didn't I had no connections my dad owned the plumbing supply house in Long Island where I grew up and we weren't connected to the music world and I just loved the thrill of trying to do what everyone said I couldn't do mmm there's no way you keep you know whenever all my roommates in college were writing their resumes and sending it out to all the companies they're like why aren't you writing your resume we're all like typing our resume why are you working on I'm like because I'm gonna get a record deal and when they said no you can't it just fueled me more to want to go out and get it so in that moment and if you can get people to understand this like you will help so many people break through because it is that moment where people tell you that you can't do it and you don't just thrash and say watch me watch me you really go out and do it and get really clever about it and so there's two stories to me that parallel there's the muffins story and how you launched marki jet which I thought was absolutely fascinating and then there was how you talked your way into getting the record company delicious final yeah to listen to your demo sure so well the Marquis Jet story you know my partner and I were guests on a private jet when I was 27 or 28 years old and when we walked onto the airplane it was like the scene in The Wizard of Oz when everything goes from black and white to color like people fly like this is unbelievable I want to fly like this and went by the time we landed or like let's start a private jet company you know like definitely you know so we could fly privately except we had no airplanes so we went to a company called NetJets owned by Warren Buffett the 800-pound gorilla they had 600 plus airplanes in the fleet and pitched this idea for a 25-hour prepaid jet cart which was called marquee jet how'd you get that interview like that time with him it's a crazy story you know I had a friend of mine who called me up and prior to that I was putting experiences together for wealthy people like impossible to get experiences and a friend of mine called me up and said that he had a friend whose daughter was turning 16 and he wanted to do something at the christina aguillera concert and I happened to have a relationship with the management company and I got his daughter on it's kind of like a backup singer kind of thing with the mic off and the guy called me up after the concert like the next day she was the star of the town you know everyone was talking about it and he was like I have no idea who you are or what you do but if you ever need anything call me like that was amazing what you did for my daughter and it turns out he was the president of this company called NetJets that owned all these airplanes so a year later when we had this idea I was like I think I know someone in this business feel like the guy that we had sing his daughter sang at the aguillera concert and that's how we got the meeting Wow but the meeting actually when we pitched the idea the meeting lasted 12 minutes and they threw us out and the president of NetJets said and this is almost a direct quote he said you know cool idea but if you think we're gonna give to kids that didn't break a thousand around their SAT which Tom pissed me off I got like a 980 but I've convinced myself I've gotten over you like keep telling yourself you broke a thousand he's like I'm never giving you guys access to our our airplanes because the the notion was if we could sell and market on to their fleet through this twenty five hour program called marquee jet that's how we would piggyback off their airplanes and they'd throw us out of the meeting and then we were relentless and we came back and we we realized that we couldn't sell this concept through a PowerPoint because they'd seen they see a thousand powerpoints so we literally brought our own focus group in to bring the meeting to life and one by one the guys stood up we had Carl banks from the New York Giants and run from Run DMC and a powerful real estate mogul and they explained that they would never buy a fraction what netjet was selling but they would buy a 25 hour card if it was offered and and that's how we ended up solidifying the opportunity and then to your point when we started the company you know this is back in 2000 so there was I had no sophisticated way to get leads I didn't know a lot of wealthy people and the only way that I could really build my database or sell anybody was to go to events where rich people hung out so I heard about this conference called the Ted I didn't even know what it was in Monterey California so I flew commercial you know transferred three flights the drove six hours when I landed to get to Ted to try to pitch this idea to anyone that would listen but when I got to the TED conference it was like Fort Knox everybody had credentials double credentials and I had nothing and they won't let me anywhere near the venue so I went to the local coffee shop and just trying to figure out how I'm gonna get in or sneak in or get someone to get me in and get access and I realized like every hour to everyone with credentials was walking into the coffee shop and they were buying lattes and muffins and lattes and muffins and lattes and muffins so the next morning I woke up at at 5 o'clock and I went to the coffee shop and I bought every single muffin that they had I took all the inventory out of the shop I'm like I think all your muffins they gave me like 80 muffins and I was sitting and then when the first wave of TED attendees you know broke for their break and they came one of the customers said um you know can I have a latte and a muffin and the guy said well I give you a lot see but we're all out of muffins and when he was walking out I said excuse me sir you know look I I happen to have an extra my fenves actually eight hundred of them you know but if you want a muffin you can have one of my muffins it's like get out of here so dollars I realized we starts but what do you do what are you doing in we started having a conversation and he said you know do you mind if I join you and ice you know my only thought was like you are qualified to buy a card you can join me and he was my first cell he was my first cell a guy who owned a company that sold it to eBay and that was the start of the adrenaline rush of okay let me try to crack this code of you know how we can build this thing with um not a big database how do you teach somebody to look for those opportunities to create those opportunities because everyone's gonna hear the no but 99.99999% of people just accept it I think it's different I think when you're young the consequences don't matter as much you know you're just thinking about the end result it's a little bit different now I have four children and I don't think I could take the risk necessarily that I did when I was 21 and living check to check but at that point the consequences didn't matter if I had to get thrown out of the TED conference or whatever it it didn't really matter I would just try again but it's always been having for me it's been and probably similar to you when you started your business but it's always having the end of the movie in my head and then filling in the script so I knew I was gonna leave there with a sale I just had to write the script and the script might change there might be you know call inaudible and you have to rewrite the script but the end of the script was always the same I'm gonna run a hundred miles okay well how you gonna do that Jesse you know like you've never you're not like a crazy endurance runner well then let's think backwards how you know but it starts with the end scene in the movie even the exit you know like okay we're gonna build this to sell I don't know who I'm gonna sell it to but that sort of been always kind of the mentality and I think the second point to that is once you get over the fear of being embarrassed you know no one likes to be embarrassed but once you get over being scared of being embarrassed it's super liberating and it allows you to go into lanes that you otherwise you wouldn't go into and everybody is wired differently you know everybody is wired completely different it's hard to rewire someone to take to be you know comfortable taking risk comfortable with being embarrassed and I think it comes from having a lot of egg on your face and learning along the way you've talked about I like to get my foot in the door and then I'll figure the rest later how have you not let I don't know what I'm doing stop you it takes a long time you know that it's a fast world there's a build into that learning curve for me 980 it takes a lot of time and I just never had that time um so I've always been like let me get my foot in the door and I will figure it out I will hire people that can help me figure it out I can go to experts to help me but they usually won't help me get in the door so let me take the first step and then once you have momentum you can ride the momentum so that's always been my mo you know it's always been in everything you mentioned living with the steel you know when Goggins came all that stuff it's just been like welcoming the unknown and being open to whatever comes of it and learning from it so let's talk about then the networking that you've done because the the amount of places you've been able to get your foot in the door are pretty impressive have you done things strategically knowing like this is gonna help me meet people that could potentially one day open the door for me somewhere yeah I mean well networking has been a big part of my life forever when I was 24 years old I wrote 10 letters a day thank you notes to anyone that came into my life that impacted me and it could be even if I didn't know you but I saw your show and I was like you know what time you've had some amazing guests I've really benefited from I would just write you a handwritten note because one the handwritten note shows intent you have to buy the envelope by the stationery write the letter lick the envelope get the stamp put it in the minute that's all a lot different than hitting send it's also memorable how many handwritten letters have you gotten this year so I I literally wrote 3,000 letters in one year and it could be to a doorman cab drive it could be anyone I would just get their car and I would thank them that was my form of networking the even to this day I have a hot 50 list that I of 50 people that can help me that I want to stay in touch with that I make sure every quarter so I send them a note and I oh they always comment on it you know like thank you so much dick it's not I'm not just writing it to write it I mean they have to really have had an impact on me and I and it's a meaningful note it makes me feel great and it makes the recipient feel attached to me in a different way you know in early age I understood the importance of that the people that you meet in your 20s rise up in their 30s or in great positions of power in their 40s you don't know when you're 20 in your 20s who's gonna who's gonna make it and who's not so you know you treat everybody properly and respectfully and you stay in touch and very often those relationships merge their heads years later decades later that's really incredible one thing that I find really fascinating and super effective about your personality is you'll capitalize and move quickly on serendipity so this audience knows David Goggins very well I was a phenomenal guest on the show but what I love in your story is you see him running next to you you see that moment that's really become a core part of his story where he's got the broken feet but he still runs the remaining thirty miles but you reach out to him afterwards and actually make something of that what was that process like for you and why is that a thing for you to really you see something you move on it yeah I think well with Goggins yeah this was his first hundred mile er and I was doing his a really race so I was doing with five friends he had no one to really with like he was his only friend at the race and he was his own team and immediately I was drawn to him because you know he was a super he was heavyset at the time really muscular and I was thinking like how's a guy that weighs this much gonna run his goal was 100 miles you know and he had no supplies he knows it was a self-supporting ready to bring lawyers to own supplies I just sold my company to Warren Buffett I had like way over did our surprise either masseuses and a Whole Foods truck pulled up you know and like Goggins had a glass of water a box of crackers and like you know a chair at Mile 70 he went through this he had crushed his feet you know he broke several bones or and I watched him get up and continue on and I was like what the is going on here and when I was done I'm like I got to meet this guy because and know at this time he was relatively unknown you know and this is 2007 six or seven I think something like that and I wanted to meet him because whatever drive whatever got him off the chair and said I want to keep running if I could teach that to my kids or to my employees or to myself like I want that secret sauce and initially you know I went out because I saw a lot of star power in them I saw just a whole just different world you know we represented something I've never really seen before and I realized that I wasn't gonna get that secret sauce through a friendship or at a lunch meeting or this and that and I asked him to come you know would you come live with me and basically said uh if you're crazy enough to ask a guy like me to come I'm crazy enough to come and came came to my house that's awesome I love that is that something that you do with frequency to you'll see something be curious be interested and do more than just the you know the casual hey it's nice to meet you it is I mean if I snot if I find someone that's inspiring or an event or something I try to introduce he she or it to my life and that's part of just my own personal development you know I learned better through experience than through books I like to be challenged and I love interesting people I like people that are think differently that act differently that's what attracts me that's just what makes me feel like I'm getting the most out of life you know and that is I'm on the constant search for that because I'm very aware of my own mortality you know I'm 50 years old I'm turning 50 and the average American lives to be 78 and if that were the case and I was average that means I got 28 years left and that dictates well who do I want to spend that time with and what do I want to do and that's a driving you know it's like on repeat in my head so to answer your question you know that's that's sort of what makes me tick and you've got a pretty deep obsession with that at one point I think you were writing the number of days you had on your wrist or something like I stopped doing that why did you stop I'm curious I'm just so aware of it now you know [Music] it was starting to freak my wife out a little bit it's a little depressing but for me it's not depressing mmm it's like you know I think people's relationship with time we talk about relationships with humans how's your relationship with your kids how your relationship with your wife we you know your dad or your parents but we never talk about a relationship with money and time and the relation to your relationship with time is such a key component of your life because when you get caught in a routine time goes so quickly when you understand that there are maybe only 28 summers left and if you want to truly you know get as much out of experientially out of life it just creates a tremendous amount of urgency so and the fear goes away because you're like Shipman nobody on the planet like everybody no one's gonna be here in a hundred years do I care what he thinks it like he's not if we're not gonna be here in a hundred years so why would I take the chance and it's just I don't know it's just so I stopped writing it because I'm so aware of it there's not a day that goes by when my head hits the pillow where I don't say to myself like you know did I maximize the day and am i and you know am i aware of my mortality and it might sound depressing but it's it's not for me it's it's thrilling it's thrilling that does not sound depressing to me at all I think I'm utterly fascinated by people that are really trying to get the most out of their life humanly possible and knowing that you're one of those people the obvious question to me becomes why are you so obsessed with doing the hard things like if you know you only have 28 summers as you said why are we doing polar plunges running a hundred miles like what is it about that drive to encounter not only the novel but the incredibly difficult I mean I think easy is boring isn't is an easy answer to that I think that it goes to your point of building your life resume you know we spend we invest so much time in our work resume which is important but I think it's equally if not more important to build your life resume because that's really an indication of who you are and what you're becoming and that's really a true look into your true body of work how is your obsession with time and I guess anything else that led you to do what you did with the monks so what did you do well what drove you to do it what were some key takeaways so I lived on a monastery with eight months for which have been there for 50 years and 50 years and I went there for 15 days I think you know the obvious takeaways were just the simplicity of how the monks live is something I think everyone can benefit from I realized immediately you know already what you're gonna miss you're gonna miss your family and your kids and your friends and some of the comforts you know I don't want to give away some of the comforts that I had but you also realized that how much at least I did in my daily life how much time I spend and worry I spend on things that are irrelevant and when I release when I release that I got so insanely creative and said so much energy because like thoughts worry all that it's exhausting I don't know when I cut mine I came home I said to my wife we were doing carpool with our kids and she was gonna take you know with two cards and she's like I think I'll take the blue car I'm like cool and then she came wreckage to I'm gonna take the silver car I'm like okay sweetie take the silver card then she came back 30 seconds later she's like you know what I want to be able to park it I'm gonna take the blue card I'm like great take the blue and then I was like you know what your energy you just used on something that's like complete but it happens all day long and you don't even realize how much energy you use unlike at the monastery all the decisions are taken away so what you eat you eat whatever they give you what you wear nobody can changed once I took one shower it just was super freeing so I left there incredibly energized and and I surrendered a lot of things in my life that just I didn't realize you know our time zappers and that might sound obvious you know like oh you went to a monastery and you realized but it wasn't about meditation it wasn't about really religion or spirituality it was just about simplifying and prioritizing and realizing like what's I already know what important to me but realizing like to eliminate some of the things that really aren't important to me and taking away those precious hours what I found really interesting about the book and by the way the structure of the book is phenomenal the way that you invite us in to you having trouble writing the book and that we're experiencing with you the meeting where you have to explain I haven't written the book and it's supposed to be done and and then as you're reading you're like wait I'm actually already in the book so it was like this sort of adaptation if you ever saw that movie yeah really really interesting and I'll just assume this was intentional but the very structure of the book had that same sense of dropping inside of your mind that I imagine is exactly what happens when you go to a monastery and there are no distractions and suddenly it becomes about what I'm learning about myself and I could I don't think you ever actually said it in the book if I remember right but the the sense was that the struggle in writing the book came from I was looking for the universals that were so present in living with a seal and I found only myself in that and so how do I pull forth the the universals by telling these incredible stories and that was really really cool and one of my favorite stories was mr. Sara Blakely and it it's just a really cool story walk people through that because it got to the heart of something that I think a lot of people struggle with and your ability to both be the top dog in a scenario and to be a cheerleader is is pretty remarkable so tell that story if you don't mind well I mean up to that point I'll get to the end first it's a key component of marriage is sharing each other's successes and rooting for each other and when the star shines on someone you celebrate it and then the other person you know they your partner celebrates it and and being on the same page and and for a guy that could be difficult if you're married to a gal that's an you know that that has a light shining on them but I was at a restaurant and my wife was running late I was with my trainer the mind and they were putting me on the spot with this one but there was a girl at the other table attractive girl who I thought which was kind of like looking over the table cuz she was kind of staring at me and it was a little uncomfortable I told my friend like you know I think this girl's like checking me out I don't think I don't know I'm not sure for like will you look over there and see if she's looking at me and he looked over and she's like she's checking you out and you know we started laughing about it and and and then she came over to me it's super attractive girl and I thought she was gonna say like can I join you or whatever and then she said are you Sarah Blakely's husband and he you know he laughed and this and that and I said I am Sarah Blake we sighs me she said I'm a huge fan of your wife you know like hoping was about Sarah and I thought the whole thing was about was about me and I write about that in the book you know um but that that's what happened and it was uh it's a funny moment you know but I was I'm so proud of my wife you know and I'm her biggest cheerleader and that's part of my job as a husband is to support it through the ups and there's a little not gonna with a lot of ups but also plenty of downs you know being an entrepreneur and is lonely you know you went through the journey man it's lonely and nobody worries about it when you're the founder like you worry about it and you can give out shares and compensation of this and that but you know it's Tom's bar man you know and so there are times where you have to be super supportive and understanding and being an entrepreneur I'm very aware of that so I think it's a good it's a good fit so another thing you talked about in the book was that you actually in the early days of your marriage you guys would argue a lot because Sarah would ask you you know what are you feeling and you say I don't know and she finally had this epiphany where it's like he really doesn't know what he's feeling yeah and what has it been like for you to learn to really be introspective and to understand your feelings cos at least from the outside and especially having read the book it feels like you've gotten to a place where you're very in tune with yourself with your intuition which is another thing we should talk about but like what was that process like yeah I mean Sara would ask me for years she'd be like you know little sweetie how does that make you feel and I would say I don't know and she say well you know something would happen like a big event was like well what are you feeling and I'd be like I really don't know you know and I really didn't know and she would get angry at me she like what do you mean you don't know I'm like I don't know I'm like you know I don't know what's going on the hawk game you know like I would just deflect it and she finally realized like I really don't know and maybe that was a defense mechanism for me I don't know and I like to stay super happy you know and upbeat and and blow away some emotions that may be but through this journey through the monastery and through Sara's like really big into talking emotions playing you know she we we've ollie she always says like she'll hit the ball and I won't hit it back and but now we're volleying a little bit more and but it's a work in progress for me you know my form of communication has been running an hour a Devlin in the last 25 years I've ran 36,000 miles you know I ran what 10,000 hours or something you know alone basically alone and that's been my meditation and that's been my release and that's been my emotional you know it's been my creative process it's been my physical well-being it's been my you know my own form of meditation and it's been my release and that's it I'm good she doesn't do that so you know I've had to work through some of that the the book was really fun in and for anybody that's ever thought oh I must just be bad at meditation the part where you try to meditate when you first got there and you're like I you know I've got my trends in dental meditation I've been given my word I can't reveal what my word is but it sounds like a sushi restaurant and I really wish I had some sushi right now right and I thought that was fantastic for people that think there's like some big mystical moment you if I remember right you were like I was waiting for somebody to say let there be light yeah and so if that moment never comes what is it that does come from being by yourself for that long well just to just to play onto into that story when I first got to the monastery I you know I went to a room that was of where we are and I had a bed and a light and a desk and brother Christopher them was like you know my go to monk at the in the experience said to me when we start tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. we will start with prayer reflection and meditation and I was like great its 6:50 p.m. what do I do for the next 12 hours and he said think so I said okay you know I just got there I said let me try to meditate so I had taken a transcendental meditation crash course years ago and had a mantra so I set my timer for 20 minutes as instructed and closed my eyes and you know immediately got bombarded with all the thoughts that would you know how are my kids what's going on at work all this stuff and I was like why hasn't the timer dinged I've been here forever let me check and see if I actually said it and I know that would be cheating so I continued on with this bombardment of thoughts and then after what felt like an hour I'm like this is crazy I'll be here all night let me set the timer and I went to set the timer and I looked at I'm like 3 minutes and 27 seconds and I was like I'm I'm here for 15 days you know and that was my first hour at the monastery and I felt really alone and you know like I felt like I was on Gilligan's Island and usually like you call your wife or you send an email I couldn't do anything I just sit there and be like you know and I started calculating how many minutes I have left here and it started really with me you know I was like what and by day 2 or 3 I was really flipped out I was homesick I was bored out of my ass I was like where the one of the lessons is gonna hit me like just give me the luck give me the cliff note version of this but I realized like anything else in life there is no cliff note version the only way for me to get this is to stick it out for the entire 15 days and until I made that mental because in the back of my head I was already I was already convincing myself about 70 is enough who's gonna care if I'm gonna modulate for 7 days or 15 days the books gonna be the same you know and I was giving myself and out once I flipped it and like made the commitment that like no man you're here you're in this for the duration I eased into it I started like appreciating the routines of the monks what they were doing the lessons became more vivid and it became a picture for real life like you don't cut corners and you make a commitment and you know you're gonna have to tough it out and the lessons are usually in the last you know like most people do 95% the same but the last five percent sure experienced it a quest at times like is where 99% of the people quit but it's the 5% with the extra five the last 5% when you hit the wall and you finish the marathon where the growth is not the first 18 miles so I realized and once I made that shift the whole experience changed for me you said being around a master of a craft is always enlightening and monks there were master dog trainers they were very surprising what what were your takeaways from that I thought a monastery would just be all prayer reflection meditation and a meal a day or something but a huge part of it is manual labor because they have to keep the lights on and the monastery that I went to which was not it was not Buddhist it was Russian Orthodox they were the largest breeders of German shepherds in this country and I remember the first day I was my job the first day was to be a distractor so they were training one of the dogs and I had to like run in front of the dog and you know try to like get him off of his game to simulate traffic in the city or distractions and the goal is to have the dog be able to walk unblemished no matter what you throw at him and I was going cribs running at him I was like you know doing the fart trick all that stuff and the dog didn't waver it just walked from point A to point B and one of the monks that was training the dog said to me it's no different than life you know it's like giving me all this like you know wax on wax off but he was saying you know you're gonna get distracted from your goals and all these things like arrows are gonna come at you all the time but the same way this dog goes from point A to point B there's a porkchop there whatever your goal is you got to get the point you have to get there even though people are gonna say you can't do it even though people are gonna throw different opportunities you know you know I'm sure your friends went out a million times the happy hour when you to stay late when you were starting your business I mean I was in the same situation those are the distractions that come at you but to get to your goal you can't go to happy hour every night you have to return emails and you have to check the manufacturer and you have to check the inventory and you have two big sales calls so I was getting these lessons but being around the best at what they do it was just impossible to not have an appreciation and respect that's really interesting and I think that a lot of times humans respond the same way when you meet somebody that's really just centered for lack of a better word they're not being distracted they know what they want they're going after there's just an ease a calmness about them which is really infectious I'm drawn to it yeah so going back to the arrows that you were talking about how in your life have you stayed the course how have you stayed focused when you had and maybe this goes to your why you know what was it that allowed you to keep going when your friends were going out to happy hour well I think like everybody I feel overwhelmed a lot still even though I'm older now and I've had some success and failure but I still have a lot of arrows that come at me all the time requests for my time challenges at work challenges raising kids being in a marriage you know is not easy I mean we have a great marriage but it's not easy work and it's overwhelming so for me I think part of it is always having something big on my calendar that I can look forward to every every other month I try to put something on my calendar for a weekend that I can really look forward to so it helps me get through the tough times and I like to have one at least one really big challenge a year that kind of centers me and keeps me honest it keeps me honest and that's really helpful for me and then the other thing that I do that really helps is I have a journal and I just take everything that's on my head and Iraqi pit in a master Journal doesn't mean I'm gonna get to it doesn't mean it goes away but it gets out of my head and it goes somewhere else to free up space in my head and then I'll just work it off or I'll prioritize it from the master list but just the act of taking all the stuff that's in your head putting it on paper in one place where it liz is like really freeing and energizing so you talked a lot in the book about finding your why did you find a why my family is so important to me have four kids under 8 and so my why stares at me in the face every day but for me going back to what you said at the opening of the show we touched upon it it's my life resume you know it's um helping people is important to me and you know I feel great being able to help people in any way I love people so I like that's a big part of my life but my own personal resume is sort of my why I just said to my wife as I turned 50 like let's have a big I'll have a big celebration this is a monumental birthday and it's really affecting me how I think you know it's like I didn't think it would but turning 50 is having a big impact on me and I said when I was 25 I had a big party in New York City where I was living and I want to kind of replicate that and she said wow honey you know think about all the things that you've accomplished in the last 25 years and I'm like I appreciate it but compared to I haven't done anything compared to what I the potential and what I want to do you know and she said well then think about the things that you love to do over those over the last 25 years what are the things that you love to do and who have you loved to do them with and for me it's been the races the travel that this and the match civil look put as much of that on your plate as you can with the people that you love to do it with in the next 25 years your life and that's sort of my mission statement so how is turning 50 affecting the way you think I'm super curious just realizing that like it went so fast and realizing that there's so much that I want to do and being away that your 70s are a different decade than your 40s and 50s well then you have 20 years left and when you really put it in perspective of how many weekends there are you know there's only 52 weekends and you start to look at it like that you're like I'm gonna be 80 in 30 years scary you know I got kids it's scary because there's a lot I want to do I feel like I don't learn anything compared to what I what I want to do and the opportunities so you know it just how do you manage your time I never thought like that I'm formally live forever and I'm you know I'm bulletproof and all that stuff and I'm not and when you turn 50 happens friends get sick you know let me give you an example of just how it's affected me and how even the monastery in this whole notion of time which we've been talking and the more this conversation but like your parents like yeah how old are your parents no matter 70 okay and where do they live in different parts of Washington State okay did you see him yeah pretty often once to three times a year okay so let's say they lived to be 78 which is the I hope they don't but let's say that they live to the average age so you see them one you said once to three times yeah okay no you don't it means you're gonna see them 60 if you see them twice here you can see them 16 more times when you look at it that way you're like what you don't have eight years with them you have sixteen times with them oh and that's the shift in my life and that's the way I look at things that's a fundamental shift in the way that I looked at situations six months ago and it's created urgency it's created a need to just like not put stuff off and to recognize like what's on your list of things that you want to do yeah man that's that's really interesting and the concept of urgency to me has been one of the driving forces in my life is the ability to create urgency even when it wasn't age and I felt like I was gonna live forever that was still a huge driver for me I need to this right now and that's been one of the things that's really served me as an entrepreneur what advice do you have for you know the the young upstart whether they're young and age or just new and in terms of going after something for the first time what advice do you have for them like urgency to actually help them get across the finish line and and manifest their dreams not just dream but really make them come true I think the first thing is like any goal is is attaching yourself to something that you love to do and we've heard that many times but we often neglect it because there's an opportunity maybe there's more money but like it takes a long time to build a brand or accumulate wealth or we hear of these get-rich-quick things and they happen but they're not the norm it takes time so if you're not doing something over that time and also you lost your 20s and your 30s you never get them back so I think you want a first step is to attack yourself the passion has to be to something you know that you like I think if you're an entrepreneur you have to understand the passion is around the process as well as the product and what you're doing people often neglect the process but you can't shortcut it and if that's what you're signed up for you have to respect it what do you think about risk and taking real chances I'm a big I'm a big risk taker in general but not I'm not a thrill seeker so I'm gonna I'm an adrenalin guy I'm an endurance guy but I don't go on rollercoasters I don't like I'm not jumping out of airplanes but the bigger the risk the bigger the reward it's for the interesting men in your life has certainly proof that there are some big rewards for taking risks all right before I asked my last question tell these guys where they can find you online so on Instagram and all the social media cool and final question what's the impact that you want to have on the world I just I mean it's person-to-person it's person-to-person you know the world gets small your world that's a big world but our worlds are small you're gonna leave all this and you go to a very small world as do I so I want to just positively impact the people that are close to me in a way that will carry on you know for as long as it can yeah Jesse thank you so much for being on the show inaudible all right guys this whole notion of a life resume is absolutely captured me I think it's really really fascinating in his new book living with monks you were going to love it literally you feel like you're tumbling down inside his mind if you've ever seen the movie adaptation that is exactly what this feels like it opens with him confessing to his literary agent that he hasn't written the book that he was supposed to be done with by now and then confessing that he kept a journal and then you sort of tumble headlong into the journal with the person that his agent and then the stories that he shares in the exploration that he's going on I mean it's just really this fascinating look at one single individuals reaction to having their world shut down from a distraction standpoint and the book itself becomes this like meditative practice in and of itself in that you see the universals you see yourself in him as he's going through this and it is really incredible he has such a unique way of experiencing something and bringing it back to people in a way that's useful and it's even self reflexive in the book how he talks about that how there's so many things you can't learn just from reading that ultimately they have to go out and experience it and the punchline of the book in the end is he said he wants everyone to build a life resume to go to the website and to pledge what it is you're gonna do and then actually take action which is why I'm so excited to get him on the show you guys know my absolute obsession is actually getting people to go out and act to do something what this man is done with his life is beyond astonishing every time he hits a note to find some amazing creative hilarious and ultimately effective way to get to the other side it is something that I hope you guys all hear in his story this is not a tale of somebody who leveraged family money to make it even bigger this is somebody who started with nothing and built an absolutely massive empire not once not twice three and four and five times it is absolutely astonishing its repeatable it's something you can learn from so dive into his world all right if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care everybody thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're gonna get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 833,071

Rating: 4.8961806 out of 5

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, jesse itzler, forget realistic, shoot for the moon, forget realistic - shoot for the moon, living with a seal, living with the monks, zico, marquis jet, how to stop being realistic, how to stop being realistic and shoot for the moon, goggins

Id: jeOWjeY7XOM

Length: 44min 47sec (2687 seconds)

Published: Tue May 22 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ipsum_stercus_sum]

That's what got me through basic training in the army. Whenever I wondered whether it was worth all the pain and suffering, I thought about my wife, and how disappointed she'd be if I washed out.

I lasted almost 8 years before my back pain got so bad that even she was begging me to take medical retirement.

Edit: Just to be clear, I wasn't in basic training for 8 years.