Jesse Itzler | The Bus Ride

[Music] in today's world people are more disconnected than ever anxiety loneliness and depression are rampant and young people are desperate for meaningful relationships from the beginning edges created opportunities for people to develop in their personal professional and spiritual lives my relationship with a mentor is awesome shout out to jason you know he's there for me in terms of any questions i have both uh professionally and personally earlier this year my dad had coveted he was one of the first people to to check in with me uh regarding that so it's it's nice to know that he cares about me as a whole human being edge continues to provide ways for you to develop as a whole person to grow yourself and to find your role in your community and make an impact edge offers a variety of programs and events to provide community and safe spaces for whole person development to occur edge groups edge work and edge events are our current product offerings but we are always looking to expand 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one-year cohort based program that focuses strictly on personal and professional development leveraging a curriculum that we co-created with butler university emerging leaders are provided a safe space to focus on their own personal and professional development we focus on everything from mental wellness to overcoming failure and self-limiting behaviors to receiving feedback and managing change edge events is where our entire community comes together events are the glue that bring folks from all of our programs together to share life learn from each other and address relevant topics within our lives and communities i struggled in my early 20s with figuring out you have to take ownership of your career and choices and i think edge really helped me gain clarity to make those choices i wanted to get involved because i frankly wish i would have had something like this 20 years ago when i started my career if you are a young person who is looking for deeper connection and community edge is for you for those more seasoned we are always in need of strong mentors your life experiences should be shared with others if you are a business owner or executive and would like to provide a unique opportunity to your employees edge at work would aid in their own personal and professional development journeys learn more about how we can partner with you at edgementoring.org our next speaker is an entrepreneur extraordinaire and true renaissance man he has authored two best-selling books and is co-owner of the nba's atlanta hawks jesse and his wife sarah blakely founder of spanx have four kids on top of all of that he is an ultra marathoner may i introduce to you jesse itzler hey everybody this is jesse itzler before i even get started i just want to say one thing i have one agenda here today and that's to provide value as an entrepreneur as a father as a son as a husband as a friend uh as a business owner i've always said to myself if i could just provide as much value as possible over index on value amazing things are going to happen so that's my agenda for today very quickly i took a public speaking class when i was in college it was a throwaway class i needed three extra credits and my friend was like take the public speaking class it's so easy so i signed up for this public speaking class and um it completely changed my life because everything that we do is public speaking whether it's sales whether it's building a culture talking to your children or your friends at home everything is centered around public speaking and in this class i remember the professor saying there are four components to public speaking the first thing is open up with a story so i'll do that in a second the second thing is tell your audience what it is they're going to learn and where they're going people want to know where they're going so i'll tell you in a minute what it is we're going to discuss today the third thing is deliver on that promise and the fourth thing is leave them with actionable immediate actionable takeaways so i'm going to go through that whole process right now let me open with the story so first i started out believe it or not as a rapper i started out in the hip-hop world as a rapper and i did a show called club mtv in the early 90s there was a big show on mtv was hosted by a gal named downtown julie brown and it was a highlight of my career i did club mtv i think like salt and pepper was on after me it was a crazy moment in my life and right after i went to do my first concert in pittsburgh i flew to pittsburgh and i got off the airplane when i got off the airplane there was a magazine rack right when i got off the plane and on the cover of a magazine called rap pages was my picture i was on the cover of rap pages like what that's like an entrepreneur being on the cover of forbes it was a big deal so i took all the wrappy all the magazines i took them all i'm like i'm gonna send it to my grandma to my mom everyone is getting a copy of rap pages magazine because i am on the cover and as i'm going to the checkout booth i look at the the headline and in bold letters with my picture it said are white rappers ruining hip hop and i was the poster child of that and it was a terrible one actually i didn't want to leave my house for like six months i felt like everywhere i went i'm like that's the guy that's single-handedly ruining rap but the funny thing is not that many people remember it and a couple of years after that i started a private jet company that was doing like 120 million dollars in sales like a year a year later so um we're only just one idea away from changing the whole complexion of our of our life what i want to talk about today is i want to talk about something i call the bus ride and how we maximize the bus ride um before we do that i just want to share a little bit of background of of me for those that don't know me again i'm jesse itzler i'm a serial entrepreneur i've had a very unconventional journey i guess as i just mentioned i'm probably my biggest business success i guess was a company that i started when i was 29 years old with my partner called marquis jet we had no private aviation experience we owned no airplanes we really had no money we had very little connections and we started this company that became the world's largest private jet card company uh we did five billion dollars in cumulative sales we sold it to warren buffett's berkshire hathaway's uh netjets division and um prior to that only a couple years before that maybe five or six years before we started the company um i slept on 18 different couches 18 different friends put me up i went couch to couch to couch struggling in multiple different areas i was a kiddie pool attendant i sold celery and carrot sticks door-to-door i sold chicken shrimp and meat um through a truck knocking on people's doors i had a t-shirt company that failed miserable i wrote jingles i tried all of these different things and then as i said just a couple years later started this company i was a guest on a private jet and my partner and i walked onto the airplane it was like the scene in the wizard of oz i think i was 27 years old when everything goes from black and white to color when i walk down the airplane i'm like people fly like this what i want to fly like this so that by the time we landed my partner are like let's start a private jet car company um you know so we can fly on on private planes and we did and um and it ended up being being a a tremendous a tremendous success um but when i look back on my journey after that i went on to have a coconut water company i partnered with called zika we sold it to coca-cola i've been an author i've had companies that worked companies that didn't work i've bootstrapped it i've raised money i've done it many different ways and when i look back on my journey i'm 52 years old a couple of themes run steady and i just want to share them before we jump into the main the main talk of the day uh the first thing is i never negotiate my goals as an entrepreneur as business leaders as parents like we don't negotiate our goals when we have a goal whatever that is the end of the movie we see it in our head the plot might change the script might change but that end of the movie that big vision it's unwavering and i never gave up on any of my dreams i always really said like this is what i want to do and there were no other options two i always cared the most very simple thing i always put every year i pick one word that describes what my year i want my year to be and for the last two or three years it's been the same word and that's soul i've always poured my soul into every project the universe knows when you're doing it for money versus when you're doing it first with you know out of your soul and when you do it for soul for the right reasons that means you don't cut corners you don't every eye is dotted every t is crossed the packaging is right you don't sure change yourself you realize like this is my one shot man i'm putting it all in when i wrote my book living with the seal i gave it to the publisher and then and and they gave it back to me they said you know re-read it just for any any proofreading for any edits or minor changes and i called the publisher the next day and i said i need another week they're like it's due today you don't have why do you want a week it's perfect i'm like i have to make it 20 better that's because i wanted every ounce of my soul to come onto those pages so i've never i've never negotiated my goals i've always you know i've always operated with tremendous soul and i've always wanted it the most i've always just felt like you know the want of my goal is bigger than the obstacles and if you want it more than the obstacles you have a great chance of success if the obstacles are bigger because we're all going to hit a lot of obstacles on bumps on our journey if these obstacles are bigger than you know then then the punch that you wanted it is your fist your wanted fist it's going to get you but if you want it more than the obstacles i really like your chances let's talk about what we want to talk about today i call it you know the bus ride and let me just give a little background i was at a funeral my wife sarah's grandmother nanny funeral and the fellow that was conducting the service was saying everything about nanny's life was beautiful nanny did this and she grew up this way and she worked here and she met so-and-so and she did this and it was amazing but the real question isn't what nanny did in her life the real question for us is how we lived our life how do we show up you know how do we love how do we take care of people how much effort did we put into our projects how hard did we try you know how do we live our life and it made me start thinking about my own mortality and the average american lives to be 78 i'm 52 that means if i'm average i have 25 summers left we just missed a summer and i love summers and i was thinking about my own mortality and how i want to live my life and um i thought about this and i've shared this on social i want to share here real quick the day we wake up we go on this bus ride we get on the bus the keys go in and we start we we get the steering wheel and we start driving the bus now you don't need me nobody here needs me to say or tell you how fast life goes we all know it goes fast but all of a sudden the bus starts going and then all maybe you're a senior in high school and they say jesse you better enjoy it it's going to go quickly and then you go to college and maybe you meet somebody and you have a child you get married you have a child and then your child is 10 years old you're going to be an empty nester in eight years and the bus keeps going the bus doesn't care if you get sick the bus doesn't care if you're lazy the bus doesn't care if you take days off there's no brakes on the bus you can't slow it down there's no reverse on the bus it just keeps going until one day boom the bus ride stops it's all over man i'm 51 52 years old now this much of my life it's over i can't get this back i don't care what happened here if you're divorced overweight broke unemployed struck i don't care it's done what i care about what we care about or should care about is how do we maximize from this moment right now right where we are right now until the the end of the bus till it's all over and we never know when it's going to stop how do we maximize from here to here now i don't have enough time in our 20 minutes to talk about all the ways and things that i do but i do want to share four or five principles that have really helped me okay the first thing that i do is i take care of the bus man and this might sound obvious but i take care of the vessel of myself health it's the number one thing for me and think of it this way if you're a bazillionaire and you have yachts and sports teams and airplanes and big bank accounts and everything fancy and you're on an amazing vacation on one of those yachts i just mentioned and but you have a sore throat and every time you swallow all you think about is your sore throat you're not thinking about your sports teams and your yachts and your planes all you want to do is get rid of the dam's throat sore throat that's just a sore throat multiply that by everything that's happening now and all the various things that you know so health is so important there's an old quote that says if you have health you have hope if you have hope you have everything and i'm not here to lecture about wellness or anything like that but i just want to bring out one quick point we basically as americans get 21 meals a week right seven days a week times three meals and i just want everybody to be mindful uh when they say when they talk about moderation of those 21 meals can you say i'm gonna have pizza tonight it's only tonight i'm a little ice cream and tomorrow i'm gonna have you know a big steak with this and ketchup and i'm gonna do that i'm gonna drink well those are two three four five six seven meals of your 21 meals that's a third of your stomach share so i just want to bring awareness to the importance of health and the importance that you cannot enjoy it anything no matter how hard you work if you don't take care of yourself number two take care of the people on the bus now i have i have made my entire living i got a 980 on my s.a.t i had a really over index in connecting with people i've made my entire career has been built on relationships and i've used very simple strategies i'm going to share i know some entrepreneurs listening that have really accelerated my growth in business and even just my own personal networking with my friends and family and really enriched those relationships to get people to root for me to give me referrals to get people to want you know want me to win and um i'm gonna share with you right now so the first thing is i do something called the three c's i complement i congratulate and i console every opportunity i can to those in my network to my customers to those closest to me what does that mean um hey brian it's jesse itzler i just want to let you know man um i'm watching the way you parent i'm a dad i'm a father of four and it's so inspiring like you spend so much time with your kids and you're just such a good dad and i just want to let you know man that i notice it and it's really inspiring to me as a father now brian brian he's not on the cover of the wall street journal he didn't sell his company he didn't win an nba championship i'm calling him up out of nowhere not when everybody's calling him to authentically compliment him on something that i noticed it's something that's going to stick out he's going to remember that moment as an isolated moment for a really long time i i i compliment i congratulate you brought i heard your son got into duke university that's unbelievable i have four kids if my kids get into duke university i'm gonna be on cloud nine uh sarah and i are on cloud nine for you every chance you get to compliment a customer a prospect a mentor whoever you take it and you console i had one of the most you know tragic things that could happen to a parent i get a a knock on my door sarah and i were home and get a knock on the door the next dates my friend dougie fresh the rapper i said doug what are you doing here he said when you get news like that you don't call you show up if you compliment you congratulate and you console you stay on people's radar you're in their lives they're going to want to help you that gives you permission to see them call them ask for stuff whenever you need something but you got to stay on their radar i have a hot 50 list i have a list of 50 people i call every quarter you know and i check in just to stay on their radar the other thing i do is something called the three minute miracle and anybody that listens and does this and takes advantage of this you can thank me in 30 days or 90 days it's very simple i go to a basketball camp every year that coach k the basketball coach at duke university hosts for guys 35 and older i've been going for the last 17 years and i love it it's uh for i feel like an eight-year-old every year for a week at this camp so i landed in north carolina a couple of months ago so i thought of coach k the camp is like seven months down the road no one's thinking about it i text him coach jesse itzler just wanted to thank you for this for the camp you put on i know you don't have to do it but you know i built amazing relationships it's the highlight of my summer and i just wanted to thank you took me 45 seconds the coach could do three things with that he might share it with his staff got this really cool text he might share it with his wife he might do nothing but i now have permission if i see coach k out at a dinner down the road to say hey coach you know i sent you this text i'm not coming out of left field who is the first person the coach is going to hug at the basketball camp 500 people who's he going to hug first me now that text took me 45 seconds if i invest three minutes a day over the next if we invest three minutes a day over the next 30 days i will send basically a hundred texts dms handwritten letters however you want to communicate i will reach basically 100 people if i invest 10 minutes a day i'll reach 300 people in the next 30 days now if i'm consistent and i just carve out three to 10 minutes a day on my little journey three to ten minutes a day i could hit at 10 minutes a day 3 000 people over the course of a year now i'm planting seeds i'm not asking for anything i'm just reaching out and connecting that's how you network that's how you plant seeds that's how you expand your reach that's how now i'm not saying that you're going to see the the fruits of this immediately but over time the universe will reward you for all this connectivity and that's how you build a deep authentic network of people the third thing i do is i fix my flats so i take care of my bus i take care of the people on the bus especially those closest to me and i fix my flats a lot of us as humans we're anti-confrontation we're wired for to put more on our plate of what we like but we ignore what's broken you can't have an amazing journey here to here when you have something major that's broken in your life for most people it's finances it's relationships it could be weight issues but if you don't address that one thing that one big thing every at the beginning of the year or every year even if you you're rich in uh in wealth or whatever you're not going to be able to maximize your journey if you have this big weight on your shoulder here's a quick exercise we could do to identify it so um pretty much if you polled people the one the number one thing that they would want is to be happy so let's do a quick happiness test imagine that all the buckets in your life um your finances your health your relationships your job where you work uh everything and put it in a giant blender and shake the blender up and everything put all the thoughts everything going on your head in a big blender and on a scale of one to ten uh with a ten being the dalai lama of happiness and a one being someone that's rock bottom what would your number be when you combine all those things think about it do it real quick what's your number and for most people i'm gonna guess it's probably a six seven eight which is amazing except if i come home with a seven if you were a seven on a a seventy on a test that's like a c or like a c plus in the most important bucket of your life happiness now what i love about the test is your brain automatically goes to a 10 it wants you to be happy it wants you to be a 10 and immediately the one or two things that that are impacting you bring it down to whatever your number was so whatever popped in your head right away those are things you got to work on so you got to fix your flats number four i'm a big believer in building your life resume versus your traditional resume you know we hear so much talk about your traditional resume and the importance of a resume and it's true but the average uh interviewer or app those that review an application take about six seconds to scan the the applicant's resume and i believe that building your life resume putting more more experiences on your plate doing more of the things you love to do more things that are interesting things that excite you make you happier more interesting might land you the dream promotion because you're more interesting and talking about these experiences at work might land you a better job because you know it separates you from everybody else and i am i have invested a tremendous amount in experiences since i was 21 since i was sleeping on those couches i've always tried to put more on my plate of the things i love to do with the people i love to do them with because the more you experience the more you have to offer and there's an old japanese ritual called the masogi and the notion around a masogi is you do one thing so challenging or so big or so scary that the benefit lasts the entire other 364 days of the year so if i was going to ask you audience what'd you do in 2011 what'd you do big in 2015 what'd you do eight days ago you probably couldn't tell me because most of us live on live like this we go through life in routine who wants to go through life and like this man i want to go through life like this i want to experience and challenge myself and you know explore i don't want to look back and be like i was the 80 percent version of myself when my bus ride's over i don't nobody signed up to be the 80 version of of themselves so you got to take time there's a lot of messages about working 21 hour days of course you got to work hard but you have to carve out to do the things you love to do or you're going to resent your boss your wife your kids for taking away the things you love to do and the way i do that is simple i do one big thing a year a year defining event my misogyny and i try to carve out an hour to three hours every day for myself it makes me a better parent it makes me better at work it makes me a better employee it makes me a better son makes me a better husband again because if i can check the box in something i want to do every single day i'm going to be way more present i'm going to be where my feet are at everything else that i'm doing during the day people spend a lot of time talking about evening about morning routines and morning routines are important but i'm a much bigger believer in evening routines my day starts the night before i'm not good enough to just wake up and wing it what am i going to do today my competition is too good i carve out 5 or 10 minutes a night i map out exactly what my day looks like and i follow the script so i'm super efficient and in that script is time for myself lastly mindset again talking about just a little a couple of quick strategies on maximizing this short little time that we have here mindset if every time that i speak at an event the number one you can google it the number one thing thing that people want is mindset and i would be remiss if i didn't spend a couple of minutes uh talking about uh mindset before we move on to some quick q a so what i'm about to share with you over the next couple of minutes um is probably the most powerful advice i've received in the last decade and if you were to ask me 10 years ago i would have said man this is so hokey yet it's had probably the biggest impact on my life over the last couple of years i'm going to share with you right now it's something you can do your kids can do you can practice it every day it's free it's relatively easy and you can see the benefit of it immediately so a couple of years ago or two years ago i was training for a race called the last man standing i do a lot of endurance runs and endurance challenges and the format of the race is it's a 4.2 mile loop you have an hour to do it and if you finish it prior to that hour you get a rest so if i finish it in 50 minutes you get a 10 minute rest because they line you up again at the top of the hour to repeat the 4.2 mile loop and they keep doing that process until only one person is left standing the last man standing it could go on for days so during my training i did about 10 runs of 38 miles and every time i got the 38 miles my body shut down i was done and i convinced myself that that was my limit i was maxed out at 38 miles and i heard about this guy named chad wright former navy seal that supposedly took somebody at the starting line of 100 mile race that had only ran five miles the most this person's ever run and took that person all the way to the finish line of the 100 mile run by just repeating i will not quit i said it's impossible nobody can run 20x what they what they've done they can't go from five miles to a hundred miles just by repeating some it's impossible but if it did happen and this guy did have an impact that someone could 20x what they thought they could do i wanted 20x my business i wanted 20x my life so i cold called chad i told him my issue and he said man i could fix you in two days three days later is that my my dinner table in connecticut where i was living and the first day he's there he doesn't say a word to me he's got a long beard he's just stroking his beard and taking notes and i'm like speaking of long beards just got one too and i'm like this is crazy and my friends are calling me up and like what what'd you learn did you change your cadence are you eating differently uh are you chain tell me about your breathing i'm like he just said a word to me we go to dinner that night he goes tomorrow we start at oh 500. we're going to meet at 4 45 in the kitchen and go over our mission i'm like this is what a waste this guy flew all the way in we're going to meet 15 minutes before the run and he's we're going to blow through the uh through this 38 mile limitation that i have we sit down and goes jesse today we're only going to do three things and if you do these three things you will shatter your 38 mile limitation he said the first thing is we're never going to give our pain a voice what does that mean he said i know it's going to be hard i know you're going to be in pain it's going to be miserable i know you're going to say you are going to say i don't have what it takes i'm not good enough the competition's too good i don't have enough experience i'm not an entrepreneur i'm not good at this i can't get a sale i know you're going to set you're going to feel all this but once you say it you give it power he said every time i ask you how you feel today you're gonna say i feel outstanding chad i feel outstanding number two we're never gonna die in the chair huh he said no matter what we're not gonna when we take our little break in between loops we're not gonna sit down and be like we're done we're gonna leave it all out on the field we're gonna exhaust every option no matter what we're gonna just go until we can't go anymore our job is simple we keep going one foot in front of the other other until we can't go anymore and either we're victorious or we exhausted all the options and it just didn't work either one of those is acceptable and once he said that to me it really simplified things took the pressure off me like i just gotta try my hardest leave it all out there and either it's gonna work or i just can look at myself in the mirror and be like i just didn't work you know and that's okay and number three he said even though you know a lot's going on in the world right now there's a lot of uncertainty unstructured times with the coronavirus and everything going on etc he said even though there's a lot going on we got a lot to be grateful for and we're gonna flip the script from misery and i can't and this stinks to everything we're grateful for every lap we're gonna say something that uh every four miles that we are grateful for that day i did those three things and i ran well over 50 miles mark brown my friend who was with me 2x his personal best fast forward uh two months later with the starting line of the hennepin 100 mile race chad's running it with me i get to mile 74 i'm broken broken chad consensus he goes jesse um he stops walking i'm limping he goes i'm gonna tell you something about me man that not many people know it's a miracle he goes i never get tired it's crazy i never get tired i want you to say it i couldn't say it i was exhausted i'd be lying i said chad no man i said no i want you to say it i said chad i never get tired he said no say it like i mean it's the chad i never get tired i never get tired he goes i'm going to let you walk to the aid station a quarter mile away but when we get there you tell all the fine people that are serving us the food the volunteers the miracle of chad and jesse we get to the aid station they give us the food i said ma'am i'm i'm jesse this is my friend chad this is crazy but we never get tired we never get tired he grabs me by his shirt he goes let's go and we start running every mile we don't get tired 77 miles in we don't get tired 81. chad i'm not tired 90. we don't get tired 93 95 97 we're not tired 99 all the way to the finish line the words you speak are so important be mindful of the words that people around you say i can't your son's not this we're not this we can't we never did this before we're not good at that over the next week be mindful of the words that you speak the words you say create an environment in your head of what it is you're becoming i have it my son my son is highly dyslexic the teacher said oh your son is really struggling this week no no no no are you saying he's working really hard he just hasn't grasped the concepts yet be mindful of the words that you speak now look i don't have all the answers but i do know this the reality is the average american does live to be 78. our window is super small we have to take care of the bus we have to take care of the people around us and mindful of the people on the bus putting more on our plate of the things we love to do with the people that we love to do and with we got to fix our flats what is it that's broken instead of living in abundance and trying to make ourselves happy by putting more on our plate of don't hide from the things that are broken we got to work on our life resume versus our traditional resume right spend time what's the one thing you're going to do this year what are the habits that we're going to do this year to make us better what's the one defining thing that we're going to do every day are we setting our our our schedule the night before so we're super efficient and then we have to be mindful of the words that we speak before i go i want to leave you with something i wrote the other day i'm at an age of 52 where my friends are getting diagnosed we talk about we never know when that ends when that bus is going to end i'm saying 78 80 90. we don't know but for many of us out of nowhere things happen i don't want to bring this on a downer but i bet a lot of people on this that are listening right now don't have their gravesite picked out yet because we know we're gonna die we just don't believe it they say health is the greatest gift and nothing is more enchanted but we often go through life and take this ultimate gift for granted just the other day my friend true story noticed something coming back from his son's lax game he said he felt a little tired and had some weird lower back pain since his uncle had something similar that ultimately destroyed his health he figured he should get it checked out better safe than sorry is what he said to himself the doctor felt around and found something a little curious he said let's just sit get this scan to make sure it's nothing serious and when the results came back he asked my friend to please sit he had some bad news to deliver we found the tumor in your neck and it spread to your kidneys to your lungs and to your liver my friend was like this is impossible i have a wife two sons and a daughter the doctor held his hand firmly and said yes but i'll help you get your things in order he thought about chemotherapy and alternative treatment for several defeating days he even thought about he even contemplated trying to cure it strictly with vegan ways but with only six months to live my friend chose to make the most and spend every waking moment with the ones he loved and held most close and as he laid in bed thinking of what he'd done different if he had his years over again he said he would have traded the hours of work four more hours with his family and friends he would have had more adventures and experience and live life for a living he love more worry less and spend more time on charitable giving but the one thing he's he told me to do is appreciate every day that we have to spend because we never know when that bus ride we're on will abruptly come to an end thank you good afternoon my name is casey krauss and along with our ceo todd richardson will be hosting today's q a with jesse itzler and carlos whitaker you know the the gift of being able to hold edgex virtually has allowed us incredible access to our keynote speakers and opportunity for all of you to engage with our guests to that end if you'd like to ask a question just drop it in the q a below and type it in and we will get to as many as we can before we launch into our q a i'd like to thank again our our presenting partners medexcel and lucas oil and all of our corporate partners it's because of all of them that we're able to have edgex and offer this unique live q a opportunity so with that said it's it's my absolute pleasure to introduce our next guest jesse itzler who you just heard from today hey jesse how's it going good how you doing i'm doing great i'm doing great thanks for being here so i got two things before we get started okay so first off i'm an indiana boy i played indiana basketball okay but uh i figured if there was one time in my life i would rep a hawks jersey it would be today sitting here with a with the co-owner of the team i love that i love the audio looks good hey second thing man i just wanted to thank you for welcoming myself and a few team members down to atlanta a few weeks ago when we met with you you often speak about being where your feet are and you talk about that when you talk about being present and when i think about that experience with you you were just extremely present with us you asked really thoughtful questions you had high energy you were very intentional and i just want to let you know that we noticed that and we appreciated it very much so thank you i'm a little bummed out because i know you guys are runners and when you came to my house you wanted to go for a run and normally i would say in any circumstance i would say yes but i'm homeschooling four kids and that was that that one it was that one time i couldn't do it so i'll rain check on that i'll do an extra mile because of the hawks jersey hey game on and i'll take you up on the rain check but we did get to share a smoothie together too so that was great appreciate it all right well let's dive in okay so you know while learning more about you and following a lot of your material a lot of people think of the range you have you know you a rapper started and sold a jet company coconut water company you're an author a sports team owner an ultra endurance athlete so it's an incredibly wide range but you often stress your role as a father and as a husband above all so i want to start at a place that you're pretty comfortable with and you speak up about a lot and that's the dinner table for family dinners so jesse for you why are family dinners so important and valuable to you and your family yeah before i get into it you know you touched on all these different topics and parenting and business and running and all these things and you know to me success people think of success and they immediately go to bank account but success to me is being good at multiple things it's being a good father or son or parent um a good friend the good boss being good at work you know it's it's being well-rounded and it's it's really you know being good in multiple buckets so that's something that's always been important to me as far as the dinner table you know there's a lot of research around the benefits of family dinners and families staying together uh how important that family dinner is as a child my parents emphasized this my mom had a cowbell and i could go outside and play but when she rang the cowbell no matter where i was in the neighborhood she had like an extra high-powered high-pitched cowbell i would come home for dinner and i think you know it's true of work it's true of family people want to be heard your employees want to be heard you want to give your employees a voice your customers want to be heard we want to be heard and the dinner table is a great place for 6 year olds or 52 year olds to have a voice equally to be honest and it's also a great time for my wife and i for our kids to just listen and for us to have an adult conversation and for them to be sponges and we try to make our dinner table super festive we dance after we have a record player in there we play freeze family freeze we mix it up and it's become an event it's a highlight for me and it's a highlight for my kids and it's also a rare point in in today's world where we can escape from this escape from tv escape from everything and truly be where our feet are and truly be present so to carve out you know 30 45 minutes a night to get everybody together to summarize the day it's like i won't trade that for anything man yeah and it's it's almost rare these days so it's really cool to hear that you and sarah do that so let's let's connect back to the keynote from today on the concept of the bus ride you seem to focus on maximizing your time extremely well you leverage every minute an hour of the day so with that said jesse we walk us through maybe a typical day in the life where you highlight where and how you maximize your time and maybe even better put is what is the perfect day for you where you've maximized your time yeah well that's it's funny because i wouldn't say that i was an ex i am an expert at this or i was an expert at this uh years ago certainly not in my 20s and 30s i i'm highly i big i struggle with attention and i struggle with focus so but let me just be let me just i'll walk you through it i mean for me everybody talks about the importance of morning routines but i'm a much bigger believer in evening routines so my day starts the night before where i lay out actually i have it right here you can actually see it on my board i lay out my exact day the night before i invest five minutes to map out my day today i'm just following a script my day was already established and won the night before when i mapped it out they say that wars are one in the general's ten it's laid out and i just follow the script what do i have to accomplish what's most important to me and a timeline what are the top ceos in in america what happens when on a daily beat they walk in they have three assistants they get handed a piece of paper at 9 15 uh casey's over here 10 o'clock here 11 o'clock meeting with todd 12 o'clock here i don't have three assistants so i have we don't have three assistants so we map it out so for me it starts at night um and then i like to create early wins i'm a big believer in momentum small wins uh so i try to start my day off with something um i need seven hours of sleep um if i need six i mean five i need seven but i like to wake up and get a small win and i like to do something for myself because i know that if i can set the tone by doing something that is important to me i'm going to be way more apt to do do something for my wife or my boss or a customer if i can check the the jesse box in the morning that could be 15 minutes of wim hof breathing it could be taking a walk exercising getting esteem but i don't want to resent my wife or my boss for taking away things that i want i love to do so if i was if you said to me case like you can't run today i'd be pissed at you if i got my run in early the rest of the day is gravy for me i've checked the personal box so my day starts with something for me and then i just kind of follow the script personally i shut down at four um that wasn't the case when i was starting out in business i would work to 11 but as you as you evolve your life system evolves so while i was going i was having dinner at 11 o'clock at night when i was single living in new york i now have dinner at five you have to evolve so you know i'm constantly looking at how can i improve my daily routine how can i be more efficient with my time i try to schedule every day sort of the same like i time block so for me that looks like i work out i six to eight is with my kids actually six to nine now because i'm homeschooling nine to eleven i work out eleven two one let's just say our only phone calls podcasts etc so it's like really compartmentalized so i don't think i know nine o'clock is my workout time and i don't wanna take too much on this on this question but you know we get a lot of arrows that come at us every day so i could be deep in a thought in a conversation with you or a business meeting or a thought and my phone might ring and now i have to stop my thought redirect my energy to deal with whoever's calling then i have to flush it out with this person and then i have to reboot to have get back and engage with you it's exhausting so i try to keep my arrows in buckets i only take calls at a certain times meetings at certain times certain times for my creative i'm not i work for myself so i can do that but even at work i try to compartmentalize that stuff to minimize the arrows that was actually a really good answer james asked a question in our q a he said how do you deal with the unexpected events or the torpedo the plan in your day so that was a that was a pretty thoughtful answer about about putting them in buckets like that so very nice derails us man yeah derails us it takes so much like what what are we talking about then i gotta like regroup get my energy back but if i'm like monotastic and like right now i am on this edge x-man you guys got my attention but when we're done it's done i'm going to play soccer with my kids and and that's what i'm doing then i have a five o'clock so like i really try to be super present be where your feet are there's a time for the torpedoes maybe five to six is put out the fire time i think that transitions well to our next question uh you talk about doing stuff kind of for yourself uh i want to talk about something else so uh in seeing the ways that you challenge yourself the quote the whole is greater than the sum of its parts seems to run true so you seem to find kind of that collective potential with you and those around you jesse uh even in in your misogyny challenges that you spoke of today it seems like you're rarely ever doing them alone so why is that important to you and why would you suggest to others to do the same and finding that that collective potential yeah you know gandhi had a great quote learn like you'll live forever live like you'll die tomorrow um i like to do things with with other people i mean i know i do some stuff alone but in general big challenges um i i like people i get energized from people i learn from people i get to teach people you know you go from student to the master when you teach i like to share those experiences and those moments they're so memorable with people and it's free if i'm going to go jump in a cold plunge for the local fire department to raise money for the special olympics and i can invite 20 friends that's free you know it's going to be a memory that we're going to share and and even if they say no they're going to appreciate the ask so the ask is free and the and and the yes is forever that memory is forever so but but the honest simple answer is i like it i love you know doing things and celebrating with people being an entrepreneur is lonely people don't understand man being an entrepreneur it's lonely the toilet breaks you got to fix it somebody quits you have to get find the replacement it's hard so every opportunity i get to share is really good and the other thing i would say is one of the best things about success however you define it or financial success let's just say is you get to treat the people you like the most to the things you like to do the most you get to bring people along for the ride and that's a part of success that i love so if i can share that you know shame on me if i don't thank you for that i'm going to touch on a quote you said from your keynote today and then relate it to a question that just came in so when you talked about mindset you said this the words you say create an environment in your head of what it is you are becoming and mitch vanderhegen asks or he says jesse always killing it brother your confidence is contagious can you elaborate on how you've built that or how you've always had it any mind hacks or talk tracks to improve this attribute well that's a really good question i think that comes i think i'm different at 52 than i was when i was 22. you know um i've realized we talked about the bus ride right on the speech i realized my own mortality and in a hundred years from now there'll be a whole new nobody on this call is gonna be alive there'll be a whole new wave of humans walking around the planet so when you start to think about that and uh almost how insignificant we are in the scheme of the whole universe and time you start to get a little bit a little bit more fearless uh so over time i've had a lot of regrets over things where fear beat me up and i i didn't do it and that led to regret like i wish i can't believe i was so scared about that you know so i like to ask myself five years from now well how will i feel is anyone can remember this am i going to care am i going to regret it am i going to be happy i did it like take myself out of the present moment where everything is so maybe overwhelming or unknown and fast forward five years out um but i think the confidence is and i think every entrepreneur listening has to have this um i mentioned this last night but you gotta believe in the end of the story if you're single you got to believe that that person's out there somewhere you have to believe that you can run the marathon you've never ran you have to believe that you can successfully build a company you have to believe that you can talk to this community with conviction and from a place of experience and add value you have to believe in where you're going and that's the definition of confidence to me it doesn't mean you have to have all the skills it doesn't mean that you have to have everything figured out it doesn't mean you have to have all the experience it doesn't mean the timing is right it just you have to believe that that end movie that end vision that end story can happen and that to me is confidence so i try to go into those scenarios with that belief and by the way if i don't have that if i can't see that in my mind's eye um sometimes it's it's uh the universe's way of telling me i'm off course and maybe this isn't the right lane for me very well said very well said i want to pop another question in here this one by the way i know mitch yeah he's an atom yeah he is uh ron chimes in here and says you're extremely inspiring who inspires you and why you know they always say that you hear the expression surround yourself with like-minded people and i've always been drawn to i've always been like why they're just like me i'm always i've always been attracted to unlike people that give me a new perspective that's how you learn so i have a lot of virtual mentors people that i follow that for one reason or another maybe they're inspiring because i love the way they parent maybe they're inspiring because they're i like the way they conduct themselves in business maybe they're inspiring because of their uh you know some of the challenges they've completed so today you can have virtual mentors on youtube instagram it for free but i was i was blessed with a great business mentor he passed away last year and a great wellness mentor um harvey diamond who wrote a book called fit for life and he also passed away last year but at a young age i was uh around a lot of i sold my company marquee jet no no i sold my first company alphabet city when i was 27 to a guy named bob sillerman who did a roll-up he bought 84 companies we were the smallest and youngest founders of of the 84 companies but he put us in the room at all the board meetings and advisory meetings with all these 84 business owners and i was a sponge you know and and marquis jet the greatest gift that i had wasn't the wire that warren buffett's company sent to us when we sold the company it was at 30 years old i was flying the 4 000 best top athletes entertainers ceos entrepreneurs and i was a sponge i wanted to know what what were they what what their routines were every opportunity i had i would ask what time do you get up where do you keep you how do you live rich where do you put your money where do you vacation who what doctors do you see what do you invest i just wanted to know what makes these elite humans tick and i today am a living compilation of those mentors habits routines that i've picked up over 52 years on earth some stayed with me the ones that worked some didn't and i continue to add new habits new routines new mindset uh and eliminate others as i get older so it's like a constant evolution of habits and routines and a lot of them come from mentors and people i don't even know they don't even know i follow them got an interesting question here from max he says knowing what you know now would you have stopped your rap career that was a great story by the way in the keynote he says would i stop my rap career yeah would you have stopped it yes i didn't have a choice it stopped itself the public said you're in the wrong way man go do something else and i started a jet company yeah um i loved it for what it was you know and i this is going back to 1990 1988 different era and it's going back to me at 19 years old um i loved it but you know it it ran his course here's what's amazing though you know it was amazing back then you you sign a record label any any artist it's incredible to me they have to create an album cover they have to create video ideas an image a brand the actual content of the of the album then they have to market it and there's it's like a crash course for me i never took a business course that was my business that was my harvard education what and i realized and i my what i learned was everything i did wrong you know and i was able to apply that and i still do because when you get smacked in the face you remember how it feels so it's good to get smacked around once in a while there you go once in a while there you go okay uh i want to touch on building your life resume okay so jesse when someone asks you what's on your life resume what is on it and how do you go about designing it uh and maybe touch on how you help others get started on theirs yeah so i'm a big believer in building your life resume versus your traditional resume we put so much emphasis on our business resume but we often neglect what i think is more important which is our our life resume our experiences our skills what we what we learn what we go through um so i i spend a lot of time investing in those experience i had a financial advisor that came to my house i've had like 50 financial advisors knock on our door or get a meeting you know to meet with sarah and i and they're they're all the same pitch with a different logo what do you want you would put your bonds and your stocks and are you conservative what's your risk tolerance and you know different logos things and then finally a guy comes in he's like let me ask you a question if you could leave your kids a boatload of money or a boatload of life experiences what would you do and of course the answer is life experiences so at a very young age i've taken time every day for myself and uh and i've tried to make sure that i do one year defining thing every year there's an old japanese ritual called the misogyny and the notion around a misogy is you do something one time so hard one time a year that the benefit lasts the benefits last the entire 364 other days of the year so i was going to ask you you know like case what did you do what'd you do in 2011 15. you probably like what'd you do eight days ago most people listening here couldn't answer because we go through life in routine i always try to to put one year defining thing on my calendar and i still do so last year i did a race called last man standing this year i'm doing a race called ultraman um you know i i can go back i could just go back in time and kind of rattle off some of these things so that that's one simple tactic i would encourage everybody in 2021 what's that one thing that you want to do you've never done that's going to kind of forget work define you and your year you know something hard something big something challenging maybe a trip you know whatever but it's really important because if not you're 85 you're 80 years old you're at the end of the road like man i wish i would have i can't believe i didn't you know where all the time go you know and i don't i don't want none of us want that got one question that uh kim in here from deb this is a good one so she says i love your energy and your message how do you deal with when you're close to those who don't have the same energy or drive as you do well you know i don't i don't really worry about other people i try i try to surround myself with people that are high energy um i'm on friend reduction right now i want you know like more isn't better better is better so it's not like everyone's like more likes more followers more this how about like quality of people in your life so and i try to just leave i leave my life the way i want to leave my life it's not dictated by other people i feel badly sometimes when i see people making decisions that i i think are wrong but i'm not it's not one without anybody asking me you're asking me questions so i'm answering i would just knock on your door and say hey man you're doing this wrong you know again my system evolved and it works for me but everybody has to find out through trial and error what works for them i just said this the other day but like before there was marketing there was this crazy thing called common sense so before we were bombarded with advertisements telling us that like you know that xyz athlete says this is the best food or product for you you know we're like okay that that they're spending a billion dollars to convince me of that but that doesn't mean it's right so i like to try things on my own and see what works for me and hopefully that rubs off on those closest around me well said well said okay let's uh let's talk to the leaders out there who might be parents mentors coaches or maybe in a position to influence others who who might be younger so you gave a story in your keynote about your son's teacher praising his efforts versus his abilities i think this is important so will you speak more about the power of praising effort versus results for those leaders out there yeah i mean it's just redefining failure you know it's just about um if we're very and rightfully so we operate in a world that's result driven but roi return on investment comes in many different forms and sometimes the the return on your investment isn't financial sometimes it's effort and sometimes the lessons and the one thing you can control is effort as a parent you know i think i want i want my kids to live up to their potential you know i i was with my brother and we were talking about my son who's a swimmer and my brother asked me how he's doing i'm like you know he's he's really good but he doesn't he doesn't try that hard and my brother's like well that's okay as long as he's happy and he's enjoying the swimming and i'm like no he'd be happy playing fortnite and eating haagen-dazs all day that's not what i want i want him to like try hard and live up to his potential and you know kids like to be praised and by praising the effort you're real you know hey you know you you scored instead of saying you scored 20 points in your basketball game saying i really enjoyed how hard you tried tonight i really all that hard work and practice really paid off it was fun to watch you know that's kind of the tone that i i use because i want to try hard love it all right let's go with the last question here okay so it's kind of a two-parter so first off imagine you could go back to your 25 or 30 year old self there's a lot of people in the audience that are of that age and give yourself some advice about your life to come what would you say and if you could jump forward to your 75 year old self and give some advice what would you tell yourself jesse well i mean the 20s and 30s are a great time to say yes to everything adventures meetings conferences things like this and your 40s and 50s are a great time to say no um so in my in your 20s you know there's a lot of messages out there about working 23-hour days and you know you got to work work work work work obviously you have to work but it's equally as important in my opinion to not lose your 20s like there's nothing wrong with being 23 and doing what 23 year olds are supposed to do try things experiment you know travel a little take a chance go do things open up to to be open you know walk around with open eyes um so in my 20s if i could go back i would you know i would say i did a really good job of that uh i was in multiple businesses i was a kiddie pool attendant i sold carrot and celery sticks i sold t-shirts i did jingles um i cleaned meat trucks and then all of a sudden two years later i had a private jet company see we're always one idea away from changing the trajectory of our life we're one idea one relationship one referral you know so in my 20s i cast a really wide web and i put myself in a position to attract luck i was out there you know i wasn't you're not going to get lucky watching the kardashians on your couch you got to go and attract it meetings people networking putting yourself out taking a risk writing letters thanking people dming people like constantly so that would be my advice in in the 20s in my 70s like i said earlier i don't want to have any it's this is so simple i can't even explain how simple this game is i got news for everybody here there's only two options either you're going to be 70 or you're not either you're going to make it to 70 and 80 or you're not going to make it to 1780. so let's fast forward to 70. all right i don't know i just hiked mount washington with my son a year or two ago there were no seven-year-olds at the top of the mountain i went wakeboarding this summer with my family i didn't see any 70 year olds on the lake not a lot of 70 year olds doing the stuff that i'm doing the last man standing race i just did like zero the window to do stuff it's short man it's short so i recognize that i think that's my superpower i'm mega aware of my relationship with time so i don't want to regret i don't want to say man i wish i would have when i can't do it my wife's i i want to do this race called bad water it's 137 mile run through death valley and my wife's like why do you want to do that like when you're 70 your hips and your knees and i'm like when i'm 70 you think i'm saving everything in my tank till i'm 70 there's no guarantee of 70. and when i'm 70 i'm going to say to myself well my hips are okay i wish i would have ran the damn race when i was 52. i live with urgency man i live with tremendous urgency you know if i have a chance to create a memory or a moment i take it incredible answer i i can do this all day so jesse thanks so much for your energy your thoughtful responses uh in the time you spent with us today uh incredible experience for myself and everyone in the audience i'm sure so thanks so much we appreciate you oh man thank you guys for having me and i love to have you guys at the house like i said i owe you a run and um probably a hundred burpees because you got the hawks jersey on so thanks for that and thanks everybody for listening it was it was an honor to be here and thank you for your time thanks so much jesse [Music] yay [Music]

Channel: EDGE Mentoring

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Id: Di8sMNJlU60

Length: 70min 0sec (4200 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020