Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Jesse Itzler: An Inside Look - 053

Episode Date: June 27, 2018

A $160,000 lesson about brownies, 2 death-defying mountain climbs, countless hours inside of saunas, and 31 days with a hardcore Navy SEAL—all these moments taught Jesse Itzler the “how-to’s” of entrepreneurship. In this episode, Jesse shares how the beaten path is the way of the entrepreneur, and how shattering the norm might be your best way to carve out your own niche. Watch or listen now to discover how storytelling, mentality, and time all play a role in your business’s success. “Money can either be used to be an asshole or to serve others.” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 6:23 - How to become a pioneer entrepreneur and enter the “white space.” 7:08 - Why compelling storytelling is the best way to market your product/service. 14:51 - How to differentiate yourself from your industry—and thrive because of it. 23:11 - How a Navy SEAL taught Jesse how to push beyond his limits. 31:38 - How to convert time into urgency for success. “Start small, think big, scale fast.” - Jesse Itzler

One thing I always ask myself as an entrepreneur is how am I different? How is my product different? How is my packaging different? And I'm constantly asking myself that. Differentiation matters. You do things differently than everybody else. You're going to have different results. Hey, friends, Bedros Kulian here.

Welcome to another episode of Empire Podcast Inside Look. And today we have a very special guest, Mr. Jesse Insular. Jesse, how are you? Welcome. Good to see you. Good to be here. Yes, sir. Thank you for being here.

And full disclosure, Jesse's here. for our Empire Podcast. You're one of our guests for the Empire Mastermind, I should say. You're here for the Empire Mastermind and you did probably about two hours of teaching and about 30 minutes of Q&A. And I know that our Mastermind members got so many big takeaways in how you built your empire. And of course, you were kind enough to share how your wife, Sarah, built the Spanx Empire. So let's start doing a deep dive. When did you decide that you're going to be an entrepreneur? I want to arm wrestle you. Oh shit. This is like, I feel like we're about to arm wrestling Right, right, yeah, hold on to the thing.

Oh, our wrestling, you can be that. You know, I decided early on. I decided early on. I grew up in New York, in New York and Long Island and was exposed to my first job ever was as a breakdance or, believe it or not, and I realized that through one specific experience, that if you take a risk, I went out to Washington, D.C. with a friend of mine,

I lived in New York to breakdance, and we said, up a boom box in a parking lot and I was nervous the whole way up. They're like, what if this doesn't go right or people don't show up? And we ended up making $42 each at the end of the day. And I remember putting the money in my pocket and thinking to myself like, whoa, I was so scared with the butterflies on the whole ride up, but I went past that and we performed and we got rewarded for something that we love to do. And that became really addicting to me. Like, if I could do things I love to do on my own terms, despite the fear, and get paid for it, I'm in. And I just, literally, since college, I said, like, I really never want to have a resume. I want to just build my own.

I love that. So would you say that was your first attempt at being an entrepreneur and realizing that you like the fact that you get butterflies, but you do it anyway? It was my first attempt. And yes, and I would say that the following three or four attempts didn't go so well. I think the first three or four attempts yielded $42, but it was just the process of it. It was just like being able to kind of do it when I wanted to do it and write my own rules. I just felt like that was, I mean, I've had jobs, obviously, as a kid as well, and I just felt like from my personality and my DNA that I was suited to be an entrepreneur. So it's safe to say that you felt that you weren't meant to be an employee, that you're meant to be an entrepreneur. Like you felt that early on.

I asked a lot of questions when I was an employee. Like, why is that red? Like, all the doors are red. Like, what have we made our door yellow? Wouldn't people come to our door more than all the other red doors, you know? And I had a lot of questions early on. And everyone was like, nope, the doors are red. That's what the doors are red.

The doors are red. The doors are red, Jesse. And I'm like, I want a yellow door. Yeah. So you went and created your own yellow door. So speaking of yellow doors, let's just kind of go down a short list and then we'll tackle everything. You authored a book called Living with the Seal Where you decided that, hey, you sold,

was it your second company at that point that you had sold? Yes. Your second company. So let's go to, the first one was Marquise Jet. You created Marquise Jet. Sold it to Warren Buffett's company, which is now NetJet. Yeah. And then went on to decide to shake things up in your life.

You're going to run a marathon. It wasn't a marathon. It was a 100-mile race. Yes. And, you know, coconut water. You discover coconut water. Now, how do you discover coconut? to then turn it into this beverage called Zincow and then sell it to Coca-Cola.

Let's walk us through that. Well, you know, like many things, I think being an entrepreneur and many things in my life that have happened to me in the path of being an entrepreneur haven't been planned. They've just, they've happened and an opportunity has created itself. It didn't go like, it didn't just, I didn't start out saying I was going to go hire a Navy seal and write a book or start a coconut water company. I was never in as a three-year-old growing up. I was like, oh, I want to have a coconut company when I grow up.

I was, I ran a 100-mile race specifically to the coconut water. I did a lot of research around hydration and nutrition before I ran this 100-miler. And I tried, by trial and error, a lot of different beverages and products and all the science led to coke, led me to coconut water. And I became a human guinea pick for coconut water because of the potassium and all the benefits and the electrolytes. I completed this 100-mile run. And when I was done, I was like, wow, you know, this is different than a gatorade. This is different than the sports drinks. And there's a real natural element here.

And there's a lot of white space there. Like, no one's really playing. They're playing in the science world. But what about the nature world? And I spent a year trying to figure out how to import coconut water. And that's sort of what led me down the path. You know, I just, I tried it. I said, this is really making my life better.

Maybe it will make other people's, excuse me, lives better. And then I started exploring the opportunity. and then momentum built. So at some point you discovered a small little company called Zinko. Yes. And tell us what happened there. How do you get in with Zinko? Oh, yeah.

So I realized that my strengths would be in marketing this and telling a story around it and being a lightning ride to attract others to this product. But I wasn't definitely my strength wasn't going to be in importing it and all the logistics, et cetera. Because you tried. I did try. You went to Brazil or whatever to try. whatever to try and figure out how this was going to work.

Yes. Once I had the idea and I knew the category was going to happen. I was like, this orange juice happened, great food juice happened, this is happening all over the world. Why hasn't this happened here? So I knew I had a good feeling that that trend was coming. So I spent a year trying to figure out how to import coconut water. And I realized that for me, the learning curve was just too great.

You know, I just couldn't really figure it out. But I knew I could market it. So I said, well, let me partner with somebody that's doing it already. and bring kind of my expertise, peanut butter and jelly this thing. So I went to this company called Zico that was doing a couple million dollars in sales at the time, and we ended up partnering, and then two years later we sold it to Coca-Cola. Brilliant move. So you said you found the white space. Tell the audience, what is the white space in an industry or sector?

Oh, just the space that hasn't been, it's just the open space. It's the space that just hasn't been created yet. And I saw a trend, specific to this, I saw a trend, people were starting to gravitate a little bit away from carbonated beverages and the water category was getting, was bottled water was getting bigger. But there was nothing in between there that was blending kind of like sports drink water with nature, other than orange juice, which wasn't a sports drink. So that was the open area.

That was the lane. I said, you know, there's a story here, and there's people buy into stories more than products. When did you discover that people buy into stories more than products? Because you're a hell of a storyteller. Well, people like to be a part of momentum. And they like to, they love, you know, hearing, they love, I remember I had a product that didn't work. I started a company that didn't work. I'm not even going to say the name.

I started a company that didn't work. And when we pulled back a little and said, look, you know, we, we, we. We've been in all these stores. We've been kicked out of several stores. How do we regain momentum? And the answer was, let's create a win and a story locally. Because if we can create a story and tell that story to investors and to other distributors, there'll be momentum and people can buy into that story.

If we said, look, we took this to this area in New York and sales were X amount of units a week. We're going to replicate that now. wider. We found the formula. That's a story people can buy into. As opposed to we had this great idea. Okay, great. There's a million great ideas. No, no, no. We have a story. There's a story brewing here. People like that. So, you know, it's very often when you're starting out, you want to start small, you want to think big. You want to scale it fast. Start small, think big, scale fast, but part of that comes with building a story, build the story. And that's exactly

what we did. And coconut water was different because we had to build a category. So there was no category. So the storyline became really important. What is the category in that particular space? Well, in that, and it was specifically, I would just call it, I wouldn't even call it sports hydrate. I would just call it coconut water. I really, I think it's its own category. I really do, just like you would say, orange juice is its own category. Soda is a category. But I really think, if you look today, there's several big players in the space,

and it's a multi-billion dollar industry. I would say it's its own category. But we were challenged with educating the consumer around, like, what is it? What is it taste like? That's a really challenging thing. You know, like everyone knows what jump rope is. Oh, I've made a jump rope better. It's a swizzle on it and its weights.

And, oh, I get that. Okay, yeah, we had this thing called coconut water. coconut water? Like, you know, what does it taste like? And what does it do for you? And where's it from? And what are the side effects? And so we'd explain all that. But I like that. That was part of the challenge and part of the fun of being an entrepreneur is having the freedom to craft that. Being an entrepreneur gives you the freedom to craft that story. Really? So let's go back a little bit to the previous business that you sold to Brickshaw Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company, which was Marquis Jett.

Yeah. Going back to White Space. I think our viewers and listeners here at Empire Podcasts need to, and I want them to have this aha moment of, oh, I need to find a vacuum or white space and then see how I can fill that with a solution that people are having or a solution to problems that people are having. Marquis Jett, you came up with this idea that, well, I want to fly private, but I, I I can't afford a private jet and the maintenance of it and the upkeep, et cetera. And why don't you walk us through the story of then how you found the white space and how you pitched?

Sure. Well, again, it wasn't planned. We weren't looking to start a private jet company. I'd never been on a private jet. I was a guest with my partner on a private airplane. And we walked onto the plane and it was like the scene in the Wizard of Oz when everything goes from black and white to color. I walked on the plane. I'm like, people fly like this.

I think this is unbelievable. I mean, you have to take your shoes off, and it's loaded with food, and we got this so quickly, and there's no lines, and we walked around on the plane. And by the time we landed, we're like, how do we do this more often? Why don't we start a private jet company so we can go, you know, with our families on this fly this way. And when we did a little investigating, we realized that there were really only three ways to fly privately at the time. You could buy your own airplane. Well, who is $30 million laying around to buy the plane?

on airplane. You could buy a fraction of a plane, but there was a big five-year commitment, big capital costs up front. Again, it's very hard to make a big five-year capital commitment. I want to taking three trips a year. Why do I want to commit? What if I don't fly next year? I don't want to pay for five years. And the third way was charter. And there were a lot of inconsistencies around like, well, who owns the plane? Who are the pilots? Is it safe? So we kind of said to ourselves, look, we take three or four trips a year. We want to all the benefits of owning our own plane, but we don't want all this responsibility and hassle. I want to prepay for 25 hours. That's pretty much what I need. And when I use it, I use

two hours. I have 23 hours left. And I want all the benefits. I want to be here on short notice. I want to have stock food. I want to have all that. And I want none of the responsibility or hassles. I don't want to deal with the pilots, the scheduling, the maintenance, the servicing, air traffic control, just want to call up and say, can I have my plane ready. And that was the genesis of the idea is like we crafted like what would what would the customers want let's start there what are the what do we want we are the customers let's craft what we want and then let's go make it happen let's build the ideal program let's write down everything we would want and then let's go find someone that will partner with us that will allow us to do that and who did you go find

well we had this like amazing idea for these airplanes except we had no you know if it's private check company we had no planes and no money, which is not the easy thing, easiest way to start a private jet company. So we went to the 800-pound gorilla, which was Warren Buffett's net jets. They had 800 or so private airplanes, the largest fleet in the world, and we pitched this 25-hour jet card concept called Marquis Jet, which was a great meeting for 12 minutes until we got kicked out. And the CEO said, you know, there's no way, no possible way, I'm giving you two 28-year-old kids

access to my 800 airplanes and kicked us out. And his partner came running out and said, guys, I was unbelievable. And we said, unbelievable. We got kicked out in 12 minutes. He said, Rich Santouli, the CEO, he doesn't give anybody 12 minutes. There's something here, but you have to repitch this. I'm going to get you another meeting. And we came back a week later and we realized that we couldn't sell this idea through a

PowerPoint because he's seen so many PowerPoints. It was like, we had to bring this thing to life. This was bigger than a PowerPoint. Our passion wasn't coming through in a PowerPoint. And by the way, how could we sell this? We're two 28-year-old kids. So we brought in a focus group, literally brought in eight people. We set up a table near their conference room table, and one by one, we had a professional

football player, run from run DMC. We had a powerful female real estate mogul, and they stood up and they talked about it. They would never buy a fraction, but they would buy a 25-hour jet. if a program like that existed. Sure. And they gave us a shot and we ended up doing several billion dollars, billions of dollars of sales and selling the company. So you had to come to them in a different way, you said.

And when you shared this in the mastermind earlier, you said, you know, the guy's seen so many PowerPoints. He's probably just desensitized to it. It's not sexy. And add to that, you guys are young. What do you know about the industry? You're not coming with money. His partners saw that there's an opportunity there.

and he said, hey, come in another way, and you were sharp enough to figure out, I need to come in as a different brownie. And our listeners are probably thinking like, what the hell is he talking about, a brownie? But you shared about showing up differently as a brownie. Can you kind of tell us this mindset that you have of showing up differently? Yeah, I mean, I think one thing I always ask myself as an entrepreneur is how am I different? How am I different? How is my product different? How is my packaging different? And I'm constantly asking myself that, you know, How is our team different? How are my everything?

I mean, I'm always challenging the existing because it's so competitive. I remember when I was in college, I took an advertising class, and I was asked to pitch this fictitious product in front of 100 people. And my product was a brownie. It was Aunt Franie's brownies, which was the product that I was thinking about selling when I graduated from college. I was like, I'm going to the brownie business. And it was a product that my roommate's Aunt Franie sent us every month.

month. And I pitched this whole campaign, advertising campaign, to my class as the final exam. And 30 seconds into my pitch, my professor told me to stop. And it's actually the only lesson I remember from college. And I think the tuition at American where I went is $40,000 a year. So for $160,000, it's the only thing I remember of my parents' money. It's the $160,000 lesson. And the professor said, stop in the middle of my pitch. And he said, son, what is your point of differentiation? I said, well, I'm a brownie. And I could be gluten-free if you want me to be gluten-free.

And I'm shiny packaging and I'm delicious. And he said, no. He said, there's a thousand brownies and substitute brownie for anything. For, you know, gym owner, for apparel manufacturer, for restaurateur. There's a thousand of them that come out every year, Every day almost. I mean, we're bombarded with competition. He said to me, if you want to make it in any industry, you better be a much different

brownie. And he made me sit down. And what I realized what he was saying to me was, and here we are 30 years later, differentiation matters. It's an important tool. It's a weapon. And if you're not asking yourself consistently as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a business owner, as a parent, as anything, how are you a different brownie?

Let me give you an example of how hard it is. Rick Barry was an NBA basketball player. When Rick Barry was retired, he was the best foul shooter, his best foul shooter when he retired in the history of the NBA. He retired shooting 90 percent, which means that nine out of 10 foul shots he made. One year, I think in the 78 season, he went the entire NBA season and only missed nine shots. He shot 90%. But Rick Barry shot every single one of his foul shots underhand, like this.

Since Rick Barry played, there's been over 2,500 players in the NBA. The NBA, not one, not one, has shot consistently. I think maybe one guy shot one underhand. Never. The NBA average is 76%. LeBron James, career average, is like 77%. Michael Jordan's foul shooting average was 83%. He shot 90% underhand and different brownie.

And no one since, none of the 2,500 players that have played in the league or been drafted have shot underhand. It's very hard to step away and be a different brownie. Right. But very often when you do, you're the best. Because it looks awkward, right? I mean, I watch basketball on TV. We call it granny style.

There's even a term for it, right? And so they put their ego ahead of their skills. But here's the thing. When you are a different brownie, it guarantees you're going to have different results. You do things differently than everybody else. You can have different results. If everybody follows the same playbook, everyone's going to do the same thing. And, you know, we live in a system, and the great entrepreneurs do that.

All entrepreneurs do it. They question the norm. They break the rules. They rip up the playbook. And that's what we did at this meeting. Forget the PowerPoint. We got to sell this through emotion and let other people say, here's our customers. He represents 1,000 professional athletes.

He represents 800 musicians. She represents the entire field of real estate. state moguls. He represents, you know, and they stood up and that's what it was. And if he'll, if Carl Banks will do it from the New York Giants, why want all the players in the NFL that can afford to do it? Do it. That's what we're doing. Forget the PowerPoint. And it worked. And it worked. And it went on to be, you know, changed the industry. You know, this reminds me of one of the lessons we, especially Craig, my business partner, teaches often in the empire mastermind, which is dramatic demonstration of proof. I mean, you came in with some serious firepower.

This person represents all of real estate. This person represents all of music. This person is all of sports. And that is dramatic demonstration of proof, which is so valuable in a space when people see that there's all this competition. Right. And so you did that so well. So you sell Marquis Jet. You sell Zico Coconut Water to Coca-Cola.

And then you decide to write this book called Living with the Seal. And I got to tell you, when I listen to it, I listen to it on the plane. and I always listen to audiobooks because I play them at 1.25 speed. And by doing that, I look at, I consider myself, I'm buying more time. I always want to buy back my time. I buy back my time. Another one of the weird quirks that I have that we talked about, this corky thing. And what even got you to write a book about living with the seal?

Which, by the way, they had me in stitches, because the way you talk and tell the story when you're in disbelief, when he says, you're going to do a thousand pull-ups and you're like, this guy's fucking nuts, right? but then he makes you do it. Why did you even look to get a seal and then live with him for 30 days and then write this book? Again, it wasn't planned. I met this fellow.

It was an amazing guy at a race that we were doing. It was a 24-hour race. It was a relay race. I was doing it with five friends. He had no one to really with. He was his own team. And he weighed about 285 pounds,

which is a tremendous amount of weight to carry for 24 hours. mile 70, he had broken all the bones and both of his feet from his weight, just crushed the bones. And I watched him sit in his chair and instead of quitting the race, I was like, we get this guy a medic. Like, get him out of here. Help! Help! Get him! He duct taped his feet and continued to run another 30 miles to get to his goal.

So I said, like, I got to meet him. I need that special sauce, whatever got him out of the chair to finish this race where there's not even an award. I need that. If I could teach that to my kids or to my family or my employees, myself. So I ended up cold calling them. And I met with them at a lunch and realized I'm not going to get that secret sauce over a salad. And I just said, like, would you come? Like, you're so impressive.

Would you come live with me and my family for a month? And he said, yes. I mean, it wasn't that simple, but he said basically yes. And a few days later he was at my breakfast table. He lived with us for 31 days, and I started to write a blog about it, and years later, I realized that the principles behind what makes a guy like that tick or how someone like myself or anybody could kind of learn to have a little bit more grit, resilience, discipline, edge, tap into the reserve tank. those are really powerful tools. I decided to turn into a book five years later after he lived with me. And so I wrote the book and it ended up doing well and I'm glad you like it.

Still one of my favorite books and recommended to all our mastermind members. Tell us about the 40% rule that he taught you. Yeah. So during the course of our journey, a lot of what we did was around pushing ourselves past our perceived limitations. You know, the limitations that we all put on ourself, very often our self-imposed, not just physically, even in like, how big can your business be? Very often it could be bigger than you even think it can if you allow yourself to dream,

you create that movie in your head of how big it could be, and you don't limit yourself. But anyway, one day we started doing some pull-ups and he wanted to see how strong I was, and I did like eight pull-ups. It's probably a lie, probably like six pull-ups. And then he said, wait 30 seconds. and do it again. I went back up and I did a handful and then wait 30 seconds, do it again. I got one or two. I was maxed out. And I said, what's next? He said, we're not leaving here until you do 100 more. And I was like, that's impossible. And he said, I'm going to prove to you

that it's not impossible and I'm going to prove to you that you're putting these limitations on yourself. You just said it's impossible. You told yourself it's impossible. I'm going to show you it is possible. And an hour and a half later, doing one at a time, I did do the full hundred, and I realized, man, like, I'm under-indexing. By a hundred pull-ups in this exercise, it made me realize,

what are the areas of my life am I under-indexing in? So his 40% rule is, when your brain says you're done, you're only 40% done. So very often, we stop because our brain is a defense mechanism doesn't want us to get hurt.

It sends a signal to its taps us, and says, hey, man, stop running. You're running too fast. I'm breathing. Like, stop. And we do. We listen. We are in tune with our body.

We listen. Sure. But the real gold and magic and the real, like, what are your limitations, go well beyond what you think you can do? And the rule of thumb for the Navy SEALs is when you think you're done, you're only at 40% of what you can actually do. What's interesting is just by thinking of that, just by being aware that that's even possible, go for a little run. And when you want to stop, you're like, oh, I had enough. You know what, I'm only 40% done and you keep going. You realize, like, whoa, I do have more in the tank.

We do have more. Like, wow, we really do have more. And you see it all the time in extreme scenario, survival stories, guys that walk 90 miles after a crash to civilization or stuff. It's like, we all had that. It's just we just don't want to go there. Right. Right. Now that's one of like a dozen lessons that I took away from your book Living with the Seal. And, you know, as you were talking, you saw I took down another dozen lessons just from

your talk. Like I'm that guy that takes down bullet points. I don't write a story. I just take down bullet points and I share it with a group. So anyone who hasn't read the book Living with the Seal, you're doing yourself with disservice. And if you're like me, you're going to want to listen to it. One, it's hysterically funny because Jesse,

I guess narrates the book himself. And number two, you can listen to it at 1.25 speed, which makes him sound funny, but you buy back some of your time as well. Great book, highly recommend it. We'll link it up in the show notes here. You have some weird and odd rituals. One of them being, if you go in the sauna,

at some gym, there's a guy in the sauna, you don't know him, you've never met. What do you say to yourself and what's the competition? I say to myself, there's no way I'm leaving before. leaves. Why? It's just this thing I started. I just felt like, I feel like it gives me an edge. It probably is just my own little thing. But if I walk in and you're sitting there and I'm like,

I'm not leaving. If I'm going to walk out before you walk out? What is it? What is that? No way. So very often I'll just, you know, they, no one in the sun will even know I'm playing again. There could be multiple people. I'm like, oh, he's here, okay. He's got to go. He's got to go. He's got to go. He's got to go before I go. Take a deep breath and I wait. And then when they hold, finally clear out. I just kind of whispered to myself, you lose. And that's it. And I feel like it just gives me like, you know, like I'm always looking for something to build on. And I feel like a lot of being an entrepreneur, a lot of just a lot of things that happen in my life. When you have edge, edge is an advantage. Edge could be a little swagger. It's something you can just take

with you anywhere. It could, sometimes it could just be a simple thing like patience. You could be in traffic. I mean, it comes into play all the time. I'm just trying to get better and build. And that's one of many games that I play. And you say it's a weird little ritual, but for me, it's just, it's just become like a lifestyle. By the way, you're nobody to talk about weird rituals. Oh, I got weird rituals. I do. I absolutely do. I absolutely do. And I'll gladly share it on this one. At all the masterminds, our masterminds are two days long. And I will stay hungry for those two days completely stay hungry i'll drink water put a little salt in there for to have my sodium etc but i'll stay hungry and the reason for that is you always hear the term stay hungry bro hey stay

hungry stay motivated well i think stay hungry really means when it comes from the caveman days of of us when we're hungry we have a heightened sense of alertness awareness sight sounds smell and we have a greater sense of desire the hungry caveman is willing to go get that apple from the tree even though the saber-tooth tiger might fucking eat them up the caveman who is not so hungry will see the apple. I'm not an apple tree. Right. Right.

You're getting aggressive. Right. The caveman that's not so hungry will see the apple tree and will not risk it. And I found that stay hungry really means my senses are heightened and I'm a better coach, I'm a better mentor, I can solve problems faster for them. Now, obviously there's diminishing returns. If I stay hungry three, four, five days, now I'm fasting at that point and I'm starting to get cloudy and foggy headed, right?

So I make sure I get my sleep, et cetera. But yeah, I have very weird rituals and I guess similar to yours, which kind of leads me to something else I was going to say. You taught the mastermind group inadvertently, I suppose. I mean, you didn't say these words. But the most successful entrepreneurs, like the empire builders, people who have like changed the fucking world, they live in extremes, don't they? They're not anywhere in the middle. They're in one extreme or the other. What do you think that is?

Oh, I definitely think that's true. Very often I think that's the case. I also think that there's a lot of characteristics I've found. I think living in extremes is one. I think that's just because very often being an entrepreneur is extreme. You're shaking up, you're being a disruptor. And without being extreme, it's hard to be disruptive. And you have to be willing to take risks.

Living in the extreme is being comfortable with the uncomfortable. It's being comfortable taking chances and risk and maybe failure. And so I think that's a personality trait for a lot of entrepreneurs. And I think it can be taught. I think it can be, you know, you can accumulate the ability to have, you know, to deal with fear and take chances. But I think you're right. And I think, I just think it just comes with the territory of, of you want to change the world or you want to go change in industry or you want to go create a category. it's hard to do that when you're like when you live playing in between the lines.

Yeah, you got to live outside the lines. And it's funny, when I was building the Fit Body Boot Camp, I guess Empire, we'll call it, in the beginning phases for about five, six years, man, I alienated myself from all of my friends, my dearest friends, because I knew I either had to go all in here or I had to, this was going to take a much longer period of time to develop if I spent time with my friends went to ball games, watched TV. I unplugged the TV, very much like you said earlier, unplugged the TV. Now we haven't had TV for 13 years in the house. We just download from Netflix. My kids have never seen a commercial because of that because when we unplugged, they weren't

even born yet. But I live in extremes where people go, hey, have you seen that commercial? No, I haven't. Have you seen that sitcom? No, I haven't. But when the sitcom comes out and I like it, I will go through it. I'll binge watch and be done and caught up because, again, time is a factor. Right. Right. And so explain that. You talked about the relationship with time. Why is time such a big factor for high-performing entrepreneurs? I think urgency is a factor. I think just taking a step back.

I think that people talk about relationships. When we talk about relationships, very often you talk about in terms of people. How has your relationship with your wife or your kids or your parents or your friends or whatever? But we neglect to think about our relationship with time and money, but specifically time. and the average American we were talking about it lives to be 78 years old. I'm turning 50. So if I was average, that means I have 28 summers left. I hope I'm not.

But if that's the case, and you reverse engineer that time and realize that, wow, like the quality is I just climbed Mount Washington. I didn't see any 70-year-olds on the hill. The stuff that I'm able to do now in my 70s, I probably won't be run. I mean, maybe I will, but there's a high chance that I won't be doing it at the level. or doing what I'm doing now. So now my quality of years are really reduced from 28 to now maybe like there's 10.

Well, then when you reverse engineer it, it's like, well, how do you want to spend that time and who do you want to spend it with? Or what do you want to build? I mean, my biggest fear is I have a lot of shit that I want to do. A lot. And I just want to make sure that I have enough time to do it.

Since I don't, I know what I want to do, but I don't know how much time is left. I want to do that shit now. I just climbed Mount Washington. That's a quick example. And Mount Washington is one of the ten most dangerous mountains to hike. I didn't know this in the States. It's got like, in the winter, it has, on any given day,

it's usually minus 30 degrees with 60 mile an hour winds. And getting to the summit is very challenging. People walk off the mountain because there's no visibility. And I went with four friends, like, without a guide, we didn't know what we would do. It was just ridiculous. And we didn't get to the summit. And I had blasted out over social.

media that were going on this expedition and everyone's like, you didn't make it. It's only four and a half miles to the top. Like, you couldn't climb four and a half miles. You ran 100 miles and you couldn't. And I'm like, you didn't even try. But I felt bad. So I said to my wife, I failed when we got home. And I'm like, this is really like, I don't want a DNF, did not finish on my resume.

I want to go back. She's like, great, sweetie. Get a tour guide. Break in your boots. Plan a weekend next year where you train carrying the pack. and you can handle the weight and go back next winter. I was like, all right, I'm going back on Saturday. She's like, Saturday.

I'm like, this Saturday, like in four days. I'm like, there's no guarantee what next winter is going to be. What if I break my leg? What if I have a sick? What if I can't? What are my friends don't want to? I'm going back on Saturday. And I went back on Saturday.

And we did it. But my point is time and urgency. And like, you wait in this competitive. of seven billion people, you're going to get your clock wrong. Someone's going to eat your lunch. Sure. So I'm a ready fire aim guy. I'm not, you know, I'm a ready fire aim guy.

And I think part of being an actual, I'm not saying go reckless and go do it without a plan. And I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying there's never the right time. You never have a right. Most people use time and experience as an excuse. I need more time. I don't have enough experience. I don't have enough experience.

The timing will be better in six months. Oh, really? You have a crystal ball that knows that the timing is going to be better in six months. The timing is never right. The experience is never always right. Go, get your foot in the door and figure it out as you go. And that's what I think you're talking about when you talk about entrepreneurship, business, time, and even life.

Get your foot in the door, take a chance and figure it out as you go. ask people that have done it. So you've got a very interesting wife. I do. And you've got what I think is even a more interesting story of how you met her or how you got to her. And to me, it's no different than how you got Marquise Jet off the ground or Zico Coconut Water off the ground. Can you share who your wife is and how you connected with her? So I was about to run this 100 mile run that I'm talking about.

We talked about earlier. and I was trying at the same time to get on the radar of Sarah, who's my wife now, who is the founder of a company called Spanx. And she sells undergarments and bras and shapewear for women. And she's built this amazing company. It's an amazing story of... You light up when you talk about her. Oh, I'm so proud of her.

You really do. But it's an amazing story. And it's an American dream. And as an entrepreneur, like, I just very few people. people have been able to do what she's done and it's just great. So I was trying to get on her radar and I was about to run this 100 mile run. So I called up her assistant and I knew Sarah. We were friendly, but I wasn't on her radar the way that I needed to be.

I lived in New York and she was in Atlanta. So I had to accelerate it. Time or else someone else is going to grab. Right. So I called up her assistant. I said, Lisa, this is Jesse. I'm about to run this 100 mile run. I'll run the entire 100 miles in Spanx,

which is women's underwear, for a testimonial or a donation from Sarah. So, now, a testimonial would have been great. I had a website. A donation would have been great, but I just wanted to get me on the phone with her, you know? So she puts me on hold, and she goes, Sarah, some lunatic is on the phone saying he's going to go run 100 miles in Spanx.

Sarah says, I think I know that lunatic. And a year later, she married the lunatic. But that's what I had to do at that moment. I had to run 100 miles to get her attention to. But here we are. Four kids later. Four kids later. God bless you guys.

So what I'm hearing really is that as an entrepreneur, Brownie. Brownie. As a brownie. Oh, Sarah, would you like to go have a steak dinner at blah, blah, blah place? Sarah, would you like to go and have a drink? You brownied it. Right.

I'm like, no, I'm going to run 100 miles. in your underwear. Did you end up running 100 miles in Spanx? No. But I would have. But she married you anyway. I would have. Yeah.

That's awesome. I got on our radar, so I didn't need the... Yeah. Spanx, what Spanx? Yeah. That's funny. And, you know, you're such a humble guy, Jesse, but not only have you built and sold two amazing companies and probably more that I don't know of, you're involved

in so many ways with so many people when you were talking about it, the mastermind, like I'm talking about celebrities that we all watch their movies and shows, et cetera. But you're very down to earth. I don't know your wife personally, but I follow her on Instagram. She seems very down to earth. Like, what, how do you guys maintain? I mean, it's a hundred, what is it, a billion dollar company that she runs, right? No business partner.

She's taken on no loans. She's done it. You've done it. You guys could be, you know, looking down your noses of people. What keeps you so humble? I mean, I don't think that the money or the, the money, anything else really should change anybody. I think I'm really, I, this is a very tough question to answer because I, it would be

better suited asking one of my friends or someone else, but I feel like I'm the same way I've always been. Well, what keeps Sarah so humble? I think she's the same way that she's always been. I just think that money is the magnifier. If you were grounded and down to earth and, you know, your parents were important to you and your family, when you have money, you're going to be more of that. If you were an asshole, you're going to be a bigger asshole.

And we've heard that before. What I love about being an entrepreneur, I love about having success, is being able to treat the people that you love to do things with the most. That's, like, to me, the greatest thing. And I've never been about, I'm about collecting experiences, not things. So I don't really, this is, I got dressed up for this podcast. Right, right, and a polo shirt and jeans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, you know, I'd rather buy, you know, great running sneakers and find a hill because that's just what I love to do.

Sure. So, you know, money didn't bring me over to caviar. It just brought me over to bigger mountains because that's what that's more of me. Yeah. So I think, yeah. Good point. Well, I mean, you made it sound like so simple, but it really, truly money is a magnifier. If you're, if you're an asshole, you will become a bigger asshole with money.

If you're a humble, giving, nurturing person, you now have more money to use. Money is just a vehicle basically to either being an asshole or to serving and helping others to freedom. So if I could be so open about this next book that you're writing, you went from living with a seal and doing some extreme shit to living with monks. Tell us about the book and the experience. Well, I felt like I did the physical side with seal. I wanted to go explore the spiritual side. And I gave myself an adult time out.

I went and lived with eight monks that have been in the monastery, four of which have been in the monastery for 50 years. years and you know I realize like I'm always on my phone I hate it I love the connected being connected to the world and my family and but I hate how addicting it's become for me and I went 15 days like no phone no TV no radio no nef no anything and I want to see what was going to happen and I want to see how I was going to react and like I said I explored the physical I want to explore the the the spiritual and I always

I also felt like when we, again, we talked about this, I'm a big believer in your life resume. Not just your work resume, but building your life resume. And I felt like this would be an amazing experience. Like, I'm done going, sitting on the beach at the hotel. You know, like, I've done that for years. I love it. But I'd much rather go experience at this stage in my life. So I felt like this would be a really cool, different once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it was.

And it was hard. The book is called, what, Living with Monks? Living with the Monks. And so those of you watching, listening to this, trust me, the way Jesse writes, talks, speaks, educates in story, you will learn so many lessons. And I'm not just saying this to blow smoke up your ass. They truly will learn so many lessons and be entertained in the process. You are an amazing infotainer is what I've kind of dubbed you as.

You're great with delivering information and wrapping it up with the cheese of entertainment so that we stay engaged. So thank you so much. How do people find you, connect with you, discover more about Jesse? Well, I'm just at Jesse Itzler on Instagram. That's the best way to get me. Sure. And jessieethler.com.

Easy enough. Yeah, but I really appreciate it. I enjoyed today a lot. So I thank you for having me. Love what you've built, man, and what you're about. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining us for another amazing episode of the Empire podcast. Now, the greatest compliment that you can give to us is liking, loving, and sharing this episode with all of your friends.

So please go to iTunes and give us a five-star rating and then share it online and social media with everyone that you know. And make sure to tag us because we love hearing from Empire listeners. And if you own a business that's doing half a million dollars or more in annual revenues and you know it's got massive potential, and you like myself and Craig Ballantine to help you scale it by 5x, 10x, and 20x in the shortest amount of time possible, then you might be a great candidate for the Empire Mastermind program that we have. To learn more about the Empire Mastermind program, go to Bedroskulian.com. forward slash empire.