My First Million - How to plan an epic 2025, without setting goals | Jesse Itzler

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Get our Business Monetization Playbook: https://clickhubspot.com/monetization Episode 659: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Jesse Itzler ( https://x.com/JesseItzler ) about how to live an epic life.  — Show Notes:  (0:00) Come into the new year light (7:56) Hand written letters (14:03) Identify your B minuses (20:15) Pick your Misogi (27:28) 6 mini adventures (37:38) Add a winning habit (39:55) Write it down (49:50) Don't f*cking waste 2025 — Links: • Jesse Itzler - https://jesseitzler.com/  • Jesse's on MFM episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff1z3GUcfO8 — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

All right, it's the end of the year and forget New Year's resolutions. We have something much better. So in the next hour, Jesse Itzler is coming on. And he has an entire process for planning a monster 2025. I don't want to play catch up. I want to attack. Like now, I'm taking control and I'm dominating the year. Not other people taking it away from it.

Jesse is a incredibly successful guy. He started Zico Coconut Water. He started a private jet company. He sold to Warren Buffett. He's an Emmy Award-winning rapper. Got four kids. He's an ultramarathoner. He lived with David Guggins. If you don't want to learn from this guy, something's wrong with you.

You're broken inside. If everybody does the three things that we're going to talk about in 2025 and does everything else the same. At the end of the year, if they see me in an airport, they're going to bear hug them. I just saw Sean Redding. Like, I, like, take notes. These are my golden nuggets from this episode. These are, you know, my pen dived halfway through.

And now you added 20 winning habits. You're fucking Jason Bourne. You're decent born. Jesse's amazing. He tells us this process that he's been doing for the past 25, 30 years. I'm pretty pumped about it, and I think he will be too. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel. I'm glad to be back, man. I love your show. I love that you got me back as a repeat, as a repeat offender. So let me just start by saying that, you know, I love December. I think December and January are critical months for the 11 or 12 months that follow them. And as we head into the new year, the first thing that I do, like any business in America,

when we get to the end of the year, they close out the year. They have review sessions, what worked, what didn't work, you know, what was successful, what wasn't successful, they give themselves a grade, et cetera. And I found that a lot of people don't do that in their own personal. lives. So I like to take a little inventory in December and just kind of have a little review process around how the year went and take inventory on my own personal year. But like no one taught me how to set up my life. You know, like no one taught me how to like deal with my emails and no one taught me how to schedule properly. I never like, I didn't take a class in school that like, hey, you're going to

have four kids. You're going to get bombarded with emails from the school with all kinds of appointments and Zoom calls that we didn't have back then. And your calendar is going to fill up with other people's requests for your time. Like, how do you want to deal with that? So you have enough time to do things that you want to do and achieve the goals that you want to do within work and outside of work. No one taught me that. And then layering children and layering a wife that works and a business as an entrepreneur.

And, like, how do you do that? So, you know, like, I'm a product of trial and error. I've tried a lot of stuff. I didn't grow up with a phone. I was scheduling everything on a paper calendar for literally 45 years of my life, you know. And I had to figure out, like, as my life evolved, how to grow with it. So I have a pretty cool system. I'm happy to share it with you guys.

It's worked really well. It's allowed me to balance a lot of things and get a lot of things done. And I think it's pretty simple. And I will preface it by saying that, you know, as you get old, How old are you guys? 35 and 36, right? Yeah, 36. All right.

So you got another maybe decade before this hits, but it will hit, and it's inevitable. As you get older, creating newness becomes really hard because you live in routine. And like, it gets very comfortable to be, to live in routine. And really, I found that the only way to really guarantee that you create newness, and newness is important. It's important to relationships. It's important to your momentum and your enthusiasm and your success and your excitement towards things and your growth. The only way to create newness I found is the planet.

Or leave room to be spontaneous. So I become a really aggressive planner. And I feel like a lot of us played life on defense. Our calendars fill up with other people's requests for time. like I mentioned, Zoom calls, weddings, appointments, school stuff. And at the end of the year, like, you don't have a lot to show for it. One of the categories, I do family fitness finance fun. Do you have, like, your own, like, cute acronym for your categories?

Well, I do my own individual personal audits for business with my teams. But then from my personal thing, adventure is a category for me. I try to look through, like, what kind of adventures did I have? Like I said, and we'll get into this in a minute. You know, you want to have something to show for all your hard work at the end. of the year, not your Zoom calls. I'm not like, yes, in October, I lit it up on Zoom. I'm not doing that. I'm like, oh, I just took a one-on-one trip with my daughter to New York City. I just got that. So stuff like that. I'm like really taking inventory on how much time did I spend with my

kids? You know, like, what did I do well? What I have to work on in my role? Like, I really, really do do that. And then I try to close out the year. And I have a system for closing out the year. I'll share it with you guys really quickly. The first thing that I want to do is, is, and like the overall theme of closing out a year, and I think everyone should take a couple of hours to do this, I think it builds momentum, and I think it gives you a little closure around the year, whether you had a great year or bad year. It gives you a fresh start for 2025, which I think is really, really important. And the theme is, I want to come into the new year life. I want to feel light, and I want to get rid of all the email baggage, all the to do lists, all this. I don't want to have

a lot of carryover going into the new year. I want to kind of clean my hands and just be light. Now, this might sound ridiculous. It starts in my closet. I go through my closet. I look at all this stuff that's been hanging there for 12 months that I've never worn, you know, and I donate it. I get a big bag. If anything is a 50, 50, do I want to keep it or don't want to keep it? I just say someone needs this more than me. It goes in the donate box. And I start to organize my closet. So when I walk in, I don't have a ton of decisions. You might see me wearing very shirts very similar to this because I don't have a lot of options. You know, I keep what I like.

I get rid of what I don't like and I get super clean. My desk, I get rid of all the clutter on my desk. I don't want to walk in and I got stacks of things I got to go through and bills and stuff. I get super clean on my desk. My emails, I'm a big hit delete and explode them all at the end of the year guy. But before I do that, I put things in files. I respond to the things that I owe an answer to. I delete the stuff that I don't need.

Everything else goes into a folder. And I try to go in net zero into 2025. That's really important. I don't want to come back from my vacation January 1 and be sitting with an inbox with 700 emails and just like, you know, just feel like I have to play catch up the first 30 days of the year. I don't want to play catch up.

I want to attack. I want to attack. So I come in naked on my emails. I unsubscribe. I go through all the stuff that I have subscriptions to. I unsubscribe. I delete all the apps that I use. Again, just trying to get light.

You know, I get rid of all, clear out all the apps. I clear out my cars. Make sure that, you know, I don't know clutter in there. And I create files for 2025 where, you know, maybe I'm still a paper guy, so I keep records of my medical files. I know people have them on digitally, but I keep. a paper file. I still get my bills, paper. I put them in files. But again, I have a system. So I'm not like playing catch up. And so I get super light on all that stuff. And then I can't recommend

this enough. I write handwritten letters to the 20 to 30 people that really impacted me or helped me, even you guys, man, having me on. You know, you might get a thank you note. Thank There's 8 billion people in the world, guys. Thank you, too, for having me on your podcast. Like, you thought of me. Thank you. I write a, I write a handwritten letter to my suppliers, my contractors, maybe a teacher, my son's coaches for football.

I want to thank them this year, you know, with no purpose other than really giving, like, a thank you. I've been doing this, but that for 30 years. When I was 23 years old, and I had no money, and I was sleeping on 18 different couches. My entire marketing strategy was I wrote 10 handwritten letters a day. And I mailed. I wrote 3,000 letters.

I'm not even kidding. And I still, to this day, do that because it breaks through the clutter. People remember it. People read their mail. They might not read their DMs, text, flax, and all that stuff. But they read their letters that come in the mail. And there's a different intention. I took the time.

I wrote it. I licked the envelope. I went to the mailbox. I put a stamp on it. I put it in there. Like, it comes with a lot of love, man. It's a lot different than hitting send on an email. Are you still doing all that?

Sam, I'm not going to talk about anything I don't do. No, what I meant is I've, like wanted to send letters to a lot of people. And then I'll be like, but is there a service where I can just type it out and they mail it out for me? Yeah, it doesn't work that way. He's like, are you listening? No, I... Is the audio coming through? I do it...

By the way, I send letters as well, but then I'll have a stack... I have, like, a few years ago, I got some stationary, and it, like, it feels good to write letters to people. But every once in a while, I'm like, I don't feel like writing this. Is there a service? And then I'm like, what the hell am I doing? And so I wasn't sure what you were doing. Yeah.

You can't outsource it. It can't outsource it. You know, as a business owner, like, I realize that you can't outsource soul. You know, and the DNA, you can't outsource it. of a business, is the soul of the business, the heartbeat of a business, you can't outsource that. And customers feel soul, and your friends feel soul. And when you start outsourcing things that, you know, for hundreds of years, humans have been doing themselves, it loses a little bit.

And I found that that two-outer investment, how about this? Let's do an experiment for your listeners. Take 10 envelopes, take 10 pieces of paper, and take 20 minutes. and write a thank you note or to your parents, to your kids, teachers, whoever, saying, hey, this year, I just want to thank you for investing so much time with my kids or whatever you want to write. Lick the stamp, put in an envelope, and watch the return on investment. Watch the return on investment. And I found that there's nothing quite like it. Now, that might sound ridiculous, hokey, but I've been doing it for 30 years and people still thank me.

No one gets a letter from you like that and doesn't remember or hit you back. There was a guy who came on, by the way, and he held up, he does the same thing. This guy, Guy Spear, he's value investor. And he held up, he goes, I do this. But he's like, why did I start? Because I went to the Berkshire Hathaway Summit. And I went to this event. And then he goes, afterwards, here's what I got in the mail.

And it was a letter. Warren Buffett had written him a letter. And it was two seconds. It was, Guy, thank you for coming. Really appreciate you being there. sign Warren. And he goes, if Warren Buffett is doing this, I can do this too. I get one from Coach K.

I know you're a Duke guy. I get one from Coach K every year. Check this out. Look at this. I'll show you guys something. This, all of these letters, all of these letters, and there's, I have boxes of these. All of these letters. Check this out.

These are all letters that I got this year. I've read them all. I keep them all in this box. And at the end of the year, it's going. in a thing, and then I'm starting a new box that's going to say 20, 25. Because I've been talking about this for a long time. And, you know, I'm in a really unique spot. I'm in a business where people write new letters.

You want to talk about finding your mission? Imagine waking up, going to your mailbox, and to letters of people thanking you for, you know, sharing best practices or, you know, helping, whatever it is. what a gift. What a freaking gift. If everybody does the three things that we're going to talk about in the next 20 minutes in 2025 and does everything else the same

that they did in 2024, at the end of the year, if they see me in an airport, they're going to bear hug me. Because they're going to be like, that was so easy, and I can't believe how much better my life just got. That's what we're going to cover.

So the first thing is, is closing out the year, getting light, doing all those things, you know, to get light, writing handwritten letters. And then the other thing that I do is I try to identify, like, what I want to fix going into next year. Because, you know, like, everybody wants to be a 10 out of 10. No one signed up to be an 8 out of 10, the 80, you know, a B minus. Everybody wants to be as close to a 10th, but if you have certain things that are broken, even if you make a bazillion dollars and your business goes up 50% and your crazy growth, you're never going to be a 10 out of 10 if like the marriage is broken, you know, something's wrong, whatever.

So what I always tell people to do is imagine you guys had it. You guys can do this right now. Imagine you had a big blender. And in the blender, you put all the buckets, Sam, that you were just talking about, all the buckets in your life into the blender, your finances, your health, your weight, your relationships, where you live, like everything going on in your life, put it in a blender, shake it out. And then on a one to ten, with ten being like the ultimate in happiness and one being rock bottom, like, again, what's your number?

Your weight, your relationships, your work, your finances, you put it all in, you shake it, are you a seven? Are you a five? You don't have to tell me. Are you an eight? Are you, like, what are you? Now, what I love about that exercise is, immediately your brain goes to a ten. and then the two or three things that are bothering you pop in your head like crystal clear

and take that number down. So maybe it was like, oh, my finances aren't there or like, I hate my job or things aren't great in my work. Whatever it came into your head, those are the things you got to work on. They're not going to magically get better. You don't just like, oh, you know, like my relationship stinks. It just like magically get better. You got to work on it.

And did anything pop into your guy's head right away? Yeah, so I put it all in the blender. I got to an eight and a half. And right away, you're right, I started at a 10 because I'm happy, right? And then I said, well, the weight's got to come down a little bit. All right, the weight's got to come down a little bit. So that's a point off. You know, I want to have healthy habits that I'm proud of.

And then the second one was, you know, I think I'm really good at this content thing. I love making content, but I'm still spending way too much of my time in my businesses. and I really want to make that shift from operator to creator. And I've made good progress, but I'm not all the way where I want to be there. I had a six. I had a daughter, and I'm loving being a father, and she's fantastic. That's a 10. Finances, I did really well.

That's a 10. But I'm bombarded with inbound messages, and I don't have a system to where I'm saying no to 10 minutes at a time. The 10-minute time requests and contact switching is ruining my life. feels like I can't get in the flow. So I'm going to give it a six. Okay. A six overall? Yeah, because the context switching, like, I get so much joy being in the flow of something and both a combination of lack of system and addiction to social media and text and all

that shit, it's brought me down a whole bunch. You know, two thoughts. One, when you're doing the exercise, there's no comparison against anybody else. So, like, you know, if you are comfortable, with the money you're making or whatever. You're not comparing yourself to buff it. It's like, you know, I'm comfortable where I am. You're never going to win the comparison game because there's always going to be someone.

So that's one thing just to think about. And then, you know, not to knock you at all, Sam, I think I was super honest of you. But like for anybody out there that was the six, if, like, if Mike's son comes home with a 60 on a test, it's an F. Yeah, no, but I'm agreeing with you. Like, it brought me down a lot. But the good thing is it's all fixable and you have to identify it. And like, look, I'm not here to be a therapist or preach. All I'm saying is knowing what those things that are that need a little bit of help

and if it's your weight, you know, then just in 2025, be like, you know what, man, everything's clicking. I'm going to address this. I'm just going to be a little bit. That's all. You know, so, but you have to, my point is for the listeners, like, you've got to identify it because if you don't, it just keeps compounding. And then you're playing, it's just harder to, like, catch up when it's,

compounding. So you close out the year, you get light, you clean the closet, clean the desks, clean the cars, you email bankruptcy, you get the files, you write the handwritten letters, you give thanks, you do the blender exercise, you identify the two or three shifts I'm trying to make. Is that how you close out the year or is there anything else to that? It's like a personal review. And just to make it super practical, are you like writing this down? Are you just thinking about it? Do you say it out loud? Do you do this with somebody else? Do you look at your calendar? How do you even go back to the year? Can you just give us like If I wanted to sit down an hour after this because I'm so pumped after this episode,

I'm wanting to go do this. Can you just give me the like kind of the, a little more detailed instruction on how I would do it? Well, I get really excited about getting light. Like, you know, so I don't have to write anything down to clean out, cleave in my closet and my desk and my emails. Like, that's all just something that like, you know, you feel accomplished when you do that. And we're doing all the other stuff anyway. We have businesses.

We're doing all this. But you just feel really good about yourself. As far as like handwritten letters, I do make a list. I keep it every year of like kind of just, man, I just think about like, what podcast were for me was I on? Who really went above and beyond for me this year? Or my kids or my family. You know, I had a, I went on a trip to Africa.

We had a great tour guide. I had a gentleman in Kenya that ran with me every day to like chaperone me through the jungle. I'm going to understand him and like, just that kind of stuff. And I don't want anything for it. It just makes me feel good. And I know it probably makes them feel good. So I do all that. And then like, again, you just took, that exercise took 30 seconds to identify what we got

to work on. And then I just make a mental note about it. Like, you know, I want to get better at it. This whole process we're talking about is like super fast. All right. So that's the first thing. The second thing I do is I have a planning system that I've been using that I swear by. There's three steps.

And this is what I was talking about. do these three things, you're going to bear hug me. Very simple. So the first thing that I do is there's an old Japanese ritual called a Misogi. And we took the liberty to tweak the exact definition of it. But the way we look at it is that the concept around a Misogi is every year you do one big year-defining thing. So again, at the end of the year, even though you're busy with all this stuff. You have one year defining thing that to really show for your time over the 365. So for example, like two years ago, and this is big, I rode my bike across America. Last year, I did rim to rim to rim with some friends. In 2015, I launched a book, living with the seal.

2017, I launched a company called 29 or 29. Like every year going back literally like, you know, 20 years ago, I can name like the one thing. that I did that was really, really year-defying. So at the beginning of the year, I just, I might not have that idea. And that could be like, I'm going to launch a podcast. I'm going to quit smoking. I'm going to run my first marathon, you know, but like, what is that one thing that you're going to look back to someone says, hey, I was your year. I was unbelievable, man. I rode my freaking bike across the country. I ran the New York marathon this year, you know? I think that's really, really important. Now, A, it's important because, like, you want to have something to show for it,

but D, I find when you have something on the calendar, a goal, something like, something that you're working towards, that's challenging, you show up at work and at home completely different. You show up completely different. A, if I'm running the New York Marathon, Sam, I now have to say no to the things that, that, I don't have the time to get people, because I got to train. I'm adding, you know, hours of training in. So now you have a vehicle to say no to things. But B, it's, you know, you're something that you're looking forward to.

One of the books that I read this last year, I think it was Michael something Easter, maybe, the comfort crisis, and he talked about the Masogi. I had one. It was a 50-mile race, and the, the Misogi was, you have a 50% chance of failing. I ended up hurting my Achilles really. badly and I was like fuck so I failed uh and it was awesome though to have something to look forward i'm picking a new one now um yeah but you didn't fail sam you just didn't finish yeah yeah yeah but it was hard-ass work and it was awesome it felt great to have that on the calendar yeah but what you

did was amazing you're saying i'm gonna go double the longest run i've ever done in my life okay i'm gonna do an ultramarathon on top of everything i have going on i'm going on i'm going to challenge myself It may or may not work. That's not an F. I mean, that's an A, an adventure. You just didn't finish it. I mean, not everything we do is going to work. I've had businesses that have failed, races that I have DNFs.

But I love that you put it on your calendar. Well, my kids, I have four kids, 15, 10, 10, and 9. All right? You know what they're talking about right now? They're talking about that we're going skiing in two weeks. So they're going to school, and I'm like, guys, two more weeks of school, then we're going skiing. Because that's on their calendar,

it's helping them go through school, focused, lock in because they know they're going to get this reward, winter vacation, coming up. Adults are the same way. Like, I'm willing to go work really hard if I know I have a vacation coming up or a race that I'm going to do or something that I'm excited about.

So having one big year-defining thing really important. Do you know what yours is going to be for 25? I don't. I don't, and that's okay, but I know that I'm going to have one. And what it does is it also, like, opens up my mind to adventure. Which Misogi do you look back out on most fondly, if you look back, you know, 10 years or so? I did a race called Ultraman, which is a 6.2-mile open-water swim, a 275-mile bike and a 52-mile run. And I was insanely, I was going to defer to the following year.

two weeks before the race because I didn't swam at all. I didn't have a wetsuit and the water was 57 degrees. So I called it my friend who's a coach and I'm like, you know, listen, I haven't been training at all zero and there's no, I don't think I can do this. And I'm thinking about deferring thinking he's going to be like, of course, deferred so you don't get hurt. And he was like absolutely not. The challenge is going to be, you know if you train.

for a year, you're going to be able to do it. You have no idea if you're going to do it. A six miles swim alone would take like three and a half hours, right? Or if you're a bad swimmer like me, five. And also like 57 degree waters is, I did a marathon 57 degree. It was horrible or triathlon. It was awful. Sam, I showed up at the event and I jumped into the water the day before. And my, I literally like my face hit the water. and it was like... You're like, I'm out. Out, I'm done.

It's like getting punched in the nose like with the first time when you want to box. You're like, this sucks, dude. I don't want to do this. But I finished it. I finished it. And, you know, when I was going through this event, those kind of challenges,

it's really important to break things into digestible bites. If you're starting in business, you want to put things into digestible bites. So when I started Marquis Jek, if they would have said, you need FAA approval, Department of Transportation Approval, Build the Sales Team, raised my, I was like, well, I was a kiddie pool attendant for you. What are you talking about?

I mean, what did you say the first thing I needed was? FAA approval? Well, there's got to be a lawyer that does that, specializes in that. Let me get, got that guy, got, what was the second thing we need? So it was the same thing here. I got to swim 10, six miles, impossible. Can I swim to that, to the, to the buoy? Yes. Can I swim buoy to buoy? Yes, so let me just break this down into 40 buoy to buoy swings because I can, let me break the, I can run for seven minutes forever. So let me run for seven minutes, walk for three, and just repeat that cycle. And that's sort of how I attacked it.

In any event, we pick a M-Sogi, all right? So I don't know what mine is yet, Sean, for next year, but I know I'm going to have one. And just for the listeners, you know, just the notion of like, yeah, you know what, I want to have something on my calendar. Now you've like reprogram your brain to just be aware of adventure. And that's already a step in the right direction if you're head down and work. The second thing I do is something that I've named after my friend Kevin. I call it Kevin's rule. Kevin and I were took our our children, his daughter and my son. My son was eight at the time. I think his daughter was nine to Mount Washington in the winter. It was it was like minus 30 with the windshield.

And we have a minus 40 sleeping bag. We're sleeping in the snow. It's insane. And we're camping out overnight. And I'm like, Kevin, he's a police officer in New York. I'm like, there's 8 billion people in the world. We're the only four people in the middle of Mount Washington, man. This is amazing.

I'm like, you know, how often do you do stuff like this? And he lights up. He's like, oh, he's like every other month, I do something one day or one weekend that I normally wouldn't have done. I'm like, what are you talking about? Instead of like watching the Georgia football game, I'll take my kids fishing. I'll come to Mount Whitehouse. Go visit my college friends. I'm like, well, why? He goes, well, if I can't take one day every eight weeks to do something, like my work life is out of balance. But if I do that, I'll have six little mini adventures a year. I'm like, yeah. He's like, well, how old are you?

Well, if you're 35, Sean, you live to be, let's say you live to be 85. That's 50 years. If you do those two things I just said, you'll have 50 year-defining things and 300 mini-adventures. That's an insane life. That's an insane life. At the end of the day, if I have 50 ultimate like Ultraman kind of things and 300 mini adventures, just because I managed my clock right, like I won life. Do your mini adventures and your Masoia, like do they stack to where it's like,

well, I already did the Ultraman. What's like the Ultra Ultraman? Like are you trying to one up them each time? Not at all. I'm just looking for things that excite me. So this actually this year I do have a, it's not challenging enough for me to consider it like a masogi, but I'm going on a tour of the world's best saunas in Finland with 12 friends.

So we're going for 10 days. We're hitting 30 plus saunas over the course of 12 days in Finland. And, you know, so that is my big thing for 2025. Hey, real quick, if you're liking this episode with Jesse, you've got to listen to the first one we did with him. It's the story of how he built his fortune, his first business, how he failed, and then ultimately a mentor stepped in and gave him some tough love, let's say, and turned his life around. He tells a story about how he started a private jet company, ended up selling that to Warren Buffett.

There's a Matt Damon cameo in it. Crazy stories from this guy. He also brainstormed business ideas of what he would do if he was young and needed to build a fortune from scratch again. So go check that out. It's episode number 504. You can either Google it or in the show notes below. We're going to put a link to it.

And also, at the end of this episode, we are giving away a few thousand dollars of his big ass calendar. The one that he uses to plan is 2025. We say the code at the end of this episode. So listen to that. And then you can go and get one of those for free. All right. Back to the episode.

So if I'm getting this right, the Misogee is more of a challenge, something that excites you, something that it's a big adventure. It's year defining. And you have the, you'll get the fun of progress along the way. As you make progress, you'll get the anticipation. And then you'll get the year defining a sense of a sense of a year defining. accomplishment, whether you win or just you did it. And then the adventures are more about, is that just more about non-routine? So just kind of making sure you are not just every Saturday,

we go here, every Sunday we do this with my kids, and just shaking up the routine with something fun. It doesn't have to be super challenging. But is that the right way to think about those? Absolutely. It's non-routine. It's planning adventure, planning newness. It's prioritizing yourself. And it's not, it's playing life on offense. It's not. It's not. letting your calendar fill up. You know, look, if we just sit back, it's going to be weddings, meetings, conferences, appointments, and just like, what do we do? What are we doing?

How many of those things are Jesse by himself or with buddies or just like the family? I love to do things with my friends. I love to do things with my family. I treat my family stuff differently. So I also plan family trips, but, you know, I have the luxury of time. You know, people talk about rich. And the first thing that comes into your head is like money, obviously. And that is important.

And clearly that's an important part of being rich. But there are so many buckets of rich. Are you spiritually rich? Are you time rich? I'm insanely time rich right now, which I think is the most. most important thing, especially in your 50s, I'm insanely time rich. So I can, I have the luxury of doing things spontaneously, when I want, et cetera. I'm spiritually rich. I'm socially rich. If we did a little sidebar here, because the three of us are all lucky to be in a position

where we don't have to work. We could all, we could just spend all year training for, you know, an MMA fight, an amateur, an MMA fight, or whatever it is. But I think a lot of people who listen to that may not be at that, you know, they still have the job, they still have whatever, the, you know, the day-to-day responsibilities. So could you take, you know, 30 seconds to sort of speak to like how you would maybe, is there any difference in how you would approach it, you know, the Mesoges of the adventures if somebody's not like, you know,

financially free where their calendar is theirs to do whatever they want with? Listen, I have been doing this since my journey was insane. It was crazy. My 20s were spent on couches, friends, apartments, you know, just trying to like figure it out, pay my rent, you know, all that stuff. But I was still so rich with adventure. Every year I would go to the Coney Island polar plunge on New Year's. You know what to cost? A subway token.

Subway token. You know what it costs to do the trip to Mount Washington with my kids? $18 to park. We live in a country that offers the most important. insane rivers, mountains, national parks, oceans, hikes, strings. I mean, conferences. Like, you could fill up your life with adventure. I should write a book, filling up your life on adventure, you know, for under $400 a

year because you can do it. Now, so, you know, I understand that obviously my can be bigger and it's easier for me, and that's true. But, you know, I've been doing these things for a long time. I just took my son to the polar plunge at Lake Lanier here in Georgia. There's just so much stuff that you can do that, again, is outside of the norm. You know, people think, like, you don't have to climb Mount Everest to feel like you've accomplished something. You have to just get out there and do something that makes you proud of you, you know?

There's a great story. Do you know Brune Brown? So she has this great story She tells about like her daughter Going to like a swim meet And she was scared to do like the swim Swimbeat She was like I'm not gonna do well

And I'm scared to even just swim Blah blah blah And she talks about how you know Her daughter After the swim meet You know she lost the race She maybe got like you know whatever She didn't do so well

She got out she was feeling kind of bummed And Bray Brown's quote is like You know Winning isn't always about getting first place sometimes winning is just getting off the block and getting wet. And, like, you know, you jumped off the blocks and you got wet. Like, that's a huge win. You, you have become a more brave person by having done that.

And I think there's, there's something to that. Because, you know, when I hear about the Ultraman races and stuff like that, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's so far from where I am. But at the same time, when I heard this Brunei Brown quote about sometimes winning is just getting off the block and getting wet, that changed my perspective. I started doing a lot more stuff because I changed what winning meant. Also, Sean, I think a lot of people listen to this stuff and they're like, oh, Jesse's into fitness shit and, you know, I'm also into, uh, I like weightlifting and things like that. And I think they like say like, well, I need to go and do a marathon or a long race. That's not true. I think that you can do things that fit your interest significantly more because like he's got a hat that says all day running, running to your passion. Like I don't think you have to necessarily do something that falls into that endurance category or whatever is popular. I want to this year, say, you know, Sam, I want to go to one of those silent retreats where you sit in a dark room for two or three days.

But listen, we're going into a new year, all right? And I'm giving suggestions, and I recognize that everyone has a different dynamic. Time is different. Finances are different. But what I love to get out of this call is I just want to fire people up for the opportunity that we all have to have an incredible 2025. You know, go master something. Go learn a language, you know, go learn a certain skill. Go volunteer.

You know, do something that makes you proud of yourself at the end of 2025. Do something that makes you feel accomplished and proud of yourself at 2025. Now, I'm not saying go ride your bike across America just because I did that. No, not at all. But do something that you look back on the year and be like, this was amazing, you know. And I'm just saying that there's a lot. a lot of things that don't cost money. If you're intentional, if you schedule it, which we'll get to in a second, and you play a little

bit of offense. So, Masoji, Kevin's rule. The third thing that I do is very simple. You know, I found this works a lot better for me than New Year's resolutions and maybe different for other people. But rather than doing all these goals and stuff, which I never accomplish, I very simply, every quarter, I add a winning habit. to my life.

For example, like, I don't drink enough water. I'm going to drink 100 ounces of water, you know, as a new habit. I'm never going to be late

to a meeting. I'm going to add a 10 minute a day meditation practice. You know, I don't know, but like... What habit did you add last quarter? This is crazy,

but like, I'm so inflexible and I found something on YouTube that was like... Basically inflexible. You know, I can't even touch my knees. You know,

so I found something that's like, five exercises you should do before you have a cup of coffee, like first thing you do when you wake up. So I've been doing these five stretches. It takes six minutes pretty much every day. And I can send you guys the link. They're really easy.

But my point is we are a product of winning habits, winning routines, and a winning mindset. That's what we all want. We want to have winning routines, winning habits, and a winning mindset. And by layering in, imagine if you do that, Let's just say we took a five-year look on life. My life's going to radically change in five years.

I have a 15-year-old son. He'll be at college. My little boys now, they're going to be in high school. Like, I like to look at things in five-year windows because if your parents are elderly, they might not be here in five years. Like mine were five years ago. Mine aren't now. Like, your life changes frigging like this.

Got to think about this stuff. And imagine in five years, you just did the three things that I said. You had five insane experiences. You added 30 many adventures that you wouldn't have had by taking six days of 365 a year. I mean, come on, man. And now you added, you know, you added 20 winning habits. You're fucking Jason Bourne. They're Jason born.

And like, this is not difficult. Well, so all this stuff, I'm like, this is badass. Okay, tell me how you plan it and how you actually put it in practice. You're saying like you're a product of your habits and things like that. What's the habit of planning and like thinking of these things and actually getting them on the calendar or whatever? So I don't know, you know, people listening to this audio or video, but this is my entire 2025. If you're not on YouTube, he's holding up the big ass calendar. So I, as soon as I know I have something, for me, I put it on my calendar, on paper. I write it down. There's a lot of research around writing it down versus putting it in your phone,

goals that are written down versus, you know, there's a ton of research around that. But as soon as I have any of these trips, I put it down. I put all my big events for the year down immediately, last day of school, first day of school. If you have kids, first day at camp, if they go to camp, last day at camp,

spring break trips, date nights with my wife. I take a quarterly, staycation or trip with my wife. My wife and I have our own little system. We have a date night once a week, Wednesdays, and then every quarter we try to plan something together. Could be like, we're going to New York next week. But it could be just, we're going to have an overnight staycation here.

But we try to make sure we have four-year date nights as much as we can, family dinners, and then the rest is just family trips. Did you travel a lot? I travel a lot, but I put it on my calendar because once it's in my calendar, Now I have permission to say no. I wish I could go dinner with you guys, but I'm actually, I'm camping out with my kids that weekend.

Like now I'm taking control and I'm dominating the year, not other people taking it away from me. You can laugh about it, but I'm dead serious. I'm laughing because I think it's cool. You know that experiment where they take a jar and they're like, all right, you have these rocks in these sand. Phil, put them in the, put as much as you can in the jar.

and basically if you put the sand in first, you can't put any of the rocks in, right? Because all the little meetings and appointments and Zoom calls and everything else takes up all the space. Versus if you put the rocks in first and then you could pour as much sand will fit all the way around it.

That's basically kind of like the model of what you're doing. You're basically saying, I'm going to put all this shit I really want to be intentional about, the life experiences I'm going to remember with the people I care about. I'm going to put those on the calendar first

and then I'll let all the little knick-knack appointments fill in around that where there's still space. And if I do it the other way, like most people do, where you say, yeah, like when I have time, then I'm going to do something great. Then they never have time and nothing ever happens. The rocks never get in.

Exactly. And the reason why, guys, I like to have this on one big visual, like, look at all 365 days on one page. The reason why I like to do that is, A, I'm visual. Like, I need to see it. You know, we're all kind of thinking pictures and we think visually. But now two things. One, I can see where my gaps are.

I can see where my gaps are where I have more time available and not. Two, I can track towards my goals so much better than versus like if they live, you know, in my phone, and I use my phone for my appointment, Zoom calls and all that stuff. But I don't like scrolling through it to be like, oh, my marathon and I'm scrolling all the way to November. I like to see it like, oh, I have this many days. It's like the roadmap is visual. So to have it all on one big calendar is really helpful. And I'm super spontaneous.

You know, I know that, look, if you don't plan it, it probably won't happen. So knowing that, after being on Earth for five and a half decades, what do I do? I want to plan as much as I can. I want to get in front of it. So I sit with my wife. We sink up all of our stuff. You know, in 2025, we're going to, like I said, I'm going to Finland. we have a trip to Japan.

We're going to Greece. We have put all this down on our account. My 2025 is already mapped out, and it's insane. All I have to do is follow the script. Now, years might not be as wild as mine, but the point is you control it, and you can map out this incredible year. But are you picking those quarterly habits as well as those mini-adventures?

I'm not. I'm not. because I'm open. I'm always listening to people. And when I had Marquis Jet, which is a company that I had, I started with my partner when I was, I don't know, 29, 30 years old. My dad owned the plumbing supply house. I had no relationship with money. We never talked about it.

I had no business experience. I didn't know shit. And all of a sudden I had this private jet company. We're flying 3,000 of the who's who have populated. Top culture, CEOs, top CEOs, athletes, entertainers. And I'm getting access to these people. And I'm really curious. I'm 30 years old.

And any time I had a minute with anybody at the airport, if I was visiting a customer client, I would say to them, like, I want to know how they lived rich. Like you mentioned people here might not be, well, they might be one day. Who's going to tell them how to do? Where do you vacation? What do you do with your money? What time do you go to bed? How many newspapers do you read?

I want to know it all. I want to know the best habits and routines and mindset from the best people on the planet. And I became a sponge. And I remember asking this guy, sitting down with this guy, I'm not going to say, his first name is James. He was insanely wealthy. I'm 30. I'm like nothing. And I asked him, I said, James, how do you live rich?

And he's like, he sent to me, I read, and you walk me through his day and where, vacations and what he does with his money and how much gold he is buried in his backyard and all this shit never forgot it one thing that he said to me one thing he said to me he goes and i take three hours a day for myself and i'm i can never do that well no it's cumulative i'm like well what does that look like for you james he's like oh i might take a 30 minutes on in the morning i might take a a little time at lunch to read go for a walk work out da da da da the end of the day it's about three hours a day for myself. And I was like, since then, I'm like, and I was like, why? And he was like, well, you know, if you check the U-box, you show up as a parent, husband, CEO, boss, employee, so

much better. You don't resent your wife or your husband or your partner for taking away time of the things you want to do, all this stuff. Long story short, I started taking two or three hours a day right after that, me. I'm like, it works for him. I'm not going to be. I'm not going to going to wait till I have a bazillion dollars. I'm going to do it now. So time rich, something that we talked about earlier, doesn't mean you have to be rich to be time rich. You have to be organized, scheduled, and allocated to prioritize you. And that's all I'm saying for 2025. You might say, Jesse, this is hokey pokey, fine. But all I'm telling you is carve out time for you to give you adventure, make you feel a comp. Works always going to be there. It's always going to be there. It's always going

be there. On a week-to-week basis, do you make a list of your to-does for the week before? Yeah. So I look at my week on Sunday night. I take it from my calendar and from my phone and I put it on paper. I use a planner, but you can also just write a piece of paper and I write down my day. It's like I can move things around and then I can prepare better. I know it's, I like to have a week at a glance view of everything. And then the last thing I would say, this is like a little bonus thought for people, is remember when you were a kid and I don't know if your parents gave you vitamins. Did they give you vitamins when you were a kid? Like for school? Flindstones vitamins, for sure. Yeah, Flintstones, right? I had Flintstones vitamins as a kid. A cow, like anti-flinstone

vitamins, but that'll be podcast number three. The vitamins were like, you know, you take one vitamin and it had like, you know, 500% of everything you needed in every category and like one little pill. And that's unbelievable, but, you know, you took your daily vitamins and it checked all the boxes. So I have my own version of this that I do Sam and Sean that works really well. So, like, if you made a list, imagine you're all the time in the world. You could do whatever you wanted to do every day. Well, how would you spend your day? Well, I know exactly what I would want to do.

I love saunas. I love cold plunges. I love running, biking, swimming, and exercise. I love doing breath work. I love taking walks with my wife. I love playing with my kids. Like, I'm very clear on what it is. By the way, no word I say, do I say I love buying art?

But I don't. Those are the things I love to do. They're very simple. I inherited that from a very simple man, my dad. Let's say I have 10 of those things on my list. Okay. Those are my vitamins. Those are the things that make me strong.

that I need. Every day, I try to take two or three of those vitamins. I can't do them all, but I try to do two or three. So today, we're recording this now, it's one o'clock, but I've already gone for an hour run, and I've taken an hour sauna. So of the three hours I allocate for myself, I've already done that two of them.

So like my day's good, and I've taken two of my vitamins. So now when I show up for you guys, I'm all in. I'm not outsourcing like we talked about. I'm all in, you know, because I've checked me. I'm showing up so much better. That is so friggin important. And that's every day for me. This is amazing.

This is awesome. Before I ask you my kind of, I have one burning question. Before I ask you my burning question, is there anything else in the planning, how to make a kick-ass defining 2025? Is there anything else we miss before we did that? Do that or were those the big ones? I think at like a high level trying to get people to rethink how they approach the new year. I think that, you know, just get started on those things.

I mean, you might not have it all laid out. I don't have it all laid out yet. But put the stuff you want to do down first on a calendar or wherever you want to put it and build a year that you're super proud of. Because let me just say this, Sean, we don't get a lot of years. we don't get a lot of years, and we don't know how many years we're going to get. So shame on you if you waste 20, 25

because you want to like, oh, I'll just do it next the following year. Like, time doesn't work like that. You don't have the luxury of like, you don't dictate the pace. Sometimes the pace dictates you, and circumstances change. And, like, you know, everyone thinks, like, I guarantee you everybody here,

here knows they're going to die that's listening to this. But I guarantee less than 1% of our listeners have their graveyard plot picked out. Because they don't think they're going to die anytime soon. They don't think that your life could change like that. My life's been turned upside down. I have people that my friends are getting diagnosed with shit. You know, like it changes, man. You can go outside and someone could be texting and you get smacked. It just, it can go like that. You don't know. So, you know. I'm 56 years old. The average American lives to be 78.

I don't know. I'm not really good at math, but that's 22 years if I'm average. And, you know, I was on a lake this summer. I didn't see a lot of 78-year-old guys weightboarding. Like the years that you have to do an Ultraman, what do they say? I was just listening to something.

They said, what, 63 is the shelf life of, like, healthy years or something, you know? Like, it's insane. It's also insane that you plan these. Like, well, I'll get to it when I'm older. But then when you're older, it's like, I don't want to fucking do that. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I've always criticized actually Warren Buffett where he talks about like

delayed gratification and things like this. And I'm like, dude, you've been the man for years. Like you enjoy it. Enjoy that shit now. Like sometimes patience is actually. Time rich, man. You don't have to be rich to be time rich. That book that went kind of viral this year or last year,

Die With Zero, talks about some of these principles. but he had this great story about one of them that he was talking about when he was in his 20s and he was on his career ladder climb. He was at some investment bank and his buddy who worked with him, they're kind of both 23 years old or whatever. It was like, hey, dude, what if we just go to Europe backpacking for like, you know, six weeks? He's like, how are you going to get six weeks off? He's like, I'm not. I got to quit. And like, I hope I'll be able to get the job when I come back, but like, I'm going to do this trip. And he was like, dude, you're crazy. That's like irresponsible. I'm going to do the responsible thing. And he didn't do that. And he told

himself he would do it, you know, maybe next year or the year after that. Maybe some reason he'd be able to do in the future. So, you know, he's like, as soon as he should came back after six weeks, he didn't have the job back, but he met up with the guy. He's like, from the glow on this dude's face, I realized then I made a mistake. And he talks about how when he was 33 then, 10 years later, he finally, like, took a career break. And he's like, went to Europe.

He's like, it's not so cool sleeping in a hostel when you're 33. You know, it's a different. He's like, I learned that some things you can't even just, not even just doing them later is worse. He's like, it's just not the same thing. Like, that's a 23-year-old trip. I didn't do it when I was 23. I did it when I was 33 or 34.

And I had to have a whole different experience. There was no going back to that. I think it's really important to say yes to adventure. And it's never the right time. You know, like, it's never going to be like, oh, I have eight days that are clean. You have to make it. You have to create that. You know, and I think that's a really important message.

Like, it's never the right time. You're always going to, I'm going to miss the basketball game. You know, there's always a sacrifice. but if you don't do it, you just, you know, you have regret. You just regret it. You just don't get it back. Well, you said yes to an adventure.

You're coming to our basketball camp with Mr. Beast. So we'll be seeing you in January for one of those. Jesse, thanks for coming on. And if you're listening to this, you made it to the end. You're fired up like I am. We're giving away a few thousand dollars of these calendars. So go to, Jesse, what's the site where people buy the calendar? I have the code here, but.

It's just jessie. It'sley.com. I think you can get it on my website. So go to jesseylicer.com and then use the code win 2025. So win 2025. First 100 people that go there from this podcast will get a free big-ass calendar. But if you didn't, just buy the same thing and start planning your year. If you're not convinced at this point, something's wrong with you.

I had so much fun on the first go-round. You know, Sam gave me a little, put me under the microscope a little bit. I loved it. I love this. That's his job and I get it. And you guys are awesome, man. I always get a lot of DMs about our first episode. So to get an invitation back was meant a lot to me, man.

So you'll get a handwritten letter from me. I think people don't realize, I mean, we host a lot of these, and I think people forget this, but like I saw Sean writing. Like I take notes. Like just these are my golden nuggets from this episode. These are, you know, my pen died halfway through. We appreciate you doing this. Thank you very much.

until round three Jesse, thank you Thank you I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off on a road

Let's travel never looking back