The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 258: Jesse Itzler - Creating Your LIFE Resume (Living With The Monks)

Episode Date: May 20, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk 258: Jesse Itzler - Creating Your LIFE Resume (Living With The Monks) Jesse Itzler is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Living with a Seal, cofounded Marquis Jet, the world's largest private jet card company which he and his partner sold to Berkshire Hathaway/NetJets. Jesse then partnered with Zico coconut water, which he and his partner sold to The Coca-Cola Company.  His latest book is titled, Living With The Monks. He's a former rapper on MTV and wrote and performed the NBA's Emmy Award-winning "I Love This Game" music campaign and the popular New York Knicks anthem "Go NY Go." When he's not running ultra-marathons, eating vegan food or being a dad to his four kids, Jesse can be found at the NBA's Atlanta Hawks games, where he's an owner of the team. He is married to Spanx founder Sara Blakely. The Learning Leader Show "I invest in people... You must look into their eyes before making a decision." Show Notes: Sustaining excellence: Spending time around the 4,000 people who used Marquis Jet, "I always asked them about their habits." You have to create the system that works best for YOU: Attack fear, take risks Get up early in the morning Create daily wins, momentum Be a great connector, build relationships Run -- Create great exercise habits Winning habits, routines, mindset. A system for self For 27 years, Jesse has only eaten fruit before noon Relying on gut instinct... How to build this, make better? Must spend time alone, to think.  Running is where this happens for Jesse (in the car for Sara) Why? Awareness with time... Understand your own mortality A constant drive to build a "life resume" You only get 1 shot to do this thing Hiking Mount Washington -- Helps you feel "super alive... It's addicting." Have you always been this way? "I get bored easily. This has nothing to do with money." Always being urgent to accomplish something Always carving out time for yourself.  Carve at least 1 hour per day. Put parameters around your time YOU are the business plan. "I invest in people... Have you ever looked into his eyes?" "At the end of the day, people drive companies." Why live with the monks? "I did the physical part while living with a SEAL.  I needed to focus on the spiritual part." Lived in a monastery with 8 monks... 4 had been there for 50 years How living with the monks helped him handle "decision fatigue" How it free'd up so much energy "The power of cumulative work" "Always do something hard" It sets the tone for yourself Don't back away from challenges -- Build the grit muscle Do small things every day (clean, make the bed, finish tasks, do the dishes now) "I'm turning 50.  I only have 28 summers left if I'm lucky." The perfect day = Family time Wellness time (running) Business time "Get your heart rate up!" Social Media: Read: Living With The Monks Follow Jesse on Twitter: @the100MileMan Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 More Learning: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 216: Jim Collins -- How To Go From Good To Great Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why

But the end of the day, people drive companies. And this guy had vision. He had passion. He had drive. He had an unwavering look in his eye that regardless of the obstacles, I'm going to get a return on your money. And I was like, man, why are him the money? And how could you evaluate it without even talking or looking at the guy? Welcome to the Learning Leader Show.

I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 44222. Now, on a tonight's featured leader with one of the most interesting people in the world, it's New York Times bestselling author Jesse Itzler. He co-founded Markey Jet, which he and his partner sold to Warren Buffett.

He wrote Living with a Seal, which is a New York Times bestseller. latest book is titled Living with the Monks. He's also a former rapper on MTV. He's won an Emmy. He's an owner of the Atlanta Hawks and he's married to Spank's founder Sarah Blakely, the youngest self-made female billionaire of all time. Pretty cool. A few of the topics we got into. How he makes investment decisions and why you are the business plan, not the PowerPoint deck, then why he strongly believes in building a life resume instead of a traditional one. And then Jesse maps out his perfect day towards any of this conversation. He gets a little bit emotional, which I found to be compelling. I think you'll love it. Ladies and

gentlemen, it's Jesse. It's Ler. Jesse, man, it's great to have you back on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. Thanks for having me, Ryan. I appreciate it, man. Episode 69. So it's been a couple years since you've been on, and it's amazing to see all of your growth and what you've been up to, the different types of people you've been living with, so we're going to get into it. But real quick, Jesse, before we get going, I'm curious, man, you've done a phenomenal job of surrounding yourself with people who sustain excellence over an extended period of time, whether it's people within your family, who you decided to marry, business partners, others that you've worked with.

I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of those common themes you found in people who sustain excellence? Oh, that's a really good question. Well, you know what? I think there are certain qualities that I've kind of picked up on. I think for me, the best part of owning Marquis Jett, which was the company I started years ago, wasn't like the journey of success or selling it or whatever. It was actually getting to be around the 4,000 people we flew who were kind of like leaders

in pop culture, entrepreneurship, entertainment, et cetera, and getting to like kind of ask them about their habits. You know, because I love to pick little nuggets from people and then see how I can apply what resonates to my own system. Everybody has their own system. I think, but to your point, I think, look, I think most are okay with kind of attacking fear. They're not, they're risk takers. They're comfortable with living in that zone and taking challenge. Many get up early, I think kind of win the day. Most all kind of create some kind of daily

wins or get momentum that they're able to ride off of. Most have, many are great connectors and have really good, meaningful relationships. In my world, a lot of them are runners. I think that's a common theme. I think running is a great or any kind of exercise is, despite the physical benefits really, you know, creates great habits. But I think at the end of the day, they all have, they all have what I call winning habits, winning routines, and a winning mindset. They've developed a system for themselves that is based around winning habits. And that varies for everybody.

You know, I only eat fruit until 12 o'clock noon. I've been doing it for 27 years religiously. That might not work for you. But that system for me through trial and error works. So I stick with it. So I think a lot of the people that are, you know, that run around in a circle that I get to see, whether they're friends or not, have implemented a system that is based around winning habits and winning routines. And that might be different for me than it is for you. But I think that that's the commonality.

They're not like they're just, you know, throwing something up on the ceiling and seeing what sticks. it's like they've developed a system that works for themselves. Getting up early is a common theme in that system. Like I said, risk taking is a common theme in that system. Being an expert in the space that they're in is a common theme amongst those people, etc. One of the, such a thoughtful, great answer. So I appreciate that, Jesse. One of the parts I noted in your book, your latest book,

living with the monks, you're having a conversation with your wife, Sarah, and she said, one of your greatest weapons, your secret weapons is your gut feel, your instinct. And the only way to be in tune with your gut is to be alone thinking. And that's part of, I'm imagining why you did what you did. For those, just from seeing you from afar and talking to you a few times, obviously your wife knows you better than anybody, that's correct. How does one develop their gut instinct or can they? Is that just something that's innately in you or is there a way to develop that and make it better to improve on that?

Yeah, I think, well, like you mentioned, I think that, first of all born with some kind of intuition. Very often that rears its head around people like, I got a weird feeling about this person or I don't know if we should make a left turn. That looks like that's the wrong way to go or whatever. And I think the only, and that's a muscle. I feel like you can build, you can be more in tune with your intuition and more aware of your instincts only by being alone and being, you know, spending a little time and quiet. If you bombarded by technology, bombarded and overloaded with work and responsibility and pressures, it's very hard to be in touch with your gut. So for me, my form of, you know, many people meditate and many people journal or spend time. alone or whatever, but for me, my form of that alone time or meditation or clearing my head

or creating space has been running because I've been doing it alone every day for basically 25 years. It's like something like 36,000 miles or something I've ran alone, 10,000 hours. That's a lot of time alone. But when you, you know, for me, that's that is the way that I kind of get to clear my head and really get in tune with my own gut. And it served me well, you know? It's many times I've gone against my gut and it doesn't feel right. And I could tell like I'm on the wrong path.

And many times I listen to my gut and it's turned out to be the right decision in the long term. So, but again, if you're not, if you're constantly on your phone, you're constantly on Facebook, you're constantly worried about that you didn't like someone's post about their vacation or whatever. it's very hard to, you know, you're not exercising that muscle and you lose that superpower. So your background, Jesse, for those who didn't listen to the first time we talked is, I guess interesting is an understatement, but you're an entrepreneur, you're a New York Times bestselling author, you're a rapper, you were the co-founder of Markey Jet, which sold to Warren Buffett, you're involved with a few other businesses.

you guys are part owners of the Atlanta Hawks. This construction of a life is incredible. And there's more. I didn't even get to everything that you do. I'm just fascinated by everything that you've done and everything that you're currently doing and everything that you'd like to do. You talk about your why in your latest book. And I'm curious, what has been and what is your why for tackling everything that you do

and everything you've done in your life? Oh, I would say it's a combination of two things, probably. One is just an awareness, my relationship with time. I have a really good awareness of my own mortality and how much time I have left and wanting to get as much out of that time as possible and mixed with the constant drive for wanting to build what I call my life resume versus my work resume, which is just like my real body of work of how I'm living my life.

The obvious answer, and of course is my family and my kids. But that aside, it's really just like, you know, I got one shot at this thing, life. And like, I don't want to, I get really bored easily. I'm an adrenaline freak. And I don't want to wake up at 80 and be like, wow, I didn't climb the mountain. Or wow, I didn't go to Europe. Or wow, I didn't try to do this or whatever. You know, I just hiked Mount Washington in the winter.

which is one of the 10 most dangerous mountains to climb. It's got like the highest death rate in the states and the winter, et cetera, et cetera. There were no 70-year-olds on the mountain. Like the window, I'm turning 50. The window to do that kind of shit, it closes fast. So I'm aware of that. And I'm, you know, check the box and go to the next, what's next? Not like, let me celebrate the fact that I did X, Y, and Z.

No one cares that the Mavericks won the NBA Championship five. or six years ago. That was five or six years ago. It's like check the box and think ahead. And that's sort of how I've always kind of lived, live my life. And it makes me feel super alive to live that way. And it's addicting. So that's sort of what, that's sort of my why. You know, it's like, and I have days, good days and bad days. And I appreciate you shouting out my resume. You know, I've had plenty of egg on my face along the way too. But it, But it's part of the process of like, you know, like my own personal body of work, my life resume.

And that's what drives me. I'm always like, well, what, I'm turning 50. What am I going to put on my plate this year? What big events am I doing? What am I doing? How many different races am I doing? Where am I traveling to? What am I doing with my kids?

You know, like I'm very aware of those moments and creating as many of those memories as I can. And I take it super seriously. Have you always been this way or is this developed over time? It's almost like success breeds more desire for bigger and greater challenges and more success. I'm just curious of how this mindset happens because I think from afar for people who look at you, they say, Jesse, like, I'm not a believer that anyone's ever made it or that anyone's ever arrived. I love JJ Reddick's quote.

You've never arrived. You're always becoming. and I know you live that way as well. But they look from afar and say, Jesse, you've sold companies, made hundreds of millions, your wife's, you know, one of the youngest self-made female billionaires ever. And you guys could probably vacation, put your feet up quite a bit. And in fact, you guys do the opposite of that. So where does it, you know, is that just because that's the way you've always been

or have you developed this? Yeah, I think, I think you probably would call it, ADD years ago or now, I guess they call it ADD, but for me, you know, even when I was 21 years old, my life hasn't really changed that. I mean, yes, I have more brown rice on my plate than I did when I was 21 years old. And there's certainly, there's certain things that are easier or, or, you know, I don't, I'm not worrying about as much as I was when I was 21. But even then, I mean, I was, I got in the music business. I went from music business, from the music business to selling airplanes, private jets, to the coconut water business, to management, to failure, to the

haul. I mean, I've been, I just get bored easily. And it is nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with anything. It has to do with just, I like newness. That's what makes, that's my why. And that might not be everybody's, but that's how I want to live my life. I want to look back on it with no, and be like, man, I did everything. I don't, you know, I'll just give you an example of how I think about that. I just, I talked about Mount Washington a minute ago. That was something that I did with five friends. You know, I'm not an adventure guy that, you know,

explorer that goes out and I'm not a survivalist. I don't know anything about winter hiking. I've never even been on a hike. So we went on short notice without a tour guide and which was not smart. And we didn't make it to the summit. My five friends and I, the first time we went. And when I came back, I put it all over social media. my wife was like, you know, everyone was like, well, I can't believe you didn't make it.

It's only four miles to the top, four and a half miles. You know, you ran 100 miles before. You couldn't climb. And I was getting bombarded with all this like, can't believe it. You didn't make it. So sorry. And I said to my wife, like, you know, I failed. I wanted to do this.

We didn't get anywhere near the summit. And I want to go back. And she was like, great. Get a tour guide. Get a tour guide to help you navigate the mountain. break in your boots, train for it, pick a weekend next winter where you can properly plan and go back next winter and take another shot. And I was like, next winter, I'm going back on Saturday.

But that example is everything. There's no guarantees of next winter. And next winter is nothing to do with money. Next winter is nothing to do with who you know. Mount Washington is free to climb. I think parking is free. there's no stopping there's no limits to who can go out there other than you have a you know a pair of boots and a sleeping bag so my point is you know it's always been about around urgency for me and i'm not waiting

i want instant gratification even if i'm under trained and that's that has been in my DNA so what happened i went back on saturday and we got to the top so what did sarah say about that I think she knows by now that what make about my why. But that, you know, listen, I think, again, I'm very aware of that. You know, it's not like, and I have always been aware of that. Even from a very young age, even at 21, I realized like I've always carved out a couple of hours of each day for myself, always. And even when I was launching a new project or was way out of

balance because I would be spending 20 hours on a new business or whatever, there was always an hour or two a day for me because I just didn't want to resent my boss or my partner or now my wife for taking away, you know, the things that I love to do in a day because then I'd be mad at my wife. She's like, you can't run. You got you can't run Jesse this week. I want to sit with you and talk about all day. I'd be like, you're you're monopolizing my only asset, like my time, you know, and I would be, I would be resentful. So I've always been able, I've always had this mentality of like, like, can't we just carve out an hour or two or three a day cumulatively for ourselves? And, you know, I've been practicing that for 30 years.

And it's been really helpful to me. You know, it's been really helpful to me to allow me to, again, be way more present at work because I know that I'm taking, carving out some of the time during the day from myself. myself. You mentioned that the commonality among the people who sustain excellence is they wake up early. And I think whenever there's pushback on this, well, I don't have time to carve out for myself. That's been the answer to me, Jesse, I think, is then it typically needs to happen before everybody else in the house wakes up. We're both married guys with kids. And I think for me and probably for you, that that makes it necessary for a time for us to get up early and get to work when everyone. else is sleeping. Well, first of all, when people say I can't, they've already established that they

can't. So if you just put parameters around, if you change that attitude to, you know, look, I'm going to put myself first and I'm going to still be super diligent in work or effective, but I'm going to put parameters around my time and I'm going to prioritize it. I'm going to say no to the things that really, if you look at most of our days, there's 24 hours is a real, long time. It's a really long time. If you keep moving, like I did in the 100-mile race, you prove to yourself if you keep moving, you can do a ton and cover a ton in 24 hours, except when you start saying yes to luncheons that don't matter, phone calls, hey, Ryan, can you spend 20 minutes for something that thinking about launching a podcast? They want to pick your

brains. Well, you don't want to say no. That's 20 minutes becomes 40 minutes. That's already one of the hours I'm talking about that it just happens all the time. So I really find it hard to believe that even if you, you know, you're working a full-time job with the family, that you can't take 10% of the day cumulatively for yourself. I just have a hard time believing that that with some changes that that's, that that couldn't happen. And again, that could be 30 minutes in the morning when you wake up. It could be lunchtime. It could be 20 minutes when you get home just to sit and think or journal or watch TV or do whatever, but it's your time. And I just feel like if you can't take 10% of the date for yourself, then like as you look

at your life in totality and you look at your pie chart of like time, that seems to be out of balance for me. That reminds me somewhat of the story you wrote about living with the monks about the time you and Seal, as you call them in the book, went to L.A. to pitch your story as a TV show. Bear with me. I'll bring it home for you, Jesse. But you and Cial went to L.A. to pitch your TV show.

And one of the things that was happening was there was other people speaking for you in those meetings. And you guys both became annoyed, especially him who, I mean, his name is out there now. It wasn't last time we talked, but David Gaggins, who I've emailed with about coming on the show, and we're going to make that happen too. But you said, when you give advice to you, young entrepreneurs and there are a lot of young entrepreneurs listening to this Jesse and that's why I wanted to make sure we got to this part but your advice to them is you are the business plan and I'd

love for you to expand on what you mean when you're talking about the business plan specifically for people who are younger or maybe not even younger but ones who are wanting to start something on why they are so important well people obviously people invest in people over you bet on the entrepreneur very often, you bet on the jockey. And the best way for me to do it is just do an example. I was just investing in a company. And I sent all of the details to an advisory team that I had set up to review investments. And my team sent me back their recommendation, all of them unanimously,

saying you have to be crazy to bet, you know, to invest in this company. And they gave me a list of reasons why. Well, the CEO doesn't have experience in the field. He doesn't have any marketing background. Where's he going to get all the, this thing? I mean, they gave a list of things. So I called them up. I set up a call.

So their recommendation was, you know, 100% pass, all three of them. So I got them all on a call. and I was like, guys, have you ever met the CEO? Have you met the founder? And they were like, no, we're reviewing, we're analyzing this based on what you sent in, da, da, da, like, have you ever looked into his eyes? Have you ever felt his passion?

Or, you know, the guy works 20 hours a day. He's obsessed with this. He's learning quickly. He's going to hire his weaknesses. He's going to make it work. And why are them, why are him the money? And the reason why I was like, wire him the money is because at the end,

end of the day, you know, I just looked at this, evaluated this, and I'm like, he's going to make it work. He is the guy. He is, forget what the numbers say. I mean, yes, they're important, and you have to take it into consideration. But the end of the day, people drive companies. And this guy had vision, he had passion, he had drive, he had an unwavering look in his eye that regardless of the obstacles, I'm going to get a return on your money. And I was like, man, why are him the money? And how could you evaluate it without even talking or looking at the guy? You know, I'm like, come on.

So you are the business plan. It's just like, you know, I always felt like before I rely on the PowerPoint, before I rely on the pitch, let me connect with the potential partner as humans. and if we're not connecting, like the deal's not going to happen anyway. So like let's build the relationship first. Let's let me establish who I am, what I've done, why I'm going to make this work and all that stuff.

And then let me get to the other stuff. So that's what I mean about UB. And I really, really, really believe that, you know, that that's the case. And, you know, it goes back. to Ryan what we were talking about earlier on the call. When you build your life resume, when you put an adventure on your plate, when you take risk, you become interesting and people want to be around you. They want to talk about it. It's different. There's a point of differentiation.

There's a, oh, you went and lived with the monks. What happened? The seal came into your house. Those are conversation starters. And that's not why I did it, but it just as a byproduct of living a full, vibrant, interesting life, it becomes a lightning. rod for opportunity too. You know? And I think of a lot of people that you mentioned young entrepreneurs, you know, I'm all about having a resume. I understand the importance of a resume.

But I believe you can land your dream job or excel and climb the ladder at your current job. If you, potentially, if you are able to build, you know, your own personal life resume. You know, that's a great conversation starter at lunch. You know, well, yeah, I'm going to climb this mountain this week and I'm doing this or I'm going on a bike ride or I'm taking care of my parents that are, you know, every weekend and whatever. Those are the kind of things people are like, wow, there's character there.

There's, you know, there's risk taking there. There's an edge in that person. And these are all characteristics that I think, you know, really reflect well in climbing up the ladder of life. So not necessarily believing in traditional resumes, but believing in life resumes, collecting moments, creating experiences, and doing more, something that you do quite frequently. And most recently, in the one that I'm fascinated by after reading, reading your latest book called Living with the Monks, you decided to leave briefly your great home with a

with the wife and kids and go live with monks in upstate New York. And I'm curious as to, you know, obviously you're always looking for great, as we said, you're looking to collect moments and create experiences. And that's, I would imagine, part of the reason why. But there's a number of different experiences that you could create. And there's moments you could collect. Why this one? Why living with monks?

Well, I feel like I did the physical part with Goggins, you know, and wrote about it and living with the seal. And now I really wanted to marry that with the spiritual side, especially I have four young kids. And I wanted to get away from my phone. I feel super attached. My phone is always connected glued to my hand. And I just felt like I needed to experience and see, like, let me go back 20 years ago before I had all this tech. and let me just regroup and take inventory and find out from these spiritual masters, so to speak, what can I incorporate in their lives into my winning habits, winning routines,

winning mindset, or my own system? So that's kind of how I entered the monastery with that in mind, like completely open-minded saying to myself, what can I take back from this experience over the next 15 days and incorporate into my life? and what am I going to miss? And who am I going to miss? And what am I not going to miss? It takes up a lot of my time.

So it was just a way for me to kind of really like take one step back, get away from all really civilization and the ability to communicate with anybody. And I went to a monastery with eight monks, four of which have been there for 50 years, on a 500-acre middle of nowhere, wilderness. location basically just out of Canada and you know just completely unplugged and and just went in there like let me experience this rather than like dictate what my expectation is there did very little research let me just go up there and see how I come out of this thing in 15 days how did you come out of there in 15 days skinny what

Why? Why so? You're already a skinny dude. No, I mean, I came, well, first of all, they only, the, there were three meals a day, and one of them was big, I only eat fruit until in the morning, so that was fruit in the morning. And then they don't, they call dinner, dinner and lunch or reverse. So dinner is really, what we call dinner is lunch. And that's their one meal. And, and then at night, it was just really soup, salad, something really light. and so I really was having one meal a day, no snacks, no sugar. They were really, I didn't really have much carbs. So I was walking a ton. I walked 120 miles.

I walked about 10 miles a day. So I just lost a lot of weight. But I came back really energized. And a lot of that, a lot of that energy comes from the fact that, like, I realize, I make so many decisions. I think the average American makes like 35,000 decisions a day or something. And at the monastery, all those decisions are taken away from you. So like you eat when they tell you to eat, you eat what they serve you.

You wear one outfit. I wore one outfit the entire time. I showered once. There are no, you know, there's no decisions. It's like they ring the bell, you go to church. They ring the bell, you go to eat your meal. So when all those decisions are taken away from you, it frees up so much energy. Like we only have a limited amount of energy.

after we exhaust all our energy, we go to sleep. A lot of that energy is around decisions and thinking and like, what should I wear? What do I eat? What should I do? Should I take this? What should we talk about on this podcast? Answering these questions, whatever it is. When you strip all that, which happened to me, I was like, oh shit, I'm so energized.

I was thinking clearly. I was writing my to-do list. I was walking. I felt great. You know, I just took all these things. Now, obviously, you can't go through life making no decisions. We all have to make decisions every day. But I became very aware of meaningless decisions or decisions that weren't really going to move the needle from you.

I spent so much time agonizing on every day that I was like, oh, my God, this is so insignificant. And once I started to cut back on those, I freed up some of that energy we're talking about. What are some of those decisions that are meaningless now to us? that like it's like I'm thinking of how all of us can apply what you learned while you are gone to our everyday lives I mean I I'll give you an example that right when I walked into my I mean this is maybe a bad example but right when I came home my wife was like day one she's like I'm going to go take the kids to school in the carpool I'm like great she's like we have two cars like I'm gonna I'm going to take the blue car and I was like cool and then she came back in middle late she's

like no no no you know what I thought of that I'm going to take the silver car because I might want to park and it's easier for me to park than, you know, like the minivan. I'm like, okay, great. Then she came back five minutes and said, you know what? You take the car you want because I don't, and I was like, Sarah, you've been struggling this for 15 minutes on this, what car to take? Like, you have much bigger things to fry today than this. I'm like, choose the car that you feel like driving right now and surrender it.

Don't even give it another thought. And I realized at that moment, and that was hour one. back home, like, wow, this happens all the time in our lives. It happens on what you want to wear. Look at the menu. Look at Netflix. There's 10,000 channels between Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, you know, all these different channels, HBO, Showtime, this and that, YouTube. It's like, I short circuit. And now I just like shut the TV off because I can't even, there's too much good stuff. Those kind of decisions happen all the time every day. So, you know, sometimes you just pull the plug out of the wall for a minute.

And it's amazing. You're like, whoa, I just got two hours back. I got less decisions. I got more energy. So you just just, just become aware of some of this shit going on in your life, Ryan. Yeah. Just become aware of it. It's funny.

I read a lot about specifically decision fatigue when it comes to what you wear and you read about Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, many others who just basically wore the same thing every day and I implemented that. Basically, I wear the same brand every day and just mix and match. And then also one of my friends is getting a meal prep business started and asked me to help them out. And so I'm helping them. And the great thing about it is that takes care of them the meals for the day as well. So not having to think about what you're going to wear and not having to think about what you're going to eat can really free up a lot of space in your brain to make decisions or to use that energy on more important things because obviously food's important

and what you want to look decent. But if you can get those decisions just already made for you, it really frees you up. It does. And it also taught me just to make a decision. Don't question it. Stand by it. And just, you know, making a decision quickly. And I'm not, you know, some things require thought and deep thought before you come out and just

you don't rush into it. But on the day-to-day stuff, very often we spend a lot of time going back and forth in our heads and then we write it down. I'm like, let me think about that for a minute. And then, you know, the waiter comes. Come back in five minutes. We just do it all the time. And it's exhausting, especially cumulatively.

So like one day fine, two days fine. But do that every day for 10 years. Get fucking exhausted. Yeah. So, you know, like I'm a big, big believer in the power. of cumulative shit. You know, like you want to have... The compound effect. Like, it builds.

Like, you want to have, you know, like, oh, listen, I eat ice cream in moderation. I eat ice cream moderation. I have an ice cream cone a day, but I don't go crazy on it. Okay. But do that for 30 years and you have 10,000 ice cream cones. You know, like, what is moderation? It's like, is that an excuse? Or is that like, you know, so and cumulatively over time, that will exhaust you if you're using up a lot of energy on, you know, stressful relationships, decisions, whatever it is that's the energy zappers. Yeah. One of the other things that I feel like you've done a great job in your life, whether it was

living with a seal or making these incredible experiences is that a commonality I found, and this reminds me a little bit of my talk with Aubrey Marcus recently, is that you purposely decide to put yourself through extremely challenging situations to make sure your body is prepared and able to always do things that are hard for lack of a better phrase. And that's another part of it feels like just your being. Yeah, it is. I mean, first of all, again, that gets me going. I love that feeling.

I love those challenges, but it also sets a tone. It definitely creates an environment, you know, mentally in your head that you don't back away from stuff or obstacles or challenges. And I think as an entrepreneur, that's really important because you're certainly going to hit a lot of bumpy road. And I think those that are super successful, you know, are able to just go right through the obstacles over time. And, you know, if they're sitting in traffic, they're not the group that sits in traffic. the traffic eventually opens up and they get to their destination. They go over the mountain and through the swamp and around the canyon until they find another road to get to where they're going.

And I think those kind of hard events challenges, you know, build that grit muscle. I really do. I think it's, you know, I think grit is a huge indicator of success and it's teachable. At least I believe it's teachable. And I believe that if you exercise that muscle and flexing, it does get stronger and it never goes away if you continue to exercise it. So, you know, even little things like today I did a 30 minute workout, I just made sure, you know, my heart rate was in my throat until I was like, I wanted to stop and then I'm like,

I'm doing one more. It's just a little mental game, but I think that by exercising and using that, those kind of challenges or activities or daily workouts or whatever it is, it builds that resilience. And, you know, sometimes it's as simple as like, I don't feel like returning, returning all my emails, but all my friends are at happy hour, but I'm going to stay home tonight and I'm going to do it anyway. Those kind of things also are big, you know, builders of grit. At the end, near the end of the book, you write 10 real world benefits. And something you just said reminded me of one of those. Actually, number one is putting effort into the small

things because how you do anything is how you do everything. So along that theme of consistently doing things you don't want to do and creating an environment in your head that you're okay to do hard things seems to play right in line with that because I found that to be a commonality is attention to the little things to the details, the little things become the big things and how you do anything is how you do everything. And that was the very first real world benefit you found from living with the monks. Correct. It's true. I think it's the small things every day, you know, that come across that we make split-second decisions on that really create that environment of what we're becoming in our head. And there

are indications of what we're becoming. So I think how we handle those kind of things like making our bed or cleaning up our room or whatever, you know, are indications of what we're becoming. You want to put it off till tomorrow, but that's an indication that maybe someone else will do it. You're lazy. You're not finishing what you start. versus you go and do it when you don't want to, that's like setting a tone of, wow, I don't shy away from things. I'm a finisher.

I complete tasks when they're put in front of me. Obstacles don't scare me. There's two different ways to approach it. So for a lot of people like, oh, I'll do the dishes tomorrow. It's not a big deal. It is a big deal. It is a big deal. You're setting a tone that like it's okay to not to put things off.

and it's okay to not finish what we started. It's okay to leave shit dirty instead of making everything you do clean and, you know, and finishing and all that. It's not, it's just not dishes. I love it. One more question, Jesse. I know we got, we got to run, but I'm curious, have you ever done the perfect day exercise? Tell me about it.

I haven't, but tell me about it. Basically, you just write down your perfect day. And I would, I don't know. it sounds like maybe you haven't done it exactly in that in that phraseology but i would i would love to hear what your perfect day is i mean i i'm very lucky ryan because i do you know i think about this kind of stuff a lot i'm turning fellerly ryan 36 i'm turning 50 when you turn 50 and you realize like shit the average american lives to be 78 if i was average i hope i'm not that's only 28 summers you start to think about a lot about time and how do you want to spend your time. So I do think about my day a lot.

And I could talk about this for hours, but my perfect day, you know, there's only a handful of buckets. There's my family bucket. There's my wellness bucket. There's my business bucket. There's, you know, friends and adventure, whatever. And I have a very simple pie chart formula of how I kind of want to spend my time. And the perfect day for me is centers around. It's it all comes down to what do I like to do the most and who do I who do I, who do I like to do it with? And the perfect day is putting as many of those things on my plate as I can with the people that I like to do it with. And that's that's sort of how I, it's sort of my philosophy forward. Breaking up into an individual day, it's time with my family, friends.

work, working out, you know, my wife. It's just those, that's it. It's not fancy cars or going shopping or anything like that. It's getting my heart rate up and challenging myself and spending time with the people I like to spend time with doing anything that I like to do. And of course, work. I can imagine it would start with a Instagram live session of you and Sarah and the kids singing karaoke to some crazy music in your kitchen. as you're getting everybody ready for school, man. Those are awesome.

I love that. Some days it does. And that's just because those are the people I want to be with, and that's what we're doing. It's cool to see. And I appreciate you, like, kind of shining a light into what it's really like, because you can tell you're doing it yourself. There's no PR people around. It's just you guys live in life. And it's cool to see.

So I appreciate it, man. I'm really happy that we had you back on. And I definitely want to continue our dialogue, man, as we both progress and look forward to meet up with you in person too, Jesse. Next time I speak to you, you'll be on, like, you'll be on episode 800. No, we've got to do it before then. No, at the rate you're going, you'll be on episode 800. I wouldn't even be able to get on the show.

Let's do it. You got to look at your spot. Yeah, I got to come to Atlanta and we'll do it in person next time. I'm starting to do more in person stuff. So we'll have to figure that out somehow. Do it on a bring your running shoes. We'll do. We'll make, we'll reduce our decisions.

Yes. We'll get our heart rate up and we'll check off what it is we love to do in the day. I love it, man. That's awesome. Well, thanks again, Jesse. By the way, where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? I'm just at Jesse Itzler on Instagram and jessieitzler.com. Simple.

Yep. Perfect. A lot of stuff about building your life resume on his website, and I love it. It's great stuff. So, Jesse, thanks again, man. I look forward to the next one. Thank you, Ryan, man. Thanks for having me, buddy.

All right, man. See you. Okay. All right. Big thank you to Jesse. for joining me this week on the Learning Leader Show. I love the conversations I have with him. I'm inspired by the way that he lives his life,

always seeking adventure, growth, searching for ways to make his life more difficult because he knows that's when we grow. If you enjoyed it, I love it. If you would write a review, subscribe, and rate the show in iTunes, Apple Podcast. That's write a review, subscribe, and rate it, hopefully five stars

on iTunes, Apple Podcasts that helps spread the message all over the world. Thank you again for your support. I'm so grateful for you, the loyal listeners. I love doing this. I will see you next week. Can't wait.