The Science of Flipping - Episode 109: Interview with Jesse Itzler – BILLIONAIRE Advise

Episode Date: September 15, 2017

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Welcome to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Colby. What is up, everybody? What is up? Welcome back to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see I have an incredible guest. A lot of you know who this gentleman is. But before I get to introduce someone who I'm completely honored to have on the Science of Flipping podcast, if this happens to be the first time you've seen me, heard me on the Science of Flipping, this podcast is all about creating systems, strategies, implementation tools to become an incredible real estate investor, build the life that you want to build, and create the business that you

want to create. So if you have any questions, go to thescienceofflipping.com. I have a book on Amazon called The Science of Flipping that I sell every day for $15. But for the listeners, I give it away for free. It's my actual book. So just go to thescienceofflipping.com, download the book for free. Just more system and tools for you guys to be successful in the game. Anything and everything you want

as far as more education, possible coaching or mastermind programs is on thescienceofflipping.com. So go there. You can see old podcasts, all that good stuff. So I wanted to do that really quickly because I'm very excited to have my guest on this show. He is the 100 Mile Man, but his true name is Jesse Itzler, founder of Marquee Jets, part owner in Atlanta Hawks, founder of Zico Water. I mean, this guy is

dynamic. So my brother, what is up, man? What's going on with you? How you doing, Jess? Thanks for having me, man. Dude, I couldn't be more honored to have you on the podcast, the show. I am so grateful for you to spend a couple minutes with us here at the Science Flippin', dude. Awesome. When it's all over, I want to replace some of the pictures on the back behind you oh really what what would you replace these pictures with i'll probably put dominique up there some hawks or some you know something uh i'll keep it red but i'll keep it red in the south yeah i'm a i'm a uh so i'm like a lightweight collector, so everything I collect is typically signed. So I got my Bo Jackson, my Jordan, Jerry Rice.

I have Willie Mays down here. So I'm not a big collector, but hey, if you happen to know somebody that might have played for the Hawks and you want to send a little gift my way for Christmas, listen, dude, I'm not going to say no. You know what I mean? I'm not going to say no. It's amazing. I'll tell you, I'm not a big collector of memorabilia, although I appreciate it. But when my wife, when I was dating my wife, when we were just boyfriend and girlfriend, she came to my house and I had some memorabilia of some basketball stuff. So she framed her underwear and signed it and put it on the wall.

Shut up. Yeah, which is hilarious. I fucking love it. I have like Dr. J, Muhammad Ali gloves, Dr. J jersey, and my wife's underwear. I hope it's still there today just to make sure everyone remembers. Of course. I love it. Of course.

Well, and you bring up your wife. I mean, talk about a dynamic duo. You guys are a power couple, right? Your wife is owner and founder of a small company, not really a very big company, but Spanx, which she in and of herself has created a freaking empire there, right? I even think you have a shirt on if you show it of Spanx. Yeah, promote it. It's just a small little billion-dollar-a-year company, no big deal, right? So you guys are awesome and completely dynamic. And again, I'm just so grateful that you're spending some time here.

I actually, we have a lot of mutual friends, right? Brad is a good friend of mine, and I know you and he have a very close relationship. He actually called me because you had, what, three weeks ago, you had some people over at the house up in Connecticut. And he's like, dude, get your ass here. And I was like, oh, man, we got our mastermind that same exact weekend. But I guess that event, I don't know if you'd even call it event. But for that close knit group, I heard that was off the chain. It was amazing. I've been to so many different masterminds and speaking events and seminars. And very often, they're at hotels or they're very similar.

And I just wanted to create something totally different. So I decided to do it at my home. And I had 45 people come for the weekend. And I brought in six amazing speakers and it was a really cool format because in the morning we had a great workout, 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. I made everybody take a cold plunge.

It was optional but highly encouraged. And then we started this amazing, basically from eight in the morning till one, lectures. But then in the afternoon, there were electives. I had a water ski instructor. I had a paddleboard coach, a yoga instructor. So it's kind of like adult camp. Yeah.

And you'll come to the next one. Yeah, I think you're having another one in Atlanta coming soon, aren't you? Or something similar. I think this one's a little more fitness, mind, body, and fitness oriented. Yeah. I just, you know what? Honestly, I've realized that for me, the days of going on vacations and sitting on the beach in Mexico, while I love to do that and I love to relax, if I'm going to take a couple of days or a week, I really want to get motivated or inspired or get a nugget or a takeaway that I can apply to my life. Yeah.

And so I figured if I could create that for other people, great. But that's also what I'm looking for. You know, I want to, I want to invest in me. Yeah. I want to invest in events and things that make me better all the time. And that could be a 5k race, or that could be a personal coach, or that could be a retreat with other like-minded people. But, you know, I i really i got a limited time left on earth man i want to make sure i get the most out of it and to me that's you know that's not necessarily laying in sand yeah that's um i mean you and in our mutual friend kent clothier my business partner i mean you guys really both hit heavily on this the time is now you have a limited

amount of time average age of a male is 78 if If you do the math backwards, you know, we only have so many hours and days left. And, you know, when we all kind of met at the Scale and Escape event where you are a keynote speaker, I mean, you just impressed everyone, dude. Kudos to you. I mean, literally everyone in that room was like, Jesse Isler is the man. And you know, the way you deliver, how you deliver, and why I wanted you on this podcast, dude, is, you know, we get roughly 10,000 downloads a week on the podcast and people need to hear your message. Right. Um, and so it, it's so true, right? Why do tomorrow what you could do today? You only have so much time left. And what you did with me, you put me through an exercise, like, literally right as we met. You sat me down, right?

If you remember, we were back in the green room, and you're like, Justin, Colby, listen. On a scale of 1 to 10, throw everything into a bucket. What are the things, what are the 10s? Like, how happy are you really? Well, no. Go ahead. It's a great test. call it's the happiness meter and what's amazing about it is it only takes five seconds and you get a lot of clarity around

what areas you have to work on and if you remember what i said to you is i said take all the buckets in your life your weight your finances your relationships relationships, everything, your spirit, just how you feel, throw them into one blender, shake it up. And on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the Dalai Lama of happiness and one being rock bottom, where are you? And I asked you to think about it and you gave me a number. And for most people, when they do that, they say you know wow i'm really happy i'm a i'm a seven and i say well that's great but if your son comes home from school with a 70 on a test that's a c in the most important bucket of your life you know so if you're a seven or below if you're a six and a half you're basically failing you know if you're a seven or below, if you're a six and a half, you're basically failing.

If you're a D, well, what happens is the way your brain operates is immediately you think when you're posed with that question, you think of immediately your brain subtracts from a 10 the two or three things that you are most unhappiest with. It's just instantly like, oh man, I just, I wish I had more money or my relationship sucks with my wife or whatever it is. And that's why I'm an eight. So I just said to you, you know, whatever the first two things you don't even have to tell me popped into your head, that's what you have to work on. And if you're not working on that, you're nuts. Like if you're going through life satisfied that you're a seven or an eight, and you're not working on the two things that got you from an eight, you know, took away from a 10 to an eight, if you're not investing in making those better, what are you doing? Yeah, you know? So yeah, I mean, it's it really works for me. It's a great way to take inventory where you are, where you are in your life. I think that's a monthly,

you know, weekly, monthly, I mean, it just hit home to me, right? Because I would say most people look at me and I feel like I'm incredibly happy internally. Like I'm a happy guy, right? I'm smiling. I'm gregarious. There's not a lot that weighs me down, right? I kind of have a shoulder shrug mentality. Shit goes wrong. Oh, well, on to the next thing. Not a big deal. I don't let it weigh on me. Um, but when you and I went through that, even though I truly internally feel like I'm really happy, there's things that aren't tens in my life. And so when you made me throw it into a blender, it took it, that assessment of saying, Oh man, I'm not acing life right now. Right? I have things I

can work on. I have things I can get better. And it's a power for the listeners. If you just do that, right? Do exactly what Jesse said. It's so powerful to realize where you really are in life, um, with your internal happiness. And there should be nothing less. Jesse hit it on the head when he did it with me. He was like, I don't accept less than 10. I'll take a nine, nine and a half, but if it's not a nine, nine and a half or 10, you don't do it, right? I mean, you have plenty of opportunities. People are pulling you a lot of different directions. You're uber, uber successful in business. And as I get to know you personally in life, right, your marriage, you're an incredible father to your children. But if something's not a 10, you're not even doing it.

Yeah. You know, look, a lot of stuff is out of your control and life deals everybody different circumstances. But a lot of it is attitude. A lot of it is what are you doing to make yourself proud? I mean, for example, my parents are aging. My dad's in his late 80s. And I'm a big believer in that you have to do things that make you proud of yourself. And you get opportunities that present itself where you can either you make a decision, you know, do I want to go on vacation with my friends? Or do I want

to go take care of my dad, you know, or my mom. And when you make the right decision, you feel good, your happiness goes up, you feel fulfilled, you feel proud of yourself. And, you make the right decision, you feel good. Your happiness goes up. You feel fulfilled. You feel proud of yourself. And, you know, so we get these decisions and circumstances. It's just how we how we approach them and how we deal with them. So, yeah, I wouldn't say I'm a 10, but I'm a work in progress. But I identify what needs work, you know, and try my best. It doesn't always work, but try my best to, to improve in those areas. No doubt. I think that's the key for me always. And we have another mutual friend, Pat Precourt, and I know he was at your house. Um, him and I talk about this all

the time, right? 1% better every day, right? And at the end of three months, you're almost 100% better as a person. So to me, it's always about progress. I don't have to change the world. I don't have to go from zero to 10. I can make progress along the way and make those decisions, which ultimately fulfill me and where I'm at to be to that level 10 in business personally and otherwise. Yeah, I mean I would challenge the 1% every day. I've heard that before, and I like it. Of course, you want to improve. But I think, I mean, I flip that around a little bit. And for me, it's just 110% effort all the time. Every day. I might run it in 905 so I didn't get 1% better but maybe that day I was tired on bad legs it was raining or whatever but as long as I'm giving that effort and the mentality and the mindset

of you know I'm I'm I'm gonna go through this I'm gonna I'm gonna do it as best I can that to me is the most important thing and it's not it's all the little things yeah it's all little things that you got, you know, you know, my quote, Justin, how you do it, that I love, how you do anything is how you do everything. How you do anything is how you do everything. So it's the little things. It's the, you know, my faucet's running, dripping. I'll fix it tomorrow. No, let me go get the wrench and try to fix it now because I don't want to, that's, that's an indication of what I'm becoming. I don't want to become lazy. I don't want to become the guy that says I'll just do it tomorrow. So it's those

little things that, that, you know, in business, in real estate, making the extra calls, you know, returning all the emails, um, going to the appointments that might not close, staying at the restaurant. So you're the last person there. So you, you know, you meet someone, you know, people always said to me, like so many times in my life people have been like you got oh my god so lucky you bumped into so-and-so and i'm like i created that luck i took the trip to san francisco to be in the room to meet the person that i didn't know was there yet you know i put myself it's like i call it wait verse create you know create verse wait you can create your own luck or you can wait for it.

And when you wait for your own luck to happen, it never happens. When you create your own luck, when you put yourself in this situation, which means being vulnerable very often, when you get comfortable with that vulnerability, that's where any of the magic happens. I'm sure the people that ace real estate are the people that do the things and other, the people that aren't scared to put themselves out there. Yeah. It's, it's funny you bring that up. Um, one of the biggest challenges personally, so I run and you know, you know, enough that we speak on stage together and these things. And so I run a lot of meetup groups and a lot of events. And one of the biggest things that every morning, part of my ritual is to be able to take on that vulnerability of, and you can use another word, fear or anxiety to say, oh boy, here we go. I don't know what's

going to happen. I don't want to be judged. I don't want people to think and be able to recognize it for me. And I recognize it and then I hit it head on, right? So in the morning I give thanks. I do my entire ritual. But then for me, being in the public eye

and you're more so in the public eye than I am, the things we do are watched, scrutinized, judged constantly. And so I'm just kind of relating it into a place of I'm able to, and I would hope everyone can get to a place of take on that vulnerability and appreciate it to a certain level, right? Because to your point, Jesse, that being able to appreciate the vulnerability and attack it puts you in the right room at the right time to say, I don't care what they think, that they don't know my name.

I'm going to go up to CEO so-and-so and introduce myself, right? And say, hey, nice to meet you. My name is Justin. I'd look forward to, you know, maybe giving two or three minutes with you to talk a little bit of X, Y, and Z, right? I have to work on that myself is the point I'm bringing up. That's a daily routine for me, to be vulnerable, to put myself out there, to be able to say, I don't care if I look like an idiot on this Instagram photo or video. Like I'm doing it because my intentions are bigger and my purpose is bigger than my fear of being vulnerable. Yeah, I think a lot of people are scared about, I mean, it's just human nature.

You want to be liked. You don't want to be embarrassed. And people are concerned about what other people will say or think or talk behind their back about or whatever. But for me, good exercise is I just recognize I'm very aware of the fact that in 100 years, no one in my life, no one around me is going to even be on this planet. And as big as Steve Jobs or the Queen of England or George Washington, whoever, think of people that have really impacted and changed the world. Do you wake up and think about Steve Jobs? Sure don't. No. No. I mean, my grandmother lived a life. She lived in her 90 90s i'm sure 60 years ago she woke up with pressures of

bills and pressures of relationships and whether or not she was going to go on a date or get married or whatever she was worrying about and that life is over her all those fears and worries that she accumulated it's she's no longer alive right no one in our world is going to be alive in 100 150 years from now do you think i care if someone says no when i ask them for an appointment or they laugh at me because i didn't finish a marathon or they say you know oh wow he started this business and it wasn't successful like if i'm gonna let that cares? We're insignificant. So when you put it in perspective and you go through life with this like – I don't want to say – with the consequences, and I'm not talking about doing things illegal or anything like that, but the consequences of risk, you're not – aren't impacted by what other people think. Then you go and do whatever the fuck you want to do. No doubt.

And that's sort of how, why I do it. I mean, I've had races that I haven't finished. I've had, you know, marathons that I haven't finished. And, you know, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to not do it because there's a chance that I might not succeed. Right. You know, like my wife always says, she's redefined failure as not trying

and not the consequence or the outcome. And I feel like I've been living that for a long time. So, you know, you got to find the tools that work for you. And for me, you know, it might not, I don't know if that resonates at all with you, but for me, it's not, that's what I think. I'm like, you know what? This guy's not even going to,

no one in Italy even knows I'm alive right what it's a huge world there's seven billion people with their own problems everyone in their own bubble let me go live my life and not be concerned about about any other thoughts so um and no one really gives a shit about our lives anyways no maybe one second but no they got own, they're off worrying about their own laundry list of problems or issues or challenges. Yeah, there's no doubt. So I want to, I want to bring into this message was so powerful when you kind of spoke about this, but I want to bring in your past. I want people to know a little bit more about you.

There's a lot of my listeners who already know about you is, you know, obviously, you know, I've talked about you at length, but talk a little bit about that beginning of business, right? Cause you've not only started billion dollar companies like Marquis Jets and Zico water and Atlanta Hawks owner, and you've done some incredible things, but what we're talking about, which I think is so valuable for my listeners or any entrepreneurs out there, is just allowing yourself to be vulnerable, to not give a shit and go for it. And I know your past story about your record music industry and how you kind of just said, yep, that's who I am.

All right, I have my lawyer, which is your dad, and we go into the book. But talk a little bit about your beginnings and some of those risks that you kind of take to say, shit, okay, I want to go get that meeting, so I'm going to cold call him every day, or I'm going to sit in that restaurant until it closes in hopes I meet that. Give a little background about your starting point, because there's a lot of people out there that are just terrified of starting. What if I fail? What if it doesn't work?

What if I don't make any money? What if, what if, what if, right? And they don't go. Right. So for me, I have to go all the way back to probably when I was a teen, even before I was a teenager. My parents gave me a long leash, encouraged me to try a variety of things, and encouraged me to, you know, whether or not I was successful or not, they were just proud that I tried them. But I remember when I was 15 years

old, I was, I lived in New York, grew up in Long Island. I've lived in New York. And in the eight, in the early eighties, hip hop and music and break dancing and all that stuff was like, that's what people were doing, you know, at least where I was growing up, where I grew up. And so I decided, uh, when I was 15 that I was, I was into break dancing. I know that sounds crazy. I don't look the part, but I was, and I went, I decided that I was going to go with my, my friend, Myron Freeland, um, white guy and black guy to Washington, D.C. because we figured there's no way the kids in D.C. were as good as the kids in New York. Just impossible.

So I convinced my sister, who just got her license, to drive us to Washington, D.C. I think I told my mom I was going to the dentist or something. My sister was taking me for a long dentist appointment. So we got in the car and we drove five hours. And the whole time there, I'm thinking to myself, terrible idea. What if no one shows up? What if we get booed? What if we get beaten up? What if the kids are better than us? So we set up in Georgetown at this little bank parking lot. We had our boom box. We put our boom box down and tilted our hat. I love it. We got out there and um the music starts going

and we start doing our thing and then you know one person comes two people come you know next thing you know there's a little crowd we take our hat off when we're done we pass our hat around and people are putting money in the hat four or five hours later you know the hats fold up and we we count up our money and we have like 280 dollars and i paid my sister for the gas 60 dollars and i paid her for food and then me and myron we went we got something to eat and then we had we split up the money and we had 48 dollars each and i remember myron look counting his money and looking me dead in the eyes said jess we're fucking rich. But what I didn't realize at the time was that was the classic lesson in vulnerability.

So I'm 15. The whole car ride up, I'm thinking about all the nerves, the butterflies, all the things that can go wrong. Nothing of what could go right. All the things that can go wrong. Then I go out there, I, you know, flick the monkey off my shoulder that's telling me everything's going to suck. I get out there in front of this crowd and then there's a reward. I'm like, whoa, you take a risk and you make yourself vulnerable and you can get rewarded. That felt really good.

And it was like an adrenaline rush. And then I was like, even now, all the time I get on stage, I have the same shoulder monkey, same butterflies and nerves, same what if they don't like me? What if I get booed? What if they don't laugh at the jokes? Whoa, that was super rewarding at the end. It never goes away. It's the same thing. But once you once you understand that you're not scared of that. And you're comfortable in that in that space. Amazing things happen. You have an author. You have a book out. You're on Amazon. You said in the beginning of the podcast, that's insane vulnerability. You're going to get comments. Justin, this sucks. Justin, I didn't learn anything.

Justin, you're not really happy. You're fake happy. Justin, you're a jerk. Whatever. You're going to get comments. Justin, this sucks. Justin, I didn't learn anything. Justin, you're not really happy. You're fake happy. Justin, you're a jerk. Whatever. You're out there. You're exposed. But you took that risk because you wanted the reward of helping people, maybe making money off it, maybe whatever, having it as a calling card. But that's full blast exposure.

Totally. You were willing to do that, right? And I'm sure it's been super rewarding. You're talking about it, giving it away for free. You're proud of it. Yeah. So, you know, all I'm saying is as an entrepreneur, it started early for me. And that was my first taste of it.

And from there, it was just that adrenaline of risk was a rocket ship. And I didn't care about the consequences, especially when I was young. It was just that adrenaline of risk was a rocket ship. Yeah. And I didn't care about the consequences, especially when I was young. I cared about the results. So it was never a B plan. There was never – I baked the dream into my DNA. So when I was going after a record deal, I baked that dream into my DNA until, and then I worked,

that was the end of the movie. I'm going to have a record deal. And then I just filled in the script along the way, whatever it took. Now for me, it took bullshitting my way into an office. They thought I was some, I set up a meeting at the record label that signed me.

They thought I was a guy named Dana Dane. They thought that I set up a meeting as Dana Dane, uh, who was an african-american uh rapper from brooklyn with gold teeth definitely not anything like me and i called up the record label because i read that the owner was a fan of dana's and he the secretary thought i was dana and said you know mike the owner would love to meet you dana come come in. So I went in as Dana and played my demo while we waited, quote unquote, for Dana and got a record deal. And so risk, creative, thinking on your feet, whatever it takes attitude within, you know, within the guidelines of not just the law, but of good principles. Morality.

Yeah, is sort of what's happened. And the other thing I would say, Justin, is that I have no business background. I never took a business class. I never took a business class. I never took an accounting business class. I took a public speaking class. I took an advertising class, and I really gravitated toward those two things. But that to me was a big blessing because it guaranteed that everything I did in my life would be done differently and not by the book. Like have a business plan and do it this

way and then go to this person. I like, I ripped that, that blueprint never crossed my desk. Right. So it was all on instinct. And you know, if I was the other person, how could I get them on? What would I want to hear to get them on the phone? What email do I have to send to get them to react? What do I have to say about this property that will emotionally connect the potential buyer to make them interested in buying it? What are they into? What is it that I can say that this property has that will emotionally feel like they need to own it, that the universe is calling them to own this? And that's not manipulating. That's just tapping into what the customer wants

and really articulating it in a way that they understand in a short amount of time. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. And I think one of the levels of, sometimes for me and maybe for yourself if you find this, but it's hard to help someone tap into the shoulder shrug mentality that I don't give a fuck. I'm going to go out there and I'm going to go do it. And I don't care about the result, right? I don't care about if someone says no, because no means I can just go and I'll get the end result. Um, it takes a little something, the entrepreneurs that go there, it takes a little,

whether we have a little screw loose, whether we just simply don't give a fuck, whatever that is, that's what I want. You have such a way of being able to communicate that message to, you got a record deal, right? You're, uh, you got a record deal, not just as a musician, but as a rapper, right? Back in the nineties where that whole industry was just beginning to blow up and was predominantly African-American, right? I mean, there was basically Vanilla Ice, Marky Mark, and maybe that was it. And you, right? I mean, maybe there's a couple others around. I mean, Beastie Boys obviously were there, right?

But that's what it takes. I think it's the power of persuasion. And I think that being able to persuade is an art. And the first person you have to persuade is yourself. You have to believe that you belong there. And once you believe you belong in the race or you belong at the table or you belong in the room everything's different when you're playing scared and trying to convince people you belong or you're not really sure you belong it's really hard to close yeah part of that is just being an expert you know

you have to know you have to know the property you're selling to sell it real estate you have to know the comps you have to know all this stuff. If you don't, you're at a huge disadvantage. If you do and you've gained the trust of being an expert to the person you're dealing with, it's a lot easier. As you get older and you have more experience, that becomes easier because you've got more things under your belt and you're just more comfortable talking about it. Yeah. But I've always, yeah. You know, that, that, that second marathon is way easier than the first. There's no doubt. Well, let's talk about something that

to your point, you didn't have this business background, but you fricking started marquee jets, right? Um, what an incredible company, what an incredible idea. Ultimately, you ended up selling it off to Warren Buffett's company, NetJets. Let's talk about that. How do you even get in the door? You were young. Weren at getting thrown out of the door because the first lasted about 10 minutes yeah uh before they said if you think we're giving our air our 800 airplanes to you two guys to use your it's not happening never never was like the exact word and um when we left we left i mean we set up a meeting to pitch this idea of a 25-hour jet card. The theory was that people would want to have all the benefits

of owning their own airplane. It would be available anywhere on eight-hour notice with none of the responsibilities of ownership. You don't have to worry about the pilots or the scheduling

or the maintenance. All that would be taken care of. You just call up, I want my plane to take me from Atlanta to New York at six o'clock tonight. Mr. Ritzler will be there. The problem is we had no airplanes. So we went to a company called Netschx that owned six or 700 airplanes at the time. They were owned by Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company. And we pitched this idea for a 25 hour flight card where you would prepay for the time. They were owned by Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company.

And we pitched this idea for a 25-hour flight card where you would prepay for the time and just work off the time like a debit card. And like I said, that meeting lasted 10 minutes. But what happened was the owner of the company came, the president of the company came out after the meeting and said, guys, that was unbelievable. And we said, well, we got thrown out of the room. He said, no, no one gets 10 minutes with Rich Santulli, the CEO. Right. It was something here. He said, but you got to – I want you to re-pitch it.

Re-pitch it. Bring it to life. So we did. And we realized that he probably gets pitched in the same way via PowerPoint all week, every day of every week. So we decided just to do it differently and bring in our own focus group. We said, look, if we want to sell this, let's have potential customers stand up and just talk about why this program would resonate and work. And we left with a deal. And a year later, we were doing more in sales than NetJets. We did $5 billion in cumulative sales over the course of our run. And then we sold it to NetJets.

I mean, that's awesome. How do you even get into the door there? How did you get into Rich Santulli's door in the first place you and your buddy had this idea by the way the idea is brilliant to this day right this is all about Airbnb I mean

it's the idea right you have all the same benefits without the ownership of the idea but how do you get into Rich Santulli's door how does that even start well it starts by by – in this particular case, it came through an indirect relationship. So I had a friend that knew someone at NetJets, my friend Steve Rifkin, who started a company called Loud Records, made an introduction to Jim Jacobsbs who is the president of the company but it comes with a very short elevator pitch and what's in it for them so it's very important when you set up meetings that the that that um because i get pitched all the time but it's it's very often it's a one-way

pitch yep need your help doing this it's very important that there's mutual benefits. So we had a good elevator pitch. Even today, Justin, I would say that we both get – I'm sure many of the listeners here get bombarded as well with emails. And it amazes me at how people don't know how to craft an email to get what they want. Like there is – email is an art form and it starts with the subject header and capturing people immediately in the subject header. If you don't get me or if you can lose me before I even open the email, if it's not a real headline. So you have to have a headline that makes me want to open it.

And then when I open it, I want it to be super short. I want you to sell me like immediately. So now I'm getting paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs. And very often you want to tap into someone's ego because people like to be stroked. So, you know,

if you can hit someone's ego, tell them what's in it for both of you and make it super short and give them a reason why they should you know spend five or ten minutes with you and not 30 minutes but cap it um you have a much better chance than writing the magna carta and sending it to somebody that's but this is going to sound crazy we were good at that yeah We were really good at – if I got on the phone with you, very quickly articulating the ask and what it was and why it was important that we should meet or what's the commonality, if there was a common thread. Do you know what that pitch was?

Once you got Rich on the phone, do you remember the what's in it for me, here's how we both benefit? Do you remember the, what's in it for me? Here's how we both benefit. Do you remember that? Well, I mean, ultimately it's like we have the ability to bring a, you know, an amazingly young, their average customer, the age of their customer was a lot older and it was corporate. So our, our storyline to them was we can introduce a generation of younger athletes and entertainers and wall street guys that will fly with you when they're 25 until they're 80. You can have the lifetime value of a customer is going to be meaningful. And we have the buy side.

We have all the guys. We have the buy side. So love to sit with you for five minutes and share our vision of how we can bring this next generation of customer into your fleet at an early age. They'll be loyal forever of how we can bring this next generation of customer into your fleet at an early age they'll be loyal forever and we can deliver that so um okay yeah sounds shit sounds like it's a win-win let's let's talk right that yeah great pitch it was 30 years ago

so i don't remember the whole it's but you know and it wasn't like – that's off the top of my head. It was thought out at the time. Of course. If I ever get to meet – first of all, we were obsessed with getting this deal. Like I said, we baked it into our DNA. We already had the jet company in our head. We already had a billion dollars in sales. We already had 4,000 members. We just didn't have

any airplanes. So now we had to go figure out how to get the airplanes. Once we got the deal, we knew that the average price of time people were paying after year one was $250,000. So we just said to ourselves, okay, we need is four thousand customers yeah if we get four thousand customers we're doing a billion dollars a year then then it was like all right how do we get four thousand customers let's hire more as many salesmen as we need to get to four thousand but it's the process has been the same i'm gonna run a hundred miles i've already ran it in my head i've done the race in my head now how do i train for it how do i get there but like the end of the movie it's already written

yep the final scene in the movie it's in my head it's done i just got to go backwards i got to back into it now okay i got 90 days i got 90 days to run 100 miles which actually happened to me how do i get there you know i'm gonna get there but now what i'm already i'm already did the race now i just got to reverse engineer it into the into doing it again yeah you know you brought up it's funny you said uh you said two things but one of them basically you had athletes and stockbrokers and then you mentioned the buy side it's funny you say that because i just finished the buy side by your friend tourney which great book great book man what a charismatic dude i mean holy hell what a life huh yeah yeah that guy yeah

tourney's an interesting story you He started out on Wall Street making very, very little money, maybe $25,000, $30,000 a year at Morgan Stanley. And he quickly realized that the gal to his right went to Harvard. The gal to his left went to Duke. And there was no way he could add any value to Morgan Stanley. But the only place in the office, the only place he could add value was at happy hour. And he became the king of happy hour and took that all the way up and wrote it to all these connections and information and became Uber, became multi, multi millions of dollars on Wall Street until all that cocaine and everything he did at happy hour caught up to him. It's a great story. It is.

It is. It'd be great to hear from him because that book is so dynamic. You're in the book, right? He references you several times throughout the book and how you were going to be the DJ and the music for, I think he was going into Galleon, right? Galleon, yeah. Yeah, you helped him write a rap about it. I was like, oh, my man Jesse's in the book. I love it.

That's funny. That's a great book. Anyways, a little promo for the book. The Buy Side is an awesome book. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're a hustler, if you're someone who just wants a good book, right, just to read a good book, The Buy Side, Turney Duff, he's an awesome dude.

Charismatic, but I wanted to put that plug out there because that was a great book. Let's go into, again, you've had so many great endeavors, right? Zico Water, that I know your backstory. That actually came from your whole running side, and I know you've been running now for 25, 30 years or whatever it may be. Um, tell me a little bit about that, how that came about. Well, um, I am a runner. I started out running.

Uh, my goal was two miles. I think we talked about this at the, at the retreat, but at this, but I started out with the goal of running two miles in 20 minutes and i'm like 18 minutes i'm sorry and i'm like if i could run at a nine minute pace for two miles 18 minutes i'm a runner right and i bet everybody listening gunned to head could probably run two miles if they had to. And once I hit that goal, you know, nothing has changed in my body since then. I'm the same legs that I have same. I'm not super strong as you can see nothing. You know, uh, my body's exactly the same body that God gave me, but I was able to run a hundred

miles with the same body. And the only thing that changed was the way I perceived what my limitations were. Once I got past that two miles and I'm like, oh, man, I could do two. Can I do four? I took the same body, the two-mile body, and I turned it into the 100-mile mine. And during the course of training for my 100-mile run, I did a lot of research on hydration and nutrition. Like, well, what if you're going to run for 24 straight hours?

It took me 22 and a half hours nonstop. What do you eat and what do you drink? How many calories do you have to take in an hour so you don't crash? How much liquid do you have to drink per hour? How many ounces? So you don't, you know, dehydrate. Right. And I did a lot of, did a lot of hydration on it.

And the first thing I did is at the time I did the run, there were only about 400 or 500 or 400 or so Americans that had done a 100 mile run. So there wasn't, this is 2006, there was not a lot of information on ultra marathons. So I literally tracked down any article,

person, movie, anyone I could speak to that had done 100 miles successfully, And I asked them about it. What'd you do with your blisters? What did you eat? I just, it became an obsession. Yeah. And I felt like I was an authority on the topic before I even laced up my sneakers. And which is so important to business too. Yeah. Become the expert, you know, and having the confidence of knowing and feeling like you belong is so important. So once I knew as much as I could about the race, I am, you know, I, I discovered coconut water because all of the, a lot of the research that

I was doing was pointing to electrolytes and the best source of electrolytes being coconut water. So I became the human guinea pig for coconut water. I used it when I, as a recovery, I used it when I ran and after the race, which I, which I said, I finished and I didn't cramp. I, you know, I felt, you put me in a wheelchair for four days, but I would say that I felt, I did feel good during the race. Aside from the blisters and the pain of the run, I'm like, man, this is the fountain of youth. You know, when people discover what I just discovered, this is going to be the next pomegranate or orange juice or cranberry juice. So like, it's going to be a category. So that's, that was my introduction to coconut water. I spent a year traveling to Brazil, Jamaica, all over the country and world looking at opportunities to import it.

And I realized that that was not my strength. I'm not an operator. I'm a marketer. And I partnered up with a company called Zico that was doing about $3 million in sales at the time, very small, and brought in coca-cola as a partner so it was my group 100 mile group zico founding team and coca-cola and then two years later coke bought the whole thing isn't that great i mean i love it and it goes back to what we started this kind of conversation about you went out there and you just created the opportunity you didn't wait for it you didn't sit back and say, well, this would be a great idea. You know, you went out there and you dug in, you became the expert and you said,

listen, I know a couple of people. It may not work out. Let me see if Coke and Zico and let's try to put this together. Cause at the end of the day, why not? Right? What do you have to really lose? It doesn't work out. Shit. Oh, well onto the next thing or maybe different introduction, but over and over since we've been talking now for about 45 minutes, your strength really comes into this who really gives a fuck mindset. Who's really judging me? At the end of the day, we're all going to die and no one's going to think twice about me, right? And so it's really powerful.

I mean, I'm not to you, but right, that's really a huge thing and a huge takeaway about why not go after what you want. You want to put that business together. You want to be in that business. Go for it. Who cares if you fail? Do it again. Get up and do it again. Right. Yeah. And I'm I'm very aware of the clock ticking. Yeah. And I'm in the second chapter of my life you know uh or maybe who knows maybe it's the 30 just you never know right but i'm approaching 50 i'm 49 so i'm basically going to turn 50 and the years of the years to be both relevant and i'm not going to go run 100 miles probably when I'm 80.

Yeah. So what's my window to accomplish stuff? Every day it shrinks. So once you realize that, once you really realize that, not just reading quotes and like, oh, okay, that's cool. I get it. Once that is embedded in you, then you don a very there's a sense of urgency in everything yep and that's that's almost to my detriment because a lot of times i won't even plan or

write a business plan i'll just be like good idea let's start it tomorrow like hiking the mountain incorporate that you know i'll call my lawyer i'm like trademark this incorporate that yeah we're in business and they'll be like well what's my lawyer. I'm like, trademark this, incorporate that. We're in business. And they'll be like, well, what's the business? And I'm like, I don't know, but I know we have to do it now. You and I are so similar with this whole thing. I will just, I'm ready, fire, aim. Great idea. Let's go do this. Let's start an LLC. We got to get it up. And what are we going to do? I have no fucking clue, but we're doing it. I'm all over this shit. Right. I mean, that's who I am in my

core. Right. My business, it drives my business partners crazy because I just take action. I'm fearless because I, in the soul, I don't care. Right. Like if I fail at this, oh, well, right. But if I win and I succeed and I reach my goal, hell yeah, right? So I just create LLCs, I create models, I create strategies. I just take action and we relate a lot on that. By the way, happy birthday, dude. Happy birthday. Finally, you're 49. I mean, for God's sakes, you can finally have fun. It's been a great 49 years of childhood. Yeah, Right. So let's dive in. I know you're, you know, you've given us a lot of time. I want to get into something huge. Obviously your book living with the seal is so dynamic. I think it was, it's a huge hit across the world,

obviously a bestseller, um, without giving everyone the details of the book, cause you have to go by living with the seal. It is unbelievable, right? There's so many different lessons in that book that you can relate personally to business, to relationships, all of it. But talk a little bit about what you learned from that experience. What was maybe the one or two biggest takeaways from that experience with the seal? Not writing the book necessarily, but with the seal that after that month, you were able to say, here's one or two or three things that those were my takeaways that will never, that I've changed. I've actually changed now because of it. Well, I thought I was operating at a really high level before he came in and I won't share the backstory of how I met him. It's very interesting and why I hired him. Yeah. But I hired him because I wanted to see what makes a guy like this tick.

And – but I will say that I thought I was operating at a high level and I'd sold Marquis Jett and ran 100 miles, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But I felt – but I realized that I had – I was really under-index what I was capable of. And I had so much more. So he had a rule called the 40% rule that anytime you think when your brain tells you you're done, you still have 40% more in you. And I realized that I was not tapping into as much as I could. And, and, you know, so I've learned to go past the threshold of pain and discomfort, not physical necessarily. It could be humiliation. It could be frustration at work. It could be a roadblock and just power through that and realize that, like, I have more.

So that was a big lesson that I took away. I'm very aware of that when I'm doing stuff and I'm like, wow, I got more. I took away. I'm very aware of that when I'm doing stuff, and I'm like, wow, I got more. I got more. And just the physical aspect, I can relate to it, because I like to, you know, we talked about how I'm big into CrossFit, and no, I'm not one of those,

ah, CrossFit, bleh. No, but I like the competitiveness. I like the team camaraderie part of it, but part of that is a mental game. I mean, that type of working out is more mental than anything because throughout your workouts, we had a 25 minute workout yesterday in vice minute 16 mentally. Can this just be over? I'm dying. I'm on the verge of vomiting right now. And I want to give up.

Well, I just set up a really cool challenge. It's called 29, it's called 29, zero 29, 29, Z E R O 29.com. But basically it's, it's up your alley. You should come. We rented Stratton mountain, the whole mountain in Vermont. Okay. And we're bringing in bands and food trucks and all this, and you sleep in a teepee, all this stuff. But the challenge is you go up the mountain, take the run, walk, crawl, hike, whatever you want, take the gondola down, up, down, up, down, until you climb Everest. So it's 29,029 feet,

and you've got two and a half days to do it. So to your point, those kind of challenges to me really translate into all the areas of your life a you learn about yourself what are you made of how much more do you have in you b you fight through you know boredom pain you have to make you have a game plan you have to rip it up all it's just short it's just parallels life so much so we're doing that in october and uh i'm really excited about that. We literally took the world's hardest climb, Mount Everest, which is unrealistic to get to with all the altitude, cost, travel, et cetera. And we brought it to the States, man. When's this?

I might hit you up and just show up. October 15th in Stratton, Vermont. And you can check it out at 29, the number 0 z e r o 29.com it's cool well and then so you're doing that and then i was just talking to sean yesterday you're also coming back for the extreme freedom event you're speaking at the extreme freedom event yeah looking forward to that you're such a goat you're a busy dude man so you will be speaking at the extreme freedom event so for all you listeners who are going you're going to hear even more from Jesse. But the last thing I wanted you to share that was so impactful for me was that you talk about the guy on your shoulder, right? Who says you can't

do it. And then the guy who says you can. Jump very briefly into that before we kind of wrap it up. And you have some great events coming up and your book and you have some great charities that, you know, Kent and Sean and myself have donated to that i really want to promote towards the end of this but before we get there um explain a little bit more about that mindset right you called it the hundred mile mind which is a great term for it about that i don't care i'm going to overlook that fear. Go into something like that. Well, I invest a lot of time and thought into that mentality. And it's like I said, it's the little things. I'm just very aware of the voice.

There's a million reasons to stop. Running sucks. Working can suck. And you want to be with your kids. You want to be at the pool you want to do all that stuff um but i just i just pride myself on trying to be a finisher yeah and trying to give it my effort and um every day so every day i do something hard every day i do something hard uh and i when i mean hard i mean like if i'm going to work out, I mean, like, if I'm going to work out, I'm there

for a reason. If I'm going to spend the time, I'm going 120%. And my 120% might be 80% of what you can do. You know, I mean, you might kill me. And I'm not comparing myself to anybody other than my effort. And it's in everything. It's in everything. At least I try to. And there's days where I struggle with that. But in general, because that grit, that resilience translates. So for me, it starts in the morning with a workout. And then that carries over. It even starts with a workout. It translates into a shower.

I take cold showers. So I jack it up to freezing, stay in as long as I can, and then count 10 Mississippis. But then after a workout and a cold shower, and I've already planned my day in advance, I feel like I'm at an advantage. Who wants to go against me? Not to sound like an ass, but I'm like, I've already inflicted a cold shower on me. I've already ran to the point where you're exercising on a treadmill in a gym with fans. It's 103 degrees outside and I'm, you know, I'm cooked.

That makes me feel good and that, I like my chances. Yeah. I like my chances going into life with that. Yeah. And let's talk about that. I mean, you have this whole, we do hard stuff, right? You're wearing the hat. It's a Facebook group. I mean, it's everything. Talk a little bit about the we do hard stuff, what it's the hat um it's a facebook group i mean it's everything talk

a little bit about the we do hard stuff what it's about what it's yeah i set up i set up uh i'm seeing that i have two percent so if i if i end up we've out talked apple uh if yeah i set up this group hashtag we do hard stuff on facebook every Every month I pose a challenge, a different challenge for the month, physical. And if anyone that completes it, I donate $100 to the charity that we're supporting that month. Each month is a different charity. So to date we've had eight different charities from Special Operations, Warrior Foundation, to Cerebral Palsy, Special Olympics, to Parkinson's, et cetera, triple negative breast cancer. Every month it changes.

And we've donated or raised well over a quarter of a million dollars already. I think we have like 10,000 people every month participating in these challenges. So there's no gym needed. Anyone can do it on any level. And it's building awareness, getting you in shape and raising money I call it fitlanthropy fitness and philanthropy and it's been great

and I know Sean Kent and I donated two pencils yeah it was super cool you guys we built a school with pencils of promise and you guys were very generous of you guys alright dude listen I really appreciate you being on here I generous to you guys all right dude listen i really appreciate you being on here i think you've given all the listeners an incredible amount of wisdom uh being

49 to reach the level of success in business and personally that you have is awesome i want them to know where to find you what you know events you're putting on i know you have several events coming up in in the next month or two so talk a little bit about where they can sign up for them, where they can find them, where they can learn more about the different events and Facebook groups, all that kind of good stuff. Awesome. I appreciate that. Well, first, you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at the number 100, 100 Mile man, the 100 mile man. And the two events that I mentioned, I think that are interesting. I want to get you there, Justin.

Yeah. Is do you have what it takes to conquer Everest? That's 29029. And that is information is at www.the number 29, Z-E-R-O-0-29.com. And the Facebook group is hashtag WeDoHardStuff on Facebook. And not to bombard everybody with information or whatever, but since you asked, I'm also having a really interesting conference in Atlanta in September. So my wife is going to be speaking about her journey at Spanx and providing some business insight. I would say not some, a lot. Tim Grover, who's Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant's personal coach, speaking. He's an amazing motivator and talks about, he has a book called Relentless. Great book. Unbelievable. Amazing.

So he has the Relentless System, which we'll be talking about i'll be speaking uh and others we just signed up frank shamrock who's got a great story from the ufc um and that's september uh 15th and 16th and we're actually doing it at spanx which is exciting yeah and you can get more information on that at wedohardstuff.com slash live wedohardst stuff.com slash live. So there's still some tickets available for that as well. So yeah, it's busy. But you know, I love these events. Because like I said, we talked about this in the beginning of the call. Yeah, the days sleeping, sitting on the beach, those are great. But like, I want to spend a weekend and get motivated, inspired and get some nuggets that I can apply to my life.

You don't get that on the beach in Florida. Maybe you do, but I think you can get more by listening to people that have lived it, that their processes have worked, and figuring out how you can incorporate their wisdom or nuggets or experiences into your own personal life. So that's the goal for all these different events. So I'm excited about it. Yeah. That's awesome. Dude, couldn't be more thankful for you. I'm excited to have you at Extreme Freedom.

But actually, I'm going to go to the website right now. Look at my schedule. I'm going to go pick up some tickets for whatever fits my schedule. I either want to see you in Atlanta or I want to want to see you uh at the uh 29 0 29 that that's gonna be both of those are gonna be badass right yes yes all right i'm there dude one is something i'm going to be at something between those two i'll make it and and uh get my ass kicked a little bit and get inspired and get motivated and and uh dude the relentless book i actually just finished i I finished, uh,

tourney's book and then Tim Grover's. I don't even know how I got to put on relentless, but that got that whole mindset. I mean, that's just right in line with what you're talking about, dude. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm excited about it. That'll be rad. All right, brother. I'll let you go. Couldn't appreciate you more. My man, Jesse Itzler, dropping some knowledge, dude, dropping the mic, the whole thing. I appreciate you guys. We'll see you on the next episode. Peace.