0:00:04 All right, it’s the end of the year and forget New Year’s resolutions, we have something much better.
0:00:08 So in the next hour, Jesse Itzler is coming on and he has an entire process for planning
0:00:16 a monster 2025. I don’t want to play catch-up. I want to attack. Like now, I’m taking control and
0:00:22 I’m dominating the year, not other people taking it away from me. Jesse is an incredibly successful
0:00:27 guy. He started Zico Coconut Water. He started a private jet company. He sold the Warren Buffett.
0:00:32 He’s an Emmy Award-winning rapper. Got four kids. He’s an ultra marathoner. He lived with David Goggins.
0:00:35 If you don’t want to learn from this guy, something’s wrong with you. You’re broken inside.
0:00:43 If everybody does the three things that we’re going to talk about in 2025 and does everything
0:00:47 else to sing, at the end of the year, they sing in an airport. They’re going to bear hugs.
0:00:52 I saw Sean writing like I like take notes. These are my golden nuggets from this episode.
0:00:58 These are, you know, my pen dived halfway through. And now you added 20 winning habits. You’re
0:01:05 Jason Bourne. You’re Jason Bourne. Jesse’s amazing. He tells us this process that he’s
0:01:09 been doing for the past 25, 30 years. I’m pretty pumped about it and I think he will be too.
0:01:23 I’m glad to be back, man. I love your show. I love that you got me back as a repeat,
0:01:30 as a repeat offender. So let me just start by saying that, you know, I love December.
0:01:37 I think December and January is our critical months for the 11 or 12 months that follow them.
0:01:42 And as we head into the new year, you know, the first thing that I do,
0:01:47 like any business in America, when we get to the end of the year, they close out the year.
0:01:52 They have review sessions, what worked, what didn’t work, you know, what was successful,
0:01:58 what wasn’t successful, they give themselves a grade, etc. And I found that a lot of people
0:02:03 don’t do that in their own personal lives. So I like to take a little inventory in December
0:02:08 and just kind of have a little review process around how the year went and take inventory
0:02:14 on my own personal year. But like no one taught me how to set up my life. You know, like no one
0:02:19 taught me how to like deal with my emails and no one taught me how to schedule properly.
0:02:22 I never like, I didn’t take a class in school that like, hey, you’re going to have four kids,
0:02:28 you’re going to get bombarded with emails from from the school with all kinds of appointments and
0:02:32 zoom calls that we didn’t have back then. And you know, your calendar is going to fill up with
0:02:36 other people’s requests for your time. Like, how do you want to deal with that? So you have enough
0:02:42 time to do things that you want to do and achieve the goals that you want to do within work and
0:02:48 outside of work. No one taught me that. And then layer in children and layer in a wife that works
0:02:54 in a business as an entrepreneur. And like, how do you do that? So, you know, like, I’m a product
0:02:58 of trial and error. I tried a lot of stuff. I didn’t grow up with the phone. I was scheduling
0:03:08 everything on a paper calendar for literally 45 years of my life. You know, and and I had to figure
0:03:13 out like, well, as my life evolved, how to grow with it. So I have a pretty cool system. I’m happy
0:03:18 to share it with you guys. It’s worked really well. It’s allowed me to, to balance a lot of
0:03:23 things and get a lot of things done. And I think it’s pretty simple. And I will preface it by saying
0:03:30 that, you know, as you get older, how old are you guys 35 and 36, right? Yeah, 36. All right.
0:03:35 So you got another maybe decade before this hits, but it will hit and it’s inevitable.
0:03:44 As you get older, creating newness becomes really hard because you live in routine,
0:03:49 you know, and like, it gets very comfortable to be, to live in routine. And really, I found that the
0:03:54 only way to really guarantee that you create newness and newness is important. It’s important to
0:04:01 relationships. It’s important to your momentum and your enthusiasm and your success and your
0:04:07 excitement towards things and your growth. The only way to create newness I found is to plant it
0:04:15 and or leave room to be spontaneous. So I become a really aggressive planner. And I feel like a lot
0:04:21 of us played life on defense. Our calendars fill up with other people’s requests for time, like I
0:04:26 mentioned, zoom calls, weddings, appointments, school stuff. And at the end of the year, like,
0:04:31 you don’t have a lot to show for it. One of the categories I do family fitness finance fun,
0:04:35 do you have like your own like cute acronym for your categories?
0:04:40 Well, I do my own individual personal audits for business with my teams,
0:04:45 but then from my personal thing, adventure is a category for me. I try to look through like,
0:04:49 what kind of adventures did I have? Well, like I said, and we’ll get into this in a minute,
0:04:52 you know, you want to have something to show for all your hard work at the end of the year,
0:04:59 not your zoom calls. I’m not like, yes, in October, I lit it up on zoom. I’m not doing that. I’m like,
0:05:03 oh, I just I just took a one on one trip with my daughter to New York City, I just got back.
0:05:08 So stuff like that, I’m like really taking inventory on how much time that I spend with my kids.
0:05:12 You know, like, what did I do well, what I do, what I have to work on in my role, like I really,
0:05:18 really do do that. And then I try to close out the year. And I have a system for closing out the
0:05:22 year, I’ll share it with you guys really quickly. The first thing that I want to do is, and like the
0:05:28 overall theme of closing out a year, and I think everyone should take a couple of hours to do this.
0:05:32 I think it builds momentum. And I think it gives you a little closure around the year where you
0:05:37 had a great year of bad year. It gives you a fresh start for 2025, which I think is really,
0:05:44 really important. And the theme is, I want to come into the new year light. I want to feel light,
0:05:49 and I want to get rid of all the email baggage, all the to-do lists, all this, I don’t want to have
0:05:54 a lot of carryover going into the new year. I want to kind of clean my hand to just be light.
0:05:57 And this might sound ridiculous. It starts in my closet.
0:06:06 All right. So when I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like two million subscribers.
0:06:11 And we made money through advertising. We didn’t actually make that much money per person reading
0:06:15 the newsletter because advertising in general is kind of a crappy business model. And so I remember
0:06:19 sitting down and I’m like, what are all the different ways that I can make money off The
0:06:24 Hustle that aren’t advertising? And so to make sure that you don’t make this mistake, Sean,
0:06:30 me and the HubSpot team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business.
0:06:34 And we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with
0:06:40 our research. And we call it, very appropriately, we call it the business monetization playbook.
0:06:44 Go to the description of this episode and you’re going to see a link to that business
0:06:47 monetization playbook. It’s completely free. You just click the link and you can see it
0:06:48 back to the episode.
0:06:57 I go through my closet. I look at all the stuff that’s been hanging there
0:07:04 for 12 months that I’ve never worn. And I donate it. I get a big bag. If anything is a 50/50,
0:07:08 do I want to keep it or don’t want to keep it? I just say, someone needs this more than me. It
0:07:14 goes in the donate box. And I start to organize my closet. So when I walk in, I don’t have a ton
0:07:20 of decisions. You might see me wearing very, a shirt’s very similar to this because I don’t
0:07:25 have a lot of options. You know, I keep what I like. I get rid of what I don’t like and I get
0:07:31 super clean. My desk, I get rid of all the clutter on my desk. I don’t want to walk in and I got
0:07:37 stacks of things I got to go through and bills and stuff. I get super clean on my desk. My emails,
0:07:43 I’m a big hit delete and explode them all at the end of the year, guy. But before I do that,
0:07:48 I put things in files. I respond to the things that I own answer to. I delete the stuff that I
0:07:55 don’t need. Everything else goes into a folder. And I try to go in net zero into 2025. That’s
0:08:00 really important. I don’t want to come back from my vacation January one and be sitting with an
0:08:06 inbox with 700 emails and just like, you know, just feel like I have to play catch up the first
0:08:12 30 days of the year. I don’t want to play catch up. I want to attack. I want to attack. So I come in,
0:08:19 I come in naked on my emails. I unsubscribe. I go through all the stuff that I have subscriptions to.
0:08:25 I unsubscribe. I uns, I delete all the apps that I think use again, just trying to get light.
0:08:31 You know, I get rid of all clear out all the apps. I clear out my cars. Make sure that, you know,
0:08:38 I don’t know clutter in there. And I create files for 2025 where, you know, maybe I’m still a paper
0:08:43 guy. So I keep records of my medical files. I know people have them on digitally, but I keep a
0:08:49 paper file. I still get my bills, paper, I put them in files. So, but again, I have a system.
0:08:59 So I’m not like playing catch up. And so I get super light on all that stuff. And then I can’t
0:09:07 recommend this enough. I write handwritten letters to the 20 to 30 people that really impacted me or
0:09:12 helped me. Even you guys, man, having me on, you know, you might get a thank, you know, thank
0:09:17 there’s eight billion people in the world. Guys, thank you too for having me on your podcast.
0:09:23 Like you thought of me. Thank you. I write in, you know, a handwritten letter to my suppliers,
0:09:28 my contractors, maybe a teacher, my son’s coaches for football. I want to thank them this year,
0:09:35 you know, with no purpose other than really giving like a thank you. I’ve been doing this
0:09:42 for that for 30 years. When I was 23 years old and I had no money and I was sleeping on 18 different
0:09:47 couches, my entire marketing strategy was I wrote 10 handwritten letters a day and I mailed
0:09:53 about 3000 letters. I’m not even kidding. And I still to this day do that because it breaks
0:10:00 through the clutter. People remember it. People read their mail. They might not read their DMs,
0:10:04 tech, flax and all that stuff, but they read their letters that come in the mail. And there’s a
0:10:10 different intention. I took the time. I wrote it. I licked the envelope. I went to the mailbox.
0:10:15 I put a stamp on it. I put it in there. Like it comes with a lot of love, man. It’s a lot
0:10:19 different than hitting send on an email. Are you still doing, are you still doing all that? Or
0:10:24 say I’m not going to talk about anything I don’t do. No, what I meant is I’ve like wanted to send
0:10:31 email letters to a lot of people and then I’ll be like, but is there a service where I can just
0:10:35 type it out and they mail it out for me? Yeah, it doesn’t work that way.
0:10:44 He’s like, are you listening? No, I audio coming through. I do it. By the way, I send letters
0:10:49 as well, but then I’ll like have a stack. I have like a few years ago, I got some stationary and
0:10:52 it like feels good to like write letters to people, but everyone’s wrong. Like, I don’t feel like
0:10:56 writing this. Is there a service? And then I’m like, what the hell am I doing? And so I wasn’t sure
0:11:04 what you were doing. Yeah, you can’t outsource it. It can’t outsource it. As a business owner,
0:11:13 I realized that you can’t outsource soul. And the DNA of a business is the soul of the business,
0:11:19 the heartbeat of a business. You can’t outsource that and customers feel soul and your friends feel
0:11:25 soul. And when you start outsourcing things that for hundreds of years, humans have been doing
0:11:31 themselves, it loses a little bit. And I found that that to our investment. How about this?
0:11:37 Let’s do an experiment for your listeners. Take 10 envelopes, 10, take 10 pieces of paper,
0:11:46 and take 20 minutes and write a thank you note or to your parents, to your kids, teachers, whoever,
0:11:50 saying, Hey, this year, I just want to thank you for investing so much time with my kids or
0:11:56 whatever you want to write, lick the stamp, put in an envelope and watch the return on investment.
0:12:05 Watch the return on investment. And I found that there’s nothing quite like it. Now,
0:12:10 that might sound ridiculous, hokey, but I’ve been doing it for 30 years and people still thank me.
0:12:15 No one gets a letter from you like that and doesn’t remember or hit you back.
0:12:20 There was a guy who came on by the way and he held up, he was, he does the same thing.
0:12:26 This guy Guy Spear, he’s value investor and he held up, he goes, I do this, but he’s like,
0:12:31 why did I start? Because I went to the Berkshire Hathaway Summit and I went to this event and
0:12:34 then he goes afterwards, here’s what I got in the mail and it was a letter, Warren Buffett had
0:12:39 written him a letter and it was two seconds. It was guy, thank you for coming, really appreciate
0:12:44 you being there, signed Warren. And he goes, if Warren Buffett is doing this, I can do this too.
0:12:48 I get one from Coach K. I know you’re a Duke guy. I get one from Coach K every year.
0:12:50 Check this out. Look at this. I’ll show you guys something.
0:13:00 This, all of these letters, all of these letters and there’s, I have boxes of these,
0:13:04 all of these letters. Check this out. These are all letters that I got this year.
0:13:10 I’ve read them all. I keep them all in this box. And at the end of the year,
0:13:15 it’s going in a thing. And then I’m starting a new box that’s going to say 2025 because I’ve
0:13:22 been talking about this for a long time. And I’m in a really unique spot. I’m in a business
0:13:29 where people write new letters. You want to talk about finding your mission, imagine waking up,
0:13:37 going to your mailbox and to letters of people thanking you for sharing best practices or
0:13:44 helping, whatever it is. What a gift. What a freaking gift.
0:13:53 If everybody does the three things that we’re going to talk about in the next 20 minutes,
0:14:00 in 2025, and does everything else the same that they did in 2024, at the end of the year,
0:14:04 they see me in an airport. They’re going to bear hug me because they’re going to be like,
0:14:10 that was so easy. And I can’t believe how much better my life just got. That’s what we’re going
0:14:15 to cover. So the first thing is closing out the year, getting light, doing all those things,
0:14:23 to get light, writing handwritten letters. And then the other thing that I do is I try to identify
0:14:29 like what I want to fix going into next year because everybody wants to be a 10 out of 10.
0:14:37 No one signed up to be an 8 out of 10, a B minus. Everybody wants to be as close to a 10 out of 10.
0:14:42 But if you have certain things that are broken, even if you make a bazillion dollars and your
0:14:48 business goes up 50% and you’re crazy growth, you’re never going to be a 10 out of 10 if the
0:14:55 marriage is broken, something’s wrong, whatever. So what I always tell people to do is imagine
0:15:02 guys had it, you guys can do this right now. Imagine you had a big blender and in the blender,
0:15:06 you put all the buckets, Sam, that you were just talking about, all the buckets in your life into
0:15:11 the blender, your finances, your health, your weight, your relationships, where you live,
0:15:17 like everything going on in your life, put it in a blender, shake it up. And then on a 1 to 10,
0:15:25 with 10 being like the ultimate in happiness and 1 being rock bottom, like again, what’s your
0:15:30 number, your weight, your relationships, your work, your finances, you put it all in, you shake it,
0:15:36 are you a 7? Are you a 5? You don’t have to tell me. Are you an 8? What are you? Now what I love
0:15:42 about that exercise is immediately your brain goes to a 10 and then the two or three things that are
0:15:47 bothering you pop in your head like crystal clear and take that number down. So maybe it was like,
0:15:52 oh, my finances aren’t there. Or like, I hate my job or things aren’t great in my work. Whatever
0:15:57 came into your head, those are the things you got to work on. They’re not going to magically get better.
0:16:04 Hey, you don’t just like, oh, you know, like my relationship stinks. It doesn’t like magically
0:16:08 get better. You got to work on it. And did anything pop into your guys head right away?
0:16:15 Yeah. So I put it all in the blender. I got to an 8 and a half and right away, you’re right,
0:16:21 I started at a 10 because I’m happy, right? And I said, well, the weight’s got to come down a
0:16:24 little bit. All right, the weight’s got to come down a little bit. So that’s a point off. I want
0:16:30 to have healthy habits that I’m proud of. And then the second one was, you know, I think I’m
0:16:34 really good at this content thing. I love making content, but I’m still spending way too much of
0:16:39 my time in my businesses. And I really want to make that shift from operator to creator. And
0:16:42 I’ve made good progress, but I’m not all the way where I want to be there.
0:16:49 I had a six. I had a daughter and I’m loving being a father and she’s fantastic. That’s a 10.
0:16:55 Finances, I did really well. That’s a 10. But I’m bombarded with inbound messages and I don’t
0:17:03 have a system to where I’m saying no to 10 minutes out of the time. The 10 minute time request and
0:17:08 context switching is ruining my life. And it feels like I can’t get into flow. So I’m going to give
0:17:18 it a six. Okay. A six overall. Yeah. Because the context switching, I get so much joy being in the
0:17:24 flow of something and both a combination of lack of system and addiction to social media and text
0:17:30 and all that shit. It’s brought me down a whole bunch. You know, two thoughts. One, when you’re
0:17:36 doing the exercise, there’s no comparison against anybody else. So like, you know, if you are comfortable
0:17:40 with the money you’re making or whatever, you’re not parenting yourself to buff it. It’s like,
0:17:44 you know, I’m comfortable where I am. You’re never going to win the comparison game because
0:17:49 there’s always going to be someone. So that’s one thing just to think about. And then, you know,
0:17:54 not to knock you at all, Sam, I think I was super honest of you. But like for anybody out there that
0:17:59 was a six, if like if Mike’s son comes home with a 60 on a test, it’s an F. Yeah, no, but I’m agreeing
0:18:04 with you. Like it brought me down a lot. But the good thing is it’s all fixable and you have to
0:18:09 identify it and like, look, I’m not here to be a therapist or preach. All I’m saying is knowing
0:18:13 what those things that are that need a little bit of help and if it’s your weight, you know,
0:18:19 then just in 2025, be like, you know what, man, everything’s clicking. I’m going to address this.
0:18:24 I’m just going to be a little bit, that’s all. You know, so, but you have to, my point is for
0:18:31 the listeners, like you got to identify it because if you don’t, it just keeps compounding.
0:18:36 And then you’re playing, it’s just harder to like catch up when it’s compounding.
0:18:39 So you close out the year, you get light, you clean the closet, clean the desk,
0:18:45 clean the cars, you email bankruptcy, you get the files, you write the handwritten letters,
0:18:49 you give thanks, you do the blender exercise, you identify the two or three shifts I’m trying to make.
0:18:53 That is that, is that how you close out the year or is there anything else to that?
0:18:54 Yeah, it’s like a personal review.
0:18:59 And just to make it super practical, are you like writing this down? Are you just
0:19:01 thinking about it? Do you say it out loud? Do you do this with somebody else?
0:19:04 Do you look at your calendar? How do you even go back through the year?
0:19:06 Can you just give us like, if I wanted to sit down an hour after this,
0:19:09 because I’m so pumped after this episode, I wanted to go do this.
0:19:13 Can you just give me the like kind of the, a little more detailed instruction on how I would do it?
0:19:18 Well, I get really excited about getting light, like, you know, so I don’t have to write anything
0:19:22 down to clean out, to clean up my closet and my desk and my emails. Like that’s all just something
0:19:28 that like, you know, you feel accomplished when you do that. And we’re doing all the other stuff
0:19:33 anyway. We’re, we’re, we have businesses, we’re doing all this, but you just feel really good
0:19:37 about yourself. As far as like handwritten letters, I do make a list. I keep it every
0:19:42 year of like kind of just, man, I just think about like, what podcasts were I want for me?
0:19:48 Was I on who really went above and beyond for me this year? Or my kids or my family, you know,
0:19:54 I had a, I went on a trip to Africa with a great tour guide. I had a gentleman in Kenya that ran
0:19:59 with me every day to like, chaperone me through the jungle. I’m gonna send him and like, just that
0:20:04 kind of stuff. And I don’t want anything for it. It just makes me feel good. And I know it probably
0:20:10 makes them feel good. So I do all that. And then I, and then like, again, you just took that exercise
0:20:16 took 30 seconds to identify what we got to work on. And then I just make a mental note about it.
0:20:20 Like, you know, I want to get better at it. This whole process we’re talking about, it’s like,
0:20:27 super fast. All right, so that’s the first thing. The second thing I do is I have a planning system
0:20:33 that I’ve been using that I swear by it’s there’s three steps. And this is what I was talking about.
0:20:39 If you do these three things, you’re going to bear hug me. Very simple. So the first thing that I do
0:20:48 is there’s an old Japanese ritual called the misogi. And we took, we took the liberty to tweak
0:20:55 the exact definition of it. But but the way we look at it is that the the concept around a misogi
0:21:02 is every year, you do one big year defining thing. So again, at the end of the year, even though you’re
0:21:09 busy with all this stuff, you have one year defining thing that to really show for your time over the
0:21:15 365 days. So for example, like two years ago, and this is big, I rode my bike across America.
0:21:20 Last year, I did rim to rim to rim with some friends. In 2015, I launched a book
0:21:28 living with the seal 2017. I launched a company called 29 or 29. Like every year going back literally
0:21:35 to like, you know, 20 years ago, I can name like the one thing that I did that was really,
0:21:39 really year defined. So at the beginning of the year, I just I might not have that idea and that
0:21:43 could be like, I’m going to launch a podcast. I’m going to quit smoking. I’m going to run my first
0:21:48 marathon. You know, but like, what is that one thing that you’re going to look back to someone
0:21:52 says, how was your years that I was unbelievable, man? I rode my freaking bike across the country.
0:21:59 I ran the New York marathon this year. You know, I think that’s really, really important. Now, A,
0:22:06 it’s important because like you want to have something to show for it. But D, I find when
0:22:11 you have something on the calendar, a goal, something like that you’re something that you’re
0:22:23 working towards. That’s challenging. You show up at work and at home completely different.
0:22:29 You show up completely different. A, if I’m running the New York marathon, Sam, I now have
0:22:34 to say no to the things that I don’t have the time to give people because I got to train.
0:22:39 I’m adding, you know, hours of training in. So now you have a vehicle to say no to things.
0:22:42 But B is, you know, you’re something that you’re looking forward to.
0:22:45 One of the books that I read this last year, I think it was Michael, something
0:22:49 Easter, maybe the comfort crisis. And he talked about the Musogi. I had one. It was a 50 mile
0:22:57 race. And the Musogi was, you have a 50% chance of failing. I ended up hurting my Achilles really
0:23:03 badly. And I was like, fuck, so I failed. And it was awesome. Those have something to look forward.
0:23:08 I’m picking a new one now. But you didn’t fail, Sam. You just didn’t finish.
0:23:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was hard ass work. And it was awesome. It felt great to have that on
0:23:19 the calendar. Yeah. But what you did was amazing. You’re saying, I’m going to go double the longest
0:23:25 run I’ve ever done in my life. Okay, I’m going to do an ultramarathon on top of everything I have
0:23:32 going on. I’m going to challenge myself. It may or may not work. That’s not an F. I mean, that’s an
0:23:37 A in adventure. You just didn’t finish it. I mean, not everything we do is going to work. I’ve had
0:23:42 businesses that have failed races that I have DNF’s. But I love that you put it on your calendar.
0:23:49 Well, my kids, I have four kids 15, 10, 10 and nine. All right. You know what they’re talking
0:23:55 about right now? They’re talking about that we’re going skiing in two weeks. So they’re going to
0:24:00 school. And I’m like, guys, two more weeks of school, then we’re going skiing. Because that’s
0:24:06 on their calendar. It’s helping them go through school focused lock in because they know they’re
0:24:14 going to get this reward winter vacation coming up. Adults are the same way. I’m willing to
0:24:18 go work really hard if I know I have a vacation coming up or a race that I’m going to do or
0:24:23 something that I’m excited about. So having one big year defining thing really important.
0:24:28 Do you know what yours is going to be for 25? I don’t. I don’t. And that’s okay. But I know
0:24:33 that I’m going to have one. And what it does is it also opens up my mind to adventure.
0:24:42 All right. So a while back, we had Gary Tan. He’s the president of white commentator,
0:24:45 which is the most successful incubator of all time. We had him on the podcast
0:24:50 and he said that the future of businesses is creator led. And that’s why I’m interested in
0:24:57 the podcast creators are brands. Creators are brands explores how storytellers are building
0:25:00 brands online. They’re going to cover the entire creative process. They’re going to talk about
0:25:04 navigating brand partnerships. They’re going to talk about what you need to know about growing
0:25:09 your social media platforms, everything you need to know on this topic. Creators are brands is the
0:25:14 pot. So check it out wherever you get your podcast. Again, it’s called creators are brands with Tom
0:25:23 Boyd. All right. Back to the episode. Which misogy do you look back on most fondly? If you
0:25:30 look back, you know, 10 years or so, I did a race called Ultraman, which is a 6.2 mile open water
0:25:41 swim, a 275 mile bike and a 52 mile run. And I was insanely, I was going to defer to the following
0:25:47 year, two weeks before the race, because I didn’t, I hadn’t swam at all. I, I didn’t, I didn’t have a
0:25:54 wetsuit and the water was 57 degrees. So I called it, my friend was a coach and I’m like, you know,
0:26:00 listen, I haven’t been training at all, zero. And there’s no, I don’t think I can do this.
0:26:03 And I’m thinking about deferring, thinking he’s going to be like, of course,
0:26:10 defer, train, so you don’t get hurt. And he was like, absolutely not. The challenge is going
0:26:14 to be, you know, if you train for a year, you’re going to be able to do it. You have no idea if
0:26:21 you’re going to do it. Dude, a six, a six mile swim alone would take like three and a half hours,
0:26:27 right? Or if you’re a bad swimmer like me, five. But yeah. And also like 57 degree waters is,
0:26:34 I did a marathon 57 degree. It was horrible or triathlon. It was awful. Sam, I showed up at
0:26:41 the event and I jumped into the water the day before and my, I literally like my face hit the
0:26:46 water and it was like, you’re like, I’m out. Out. I’m done. It’s like, it’s like, it’s like getting
0:26:50 punched in the nose, like for the first time when you want a box. You’re like, this sucks, dude.
0:26:57 I don’t want to do this. But I finished it. I finished it. And, you know, when I was going
0:27:02 through this event, those kind of challenges, it’s really important to break things into digestible
0:27:08 bikes. If you’re starting a business, you want to put things into digestible bikes. So when I
0:27:13 started Marquis Jack, if they would have said, you need FAA approval, department of transportation
0:27:18 approval, build the sales team, raise money. I’m like, well, I’m as a kiddie full attended four
0:27:23 year. What are you talking about? I mean, what would you say the first thing I need was FAA approval?
0:27:27 Well, there’s got to be a lawyer that does that specializes in that. Let me get, got that guy,
0:27:32 got, what was the second thing we need? Like, so it was the same thing here. I got to swim 10,
0:27:41 six miles impossible. Can I swim to that, to the next, to the buoy? Yes. Can I swim buoy to buoy?
0:27:47 Yes. So let me just break this down into 40 buoy to buoy swims because I can, let me break the,
0:27:52 I can run for seven minutes forever. So let me run for seven minutes, walk for three,
0:27:59 and just repeat that cycle. And that’s sort of how I attacked it. In any event, we pick a Masogi.
0:28:04 All right. So I don’t know what mine is yet, Sean, for next year, but I know I’m going to have one.
0:28:09 And just for the listeners, you know, just the notion of like, yeah, you know what? I want to
0:28:15 have something on my calendar. Now you like, you’ve like reprogram your brain to just be aware
0:28:21 of adventure. And that’s already a step in the right direction if you’re head down and work.
0:28:26 The second thing I do is something that I’ve named after my friend Kevin, I call it Kevin’s rule.
0:28:32 Kevin and I were, took our, our children, his daughter and my son. My son was eight at the time.
0:28:38 I think his daughter was nine to Mount Washington in the winter. It was, it was like minus 30 with
0:28:45 the windshield. And we have a minus 40 sleeping bag. We’re sleeping in the snow. It’s insane.
0:28:49 And we’re camping out overnight. And I’m like, Kevin, he’s a police officer in New York. I’m
0:28:57 like, there’s eight billion people in the world. We’re the only four people in the middle of Mount
0:29:02 Washington, man. This is amazing. I’m like, you know, how often do you do stuff like this?
0:29:09 And he lights up. He was like, oh, he’s like, every other month, I do something one day or one
0:29:15 weekend that I normally wouldn’t have done. I’m like, what are you talking about? He’s like,
0:29:19 instead of like watching the Georgia football game, I’ll take my kids fishing. I’ll come to Mount
0:29:25 Washington, I’ll go visit my college friends. I’m like, well, why? He goes, well, if I can’t take
0:29:35 one day every eight weeks to do something like my work life is at a balance. But if I do that,
0:29:42 I’ll have six little mini adventures a year. I’m like, yeah. He’s like, well, how old are you? Well,
0:29:48 if you’re 35, Sean, you look to be, let’s say you look to be 85. That’s 50 years. If you do those two
0:29:58 things, I just said, you’ll have 50 year defining things and 300 mini adventures. That’s an insane
0:30:07 life. That’s an insane life. At the end of the day, buy a 50 ultra man kind of things and 300
0:30:15 mini adventures. Just because I managed my clock, right? Like I won life. Do your mini adventures
0:30:21 in your Masogi, do they stack to where it’s like, well, I already did the ultra man. What’s like
0:30:26 the ultra, ultra man? Are you trying to one up them each time? Not at all. I’m just looking for
0:30:35 things that excite me. Actually, this year, I do have a, it’s not challenging enough for me to
0:30:41 consider it like a Masogi, but I’m going on a tour of the world’s best saunas in Finland with 12
0:30:49 friends. So we’re going for 10 days. We’re hitting 30 plus saunas over the course of 12 days
0:30:59 in Finland. So that is a big thing for 2025. Hey, real quick, if you’re liking this episode with
0:31:03 Jesse, you’ve got to listen to the first one we did with him. It’s the story of how he built his
0:31:08 fortune, his first business, how he failed, and then ultimately a mentor stepped in and gave
0:31:12 him some tough love, let’s say, and turned his life around. He tells a story about how he started
0:31:17 a private jet company, ended up selling that to Warren Buffett. There’s a Matt Damon cameo in it.
0:31:22 Crazy stories from this guy. He also brainstormed business ideas of what he would do if he was
0:31:26 young and needed to build a fortune from scratch again. So go check that out. It’s episode number
0:31:30 504. You can either Google it or in the show notes below, we’re going to put a link to it. And also,
0:31:35 at the end of this episode, we are giving away a few thousand dollars of his big ass calendar,
0:31:39 the one that he uses to plan his 2025. We say the code at the end of this episode. So listen
0:31:43 to that, and then you can go and get one of those for free. All right, back to the episode.
0:31:49 So if I’m getting this right, the Misogi is more of a challenge, something that excites you,
0:31:55 something that it’s a big adventure. It’s year defining. And you’ll get the fun of progress
0:31:59 along the way as you make progress. You’ll get the anticipation and then you’ll get the year
0:32:05 defining, a sense of accomplishment, whether you win or just you did it. And then the adventures
0:32:11 are more about, is that just more about non-routine? So just kind of making sure you are not just
0:32:15 every Saturday. We go here every Sunday. We do this with my kids and just shaking up the routine
0:32:18 with something fun. It doesn’t have to be super challenging, but is that the right way to think
0:32:25 about those? Absolutely. It’s non-routine. It’s planning adventure, planning newness. It’s prioritizing
0:32:32 yourself. And it’s not, it’s playing life on offense. It’s not letting your calendar fill up.
0:32:38 You know, look, if we just sit back, it’s going to be weddings, meetings, conferences, appointments.
0:32:44 And this is like, what do we do? What are we doing? How many of those things are Jesse
0:32:53 by himself or with buddies or Jesse, like the family? I love to do things with my friends.
0:32:59 I love to do things with my family. I treat my family stuff differently. So I also plan family
0:33:07 trips, but you know, I have the luxury of time. You know, people talk about rich and the first
0:33:11 thing that comes into your head is like money, obviously. And that is important. And clearly,
0:33:18 that’s an important part of being rich. But there are so many buckets of rich. Are you
0:33:27 spiritually rich? Are you time rich? I’m insanely time rich right now, which I think is the most
0:33:36 important thing, especially in your fifties. I’m insanely time rich. So I can add the luxury of
0:33:44 doing things spontaneously when I want, et cetera. I’m spiritually rich. I’m socially rich.
0:33:51 If we did a little sidebar here, because the three of us are all lucky to be in a position where
0:33:58 we don’t have to work, we could just spend all year training for an MMA fight, or whatever it is.
0:34:02 But I think a lot of people who listen to that may not be at that, they still have the job,
0:34:06 they still have whatever, the day-to-day responsibilities. So could you take 30
0:34:11 seconds to sort of speak to like how you would, maybe is there any difference in how you would
0:34:16 approach it, the misogynies or the adventures, if somebody’s not financially free, where their
0:34:21 calendar is theirs to do whatever they want with? Listen, I have been doing this since my journey
0:34:31 was insane. It was crazy. My 20s were spent on couches, friends, apartments, just trying
0:34:38 to figure it out, pay my rent, all that stuff. But I was still so rich with adventure. Every year,
0:34:44 I would go to the Coney Island Polar Plunge on New Years, in order to cost a subway token,
0:34:50 subway token, in order to cost to do the trip to Mount Washington with my kids, $18 to park.
0:34:59 We live in a country that offers the most insane rivers, mountains, national parks, oceans, hikes,
0:35:08 streams, I mean, conferences. You could fill up your life with adventure. I should write a book,
0:35:13 filling up your life on adventure for under $400 a year, because you can do it.
0:35:21 I understand that obviously, mine can be bigger, and it’s easier for me, and that’s true. But I’ve
0:35:26 been doing these things for a long time. I just took my son to the Polar Plunge at Lake Lanier,
0:35:33 here in Georgia. There’s just so much stuff that you could do that, again, is outside of the norm.
0:35:42 People think you don’t have to climb Mount Everest to feel like you’ve accomplished something.
0:35:46 You have to just get out there and do something that makes you proud of you.
0:35:54 There’s a great story. Do you know Brene Brown? She has this great story she tells
0:36:00 about her daughter going to a swim beat. She was scared to do the swim beat. She was like,
0:36:07 “I’m not going to do well. I’m scared to even just swim.” She talks about how her daughter,
0:36:13 after the swim beat, she lost the race. She maybe got whatever. She didn’t do so well.
0:36:19 She got out. She was feeling bummed. Brene Brown’s quote is like, “Winning isn’t always
0:36:23 about getting first place. Sometimes winning is just getting off the block and getting wet.”
0:36:30 And you jumped off the blocks and you got wet. That’s a huge win. You have become a more brave
0:36:34 person by having done that. I think there’s something to that. Because when I hear about
0:36:41 the Ultraman races and stuff like that, I’m like, “That’s so far from where I am.” But at the same
0:36:44 time, when I heard this Brene Brown quote about sometimes winning is just getting off the block
0:36:48 and getting wet, that changed my perspective. I started doing a lot more stuff because I changed
0:36:52 what winning meant. Also, Sean, I think a lot of people listen to this stuff and they’re like,
0:36:58 “Oh, Jesse’s into fitness shit. I’m also into weightlifting and things like that.” And I think
0:37:05 they say, “Well, I need to go and do a marathon or a long race.” That’s not true. I think that you
0:37:11 can do things that fit your interests significantly more because he’s got a hat that says all day
0:37:14 running, running is your passion. I don’t think you have to necessarily do something that falls
0:37:20 into that endurance category or whatever is popular. I wanted this year, Sam, I want to go
0:37:24 to one of those silent retreats where you sit in a dark room for two or three days. But listen,
0:37:31 we’re going into a new year, all right? And I’m giving suggestions and I recognize that everyone
0:37:39 has a different dynamic. Time is different, finances are different. But what I love to get
0:37:44 out of this call is I just want to fire people up for the opportunity that we all have to have
0:37:55 an incredible 2025. Go master something. Go learn a language. Go learn a certain skill. Go volunteer.
0:38:01 Do something that makes you proud of yourself at the end of 2025. Do something that makes you feel
0:38:08 accomplished and proud of yourself at 2025. Now, I’m not saying go ride your bike across America
0:38:14 just because I did that. No, not at all. But do something that you look back on the year and be
0:38:21 like, “This was amazing.” And I’m just saying that there’s a lot of things that don’t cost money.
0:38:27 If you’re intentional, if you schedule it, which we’ll get to in a second, and you play a little
0:38:32 bit of offense. So, Masochi, Kevin’s rule. The third thing that I do is very simple.
0:38:38 I found this works a lot better for me than New Year’s resolutions and maybe different for other
0:38:45 people. But rather than doing all these goals and stuff which I never accomplished, very simply,
0:38:52 every quarter, I add a winning habit to my life. For example, I don’t drink enough water.
0:39:00 I’m going to drink 100 ounces of water as a new habit. I’m never going to be late to a meeting.
0:39:04 I’m going to add a 10-minute a day meditation practice. I don’t know.
0:39:07 What habit did you add last quarter?
0:39:14 This is crazy, but I’m so inflexible. I found something on YouTube that was basically inflexible.
0:39:20 I feel like I can’t even touch my knees. I found something that’s like five exercises you should
0:39:24 do before you have a cup of coffee. The first thing you do when you wake up. I’ve been doing
0:39:30 these five stretches. It takes six minutes pretty much every day. I can send you guys the link.
0:39:38 They’re really easy. My point is, we are a product of winning habits, winning routines,
0:39:42 and a winning mindset. That’s what we all want. We want to have winning routines,
0:39:49 winning habits, and a winning mindset. By layering in, imagine if you do that. Let’s just
0:39:54 say we took a five-year look on life. My life is going to radically change in five years.
0:40:00 I have a 15-year-old son. He’ll be at college. My little boys now, they’re going to be
0:40:07 in high school. I like to look at things in five-year windows. If your parents are elderly,
0:40:14 they might not be here in five years. Mine were five years ago. Mine aren’t now. Your life changes
0:40:20 frigging like this. You got to think about this stuff. Imagine in five years, you just did the
0:40:29 three things that I said. You had five insane experiences. You added 30 mini adventures that
0:40:39 you wouldn’t have had by taking six days of 365 a year. Come on, man. Now you added 20
0:40:48 winning habits. You’re fucking Jason Bourne. You’re Jason Bourne. This is not difficult.
0:40:53 Well, all this stuff, I’m like, this is badass. Tell me how you plan it and how you actually put
0:40:59 it in practice. You’re saying you’re a product of your habits and things like that. What’s the
0:41:03 habit of planning and thinking of these things and actually getting them on the calendar or
0:41:08 whatever? I don’t know, people listening to this audio or video, but this is my entire 2025.
0:41:12 If you’re not on YouTube, he’s holding up the big ass calendar.
0:41:21 As soon as I know I have something, for me, I put it on my calendar, on paper. I write it down.
0:41:25 Now, there’s a lot of research around writing it down versus putting it in your phone,
0:41:31 goals that are written down. There’s a ton of research around that. But as soon as I have any
0:41:36 of these trips, I put it down. I put all my big events for the year down immediately, last day
0:41:41 of school, first day of school. If you have kids, first day of camp, if they go to camp, last day
0:41:49 of camp, spring break trips, date nights with my wife. I take a quarterly staycation or trip with
0:41:54 my wife. My wife and I have our own little system. We have a date night once a week, Wednesdays,
0:42:00 and then every quarter, we try to plan something together. We’re going to New York next week,
0:42:04 but it could be just, we’re going to have an overnight staycation here, but we try to make
0:42:11 sure we have four year date nights as much as we can, family dinners, and then the rest is just
0:42:16 family trips. Did you travel a lot? I travel a lot, but I put it on my calendar because once
0:42:21 it’s in my calendar, now I have permission to say no. I wish I could go dinner with you guys,
0:42:29 but I’m actually, I’m camping out with my kids that weekend. Now, I’m taking control and I’m
0:42:36 dominating the year, not other people taking it away from me. You can laugh about it, but I’m dead
0:42:42 serious. I think it’s cool. You know that experiment where they take a jar and they’re like, “All right,
0:42:46 you have these rocks and these sand. Put as much as you can in the jar.” Basically, if you put the
0:42:50 sand in first, you can’t put any of the rocks in because all the little meetings and appointments
0:42:55 and Zoom calls and everything else takes up all the space versus if you put the rocks in first,
0:42:59 and then you could pour as much sand will fit all the way around it. That’s basically kind of like
0:43:03 the model of what you’re doing. You’re basically saying, “I’m going to put all the shit I really
0:43:06 want to be intentional about, the life experiences I’m going to remember with the people I care about.
0:43:10 I’m going to put those on the calendar first, and then I’ll let all the little knick-knack appointments
0:43:15 fill in around that where there’s still space.” If I do it the other way, like most people do,
0:43:18 where you say, “Yeah, yeah, like when I have time, then I’m going to do something great,
0:43:21 then they never have time, and nothing ever happens. The rocks never get in.”
0:43:25 Exactly. The reason why, guys, I like to have this on one big visual,
0:43:33 like looking at all 365 days on one page. The reason why I like to do that is, A,
0:43:38 I’m visual. I need to see it. We all kind of think in pictures and we think visually.
0:43:46 But now, two things. One, I can see where my gaps are. I can see where my gaps are,
0:43:53 where I have more time available and not. Two, I can track towards my goals so much better,
0:43:59 versus if they live in my phone, and I use my phone for my appointments, Zoom calls,
0:44:03 and all that stuff. But I don’t like scrolling through it to be like, “Oh, my maritime,
0:44:07 and I’m scrolling all the way to November.” I like to see it like, “Oh, I have this many days.”
0:44:15 It’s like the roadmap is visual. To have it all on one big calendar is really helpful.
0:44:23 And I’m super spontaneous. I know that, look, if you don’t plan it, it probably won’t happen.
0:44:28 So knowing that, after being on Earth for five and a half decades,
0:44:33 what do I do? I want to plan as much as I can. I want to get in front of it.
0:44:38 So I sit with my wife. We sync up all of our stuff. In 2025, we’re going to, like I said,
0:44:45 I’m going to Finland. We have a trip to Japan. We’re going to Greece. We have put all this down
0:44:51 on our account. My 2025 is already mapped out, and it’s insane. All I have to do is follow the
0:45:02 script. Now, yours might not be as wild as mine, but the point is, you control it, and you can
0:45:08 map out this incredible year. But are you picking those quarterly habits as well as those mini-adventures?
0:45:14 I’m not. I’m not because I’m open. I’m always listening to people. And when I was, when I had
0:45:19 Marquis Jet, which is a company that I had, I started with my partner when I was, I don’t know,
0:45:27 29, 30 years old. My dad owned a plumbing supply house. I had no relationship with money. We never
0:45:34 talked about it. I had no business experience. I didn’t know shit. And all of a sudden, I had this
0:45:43 private jet company. We’re flying 3,000 of the Hoos who have pop culture, CEOs, top CEOs, athletes,
0:45:50 entertainers. And I’m getting access to these people. And I’m really curious. I’m 30 years old.
0:45:55 And anytime I had a minute with anybody at the airport, if I was visiting a customer,
0:46:01 client, I would say to them, like, I want to know how they lived rich. Like you mentioned people
0:46:05 here might not be, well, they might be one day. Who’s going to tell them how to do? Where do you
0:46:10 vacation? What do you do with your money? What time do you go to bed? How many newspapers do you read?
0:46:16 I want to know it all. I want to know the best habits and routines and mindset from the best
0:46:24 people on the planet. And I became a sponge. And I remember asking this guy, sitting down with this
0:46:30 guy. I’m not going to say his first name is James. He was insanely wealthy. I’m 30. I have like nothing.
0:46:35 And I asked him, I said, James, how do you live rich? And he’s like, he sent to me, I read,
0:46:40 and he walked me through his day and wearing vacations and what he does with his money and
0:46:45 how much gold he has buried in his backyard and all this shit. Never forgot it. One thing that he
0:46:53 said to me, one thing he said to me, he goes, and I take three hours a day from myself. And I’m like,
0:46:57 I can never do that. There’s no, it’s cumulative. I’m like, well, where does that look like for you,
0:47:02 James? He’s like, oh, I might take a 30 minute sun in the morning. I might take a little time at
0:47:08 lunch to read, go for a walk, work out. The end of the day, it’s about three hours a day for myself.
0:47:15 And I was like, since then, I’m like, and I was like, why? And he was like, well, you know,
0:47:23 if you check the U box, you show up as a parent, husband, CEO, boss, employee, so much better.
0:47:28 You don’t resent your wife or your husband or your partner for taking away time of the things you
0:47:34 want to do, all this stuff, long story short, I started taking two or three hours a day.
0:47:37 Right after that, me, I’m like, it works for him. I’m not going to wait till I have a
0:47:44 bazillion dollars. I’m going to do it now. So time rich, something that we talked about earlier,
0:47:49 doesn’t mean you have to be rich to be time rich. You have to be organized, scheduled,
0:47:56 and allocated to prioritize you. And that’s all I’m saying for 2025. You might say, Jesse,
0:48:03 this is hokey pokey. Fine. But all I’m telling you is carve out time for you to give you adventure,
0:48:07 make you feel a cop. Work’s always going to be there. It’s always going to be there.
0:48:15 Hey, Sean here. I want to tell you a little story about Winston Churchill. So Churchill once said,
0:48:21 first, we shape our buildings, and thereafter, they shape us. And I think this is true not just
0:48:25 for the buildings we see in cities, but also for the building blocks you choose in your company.
0:48:30 For any company that I start, I use Mercury for all of my banking needs. Why? Well, it was
0:48:34 built by a YC founder, and you could tell this is built by a founder who understands the needs of
0:48:38 other founders. Second thing is this modern, it’s clean, easy to use. The design is really nice.
0:48:43 You never have to drive somewhere, park, put coins in the meter, get out just to do one simple task.
0:48:47 You could do everything in just a couple of clicks. They got bill pay, checking account,
0:48:51 savings account, wire transfers, everything you need. They got it. I use it for not one,
0:48:54 but actually six of my companies right now and actually even have a personal account with them.
0:48:58 It’s kind of amazing. So if you’re ready to operate in the future, head over to mercury.com,
0:49:03 apply in minutes. Disclaimer, Mercury is a financial technology company out of bank banking
0:49:07 services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC.
0:49:10 Thank you to Winston Churchill for that little ad segment. All right, back to this episode.
0:49:20 On a week-to-week basis, do you make a list of your to-dos for the week before?
0:49:29 Yeah. So I look at my week on Sunday night. I take it from my calendar and from my phone,
0:49:34 and I put it on paper. I use a planner, but you can also just write a piece of paper and I write
0:49:39 down my day. It’s like, I can move things around and then I can prepare better. I like to have a
0:49:45 week at a glance view of everything. And then the last thing I would say, this is less like a little
0:49:50 bonus thought for people is, remember when you were a kid, and I don’t know if your parents gave
0:49:54 you vitamins? Did they give you vitamins when you were a kid? Yeah, Flintstones vitamins for sure.
0:50:00 Yeah, Flintstones, right? I had Flintstones vitamins as a kid. I had like anti-Flintstone
0:50:08 vitamins, but that would be podcast number three. The vitamins were like, you take one vitamin and
0:50:15 it had like 500% of everything you needed in every category and like one little pill.
0:50:20 And that’s unbelievable, but you took your daily vitamins and it checked all the boxes.
0:50:27 So I have my own version of this that I do, Sam and Sean, that works really well. So like,
0:50:32 if you made a list, imagine all the time in the world, you could do whatever you wanted to do
0:50:37 every day. Well, how would you spend your day? Well, I know exactly what I would want to do. I
0:50:43 love saunas. I love coal plunges. I love running, biking, swimming and exercise. I love doing
0:50:47 breathwork. I love taking walks with my wife. I love playing with my kids. Like, I’m very clear
0:50:53 on what it is. By the way, know what I say? Do I say I love buying art? But I don’t,
0:50:59 those are the things I love to do. They’re very simple. I inherited that from a very simple man,
0:51:06 my dad. The, let’s say I have 10 of those things on my list. Okay, those are my vitamins. Those are
0:51:13 the things that make me strong that I need. Every day I try to do two, take two or three of those
0:51:20 vitamins. I can’t do them all, but I try to do two or three. So today it’s, we’re recording this now,
0:51:27 it’s one o’clock, but I’ve already gone for an hour run and I’ve taken an hour sauna. So of the three
0:51:32 hours I allocate for myself, I’ve already done that two of them. So like my day is good and I’ve
0:51:38 taken two of my vitamins. So now when I show up for you guys, I’m all in. I’m not outsourcing,
0:51:45 like we talked about, I’m all in, you know, because I’ve checked me. I’m showing up so much better.
0:51:52 That is so frigging important. And that’s every day for me. This is amazing. This is awesome.
0:51:57 Before I ask you my kind of, I have one burning question. Before I ask you my burning question,
0:52:02 is there anything else in the planning, how to make a kick-ass defining 2025? Is there anything
0:52:06 else we missed before we did that? Did that, or were those the big ones? I think at like a high
0:52:14 level, trying to get people to rethink how they approach the new year, I think that, you know,
0:52:19 just get started on those things. I mean, you might not have it all laid out. I don’t have it
0:52:25 all laid out yet, but put the stuff you want to do down first on a calendar or wherever you want to
0:52:34 put it and build a year that you’re super proud of. Because let me just say this, Sean, we don’t get a
0:52:41 lot of years. We don’t get a lot of years. And we don’t know how many years we’re going to get.
0:52:48 So shame on you if you waste 2025 because you want to like, oh, I’ll just do it next the following
0:52:55 year. Time doesn’t work like that. You don’t have the luxury of like, you don’t dictate the pace.
0:53:02 Sometimes the pace dictates you and circumstances change. And like, you know, everyone thinks like,
0:53:08 I guarantee you, everybody here knows they’re going to die. That’s listening to this. But I guarantee
0:53:14 less than 1% of our listeners have their graveyard plot picked out. Because they don’t think they’re
0:53:19 going to die anytime soon. They don’t think that like your life could change like that. My life’s
0:53:24 like that. My life’s been turned upside down. I have people that my friends are getting diagnosed
0:53:29 with shit. You know, like it changes, man. You can go outside and someone could be texting and
0:53:38 you get smacked. It just, it could go like that. You don’t know. So, you know, I’m 56 years old,
0:53:43 the average American lives to be 78. I don’t know. I’m not really good at math.
0:53:51 But that’s 22 years if I’m average. And, you know, I was on the lake this summer. I didn’t see a lot
0:53:58 of 78 year old guys weight boarding. Like the years that you have to do an Ultraman, what do
0:54:03 they say? I was just listening to something. They said, what, 63 is the shelf life of like,
0:54:10 healthy years or something. You know, like it’s insane. So it’s also insane that you plan these,
0:54:14 you like, well, I’ll get to it when I’m older. But then when you’re older, it’s like, I don’t
0:54:18 want to fucking do that. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I’ve always criticized actually
0:54:22 Warren Buffett where he talks about like delayed gratification and things like this. And I’m like,
0:54:26 dude, you’ve been the man for years. Like you enjoy it. Enjoy that shit now. Like sometimes
0:54:30 patience is actually. It’s time rich, man. You don’t have to be rich to be time rich.
0:54:35 That book that went kind of viral this year, last year, Die with Zero talks about some of these
0:54:38 principles. But he has a great story about one of them that he was talking about when he was in
0:54:43 his 20s and he was on his career ladder climb and he was at some investment bank and his buddy who
0:54:47 worked with them, they’re kind of both 23 years old or whatever, was like, hey, dude, what if we
0:54:51 just go to Europe backpacking for like, you know, six weeks? He’s like, how are you going to get
0:54:54 six weeks off? He’s like, I’m not, I got to quit. And like, I hope I’ll be able to get the job when
0:54:58 I come back. But like, I’m going to do this trip. And he was like, dude, you’re crazy. That’s like
0:55:03 irresponsible. I’m going to do the responsible thing. And he didn’t do that. And he’s, he told
0:55:07 himself he would do it, you know, maybe next year or the year after that, maybe some, some reason
0:55:11 he’d be able to do it in the future. So, you know, he’s like, as soon as he came back after six weeks,
0:55:15 he didn’t have the job back, but he met up with the guy. He’s like, from the glow on this dude’s
0:55:20 face, I realized then I made a mistake. And he talks about how when he was 33 then 10 years later,
0:55:23 he finally like took a career break. And he’s like, went to Europe. He’s like,
0:55:29 it’s not so cool sleeping in a hostel when you’re 33. You know, it’s a different, he’s like, I learned
0:55:33 that some things you can’t even just, it’s not even just doing them later is worse. He’s like,
0:55:38 it’s just not the same thing. Like that’s a 23 year old trip. I didn’t do it when I was 23.
0:55:42 I did it when I was 33 or 34. And I had to have a whole different experience. There was no going
0:55:48 back to that. I think it’s really important to say yes to adventure. And it’s never the right time.
0:55:53 You know, like, it’s never going to be like, oh, I have eight days that are clean.
0:55:57 You have to make it. You have to create that. You know, I think that’s a really important message.
0:56:01 Like, it’s never the right time. You’re always going to miss the basketball game.
0:56:08 You know, there’s always a sacrifice, but if you don’t do it, you know,
0:56:10 you have regret. You just regret it. You just don’t get it back.
0:56:15 Well, you said yes to an adventure. You’re coming to our basketball camp with Mr. Beast.
0:56:20 So we’ll be seeing you in January for one of those. Jesse, thanks for coming on. And if you’re
0:56:24 listening to this, you made it to the end. You’re fired up like I am. We’re giving away a few
0:56:29 thousand dollars of these calendars. So go to Jesse, what’s the site where people buy the calendar?
0:56:33 I have the code here. But it’s just jesseitsler.com. I think you can get it on my website.
0:56:39 So go to jesseitsler.com and then use the code win 2025. So win 2025.
0:56:43 First hundred people that go there from this podcast will get a free big ass calendar.
0:56:47 But if you didn’t just buy the thing and start planning your year, if you’re not convinced
0:56:52 at this point, something’s wrong with you. I had so much fun on the first go around.
0:56:57 You know, Sam gave me a little put me put me under the microscope a little bit.
0:57:03 I love it. I love this job. And I get it. And you guys are awesome, man. Like I always get
0:57:11 a lot of DMs about our first episode. So to get an invitation back was meant a lot to me, man.
0:57:15 So so you’ll get a handwritten letter from me. I think people don’t realize because I mean,
0:57:21 we host a lot of these. And I think people forget this. But like, I saw Sean writing like I like
0:57:26 take notes like I just these are my golden nuggets from this episode. These are, you know,
0:57:30 my pen died halfway through. We appreciate you doing this. Thank you very much.
0:57:34 Until round three, Jesse. Thank you. Thank you.
0:57:52 Hey, Sean here. I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvy story. One of the great
0:57:58 ad men. He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron. She’s your wife. You wouldn’t lie to your
0:58:03 own wife. So don’t lie to mine. And I love that you guys, you’re my family, you’re like my wife,
0:58:07 and I won’t lie to you either. So I’ll tell you the truth. For every company I own right now,
0:58:12 six companies, I use Mercury for all of them. So I’m proud to partner with Mercury because
0:58:17 I use it for all of my banking needs across my personal account, my business accounts.
0:58:20 And anytime I start a new company, it’s my first move, I go open up a Mercury account.
0:58:23 I’m very confident in recommending it because I actually use it. I’ve used it for years. It is
0:58:29 the best product on the market. So if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders,
0:58:34 go to mercury.com and apply in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology
0:58:38 company, not a bank banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and
0:58:42 Trust members FDIC. All right, back to the episode.
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