Building "Impossible" Visions w/ Jesse Itzler

So I actually want to talk about Zico Coconut Water, because we didn't go into that, and that's like, the name. That's really.

As far as I know, you stepped into it when it was already successful, and then one, two, skip a few, sold it to Coca Cola. In your business, you had Marquis Jet, and that wasn't enough. You sell that to Berkshire Hathaway. I got more in the tank. You take on Zico Coconut Water, you sell that. I got more in the tank. Now you're an owner of the Atlanta Hawks. Talk about that midpoint. You had one success. A lot of people would have wanted to coast. Like, I've sold a jet company now to Berkshire Hathaway. A lot of people would be like, I'm done now. I'm gonna invest my money. I'm cool. I'll be at the beach. You can find me there. You doubled down. Would you talk about that? That piece?

Yep.

So I'm a big believer in checking the box and move on. So, you know, I don't. I like to celebrate wins for a night or two, but they're done. And it's always about what's next, what's next. So the marquee jet was a great chapter. Who cares? We did it. And what's the next thing? So that's. If I wasn't up here and you asked to give a little business background, that never goes through my brain. That's all this. I want to build my life resume and do as many things as I can. So when Zico came into my life, the question I asked myself was, why do I want to do this? You know, why am I doing this? What's my purpose to doing this? And I had a personal, emotional connection to coconut water, and I wanted to share that and the benefits. Felt like I was doing a good thing for the world with all these sugary drinks, and that was my purpose for doing it. So it could have been a better idea, like, you know, go do this thing. But that. That and maybe made more money. That's what I wanted to do. I was very passionate about it because I experienced it, and I want to share it.

Did they come to you as an already established brand and say, help us grow, or did you reach out to them?

So zico was doing $3 million, $4 million in sales. When. When I was introduced to them, I had gone to Coca Cola with this idea. I said, look, I really think the next big thing in beverage is going to be coconut water. I had a meeting with the president that was Set up through one of the Marquee Jet customers who made the introduction, networking. And he said, you know, I wanted them to be my NetJet. I wanted them to do all the operations and all the back end stuff and we would just do the magic dust and the marketing. And they said to me, look, we don't buy PowerPoints, we don't buy startups, we buy businesses. If you partner with the coconut water company that's out there now, we want to be business with you, meaning me and my team. So I went to zco, they actually introduced me and said, look, if you partner with zco, we'll do a three way deal. And so we partnered with zco, they were doing a couple million dollars and two years later Coke bought the whole thing.

So I'm really, I'm excited about this because about 25, well that's going to be like really weird then if you're sprinting around and I'm just chilling. So there's about 25% of the room runs a $2 million business and up. And the idea of then being acquired or going to a big brand, really interesting. But you said you have that, your magic dust, the marketing that kind of gets it in motion to be perceived as having the momentum to be acquired by somebody else. Would you talk a little bit about that magic dust that you put into those companies?

So for me, when I the peanut butter and jelly with ZCO was they had distribution in place and they had all the operations in place. But what they didn't have was a vehicle or a machine to generate interest, publicity, content that was prable. So all my job was to do was to make this thing hot. So they took all the responsibility off my plate and I had to just focus on blowing up this brand and getting the brand out there. So through Marquee Jet we flew a lot of the entertainers and athletes and CEOs and influencers, the biggest in the country. So I had built this network of amazing relationships, genuine, authentic relationships. And I tapped into that network and it worked.

Your wife had a video go viral recently about failure and how she was encouraged every day to talk about something that she failed at doing. You have a similar mentality of I'm gonna do something that sucks, that's out of my comfort zone. I'm just curious if you two challenge each other on that, does that come up at home?

Well, my wife got great advice from her dad very at a very early age through her dad asking my wife what she failed at every week when she came home on Friday he would say, what did you fail at this week? And she said, oh, I went out for cheerleading and I didn't make the team. He would give her a high five. And what he did was he redefined failure as not the outcome, but not trying. So she has lived her life getting over fear and saying, even if I don't succeed, I'm going to try to do it. But I can tell you at our dinner table, like I said when I came on, most of our conversations are around our four kids getting them potty trained.

How old is your oldest now?

I have a seven year old.

And how do. How does both of your mentalities factor into how you raise your children? Are you encouraging them to do things that are different than most kids? How does that affect how you raise your kids?

So any parents out here? Yeah, everybody. A lot of people. So for me, one of the biggest challenges was recognizing that. Sorry, I'm addressing them, not you, but was recognizing that my kids are on their own journey. And even though I grew up playing basketball in my driveway, if my son wants to sit inside and play Minecraft, that's his journey. It's different than what I'm going to do. But I try to encourage my kids and my wife. Same thing. We try to expose them to things that, that we do that are super hard, that we might fail at. So let me just give you guys an example. I have a seven year old, my son's name is Laser. And two years ago, I was doing a polar plunge in Georgia at Lake Lanier for cerebral palsy with the local fire department. So I said to Lays, you want to do it with me? He's like, yeah, let's. Let's do it. So we drive out to Lake Lanier, and on the ride out there, I'm saying, look, you're going to be the youngest kid to do the polar plunge. Man, we can do this. It's gonna be cold, but you can do it. He's getting all I'm doing. I'm so excited. We get there and everyone's on the beach. They blow the whistle. Everybody runs into the water, and my son's standing on the beach.

So I come out and he's like, I don't want to do it, Dad. I don't want to do it. I said, it's okay, it's okay. He's like, oh. He's all. So we get in the car and he's upset. I said, no lasers. When you're ready to do it. I'm just glad you got to See me do it. Fast forward one year, we go back, we're in the car, and I'm saying, laser, we're going. You're still going to be the youngest, man. You got to do it. You got it. And he's a shy kid. You got to do it. You got to do it. He's like, I'm going to do it, dad. Blow. Get on the beach. We blow the whistle. He takes off into the water. He's the first one in the water. He's the last one out. Now, he's still a shy kid, but that experience peeled the layer off him. It changed him because it taught him in his little mind, I didn't even realize that he had to live with failure for a year. He had to live with that, and he got to watch me celebrate something that was hard. So as a parent, that's a really valuable lesson in exposing your kids to things that you do that are hard and rewarding.

Clap that up.

Growth is a really interesting thing because there's always a next thing. And you make it very clear that everything that's in your past, you don't give much credit to. It's like, it's over. What's the next thing? And our brains are wired to normalize things that are happening. So a certain level of success, a certain level of happiness just becomes normal. And then it's off to the next thing that we see. How do you. Or when do you pause to enjoy it or appreciate how far you have come? Or do you just use that as research and development to go get the next thing?

Well, you know, I'm super appreciative. I mean, I think we're all. The fact that we're all healthy living in this country at this time, there's got to be some level of appreciation for everybody. I try to approach every day like that. So I start my day very happy. And, you know, I really do try to build my life resume. So I look for things. And just because something is a good idea doesn't mean you should do it. So I get a lot of things that go through my head, and I'm like, this is an amazing idea, man. Maybe this could be the next Zico or whatever, or Marquis Jett. But that doesn't mean I should do it. And the way I kind of weigh it is I say, okay.

I'm 48 years old. The average American in this country lives to be 78. So I got. If I'm average, and I hope I'm not, I got 30 years left of those years. The last five in my 70, 72, 3 to 78, those are different kind of years. So I got 25 years left on this earth, it's fucking nothing. Who do I want to spend them with and how do I want to spend them? And that dictates the projects that I go into. Do I like the people, do I want to do this, why am I doing it? And then it's simply time versus time and reward versus aggravation. So if there's super high aggravation, even if it's super high REWARD in your 20s you can do that. But when you're 50 with four kids, you don't want a lot of aggravation, you have enough aggravation. So I'm looking for things that are low aggravation, even if they're low Reward.

If you're 50, you're making 50 look like a frickin dream, my friend. And if you wait until tomorrow, Peter Dmanis will tell you how to live a lot longer. Apparently he says he's gonna live to be 950, 950. So we can, I'm gonna outlive him. We can, we go for 951. All right.

Self imposed limitations.

Do you, do you fear, do you fear losing it all? And if so, when does that come up?

Fear losing it all? Yeah, no, because I mean I love where I'm at, at my life, but my routine, what I like is no different than when I was 18. I still run this, you know, I still run every day, I still eat, I still eat the same bananas. So I mean I don't want, I don't want to lose it all, but my life isn't based on, you know what, it all hasn't really bought me anything.

So would you say happiness is a greater driver to you than success? Or what is your primary driver? Growth Happiness Challenge.

I mean I'm highly add, which has been to my advantage. I'm an endurance adrenaline freak. So I love challenges, I love newness. So I'm driven by newness. I get bored easily and so I like to do things quickly. That's why I loved before in the exercise before.

Who was up before my mind?

Mike. Mike.

Mike was showing that he said, Okay, I have 90 days to make X amount, get it to market and move on. That really resonated with me because that, you know, that's sort of how I, I'm very impatient, very impatient. By the way, just one thing, Ryan. When you say no to stuff and you eliminate some of the non essential stuff, a Two year plan can be shrunk to one year because you can get so much done when you're completely laser focused on one concept.

Can you talk about the process of getting involved with the Hawks? How did that opportunity present itself? I've told you, my dream is to own the Cleveland Indians. So selfishly, I want to hear how this got done. So how did the opportunity present itself?

Well, I'm a basketball fan. I was a consultant to the Hawks for a year before they became for sale. So I fell in love with the team. I fell in love with the coaches and the players and the community. And when the team became for sale, being that I'm in Atlanta, I put my hand up in a big way and said, I want to be involved. Owning a professional sports team is almost impossible because there's very little turnover, virtually no turnover. And then at any given moment throughout the process, someone like Obama can come in and say 2 billion and just annihilate the process. So I just made sure that I met with everyone that had interest, let everyone know that I was local, that I had relationships with the team, that I could be additive and my wife, obviously in Atlanta, would be a great addition to. And the way the deal came together was completely unbelievable because.

It didn't come together until three hours before the bids were due that we got Tony Ressler, who is our anchor, you know, lead owner, involved. So we had the group and then we brought in the missing piece three hours before the deadline and won.

So the team came for sale and then you just put together a syndication and started going out to all the interested parties and putting that.

So the way the NBA works is each team has one governor, one. One principal owner. And that principal owner has to own over 15%. They can own 16, 50, 100, whatever. There could be other owners that even own more equity, but whoever has, you have to have at least 15% to be the governor. We had. No one wanted to be the governor. It's a lot of work and responsibility. We needed someone that wanted to be in that role.

And I had gone out, not to bore you guys with this, but trying to meet with everyone that had interest to say, you know, if you guys win, my group wants to be part of it. And then we. I spun our group independently. There were two groups bidding and they each wanted our group, my group, because we had kind of. We were going to put either one over the edge and we said, we're going to go independent. And you know, we wrestler came in at the last minute.

So you went, you Went. You went third party?

We went third party. We took a chance and we said, maybe it's going to be a broken process. Maybe we'll link up after if one of these two groups win. And we realized that we were. None of these two groups were strong without us. So all of a sudden we went independent and we had tremendous leverage.

And then the right investor just came in at the, at the right time. So it was almost like a Hail Mary pass that.

But we also had leverage because if the right person didn't come, we had leverage on where we wanted to go because we could have either group needed our capital, local presence, etc. So it was a really good move.

Could you talk a little about the. The capital raising part of that was, is that something you had experience in or was that another thing, like, all right, time to cold call some people?

Well, we had. We had to raise $850 million.

A few bucks.

A few dollars. But in that, in that world, it's a small arena of people that really want to participate. And, you know, you get a banker and they have a lot of people that on their list that would have. Be interested. So the world becomes super small fast.

So it's a small pool, but I.

Mean, you're ready for the Indians. We'll talk about.

I mean, that pool is just. I mean, does it just spread that there's a syndication being put together and that those are.

No, it's challenging because for me, I have no interest in being involved in any team other than the Hawks. So, you know, I love basketball, but if you, you know, if Minnesota became available. I live in Atlanta. I was close with everybody, and I think a lot of people are like that, too. So you want to buy the Indians. You don't say you want to buy the Mets or the Yankees or the Braves. You want the Indians. So geographically that world becomes smaller because it's a lot of money to invest in something if you live 3,000 miles away.

Cool. So we have a time for a couple questions. If you want to run up to one of the mics, we've got a couple questions. A couple time. A little bit of. Let me try that again. A few minutes for Time with Jesse.

Did I run in The Spanx the 100 miles? No, I got. But I got the testimonial. I got the ring.

Jesse, is there anything that scares you now, like what makes you uncomfortable now?

I mean, my whole thing is just trying to stay healthy. That's my biggest fear is that got four kids. So there's a Great quote. If you have health, you have hope. If you have hope, you have everything. You know, so that's my. That's really my fear. Otherwise, I really don't care what people think or. Yeah, no.

Cool. Let's start over here.

So, Jesse, hearts racing. So, first and foremost, thank you for being here. Appreciate you. Adam Edson, owned Rare Crosser in Virginia. Second season host of the Minty podcast. You've touched me because years ago, I ran my first hundred miler. Changed my life. So I've started a charity called RareCaresMore.org to fight or help kids with cancer. I know you like big challenges. Would you run 100 miles with me next year to raise money for rarecaresmore.org where is it? How about this? Wherever you choose.

I'll come to you. I live in Virginia, Fredericksburg, about an hour south of D.C. the last one I ran was Grindstone 100. It was in the mountains of Virginia.

How much money did you raise for the. For the charity?

We're just starting it now. The first marathon I ran, I raised $2,000 for a kid with cancer. My goal next year is raise $100,000.

Okay, I'm gonna change the challenge to you.

Okay.

Because I've already done that.

Okay.

The. I'm doing a hundred miler. That's gonna be a 33 mile paddle, 33 mile bike, 33 mile run. So it's my version of. I call it the triathlon. Paddling 33. Paddling. 33 miles is not fun.

That's rough.

If you do that with me, I'll make a very generous donation to your charity.

Name the time and place.

I'll be there.

Done. So that's done. Book, I got you. Okay.

Connect afterwards. So, hey, real quick, though. This guy's fucking amazing. Let's give him another hand.

Seriously. Love you.

Cool, man. Thank you. We'll do it.

Jesse, we'll go over here.

So I was looking at your schedule and you like to work six hours a day. Do you find that early in your career you're working a lot more hours in the day and you find that balance later on in your career? Because in my business, we tend to work a lot more. It's still early. We're still building, building, building. But balance is perfect for me, and I want more balance. And I have kids and a family and so trying to find that to where when I look back in years, I don't miss these moments. Do you find that you are early in your career, Would you have spent more hours, you know, Building, or you're at that point where you can, you know, kind of have more people doing that work for you.

It's a great question, and I apologize for even showing the chart because I'm in a different place right now. When I was starting out, my pie chart was completely different, and work was probably 12 hours, not six or eight. I always took the three, though, for me, always, since I've been 21 years old. And so the pie chart changes depending on where you are in your life. So for you right now, it could be that work bucket could be 8, 10, 12. My point was it's really important to take time for you. And I will say, you know, you want to be there for the great moments, and you'll have to figure out how you. How you do that. When you're trying to build something or be great, you're going to be out of balance. You think Kobe Bryant is balanced or LeBron, you know, the greats, Brady, you know, when they're in season, they're out of balance. So you have to find the spots where you're out of balance, but then you have to take the time for the important stuff. And then, you know, when you're 40. I looked at it this way. I don't know. How old are you?

29.

Right. So your 20s are discovering what you really want to do. Your 30s are mastering it. Your 40s to 50s are cashing out and re changing your pie chart. So you're still 29. You know, unfortunately, you have to take that risk and spend the time. But you want to. You want to monetize it in 30 to 40. That makes sense.

That does make sense.

Thank you.

All right, so we have three minutes. So we'll try and knock out three more a minute each.

My name's Kyle Hayoungs.

I'm a spell it.

K Y L E H A Y U N G S. Kidding.

I just want to make sure you got the Kyle part.

I'm gonna. I don't know if I'll, you know, get a chance to get in front of you again or not. So I'm gonna kind of call you out. I'm see if we can get five minutes anytime today or tomorrow. If I could take you to dinner or whatever. I don't know what your schedule's like, but I'm closing my company out. I got a company called MRG Holdings. It's a portfolio of companies in healthcare business services.

We have a philanthropy part platform that we just launched called.

I'm going to cut you off if you want to connect with him after, that's your choice.

Here's the other thing.

People have Q and A. Yeah, I'm.

At, at the 100 mile man, the number 100 mile man on Instagram. I respond to everything. That's it. Because I'm leaving after. But hit me. Anyone can hit me. I respond to everything over here.

I can probably get you on there too. But I thought your, your music business, your music industry entry story is kind of odd and unconventional. I don't see suppose you'd ever recommend somebody use that approach to enter the music industry. But I was gonna see if you have more thoughts on the music industry. Would you enter it like using the conventional approaches marketing wise? I mean, can you enter the music industry the way.

Well, I think that first of all, I didn't care about the consequences. I was 21 years old. I just wanted the gold. I just wanted to get my goal. So the consequences became irrelevant to me. Not in a, you know, in a way that was dangerous to me or anybody else, but that was one thing. But no, you have to stand out, you know, and.

Sometimes just being different isn't enough. You have to be different and great in anything in any business. I wasn't great at music, but I was different, but my approach was different. And I want to change to anything.

Do you have one more record in you?

I don't know. Would have to be different.

All right, we got time for one more. We'll stay over here. All right.

My name is Alex Mitchell Hart. I feel a lot of similarities to your story. I love basketball, hip hop and believe I'm capable of anything. And I recently turned 30 years old and I'm curious what would. If you could tell your 30 year old self one thing, what would that be? What piece of advice?

It would certainly be.

I mean, I take a lot of personal inventory and just you know, really kind of try to dig deep into myself and do my own personal audit. I would tell my son even earlier than 30 to be blatantly honest in everything. Just reputation is so important. And you know, of course we all have our things, but so I would, I would just be that. Pick really good friends, pick really good mentors, and never ever stop. You know, I think that's what I.

Would probably tell.

Give it up for Jesse Itzler.