Game-Changing Millionaire Secrets: What Jesse Itzler Wishes He Knew Sooner

I was talking to my friend Rich, who worked for a hedge fund on Wall street and he was like 23 years old or something. And I'm like, rich, it has everything going. He's like, oh, great, it's got my holiday bonus. I'm like, oh, what was it? He goes, $3 million. And then I was thinking to myself, I love Rich. But Rich couldn't tell me where the ocean is right now and we're in it. It made me realize, like, rich can make $3 million. I can make $3 million. If so, and so can run a marathon. I can run a marathon. If that guy can run 100 miles, why can't I run miles?

Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Cody Sanchez and this is for those of you who don't want to just be rich, but free and are willing to do what it takes to get there. Okay, this week we've got Jesse Itzler. This man is an absolute legend. He is married to famously Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx and now sneaks her new company. He started Zyco Coconut Water Co. Which sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. He started Marquee Jet, which sold for billions of dollars to NetJet. He started more companies than he can remember that are multi million dollar companies and a few others that are eight figure a year companies. The weirdest part though is he's so humble and he lives his life by this code that I find fascinating. The code is essentially this. How can we create a life so good that we look back on it and every single year we think that I lived it with adventure. So I hope you guys enjoy this conversation as much as I do. He's also kind of hysterical and a beautiful storyteller. But before we get into the interview, I want to share a quick business tip that I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's eliminate automate, Delegate. Famously Tim Ferriss. But if you assess the tasks in that order, your business runs 10x more smoothly. I learned it from him and I'm still doing it today. I'm always looking for tools to help eliminate tasks, automate them, and then make the delegating them easier. So one of those tools is Riverside, the sponsor of today's podcast episode. Not only can it record 4K videos and audio remotely to ensure your podcast quality is top notch, but it also drastically improved my team's editing speed with the text based editor. So it basically transcribes your footage, removes silences in one click, and creates short clips just by selecting the text. Even better. If you make a flub, which I never do, obviously, then you can delete the sentence in the transcript and it will delete it from your video instantly. Riverside has an in platform editor where you can upload your own content too. So it's not just footage recorded on Riverside that gets the special treatment. So how do people find new podcasts? Often from seeing clips online. Riverside understands this, and that's why I love their AI magic clips, which analyze moments in your podcast that have the most potential to get traction online. So this saves hours of listening to your podcast for the 50th time to find the perfect clip. Riverside got you covered, so don't waste your time doing what Riverside can do for you. I got you guys a deal. If you want to try it out for yourself, get the Riverside link in the description and use code Cody for an inclusive discount. If I'm not wrong, you have run a marathon in a coconut inflatable sack outfit. You were a rapper, sang jingles, and also seemed to have a penchant for like, running up to famous people, getting them to do certain things. And I was just wondering, do you not care what other people think?

You would be doing all the same stuff before if the Internet wasn't here. I didn't, I didn't have a choice. Like when I was, you know, making my way up in the business world, we had to do anything we could to get like, attention without clicks. So it was just the marketing and the way we went about everything was totally different. So, like, you know, you mentioned running a marathon in a coconut. I was in a coconut package, like a bottle of our package. And I had six friends. We were six pack and Gatorade had paid like a bazillion dollars to be the title sponsor of the New York Marathon. And our company was doing like a million dollars, like 2 million in sales. Like it was nothing beverage. And we're like, we gotta, you know, we ambushed the New York Marathon. Basically, we ran as. But you had to do those things back then to stand out. So. Yes.

But are you ever freaked out when you do things like that or just go, fuck it, I'm here.

Yeah. I mean, I think if you want to be an entre. Part of being an entrepreneur is you have to get over the fear of being embarrassed. You know, it's like the best gift you can give yourself in anything, entrepreneur or not. Once you get over the fear of being embarrassed, it's so liberating. And the only way to do that is to put yourself in situations that are embarrassing.

What was like, the first one that you did that was like, do you remember, like, back in the day where.

You'Re like, oof, yeah.

What was it?

I was. I was 15 years old. So I grew up in New York in the 80s when, like, I know, like when breakdancing and hip hop was just coming on the scene. I was in New York. It was the heartbeat of everything. And I know I don't look like it, but I got into breakdancing and I was like. I said to my friend who was like my partner in this, Myron. I'm like, man, let's go to Washington D.C. there's no way the kids in D.C. are as good as us. Like, we're from New York, you know. So I convinced my sister, who just got her driver's license to drive us down to Washington D.C. from New York City. And we had this boombox and the whole ride down, I was flipping out. I'm like, we're gonna get out of our car and set up a boombox in a parking lot somewhere in Georgetown. Like, I was just nervous, you know? And what if we're not good? What if kids are better than us? What if, like, no one shows up? And all these thoughts that we all have about, like, self centered around self doubt. So anyway, so we get out there, we put the boombox down, he starts doing his thing, I start doing my thing. A crowd forms around us and we take off our hat. We're collecting money. It's, like, working. And at the end of three hours, we had like 80 bucks and I paid my sister for the gas, and we split, like, you know, I think we split 80 bucks. Like, $40 to Myron, $40 in singles to me. I, like, stuffed my pocket and I ran over to my. Counted all the money. Then I, like, put. Counted all the money again. And then I gave him a bear hug, and I'm like, myron, we're fucking rich. But it was the first time in my life that I was like, if I could get over that fear and get rewarded, then, like, whoa, you know, like, I just got paid, even though I was really scared. And it doesn't sound like a meaningful lesson, but it was for me at 14, because I was like, all right. Butterflies are okay.

That's such a. Did it ever not work out for you to do something really scary?

A million times. I've been booed off stages. I mean, I had Cody, I had a record out, like, you know, right after college, I signed to a record label called Delicious vinyl. And there was a magazine called Rapages, which is like a big hip hop magazine in the early 90s. I get off a plane and I look to the, to the left of me and there's a magazine rack in the airport. And I'm like, I'm on the COVID of rap pages. So I flipped out. I'm like, how can no one tell me that? Like, they didn't even call me and tell me. So I bought like the thirteen magazine. I'm going to send it to everyone on the COVID of rap pages. And as I'm going to check out, I'm like, you know, I want to read the article. So I go to open it up and it says, are white rappers ruining hip hop? And I was on the. I was the COVID child of that. So I mean, like I. I've had an egg on my face, you know, and it was just.

Still buy them.

What's that?

Did you still buy the magazine?

Hell no. I was so mad at the writer, I was embarrassed. I thought everyone in the world was looking at me like, that's the kid that's ruining hip hop. That's the kid. But no one cared, you know, I did a show. I had a song that I did for the Denver Broncos when I was writing sports songs, which is something that I did. They won the Super Bowl. So I performed it at the super bowl. There were 675,000 people there and I forgot the words.

Oh, no.

So, I mean, but that's part of, you know, look, if you want to have an exceptional life, you got to put yourself in exceptional situations. And it doesn't always work out, you know, but you have to put yourself in those situations.

You do that a lot.

A lot. I still do it.

Your life. Well, one, it kind of makes sense because you have this big ass calendar that's huge that I used, which is, I think when I first started going back and forth with you.

Yeah.

I was like, this is so weirdly cool. I put up this big, huge calendar and I blocked off all of the days on it that I wanted to have my. You call it masogis.

Yeah.

And it totally changed our year and we actually ended up doing a bunch of stuff. I work too much, so sometimes I just end up being in a spreadsheet all year. And then all of a sudden you're 85. And I'm not 85, but I'm 38. I'm like, oh my God, what did I do this year? I just, I just did business.

Right.

And so it seems like, that's always been part of your life. Inserting that. Is that true? Like, how do you live an exceptional life?

Well, first of all, to your point, most people spend so much time, you know, scheduling their work days. You know, every Monday through Friday is like appointment schedule, zoom call, whatever, and very little time scheduling their personal life. Like, when are we taking trips? When's date night? What races am I doing? What concerts am I going to? So their calendar fills up with work stuff. And I think it's really important to prioritize yourself first. And when you have this, the big ass calendar like that we have, you know, we're all visual, so you can see all 365 days of the year on one calendar. You can see where your time's going and you can also track towards your goals. So I think the calendar is the one of them, if not the most important planning tool. People can have business in their personal life. As far as. What was the question?

Well, actually I have a follow up now. So if you're gonna schedule your life, how do you use the big ass calendar? Lots of people have goals, goal setting. You have some weird ways you do it. How do you do it?

Well, the first thing is I put all the things that are important that I know that are important to me on my calendar first. So for example, like I take a one on one trip with my kids or that goes on the calendar stuff that I'm doing with my wife, with Sarah, like our trips or big events that I know I have spring break trips, family trips, like that. If that doesn't happen, something else your calendar is going to fill up. But then I have three rules that I do. So one is what you just mentioned, which is we tweaked the definition of this, but there's an old Japanese ritual called the musogi. The way we've interpreted is you do one big year defining thing, a year that really defines your year and it has and it has to be big. So, like, you want to have something to show for your year at the end of the year. You don't want to be like, if I said to you, like, what'd you do in 2021? Like, you should be able to be like, oh, I launched my podcast, or I quit my job, or like something like, what are we, what are we all working for if we have something to show for it. So one big year defining thing last year for me, I rode my bike across America, like, big and. But think of it this way, if you're 35 or 36. And you live to be 86. 50 more years, you'll have 50 year defining things. That's a hell of a life that you've done versus I didn't schedule it. The second thing that I do every year so that goes on my calendar first when I know what that is this year, like rim to rim to rim like your husband did was something that I put on my calendar in that regard. The second thing is every other month I try to take a little mini adventure and it could be just instead of doing something that I normally wouldn't have done on a weekend. So instead of watching the Georgia football game, maybe I'll take my kids fishing, maybe I'll visit my college roommates, maybe I'll go to a lecture. But I want to have six. And again, the reason there is you live 50 more years. That's 300 mini adventures you wouldn't have had. 50 year defining things and 300 mini adventures like you're starting to shape an insane like being 85 and be like, like look what I did versus man, I worked my ass off, man. So that's the, that's the reason. The third thing is I just create. I, you know, we're all the number one thing that we can do to have a better life is have winning habits, winning routines, winning mindset, those three things. So I try to have good habits. I try to add every quarter or so a new winning habit. And that could be as simple as I'm never going to be late for a meeting. I'm going to drink more water. I'm going to drink 100 ounces of water a day. I'm going to add a 10 minute a day meditation practice and it's probably a good idea here. So that's how my calendar starts to fill out and then I work around it.

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Yeah. And again, like, you know, I want my calendar to be fun. I want it to be to, you know, like, light it up. It's a work in progress. Throughout the year, I'm adding to it as things, you know, speeches and travel. I keep adding to it, but making it color coded. When I look at it, I think in pictures. Most of us do. So when I see it, I'm like, wow, I have a lot of exciting travel coming up versus, like, I got to scroll through my phone to do that. It's not the same.

That is true. Yeah. You know what else is interesting with that is then you start to think about it as exciting as opposed to. Sometimes I look at my calendar, I get overwhelmed. I'm like, oh, my God, I have so much I have to do as opposed to I get to do it. You have a kind of a ridiculous mindset. Like when I see all the things you just got back from Running man, which you put on, which is like, what, a couple hundred people in sort of a remote location. We wanted to come, but I had.

Something else going on.

Plus, I suck at running. So small side note. And you have like. Is that the same one? You have like 100 saunas and the. Or is that a different one?

Yeah, we had a thousand people there. It's a three day, like, wellness festival in the middle of Georgia. And it's kind of like the Woodstock of wellness. There's speakers and breakout sessions and music and bands. And we built the world's biggest sauna. It's almost 5,000 square feet. We get a couple hundred people in it with a DJ and we have yoga sessions. So I need things. I work hard and I have kids and I have a wife. And, you know, like that whole work, life balance thing, I need things that I'm excited for on my calendar. It makes me show up better at work. It makes me show up better as a dad, as a husband. If I know, like, look, I Can work my ass off for the next 90 days. But then I'm taking a trip to Florida or I have this guy's trip that I'm doing. It helps me.

Somebody was telling me the other day it was about content. And they were like, there's so many young people today that want to be, quote, unquote, famous, that want to create really cool things on the Internet, but they haven't actually lived much life. And so when you haven't lived much life, there's not that much to create about, right? And they're like, if you want to create incredible content, live an incredible life. And it doesn't have to be like a fancy one. I mean, half the time you have an event at your house where you just run up and down a hill like three bajillion times, and it's called Hell on a Hill, right?

Yeah, I do. To your point, I was just at Running Man. I was talking to my friend's son, and I asked him, he's, you know, in his 20, mid-20s now, maybe even a little older. And I said, what are you doing now? And he goes, oh. He, like, lights up. He's like, oh, I have the dream job. And I'm thinking like, whoa. You know, I'm like, what do you do? He's like, I worked a chairlift at the local ski resort in Colorado. And I was like, oh. He's like, no, you don't understand, man. It's unbelievable. He's like, you know, I get to meet everybody there. You know, I get to ski an hour a day. We get together as a group after. So, like, to him, he has the dream job. He runs the chairlift at the local ski resort, which is amazing. Like, people think you have to have these. Be the CEO of a mega company or climb Mount Everest to have these incredible lives. Like, no, you have to be around people you love doing things you love to do and feel accomplished if you do those three things. You really checked all the boxes, you know, and he did, and he's doing that right now. It was really, really kind of eye opening for me. Like, when he said, I was like, you know, you can learn something from everybody, man. You don't have to be famous. You don't have to be an influencer. There's lessons everywhere. I'll give you an example. My dad died two years ago, and I woke up on the anniversary of his death, and I got a text from a girl, Maureen, who I'm friends with, but not like, we don't go to dinner, we're like, we're friends, but we're not, like, super close. And she just wrote, I know it's the two year anniversary of your dad's death. You know, she wrote me this really nice note. I have 10,000 plus people in my contacts. She was the only text that I got. And so I called her and I asked her about it. I was like, maureen, how'd you remember? She's like, oh, I have a list of monumental events, good and bad, of people in my life on by month. And the days of those anniversaries, I just reach out to them. I'm like, that's brilliant, because I'll never forget that. So I call that Mo's rule. And I have rules that I've named after. Not no one. Maureen's not even on Instagram. You know, I have rules that I've named after, you know, people in my life that have. That have, like, given me these lessons that now I'm doing that, you know, And I have. I have so many of those.

Whoa. Well, the other thing that's interesting about you is you're not like, so many people who have a lot of money. There's not a lot of pretense there. You throw a ton of events and it doesn't seem like the thing that really makes you happy has a lot of zeros associated with it. Maybe flying nicely one way or another.

I mean, flying definitely is amazing. And that's a huge perk. I remember Warren Buffett saying, that's like the one thing I'll never get rid of is his private jet. Yeah. I mean, like, I still have very much so like, an underdog mentality. I still feel like. I mean, I spent so many years sleeping on couches, so many years hustling so many doors in my face, so much rejection, trying to make payroll, not being able to. I've been like, my whole 20s was like, that. I hold. I spent 20 years in that environment and it's never left me. So I still, you know, I've been to restaurants so many times where, like, just freaking out when I hand them my credit card that it's not gonna work, that I still. I'm still traumatized, but I still get that to this day.

Do you really?

All the time. Every time I pull out a credit card, I'm like, oh, my God, is this gonna work now? But now I'm like, if it doesn't work, it's not really a big deal because. But. But yeah. And so that never left me and Sarah's. I think Sarah, she was never. She was so mission driven. Always about making products that women love.

I mean, so you don't end up feeling rich even when you have that amount of dollars.

You know, my life is exactly the same. I still like to run. I like to take saunas. I love to go to. Like, I still coach my kids. I don't miss anything. My friends are the same. Like, everything is the same. It's just bigger. Like the swimming pool. I have a swimming pool now. I have like, you know, the house is bigger, but it. But. But the problems are the same.

Yeah. What?

The problems are the same. Like, you're.

Don't the problems get bigger?

In some ways, it depends on how. What your relationship with money is. So a lot of people have, you know, when you think of relationships, you think of them in terms of, like, people, what's your relationship with your husband or your parents or whatever. But people don't think of their relationship with time and with money. So you have to have. And that's really important. So, like, Sarah always says, money's fun to make, money's fun to spend, and money's fun to give it away. And the best thing about it is you get to treat the people you love the most to the things that you love to do and do it with them. And that's really been the best gift about it. The other great thing is that it's opened up. It's given us an opportunity to meet so many cool people that we wouldn't have had, and it makes everything easier. But kids still have glitches, still have social concerns, still have, like, you know, like, you know, you still have to stay healthy. It's so.

Yeah, but, you know, what's interesting about you is you have a lot of examples of you meeting famous people, celebrities, when you were young and didn't have much of anything, right? So, like, for somebody who's young, listening to this and thinking, yeah, it must be nice, you know, they're at this level. He's done all this stuff. What would you tell somebody who's young and wants to work for, learn from a successful person? And maybe. When did you do that?

Well, now you can have, you know, you can have virtual mentors. You can. You can get mentored by anybody virtually just by watching them. And. But I was a big observer when I was. When I, like, I was sleeping on my friend's couch in Burbank, California, I slept on 18 different friends couches that put me up. I wasn't like homeless, but, you know, I got out of college. My parents, like, I was on my own and my friends were putting me up. I'm trying to figure it out for like two years. I'm couch to couch to couch. I'm in Burbank. We go to the Beverly Hills Hotel for lunch. And I'm looking around and there's the head of Warner Brothers, you know, movie division, and the head. The head of the biggest advertising agency, and this actor and this athlete. And I'm like, you don't have to have a hotel room to go to lunch here. Like, you could just get a salad and like an iced tea for $18. And I could sit here for three hours. And that became my office. So I would leave the couch, put on a shirt like this, drive to the Belleville's hotel, eat a salad like a couple days a week, almost every day. And I would observe. I would be like, how do people greet each other? Like, not. I mean, not like, you know, I wasn't like, taking notes, but I was very observant. And I was also getting my face out there. I was. I was, hey, I saw you here last week. But I was just starting conversations. And it, like, it trained me to. Because, like, my dad owned the plumbing supply house. We didn't talk about money, we didn't talk about business. I had no training. I had to like, observe people that were, you know, so that put me in the room. I was. Proximity. I was in the room. And then when we had Marquis Jett, which is my first successful, second successful company, but the biggest, we flew 3,000 of the who's who of pop culture, entertainers, CEOs, whatever. I was 28, 29 years old when we started the company. And I was obsessed, Cody, with their habits. So, like, I would ask them, like, and I became, you know, I would go to the airport, greet them for a plane. I was. It was my company. So I would ask them questions like, where do you love to. Where do you guys vacation? You know? And if I was more comfortable and I had a good enough relationship over time, what do you do with your money? Like, what do you do when you get $8 million? No, seriously, like, what do you do with it? I had no clue. So I would ask a lot of questions, and I got obsessed with their habits. What time you guys can ask you a crazy question. What time do you guys get up? What time you go to bed? Do you guys read newspapers? Like, if you were me, what newspapers would you. I was just asking questions. And then I would try some of the things they said. Some work, some didn't. But you know, it's interesting. Like in your, in your 20s and 30s, for most people, you're going to make five to 10 times more money in your 40s and 50s than you will in your 20s and 30s because you'll have more contacts, you'll be better at whatever it is you do. You'll be much better. You'll know what mistakes to avoid. And I think a lot of people now see people on the Internet like getting rich really quick. It takes time. First of all, I don't even know if they're getting rich. Like they're showing that they're getting rich or they're showing a picture in front of a plane. But who the hell knows what's going on? So that's another thing you have to be careful of. And that's, you know, you can't. That's their story. Who knows if it's what this, what's. There's no one fact checking that. But in your 40s, you know, you have all this, it's different. So. And it takes time. Like I was saying, when we had Zico coconut water, which we sold to.

Coke and how big was that company?

Like maybe close to 100 million when we sold it.

Holy crap. And that's huge.

But we got it up there. We ramped it quick.

That's the biggest company after Marquis.

Marquis was, I mean Marquis. We did like 5 billion in sales.

That's so wild. Yeah, but like really small margins. What were margins on private jets or was that pretty big?

The way that we started the business is so we had no aviation experience, very little business experience and not a lot of money. Like I think we raised $4 million from friends and family which. To start a jet company. It doesn't make any sense. The way that we started out, we were. NetJets was our parent company was providing us with the airplanes and they were carrying the paper, meaning we didn't have to like buy the planes or lease them. They were holding the paper on that stuff for us. So like when we had an order we could pay them and we were just, we were commissioning it on, we were commissioning, charging more for time on their plane.

So you basically arbitrage the rate between what NetJets would charge a customer.

We were drug dealers. We were buying a lot of drug. A lot of time on the planes. We were chopping up into smaller increments and charging more.

Love that.

And we were selling 25 hour increments in jack cards. So we were, yeah, we were just.

The first people to kind of think about doing it that way.

Right? We were, yeah, we were doing it before that.

Everybody thought, no, we have to have these long leases or it has to be individual. And you're like, wait a second, why can't we just cut it with some lactose powder or something?

I remember sitting with my partner, like, our average sale was people were spending about $250,000 a year. They didn't have to, but like on average a year with us on jet time. So we were just like, if we could get to 4,000 customers, we'll be doing a billion a year. And like, we were just like, all right, how do we. We just like sitting there like, how do we get to 4,000 customers? Well, let's hire a hundred sales reps that could, that could find 40 people each. That was basically like a commission only. Yeah, commission, yeah.

You're basically like, find a bunch of. We did.

But they did it. Those hundred people were able to, you know, we built up this, this customer list. So. But anyway, that was like, felt. It feels like a lifetime ago.

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Yes.

What is that story?

So I was managing Run DMC. I was managing Run DMC in the mid-90s, early 90s, and Jam Master J, the DJ for Run DMC. Oh, I remember who was killed.

Yeah, he.

He came in to my office, and he's like, I'm working with this kid. He's a boxer. He wants to be a rapper, and he wants business experience. He goes, but he's really good at writing songs and stuff. I was writing songs for sports teams, like theme songs. He goes, he'll come in the studio with you and help you out and do some stuff. But in exchange, he wants some. He wants to. Like, this is insane. Now that I'm thinking about it. Like, this is fucking insane. But he wants business experience. So Curtis came in, and he worked with me for, like, a year and a half, and then he became 50 cent.

That is wild. Did you know that he was, like, really talented when you met him, were you immediately like, oh, yeah, he's got it.

He.

No, he was just like a normal intern.

I'm like, 23 years old, and this kid's coming in. I have no idea. I don't have a crystal ball. So you have to imagine there's a thousand people that are struggling artists or wannabe artists, you know, getting into rap. Everyone's trying to get a deal and this and that. And this kid comes in, he's got his boxing stuff. And I'm, like, thinking, like, all right, cool. Like, it wasn't even on my radar, you know? Like, I'm like, just, cool.

Come.

Yeah, you can. And. And then, like, looking back on it, he became, like, an international megastar. Here's the coolest thing. Eight years later. So he goes. I don't. There's no contact after, like, you know, he goes and becomes this huge star. We're going crazy in the office. Like, we're like, holy fuck, that's Kurt. Like, we're going nuts. And we're, like. In a great way, like, we're feel like. Like we're all celebrating. Yeah. But I have no contact with him. And then we start Marquis Jet. Every day, I would get a list of who's flying on our planes, and I would just look at who are the guests? Who's on each flight? Maybe someone I know. Maybe someone interesting. I see that he's a guest on one of our planes. So I called the pilot, and I was like, can you leave a note for 50? And said, 50? It's Jesse Itzler from Alphabet City. That was the name of our company that he worked at. You're never gonna believe this, but I own the company that you're flying on right now. And then the next day, he wrote into all of his contracts, he would only fly with Markey Jett. Is that Insane.

That's amazing.

Amazing.

It's really fun to hear about celebrities these days. It's pretty easy to shit on them. But so many people I've met of, like, all of the people that I would look up to in the world are incredible humans. And part of me thinks that that might be more common than people think.

Yeah, I agree with you. You know, there's a lot of. You get disappointed by people, too, in business. I've been burned. I've been disappointed. I've been surprised. I've been stabbed. But. But in general, I agree with you. People in general want to help people and are good.

Yeah. If you go back to thinking about some of those instances, what do you think of, like, what was the biggest failure you've had in business?

I had a company called Sheets. They were these, like, oral dissolvables, like a Listerine strip that you put on your tongue, but they were infused with caffeine. So they were. It was like, basically like drinking a Red Bull, but you put it on your tongue and it just goes right into your bloodstream. And, like, you get this burst of energy. And at the time that we launched it, Five Hour Energy was selling 10 million two and a half bottles of Five Hour Energy a week. So the category was huge. And I'm like, we're gonna. We're gonna. They're at. We're gonna put them out of business. And I was so sure. We just sold Zico to Coke. Marqu had just gotten so, like, I was. It was a good. A lot of momentum for me. And I'm like. So we started this company called Sheets. I partnered with LeBron. I brought in a lot of celebrities, a lot of star power. I took in money from everybody I knew. Cause I'm like, give me 10 grand. And I wanted to be a hero. You're gonna get an island back. Like, your 10 grand's gonna turn into an island. And we're all gonna be neighbors because of this strip. And I had. I would back to back big wins. And I believed it. I was so sure. And we did a focus group. It didn't go well. And, like, I just. Anyway, it didn't work because at the end of the day, it was super bitter. And your product has to be good. It doesn't matter who's endorsing it, who's in the commercial, how good the packaging is. People have to buy it. You have to give them a reason to buy it. And then they have to buy it again, and they have to tell friends. And they didn't buy it again. And they told friends, oh, I don't like the taste of it. So it did. So it didn't work. And the hardest part of that was I lost, you know, like, money for, you know, I lost the most money by far. But, you know, like, that hurts, you know, like, still seeing people that gave you money even though they could afford it, and everyone knows when you make an investment and then people like, well, why don't you just pay them back? That becomes weird, you know, like, there's just some weird.

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Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers. It just, it was just, it was a tough time. I still think about it. I literally still think about it. And it was, you know, 20 years ago.

Yeah, I think. I think it's really hard for people to understand if you have good moral character, losing somebody else's money is worse than losing your own. Like it is. I had an investment company for a long time and we were in the cannabis space and we invested in all of these startups in cannabis. And from like 2016 to 20 or 2016 to 2019, we killed it. We just made so much money. We. We like 3x the fund gave it, all the investors back their money. Then the second fund that we did was right when Covid hit and we kind of before COVID we thought, we're going to raise all this stuff and they're going to legalize this shit. Like it's going to be legal. And it didn't end up getting legalized fast enough. And Covid hit and I thought we were going under. I thought we were dead. And I remember Chris, you know, my husband, who you met at the time, we were just sitting in California and I was like, I don't think there's anything I can do. My grandmother's money is in this because same thing. I was like, we are legal weed dealers money. And I was like, fuck, I'm gonna lose everybody's money. And I didn't have enough to repay it. I mean it was hundreds of millions of dollars. Thank God the government deemed it an essential service. In retrospect. Yeah. It kept our companies afloat. In retrospect, I'm not even sure though, then I'm happy I was in cannabis. Like I kind of think.

Right. The reason why you can't repay it is, you know, first of all, that sense that sets the precedent that anytime you raise money. What if I want to raise. I want to put. Build a spaceship to the moon. I need to raise a bazillion dollars. Well, the expectation is you pay. It didn't work. We're gonna get our money back anyway.

Yep.

That you're gonna pay everything back and every loss back. So that's, that's one of the reasons. And there's a variety of reasons, but it's.

Well also it can create fake guarantees. So it actually owes you up to lawsuits and 100%, you know, so there's, there's, there's a lot of reasons why sometimes legally you're not even allowed to in the docs. And then who's to say what the actual cost is of money from an opportunity cost perspective? It's really messy. But I do think, fuck, if you're in the game, you've lost some money at some point, unfortunately.

And. But if you're taking in money, you have to understand it comes with responsibility. It comes with responsibility to report, you know, to, to, to have some kind of, you know, to have to be transparent. And it just, it's just you lose your own money. Yeah, it's one thing when you lose someone else's money, it's tough.

Well, you know what I think is interesting too is like I think you're one of, probably one of the best marketers out there. Pre Internet in such interesting ways. But to your point, you can't really market a non incredible product. And you had a little formula there I really liked, which maybe was something like if you want to create a really viral product or if you want to create a product that continues to sell forever, they have to buy the product. They got to buy it again. And then they have to tell a friend. And a lot of times people leave that last part off. Like, is that your formula for creating winning products? Or how do you think about creating winning products? Because he got a pretty good hit.

Ratio Yeah, I mean, I think things, getting, getting shared, friend to friend is really important still. Even with the Internet.

Oh yeah.

Spanx, Spanx exploded. Friend to friend, girlfriend to girlfriend. I think that's a really important element. PR is a really good way to get to reach a lot of people and get, and get validated and back. I'm talking about like when we were starting out when there was no Internet. If you could get an article, something placed about your company, that was a great bang for the buck. Now you can do it, you know, by viral posts that are free but without the Internet. That was a good, a good resource.

Yeah.

But yeah, I think people talking about it is really important.

How many million dollar businesses have you started that have hit seven figures?

Do you know, like top, just top line?

Yeah.

Oh, a lot.

What do you think's a lot?

I've never thought about, I don't know.

What about eight figures?

How much is eight figures?

That would be like 10 million or more.

Oh, handful.

Yeah. And then two that were nine figure.

Companies north of 100.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's wild. That's probably pretty rare error, right?

I've also had 20 companies that didn't work, you know, so it's. I had a lot of balls in the air, but I've been doing it for 30 years. Yeah, but I'm tired now.

Are you?

Yeah.

I don't believe you're tired. You're just at a three day running band event you put on with the world's biggest sauna.

That's true, I'm tired. But like the energy to start a company brand new, like the energy, like, you know what it takes to start a company. Like the amount of your soul that you have to pour into it and the amount of caring at this point in my life would take away what I could give to my kids. Like, I don't have, I don't have that much caring in me, you know, like it's capped. And when I was single and young and in my 20s and 30s and even like young kids in my 40s, it was different. But in your 50s, you know, when you're 56, man, you look at things, you look at time differently. Cause you're like, shit, in 14 years, I'm 70. That's fucking nuts. That's freaking me out. So then I'm like, all right, five, 14 years to be 70.

Yeah.

Do I want to start another company? For what? Have like a bigger plate of brown rice? Like, what, for what? Or do I want to like take those 14 years and load Them up with adventures with my friends and the people like my kids and have like an epic, you know, decade and a half of. Because I was just water skiing with my kids this summer. And like there were no 70 year olds water skiing on the lake.

That's true.

There were no 70 year olds at Running Man. There were no 70 year olds. As you get harder, like as you get older, you know, your, your window to do things closes, closes starts to close.

So did you see Larry Ellison lately? 81. Have you seen this guy?

Larry Ellison's on a whole nother level.

He looks incredible.

Yeah, he's younger than people in the world. There's 8 billion people. There's one Larry Ellison.

We're not going to be.

We might, but I mean, you know, for the masses, it's hard.

It's a good way to think about it. So what do you think it takes to actually start a really successful business?

One is enthusiasm. I think you have to have a lot of enthusiasm around not just the product that you're selling, but also like the process of being an entrepreneur. You know, like it's. That means a sacrifice. When you're friends at the bar for happy hour, you might have to go back to the office to do something like that. You have to be willing to do all that. You have to be customer focused and really think about and product driven. The product has to be good. I think it has to be fun. You know, you want to make money, you want to have fun and you want to have fun making money. And you have to be different. You know, Sarah always says entrepreneurs do one of two things. Either they create something brand new or they make something that exists better.

Yeah.

So what are you doing? Are you making something brand new or are you taking something that's out there and just making it better? And I think it has to be authentic to you. I think how you stand out, everything is. All categories are so crowded right now. There's so many because it's so. The barrier to entry is so low right now. So you have to stand out.

I read a fascinating statistic the other day that only 3% of Americans own a business. That of the 3% that own a business, only 10% will ever hit a million dollars. That of those that hit 10 million, that's 0.4%. So 0.4% of the 3% ever get to eight figures. I thought that was crazy.

Hold on, I gotta put that on a. I gotta like, I need, like I gotta.

Yeah, you need your big ass calendar, but whiteboard edition.

I Need the big ass calculator for that. So what's the net? The net net is.

The net net is that most people underestimate how hard it is. That not. And how do you define hard? Because words mean things and often we don't define things very well. So it's not just grit. It's actually just mathematically difficult. And so.

But think about this. Now, my math might be wrong on this because I haven't been getting a lot of sleep. I think there's 18 million millionaires.

That sounds right.

In this country.

That sounds right.

So if you take. There's every year four million people born. So by the. So at 80 million people under 20 years old. So that means that there's about one. One in 11 people are a millionaire that are like over 20. I'm close. The math is something like that.

Okay. Check us on the Internet.

YouTube, something like that. Here's my point. If like 1 in 11 or something like that, people over 25 or 25 to 7, whatever, are millionaires, and you lined up, you know, 11 people in the room, or 20 people, whatever the exact number is, I want to get the math right on it. That's like. Doesn't make it sound like it's so hard.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Like, I would think like, oh, one in a thousand people are millionaires, but it's not like one in. It's like one in 18 or so. Like one in 11 or one in 18. Something like. It's low.

Yeah.

As adults become millionaires. So it's like. I remember. I remember. By the way, I might get canceled. That math might be way off. But I remember the statistics. The bottom line is, what I'm trying to say is it's not like a needle in a haystack.

No.

It's like there is a. To become a millionaire in this country. There's a path. I remember when. When I was 22 years old, Cody, I was playing basketball in this basket with a bunch of guys in New York City, and I met my first millionaire. I met my first millionaire. Now there were millionaires in my town probably. But like, I didn't know at that. I was a kid, but like the first person that I knew, like my age, like, like a contest, like someone was a millionaire. And I couldn't believe it because I was making like 12 grand, you know?

Totally.

I'm like, I couldn't believe it. And then like three months later, I went away for Thanksgiving with four guys. We went to Jamaica and I was talking to my Friend Rich, who worked for a hedge fund on Wall Street. And he was like, 23 years old or something. And I'm like, rich, and how's everything going? He's like, oh, great. It's got my holiday bonus. I'm like, oh, what was it? He goes, $3 million. I was like, you need $3 million. And then I was thinking to myself, I love Rich. But Rich couldn't tell me where the ocean is right now, and we're in it. Like, he made $3 million. I'm gonna make 3 million. It made me realize, like, the fucking rich can make $3 million. I can make $3 million. If so. And so can run a marathon. I can run a marathon. If that guy can run 100 miles, why can't I run 100 miles? Like, once you see it, you know, we put so many limitations on ourselves.

I think you're right. Well, and on top of that, I mean, I bet most of those millionaires made their millions working with or for somebody else. I think also, I'm a big proponent for you should always try to get some equity, try to get ownership and things. I love people buying small businesses. That's sort of my shtick, because that's how I've made my money. So you always have, like, a bias. I'm like, I did it that way. Anybody could do it that way. But another thing that I try to give a lot of credence to is like, I bet you have minted so many millionaires. Not you. They did it for themselves, too. But through creating these big, huge companies.

I have. I have. But more importantly, I've had an army of people that worked for me as interns, as employees that have gone on to do insane things.

That's interesting.

You want the list?

Yeah.

So Kenny Austin, who worked with me, was one of my partners, but, like, at Marquis Jet, went on to create Tequila Avion that sold. He created Proper 12 with Conor McGregor that sold for over, you know, for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. He created and partnered with the Rock on the Rocks Tequila. It's worth over north of a billion dollars. I mean, just Jennifer Lopez hit after hit. Adam Tishman, who is my intern, created Helix. This mattress is sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Farah, left, who is my intern, she now runs Clutch, one of the biggest sports agencies, if not the biggest in the world. LeBron, and probably one of the most powerful women in sports. So, you know, 50.

Why do you think that is?

Why? Because people are observing. Coaches are important. I still have coaches. I Just, I have a swim coach. I have.

You had an ABCL coach.

I had because I wanted to get better at memorizing names. I wasn't great when I met people at remembering their names, so I brought a coach in to help me with that. I've had sales coaches. I've had coaches in so many areas of my life because I'm not great at everything. I want to go to people that are amazing at what they do. I live with Goggins. I lived on a monastery to get better at my spirituality. Like, investing in yourself to get better is so important. And so I think that if you're working at an organization, two things. One, I think you should make yourself irreplaceable. That's really important. Then you have the leverage. You can't even fire me. I know everybody, every customer. I'm unfirable. Now you have some leverage, which I think is really important. And you should learn network and sponge as much, absorb, especially when you're young, as much as you can. Do everything, learn everything. Gandhi said it best. He said, learn like you'll live forever. Live like you'll die tomorrow. So you want to learn and keep getting better, you know, in as many things as you can.

Did you. Do you have a particular way that you lead people? What do you think it is? Is it either you select these people who are going to be high performers and so you have a selection bias, or do you have a particular leadership style that you think enables other people to become something bigger?

I think that you have to put confidence in, like, I'm. There are so many better. I. Honestly, Cody, I'm. I'm like back of the pack entrepreneur. I know. I really am. There's so many amazing entrepreneurs. Like, I don't even put myself. I'm not. That's not my strong suit. It's not. It's not. I've had wins. I've had great partners. I've had good ideas. Right time, right play. Like, a lot of things happened, but there's so many. I still go to so many entrepreneurs for advice, but I am good at giving people confidence and belief. And that's really important because if you have to believe in the end of your story, like you. If you're single, you have to believe he or she's out there. If you're going for a job interview, you have to believe like, I'm the one that's going to get this job. If you're applying to a college, you have to believe like, oh, the app, the. The acceptance race. Is one in 80. I'm that one. I'm that one. You have to have like insane conviction. And I'm really good at breathing conviction into people.

Oh, that's so good. Do you breathe it into yourself and.

If so, how self talk you like.

In the mirror going, Chelsea?

No, but just like you got this and like, you know, I have really good self talk. There's not a lot of I can't that comes out of my kids mouths or my mouths or. Sarah and I are really particular about how we, our family speaks.

What would that look like? Like, so if you're trying to raise children who believe in themselves like that, what does that look like? What are examples?

Well, first of all, we praise the effort, not, not the result. You want to praise the effort to get your kids to, to, you know, want to put max effort in, let them experience disappointment and then, you know, correct them. Oh, dad, I can't, I can't, I can't. I can't jump off this diving board. Like, well, if you say you can't, you're never gonna do it. So you have to reframe it, you know, tweak it. But it's true of, it's true. It's true of everything. You know, the words that you speak are really important.

Yeah. My husband always says words mean things. And he means that when we talk about stuff between each other, like, it's really important that we both think about what we say and then we understand what the word means to each other. Because oftentimes you don't even realize that I would.

It's true. I was doing like a math problem with my daughter. We were going through her math homework and like she got the first five, then we got the math to question six and she's like, oh, dad, this is, this is hard. Let's just, we'll skip that one. Let's go to the next one. And like, I think most, I think like most of my childhood maybe, you know, my parents wanted to make things as good as they have a. Skip it. We don't skip things. Like, you get a chance to like skip. Oh, you know, coming up with the packaging for this widget company is really hard. Let's skip the packaging. Like, no, my daughter's name is Tepper. Tepp. Let's sit here and figure this out before we go to question eight. Let's sit on, let's stay on seven. I know it's hard, but it's on the paper. It was assigned to us. It's in front of us. So we're gonna have to figure this out. We're not. We're not skipping it and going to eight. I didn't say it in that tone, but that. But those kind of lessons were, like, you know, I think are important.

Do you talk like that between Sarah and yourself? Like, when it comes to partnership, do you help your partner speak that way to each other? And if so, how do you do that in a relationship? Or did you both come fully baked?

Every partner's so different. So you know this. I'm a support system for my wife, like, and she's a support system for me, but my needs are more ego based, you know? Like, I need to be told, like, you did a great job, Jesse. Like, you cleaned the dishes. And like, oh, I didn't. I didn't just clean the dishes. The dishes are fucking spotless. Like, I need to be. Can you say that, Jesse? The dishes are spotless. You're the best dishwasher in the family, so you. I need that.

Yours is words of affirmation.

Right? So I need affirmation. And she's completely different.

What does she need? She. She.

She needs more. She needs to be heard. She needs to be heard. Yeah. So I need to be a bit more of a listener. And then. And then periods. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Okay. Interesting.

Married for 18 years. So now I know.

Now you're. You've got it down. Interesting. So what was it like in the beginning? Like, I know every relationship yesterday. Yeah.

We were in. We were in the steam. I went in the steam room with my friends, and then Sarah went in there and she couldn't figure out how to. How to shut the steam off. So she left the door open and all the steam flew. It was all over the house. Like, it was like. And our steam room was like. It's like. It's like the. It's like massively powerful. It's like it's blowing steam. The whole. I'm like, upstairs, I was like, fuck is steaming in here. So I go down through the steam and Sarah's in there, like, la dee da. I'm like, sweetie, shut the door. And she's like, I can't. She's like, I don't know how to shut the door. Like, she was pissed. She's like. And I'm trying to shut it off, and I can't shut it off. And it's. Steam is going everywhere and I'm. And we're, like, arguing over it. And then, like, she was. I was pissed at her and how she handled it and she was yelling at me and I'm yelling at her and then like, we went on our merry way and then I called her and I'm like, I'm not mad at you. I'm not even mad at you. Are you mad at me? She's like, I was mad at you, but I'm not mad at you now. So, like, you know, you have to. In relationships, it's okay to get mad, but we're married, so I'm not gonna stay mad at her. That she left the door open and the whole house has mold in it now.

I'm not upset at all.

I'm not mad at her. I'm not even thinking about it a day later. Hello, friends.

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Quick FYI, we've got just a few months before my first ever book is out in the world. If you want to pre order it for yourself or anyone you love, you can do that in the link in the show notes or you can search it online. It's called Main Street Millionaire. You'll love it. I think it'll make you a lot of money and I hope you guys pre order it. Chris and I have been married for four years, together for seven, but we've known each other since we were 12. And I was married before, so I fucked it up once and it's like very big on my list of do not fuck this up again. And I think one of the things that I love talking to people about who've been married for a while and have kids is like the real of it. Because, you know, we have a therapist. That was one of my things. Like with my first marriage, I tried to make that happen and he wasn't.

I like the word coach. You have a coach?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We have a coach. Although our coach is doing this thing lately that I hate. I don't know if yours have ever done this. She's like, now I want you to stop, and I want you to think about, where do you feel it in your body?

That's a therapist.

Oh, God, I about died last week. I'm like. And especially Chris, former Navy seal. You can only imagine what his face looks like. And then she says, I'm sorry, I won't say her name because she's great in many ways. But then she says, I know you feel hot in your body. You feel heat. I want you to ask the heat what it wants to tell you. I was like, I have to leave. I have to leave this zoom call. And that was not very helpful for me.

I have a hard time in that room. No, I'd have a hard time.

So what kind of coach do you guys have you ever used in your marriage? Have you ever.

We have on very rare occasions.

Interesting.

On more specific topics. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's almost like, hey, we're not communicating well here, so we want to communicate better.

Yeah. Like. Or we have. We disagree on this.

Yeah.

On, you know, on this particular thing. Let's go to a specialist. So for us, just to be candid, it was like, food, you know, like, I was a vegan, vegetarian. I eat super clean. Sarah has eats a whole different lifestyle the way she eats, which just doesn't bother me at all. It doesn't bother me one bit. But now we have four kids, so how do we want to feed and raise our kids when it comes to food? And early on in the relationship, it was. I was all the way over here, and she was all the way over here. And that created a lot of, you know, an uncomfortable environment because guess what? You have to eat. And we're eating three times a day, so we're having a thousand meals, and, you know, they're eating one way, or I want them to eat one way and Sarah wants them to eat another. So we had a. We had to. Right. Size that. But you have to get in front of the problems. It's like Crisis Management 101 is you get in front of the problems. You know, you can't let a small problem become a bigger problem. It doesn't magically disappear.

What does that look like?

To get in front of a problem, you have to. You have to confront it and be like. And be solution driven rather than just ignore it. You know, humans. I'm non Confrontational. So for most things, I'm like. I just don't. I'll just. It's not a big deal. I don't know. But it doesn't go away, right. Unless you. Unless you address it.

Yeah, that's a good point. And you guys met later on in life, right?

Yeah, we got married. I was 40, she was. Sarah was 37.

And you. So what I find interesting, obviously, young people today are getting married later than ever, to a lesser degree than ever before. And I found when Chris and I came together, that sometimes when two humans are so fully baked, there's hard parts about that. Because I'm like, no, no. I'm like a full adult human. I have operated like this for 31 years.

Right.

I'm pretty good.

Right.

Were there ways that you came together to compromise that you think are. We're helpful and necessary? Because you, I imagine, are a strong personality. She imagined I. Strong is a strong personality. And you're gonna have to figure out how to compromise somehow.

Yeah. The one thing is, we were very aligned. We're very different. Very different in certain regards, but the one thing that we are very aligned on is values. And I think that's, like, super important. Before you get married, you don't talk about, like, food. Do you want your kids to be raised religious? Do you want your kids to go away to summer camp when they get older? If you can afford that, do you want to. You know, there's a lot of things that we didn't discuss, like, ever. And then, like, you have. You have children, and you're like, wow, we never even went over, like, our. How do you want to discipline the kids? Do you want to spank the kids? Not spank the kids. Do you want to yell at them?

Not.

What. What's our discipline protocol? Like, we didn't go over any of that stuff. So we didn't have. You don't have a choice. You have to get aligned on that. So stuff.

What do you think is important for, like, a couple coming.

Values is really important.

And how do you define values? Is it your political party? Is it your religion?

No, just, like, how you treat people and what. What matters. What doesn't matter, you know, values more. More like the hierarchy of what's important and what's not important. Values and family and traditions and taking care of your parents, like, just core values is really important.

Yeah. You know, I read a study the other day that increasingly young people, specifically women, which is interesting, but young people today don't want to marry or date somebody of the opposite political party, which I think is such a mistake, because my parents were both, you know, one of each. And I do think in many ways, we're forgetting this opposite attracts thing. You know, I was hanging out with a guy who I really admire a lot and become buddies with, Sean Rad, who started Tinder. And it was interesting, he was saying that one of the byproducts of Tinder is this, is that increasingly in Tinder, you can determine exactly what you want in a human. And so because of that, you won't ever even get served what you might need. You only get served what you think you want. And a lot of us don't even know what we want.

Right.

And I thought that was really interesting because I find if you and Sarah are really different, Chris and I are really different. I'm not sure we ever would have gotten matched on an app, because aren't.

There a lot of studies about, like, marriages that last long, longest are. I remember reading this. I could be wrong, but I remember reading that that opposite more than, you know, similar.

That's what they say. Yeah. It's more of two parts fitting together.

Yeah.

And you guys have some really cool stuff you seem to do as a family that I've just seen on social. Like, I remember seeing a sign that you have for all the things you want on your birthday and all the things Sarah wants on her birthday. What's the deal with that?

Father's Day and Mother's Day.

Oh, that's what it is.

Father's Day and Mother's Day. She gets to make a list of how she wants her. Her special day to be. And it was like, she wants to talk for an hour. It was all the Sarah things. And then mine was, like, all the Jesse things on Father's Day, like, I want to eat fruit. I want to run. I want to take a sauna. You know, I made a whole list. So. Our lists were so different. They were so different.

But do you find some joy in coming together on the day? And you're like, I want to listen. Ready, go.

Of course. And, like, listen, the other thing about. About marriage is you have. We. I found that you have to let your partner be who they are, you know? And, like, if Sarah loves to eat French fries and do that, do it. Like, if I took that away from her, she would resent me. So she lets me do the things I love to do, and I let her do the things she loves to do. And we come together on the values and the stuff that, you know, that we do. Together.

Yeah. You know, that was one of the best things, Chris.

Sarah's super fun, by the way. I bet she's like. She looks fun. Like, it's not hard. I mean, it's. She's so fun. She's funny, you know, She's a great mom. She's a great business person. She gives great advice. She cares. I've lost my dad, my sister, and my mom in the last two years. Having someone there, you know, is really important. And she was super supportive. You know, those are the things that, to me, are really important for what I need in a marriage, you know? And I like to have fun. You know, like, you want your house to be a place of fun, and.

I get that vibe.

Yeah, we checked that box.

Yeah. But I do like this idea of Chris always, like, when we first started out, you know, when you start dating somebody and, you know, they want you to hang out with all their friends and their family and go do all these activities. In the beginning, I thought, yeah, like, that's what you're supposed to do. You have to come do all this stuff that my family wants to do, that I want to do, because we're now in a relationship. And Chris actually taught me a lot about. Do you like, do we. Is this a. What is need? Like, what is that word? And at first it bothered me. I was like, oh, I want them all to like you, and I want them to do whatever. And he's like, do I? I don't care. So, like, do you care? Because then maybe we could do something.

No, I think every marriage. Listen, I'm not a marriage expert at all. I've only been married once.

Next book.

I don't even know if I'm good at it. I really don't even know if I'm good at it. You have to interview Sara. I don't know. I'm doing the best that I can do, but I don't even know how good I am. I'm probably like eight. But every marriage is different, you know, couples have different needs. Circumstances are different. I don't think it's like a one, a one size fits all at all. You do what works for you, you know, and for your family, and you're for your family unit. And that's based on years of family traditions. It's based on the personalities that are married. And don't worry about what everybody else is doing, like, what works for you guys. Do you like watching Netflix every night? And that's fine. Do you, like, you have to do what works for the Unit.

Yeah, I agree. I think sometimes, though, it's hard when you haven't had a role model like your kids, I think will probably be quite lucky to see the two of you and how you are in a marriage together and get to take what they like and what they don't. And I think Chris's dad always said it best, or Chris always says it best to his mom and dad. He says, thanks for fucking me up enough to be a Navy SEAL but not to be a stripper.

That's good.

I kind of like that. Because we're all gonna do that to our kids and they're gonna resent something, I'm sure. But I do think it's nice that you guys share some of this stuff, because when I was a kid, like, this is the class I wish we would have had. It's my most precious thing is being married to Chris. Like, I feel very lucky about that. But I didn't really know what I was doing for a long time, and I think I was a nightmare sometimes. So I think it's cool that you share a bunch of this stuff on the Internet and you do it very much. You don't have a lot of I do this, so you should do that in your vocabulary that I've ever noticed.

No, I mean, because I don't think I'm in a position to tell people that. I can tell people what works for me and show them what I do, and they can choose to. To do that or not, but. Yeah, you gotta be careful, man. Like, when you give advice to people, you know, like, you got it, it comes with a. Like I said, it comes with a lot of responsibility. We're both in a space where in personal development or whatever you want to call it. And you got to be careful.

Yeah.

People like listening and, like, you got to give them. So I try to just be like, this is what I did and this is what I'm doing, and show, don't tell. It's like with my kids, I'm not telling. I'm their dad, I'm not their coach. So I have to show them. You know, if I go outside and it's pouring rain out at 7am and my kids say. And I come in, I'm like, oh, I don't care about the rain. I run every day. It doesn't matter. I don't even look at the weather. I'm going no matter what. So why would I look at the weather then? They're. They're now have that same thing, like, you know, like, oh, it's freezing. My kids don't care. It does. Has no impact on them because they see it from me all the time. Cold, plunging, sauna running, like all they see it.

Some. One of my friends said entrepreneurship is a trauma response.

Yeah.

Do you think that's true?

It can be, yeah. Yeah.

Was it for you?

I just started so early. Like, I didn't have a choice, you know, Like, I didn't want to work for anybody. I just always wanted to. Like, I had three goals. I wanted to be able to. I said to myself, if I could work like 50, 50 weeks a year on my own stuff, but make enough money that I could take a two week trip, it's worth it. I'm like, if I could take a two week trip, Are you kidding? So that was like one of the goals that I had. The second goal is I wanted to make enough money that I could have a swimming pool. I'm like, if I could have my. I don't have to go to a public swimming pool. I could go on my own. Pool would be the coolest thing. And then I want to be able to grow my own fruit. Those are like my. Those were my business goals. And then when I had those, I started, I crossed them off and I made new goals. And I've always been doing that. I've always been like, kind of after I hit the goals, making new goals, and the bar kept going higher and higher.

That's so interesting because I think a lot of times when people set goals, they set a really big first one.

Which is fine. Which is fine. Mine weren't less about goals and more about, like a wish list. Like, I think it's important that people have, like, if I gave you $10 million tomorrow or anyone listening, are you crystal clear on what you would do with that money? Like, what would you do? You should, like, what are you working for? You should have an idea of, well, what do you want? I had a friend of mine that was going through a tough time, and I said to him, I was like, brian, man, if I wired you $10 million, what would you do? He's like, oh, I would move to California tomorrow. And I'm like, that's great. Why? He's like, I always want to live in California. And he's like in his mid-50s. I'm like, Brian, no one's wiring you $10 million. If you want to go to California, figure out a way to go move to California. I think, like, a lot of people like, a lot of the things that we want to do we could probably do now?

Yep.

You know?

Yeah. Okay. I want to close out with a few little rapid fire questions. Which are, what do you think the secret is to staying in love while running multiple businesses? These are questions people asked from the group.

Really?

Yeah. What do you think the secret is to staying in love?

I assure you that did not come from a man.

It was probably a woman.

Read to me again.

What is the secret to staying in love while running businesses?

Just like my wife has a hashtag, justlove him. Just love her. You have to just let your partner be who they are and, you know, do what they like to do. You can't, otherwise it creates resentment. But communication is really important, you know, not like just transactional communication like, hey, Chris, did you take out the garbage? But more like, kris, how you feeling today, man? Like, what's going on, you know, I think is really important.

What have you spent the most money on ever that made you the happiest?

These are great questions. I just bought a farm and that, but up until that point, that made me really happy because that as the goals got bigger, the wish list, that was on my wish list, and I bought an rv. Those two things made me insanely happy because they're like great memory makers for my family. But up until then, I really didn't spend money on anything. I don't. I don't have a lot of wants. I like bikes, so I collect bikes. I love buying bicycles and. And saunas. I have a great bike and sauna collection. I don't have any fancy art. No fancy watches.

Yeah, that's right.

I don't really have a lot of. I don't really. I like to. I'm pretty simple.

Are you gonna put like some goats and horses and stuff?

Yeah, we got goats. Chickens. Yeah, I love goats.

Interesting. You gonna get the funny chickens with, like, the hair and the hairy feet?

I'm getting all of it.

A good friend of mine, Tim Kennedy, is like the hardest man ever. Do you know Tim?

I think I do, yeah.

He's incredible. He's a former. Oh, no, no, current. God, I always mess this up. Either an army ranger or a green brain. But he wrote the book Scars and Stripes.

Okay.

Anyway, he's based here. He's incredible human, but he's, like, obsessed with chickens. He's like the most murdery man that is obsessed with protecting his little flock.

Stop it.

Yeah, it's the cutest thing ever.

I love that.

Yeah, so he sends me chicken videos all the time. Incredible thing. Oh, this one was interesting. How do you give a speech to get a standing ovation based on our conversation before?

I think it's really important. The way I approach it is I want to make people laugh. I want to leave people inspired and give them actionable takeaways to make something better. And I want to make them cry. When I say that, I mean, like, I want to make them emotional is a better way to say it than make them cry. I'm not trying to make people cry. That came out the wrong way. Emotional. Like, there has to be an emotional. A good speech is a big emotional closing and gives people actionable takeaways and entertains them. Those are the three things that I think are the most important things you want to entertain, inspire, give them takeaways, and have a big emotional close.

Do you have a good joke in it?

Humor is really important too, but I tell a lot of stories, and just by that are funny. Yeah, stories are usually funny.

Yeah. And you have a dj.

That's what you do on stage. When I write a speech, I want to make sure that there's enough humor throughout it, because humor and stories are gonna keep the audience engaged.

Yeah. I also did a study. They make you remember things better. Like 30% better recollection.

But, Cody, the most important thing is to tell stories in a speech that only you can tell. So if I say, you know, hey, you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. A million people can say that. But if I say, you know, I rode my bike across the United States of America, and let me tell you what I learned about being uncomfortable from, like, you know, it's unique to me. It's a story that only I can tell, and that. That is really important in giving talks.

Yeah. You seem like a story collector.

Yeah, I am.

You know, and your life is kind of a. A version of that. This one was interesting. Have you ever done Brazilian Jiu jitsu?

I love to. I haven't. I took Krav Maga, but I never did Brazilian jiu jitsu.

So Krav Maga is like the Israeli.

Martial arts, because you can learn. What's good about Krav Maga is you can learn the basics and the foundations in, like, 30 hours.

Whoa.

As opposed to. But yeah, I would love to do that. I haven't done it yet.

We have a big audience of people that are obsessed with bjj, and they ask this question a lot, which I think is funny. And. And I think the last one is if you were chatting with somebody who is young, Jesse today, world's a lot Different. But what would you leave them with?

God, Cody, Jesus. These are like, these are really good questions. And the way you said it, what would you leave them with? You said it like don't fuck it.

Up is what I'm saying here. You know, you get one shot.

I just think, you know, this is an obvious answer, but we have one life. For me, I don't want to be 85, 90 years old and look back on my journey and be like I was the 80% version of myself. You know, like I don't want to be. No one wants to be the 80% version of themselves. So I think it's really important to live a life that prevents that, you know, that you're excited about you're writing, you know, you're the author of your story and that you're writing a really good story that you're proud of. I'll leave you. I'll leave you with this story. So my parents passed away. When your parents pass away, they lived. My parents lived in a house. My brother and my sister and I decided to sell my parents house. Like we weren't going to keep it. So what happens is someone comes in, like we sell the house but now we have to get rid of the all, all the 90 years of possessions that are in the house. The silverware, the mirror that's on the wall. You know, everything has to go so that the new owner comes into a house with nothing in it. So the estate people come and they start, you know, pricing out the cow. We'll give you this for the couch. We'll put this in an auction. We'll give this, we'll donate this. They go through everything and then the guy comes and he goes through the pictures and we'll give you 500 for this. This goes here. We'll sell this and then the book guy comes with Venmo stash. A taco in one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more. Pick a bundle with your go tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo Me Stashterms. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply. And we have like, my mom had like a thousand, like so many books. And he's going through the book one by one, writing how much they're worth and this, what they're going to do with the books. And then a couple of hours in, he hands my brother a book and he says, you need to see this. So my brother opens it up. It's not a book. It's a hollow, carved out book with a safe in it, like out of a Mission Impossible James Bond movie. So he opens it up. It's hollow. There's some old credit cards from 20 or 30 years ago that expired. And there's a note, and the note says, if anything happens to me, here's a combination to the safe, here's an address. You're the only one that has this combination. So my brother calls me up, he's like, we have a situation. Like, he's like, maybe mom left us Apple stock. I don't know what, like, like at $2. Like. And then I said, what's the address on the note? So he gives me the address. I'm like, that's my house in Connecticut. I wrote that Note to Mom 25 years ago when, when I bought this house. And I had some valuable stuff in the safe in case something happened to me. So that week happened to be Labor Day weekend. So I was at the house in Connecticut. So I went down in the safe, I opened it up, and in the safe, this is a true story. In the safe was a book. And the book was an autobiography that my grandfather wrote in 1974. And so I read the book, 54 pages, and we could do a whole other podcast episode on it, but he really left all these lessons through his autobiography for his kids, his grandkids and generations. And my father, you know, my parents are gone, my grandfather's gone, but the stories live on forever. And the, you know, the stories that we create, you just went through a whole hour. I don't even know how long we could have been here. Fifteen minutes or two, I have no idea.

Three years.

But all the stories that we went through, oh, the marquee jet running in the costume and the Zico costume and you know, the thing with Sarah, all these. All these little. They're just stories that we've collected. They're nothing more than. It's all going to go away. Everything's going away. But your legacy is the stories that you create that you pass down to your friends, family, kids, or the book that you leave in the safe. And that is what I would say, like, at the end of the day, you know, what. What is that book gonna look like for you in the safe? You know, like, what. What are the stories that are going to be in there? And. And how do you. How do you write the best ones? And it's not going to be the zoom calls. It's not going to be that. It's going to be what's on your calendar in yellow that you're excited about. You know, that you look back and be like, yeah, Chris did Rim to rim to rim. If you ask him, Chris, name 10 things you did in 2024, you probably couldn't. Like, what'd you do in January? I have no fucking idea. But he'll never forget Rim to Rim to Rim.

You're so right. So do you. Are you gonna write a book like that for your kids?

For sure. But I'm also. I. I am a story. Like, I am in. So deeply invested in spending my money on experiences. Like, I am so deeply invested. I'm going on a sauna tour of Finland with 10 friends in February. I rode my bike across America with 10 friends last year. I, you know, I'm going on trips with my fan. Like, I went. I got scuba certified with my son. I've been to Africa and Fiji all with my family over the last six months. And New Zealand. Like it? Because that's what I want. Yeah, that's. That's everything now. Easy for me to say, right? I have. I have the ability to do it, and I can afford to do it. But even when I was 21, sleeping on couches, I was going to Coney Island's Polar Plunge, which was free. I was going to free stuff in New York City. I was going to the rallies. I was going to this. I was out there. I wasn't sitting on my. On. On the couch watching the Kardashians. I was out 14 doing it, man.

Yeah, breakdancing, which actually makes nothing wrong.

With the Kardashians, but I wasn't doing that.

No, I think. I think you're right. I remember I threw my first protest when I was 15, and I want to throw up.

Would you protest?

Yeah. You haven't thrown A protest yet? Get together on the bucket list. 20, 25.

Will you come?

I'm in. I will hold the sign. I'll make the signs. I protested our. I was on student government and the dean of the school, or the principal. That's what you called it back then. The principal wanted to get rid of. Of half of our. What's that called? Where you go in between classes. Like the time.

Yeah.

Not recess. Yeah, yeah.

Whatever it is. Yeah.

And I said, that's ridiculous. We need that time. We sit in these chairs all day. I need to be connecting with people. We have things to do. And so we threw a protest and invited the news sources. But it's funny to look back in retrospect. I love sides. Yeah. But you know what cost me nothing. I'll remember it forever. And I think that's a beautiful thing for people to realize today. It's not just about the bank account that you have at some point, it's this story bank that you have.

Right. It's true.

Jesse, you're the man. Thank you, Cody.

Thanks for having me, man.

Dah. It's so good, that story. Obviously more inspiration than. I don't know, I got in a four year college degree. So if you also are getting inspired to do better, be better, hit that subscribe button. Share this video Share the audio so let's get more people into this wild world where we actually believe you can do things as opposed to have to be told what to do every second of every day. I hope you guys liked this podcast. Let me know in the comments on YouTube. We read every single one. I read every review you guys leave. So please comment or leave a review so I can hear what you liked about this podcast or not. And we keep making it better for you.