How to Relentlessly Prioritize Your Life – Jesse Itzler | 1121 | Dave Asprey

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. You are a New York Times bestselling author of two books, Emmy award winner, ultra marathon runner slash masochist. I'm assuming because you run ultra marathons. Those just go hand in hand. And you are part owner of the Atlanta Hawks. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. Man, what an honor.

You're a hard guy to unpack because you built Zico coconut water marquee jets. And I don't Even know what 29029 Everesting is because I didn't have time to look that one up. What is that?

Oh, it's a company that we have where we rent a mountain and people hike up and take the gondola down until they repeat. They repeat that until they climb the equivalent of Mount Everest, 29,500ft. Yeah.

So it's another one of those masochistic endeavors that you're just so into can.

Look at it that way.

So why ultramarathons? Why the long distance walking up Everest kind of a thing? That sounds painful. What's driving you?

I don't know. That's a really good question. I have to lie on the couch and answer that one. I think I'm. I'm a back of the pack guy. Back of the pack. I consider myself a back. I've had success, but a back of the pack entrepreneur. Back of the pack athlete, triathlon guy. But I realized that these long races, hundred mile races, ultra marathons, et cetera, come down to one thing, and that's will. And I'm really good at will. And I love things that strengthen my will.

Muscle.

Yeah. So I think that's what drew me to this sport. You don't have to be super athletic or, or, or great at anything. You just don't. You just can't quit.

I get that when I, I do long distance mountaineering stuff, it's. It's been a little while having kids and all does that, but there's something about spending days walking through the Himalayas or the Andes, and I've done both where it does something good for your mind, if nothing else. And there's something about pushing your willpower that's good for you. And I, I just went through this comparing that to being a long distance cyclist when I was younger and overweight. There's a cognitive thing that's, that's really beneficial for it, but it sounds to you like you just want to show yourself you can do it. When you talk about will, is that what it is?

I think to your point, there's a lot of lessons that, like, where do you really find growth in your life where you can really, like, learn about yourself? For me, I learn a lot from these experiences. I mean, for one, I always come out of it differently. But I've found very often that when you're in 100 mile race and you get to mile 45 and you have blisters and you're tired and you're broken, the reason why people quit versus finish very often is the people that are there in that moment think they're going to be there forever, that that will never get better, things will never change for them. And the people that say, well, let me just get to the next mile marker very often go through some kind of transformation where they start to feel better. I found that in all I've had multiple businesses, many have worked, some have failed. In all the journeys, I've come to that crossroads where I feel like, God, I'm stuck. I'm going to be here forever. And I've lost partners that have quit, competitors that have quit. To me, that's weeded out so much of the competition. And I think I'm really here talking to you today because I've stayed in the game long enough to create luck and opportunity. Where others felt they would stay in that position for a long time, I felt that I just kept going and over time it worked out. Those lessons are reinforced to me in events like that. The other thing I would say real quick is I always tell people when I do events or they do one of my events, if they finish it, go back and double your business plan because it shatters what you think your limitations are. It shatters it. So, you know, I think that it expands what you think you're capable of. And I think those qualities are really important in anyone, any goal.

If people haven't guessed yet and I have failed to mention it, we are talking with Jesse Itzler. I was thinking I said that at the top of the show. And this episode is all about mastering the art of organization for success. Because it's getting to be 20, 24 early days. So I want you to get clear, direct methods to help you upgrade your life, your work, your fitness. I'm going to compare and contrast what I do to be organized with what Jesse does. And we're going to then conclude that Jesse's methods must be better because he's sold way more companies than I have. So, okay, maybe not. We're going to see what resonates with you. That's Going to work for your personality and all. So, Jesse, thanks for being willing to go there with me. How do you organize your life? You got a lot going on just like I do.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny that you're asking me now because right now as we head into 2024, I'm focused on getting, getting lean and light in my life for 2024. So. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I think it's really important, Dave, to go. I don't know if you do this, but if we're going to compare notes. Thanks for holding that.

If we're going to giant big ass calendar that Jesse.

I have mine right here, by the way. So, Dave, this is my entire 2024 already mapped out. It's already mapped out because I feel like for me at 55 years old with four kids and it's really hard to create newness and I don't know if you feel this way, but so many of us live in routine that for me to create newness, very often I have to schedule it. Like, where does newness come from? You know, like I have to schedule a lot of that. I feel like a lot of people play life on defense and their calendars fill up with other people's requests for their time and I've completely flipped. That's my little bio hack. I flip that model upside down and I'm super aggressive with my planning. I feel like I really want to prioritize me and the things I want to do first and then let my appointments and work, they're going to happen anyway, fill in around it because without that, the weekends, the weekdays get filled up and I have nothing to show for it or not allowed to show for it. So I'm really aggressive and so is my wife with mapping out a roadmap. So like this is a calendar called the big ass calendar. But this is my entire year. I have all my trips, date nights, one on one trips with my kids, you know, as much as I can laid out and that that's really important for me.

You have a giant paper calendar with post it notes. Is this because you're 55?

No, it's because I want to maximize my year.

Don't digital calendars work a little better?

Not for me because first of all, I'm super visual so I like to see. First of all, I like to really track towards my goals. I like to see when they're approaching visually. I like to see where I have gaps in my ear. I can't do that from scrolling On a calendar. I feel like when you write stuff down and you put them down on paper and you lay out a map on one piece of paper, the general can see the landscape better. It helps me organize my time. So I guess for some people it could, but for me, I like a model where I can see my entire year on one piece of paper. I do use digital too, but I think this complements it really well.

I like the idea of having a visual calendar like that. In fact, I'm entirely visual and I don't perceive time very well at all. I don't know whether something happened last week or last month. It's the before time and I don't care that much. So because I'm so visual, when someone asks something, if I don't look at my calendar on my phone, I just don't know because it's. There's. There's no. I'm fascinated by people who they. They store everything in their memory with a date stamp. I don't do that. I just. It's not in my universe. So the visual side is really important. So, okay, that's your first piece of advice, is have a visual calendar, Maybe even one that's on the wall.

I do three things that have worked for me really well to kind of like help me map out a really good year. So the first thing I do is there's an old Japanese ritual, you might be familiar with it called a musogi. And the notion around a masogi is you do one big. I took the liberty to change the definition a little bit. But you do one big year defining thing every year. So last year I rode my bike across America. That is a big. It was a big thing for me. But in 2015, I wrote a book. It could be. I launched a podcast or I. Whatever it is, every year I try to have one big thing to show for it. Because if I said to you, what did you do, Dave, in 2013 or 2017 or anyone listening, you know, most people can't answer that question. I have no idea. Like what I. I like to have something that. That really defines my year. So that's the first thing that I do. And I kind of put it down the second thing that I do. And again, this has really helped me build what I call my life resume versus my traditional resume. Like, you don't look at time and stamp time the way others do. I don't look at resumes the way others do. I look at it as a life resume. I think that's way more valuable Than your piece of paper you give to an employer that says, I went to Wharton and I did this and I did that. I think that's amazing, but that's not an indication of the human every other month.

Did you go to Wharton?

No, but I know you did.

Oh, I was gonna say it's like the only school that doesn't have a built in ethics program. So I was gonna compliment you on your choice of school. Never mind. I'm just kidding. Sorry. My friends at Wharton. Yeah, I think they, they might have fixed it. But when I was there, we were complaining like they should maybe teach ethics sometime. Anyway, keep going. I was just gonna give you a hard time. But I failed. I gave myself a hard time. Nice ninja move.

Yeah, I would have gone to war and I just couldn't get in. So every year I do one big year defining thing. This little misogy that I call. The second thing that I do in my kind of the three is every other month. I learned this from my friend Kevin, who's a police officer. So I call it Kevin's rule. Every other month I try to do something I normally wouldn't have done on a weekend. So for example, instead of watching the Georgia football game, I might take my kids fishing. I might go to a web, a conference, I might take a course or a class. So I do like six mini adventures every year. And I feel like if I can't take a day every eight weeks to do something for me, my work life is really out of balance. So at the end of the year, I have this one year defining thing and I have six mini adventures. But here's why it's important. I know you, you know you're going to live to 180 or whatever you're going to live to. But let's say at minimum, I don't want to insult you, 280. But. But most people are going to live to 80 or 90 at least now, right? So if you're 40 and you're watching this and you live to be 90 and you live 50 years and every year you do a year defining thing. You've put 50 unbelievable experiences on your life resume, year defining things. And you've added 350 years times six mini adventures. 300 mini adventures. That's an incredible life. That's an incredible life. Incredible life lived. So I stick to that formula. That's my biohack for planning. And then the third thing I do is every quarter I try to add a winning habit. You know, like we're all products of our Winning of creating winning routines, winning habits and a winning mindset. So you know, that could be, I don't drink enough water, I'm going to add 100 ounces a day or I'm never going to be late to a meeting, or I'm going to add a 10 minute a day meditation practice, whatever. But I try to layer in sustainable habits over the course of, of my lifetime. And I'll tell you, you know, if you just did those three things, Dave, and you know, I know you have your system and I'm eager to hear about how you do it. And did everything the same in 2024. You did everything the same that you did in 2024 that you did in 2023. Only this year you added a year defining thing and six mini adventures that you wouldn't have had. And layer in a couple of habits. There's a great chance your year's going to be better by definition than it was in 2023.

The cool thing about layering in habits, like an annual habit, it's very different than a New Year's resolution. I kind of think those are dumb. I've written about that so many times because it's like a succeed, fail thing, but a habit. You know, habits are like a sliding scale. You know, a habit is most mornings I brushed my teeth and that one morning you didn't brush your teeth, but you're still in the habit of brushing your teeth. And for the record, I did brush my teeth this morning and you should brush it every morning. But everyone knows you're not going to die if you skip it. And you didn't fail for life. But with most New Year's resolutions, some like 80% of them fail in the first, not so long. Because it's not about a habit, it's about perfection. So habit for the year. I love that. I also map out important trips and adventure kind of things I want to do. I'm just thinking about it because my kids are teenagers. They spend their breaks from school with me. They're teenagers. So I plan kind of adventures with them. But it's time windows. And one of the challenges that I run into is that people hire me to speak on big stages for companies to talk about longevity and biohacking and brain enhancement and things like that. So those are relatively lucrative. And what I've started doing is when I have one of those, I invite one or both kids to go with me. Like I was just in, just in Miami and speaking at a conference there, a real estate conference. And so I brought My kids to Miami with me, and we went out on the Everglades and all. So it's kind of a mix of that. And also I want my kids to see what do I actually do at work. So instead of like, like that disappears and comes back with money, it's sort of, what. What is this all about? But I. I would say I. I am less planning oriented than you are, but I have an EA who I work with very closely on my calendar. Thank you, Christine. And I will just say, hey, I want to go do this when I hear about it. And then it's her job to find the time to slot it in when I'm not traveling. And I think that generates a bit of chaos just because it's like, oh, well, if the only time to do that is three months from now and you had a couple things scheduled, I don't violate my speaking contracts. And if there's things that just can't be moved, I don't move those. But generally you do it. And little mini adventures. I've been wanting to do one of those firearm training classes forever. I've had a gun since I'm from New Mexico, since I was 12, so there's nothing special about them compared to fire extinguishers. The way I grew up, you just think you're probably not going to need it. But I've been wanting to do that. So a couple buddies just reached out. So in a few weeks, I'm going to go do that. It's been on my list for 10 years, but it was never high enough priority until I also got friend time. So for me, Stu Friedman, one of my Wharton professors, who's maybe one of the first 50 guests on the show, he talked about, well, if you're going to do things, there's these different domains in your life, and you might as well do something that checks multiple boxes. So if giving back to your community is part of it, so what if you wanted time with a friend and you wanted to give back to your community with some kind of charity work and you wanted an adventure? Well, find an adventure that supports a nonprofit and invite your friends. And you're kind of getting three benefits in one adventure. And that's the kind of thing I would do. So for me, this is, you know, increasing my skills and spending some quality time with some guy friends, right? So, okay, I got two of those, and it was only two and a half days, so I could. I could swing with my schedule. But if it had been a week, it would have taken me a long Time.

That's cool. That's efficient.

How do you pick your six adventures? Like, what if there's eight you want to do? How do you know which six you're going to do?

When I turned 50, I made a promise to myself to put more on my plate of the things that I love to do with the people I love to do them with. So I try to choose adventures that include my high school friends, my college friends, my family, my close friends. That's a priority. And at this stage of my life, I know that I love to be outdoors. I love to do things that are physical activities. I love cold water. So I usually create adventures around those kind of things. I don't think you can ever get too many experiences or memories. So if I get. The more the merrier. To me, I feel like I show up better at home, at work, if I do things that I love to do. By the way, just for the record, if my wife or someone took that away from me, if that got taken away from me, I would have incredible resentment towards my job or my family, whoever took that away from me. But when I have that and I've checked the Jesse box and now my wife wants to do something, you know, I show up much better.

Yeah. Having adventures and experiences that are important to you are not. It's not negotiable. If you're going to show up in a partnership, whether it's a business partnership or an intimate relationship, you've got to be able to take care of that. And most guys, including me, for a lot of my career, it's like, well, it's your job to pay for the family, and you've got a team at work, so you're going to prioritize those things, and then you don't do the adventures. Like, for me, I've been wanting to go to Burning man since the late 90s. But the industry that I was in, in tech, at least one of the big ones was a virtualization industry. And VMware's annual conference was during Burning Man. So I was giving keynotes in a stupid sport coat instead of, you know, Viking horns and a vest or something, where I should have been at Burning Man. And I finally was like, I've had enough of this. And that was 2011. And so I said, I have to.

Go to a wedding.

So I gave my keynote, and then I flew to Burning Man. I didn't say that it was a wedding for someone I didn't know. I just knew there would be a wedding at Burning Man. And I finally Got to go. And I've been 10 times since then. But having those adventures, I just found I had to really fight to get them in. And what you're doing, that I think is really good advice for everyone listening, is put them on the calendar first. Right. And do you keep a list, like a bucket list of those things and then pull them off the list?

Yeah, I try to. I like to get rid of the B and add an F in front of bucket to make it an UCket list. Bucket list, A B and F instead of the B. I do keep a list. I'm not crazy about it and I have a lot of room for being spontaneous. But my point is, as we're talking about going into the new year, for me, it's really important at least to have a plan and to plan as much as I can if I want to get it done. Because my life just fills up like yours does. You have your speaking stuff and it starts to fill up. And then at the end of the year, what do you have to show for it?

Where do you keep your bucket list? Is this an evernote, an email? Is it a big sheet on the wall? And what does your.

I'm an old school guy, so I've had a list since I'm 21 of things I wanted to try to do in my life. I've always been into lists and I, I always add delete, edit. Riding my bike across America has been on my list since I'm 21 years old and you know, 34 years later, I did it.

Do you have one of those Franklin Covey Daily organizers from the 80s and that's what you use?

No, I have an insane amount of napkins and pieces of paper like the guy from Back to the Future would have.

Nice. Okay, that's a good answer. Mine's relatively similar. I have a stack of mostly computer printer paper on my desk. Just, you know, white, whatever, white, A4 paper.

Dave, you know what I'm about to do? You know what I'm about to do? When we get off this podcast, I'm going to go to my 17,421 emails in my inbox and I'm going to hit delete.

I don't have an issue with that. You can wait. This is the entire year's worth. You're going to delete them because it's end of the year?

Yeah, just because, like if I haven't read them or I'm never going to read them and I want to go into 20, 24 empty zeroed out. So I think I'm just going to hit delete. They need me. They'll find me.

So this is part of the sharing and comparing notes. Oh geez. Back before I started Bulletproof, I read Getting Things Done or GTD this organizing system where your inbox is always at zero and you file everything. And I did this hardcore for two years. I bought filing cabinets and organized my email. And one day after two years I realized this is neurotic. And I just reread David Allen's book. And what I realized is he is absolutely PTSD about missing something. So he built systems to feel like he's in control without taking into account the cost of the system itself. And like you, I said fuck it. And now I just delete everything. And I never empty my deleted items. And you can find anything with a search. So don't delete your 17,000, just toss them in a bucket. And if you ever need. What did that person send to me? It's in there somewhere. Right?

Right. You're right.

I'm seeing people archive it, but I found that archiving was an extra keyboard click than just deleting it. So I leave it in the deleted items. It doesn't matter, Right. The only time it would matter is you have to make sure that you retain records if you're dealing with anything legal and all that stuff. So for some people you're not allowed to delete things if you have whatevers. But I imagine that given being that you're a successful business person, you've never been involved in a legal matter. Right? Me either. Right. So that's just part of the game. So you got to do it. Do you work with an assistant?

What?

Do you work with an assistant?

I do, yeah.

Just one. Two, two. How do you structure your assistants? Are they like peers? Is one charge? Is one pa, one ea? How does that work?

Yeah, I try to separate the responsibilities between personal, my personal needs like shopping or gifting or stuff like that. I'm a big gift giver. It's a big part of my DNA.

Hey, you sent me a. You sent me a big ass calendar. Thanks, man.

Yeah, you're very welcome.

Your love language.

I love it. And, and then, and then I have an assistant also. That's more on my calendar. Travel work. I give a lot of talks to do a lot of traveling and yeah, I love having, you know, as I get older, I love having young energy around me. I love, you know, so I feel like I like having multiple people. I have a very small team, but I Like, you know, for me, making, doing things that make my life easier is really important to me. And having the luxury of having an assistant and now two is a tremendous gift because it just, it allows me to frees up my time and that's where I want to invest.

A lot of people listening are saying, look at these two, you know, rich guys, they have assistance. And I'll just tell you, I would never do any act of self care or see my family or have relationships in my life if I had to do all of my own calendaring and scheduling. So therefore I would cut the work that I do by at least 50%. And I'm absolutely not apologizing for that at all. It just, it's something that allows me to do it the way that I organize things. I have one assistant who organizes time. She's my ea and I have one who organizes space who's my PA or kind of personal assistant, even though she also does business stuff. So one of them orders stuff and inventory stuff and makes sure that physical infrastructure runs so that I don't have to think about it. So I can think about mitochondria or I can think about what I'm going to ask Jesse. Right. And the other one knows where I'm going to be. And then I wake up some mornings and I don't know where I'm traveling. I know I've packed my stuff and I've had help packing the vitamins and stuff. My PA even grinds my danger coffee beans and weighs them for each day so I have my coffee and I can brew my coffee in my hotel room. I don't drink bad coffee. And so the number of hours every week, I think it saves me 30 hours a week. And during that 30 hours, I can write books and I can do podcasts. So I don't feel at all guilty. Do you ever like feel like, wow, I'm fortunate or do you have any kind of like I'm, you know, I have guilt over this?

Well, I would just say that when I started out, I was the marketing department, I was the mail room, I was my own assistant, I was the packing and shipping guy. I was, I was the receptionist. I was everything, really. Honestly, for the first 15 years of my journey as an entrepreneur, I've only recently added assistance. I've had interns even at Marquee Jet, my first company, my first really successful company, I never had an assistant. I had an intern. Her name is Farrell F. She now runs probably one of the most top three most powerful women in sports but she was an intern for me for 10 years, never had an assistant. So I don't feel guilty about it at all. It makes me more efficient, but it took me a while to get there.

Maybe I'm strategically lazier than you are. And I believe all entrepreneurs are inherently lazy. That is so stupid and wasteful. I bet I could invent a better way and sell it to other people. And it's the motivation to drive to do something better that's actually lazy. That's like marquee jets. It is so stupid the way you have to fly. So why don't I just invent a company that solves the problem so it's easier. So entrepreneurs make life easy for other people. And I just realized early on because I, when I started Bulletproof, I was a VP at Trend Micro, I was vice president of Cloud Security, a full time job, quarter million dollars a year, stock options and giving keynotes around Platform Planet. This is not a low pressure job. I also was starting a Bulletproof and I had a one year old and a two and a half year old and I had just moved to a new country and there was just no way I was going to do this without an assistance. So that was one of my first hires, was someone who could just help me to do the simple stuff. And so for people who are listening and some of the the Upgrade collective live audience here with us today, they're asking, you know, could you do this with a virtual assistant? What would you advise your younger self? When you were starting your first company, should you have hired a virtual assistant? You, you've hired an in person, should you have just gotten a housekeeper? If you could do it all again, what would you do different?

Well, I think as soon as you can afford to hire your weaknesses, you should. And for me, organization was a weakness, always a weakness. So that was a good first early hire for me when I could afford to do that. I think everybody has their own operating system. You know my wife who ran and owned Spanx for 20 years, a very successful shapewear company. Oh yeah, you know, she, she liked to keep her books, you know, early on she liked to keep her, make her own appointments. Some people like to do their own travel. And then things got too big and her life changed and she had to bring in an assistant. I think it's a personal decision. But for me, asking me specifically, again, not just in business, but in all areas of my life, the best use of my, my relationship with money is probably different than a lot of the listeners here. For me, money is a great tool to make my life better and easier to take to treat people I love to things that I love to do. You know, I don't have a lot of fancy watches and artwork. I have a lot, but I don't have a lot of that. And so, you know, to use money towards things that make my life easier, an assistant, being one and more efficient in business is a great investment. So for me, you know, I wish I could have done it a little earlier. Maybe my business would have scaled faster. I don't. Who knows? But when I'm out running on a long run and someone is taking care of things that I would have had to do and take time, even things like errands, it just freed up two or three hours. Multiply that by 365 days, and then multiply it by the 120 years you have left on earth, and you basically just found yourself 20 more years of life. Dave.

It. It's a longevity strategy to free up a few hours a day to do stuff you want to do a hundred percent with you. I have a Spanx story for you.

Okay.

And I feel called to share it because it's so outrageously ridiculous. And I want you to ask Sarah about this and see if she got the social media tag. All right?

Okay.

One of my very best friends is a celebrity nutritionist and author named J.J. virginia, very well known in the health space, and she hosted a nonprofit party thing. And you're supposed to dress as a rock star or a legend for as a costume party. So I order the Steve Jobs outfit with a turtleneck and all, and it doesn't arrive, and I'm in some desert climate like Palm Springs, so I go to Nordstrom Rack. There's no turtlenecks in the desert. I'm like, God, there's no costume for this. So I'm thinking, what legend and rock star can I do? And, well, J.J. it's her event, and she's a total rock star. I'm like, okay, I. I gotta do this. So I. The 80% off dress thing. She wears an iconic pink dress. It's there for 29 bucks. I don't know my size. So walking in the dressing room with 10 different dresses JJ would wear, like I said, she's a close friend. I know her style. And so I put the thing on, and I found the one, and I'm wearing toe shoes. And, like, this is not cross dressing. There's just a dude in a dress to go to a party. And. But I go, there's a bit of a bulge here in the front. And I can't wear this dress with that happening because that's just a little bit too pornographic for my taste. So I go to the discount Spanx section at Nordstrom Rack. Jesse, there are 5,000 different types of Spanx. It's like Tetris for human. I don't understand all that. And I was very intimidated.

The anti bulge one, I think I.

Found some bike short style ones and I put them on. But I'm getting to the point here for Sarah. So I get to the party. Three other women have dressed in the same dress that JJ would wear and are carrying her book. It's like, well, like, hey, she's like the biggest rock star in the room. It was kind of a way of honoring a friend, right? So we have a photo where we're all standing there in these dumb pink dresses and lifting up our dresses to show off that we're all wearing Spanx. And we took the picture and we sent it to Sarah and they didn't repost it on the Spanx website.

And I just don't know why, you know, I never heard of it. That's. First of all, it's a fantastic story. You're insane.

Seen.

You're out of your mind.

It was crazy.

But I will check with her. I'm sure if she got it, she would have definitely shared it or told me, so I'll have to double check. That's hilarious though.

It was funny. And it's one of those things where I didn't understand how complex of an organization Spanx was. But that product set was insane. And I don't know how anyone walks in a dress. It was, it was. Yeah, it was odd. Anyway, that's my, my one Spanx story. And I always, I always wanted to know if she got it, so I hope she did.

Yeah, I'll shoot you a note. I'll let you know. That's funny though.

Now that brings you to the concept of a sense of humor. Just being able to laugh at yourself. And I wonder, you hired David Goggins to live with you for one month and kind of run you through the ringer. You wrote a whole book about it called Living with a Seal and David Goggins is a total stud and so tough. Are you. Are you like the lean in, you know, be, be tough kind of David Goggins, you know, like you haven't earned it or is there like a sense of humor behind all this?

I think a combination of both. I think that first of all, I met Goggins in 2006, so 17 years ago. And we've always been told surround yourself with like minded people. But like minded people are just like you. I'm really attracted to people that are, are incredible at something that I'm interested in. But we're different. So you know, I've lived on a monastery with monks Goggins. I live with Wim Hof. I've had a journey of living with these really interesting people. I'm a compilation of that. So of their habits. We talked about habits. I'm really. Even when I had Marquis jetty, we flew 4,000 of the who's who of pop culture, CEOs, athletes, entertainers. I was 29 years old when we started the company. I was obsessed with their habits. How do you live Rich? Where do you travel? My dad was a plumb, owned a plumbing supply house. I didn't know anything. We never talked about anything about money, nothing. So when I was around these people, like what time do you get up? What time do you go to sleep? What do you eat? My version of biohacking was pre Internet. It was going to the people that were best of breed in their industry and trying to figure out things that resonated with me.

So you studied them. It's definitely biohacking. One of the reasons that we're up to about 1200 episodes on the show is that I wanted to ask a lot of people who've done interesting stuff how they did it, how they ticked. So there you go. Twelve hundred interviews later, I think I might have learned a thing or two.

100%. 4,000 customers later, I feel the same way. And I was so every moment that I had I would ask them questions as a curious 29 year old kid. And I still do that. I still do that. So Goggins was a little bit more intense because we spent more time together. But you know, I was fascinated with some of the things that my. This is pre Instagram. Pre Goggins was, was a Navy seal. He was still an active seal. No one knew who he was other than people in the running community that had done some ultras. That's where I met him at a race. So my intention wasn't like I'm gonna write a book or anything like that. It was like, I'm really, this is a fascinating guy. Early on I was something, you know, drew me to him and, and that's how our journey started. Same thing with the monks. Like, you know, I realized that I had spent so much time investing in the physical side of My body of me, training, trainers, marathons, like you said, crazy races for pain. But I neglected the spiritual side. So I said to myself, like, who are the spiritual masters? And everything pointed to monks. So I said, I'm not going to read a book. I don't learn reading, I gotta go do it. So I lived on a monastery for 15 days with eight monks that had been there for 50 years. I love this, to answer your question about like, you know, personality and this and that, to me, I love Gandhi said it best, learn like you'll live forever, live like you'll die tomorrow. And that's really the way I kind of try to live my life. I'm really curious. I love learning, but I love learning through doing and through people. When I turned 50, I made a list of the 50 things I always wanted to learn but never did in my life. Simple things like driving a stick shift car, free diving, backgammon, ballroom dancing, DJing. All these things that I've been curious about that before my journey is over, I want to experience, I want to learn. And I started bringing in again, what's the best use of money. For me, it's investing in experiences and learning. I started bringing in coaches one by one to teach me these skill sets. I got really good at ping pong. I got really being able to hold my breath. This is interesting. Listen to this. The first thing that I did is I brought in a free diving coach. And to get a baseline, she asked me to hold my breath underwater to see where my, what my limit was. And I'm like, I've run 100 mile races. How much time do you have? Go get lunch, because I'm going to be under this water for a very long time. 29 seconds.

Oh, that was it.

So I come back up. There's no correlation between ultra running and holding. So I said, I was so pissed at myself, I'm like, do it again. We do it again. 29 seconds. So after one session, no, I'm sorry, two sessions. I went from 29 seconds to holding my breath for over three minutes. So it just goes to show you, when you talk about hacking, biohacking, entrepreneur hacking, once you get that trade secret, whether it's health, whether it's business, whether it's, I can't do a Rubik's Cube, but now how to do it, I can do it in one minute because I know, I know how to do the Rubik's Cube.

What?

Once you figure out your Rubik's Cube, no matter what it is, you've Hacked it. And it becomes, you see it much easier and much better. So I want to be Jason Bourne. I want to meet as many people that can give me as much information so I can learn to hack things. And then I want to share it with people.

Have you done one of those urban escape innovation courses like Jason Bourne?

No, but tell me about it.

You got to add this to your list, man. I did this years ago, right when I was starting all this. Neil Strauss, who's become a friend, has been on the show several times, wrote a book called Emergency years ago about how he had like stopped being a fearful New Yorker and went out and learned how to kill an animal and eat it and how to survive. And part of this is a three day class and there's a bunch of people who offer these around the country now. And three day class, they teach you how to. What spies do, like how to pick locks, how to get out of handcuffs and zip ties and duct tape. And the final exam is they kidnap you, put a hood over your head, handcuff you in the back of a van. You pick the locks, escape from the van, you partner up, at least in the one that I did with someone. And then you, you, you go into a city you don't know, and then you kind of run missions while there's bounty hunters looking for you. And if they catch you, they duct tape you and take you further outside of town. You got no money, no cell phone, no id, and you're just on your own. Whatever you, you know, you might have hidden around and it was incredibly scary, but it was the closest thing to spy school and Jason Bourne I've ever done. And it was, it was remarkable, actually. I learned so much about, about myself from doing it. So that seems like that should be on your list if you want to.

Be Jason Bourne on my list. That's going to be my birthday present for me. That's the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life. I'm 100% doing that.

You know, I would do it again. If you decide to do it, maybe we can line it up because that would be fun.

Sounds incredible.

Yeah, I'll see if I can find the name of where I went or actually, I know a guy who does it who'd be really good. So I'll refer someone to you. And it's one of those things where you actually can break a zip tie if you know how. And it was also to be. To be hunted in a city. It's different than waking up with David Goggins. But it was probably. My heart rate would have been as high either way.

That's incredible. Thanks for letting me know about that.

You got it. When you said Jason Bourne, that just pushed a button for me. I want to know though. So you said you're going to add it to your list. I have a problem with lists because the honeydew list or even just a to do list, that, that's mine. It's like an ever present weight on me. This is one of my criticisms of getting things done. So I don't do lists. If I want to do something, I put it on my calendar. And if I don't put it on my calendar, I send it to my EA and I say, can you keep this on your list? That I don't see and that way if there's an opportunity to do it, we'll add it to the calendar. But I don't want to pay attention to the list because if I have a list, it's like it could be midnight and I've written, you know, 4,000 words on the book and I've returned text messages and I've done whatever. But then I'm going to look at the list and I'm going to take the next one and then I'm not going to sleep and I'm just going to work. And you know, a list feels that it's like, it's like a PEZ dispensary. You just eat a pez, there's another one. Eat a pez, there's another 1. It feels like it's soul crushing. So how do you manage lists without just having constant omnipresent pressure?

Yeah, I look at it a little bit differently than you do. Although similar in some regards to me, I want to get things out of my head to create more freedom, space, creativity and energy. So for example, whatever comes to my head, let's say my son, I have to get a birthday present for my son's friend's birthday. Right. I can't think about that. It's taking up too much bandwidth. I put it on my list just to get it out of my head. And that doesn't mean it's done. It doesn't mean. But I want to free up my head. So I have a big list. Then I might delegate it or whatever. But for me, step one is getting it out of my head. My head is time to think, be creative. Yeah, so we're kind of saying the same thing. I'm not in the sense that you go from calendar or you delegate it. Me, my Delegation is getting it out of my head. Okay, I don't want to worry now. That doesn't mean it's done. But now I don't have to think about it. It lives somewhere and frees up brains, brain space for me. My biggest superpower, quite honestly, is bandwidth. My greatest superpower. I have two enthusiasm and bandwidth. And don't underestimate enthusiasm listeners, by the way. Don't underestimate. I've built businesses based on enthusiasm, but also bandwidth. You know, if you want to be an entrepreneur or, I mean, even as a parent of four young kids, I need bandwidth. Otherwise I feel overwhelmed, bottlenecked. And part of the. One of the strategies for me to create bandwidth is to do it is just to dump things onto paper 100%.

My superpower would be forgetting stuff, which is why if I don't capture it on my calendar or send a text or whatever to my assistant, it is not going to be remembered. And I just recognize that if there are even studies of this, that our ability to remember things is much less than we think it is.

What I love about what you just said, and it's like, it's a takeaway for me that I'm going to get better at. And I love it is. I love how casual and not concerned you are about keeping a list. Like, a lot of people obsess on and you're like, oh, yeah, I'll either delete it or I'll give it here. Like, you don't put any pressure on. We have enough pressure.

Yeah, like, like someone else can do the list. Because my superpower isn't keeping a list.

Right. You, you took the, you took, you took it off the table by just, by, by minimizing the whole concept of. And I like that, like, you took all the pressure off yourself by saying, oh, then I have to complete a list and check it and like, oh, my is on my list. I like that a lot.

I was an IT guy for a lot of my life and, you know, took actually my. I have a degree in it and so I know how to design these systems to hold information. But designing systems is a lot of work and running them is a lot of work. So even with, with my team at, like, I want them to do it. So, like, hey, there's a list somewhere. I don't know where it is of people that I know in la, I want to. I want to meet with when I'm down there. So every time I meet someone in la, I'd like to meet this person. I send context and I. And I send a text and it goes on a list and then if, if I have an open spot for dinner, then she'll open up the list and then we go down the list and say, okay, like that would sound like fun. And then we do it. But if I had to keep track of all that, I have 10, I've tried to do it. I have 10 different lists that say people I know in LA on 10 different stupid note taking systems. I don't know which one's current. And besides, I'm not going to be the one who sets it up anyway. So I just became really at peace. It's like the opposite of getting things done where I know I'm not going to be perfect. I don't care if I'm perfect. And I can be safe if my inbox is full and I can be at peace and I can be safe if I put it on a list. I can be safe if I forget it for 99.9% of things. And cultivating that inner peace took months of neurofeedback. And I've lived in monasteries as well and traveled the Himalayas and all that kind of stuff. And I just realized it feels like I'm going to die a lot of the time when I'm not going to die. So I finally learned to not feel like I'm going to die. If I have a fantastic idea and I don't write it down, it just means I'll have another one later.

Can I ask you a question? This has nothing to do with what we're talking about right now, but you mentioned about brushing your teeth. Do you use toothpaste?

I use a tooth powder that's fluoride free. Primal Life Organics is the one I use because it remineralizes your teeth. But I don't. I guess my, my phys, my personal assistant arranges that. It just manifests itself in the house somehow. How about you?

Sometimes a combination of water, you know, flossing. My wife does the baking sort of thing. I'm, I'm anti fluoride too, but it's, you know, I'm very particular. I like the food, babes, toothpaste a lot.

Yeah, Vonnie's been on the show a couple times. I like her. She's gonna, she's not gonna put chemicals in there, that's for sure.

Yeah, I like her. Her toothpaste in the white tube is the one that I use the most and that's my favorite. But I was just curious if you were, what your thoughts were so there's.

There'S actually a good argument for sometimes in the morning not brushing your teeth, especially when you first wake up. And it has to do with nitric oxide producing bacteria. And you probably have better blood flow if you wait a little while. But if you tape your mouth at night, which I've done religiously for five years, I tape my lips closed so I breathe through my nose. It also increases nitric oxide and it makes your mouth have a much healthier biome and you don't get cavities anyway. And I typically don't wake up with dragon breath unless I did something really bad the night before. So it's like, I don't really need to brush my teeth in the morning. It's kind of a habit at this point because my oral biome has shifted.

It's interesting.

And by the way, you can measure that too. If you go to Viome V I O M e dot com, it's probably Code Dave or something for listeners, but they'll actually measure all the bacteria in your mouth and tell you whether you like which ones you have that are nitric oxide formers and which ones aren't, which ones are bad for cavities, whether you're likely to have bad breath or not. And you can even get like a probiotic for your mouth, that changes that. It's kind of cool.

What research are you most excited about now in the biohacking lane? Like, what fascinates you the most or where are you putting most of your energy?

Well, longevity has always been the goal. In fact, one of the big reasons I started biohacking was to make longevity cool so we could start doing it in our 20s. If someone just told me all this stuff when I was 20. It's very cheap and easy to do the basics when you're young, and it's very expensive to reverse it after you trash your biology. You hit 300 pounds like I did. So what I, what I'm really excited about now is, is some of the aggressive longevity therapies that I dreamed about when I wrote my big longevity book a couple years ago. And one of them is gene therapy. And if you go to, to daveasprey.com genetherapy, there's a link to the episode of the podcast and all that. But I had an injection that if, if I respond like an average person, will take nine years off my measured age from a single injection that teaches my body to make more of a compound made by young bodies. And after two years it goes away and there's no Permanent change to my genetics so that I'm pretty excited about some new stem cell things. And also we're finally learning how to get good signals into the body to cause it to change. So like David Goggins, the signal is pain. You know, and I'm teasing if he's listening, David, I think you're awesome. But you know, he's like, you know, you're going to push and you're not going to let it go, but. Or my buddy Jocko, you know, same thing. It's like the signal is the amount of work. But what I've determined in my last book, it's actually not the amount of work, it's how hard was the work and how hard could you turn it on? So it's the slope of the curve, not the area under the curve. And then it's how quickly do you return back to baseline? So if you do the impossible in half a second and return back to normal in half a second, you would have the fastest progress on earth. I've managed to with Upgrade Labs, which is my new franchise. We have 27 locations in the process of opening. I say new, I started eight years ago, but we've taken cardio down from five one hour sessions a week. If you're really into cardio, you give me five minutes three times a week and I'll give you six times better VO2 max in 15 minutes versus five hours.

Doing what?

What I just described that, that turning it on. This is an AI driven system. So I, I'm exercising 20 minutes a week now because I'm busy and I am 7% body fat. I'm like lean and ripped in a way I've never been before. And it's because I'm using AI to get a signal in very quickly, but also to tell the body to return back to baseline very quickly. And that's called Upgrade Labs. And, and for listeners, go to ownandupgradelabs.com and you can have a franchise in your neighborhood.

You just saved me about, probably save me about 200 hours a year.

Yeah. Honestly, and this was my point is as a dad and I have six companies now, which is probably too much, and the author and the public speaking and the show. I just realized I am willing to work really hard. In fact, I would say my resilience is very high. I can handle more than most people and I work my ass off and I can grind it and have all the tools to do it, but I don't want to waste time. And if I got great joy from Sitting on a spin class, I would go, just because I loved it, I hate it, and I'm not going to do it. In fact, you can't pay me enough to do that. I'll go for a hike or something, but I'm just not going to do it. So that's why this was attractive to me.

Yeah, that's very cool. That's very cool.

It's kind of like your Marquis jet thing, right? At a certain point when people start having money, they go, wait. It was going to cost me four hours of standing in airports with people who don't like me taking off my clothes. And what, like, it's just become really burdensome to travel. It didn't used to be that way. And it's not any safer than it was before. It's just more locked down. And now there's a $10 billion industry to make sure that it's inconvenient. So that's not going away in the US Anyway. So all that's there. And then, oh, with marquee jets, maybe it's a little bit cheaper than it was to do the full jet. And because of all that pain, and if you're someone who flies like I do at least 100 times a year, if I could afford to use marquee jets all the time or something similar, I would. And I have taken private flights when the savings of time was worth it. Because the same thing with exercise, you got to allocate your time to something that matters to you. And I'd rather spend the time with my kid. And if I have to spend money that I have and I'm lucky enough to have at one time or another, then it just feels right. Do you have the same mindset?

Oh, 100%. 100%, yeah.

And for people listening going, look at you assholes. Talk about private flights. The. The number one piece of advice I give to young entrepreneurs that are getting started, especially women entrepreneurs, is I'll just say, all right, guys, who here washes their socks, who does their own laundry? And all the hands go up. Doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, if you're in your early 20s, and then I'll stand there, I'll say, shame on you, because you are starting a company. If you have any revenue in your company at all, I promise you that the time you're spending doing your laundry is not high value time. And that's the first thing you outsource. And the reason I call out women is that usually when I get into the 30s and people maybe start having kids or their 40s, they're still doing it. And I know women running $10 million companies do their own laundry because I haven't thought about the preciousness of every second of every day. So for me, the efficiency is if I can do nothing, sometimes that's what my body needs to just process thoughts. And if instead I'm, you know, buying aluminum foil or something like that, I'm doing it wrong. And that's how I organize my year is I, I don't want to do the trivial stuff unless cooking. I like to cook. So I make my steak and I feel good about that.

Yeah, you want to put your energy into things that matter the most to you.

Now I want to ask you one more question about how you do stuff, which is still not clear to me. You have your big annual calendar, right? Your big ass calendar, the one you sent me. And can people get that online or is that just the one you sent? Yeah, just@jesseo.com Jesseitsler.com I T E L E R There you go guys. You get the big calendar and it's too big for me to open it here, but it's, it's big. Like actually if I open it, it's like really big. There you go, like I guess behind me there. But it's, it's large. How does it get from there into slicing a day? So, you know, tomorrow, does your calendar start at 8am you have 15 minute segments and you're bouncing from one thing to the other. Do you do an hour blocks, like just walk me through your productivity thing?

Yeah, I think for me, my day starts the night before. So most people, you know, I don't think anyone here, you hear the term like you have to win the morning, which you do, or you know, but nobody listening is good enough to just wake up and wing it. What am I going to do today? You know, like, oh, the competition is too good. So I think for me, I always lay out my day and make sure my day is organized the night before. That's a non starter. So I look at my calendar the night before, know exactly what's laid out. Maybe certain things I have to change or move around to make sure that my day fits. For me, I'm not the greatest person. Well, you're asking me, so I'll tell you how I do it now. But let me also tell you how I did it in my 20s because I'm different now. For me now my mornings, you know, get my kids ready for school in the Morning, I split that with my wife. But then I work out the morning, so I don't start my day until 10 o'. Clock, my work day till 10 o', clock, so I don't put anything on my calendar until 10 o'. Clock. I'm either running, training, maybe if I want to write something or even just do nothing, I get that time alone. And usually I'll work out, run and swim, or run and sauna or something like that. And then I work and I try not to schedule. I try to like time block it. So I told my assistant, like, I don't want to do calls on Monday. I want to do anyone who wants to do a call or a podcast, let's do it between 1 and 3 Tuesdays, Thursdays. I create certain blocks of time for me to write, work on my speeches, get creative, whatever it is I'm working on. But I keep my meetings separate. But the biggest thing for me is laying out the night before. And the second thing is I used to put a lot of pressure on the days. So, for example, I'm an author. I'm going to write ten pages a day. I'm a runner, I'm going to run seven miles a day. And that never works because your kid gets sick, you have a field trip, and then you lose one day and you're like, I couldn't even do it for this. I'm done. Instead, I love to think of it in terms of weeks. I'm going to write 50 pages this week. I'm going to run 50 miles this week. Because then if I miss a day, I have the ability to be successful and catch back up and make it up. So I really set, you know, like a weekly. This is what I want to get done this week. I got to do this, this, this, and this. Versus this is what I have to do necessarily on a daily basis. That never works, man. At least for me. So the night before, thinking in terms of weeks, not days, prioritizing and then time blocking the best that I can. By the way, I also stop my days at 4 o' clock when my kids come home.

Nice.

Like, I'm really, you know, I have a rule, Dave, that I'm never too tired for my kids. I'm never too tired for my kids. If my kids come home and say, dad, I want to have a baseball catch, oh, I'm too tired, then I'm putting way too much energy into other stuff. So that's a rule of thumb. And that trumps everything else.

Love that. I believe I've had dinner with my kids more than any other CEO of a company. The kind of size that, that I've grown, even the whole time I was growing, it, you know, just, you know, every single night unless I'm on the road. And that's just, you know, for me, non negotiable. Same thing. My phone stays in airplane mode until the kids get dropped off at school. So I don't look at anything. It doesn't matter. If you want to get a hold of me, you have to drive to my house. It better be a big emergency. And now that my kids are older, they're, you know, and teenagers at school and I live in a different city, a lot of the time I don't have that same rule, but same thing. They get, you know, top, top priority. It's, it's an interesting thing. You're going from 10 to 4 my workday, and people be surprised at this. Cause I, I'm known for being very prolific and productive. 10 to 5? Yeah, I don't, I don't schedule stuff before 10. On occasion, you know, I'll schedule coffee with a local person in Austin. I was probably gonna have coffee anyway, so they come to my house and have coffee. That's social time, right? And what am I doing? I do my. Sometimes maybe it's work. I'm doing social media for my cold plunge. I did the sauna this morning. My body didn't want cold, so I didn't do cold. And I do just different biohacks to be resilient, I think, or I read or I just do whatever. But it's kind of my time. And I get organized and I think most people listening don't do that. And if you just give yourself an hour to get stuff in the morning, you don't have to hit the ground running. And I brush my teeth while I'm standing on my vibration plate in front of my red light. And I start dictating my first email memos as I'm running to make my coffee. That's a recipe for getting old. It's the moments of peace followed by moments of focus. But the challenge and the thing I wanted to ask you about because you've done some big stuff too, man. My days are just full of meetings over and over and it gets just freaking exhausting. I don't have enough time to write and work.

I don't take meetings.

Tell me more.

I don't take meetings. There's nothing to talk about. I don't, I don't do meetings anymore.

How does your team Know what you want to do. How do you manage now?

I have meetings with my team. Like just with. But I don't have meetings. Like I don't like go out and always have a lunch. Me, I don't do that anymore. I did that for 30 years. I'm done with that. No, I don't schedule meetings. If there's a meeting, it's at my house. I feel like I've earned the right to do that. For me personally, the way I want to design my life forward. I don't go to meetings, first of all, I can't. I'm just impatient in them. They're not effective. I get in the way. It doesn't mean I don't meet with my team, but I don't outside meetings, I don't do anymore. I also, like, my goals have shifted. Dave, like you, you know, I don't have the energy to build another Marquis Jet or Zico Coconut Water or I don't have the energy. I'm not the same that I was in my twenties and we, you know, that's okay. I'm okay with that. Like, I've evolved, I've changed. My priorities are a lot different. I have four kids. I don't need to own the world. I have a really good sense for me of that. And yeah, so that's an important thing in how I schedule as well.

Nice.

Here's the deal. When you get older, for me, we're comparing notes. So maybe you feel the way, but maybe not. Because you have six big companies and you got all this.

They're not all big. In fact, I was removed from the board of Bulletproof. So that's one that I still own. But most ones I'm running are smaller. But still it's dozens of employees kind of thing.

Yeah, I'll look at it this way. I want the lowest. I don't. I want. When I was young, I could take high aggravation for high reward. I was willing to invest incredibly high aggravation. People work meetings because the reward was potentially very high. Now if it's a super high reward, but it's high aggravation, it's a non starter. It's a no. I want low aggravation for any kind of reward. And that is business. That's people. That's everything. I want as low aggravation as I can get. Now that comes with a sacrifice. That comes with the ability to scale. Maybe that comes with the ability to do it again. But I'm not competing with anybody. And I've gotten To a spot where that's okay with me. So those factors come in. If someone said to me right now, Jesse, you could be in ground zero at Google, but you have to go, and we're going to go to Europe three times a year and blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm out, I'm out. I'd rather go to the football game, my kids football game.

You know, what you're saying here is repellent to some people. And some people saying that's impossible. You're only saying that because you've become successful. And I would have been one of those people. In my 30s, I was very. I made 6 million bucks when I was 26 in the tech world, lost it when I was 28. So I. Same kind of thing, you know, we, we both did that. And I traded a lot of good stuff I should have done and traded some of my health for that for no good reason other than bad programming. But I know today I know at least a couple dozen people who are 30 or under who didn't do that and are quite successful, quite wealthy, and they're way happier and have better relationships and better friendships than other people. So there is no evidence that shows that hard work creates results because we know lots of people work hard and don't get results. We know the ability to work hard is important to get results, but it doesn't mean doing it all the time is how you do it. In fact, doing it for brief periods of time with greater results seems to work better. And that's the goal you set when you're younger is leveraged your time, leverage your energy so that you can start these activities earlier and be a lot happier.

There's a famous speech by a guy, I forgot the guy's name, but I need a memory pill, Dave for the holidays. Send me something that will give me better retention. But I do remember reading that in the 1940s at Prudential Insurance, a guy gave a talk, a famous talk. You can I. I'll send you a copy of it because I have a paper copy of it. It's interesting where he studied what made people successful. And he wanted to distill it down to one thing because he had been told his whole life exactly that you just said if you work really hard, you have to work hard to be successful. If that's the case, everybody that worked hard would be the people that were successful. But he found people around them that weren't working that hard, that were mega successful. So he was like, well, what is it? So he did a Year of research. And he gave this talk to Prudential, and he simplified it to one characteristic. And it sounds obvious and there's a lot of buildup. So it might be disappointing to the people listening, but it's something everybody can do. The people that were most successful did the things that other people weren't willing to do, didn't want to do. So, for example, they would come home, and when everybody else went to happy hour, they didn't want to return all their calls or whatever, they did it. When everybody else was going to the football game, they drove two hours to see the client that changed their life, or whatever there was. They were willing to do the things that other people just weren't willing to do. And that was. And that made sense to me. When I look back on my journey, like I said earlier, I was able to go to that point where we did people out. They weren't willing to go past mile 40 with the blisters and the tires. They weren't willing to. To go. Look. When we started Marquis Jet, I had no aviation. I was a kiddie pool attendant. A couple of years before it, I went from kiddie pool attendant in five years to starting a company that did 5 billion in sales. All right, when we started Marquee Jet, they if they would have said to me. They did say to me, you're going to need FAA approval, Department of Transportation approval. Raise money, buyers hire sales to blah, blah, blah. I'd be like, what? I was a kiddie pool attendant. What are you talking about? What's the first thing you said? I need Department of Transportation approval. There must be a lawyer that specializes in that. Let me get the lawyer that specializes in that. Okay, we got that.

Check.

What's the second thing? Faa. There's got to be a guy. We got that. What's the third thing? Where the other people were like, we could never start a private jet company because we don't do that. I'm not willing. I don't. That's not what we do. I don't know anything about that. I'm not willing to go down that route. It weeded out 95,199% of the people. So now my competition pool is like, three companies.

Love it.

Let me tell you something. Do you know how many Apple podcasts there are? I think there's 2 million.

It's gotten a little bit crazy right now.

There's 2 million podcasts. Did you know that? 500,000. I want to put an asterisk next to this because I want to Double check my math. But I believe there's 2 million, and I believe that 500,000 of them, 25%, only do one episode of the podcast and then quit.

Exactly.

So if you're telling me that the state of the union is we can discredit 25% of anyone in our field or whatever, because, oh, the advertisers didn't come, this is too hard. I don't want to have what it takes to grow a following. Then I already like my chances. Because what I say at the very beginning of this conversation when you talk about is, why do you run the hundred mile races? Because it's a test of will. So they're not willing to do that. Now, my field is only 75% of the market now. We get to 10 episodes, it gets to like 50.

So.

So all I gotta do is stick in for 11 episodes and I'm in the top 50%.

It's completely true. Same thing goes with companies. The vast majority of companies, something like 99 out of a hundred, don't make it past a million dollars in revenue. Right. And then it happens again. Going past 10 million and again going past 100 million. To the point there's 17,000 companies in the US doing of $100 million in revenue. And I, I built one of them from scratch.

Wait, wait, what? You said there's 17. Say that again.

There's only 17,000 companies in the US doing north of $100 million a year in annual revenue.

Wow.

So. And you've. You've built companies that are the next tier above that. The billion dollar companies I never hit, I might have hit a billion dollars in valuation using fantasy math. But if you don't sell it for a billion dollars, don't do anything. And.

But fantasy math is amazing when your head hits the pillow, but it doesn't do much for you.

Yeah. Even when people say Elon's worth a trillion dollars, if you tried to sell all of his Tesla shares tomorrow, the price would drop precipitously. So it's not really worth a trillion dollars. And it's true for everyone who's a Kabillionaire. It's like they own assets that are worth a lot, but they don't really have that much money. So whatever. But to build a company that much revenue, that's a hard number. So that. It's the same thing with running. Do you have the willpower to stick out all the. Every entrepreneur has been betrayed. Everyone's had investors try to screw them over and had employees who absolutely didn't do the job and then turn around and try and sue for whatever they can get, for whatever reason they can make up just because they're low integrity people. And to go through all that, it's rough. In fact, the guy who started Nvidia, did you see that interview?

I didn't, man.

He, they said if you had advice to yourself when you were 19 years old when you started Nvidia, what advice would you give yourself? And his advice was, don't do it. No one can ever tell you how much you will suffer to become this successful. You will spend so much of your life. Wow, man, that's kind of dark. But he's not wrong. I don't regret anything I've done because I wasn't doing it to make money. I was doing it because there was a change that I wanted to see in the world. And that's still why I'm motivated. Otherwise I, you know.

Yeah. There's a famous study where they interviewed some of the wealthiest people in America and they asked, I mean liquid, liquid net worth of like 20 million or more. So like incredibly successful people. And they asked them what their biggest regret was in getting all the money. And overwhelmingly the majority of the people all said the same thing. And that is giving up what they already had, chasing what they wanted, meaning their freedom, their time, their family, their health. Their health, their everything. You know, they sacrificed all that, their kids, their relationships to get the money. So now if you did that, why in the world would I want to go take. The reason why I became an entrepreneur is to do what I'm doing now. That's the whole reason why I did it.

Yeah.

To have freedom to like go for runs, ride my bike across America, jump in freezing cold rivers in the middle of nowhere, go to Jason Bourne camp with Dave Asprey. Like that's why I did it. So like, why would I take that away from myself now? Chasing something where like, and then, and then also like you might live to be 180 if you live to 100 if you do live. Let's use, let's use your end date as 180. Let me ask you a question. It from 150 to 180. Are you skiing? Are you riding your bike? Are you active? I mean what are, how long does the, do you extend the longevity of.

I'm assuming that I will look and feel like I do now or better for the entire time. That's the goal. And if I'm not, then I'm going to be putting my energy into Learning and being curious about how to do that. Because every day our ability to reverse aging is getting stronger and stronger. So by the time I'm 180, I'm expecting that my IQ will probably be, you know, 50 or 60 times higher than it is now if I want it to be. And I can choose the age of my biology. And I'm not joking. It sounds like science fiction, dude. 100 years ago we were still fighting World War I with horses. Like unimaginable amount of time, like we're not good at seeing time. So I just want 50% better than what we have today. So we are all assuming we don't die of inhaling glyphosate and whatever else, but assuming that you maintain your health reasonably well and that things continue on the track down to you are going to be able to do like, like you will say, well, I don't know, do I want to go for a run today? Do I want to do any sport you want to do? Do I want to spend the entire day, you know, with my loved ones doing fun stuff or in the bedroom? Right? Like anything that you would do at any time in your life available to you. And I want to do that until I'm say, you know what, I'm 180, I'm bored. I did everything I came here to do, guys. I'm gonna like go to a cave and learn how to meditate and just walk out of my body. That would be my perfect death.

Yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to set all the like ultra marathon, all the endurance records for 90 and up when I turned 90.

What if we grow your legs to be like 8ft long? Would that still count?

Yeah, let's do it. Everything counts. Everything counts. Let's be clear about that. It all counts. But now after hearing you, I might want to change that. And I think I might be under indexing in the bar that I'm setting. If you're, you know, before, if you're not a Dave Asprey, if you're not you and you're a regular human, you have a different, a regular human mentality. Meaning. Meaning average American lives would be 78, 80, whatever that is. I don't know, something in that ballpark even push it out to 85. That might be true for life expectancy, but you know, I just rode my bike across the country. I didn't see any 70 year olds on the road. I didn't see, I didn't see any 70 year olds water skiing on my lake this year. Not many, you know, so the relevant years. I'm 55, so I'm a little bit older than you. The relevant years that we have in the normal, traditional. I'm going to live to 90 to be, like, relevant, physically relevant, meaning, like, participatory, radically. Gets it. It shrinks so fast once you hit 67, like, it's just. There's not a lot of 70.