Defining Success: The Key Buckets Jesse Itzer Swears By

I never want to lose that. And I'm not, I'm not talking about financial. I'm not. I'm talking about. In all the way I look at success is. There's so many definitions, but like, I take the buckets that matter the most to me, my family, my work, my wellness, my friends, charity, whatever. I want to be as good as I can be in those buckets.

Yeah.

I don't. The best in the world, I don't think. I'm not competing with this one and that one. But for me, those are the buckets that matter. And if something doesn't fit into one of those buckets, I'm usually not doing it. It's like a waste of time.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to just focus in on those buckets that matter the most and spend. When I turn 50, I made a promise to myself to put more on my plate of the things I love to do with the people I love to do them with, you know, so, so great. That's it, man. That's my driver.

I love that. And, you know, I think, I think as someone who's still in the grind or still searching for just another level of success, right. And they get hit with a couple obstacles externally or they have those ins. Internal blocks, that internal fear. In today's world, they call it imposter syndrome. It could be self doubt, the thing they worry about when no one's watching. And. And I think because, you know, we get to be around a lot of people, I think they feel that that goes away. I still have that voice of self doubt. I still have the same fears as a broke kid in upstate New York wondering if I was ever going to make it, hustling cars at 17 and 18, selling firewood and all this kind of stuff. I. I still have those. I've just learned how to dance with that voice or overcome that voice. Is there still something that scares you or something in the invisible that you still worry about that no one would ever think.

Well, you know, it's really hard to play scared. You know, it's hard to play scared. And you hear that sports analogy all the time. Like, don't play scared. Play to win.

You got.

Don't play. You know. Yeah, you gotta play to win. Yeah. I mean, I think everybody suffers from that. I think at. I think as you get older and, and you get some wins, you get a confidence and a conviction. That's really important. And I think that little edge, swagger, whatever you want to call it, I think is really important. And people Feel that. But there's always the doubt. I think everybody, I mean, that's human nature. I'm pretty sure that Oprah said this, that she's interviewed the biggest names in the world. Everyone's been on the Oprah show, that is been on the COVID of every magazine and everything. And. And what are the four. What are the four words that everybody that comes off stage say to Oprah? How did I do? The most brilliant in the world are insecure.

Yeah, they're insecure.

Even Oprah, when she. I don't want to speak for Oprah, but I'm sure she comes off the stage and says the same thing. Dale, how'd I do? You know, people want to be liked, they want to be expected, they want to be good. So that never goes away. But what I love about that too is there's a major weed out process with that Dean, because it weeds out a lot of competition. A lot of people get too scared over that and it knocks them out of the game. And the people that just have. Think of this. There's. What are there. There's 2 million podcasts on Apple TV, I think, and 500,000 of them. I want to make sure I get this right. 500,000 of them only do one episode and then they quit. So like, I think it's like 25% are out of the game just because they. Where are the advertisers? How come one of my Instagram followers. It takes a bazillion. You know, how many people passed on living with the seal till I got a record, until I got a book deal? How many people record companies passed on me till I got a record deal? How many doors I knocked on before I got a manufacturer with. I mean, like if it was just one podcast. So I love my chances knowing that, you know, that's a really good point.

I love.

I gotta get the fact. I think I posted. I'm pretty sure it's either a million or 2 million, but it's a big number. It's like 25% are out. Like they're out. They're off the table right away. And then the number keeps going up. Two episodes, four episodes. Then when you get to five episodes, it's like 90% or something of the people are out of the game. I'll do 1,000 podcasts.

Yeah, same. Yeah. You know, there's. There's that book and I don't even have a podcast. Exactly. There's Ogmundino's book, the World's Greatest Salesman. I love that book. It's really not about being a salesman. It's about the human.

I saw you quoting it on a couple of things.

Yeah, Yeah, I really. I really love that book because. Because one part, he said, I will persist until I succeed. If you just adopt that the word persist is probably the only word in the English language that can guarantee your success. Like you just said, if I have to do 100, 1,000 or 10,000 podcasts, if I decide I'm going to be a successful podcaster, I will persist until I succeed. But then he goes on to say two things I think you'll like. He said, the prize is not at the beginning of the journey. When did anybody tell you that? The prize is at the end of the journey. And during that journey, you don't know how many corners you need to go around until you find the prize. Like, I picture someone's like, I worked hard. I did three podcasts. They look around the corner. It's like, hey, no advertisers. It's like, there might be 70 more freaking corners. You go around and you don't know how many it's going to take. And if the other guy only took 5, it doesn't matter. You might have to take 50.

If. If working hard. Everybody works hard. If working hard was the. Was the ingredient to success, everyone would be successful. It was so simple. Just work hard. Then. I mean, my dad worked his ass off, you know, and, like, it didn't. It didn't work out like that, you know, working hard. And I'm sure he, you know, felt great about the effort he put in. They did it. There was an old. A famous speech about a guy that worked for Prudential insurance back in 1940s, and he wanted to distill success down to one thing. And he gave a presentation in front of his. All of his. The whole company about. He spent, like, years. What was the one thing that leads to success? And he. He dummied it down into basically the people that did things that other people didn't want to do. So, like, nobody wants to. When happy hour is going on. People watching the Georgia football game. No one wants to stay home and return every single email that came in that day or not go with their friends and go. But this guy was these guys that were willing to do all the things that the other people weren't willing to do was the biggest differentiator. When I think back on my journey as an entrepreneur, it's been a remarkable journey. And I don't mean remarkable in terms of success, just what I'VE gone through. It's really like I've been really thinking about it a lot lately of. I'm proud of myself, man. Like, I didn't have a lot of help, you know, my dad, I didn't take a business class. We didn't talk about money. We didn't talk about business growing up, Nothing. And I've been able to kind of navigate. And I've had partners in almost everything I've done, and they all dropped out. Just before I got a record deal, my partner quit. He was like, it's not working. Just before this, someone quit. Just before this, the guy bailed.

And.

It'S just that persistence and that resilience is really important. It doesn't guarantee success, but it's a big component. And I would just say this. I do a lot of long distance running. I've run several hundred mile runs. And what I found is, what's interesting about that is when you line up at the starting line of 100 mile race, it's not like everybody looks like an Olympic athlete. You have all shapes and sizes. And sometimes the people that look like they could never even finish a marathon finish way in front of you. And sometimes the strongest looking people drop out after 10 miles. And what I found is the one thing that everybody has in common that completes these races. And I would hire anyone that finished 100 mile run can come work for me because they have an incredible will. And they just have a will. It's unbelievable. And I'm like, whoa, that's. I have will. I have will. I started running. Two miles was my goal when I started running. But I'm like, when I saw that, I'm like, I have will also. Why can't I run 100 miles? Same body that ran 2 miles took me to the finish line of 100 miles because I have. I have will. So when I had Marquis Jett, people used to. Sales reps used to come in to me. I'd be like, how'd the meeting go? They'd be like, oh, it was so tough. I got beaten up on price. I got beaten up on competition. And I'm like, you're a sales rep? What you expect? Your job is to sell. The customer's job is to push back. What did you expect? And for those, for those people that you mentioned that are going through these challenging times, like, you're an entrepreneur. That's what you signed up for. What did you expect? Like, did you expect that you're just going to cruise through it with no blemishes? It doesn't work like that. So for me, when I hit, when I get in pain in 100 mile run at 57 miles in, my response is, what took you so long? That's all you got? Pain. That's it. Because I know it's coming. I'm not going through that without being in pain.

Yeah.

It's not a surprise to me that business is hard. It's not a surprise to me that that's going to happen. And part of that is the gift that my parents gave me of allowing me to be disappointed. They didn't strip that from me. They didn't take that away from me by silver coating everything and saying yes to everything. My parents allowed me to be disappointed. And my parents didn't over schedule me. They allowed me to sit in a room and when they had a meeting for three hours and think and dream and figure it out and envision myself in different roles and visualize. That's what I. When my mom had a board of education meeting, she took me with a pen and a piece of paper and said, we'll be done in three hours. And I would sit there like, you know, it's very different than today's world. But those were gifts that my parents gave me and I didn't even realize it. They were massive gifts.

God, Jesse, so many great takeaways from what you just shared. So many great takeaways. I love that perseverance in the 100 mile race. 100 mile race, we're all running a hundred mile race, right. We're all in it right now. Especially if you decide to do your own thing. And what's harder, the struggle of getting through the self doubt, the pain, the things that go wrong, the people let you down or getting to the end of your life like you said earlier and being 95 years old and realize you missed it. You just want. You took the flat road, right. You took the walk rather than the run because it was comfortable in the moment. But like the, like the Theodore Roosevelt man in the arena speech, right? It's like you get to the end of your life and realize you never got out in the field. You just judged from the stands. You wore someone else's name on the back of your jersey and never knew what it was like to feel alive, to feel disappointed, to feel scared. But on the, on the opposite side, feeling what it's like to sell Marquis Jet or have the company or have the accomplishment I love. So I. Before we get, before we go, here's a couple things I want to. I know you got the Running man festival coming up October 17th through the 19th in Kingston, Georgia. That's coming up soon. So we'll get this out to make sure we can help get some of our people there. How? How do people find out more about that.

Yeah, if anyone's looking for an amazing event that combines kind of like being outside, camping, running or walking and saunas and cold plunges and speakers and music, we're having a little mini festival. You can go to alldayrunningco.com, alldayrunningcode.com and check it out. It's gonna be a great way to experience new people and new things.

Well, I wanna tell you one more thing, and then tell me just before you share that. Is everybody I know, Jesse, that does any of your running events comes back transformed, not just because they ran and had some exercise. That's a part of the journey and the willpower. But you've set it up in such a great way. A friend of mine, Stu McLaren, and his wife went and they were telling me how they got done. And it was just the whole experience you put together that was transformative. So October 17th through the 19th, I would highly encourage you to go check it out. You were going to say something, Jesse?

I was just going to say that, you know, you talked to me a little bit about regret and the end of the road and what drives me and this and that. And if we have two minutes, I just want to share the two things. Yeah. So one thing that I do that's been really helpful and for anyone listening here, you know how, like, you know, Sarah and I have busy lives, like everybody and our kids have glitches like other kids parents have glitches. And we have issues like other people. Nothing changes just because you've had some money. And you know that better than anybody. But, you know, we've been able to design a life like, do things that almost guarantee that while we're building our businesses, we're building our life resume and our, our personal. The personal side of the journey. So the first thing that I do is there's this old Japanese ritual called the misogi. And the notion around it is you do one big thing a year, like one year defining thing every year. So this year I rode my bike across America. In 2015, I wrote Living with the Seal, as you mentioned. 2018, I launched this company called 29 029. You should have something, one thing to show for it at the end of the year, 365 days, there should be like, if you don't have one thing to show for it that like, whoa, look what I did. What do we really do? So every year I try to do one big thing and then the other thing and I schedule it. And the other thing that I do is I had a friend, I have a friend named Kevin. And Kevin coined this by coin, this Kevin's Rule, because he kind of created it. But I was camping with our kids. They were eight at the time. Mount Washington, which is. It was like minus five degrees out. We're sleeping in a minus 40 sleeping bag and snowing. I'm like, Kev, there's eight billion people here, man, in the world. There's no one on this mountain. Like, this is amazing. How often do you do this? He's a police officer and he lights up. He's like, every other month I do something I normally wouldn't have done. I go, what are you talking about? Since college. He goes, well, like, instead of watching the football games, I might go fishing, I might go to a conference. I might watch one of your webinars, Dean. I might do something that I normally wouldn't have done. And I said, every other month. I take like one day every other month. I said, well, why? He goes, well, look, he goes, if you're 30 years old and you live to be 80, so that you live 50 more years and you do six mini adventures a year, that's 300 mini adventures. So if you do one, if you do one big year defining thing, right, I'm calling a masogi and you're 30 and you live to be 80, that's 50 year defining things you've done and 350 year defining things and 300 mini adventures. Like, that's a heck of a life, man. Forget about your riches, forget about your businesses, forget about that is an unbelievable life live. So, yes, I've had success in business and I've sold companies. Yes, I've also suffered the defeat of having to call people and be like, we're out of business. But while those journeys were happening, what I'm most proud of is I never neglected this side of me. This, like, I'm building up an unbelievable life parallel to building these businesses. It was never a goal of mine to be like, I want to be the richest. I want to be this, like, I don't even. I don't play that game, you know. But I did want to be the richest on this side of the equation, or at least as rich as I could be on that side. I feel like anyone can win that game. And for people listening that say, oh, well, it's easy. That is true. It makes it a lot easier. But our trip to Mount Washington cost $18 to park our car. It cost $18 to park the car when I was 21. The Polar Plunge with my kid free. There's stuff that you can do, local races, challenges. You know, you're in the forefront of webinars and your coaching programs and products. You're in the forefront of. You guys have really revolutionized the modern day coaching business. You and Tony have revolutionized through a variety of ways. And there's so many ways to learn now. And there's so many ways to get better through, you know, through social media, through webinars, etc. And there's so many ways to experience life. You know, we live in an amazing country. I just rode my bike across it. I saw it 15 miles per hour at a time. I saw this whole country west to east, 15 miles per hour at a time. And there's a lot that it has to offer that's free. There's a lot that it has canyons and rivers and mountains and don't tell me it's money. It makes it easier for sure. But don't use that as an excuse.

Jesse. You know, I love doing these interviews. I just started this podcast about 14 weeks ago. I don't run advertising on it. I don't do it as a money thing. I feel blessed that it's one of the. This morning when I woke up, we were the number three podcast in the world. And our category. I feel the momentum this thing is getting is amazing and, and it's what people don't realize. I love to be able to share. I love that those listening today got so many great gifts, but I get the gift too. What you just shared. I just want to tell you the one big thing and the 300 many things. It's a reminder to me because success without fulfillment has got to be the emptiest thing on the planet. And reminding us that, you know, at 50, soon to be double fives, right. It's going quicker. I hope it hit everybody like it hit me. It was such wise words. And. And to push ourselves out of the comfort zone. One big milestone a year and 300 mini adventures by the time we end our lives. Six a year. What a great. Or 12 a year. How many? You said every two months. So six a year. What a great lesson. Jesse, this has been amazing. I appreciate you spending the time today and sharing your knowledge. And if you're home listening right now take what serves you. I know there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of podcasts you can listen to. I'm grateful you're listening to this one. But listen to this. Take what serves you and throw the rest away. But take at least one thing Jesse shared today and implement it. Think about it. Journal on it. Think about it at night, think about it in the morning. Be disturbed within action. And when you're done listening to this, share this with somebody who needs this message as well. Make sure you check out Jesse's run that's coming up October 16th through the 18th, the Running Man Festival. I'll make sure I put the link in the show notes. Jesse, thanks for taking the time. Thanks for being such an inspiration to so many.

Dean. 8, 2268 8, 2268.

It's written down right here at the top of my paper. 8, 2268.

I can't miss you're 1120, 11 something.

60, 1120 11, 28, 1120. So every, every birthday now I'm just gonna look back, go, ah, Jesse got me by two months. Hey man, I appreciate it. Anything I can never do to support you. Let me know if when you're going to do something else. Write a book, anything you got going on, make sure you reach out. I'd love to support you in any way I can.

Thank you, Dean man. Thanks for having me.

Appreciate you guys. Thank you Jesse and everybody. Until next time. We'll see you.