The Japanese Rule For "Starting Fresh” - Jesse Itzler

All right, it's the end of the year and forget New Year's resolutions. We have something much better. So in the next hour, Jesse Itzler is coming on and he has an entire process for planning a monster 2025.

I don't want to play catch up. I want to attack. Like now I'm taking control and I'm dominating the year, not other people taking it away from me.

Jesse is an incredibly successful guy. He started Zico Coconut Water. He started a private jet company. He sold to Warren Buffett. He's an Emmy Award-winning rapper.

Got 4 kids.

He's an ultra marathoner. With David Goggins. If you don't want to learn from this guy, something's wrong with you. You're broken inside.

If everybody does the 3 things that we're going to talk about in 2025 and does everything else the same, at the end of the year, if they see me in an airport, they're going to bear hug me.

I just saw Sean writing like, I like take notes.

These are my golden nuggets from this episode. These are, you know, my pen died halfway through.

And now you added 20 winning habits. You're fucking Jason Bourne. You're Jason Bourne. Jesse's a amazing.

He tells us this process that he's been doing for the past 25, 30 years. I'm pretty pumped about it, and I think you will be too.

I'm glad to be back, man. I love your show. I love that you got me back as a repeat, as a repeat offender. So let me just start by saying that, you know, I love December. I think December and January are critical months for the 11 or 12 months that follow them. And as we head into the new year, you know, the first thing that I do, like any business in America, when we get to the end of the year, they close out the year. They have review sessions, what worked, what didn't work, you know, what was successful, what wasn't successful. They give themselves a grade, et cetera. And I found that a lot of people don't do that in their own personal lives. So I like to take a little inventory in December and just kind of have a little review process around how the year went and, and, and take inventory on my own personal year. But like, no one taught me how to set up my life, you know? Like, no one taught me how to like deal with my emails and no one taught me how to schedule properly. I never, like, I didn't take a class in school that like, hey, you're gonna have 4 kids, you're gonna get bombarded with emails from, from the school with all kinds of appointments and Zoom calls that we didn't have back then. And you know, like your calendar's gonna fill up with other people's requests for your time. Like, how do you wanna deal with that? So you have enough time to do things that you wanna do and achieve the goals that you wanna do within work and outside of work. No one taught me that. And then layer in children and layer in a wife that works and a business as an entrepreneur. And like, how do you do that? So, you know, like I'm a product of trial and error. I tried a lot of stuff. I didn't grow up with a phone. I was scheduling everything on a paper calendar for literally 45 years of my life. Um, you know, and, um, and I had to figure out like what, as my life evolved, how to grow with it. So I have a pretty cool system. I'm happy to share it with you guys. It's worked really well. It's allowed me. To, to balance a lot of things and get a lot of things done. And I think it's pretty simple. And I, I will preface it by saying that, um, you know, as you get older, how old are you guys?

35 and 36, right?

Yeah.

36.

All right. So you got another maybe decade before this hits, but it will hit and it's inevitable. As you get older, creating newness becomes really hard. Because you live in routine, you know, and like it gets very comfortable to be, to live in routine. And really I found that the only way to really guarantee that you create newness, and newness is important, it's important to relationships, it's important to your momentum and your enthusiasm and your success and your excitement towards things and your growth. The only way to create newness I found is the planet. And, or leave room to be spontaneous. So I become a really aggressive planner and I feel like a lot of us play, um, life on defense. Our calendars fill up with other people's requests for time. Like I mentioned, Zoom calls, weddings, appointments, school stuff. And at the end of the year, like you don't have a lot to show for it.

What are the categories? I do family, fitness, finance, fun. Do you have like your own like cute acronym? for your categories?

Well, I do my own individual personal audits for business with my teams, but then for my personal thing, adventure is a category for me. I try to look through like, what kind of adventures did I have? Like, like I said, and we'll get into this in a minute, you know, you wanna have something to show for all your hard work at the end of the year, not your Zoom calls. I'm not like, yes, in October I lit it up on Zoom. I'm not doing that. I'm like, oh, I just, I just took a one-on-one trip with my daughter to New York City. I just got back. So stuff like that, I'm like really taking inventory on how much time did I spend with my kids? You know, like what did I do well? What I do, what I have to work on in my role. Like I really, really do do that. And then I try to close out the year and I have a system for closing out the year. I'll share it with you guys really quickly. And like the overall theme of closing out a year, and I think everyone should take a couple hours to do this. I think it builds momentum and I think it gives you a little closure around the year, whether you had a great year or bad year. It gives you a fresh start for 2025, which I think is, is really, really important. And, um, the theme is I wanna come into the new year light. I wanna feel light and I wanna get rid of all the email baggage, all the to-do lists, all this. I don't wanna have a lot of carryover going into the new year. I wanna kind of clean my hands and just be light. Now, this might sound ridiculous. It starts in my closet. I go through my closet, I look at all this stuff that's been hanging there. For 12 months that I've never worn, you know, and I donate it. I get a big bag. If it, if anything is a 50/50, do I want to keep it or don't want to keep it? I just say someone needs this more than me. It goes in the donate box and I start to organize my closet. So when I walk in, I don't have a ton of decisions. You might see me wearing very shirts, very similar to this because I don't have a lot of options. You know, I keep what I like, I get rid of what I don't like. And I get super clean my desk. I get rid of all the clutter on my desk. I want, I don't want to walk in and I got stacks of things I gotta go through and bills and stuff. I get super clean on my desk, my emails. I'm a big hit delete and explode 'em all at the end of the year guy. Um, but before I do that, I put things in files. I respond to the things that I owe an answer to. I delete the stuff that I don't need. Everything else goes into a folder. And I try to go in net zero into 2025. That's really important. I don't want to come back from my vacation January 1st and be sitting with an inbox with 700 emails and just like, you know, just feel like I have to play catch up the first 30 days of the year. I don't want to play catch up. I want to attack. I want to attack. So I come in, I come in naked on my emails. I unsubscribe. I go through all the stuff that I have subscriptions to. I unsubscribe, I, I delete all the apps that I think use, again, just trying to get light, you know, I get rid of all, clear out all the apps. I clear out my cars, make sure that, you know, I have no clutter in there. And, um, I create files for 2025 where, you know, maybe I, I'm still a paper guy, so I keep records of my medical files. I know people have them on digitally, but I keep a paper file. I still, get my bills, paper, I put 'em in files. So, but again, I, I have a system, so I'm not like playing catch up. And, um, so I co— I get super light on all that stuff. And then I can't recommend this enough. I write handwritten letters to the 20 to 30 people that really impacted me or helped me. Even you guys, man, having me on, you know, you might get a thank you note. Thank— there's 8 billion people in the world. Guys, thank you too for having me on your podcast. Like you thought of me. Thank you. I write, I write in, you know, a handwritten letter to my suppliers, my contractors, maybe a teacher, my son's coaches for football. I want to thank them this year, you know, um, with no purpose other than really giving like a thank you. I've been doing this, but that for 30 years when I was 23 years old and I had no money and I was sleeping on 18 different couches. My entire marketing strategy was I wrote 10 handwritten letters a day and I mailed— I wrote 3,000 letters. I'm not even kidding. And I still to this day do that because it breaks through the clutter. People remember it. People read their mail. They might not read their DMs, texts, Slacks, and all that stuff, but they read their letters that come in the mail. And there's a different intention. I took the time, I wrote it, I licked envelope. I went to the mailbox, I put a stamp on it, I put it in there. Like, it comes with a lot of love, man. It's a lot different than hitting send on an email.

Are you still doing, are you still doing all that? Or—

Sam, I'm not going to talk about anything I don't do.

No, what I meant is, uh, I've like wanted to send email, uh, letters to a lot of people and then I'll be like, but is there a service where I can just type it out and they mail it out for me?

Yeah. It doesn't work that way.

He's like, are you listening?

No, I, I—

Is the audio coming through?

I do it, by the way, I send letters as well, but then I'll like have a stack. I have like, um, a few years ago I got some stationery and it like feels good to like write letters to people, but every once in a while I'm like, I don't feel like writing this. Is there a service? And then I'm like, what the hell am I doing? And so I wasn't sure what you were doing.

Yeah, you can't outsource it. You can't outsource it, you know, um, as a business owner, like I've realized that you can't outsource soul, you know, and the DNA of a business is the soul of the business, the heartbeat of a business. You can't outsource that. And customers feel soul and your friends feel soul. And when you start outsourcing things that, you know, for hundreds of years humans have been doing themselves. It loses a little bit. And I found that, that 2-hour investment, how about this? Let's do an experiment for your listeners. Take 10 envelopes, 10, take 10 pieces of paper and take 20 minutes and write a thank you note or to your parents, to your kids, teachers, whoever, saying, hey, this year I just want to thank you for investing so much time with my kids, or whatever you want to write. Lick the stamp, put it in an envelope, and watch the return on investment. Watch the return on investment. And I found that, um, there's nothing like quite like it. Now that might sound ridiculous, hokey, but I've been doing it for 30 years and people still thank me. No one gets a letter from you like that and doesn't remember or hit you back.

Uh, there was a guy who came on, by the way, and he held up, he was, he does the same thing. Uh, this guy, Guy Spier, he's a value investor and he held up. He goes, I do this. But he's like, why did I start? Because I went to, um, the Berkshire Hathaway Summit and I went to this event. And then he goes, afterwards, here's what I got in the mail. And it was a letter. Warren Buffett had written him a letter. It was 2 seconds. It was, Guy, thank you for coming, really appreciate you being there. Signed, Warren. And he goes, if Warren Buffett is doing this, I can do this too.

I get one from Coach K. I know you're a Duke guy. I get one from Coach K every year. Check this out. Look at this. Let's show you guys something. This, all of these letters, all of these letters, and there's, I have boxes of these, all of these letters. Check this out. These are all letters that I got this year. I've read them all. I keep them all in this box. And at the end of the year, it's going in a thing, and then I'm starting a new box that's gonna say 2025 because I've been talking about this. For a long time. And, um, you know, I'm in a really unique spot. I'm in a business where people write me letters. You wanna talk about finding your mission? Imagine waking up, going to your mailbox and, and, and to, to letters of people thanking you for, you know, sharing best practices or, you know, helping, whatever it is. What a, what a gift. What a freaking gift. If, if everybody does the 3 things that we're gonna talk about in the next 20 minutes in 2025 and does everything else the same that they did in 2024, at the end of the year, if they see me in an airport, they're gonna bear hug me cuz they're gonna be like, that was so easy. And I can't believe how much better. My life just got. That's what we're going to cover.

Hey guys. So a huge part of the growth of this podcast is thanks to our presence on YouTube. And without YouTube, I don't think we'd be as big as we are now. And it's all because of you guys for watching. We see you in the comments, even the negative ones. It definitely bothers me, but I read all of them and we see how powerful this platform is for growing an audience. Well, if you're planning for the next year and you're thinking about investing in a YouTube strategy for your business, then you have to check out this new guide from HubSpot. It covers everything you need. So building a content strategy, it covers understanding the YouTube algorithm and how to leverage SEO tactics. And then it also talks about the different content types and examples to create engaging content. So don't miss out. Grab the guide and set yourself up for success next year. Now let's get back to the episode.

So the first thing is is closing out the year, getting light, doing all those things, you know, to get light, writing handwritten letters. And then the, the other thing that I do is I, I try to identify like what I want to fix going into next year because, you know, like everybody wants to be a 10 outta 10. No one signed up to be an 8 outta 10, the 80, you know, a B minus. Everybody wants to be as close to the, a 10 outta 10. But if you have certain things that are broken, even if you make a bazillion dollars and your business goes up 50% and you're crazy growth, you're never gonna be a 10 outta 10 if like the marriage is broken, you know, something's wrong, whatever. So what I always tell people to do is imagine guys had a, you guys can do this right now. Imagine you had a big blender and in the blender you put all the buckets Sam Parr, that you were just talking about, all the buckets in your life into the blender, your finances, your health, your weight, your relationships, where you live, like everything going on in your life, put it in a blender, shake it up. And then on a 1 to 10, with 10 being like the ultimate in happiness and 1 being rock bottom, like again, what's your number? Your weight, your relationships, your work, your finances. You put it all in, you shake it out, you're 7. Are you a 5? You'll have to tell me. Are you an 8? Are you what? Like, what are you now? What I love about that exercise is immediately your brain goes to a 10, and then the 2 or 3 things that are bothering you pop in your head like crystal clear and take that number down. So maybe it was like, oh, my finances aren't there, or like, I hate my job, or things aren't great in my work. Whatever came into your head, those are the things you gotta work on. They're not gonna magically get better. You don't just like, oh, you know, like, my relationship stinks, it doesn't like magically get better. You gotta work on it. And did anything pop into your guys' head right away?

Yeah, so I put it all in the blender. I got to an 8.5, and right away, you're right, I started at a 10 because I'm happy, right? And then I said, well, I do— the weight's got to come down a little bit. All right, the weight's got to come down a little bit. So that's, that's a point off. You're not I want to have healthy habits that I'm proud of. And then the second one was, you know, I, I think I'm really good at this content thing. I love making content, but I'm still spending way too much of my time in my businesses. And I really want to make that shift from operator to creator. And I've made, I've made good progress, but I'm not all the way where I want to be there.

I had a 6. I had a daughter and I'm loving being a father and she's fantastic. That's a 10. Finances, I did really well. That's a 10, but I'm bombarded with inbound messages and I don't have a system to where I'm saying no to 10 minutes at a time. The 10-minute time requests and context switching is ruining my life and it feels like I can't get in the flow. So I'm gonna give my, give it a 6.

Okay. A 6 overall.

Yeah, because the context switching, it like, I get So much joy being in the flow of something and, uh, both a combination of lack of system and addiction to social media and texts and all that shit. It's brought me down, uh, a, a whole bunch.

You know, two thoughts. One, when you're doing the exercise, there's no comparison against anybody else. So like, you know, if you are comfortable with the money you're making or whatever, you're not comparing yourself to Buffett. It's like, you know, I'm comfortable where I am. You're never gonna win the comparison game. Because there's always gonna be someone. So that's one thing just to think about. And then, you know, not to knock you at all, Sam, I think that was super honest of you. But like for anybody out there that was a 6, if like, if my son comes home with a 60 on a test, it's an F.

Yeah, no, but I'm agreeing with you. Like it, it, it brought me down a lot.

But the good thing is it's all fixable and you have to identify it. And like, look, I'm not here to be a therapist or preach. All I'm saying is knowing what those things that are, that need a little bit of help, and if it's your weight, you know, then just in 2025, be like, you know what, man? Everything's clicking. I'm gonna address this. I'm just gonna be a little bit, that's all, you know? So, but, but you have to id— my point is for the listeners, like you gotta identify it because if you don't, it just keeps compounding and, and then you're playing, it's just harder to like catch up when it's compounding.

So you close out the year, you get light, you clean the closet, clean the desk. Clean the cars, you email bankruptcy, you get the files, you write the handwritten letters, you give thanks, you do the blender exercise, you identify the 2 or 3 shifts I'm trying to make. That's— is that close? Is that how you close out the year, or is there anything else to that?

It's like a personal review.

And just to make it super practical, are you like writing this down? Are you just thinking about it? Do you say it out loud? Do you do this with somebody else? Do you look at your calendar? How do you even go back through the year? Can you just give us like If I wanted to sit down an hour after this, because I'm so pumped after this episode, I'm wanting to go do this. Can you just give me the, like, kind of the, a little more detailed instruction on how I would do it?

Well, I get really excited about getting light, like, you know, so I don't have to write anything down to clean out, to clean my closet and my desk and my emails. Like, that's all just something that, like, you know, you feel accomplished when you do that. And we're doing all the other stuff anyway. We're, we have businesses, we're doing all this, but you just feel really good about yourself. As far as like handwritten letters, I do make a list. I keep it every year of like kind of just, man, I just think about like what podcasts were I on? For me, was I on? Who really went above and beyond for me this year? Or my kids or my family. You know, I had a, I went on a trip to, to Africa. We had a great tour guide. Um, I had a gentleman in Kenya that ran with me every day to, to like chaperone me through the jungle. I'm gonna send him in, like just that kind of stuff. And I don't want anything for it. It just makes me feel good. And I know it probably makes them feel good. So I do all that and then I, and then like, again, you just took that exercise, took 30 seconds to identify what we gotta work on. And then I just make a mental, a mental note about it. Like, you know, I wanna get better at it. This whole process we're talking about, it's like super fast. All right, so that's the first thing. The second thing I do is I have a planning system that I've been using that I, I swear by. It's, there's 3 steps and this is what I was talking about. If you do these 3 things, you're gonna bear hug me. Very simple. So the first thing that I do is, um, there's an old Japanese ritual called the misogi. And we took, we took the liberty to tweak the exact definition of it, it, but, but The way we look at it is that the, the concept around a misogi is every year you do one big year-defining thing. So again, at the end of the, the year, even though you're busy with all this stuff, you have one year-defining thing that to really show for your time over the 365 days. So for example, like 2 years ago, and this is big, I rode my bike across America last year. I did rim to rim to rim. With some friends. In 2015, I launched a book, Living with a SEAL. 2017, I launched a company called 29029. Like every year going back literally to like, you know, 20 years ago, I can name like the one thing that I did that was really, really year-defining. So at the beginning of the year, I just, I might not have that idea and that could be like, I'm gonna launch a podcast, I'm gonna quit smoking, I'm gonna run my first marathon. You know, but like, what is that one thing that you're gonna look back to? Someone says, yeah, how was your year? Say, oh, it was unbelievable, man. I rode my freaking bike across the country. I ran the New York Marathon this year. You know, I think that's really, really important. Now, A, it's important because like you want to have something to show for it, but D, um, I find when you have something on the calendar, a goal, something like that you're something that you're working towards, um, that's challenging. You, you show up at work and at home completely different. You show up completely different. A, if I'm running the New York Marathon, Sam, I now have to say no to the things that, that I don't have the time to give people cuz I gotta train. I'm adding, you know, hours of training in. So now, now you have a vehicle to say no to things. But B, it's, you know, if something that you're looking forward to.

One of the books that I read this last year, I think it was Michael something, uh, Easter maybe, uh, The Comfort Crisis. And he talked about the misogi. I had one, it was a 50-mile race. And the, the, the misogi was, uh, you have a 50% chance of failing. Uh, I ended up, uh, uh, hurting my Achilles really badly and I was like, fuck. So I, I failed. Uh, and it was awesome though to have something to look forward. I'm picking a new one now.

Um, but you, you didn't fail, Sam. You just didn't finish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It, but, but it was hard-ass work and it was awesome. It felt great to have that on the calendar.

Yeah. But what you did was amazing. You, you're saying, I'm gonna go double the longest run I've ever done in my life. Okay. I'm gonna do an ultra marathon on top of everything I, I have going on. I'm gonna challenge myself. It may or may not work. That, that's not an F. I mean, that's an A in adventure. You just didn't finish it. I mean, not everything we do is gonna work. I've had businesses that have failed, races that I have DNFs, but I love that you put it on your calendar. Look, my kids, I have 4 kids, 15, 10, 10, and 9. All right. You know what they're talking about right now? They're talking about that we're going skiing in 2 weeks. So they're going to school and I'm like, guys, 2 more weeks of school, then we're going skiing. Because that's on their calendar, it's helping them go through school focused, lock in, cuz they know they're gonna get this reward, winter vacation coming up. Adults are the same way. Like, I'm willing to go work really hard if I know I have a vacation coming up or a race that I'm gonna do or something that I'm excited about. So having one big year-defining thing. Really important.

Do you know what yours is gonna be for 25?

I don't, I don't, and that's okay. But I know that I'm gonna have one. And what it does is it also like opens up my mind to adventure.

Which masogi do you look back on most fondly? Uh, if you look back, you know, 10 years or so.

I did a race called Ultraman, which is a 6.2-mile open water swim, a 275-mile bike, and a 52-mile run. And I, I, I was insanely, I was going to defer to the following year, 2 weeks before the race because I didn't, I hadn't swam at all. I, I didn't, I didn't have a wetsuit and the water was 57 degrees. So I called my friend who's a coach and I'm like, you know, listen, I haven't been training at all, zero. And there's no, I don't think I can do this. And I'm thinking about deferring, thinking he's going to be like, of course. Deferr, train so you don't get hurt. And he was like, absolutely not. The challenge is gonna be, you know, if you train for a year, you're gonna be able to do it. You have no idea if you're gonna do it.

Dude, a 6, a 6-mile swim alone would take like 3 and a half hours, right?

Or if you're a bad swimmer like me, 5. But yeah.

And also like 57-degree waters is, I, I did a, a marathon in 57-degree. It was horrible. Or triathlon. It was awful, Sam.

I showed up at the event and I jumped into the water the day before and my, I, I literally like my face hit the water and it was like, you're like, I'm out, out, I'm done.

It's like, it's like, it's like getting punched in the nose. Like when the first time when you want to box, you're like, this sucks, dude. I don't, I don't want to do this, but I finished it.

I finished it. And, um, you know, when I was going through this event, those, those kind of challenges, it's really important to break things into digestible bites. If you're starting a business, you wanna put things into digestible bites. So when I started MarqueeJet, if they would've said, you need FAA approval, Department of Transportation approval, build a sales team, raise money, I'd be like, well, I'm as a kiddie pool attendant for you. What are you talking about? I mean, what, what'd you say the first thing I needed was? FAA approval? Well, there's gotta be a lawyer that does that, specializes in that. Let me get, got that guy, got, what was the second thing we need? Like, so it was the same thing here. I gotta swim 10, 6 miles. Impossible. Can I swim to that, to the next, to the buoy? Yes. Can I swim buoy to buoy? Yes. So let me just break this down into 40 buoy to buoy swims. 'Cause I can, let me break the, I can run for 7 minutes. Forever. So let me run for 7 minutes, walk for 3, and just repeat that cycle. And that, that's sort of how I attacked it. In any event, we pick a masogi. All right. So I don't know what mine is yet, Sean, for next year, but I know I'm gonna have one. And just for the listeners, you know, just the notion of like, yeah, you know what? I want to have something on my calendar. Now you're like, you've like reprogrammed your brain to just be aware of adventure. And that's already a step in the right direction if you're head down in work. The second thing I do is something that I've named after my friend Kevin. I call it Kevin's Rule. Kevin and I were, took our, our children, his daughter and my son. My son was 8 at the time. I think his daughter was 9 to Mount Washington in the winter. It was, it was like -30 with the wind chill and we have a -40 sleeping bag. We're sleeping in the snow. It's insane. And we're camping out overnight and I'm like, Kevin, he's a police officer in New York. I'm like, there's 8 billion people in the world. We're the only 4 people in the middle of Mount Washington, man. This is amazing. I'm like, you know, how often do you do stuff like this? And he lights up. He's like, oh, he's like, every other month I do something one day or one weekend. That I normally wouldn't have done. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, oh, instead of like watching the Georgia football game, I'll take my kids fishing. I'll come to Mount Warner. I'll go visit my college friends. I'm like, well, why? He goes, well, if I can't take one day every 8 weeks to do something, like my work life is, is at, is out of balance. But if I do that, I'll have 6 little mini adventures a year. I'm like, yeah. He's like, well, how, how, how old are you? Well, if you're 35, Sean, you live to be, let's say you live to be 85. That's 50 years. If you do those two things I just said, you'll have 50 year-defining things and 300 mini adventures. That's an insane life. No, that's an insane life. At the end of the day, if I have 50 Ultraman kind of things and 300 mini adventures just because I managed my clock right. Like I won life.

Do your mini adventures and your misogi, like, do they stack to where it's like, well, I already did the Ultraman. What's like the ultra Ultraman? Like, are you trying to one-up them each time?

Not at all. I'm just looking for things that, that excite me. Um, So this actually, this year I do have a, it, it's not challenging enough for me to consider it like a masogi, but I'm going on a, a, a tour of the world's best saunas in Finland with 12 friends. So we're going for 10 days. We're hitting 30, 30+ saunas over the course of 12 days in, in, in Finland. And you know, so that is my, a big thing for, for 2025.

Hey, real quick, if you're liking this episode with Jesse, you got to listen to the first one we did with him. It's the story of how he built his fortune, his first business, how he failed, and then ultimately a mentor stepped in and gave him some, some tough love, let's say, and turned his life around. He tells a story about how he started a private jet company, ended up selling that to Warren Buffett. There's a Matt Damon cameo in it. Crazy stories from this guy. He also brainstormed business ideas of what he would do if he was young and needed to build a fortune from scratch again. So go check that out. It's episode number 504. You can either Google it or in the show notes below, we're going to put a link to it. And also at the end of this episode, we are giving away a few thousand dollars of his big-ass calendar, the one that he uses to plan his 2025. We say the code at the end of this episode. So listen to that and then you can go and get one of those for free.

All right.

Back to the episode. So if I'm getting this right, the misogi is more of a challenge, something that excites you, something that It's a big adventure. It's year-defining. And you have the— you'll get the fun of progress along the way. As you make progress, you'll get the anticipation, and then you'll get the year-defining sense of accomplishment, whether you win or just you did it. Um, and then the adventures are more about— is that just more about non-routine? So just kind of making sure you are not just every Saturday we go here, every Sunday we do this with my kids, and just shaking up the routine with something fun. It doesn't have to be super challenging, but is that the right way to think about those?

Absolutely. It's, it's non-routine. It's planning adventure, planning newness. It's prioritizing yourself and it's not let— it's, it's playing life on offense. It's not letting your calendar fill up. You know, look, if we just sit back, it's gonna be weddings, meetings, conferences, appointments, and it's just like, what do we do? What are we doing?

How many of those things are, uh, Jesse by himself or with buddies or Jesse, like the family?

Um, I love to, I love to do things with, with my friends and I love to do things with my family. I treat my family stuff differently, so I also plan family trips, but you know, um, I have the luxury of time. You know, people talk about rich and, and the first thing that comes into your head is like money, obviously, and that is important and clearly that's an important part of being rich. but there's so many buckets of rich. Are you spiritually rich? Are you time rich? I'm insanely time rich right now, which I think is the most important thing, especially in your 50s. I'm insanely time rich, so I can, I have the luxury of doing things spontaneously. When I want, etc. I'm spiritually rich. I'm socially rich.

If we did a little sidebar here, because the three of us are all lucky to be in a position where we don't have to work, we could all— we could just spend all year training for, you know, an MMA fight, an amateur MMA fight or whatever it is. But I think a lot of people who listen to that, you know, may not be at that. You know, they still have the job, they still have whatever the, you know, the day-to-day responsibilities. So could you take, you know, 30 seconds to sort of speak to like how you would Maybe, uh, is there any difference in how you would approach it, you know, the bisogis or the adventures, if somebody's not like, you know, financially free where their, their calendar is theirs to do whatever they want with?

Listen, I have been doing this since— my journey was insane. It was crazy. My 20s were, were spent on couches, friends' apartments, you know, um, just trying to like figure it out, pay my rent, you know, all that stuff. But I was still so rich with adventure. Every year I would go to the Coney Island Polar Plunge on New Year's. You know what it costs? A subway token. Subway token. You know what it costs to do the trip to Mount Washington with my kids? $18 to park. We live in a country that offers the most insane rivers, mountains, national parks, oceans, hikes, streams. I mean, conferences, like you could fill up your life with adventure. I should write a book, Filling Up Your Life on Adventure, you know, for under $400 a year because you can do it now. So, you know, I, I understand that obviously mine can be bigger and it's easier for me, and that's true. But you know, I've been doing these things for, for a long time. I just took my son to the Polar Plunge at Lake Lanier here in Georgia. Um, you know, um, there's just so much stuff that you could do that again is outside of the norm, right? You know, people think like you don't have to climb Mount Everest to feel like you've accomplished something. You have to just get out there and do something that makes you proud of you.

You know, there's a, there's a great story. Uh, do you, do you know Brené Brown? So she, she has this great story she tells about like her daughter. Going to like a swim meet and she was scared to do like the swim, swim meet. She was like, I'm not going to do well. I'm scared. I'm scared to even just swim, blah, blah, blah. And she talks about how, you know, her daughter after the swim meet, you know, she lost the race. She maybe got like, you know, whatever. She wasn't, didn't do so well. She got out. She was feeling kind of bummed. And Brené Brown's quote is like, you know, winning isn't a, winning isn't always about getting first place. Sometimes winning is just getting off the block and getting wet. And, uh, like, you know, you jumped off the blocks and you got wet. Like, that's a huge win. You, you, you have become a more brave person by having done that. And I think there's, uh, there's something to that. Cause you know, when I hear about the ultra marathon, uh, Ultraman races and stuff like that, I'm like, ah, yeah, that's, uh, so far from where I am. But at the same time, when I heard this Brené Brown quote about sometimes winning is just getting off the block and getting wet, that changed my perspective. I started doing a lot more stuff because I changed what winning meant.

Also, Sean, I'd like, I think a lot of people listen to this stuff and they're like, oh, Jesse's into fitness shit. And you know, I'm also into, uh, I like weightlifting and things like that. And I think they like say like, well, I need to go and do a marathon or a long race. That's not true. I think that you can do things that fit your interests significantly more because like he's got a hat that says all day running, running's your passion. Like, I don't think you have to necessarily do something that falls into that endurance category or whatever is popular.

I want to this year, Sam, I want to go to one of those silent retreats where you sit in a dark room for 2 or 3 days. But listen, we're going into a new year. All right. And I'm giving suggestions and I recognize that everyone is in a different, has a different dynamic. Time is different. Finances are different. But I, what, what I'd love to get out of this call is I just want to fire people up for the opportunity that we all have. To have an incredible 2025. You know, go master something. Go learn a language. You know, go learn a certain skill. Go volunteer. You know, do something that makes you proud of yourself at the end of 2025. Do something that makes you feel accomplished and proud of yourself at 2025. Now, I'm not saying go ride your bike across America just because I did that. No, not at all. but do something that you look back on the year and be like, this was, this was amazing. You know? And I'm just saying that there's a lot of things that don't cost money if you're intentional, if you schedule it, which we'll get to in a second, and you play a little bit of offense.

So Masoji, Kevin's rule.

The third thing that I do is very simple. You know, uh, uh, I found this works a lot better for me than New Year's resolutions and Maybe different for other people, but rather than doing all these goals and stuff, which I never accomplish, I very simply, every quarter, I add a winning habit to my life. For example, like I don't drink enough water. I'm gonna drink 100 ounces of water, you know, as a new habit. I'm never gonna be late to a meeting. I'm gonna add a 10-minute-a-day meditation practice.

You know, I, I, I don't know, but like, what habit did you add last quarter?

This is crazy, but like, I'm so inflexible and I found, uh, something on YouTube that was like physically inflexible. You know, like I can't even touch my knees. You know, so I found something that's like 5 exercises you should do before you have a cup of coffee. Like first thing you do when you wake up. So I've been doing these 5 stretches. It takes 6 minutes pretty much every day. And, um, I could send you guys the link. They're really easy. So that, but, but my point is we, we are a product of winning habits, winning routines, and a winning mindset. That's what we all want. We want to have winning routines, winning habits, and a winning mindset. And by layering in, imagine if you did that. Let's, let's just say we took a 5-year look on life. My life's gonna radically change in 5 years. I have a 15-year-old son. He'll be at college. My, my kid, my little boys now, they're gonna be in high school. Like, I like to look at things in 5-year windows because, you know, like if your parents are in the, are, are elderly, they might not be here in 5 years. Like mine, mine were 5 years ago. Mine aren't now. Like your life changes frigging like this. Gotta think about this stuff. And imagine in 5 years you just did the 3 things that I said. You had 5 insane experiences. You added 30 mini adventures that you wouldn't have had by taking a, you know, 6 days of 365 a year. I mean, come on, man. And now you added, you know, you added 20 winning habits. You're fucking Jason Bourne. You're Jason Bourne. And like, this is not difficult.

Well, so, uh, all this stuff, I'm like, this is badass. Okay, tell me how you plan it and how you actually put it in practice. You're saying like you're a, you're a product of your habits and things like that. What's the habit of planning and like thinking of these things and actually getting them on the calendar or whatever?

So I don't know, you know, people listening to this audio or video, but this is my entire 2025.

If you're not on YouTube, he's holding up the big ass calendar.

So, so I, As soon as I know I have something, I, for me, I put it on my, on my calendar, on paper. I write it down. Now, there's a lot of research around writing it down versus putting it in your phone. Goals that are written down versus, you know, there's a ton of research around that. But as soon as I have any of these trips, I put it down. I put all my big events for the year down immediately. Last day of school, first day of school. If you have kids, first day of camp, if they go to camp, last day of camp. Fam, spring break trips, date nights with my wife. Every, um, I take a, a quarterly, um, staycation or trip with my wife. My wife and I have our own little system. We have a date night once a week, Wednesdays, and then every quarter we try to plan something together. Could be a, like, we're going to New York next week, but it could be just, we're gonna have an overnight staycation here. But we try to make sure we have 4-year date nights. As much as we can, family dinners, and then the rest is just family trips.

Dude, you travel a lot.

I travel a lot, but I put it on my calendar because once it's in my calendar, now I have permission to say no. Uh, I wish I could go to dinner with you guys, but I'm actually, um, I'm camping out with my kids that weekend. Like now I'm taking control and I'm dominating the year, not other people taking it away from me.

Right.

Oh, you can laugh about it, but I'm dead serious.

I'm laughing because I think it's cool.

You know that experiment where they take a jar and they're like, all right, you have these rocks and these sand, fill— put them in the— put as much as you can in the jar. And basically, if you put the sand in first, you can't put any of the rocks in, right? Because all the little meetings and appointments and Zoom calls and everything else takes up all the space. Versus if you put the rocks in first and then you could pour, as much sand will fit all the way around it. That's basically kind of like the the model of what you're doing. You're basically saying, I'm going to put all the shit I really want to be intentional about, the life experiences I'm going to remember with the people I care about. I'm going to put those on the calendar first, and then I'll let all the little knickknack appointments fill in around that where there's still space. And if I do it the other way, like most people do, where you say, yeah, yeah, like when I have time, then I'm going to do something great. And then they never have time. Nothing ever happens. The rocks never get in.

Exactly. And the reason why, guys, I like to have this on one big visual, like look at all 365 days on one page. The reason why I like to do that is, A, I'm visual. Like I need to see it. You know, we're all, we all kind of think in pictures and we think visually. But now two, two things. One, I can see where my gaps are. I can see where my gaps are, where I have more time available and not. Two, I can track towards my goals so much better. Then versus like if they live, you know, in my phone and I use my phone for my appointments, Zoom calls and all that stuff, but I don't like scrolling through it to be like, oh, my marathon. And I'm scrolling all the way to November. I like to see it like, oh, I have this many days. It's like the roadmap is visual. So for, you know, to have it all on one big calendar is, is really helpful. And I'm super spontaneous, you know, I know that I look, if you don't plan it, it probably won't happen. So knowing that after being on earth for 5 and a half decades, what do I do? I wanna plan as much as I can. I wanna get in front of it. So I sit with my wife, we sync up all of our stuff. You know, in 2025 we're going to, I'm, like I said, I'm going to Finland. We have a trip to Japan. We're going to Greece. You know, we, we have put all this down on our ca— My 2025 is already mapped out and it's insane. All I have to do is follow the script. Now, yours might not be as, as, you know, wild as mine. Um, but the point is you control it and you can map out this incredible year.

Do you, but do you, are you picking those quarterly habits as well as those mini adventures?

I'm not, I'm not because I'm open. I'm, I'm always listening to people and And when I was, when I had Marquee Jet, which is a company that I had, I started with my partner when I was, I don't know, 29, 30 years old. Um, my dad owned the plumbing supply house. I had no relationship with money. We never talked about it. I had no business experience. I didn't know shit. And all of a sudden I had this private jet company. We're flying 3,000 of the who's who of pop culture, CEOs, top CEOs, athletes, entertainers, and I'm getting access to these people. And I'm really curious. I'm 30 years old and anytime I had a minute with anybody at the airport, if I was visiting a customer or client, I would say to them, like, I want to know how they lived rich. Like you mentioned, people here might not be, well, they might be one day, Who's gonna tell 'em how to do? Where do you vacation? What do you do with your money? What time do you go to bed? How many newspapers do you read? I wanna know it all. I wanna know the best habits and routines and mindset from the best people on the planet. And I became a sponge. And I remember asking this guy, I'm sitting down with this guy, I'm not gonna say his first name is James. He was insanely wealthy. I'm 30. I have like nothing. And I asked him, I said, James, how do you live rich? And he's like, he said to me, I read, and he walked me through his, through his day and where he vacations and what he does with his money and how much gold he has buried in his backyard and all this shit. Never forgot it. One thing that he said to me, one thing he said to me, he goes, and I take 3 hours a day for myself. And I'm like, I can never do that. He goes, oh no, it's cumulative. I'm like, well, what does that look like for you, James? He's like, oh, I might take a 30-minute sauna in the morning. I might take a little time at lunch to read, go for a walk, work out, da da da da. At the end of the day, it's about 3 hours a day for myself. And I, I, I was like, since then I'm like, and I was like, why? And he was like, well, you know, if you check the U-Box, you show up as a parent, husband, CEO, boss, employee. So much better. You don't resent your wife or your husband or your partner for taking away time of the things you want to do. All this stuff. Long story short, I started taking 2 or 3 hours a day right after that meal. I'm like, it works for him. I'm not gonna wait till I have a bazillion dollars. I'm gonna do it now. So time rich, something that we talked about earlier, doesn't mean you have to be rich to be time rich. You have to be organized, scheduled, and allocated. To prioritize you. And that's all I'm saying for 2025. You might say, Jesse, this is hokey pokey. Fine. But all I'm telling you is carve out time for you to give you adventure, make you feel accomplished. Work's always gonna be there. It's always gonna be there.

On a week-to-week basis, do you, do you make a list of your to-dos for the week before?

Yeah.

So, um, I look at my week. On Sunday night, I take it from my calendar and from my phone and I put it on paper. I use a planner, but you can also just write a piece of paper and I write down my day. It's like I can move things around and then I can prepare better. I know it's, I like to have a week at a glance view of everything. And then, and then the last thing I would say, this is less like a little bonus thought for people, is remember when you were a kid and you, I don't know if your parents gave you vitamins. Did they give you vitamins when you were a kid? Like, for school?

Flintstones vitamins, for sure.

Yeah, Flintstones, right? I had Flintstones vitamins as a kid. Yeah, I was like, cow, like, anti-Flintstone vitamins, but that's, that's, that would be podcast number 3. The, the, the, the vitamins were like, you know, you take one vitamin and it had like, you know, 500% of everything you needed in every category in like one little pill. And I was like, that's unbelievable. But you know, you took your daily vitamins and it checked all the boxes. So I have my own version of this that I do, Sam, um, and Sean, that, that, that works really well. So like, if you made a list, imagine you had all the time in the world, you could do whatever you wanted to do every day. Well, how would you spend your day? Well, I know exactly what I would want to do. I love saunas, I love cold plunges, I love running, biking, swimming, and exercise. I love doing breathwork. I love taking walks with my wife. I love playing with my kids. Like, I'm very clear on what it is. By the way, nowhere did I say, uh, do I say I love buying art. But I don't. Those are the things I love to do. They're very simple. I inherited that from a very simple man, my dad. The, let's say I have 10 of those things on my list. Okay? Those are my vitamins. Those are the things that make me strong. That I need every day. I try to do 2 or take 2 or 3 of those vitamins. I can't do 'em all, but I, I try to do 2 or 3. So today it's, we're recording this now, it's 1 o'clock, but I've already gone for an hour run and I've taken an hour sauna. So of the 3 hours I allocate for myself, I've already done about 2 of 'em. So like my day's good and I've taken 2 of my vitamins. So now when I show up for you guys, I'm all in. I'm not outsourcing like we talked about. I'm all in, you know, because I've checked me. I'm showing up so much better. That is so frigging important. And that's every day for me.

This is amazing.

Um, this is awesome.

Is there, before I ask you my, my kind of, I have one burning question before I ask you my burning question. Is there anything else in the planning, how to make a kickass defining 2025. Is there anything else we missed before we do that, uh, do that, or were those the big ones?

I think at like a high level, trying to get people to rethink how they approach the new year. I think that, you know, just get started on those things. I mean, you might not have it all laid out. I don't have it all laid out yet, but put the stuff you wanna do down first on a calendar or wherever you wanna put it. And build a year that you're super proud of. Because let me, let me just say this, Sean. We don't get a lot of years. We don't get a lot of years and we don't know how many years we're going to get. So shame on you if you waste 2025 because you want to like, oh, I'll just do it next, the following year. Don't like, time doesn't work like that. You don't have the luxury of like, eh, I'll, that you don't dictate the pace. Sometimes the pace dictates you and circumstances change. And like, you know, everyone thinks like, I guarantee you everybody here knows they're gonna die that's listening to this, but I guarantee less than 1% of our listeners have their graveyard plot picked out because they don't think they're gonna die anytime soon. They don't think that like your life could change like that. My life's been turned upside down. I have people that my friends are getting diagnosed with shit. You know, like it changes, man. You can go outside and someone could be texting and you get smacked. It just, it could go like that. You don't know. So, you know, I'm 56 years old. The average American lives to be 78. I don't know. I'm not really good at math, but that's 22 years. If I'm average and, you know, I was on the lake this summer. I didn't see a lot of 78-year-old guys wakeboarding. Like the, the years that you have to do an Ultraman, what do they say? Um, I was just listening to something. They said what, 63 is the shelf life of like healthy years or something, you know, like it's insane.

So it's also insane that you plan these, you like, well, I'll get to it when I'm older. But then when you're older, it's like, I don't want to fucking do this, you know what I mean? Like, you know, I've always criticized actually Warren Buffett where he talks about like delayed gratification and things like this. And I'm like, dude, you've been the man for years. Like, you enjoy it. Enjoy that shit now. Like, sometimes patience is actually time rich, man.

You don't have to be rich to be time rich.

That book that went kind of viral this, this year, last year, Die with Zero, talks about some of these principles. But he has a great story about one of them that he was talking about when he was in his 20s and he was on his career ladder climb. He was at some investment bank and his buddy who worked with him, they were kind of both 23 years old or whatever, was like, hey dude, what if we just go to Europe backpacking for like, you know, 6 weeks? He's like, how are you going to get 6 weeks off? He's like, I'm not. I got to quit. And like, I hope I'll be able to get the job when I come back, but like, I'm going to do this trip. And he was like, dude, you're crazy. That's like irresponsible. I'm going to do the responsible thing. And he didn't do that. And he told himself he would do it, you know, maybe next year or the year after that. Maybe some, some reason he'd be able to do it in the future. So, you know, he's like, as soon as he came back after 6 weeks, he didn't have the job back, but he met up with the guy. He's like, from the glow on this dude's face, I realized then I made a mistake. And he talks about how when he was 33, then 10 years later, he finally like took a career break and he's like, went to Europe. He's like, it's not so cool sleeping in a hostel when you're 33. Um, you know, it's a different, he's like, I learned that some things you can't even just, it's not even just doing them later is worse. He's like, it's just not the same thing. Like that's a 23-year-old trip. I didn't do it when I was 23. I did it when I was 33 or 34. I had to have a whole different experience. There was no going back to that.

I think it's really important to say yes to adventure and, um, it's never the right time. You know, like it's never gonna be like, oh, I have 8 days that are clean. You have to make it, you have to create that. You know, and I think that's a really important message. Like it's never the right time. You're always gonna, I'm gonna miss the basketball game. You know, there, there's always a sacrifice, but if you don't do it, you just, you know, you have regret. You just regret it. You just don't get it back.

Well, you said yes to an adventure. You're coming to our basketball camp with MrBeast. So we'll be seeing you in January for one of those. Jesse, thanks for coming on. And if you're listening to this, you made it to the end. You're fired up like I am. We're giving away a few thousand dollars of these calendars. So go to Jesse. What's the site where people buy the calendar?

I have the code here, but it's just jesseitsler.com. I think you get on my, on my website.

So go to jesseanswers.com and then use the code WIN2025. So WIN2025. First 100 people that go through, go there from this podcast will, will get a free big-ass calendar. But if you didn't, just buy the damn thing and start planning your year. Uh, if you're not convinced at this point, something's wrong with you.

I had so much fun on the first go around. You know, Sam gave me a little, put me, put me under the, uh, the microscope a little bit. I loved it. I loved it. That's his job and I get it. And, um, you guys are awesome, man. Like, I always get a lot of DMs about our first episode. So, um, to get an invitation back was— meant a lot to me, man. So, so you'll get a handwritten letter from me.

I think people don't realize because, I mean, we host a lot of these and I think, um, people forget this, but like, I saw Sean writing, like, I like take notes.

Um, I'm like, I have like, just, these are my golden nuggets from this episode. These are, you know. My pen died halfway through.

We appreciate you doing this. Thank you very much.

Until round 3, Jesse. Thank you.

Thank you.