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This is The Art of Charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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The Art of Charm is where ordinary guys become extraordinary men.
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Welcome to The Art of Charm, I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise, packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all the questions.
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Make sure to stay up to date with The Art of Charm and get some great stuff that we don t or can t share on the show by signing up at theartofcharm.com
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We ll email you our fundamentals toolkit, our networking strategy guide, all kinds of things covering topics like body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, business networking, public speaking, negotiation, and a whole lot more.
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I m also doing regular videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward every single week.
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I also want to encourage you to join the Social Capital Challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed 233444.
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It s about improving your social capital, becoming a better networker, becoming a better connector.
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It s gonna be great.
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We re doing giveaways as well.
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That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed.
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Today we re talking with Jesse Itzler.
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He was the founder of Marquee Jets, co-founder.
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He also helped bring coconut water to the United States, sold the Jets company to Berkshire Hathaway, sold the coconut water to Coca-Cola.
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This guy knows what he s doing.
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We re gonna talk about how to get a music deal by pretending to be someone else.
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Deception for fun and profit.
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How when you think you re done, you re only 40% done.
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He lived with a seal for a month, and this guy taught him a lot of hard lessons.
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So it s gonna be a really interesting show.
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Enjoy this one with Jesse Itzler.
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Tell us what you do in one sentence.
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I love how you guys open up with the hard questions.
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Yeah, and it s hard not because nobody knows that they do, but because they can t put it into one sentence.
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Yeah, I try to identify trends early and capitalize on them.
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That s a good sentence because it tells us literally nothing about what you have done, but we ll get into that, right?
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And you re in a unique position because you ve done a lot of different things instead of just a lot of one thing, but there are common threads that go along with your success that we re gonna explore today.
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So, where did it begin?
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I mean, for you, were you always kind of an entrepreneur?
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Were you born into money?
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What s the deal?
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Definitely not born into money.
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My dad owned a plumbing supply house in Long Island, New York, but gave me the freedom to explore things and try things that I liked and had passion for.
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And you know, when people ask me, what do you want to be when you grow up?
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I really never had an answer.
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I never really, I still don t know what I want to be when I grow up.
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You re never going to grow up, that s why.
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You won t ever need the answer.
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Exactly.
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I want to stay as young as I can, as long as I can.
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You know, so I really didn t know what I wanted to do.
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And right out of college, I went to school in Washington, D.C.
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I went to American University.
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And right when I entered college as a freshman, hip hop music, rap music was just starting to take off.
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I got drawn to it really early.
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It was kind of, you know, where I lived in Long Island was a hotbed for it.
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And when everybody was writing resumes in college and sending them out to all these different companies, I was like, I m not spending my time writing a resume because that s not going to get me a record deal.
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I really want to get a record deal.
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And I was really into music in college.
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I spent a lot of time
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doing what you would do if you were trying to break into the music business, going to clubs and networking and all that stuff.
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And right out of college, a friend of mine was working on a movie called Bonfire of the Vanities.
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It s filmed in California.
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He knew that I was big in music and asked me to come out and thought maybe he could help me
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do something, score some of the music, write a theme song, whatever, do something that could land in this movie.
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I headed out west of California with my demo that I had in my pocket, and I literally cold called a label in Los Angeles called Delicious Vinyl, which is a big independent record label in the 90s.
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And of course, having
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cold call record companies in the past and gotten the phone slammed in my face.
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I had read that the founders of Delicious Vinyl, of this really hot label at the time, they had a song called Bust a Move with Young MC and Wild Thing with Tone Loke.
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It was probably the hottest independent label at the time.
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I had read that the two founders of the company were big fans of a guy named Dana Dane, who was a New York rapper.
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So I literally called the secretary and told her I was Dana Dane.
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and got a meeting and showed up and obviously, you know.
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I got the meeting, and it s a little bit more of a crazy story.
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I actually had a demo tape that Dana had done.
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It wasn t even a demo.
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It was actually an advanced cassette of his new album, of his second album.
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I borrowed it, I guess is a good word, from a studio that I was in.
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It was laying on the counter.
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I went in there under the guise that, okay, they re going to freak out and kick me out.
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I would immediately tell them that I had this advanced copy, knowing that they re huge fans of the genre and of this artist, and that they would want to hear it, and that Dana was 30 minutes behind, and then I would, in my head, or the plan was, I would then slip in my demo as well, and that s literally what happened.
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So they think they re listening to the new Dana Dane,
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Yeah, it s not bad.
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And you re like, that s me.
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You actually like it.
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And they re like, oh, crap.
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Now we can t say we don t, because you primed us psychologically.
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I threw in Dana s cassette.
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And then as we started talking, and I asked a lot of questions, and we kind of hit it off.
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And I said, you know what?
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Can I throw in some of my music while we wait for Dana, who was in New York?
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We d have to wait a couple of days for him to get there.
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And I threw in my demo.
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And that was it.
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And then you became a white rapper?
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I became a white rapper, and Jordan, the best thing that ever happened to me, which was the worst thing at the time, was I didn t sell a lot of records.
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You think you get a record deal, you re with a successful company, you re going to do a video, and you re going to sell a bazillion albums.
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That didn t happen to me.
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In fact, the reverse happened to me.
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I had a video out.
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The reviews weren t great.
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I didn t get picked up to do a second album.
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At the time, I thought it was a huge failure, but it was really life s way of tapping me on the shoulder and telling me how to go in a different direction.
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Which is good because then Vanilla Ice.
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But yeah, it ended up being a good thing.
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Right, yeah, exactly.
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So what did you do after that?
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I mean, did you change focus from being a white rapper to something else?
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Or were you like, no, I m gonna be a rapper.
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Funny, I never thought, I happen to be white.
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I never thought of myself as a white rapper.
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I m sorry to break it to you.
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I was.
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I moved back to New York City.
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I m a huge Knick fan.
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I grew up in New York City.
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At the time, there was a big shift in programming or the game experience at NBA arenas.
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You know, fans were going for 48 minutes to watch a basketball game, but they had to be entertained for two hours.
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So you started seeing the introduction of
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dancers like the Laker girls and the Knick City dancers and video and music became a big element.
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So I went to the New York Knicks in 1992 with an idea for a theme song called Go New York Go and played it for the powers that be.
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After telling them you were somebody else?
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I m Kid Rock, I got a demo tape for you.
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No, I told them I was me.
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I was able to get in that door as me.
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I played on this version of Go New York Go and did this theme song for the Knicks.
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Really, it became a calling card for me because every team that came into Madison Square Garden was like, who did this?
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Why don t we have one of these songs?
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There was a video with it as well with celebrities that were Knicks season ticket holders, Spike Lee and all these guys.
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It became a really big deal in New York.
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Every team that came in started calling me saying, you know, like, can we have one of these?
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And literally, I created kind of this new category of sports, this new genre of sports music, and did that for, you know, for a couple of years, wasn t making any money.
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You know, I thought I was
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I made it because I had these songs that are playing on radio and they re in the stadiums, but I wasn t making any money by the time I paid the studio and the singers and everybody.
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My $4,000 that I was getting paid was like $400.
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The songs were catching on and there was no way to buy the songs.
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So, my partner and I came up with an idea to take these team-specific theme songs and license the other songs they play in the arena, whether it was Puff Daddy or YMCA or whatever, and in between put great moments in team history and put our song on.
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It became like a musical program.
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We put out these records like the New York Knicks  greatest hits, the Chicago Bulls  greatest hits, and we sold millions of records.
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by start of an interesting journey in business.
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So at this point, you re crushing it, and you re like, damn, this is really a good money-making business, thank God there s money in music.
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Were you still at some point in your mind like, now I can leverage this into my own music career, or had that ship sailed and you were over it?
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No, I was like, you know what, there s thousands of artists at that time, you had to buy records in record stores, there was nothing, there were no iTunes or anything like that.
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And there were thousands of artists.
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And I said, you know what, instead of competing with thousands of artists, I m the only person in this lane, I m gonna put my foot on the pedal.
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So I took all the money, my partner and I
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took all the money virtually that we made from selling these sports records and went to all the different sports leagues, the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, the NFL, and we signed exclusive licensing deals to put out these team-specific
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compilations, so we actually did the opposite.
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We invested all the money we made, rolled all the dice on ourselves, and started putting out dozens of these team-specific records, and it worked.
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We ended up selling the company to a public company called SFX about a year later.
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Wow.
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At this point, you had gone from something you were really passionate about to this business angle of making money doing the music.
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Were you as passionate about that as you were about becoming
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a stage-performing artist yourself?
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The great question.
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I was even more passionate because this married two things I really love, which was sports and music.
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But it s a really hard thing to do, to walk away.
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First of all, you don t know where that road s going to take you.
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So it could fall flat.
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It could be wildly successful.
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But in the back of my head, I always wanted to be Jay-Z or whoever, a really successful artist.
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You see the videos, you read about how those guys are living and how they struck it rich.
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So it s hard to walk away from that and go down a lane that you re really unsure about.
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And it s even harder as a 23 or 24-year-old kid to take the first money you ve ever made and put it all back into your business in the form of licenses.
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hard decision to do, like I really wanted to buy a car, I really wanted to buy my first home, but I didn t.
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I continued to rent a very small apartment and reinvested everything into this, but it ended up working out.
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I get this a lot from the audience, and at large I should say, and frankly, I don t even necessarily know how to answer it myself, so that s why I guess I was asking you, did this new passion pull you away from the old one, or was it like, okay, this isn t working, I m wrapping it?
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It pulled me away from it because, again, I realized that I had a lot less competition and I was really enjoying it because, again, it was sports and music.
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I could see that this was going somewhere, that I could really scale it and I can make a career out of it as opposed to my career being dependent on the success of each song or each album, if that makes sense.
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One bad album, one bad song, all of a sudden, one artist comes up.
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I mean, Eminem, let s imagine if I would have gone down that path.
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I mean, Eminem is so good, he literally ruined it for other white rappers, for most other white rappers, because he s so talented.
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The bar was set so high.
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So here I was in my own little niche, and no one really understood it, but I saw that it was going to lead to something bigger.
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How did you end up going from creating records, selling records, to Jets?
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So what happened was I was putting out all these different sports records.
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I was creating these ad campaigns for all these teams.
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I mean, these theme songs were becoming full-blown campaigns.
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Budweiser was incorporating Go New York Go and Sporting Goods Stores.
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It became much bigger than just a theme song.
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And we were selling a lot of records.
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And our little company, which was starting to grow, which was really a marketing company more than just a music or jingle company, caught the eye of a guy named Bob Sillerman.
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And Bob Sillerman was doing a big roll-up in the sports and entertainment world called SFX.
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He had rolled up about 80 different companies.
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And we caught his eye, took a liking to my partner and I, and we ended up selling our company, which is called Alphabet City, to SFX.
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Bob, at the time, owned a timeshare, a fraction, in one of the fractional jet programs at the time, and invited my partner and I as a guest on his private jet.
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We were 27 years old, just sold our company, and now we re on this guy s private jet.
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We both literally walked on the plane for the first time, looked at each other and were like, we got to figure out how to do this more often.
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And that was the start of what became Marquee Jet, which ultimately became a company that we sold to NetJets and Berkshire Hathaway.
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But we gotta back up, because nobody gets on a private jet and goes, I gotta get a fleet of these things, right?
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I mean, where did you begin with that?
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Because most people who fly a private jet, they can t buy that jet, let alone multiple jets that they then lease out to other people.
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I mean, where did you even begin with that?
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We got a quick course on just private jet travel on the airplane.
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We started asking a lot of questions like, do you own this plane, Bob?
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Or how did you get this?
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Can you get this whenever you want it?
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And, you know, the pieces started to come together.
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And we realized that we wanted to fly like this as often as we can.
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Like this would be a great trip to take 10 friends skiing or whatever.
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At the time I was 27 years old.
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And if we want to do this, there s got to be a tremendous amount of guys our age that would love to do it if it was affordable, if it was easy.
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How can we make it more affordable?
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How can we make it easier to consume?
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So we just started, when we got home, we started really researching the options as it relates to private travel.
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And there were really only four.
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You could buy your own airplane, which was obviously incredibly expensive and for us, out of the question.
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I mean, that s impossible unless you re Elton John or whoever.
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B, you could buy a fraction into one of the fractional programs, but those were also really expensive.
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They were big commitments, five-year commitments, million-dollar minimums.
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It was just more than we needed.
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Or you could charter a plane.
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As we did research, there were a lot of questions about that.
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Who s flying the plane?
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What if the plane doesn t show up?
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Et cetera, et cetera.
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We just wanted to take a handful of flights a year, and we wanted to be on the best planes.
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We said to ourselves, what if we went to one of the fractional companies like NetJets, who is the 800-pound gorilla, and we made a deal that allowed people to fly and access their program, but consume their program in a much smaller way, like in a 25-hour increments instead of this five-year commitment and much bigger outlay of capital.
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You know, that was great in theory, but then we had to convince the powers that be at NetJets that this was a good idea and that we would be good partners.
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You know, that s when the fun began, and that was a little bit tricky.
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Over the last 17 years, we have launched our fair share of online courses, coaching programs, and finding the right platform has always been a challenge.
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Go to kajabi.com slash charm and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over $7 billion.
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Hey, Art of Charm listeners, I m excited to share a new podcast I ve been absolutely binging.
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Winning is an everyday mindset, and Craig Robinson and John Calipari are here to help.
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On Ways to Win podcast, Craig and Coach Cal use their on-court wisdom to solve your off-court problems.
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Whether it s trouble at home or a workplace dilemma, the coaches will help you find a winning formula for success.
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You ll hear from prominent athletes, business leaders, and celebrities who reveal insights that made them
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into the leaders they are today.
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And don t miss President Obama sharing how he deals with pressure by projecting confidence, believing in your team, and taking criticism.
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Listen to Ways to Win wherever you get your podcasts.
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All right, back to Jesse Itzler.
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Yeah, how did you do that?
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Because I m imagining you walk in and you re like, yo, I m Dane Jones.
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And they re like, what, no, you re not.
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And then suddenly you re like, hey, can we give you a bunch of low-end clients that can t actually afford your full service?
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Sure, where do we sign?
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How does that conversation go?
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Right, so, you know, Jordan, this goes back to a little bit of the deception we were talking about originally.
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I guess this has been a theme in my life, I don t know.
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There s a running theme here, yeah, we re getting it, definitely.
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This is going to be crazy and sound nuts, but this is actually what happened.
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A couple of years earlier, maybe a year or two prior to this, a friend of mine called me up, knew that I was friends with Christina Aguilera s manager at the time.
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He had a friend whose daughter wanted to go to an Aguilera concert and wanted to see if I could maybe call the manager and do anything special for his daughter, for a Sweet Sixteen.
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So I did.
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His daughter showed up and had the option to go on stage as a background singer.
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They were going to shut the mic off and great seats and all this incredible hospitality.
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It was just unbelievable what the manager did.
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It turns out that the father of this gal was Jim Jacobs, who was the president of NetJets.
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As this idea evolved, I called up Jim.
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I said, you probably don t remember me, but a year or two ago, your daughter, Christina Aguilera, just started saying words until it all clicked in his head.
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And we got a meeting and met with Jim, who was the president, and Rich Santulli, who was the founder of NetJets, and pitched our idea for this, what would become Marquee Jet, this 25 hours of flight time on the NetJet fleet.
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And literally 12 minutes, I would say, into the meeting, they ended the meeting and said,
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Rich Santulli said, you know, great idea, but if you guys think we re going to give our fleet of 500 airplanes to basically two 28-year-old guys with no aviation experience, it s not happening.
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So- I get that.
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We left the meeting and very discouraged.
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And about five minutes after, Jim Jacobs called up and said, guys, that was unbelievable.
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That was great.
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So what are you talking about?
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We got thrown out of your office.
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He said, no, Rich doesn t give anyone 12 minutes.
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Oh, wow.
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If you guys can tweak your pitch or maybe just prove that there really is a market here of your generation, a younger generation, this might have some legs.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we came back about two weeks later and instead of basically trying to sell them on the idea, we literally brought in our own focus group.
2
SPEAKER_00
We brought in
2
SPEAKER_00
athletes, agents, artists, set up chairs in the front row.
2
SPEAKER_00
One by one, they explained how they would never buy the NetJet fractional program because the reasons that I said, they don t know where their cash is going to be in five years from now and they don t want to commit that much.
2
SPEAKER_00
They just want to go on two or three trips.
2
SPEAKER_00
One by one, they explained why.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re like look volume scale right volume economy of scale where there wasn t one before an infrastructure to handle that kind of quick demand that quick I guess turnover or whatever you would call it of the product and they went great cause they probably had a lot of unused capacity.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that was killing them.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like a building that has three vacant units and someone says, hey, Airbnb?
2
SPEAKER_01
And they re like, whoa, where do we sign up?
2
SPEAKER_00
Right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yup.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think they recognize that, you know, we could introduce a younger audience that the lifetime value of that customer, if they continue to fly privately with NetJets or graduate up from Marquee Jet to NetJet would be substantial.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s exactly what we did.
2
SPEAKER_00
literally a year later, we were the largest private jet car company in the world with probably more customers a year or two down the road than NetJets.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s excellent.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s really, really inspiring and very cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
And along the way, you had some great stories, too, because, I mean, first of all, how did you even start promoting that company?
2
SPEAKER_01
Or did NetJets kind of say, look, you can t do what we do, go to Marquee Jets?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, how do you even get clients?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, we had to write projections when we first started the company and send it up to NetJet.
2
SPEAKER_00
Kenny, my partner, looked at me and said, you know, how many guys do you think you could sign up?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I said, I don t know, what do you think you could sign up?
2
SPEAKER_00
And he said, oh, probably put me down for 20.
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, all right, then put me down for 21.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that was literally our forecast.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the way we spread the word was, you know, we realized quickly that each customer was traveling with would fill up their plane.
2
SPEAKER_00
So every flight we had six or seven or
2
SPEAKER_00
more prospective new customers that we could market to.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we started aggressively, how did you like the flight?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you have any trips coming up?
2
SPEAKER_00
Attacking those guys.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then we got a call one day from a show that was going to air on national TV that was looking for new brands to potentially advertise on the show.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that show was called The Apprentice.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
2
SPEAKER_00
On the second episode of The Apprentice, they featured Marquee Jet, and that was the start of the Floodgates opening.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like Shark Tank.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re Shark Tank, basically.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
Only with jets.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can t beat that.
2
SPEAKER_01
You learned a lot along the way, obviously.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now, fast forward a little bit, you own the Atlanta Hawks, and what else are you even doing now?
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you do after you make an exit like that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I did that for 10 years.
2
SPEAKER_00
The beautiful thing about Marquee Jet was we flew thousands of the who s who of pop culture, entrepreneurs, CEOs, athletes.
2
SPEAKER_00
I worked very closely with those families and there was a lot of trust involved and built some great friendships and relationships along the way.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s been very valuable to me since the Marquis chapter.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right after Marquis Jet, I ran a hundred miles in a nonstop charity.
2
SPEAKER_00
run that I did.
2
SPEAKER_00
And during the course of that training, I did a lot of research on, well, what do you eat if you re going to run for 100 miles?
2
SPEAKER_00
And what do you have to drink?
2
SPEAKER_00
And how do you stay hydrated for 24 hours of running?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was literally the human guinea pig for coconut water.
2
SPEAKER_00
I fell in love with the product early on, before it really was on the shelves here in this country.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I ran this race successfully, no cramping, this and that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like, wow, this is the fountain of youth.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I spent a lot, I spent about a year exploring ways to import coconut water into this country.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is after you sold Marquis to Berkshire Hathaway and Natchez.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was towards the tail end.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
right towards the tail end.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I ended up hooking up with the founder of a company called Zico, which was just coming to the United States, probably doing about $5 million in sales at the time, which is basically top, top, top of the first inning in beverage, and forming a partnership.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I spent the next couple of years at the marquee working on Zico as a partner with Mark.
2
SPEAKER_00
In our third year, we sold 100% of it to Coca-Cola.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is like the Forrest Gump of business in a lot of ways, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s not because you re getting so lucky, it s because you ve stayed true to certain principles throughout this whole thing, one of which happens to be hustle so hard that demo tapes fall into your lap.
2
SPEAKER_01
But there s a lot to what we talked about pre-show as well, and I d love to get into that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you ve created
2
SPEAKER_01
This new project, Living with a Seal, my 31 days training with the toughest man on the planet, who is this guy and where does he come into the picture?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I met this fellow at an ultra marathon.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was running the race as part of a relay team with six friends.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was a 24-hour race, as many miles as you can run as a team in 24 hours.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this guy was his own team.
2
SPEAKER_00
He ran the entire race himself.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when I saw him for the first time at the race, there was something about him I d never seen before.
2
SPEAKER_00
He just had a determination, a look,
2
SPEAKER_00
of focus and purpose that I d never and still have never seen in my life.
2
SPEAKER_00
This race was an unsupported race, meaning you have to bring your own supplies.
2
SPEAKER_00
My friends and I had bananas and masseuses and big chairs and blankets and all the stuff overboard.
2
SPEAKER_00
This guy had literally a chair, a fold-up chair, a bottle of water,
2
SPEAKER_00
and a box of crackers for 24 hours.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s all he brought.
2
SPEAKER_00
Crackers?
2
SPEAKER_00
And he just sat there before the race, Jordan, like with this don t fuck with me expression on his face, with his arms crossed.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, I got to meet this guy.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I literally cold called him after the race.
2
SPEAKER_00
I tracked him down and I flew out to meet him.
2
SPEAKER_00
In our meeting, I m like, my life will be dramatically better if I can, if some of this, whatever this guy has, his magnetism, whatever it is, rubs off on me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I asked him to come live with me and my family for 31 days, and he said yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then I told my wife after, and that s how we met.
3
SPEAKER_01
I kept a blog of our 31-day journey, and the blog became hit and nerve.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think people found it, what they told me they found it to be incredibly motivating and inspiring, and it evolved into this book that s now out called Living with a Seal.
3
SPEAKER_02
Now, when he moved into your house, did he show up with a folding chair and an empty box of crackers?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, that would have been way too much.
3
SPEAKER_01
He came with basically less than a knapsack worth of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was unbelievable.
3
SPEAKER_01
I go away for a weekend.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I have to check my luggage.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he came for 31 days with, you know, less than a knapsack worth of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it was more than enough.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s admirable.
3
SPEAKER_02
He sounds like a guy who wears flip flops and shorts every day.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
That s amazing.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s an unbelievable guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
And as it turns out, you know, he s an American hero.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s a Navy SEAL with 20 plus years in the military.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s also set the Guinness Book of World Records for the most pull-ups.
3
SPEAKER_01
He did like, I think it s 4,030 pull-ups in one day.
3
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God.
3
SPEAKER_02
Is that just constantly doing really fast pull-ups for the whole day?
3
SPEAKER_02
I just can t imagine that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t even wrap my arms around it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, but it just shows the mindset of this guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, I had the privilege, which really was an honor, to live with him.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m 4,025 pull-ups away from me, from his record.
3
SPEAKER_02
Completely.
3
SPEAKER_02
Me too.
3
SPEAKER_02
Thousands, thousands of, everyone who s hearing this right now is thousands of pull-ups away from that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it sounds so unbelievable, like the guy did 4,000.
3
SPEAKER_01
pull-ups, whatever, but if you knew him and you saw him, you d understand it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, he is constantly pushing the limits and just shocking himself and everybody around him.
3
SPEAKER_02
I just don t understand what somebody who can do that many pull-ups would look, does he have legs?
3
SPEAKER_02
I mean, you know, cause your upper body gets so big or I mean, I just, I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_02
I just can t wrap my mind around that number.
3
SPEAKER_02
I thought the world record for pull-ups would be like 200 something.
3
SPEAKER_01
He is an amazing story.
3
SPEAKER_01
He lost a bunch of friends in a helicopter crash in the Middle East and decided he wanted to do something special to raise money for the kids of these fallen soldiers.
3
SPEAKER_01
So he literally Googled the 10 hardest things in the world to do, like endurance races and this kind of thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at the time, he was a really big guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was a power lifter.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was about probably, I m gonna guess around 260 pounds.
3
SPEAKER_01
and he lost a tremendous amount of weight and became probably the best endurance athlete in the planet.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s done some unbelievably crazy races.
3
SPEAKER_01
He came in second in what s called the Ultraman competition in Hawaii, which is basically like six times an Ironman or something.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is some incredible like six-mile swim, 50-mile.
3
SPEAKER_01
The numbers are crazy.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know the exact numbers.
3
SPEAKER_01
He showed up in Hawaii, did not own a bike.
3
SPEAKER_01
He rented a bike with clips like you would have if you went to Central Park in New York City and came in second place in the race.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s just like this off-the-charts athlete.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know what?
3
SPEAKER_01
Physically, he s unbelievable, obviously, but a lot of it is just he s been able to program his mind or have a mindset of, you know, I m gonna keep going, I m gonna keep pushing myself, I m not gonna stop.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s what I was hoping would rub off on me when he lived with me.
3
SPEAKER_02
Okay, first of all, Jason, you just found something about this pull-up record.
3
SPEAKER_02
It actually was beaten by someone else.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yes, it was, recently.
3
SPEAKER_02
Jason, can you tell us about that?
3
SPEAKER_00
It looks like it was... It looks like it was beaten by his brother.
3
SPEAKER_02
by over 1500 so the new record is 5801 in 24 hours and you know he did the last one with one arm or like couldn t you know even move anymore and was like one more
3
SPEAKER_02
just to make it look like a non-even number.
3
SPEAKER_02
This is unreal.
3
SPEAKER_02
And that was this year.
3
SPEAKER_02
That was this year in May.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s unbelievable.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know who broke it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t think it was his brother.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t even know.
3
SPEAKER_01
When he did it, he had third-degree burns on his hand.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he continued to do them from the friction of holding the bar for so long.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s just, it s mind-blowing.
3
SPEAKER_02
Wow, I just, I m so not even close to the same, I m not even on the same continent of toughness as that.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, and I m glad he s on our side.
3
SPEAKER_02
No kidding.
3
SPEAKER_02
And is fighting for us.
3
SPEAKER_02
That s just unreal.
3
SPEAKER_02
What did you learn from him, and how did he teach it to you?
3
SPEAKER_02
Because there s a part of me that just doesn t believe that that can be taught, but I also think that that s just because it s so alien to me right now, that it looks and sounds impossible.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, you know, one of the things that he taught me that, you know, I probably beforehand, I definitely would get to a point where I d just be like, I m done.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was a runner.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve done marathons and done other stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
But he had a saying that really resonated with me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And having been around him, you know, it kind of rubbed off on me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he would always say that when you think you re done, or when your brain is telling you that you re done, you re only 40% done.
3
SPEAKER_01
And as he lived with me constantly, that would be reinforced in my mind.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there would be times where he d tell me to do X amount of push-ups or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I would just be like, man, I am done.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he would look at me and he d be like, you know what, fucker, you re not done.
3
SPEAKER_01
Somehow I would squeak out an extra X amount of push-ups.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it happened day in and day out.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean,
3
SPEAKER_01
And as I look back on my life, you know, there s been so many times where I said, oh, I m going to stop or probably could have kept going.
3
SPEAKER_01
As I look back, I probably did have more in my reserve tank.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was a huge reserve tank guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, like you got to tap into your reserve tank, figure out what you really have in your reserve tank and know that you can go there.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when you re done in that tank, you got 60% more.
3
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, I find myself now, you know, this is well after he s moved out of my house, relying on that, relying on that and just being like, Jesse, you are not done.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can stay here for another hour and proofread this again.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can go out and you can do another mile or so many different areas of my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s really, you know, it s hit a nerve.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s my fallback.
3
SPEAKER_01
Jordan, the other thing that was really interesting about him was we spend most of our life trying to avoid pain, not just physically, but even like having assistance or whatever we can do, car service, to just enjoy life and avoid pain as best we can.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he gravitated towards it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Clearly, he did.
3
SPEAKER_01
Clearly.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it s fascinating because like,
3
SPEAKER_01
Pain for him was letting him know that he had pushed himself and tried his hardest.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was his reward.
3
SPEAKER_01
He would enjoy it.
3
SPEAKER_01
He would actually come home and I d be like, do you want to ice that?
3
SPEAKER_01
He d be like, I m not fucking icing that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I want to enjoy it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was his way of remembering the hard work.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it was just a really insane mindset to be exposed to.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it makes a lot of sense.
3
SPEAKER_01
It would show me that you have to get to a point where you have to be uncomfortable to get better.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like you cannot get better unless you re in a position to be comfortable with getting uncomfortable.
3
SPEAKER_02
All right, back to Jesse Itzler.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, this is a concept that we talk about on AOC quite a bit.
3
SPEAKER_02
Getting out of your comfort zone where the growth happens when you re uncomfortable, etc.
3
SPEAKER_02
That obviously applies in training for physical activity.
3
SPEAKER_02
Have you been able to apply this in business ventures since you ve learned this principle?
3
SPEAKER_02
And if so, how?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I always am because, you know, I never really took a business class in my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t trained in coconut water.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had no background in private aviation.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I m always getting out of my comfort zone when I try something new.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think, you know, and I think that s a quality of most entrepreneurs have.
3
SPEAKER_01
They have to be comfortable just really stepping out, taking a risk, not being scared to fail and just living, not getting out of your comfort zone, living outside of your comfort zone.
3
SPEAKER_01
So for me, I try to live like that every day.
3
SPEAKER_01
I try to push myself and my workouts, but it extends to work too.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m very comfortable calling people I know, but I made my living calling people I don t know and trying to meet with people that I don t know that I find interesting regardless of the outcome.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, and telling them that you re someone they already do know as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, right.
3
SPEAKER_01
But also, you know, as I think about it, for me, I ve always been, you know, get your foot in the door first and then figure it out later.
3
SPEAKER_01
I never really had a game plan.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just kind of, I got to get myself in the door.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then once I m in there, let s call some audibles and let s navigate until we re in a comfortable place or, you know, we re moving forward.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the comfort thing for me has always been
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s get the fuck out of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
reattached to it for no reason.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yup, I got a really good lesson in loyalty a couple of years ago.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is a crazy story, but I used to manage and work with Run-DMC, and the DJ for Run-DMC, Jam Master Jay, he was killed years ago, came into my office.
4
SPEAKER_01
We shared a desk together, so he came into work one day, and he said, I have a boxer that I m working with in Queens, young kid, who needs like a summer thing, so would you mind if he came up here and interned at my company at the time, it was called Alphabet City.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was like, sure.
4
SPEAKER_01
So this guy came in from Queens.
4
SPEAKER_01
We had a promotional van that we were running for the New York Knicks at the time, and he was handing out keychains and whatever we needed him to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
He was a great kid.
4
SPEAKER_01
And Curtis.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then he would go home and he d go boxing and this and that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Curtis had a partner
4
SPEAKER_01
who was a rapper named K-San.
4
SPEAKER_01
Curtis was starting to rap K-San.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was like, this guy K-San was unbelievable.
4
SPEAKER_01
I signed him to a production company that I had or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_01
Curtis was also, I didn t think was as talented, but as luck would have it, Curtis, my intern, became 50 Cent.
4
SPEAKER_01
We lost touch and we went on and had this amazing career.
4
SPEAKER_01
But when I started Marquee Jet years later on one of the passenger manifests that would list all the folks that were flying with us that day, I saw that he was a guest on one of our planes.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I called up NetJets and I said, look, a good friend of mine, an old friend of mine is on the flight today.
4
SPEAKER_01
Can you send them this little gift, this bottle of champagne or something with a note?
4
SPEAKER_01
I wrote, I wrote 50.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re never going to believe this.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is Jesse Itzler.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re on one of my planes.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the next day, literally, he went back and changed in his rider that he would only fly with Marquee Jet.
4
SPEAKER_01
He changed his contract.
4
SPEAKER_01
He literally would write into his riders that if I m flying, I m flying with Marquis Jet, and it was a lesson on loyalty.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just so weird how the universe, how this emerged into my life, but it hit a nerve with me.
4
SPEAKER_01
that you just never know the people that you work with, who s going to become what.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was literally the start of his career.
4
SPEAKER_01
Who would have thought that he would be this amazing artist?
4
SPEAKER_01
And here he was teaching me a lesson on payback and how important it is.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s something that, for me, I carry that with me and try to reward those that have been good to me and that I ve come across, and try to set that example going forward.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because you re right, Jordan, it s so rare today.
4
SPEAKER_01
People are bouncing around from job to job, getting a job here for six months just to get a job at the next place for six months, and then Facebook to Twitter, from Twitter to here, and then working their way up the ladder, bouncing around.
4
SPEAKER_01
Where is the loyalty that my dad had?
4
SPEAKER_01
and his employees had when they stuck with the same team for years and shared the wins and shared the hardships together.
4
SPEAKER_01
We just don t have it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And authentic loyalty is so hard to find.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if you can find that in your workplace, even if it s with a handful of people that really have your back for the right reasons, and you have their back for the right reasons, that s the start of a great organization.
4
SPEAKER_00
So how is loyalty different now, or is it different now?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because no one s working at General Motors for 30 years.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everybody s moving around, bouncing around.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is that disloyalty, or is that the way that the working world works these days?
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think it s a combination.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think it s part of the way that the working world works, and it s a mindset of, I gotta climb up the ladder, and this is a good way to do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let me bounce from job to job, or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think it s also a result of corporate culture.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, I think that
4
SPEAKER_01
The companies that really focus on inclusion and celebrate the wins and promote the wins and really give people a long enough leash that they can be creative and have their creative freedom and their independence to shine, get that loyalty.
4
SPEAKER_01
Without it, how do you really build a winning team?
4
SPEAKER_01
It s so hard.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, loyalty is not even rewarded in the same way that it was back then in traditional corporate culture.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, not just like loyalty to your friends.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, corporate loyalty.
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You know, one of the things we did a great job at Marquis Jet, and it took us a while to figure it out, but ultimately, you know, we had basically zero turnover.
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And, you know, we had people that wanted to come in early and stay late because we spent a lot of time on, again, getting out of our comfort zone, living out of the box, but on culture and creating an environment that, and you read about the companies that do it great, but creating an environment
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that really rewarded our employees for being loyal to the company.
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And that was things like bringing in, having manicures at the office on Friday for the women and having lectures, you know, once a month from great speakers and going on a lot of trips and celebrating wins as a team, you know, regardless of your position at the company.
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And a whole, I mean, we invested a lot of time in that and we were rewarded
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with loyalty.
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Loyalty doesn t just mean putting in the hours.
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It means all holding hands and telling the same story and not being politically motivated to advance.
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That was a success.
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When you have two guys, my partner and I had started Marquee Jet.
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I m not trying to talk about myself or anything like that, but we were not experts.
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We got 1,000 on our SATs.
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That s bad for people who don t know that.
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That s terrible.
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Yeah.
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Like I think 900 is as low as it goes and I think it goes up to like 1600.
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So think D, D minus or something like that.
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Maybe a little bit better.
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I m just kidding.
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It s like, I don t know.
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How do you equate that?
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Is it like a C?
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I actually don t know.
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It means that there s a lot of people that were smarter than us, or better test takers, I should say.
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They were just better at filling in the bubbles.
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You just missed the bubbles.
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That was clearly the problem.
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But a lot of the success of the company was around being able to build loyalty.
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And it s something that I don t think people focus on enough.
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How do you cultivate that personally?
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Right.
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So not just among your team, but is there other loyalty muscles that you feel like you ve worked on?
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You know, are there ways other people can apply that?
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I just think it comes down to authenticity.
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I think that, you know, really caring, really listening.
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I mean, you know, the stuff that s obvious, but you have to practice it.
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I had a thing for years where I was writing, you know, a handful, five to 10 handwritten letters that I would mail out to people every day.
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You know, if you write 10 handwritten letters
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every day for a year, you re sending out 3,000 plus letters to people.
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What I would do is, again, it had to be authentic, but I would just tell them how I was feeling about them.
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If it was someone that did something great today, I would thank them and tell them if it was 50 Cent that showed incredible loyalty, I would just explain to them how it moved me.
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It wasn t about
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trying to build loyalty.
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It was just about building the relationships that ultimately would result in some kind of loyalty or some kind of personal connection that would end up being very rewarding.
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I don t think you can t take a class in loyalty or table manners or anything like that.
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I just think that it really has to be authentic.
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And if it comes across authentic and you really care about people, they know.
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And if you don t, then obviously they ll see right through that and it won t work.
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Yeah, I think you re absolutely right.
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I mean, you said you write a lot of handwritten letters.
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Here s the question we get a lot when it comes to systemizing things like loyalty and things like keeping in touch.
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Is it authentic if it s systemized?
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How can we say on one hand it s authentic and on the other hand say, and here s the system where I do it every day?
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Well, I think you just have to have a framework.
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I think that, of course, you want to do it every day.
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It warrants it, but if there s nothing there or something didn t move you or someone, then you skip it.
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But when it happens and it s surfaced, you act on it.
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And I think that, you know, as long as you have in the back of your mind, look, people love human touch.
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How many letters do you get a day, Jordan?
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I mean, you probably get a bazillion emails, I m sure.
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You probably get a ton of voicemails.
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But when s the last time someone really, a handwritten letter?
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It s pretty rare.
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It s rare.
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It s just for me, it s just been a way to break through the clutter and let someone know that I m thinking about them or that they had an impact on my life.
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And so going above and beyond is not a tactic, or even if it is a tactic, it s still genuine in the sentiment.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah, I think that s really important.
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I mean, a lot of people will say, well, you know, you re all about authenticity, but yet here you are teaching nonverbal communication and, you know, how to be a better communicator and that s tactical.
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So it can t be authentic.
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And I think the difference is there s nothing wrong.
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with getting better at authentic communication, and doing so doesn t make that communication inauthentic.
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In fact, anxiety around communication, the inability to do so when you know that you have the potential to learn it, that I d say is less authentic than simply applying yourself and getting it right.
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I agree, I agree.
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And look, there s little things.
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Don t bring your phone to meetings.
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How many times have you been in a conversation that you thought was authentic, and the next thing you know, the guy s like, hold on one second, and he or she is typing, and it s like, come on, man.
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That s the worst.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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And whenever you do it in front of your significant other, you get punched in the throat, and you deserve it.
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Jesse, thanks so much for your time, man.
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I know you re a busy dude.
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Living with a Seal, it s on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.
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We re gonna link to it in the show notes.
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And your website as well, the100mileman.com.
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Thanks again, man.
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Really amazing stuff.
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I appreciate it.
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And listen, you guys have done a great job of building this and everything that you do and giving people like myself and others the opportunity to come on.
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It s great.
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I appreciate it.
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You got it, man.
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Our pleasure.
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Interesting stuff, man.
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Jason, this is good.
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I mean, he s got a lot of lessons in here that nobody can really argue with, because he s not a quote-unquote inspirational, motivational speaker.
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You know, he s done this stuff, which is kind of really what sets him apart.
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He can take these physical lessons that he learned through living with a SEAL, apply them to business, and apply business lessons to basically pushing through in your life and being loyal and being authentic.
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I dig it.
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Totally, man.
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He s not trying to be inspirational, but in not trying to be inspirational, he is completely inspirational.
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He accidentally inspired a bunch of people, exactly.
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So check out that book.
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That ll be linked up in the show notes.
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Of course, the show is a fanarchy, so your suggestions and feedback are welcome.
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You can email guests at theartofcharm.com.
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And if you enjoyed that, don t forget to thank Jesse on Twitter.
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That ll be in the show notes.
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My handle will be in the show notes as well.
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You can always interact with us.
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on the Twitters, and you can tap our album art in most mobile podcast players to see the show notes right on your phone, with all the resources mentioned there as well.
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Bootcamp details for our live programs were sold out a few months in advance, so if you re thinking about it, get in touch, get some info from us, plan ahead, that s bootcamp.theartofcharm.com.
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Subscribe and review in iTunes, that s how people usually find us, and otherwise, if you don t do it, we don t stand out, and all the big corporate marketing, big budget guys eclipse us, so write us a review, it makes us feel proud,
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helps keep us up in the ranks so other people can find this show more easily to get the credible advice they need.
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Thanks to the Jasons for their help in production of the Art of Charm podcast.
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Tell your friends, the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else either in person or shared on the web.
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Now have a great week and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and everything for the extraordinary man at theartofcharmpodcast.com.