Jesse Itzler
Appearances
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Well, I have to agree with everything. We're married. So, of course, I agree. No, I think one of the most important things as an entrepreneur I found is figuring out how to get from point A to point B the fastest.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And if that is telling someone, or if that, in my case, maybe it was getting a key investor, getting a celebrity as part of Zico or one of our brands, whether it was a key partnership, I think that's been a critical part of my journey. Because when I started out, I did sleep on 18 different couches. The one thing I needed that we all need is we need a story. We need momentum.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
People buy into stories and momentum more than they buy into products. Like, we're the business plan. When I started out, I started out in the music business. I had a record out on a label called Delicious Vinyl. And right when my album came out, I did Club MTV, which is a big show on MTV at the time. I was 21 years old. And I thought like, wow, man, mom, I made it. I'm on MTV.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
This is unbelievable. And I did my first show in Pittsburgh. And I got off the airplane in Pittsburgh. And when I got off the airplane, there was a huge newsstand. And on the cover of this big magazine called Rap Pages at the time was my picture. And I'm like, Holy shit. I'm on the cover of rap pages. And I'm like, this is unbelievable. I was like thinking I was Forbes for Sarah.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Like I'm on rap pages. And I go and I get the magazine and the cover of the magazine with my picture on it was our white rappers ruining hip hop.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I want to tell you what to marry me. So I needed a story. I needed a story. So for me at that age, you know, it wasn't about when I had an idea of telling people it was about getting momentum. And I went to the New York Knicks with an idea to do a theme song for the Knicks. I was 22 years old. And I said, you know, sports is changing. People sit in seats for three hours in an arena.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
But the game is only 48 minutes. So you have to entertain them for over two hours. Let's do a song and a video and we'll get all the celebrities in New York. The song was called Go New York Go. And the Knicks paid me four thousand dollars for the song. And by the time I paid the studio, the engineer, the singer, the producer, the drummer, it cost me $4,800 to do the song.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
So is that a good business model? No. Right. They paid me $4,000. They paid me $4,000. It cost me $4,800. Do you guys think that's a good business model? Wrong. That's an amazing business model. Because I would have paid the next... I would have paid the Knicks $5,000 to do the song for them to help me get to point B faster because now I had a story.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And I could call up the Bulls and be like, I did the Knicks song. And every team that came into Madison Square Garden was like, why don't we have a song like that? And that was what really jumpstarted my career. So for me, it's like, how do you get from A to B the fastest?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I did.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Well, I mean, we figured out the business model after that. It wasn't sustainable, but it got me in the door and it got me momentum. And, you know, I always tell people that ask me if they're stuck, if they're overwhelmed, small wins. Just, you know, even in this race I just ran, we all go through this period in any part of our journey where we're overwhelmed with self-doubt.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Anybody, no matter what you're doing, even as a parent, as an entrepreneur, as a marketer, someone's bad. I'm not good enough. I don't have what it takes. Whatever. We go through this period of self-doubt. I had it in my race. I started off. I was like, I couldn't run four miles.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And once you get momentum and you start to believe and you can have something that you can build on, that's super powerful. Yeah.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Small wins.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I just think we both, you know, Don't take ourselves super seriously. And humor works. Humor is fun. I think one thing we've both had in our entrepreneurial journey is we've had fun. And I think a lot of people forget how fun it can be. And, you know, and we work on making it fun.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
We try to do fun things, incorporate fun things into our household, with our kids, with our cultures and our companies. And it's an important part of the process.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I see him. I see him looking at me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I ran the same route every day, and I would come home, and Sarah would say, how was the run? I was like, the run was great, but I got attacked by a bird. Every time. And she's like, it's impossible. I said, no, you've got to come with me. And she walked by, and the bird didn't care. I walked by, and the bird went bonkers.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Thank you.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
It's just a reference to a story when I was in college. I took, I was a crossroads my senior year of college. I was either going to the music business or which I loved, or I was going to sell a product called aunt Franny's brownies. I had a roommate in college that had an aunt Franny and every month she sent us a shipment of brownies.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And I don't know what she put in the brownies, but they made everybody happy. Like I can market these like this is going to work. So from, from my advertising class senior year, we had to create a fictitious brand from scratch soup, soup to nuts, like, you know, jingle, which I was good at billboard slogan, um, packaging, everything.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
So I said, I'll use this advertising class as my R and D department. And if they like my aunt Franny's brownies presentation, I'll just roll it out and I'll sell brownies. So the way that the final exam was set up, there were a hundred kids in the classroom.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
It was, it was small and everybody had a hand in their campaign, but five people were going to get picked at random to present a 30 minute state of the union of the business they were going into the industry they were going into in front of the class. So, like, I'm a senior in college. There's a 5% chance that I wanted to get picked. Like, nobody prepared for the oral presentation.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
You didn't want to get picked. And sitting to my right in the classroom was a guy named Ronnie Cohn. Ronnie Cohn was a professional jackass. No, Ronnie Cohn bullied half of the class for four years of college. So when the professor said, we're going to do this the democratic way, everyone write down your name and I'll take off my hat and I'll pick out the name.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
When he came to me, I took 25 pieces of paper and I wrote Ronnie Cohn's name down. I stuffed him in the hat. And when he picked out the name, this is a true story. Sure enough, the first thing that came out was Jesse Itzer, the jackass, did the same thing. He's such an asshole. So I went up there and I pitched Aunt Franny's brownies in 30 seconds into my presentation.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And by the way, the tuition at American University is $40,000 a year. That's where I went. So for four years of tuition. $160,000 of my parents' money. This is literally the only thing I remember. The professor stopped me for $160,000. He stopped me in the middle of my presentation, 30 seconds in, and he said, son, I want to know what is your point of differentiation?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And I was like, what does that even mean? He said, what makes your brownie different than all the other brownies on the market? And I was like, well, they're moist and delicious. They could be gluten-free. They're home-baked, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he was like, no. He said, son, there's 1,000 brownies that come out every year.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And substitute them for marketer, for restaurateur, for advertising, for lawyer. For whatever you do, there's 1,000 of you that come out. And if you want to make it, your brownie, whatever it is, has to be different than all the other brownies. Sit down. And he made me sit down. And I realized at that moment, like it was a real powerful moment for me because I asked myself at that moment, like,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And since then, as an entrepreneur, I've always asked myself, like, how am I different? You know, what makes my product stand out? How can I treat my customers differently than everybody else? Zara mentioned it early, but like if you if you rip up the playbook that everybody in the industry is using and you say, like, well, how would I do it if I never was taught how to do it?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
That's where innovation comes from. So I always ask myself in an authentic way, you know, if you're quirky, be quirky. If you're this, be this. But what makes you different? I just remember, not to belabor this point, but I remember when we started Marquee Jet. which is a private jet company that I started with my partner. We had no aviation experience. We had no airplanes.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
We didn't know a lot of rich people. And we started this company that, and not a great formula for a private, but we ended up building a company that did $5 billion in sales. And we sold it to Warren Buffett's NetJets. And I remember sitting with our sales team and I would go in and I would listen to pitches and they would pitch the way Kenny and I, my partner and I were pitching.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
And I'd be like, what are you, you can't, what are you doing? Like you're a single mom. Be who you are, you know, and be unique for you and be different for what you are. You can't, you're not the co-founder. So it's always been a mantra of mine to just kind of like what makes you uniquely different. And that was a question Sarah asks all the time to her team and to her employees, you know.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
She always asks her employees, if no one taught you how to do your job, how would you do it?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Yeah. I would just put an asterisk next to that because, you know, I just ran this race and I did. I'm a big believer in becoming the expert in the space you're going into. So before I approached this race, I called everyone that I could find, anyone I could find that did this race and asked them a lot of questions. How many calories do you have to take?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
How many ounces of fluids do you have to take every hour? How much sodium do you need every hour? And in a very, very short amount of time, I became what I believe in my own head was an expert. And I would come in every station. And say to my pit crew, I'd be like, I had one goo, half a bottle of Roctane, which was the drink that I was drinking. I had 200 calories, 70.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I need 350 milligrams of soda. I was very aware of it. So in certain circumstances, you want to become the expert and follow the advice. But in others, you want to stand out for what you want to do.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Your speed round, sweetie.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
yes excellent marketing excellent marketing i'm in the butt business okay wow that's good that's good oh there's a song called here i come it's a reggae song that's one of the mantras like here i come so it's just strong personal thing okay favorite party trick um i can make people say no i have this crazy thing i could do with you after heather Have you ever heard it before? No.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Weird what?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I've only had fruit until 12 o'clock noon for 29 years now, unwaveringly.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Believe me, I get the, I mean, so we'll be driving and Sarah will be like, shut the window, wipe the wipers off.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Yes.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Go to my Instagram at Jesse Itzler. Use the same hashtag. Come to a Hawks game with me courtside. I'll take three people.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
We'll go early. We'll go to shoot around. And if we win, you get invited back.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Yeah. So I just that's the reason why I'm wearing flip flops. I just got back from a race called The Last Man Standing. You guys hear me OK? Cool. OK. I feel like an operator. And the format of the race is you run a four point two mile loop. You have an hour to do it. And if you finish earlier, you can finish in 15 minutes.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
You have a 10 minute rest and then they line you up again at the top of the hour and you do it again and you keep going until one person is left. So my wife, it was in Maine, and when I Googled it, it said that there was moderate elevation. Yeah, if you live in Maine. It was crazy terrain. So I ended up, I just got back. I did 20 hours, 80 miles, and I came in fifth.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
But I didn't say to say it like this. Ooh, you look good.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
What's interesting about this race is, You know, you can get lost in how long it's going to be or what the distance is. And it's like anything you're doing in your entrepreneurial journey or any challenge, any goal, it's really just being laser focused on what's happening right now, what's the most important thing, and not patting yourself on your back for all your achievements.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Like, oh, I got to mile 25 or whatever, and not thinking about how far you want to go. It was literally just staying super present. And I always say, be where your feet are. And right here, I'm in this loop. I'm in this loop right now. Let me get back to the chair, get my little rest, and go on the next loop. Right now, this is my job to get to the loop. And that was the focus.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Wow, that's very, very impressive.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
Try living with that.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I would take simple things like, I'm just going to do the laundry tomorrow. And she'd be like, Do you know the ramifications of waiting until tomorrow?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
I think, well, I definitely have my own version of mindset. When I have a goal, I like to say that's the end of the movie. I go to the end of the movie first where I want the outcome to be. And that's unwavering. I don't negotiate that. I don't try not to ever negotiate my goals. The script changes, the plot changes, how you get there.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Why Your Mindset Is The KEY To Success! With Sara Blakley & Jesse Itzler
You have all kinds of obstacles, but the end of the movie really never changes for me. So that's my form of visualization and how I kind of attack it.