June 6, 2018

The James Altucher Show: Jesse Itzler on Becoming Self-Made

Intro

• Jesse (@the100MileMan) is the author of a new book – Living With the Monks: What Turning Off My Phone Taught Me about Happiness, Gratitude, and Focus
• He is also the author of – Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet
  • For this book, he had a navy SEAL move in with him for 30 days, and he had to do everything the SEAL said to get himself in shape
• Jesse  is married to Sara Blankley who started Spanx 

“I learn best by jumping into the unknown”

• The traditional way to gain an edge – read books, hire a coach, go to seminars, listen to podcasts
• For Jessee – “Stepping into the unknown is the best way for me to get an edge”
• Given his books – the idea of learning by jumping into the unknown and just seeing what happens, is sort of a niche for Jesse

The $160,000 Lesson

• Jesse remembers only one lesson from his college education
  • His senior year, he took an advertising class, where he had to create a fictitious brand from scratch
  • Jessee used the project to create a brownie business
    • His teacher told him “There’s a thousand brownie businesses that come out every day. If you want to be great, and make it in this world, you better be a much different brownie business that anyone else”
      • You can sub brownie business for manufacturer,author, restaurant etc.
  • You HAVE to differentiate
    • “We all live by a playbook, so what if we ripped up the playbook?”
    • “If no one told you how to do your job, how would you do it?”
    • If you do the same thing everybody else does, you’re going to get the same results
  • Be 10x better not 1x better
  • Go where it’s least crowded
• “Ready, fire, aim”
  • When you have an idea – get the advantage of being the first mover in the space
  • Waiting to become an expert takes too long
  • If you fail, you can always go back and try again

Experience is Overrated

• Look at things with beginners mind – borrow from other people who may have put in the 10,000 hours, instead of putting the “necessary” 10,000 hours to be an expert yourself
  • Just like Jesse did in his book Living with a Seal
• Many a people have lost an opportunity trying to take the time to get to 10,000 hours
  • Timing is an excuse – the timing is never right
  • Waiting until you “have experience” will just allow someone else to be first
  • Check out the book Smarcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking by Shane Snow 

Life Resume

• We focus on our work resumes a lot, we should focus on our life resumes more – build through experiences 
  • “After a certain period, no one will ask where you went to college” – James
  • “The real life nuggets don’t come in the way they think they’re going to come”
• The Kevin Rule – named after Jesse’s friend Kevin
  • Many people feel they are too busy for X
  • So the rule – “If I can’t take one weekend every other month for myself, or to spend with my family, how out of balance is my life?” – Allow yourself to take that trip

Time

• We are all running from the present moment
  • One thing Jesse does to help him be more present, he likes to tell himself things like:
    • The average American lives to be 78
    • So, if your parents are both 73, but you only see them twice a year, you don’t have 5 years left with your parents – you only have 10 visits left – Be present
  • Reverse engineer the rest of your life
    • Recognize how precious the time you spend with people is
    • “How do I want to spend that time, and who do I want to spend it with”
  • Wellness, family, business, relationships – the 4 buckets of life
    • If you’re spending a lot of time outside those 4 core areas, it’s a distraction
• If you’re trying to decide whether to invite someone to a birthday party, ask yourself – “If this person were the only person to show up at the party, would I be happy that they were the only person to show up?”
  • If not, don’t invite them
• If you’re feeling anxious about a piece of work/a creation
  • Remember: “No one whose reading this will be around in 100 years”
    • When you realize this, it’s much easier to do/try things you normally wouldn’t
• The average person spends 2-3 hours a day looking at social media
  • That’s 800 hours a year – a lot of wasted time

Living with the Monks

• Jessee recently spent 15 days living at a monastary
  • He wasn’t allowed to use his phone
• “By writing about your experiences, it’s like you’re experiencing them again” – James
• Jesse wanted to pull some of the wisdom of this 1500 year old tradition, and apply it to his life
• To pay the bills at the monastery, the monks breed German Shepherds
• By just jumping in and not doing too much research, Jesse didn’t give himself the opportunity to psyche himself out
• “I wasn’t looking for religion, I wasn’t looking for silence, I was looking for experience, one more thing I could put on my life resume
• We are all bombarded with too much news and information, notifications, we ask Google and Alexa our questions etc. – This makes it hard to trust our gut
  • “Thinking is a lost art form”
• What did Jesse learn from this monk experience?
  • Things that were most important to Jesse rose to the surface
  • “I didn’t miss a lot of the things that I spent a lot of time on” – like the things on a “to do” list
  • Jesse became more present – he no longer is so attached for his phone
• The monks just had “do lists”, not “to do lists”
  • They didn’t move to the next task, until the current one was completely done – they perfected monotasking
  • After being overwhelmed with helping with doing the dishes one night, a monk told Jesse – “You don’t have to clean all those dishes, you just have to clean the one that’s in your hand”

Random

• Aim to have 3 hours of the day for yourself – exercise, run, sauna, write, read etc.
  • When you’re in this time, don’t feel guilty about not working or being with your family
• Jesse only eats fruit until noon, and has done so for 27 years
  • Fruit takes less energy to digest, which technically means you’ll have more energy in the afternoon
• “If you don’t have a cause you’re working towards at age 50, it’s a miss” – Take a position on something that means a lot to you, and stand up for it
• Stop taking Flinstones gummy vitamins
  • 3-5 of the ingredients are banned in 10 nations (aspartame etc.)
• “If you’re present in everything you do, it’s like receiving a present”

James Altucher Show : entrepreneurship, meditation, monk
Notes By MMiller