If you want a rich life, watch this before 2026

that is unbelievable that made me cry this is jesse flirt he's got the craziest resume you've ever seen he sold a private jet company to warren buffett he helped build z coconut water and he's the only guy who can say that fifty cent was his intern but i don't admire jesse just because he's rich financially i admire him because he leads such a rich light runs these crazy endurance races he goes on adventures with his friends and i've always wondered how does one guy do so much as jesse says we don't like time we lack a system so that's why i'm here at his house today to learn the exact system that he uses to plan his year i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a days off on a less travel jesse teach me how to play my unit listen this is so exciting then thanks for being here yeah i mean first of all before we even get started i think it's just really important to talk about why we're here i don't take years lightly you know we don't get a lot of them and we're also busy and i feel like in general most people plan their life around work and i think it's really important to plan work around your life in other words we tend to play life on defense like our calendar fill up with other people's requests for time zoom calls and meetings and weddings and appointments and kids done like before you know it like what do we have to show for a whole year right so we're sitting right now in december and do you feel like you had a great twenty twenty five like what were some of your highlights of twenty twenty five so i had a few events that i thought were pretty awesome so we we you went to one of them in january we planned a big event and we we did it's called two group that's kinda what of my favorite parts of the year i feel like because of our conversation last year i picked a musk which will talk about but like this sort of grand challenge for the year and i did it and i'm like really proud of myself for doing that and i kinda know that i really would have i wouldn't have done it this year it would've have been on my sunday list right and and then there's other things that i kinda of procrastinate or like you know i couldn't tell you i what happened in april i have no idea you know like there were some months that just flew by because i wasn't very intentional so i'd say i did like some of the things that i feel really proud of like i started coaching i told you i started coaching a high school basketball team we you know launched a new project for for our work and we really like poured ourselves into that so there's a few things that i was pretty intentional about but i would say there were many months that flew by and which is fine yeah that but i wanna be better at it like you showed me that you know this is super important like you know i've always thought of myself as the ceo of my company but not the ceo of my life got it well the way this came about just to give a little bit of background is my life got very busy you know i have multiple businesses i have four children a married i had elderly parents i was taking care of i have friends that i wanna see i have races that i wanted do like there was just so much that i wanted to do i didn't have a system for it so i would have all these ideas and i would leave like the end of the year i'd be like oh didn't do this i feel you know una accomplished and like oh that's all this stuff on the table i just kept getting older and older there and as more and more stuff came on my plate i needed a system i was never taught a system no one ever said hey this is how you map out your year you know they just kept throwing more stuff in me so over the course of the last probably twenty years an evolution happened i started to figure out what why do the why was this year better than last year and this and that and i i had this system that i've been using and then and just in it's not based on theory i think google it i didn't like it's based on trial and era right and i'll share with you and i'll i'll walk you through it and if you know we'll we'll help map out your ear and if anyone here is listening if there's a couple here things here that have you you know help you have a little bit more efficiency next year or get you excited to do something that maybe you wouldn't have done than the next twenty minutes or whatever are gonna be very well worth your time so so for starters before you even start anything you know here we are in at the end of the year we're coming into a new year the first thing that i like to do is i get as i go into the new year and i i call it getting light i wanna come into twenty twenty six fired up hitting the ground not playing catch up like oh i have to do all these emails i didn't clean my clock i wanna be ready to go no baggage no baggage light and i literally i wanna feel light mh i even like the term getting light right so getting light means closing out the year you know the the proper way so the we have a little jar here just step one getting light you can see that it's empty because there's gonna be nothing in your jar when you're done so getting light starts for me at home the first thing that that getting light means getting rid of all the apps on your phone that you don't use getting rid of canceling all the subscriptions that you don't use that you're paying you know stuff go in your closet and donating all the clothing that you don't wear there that that might sound insignificant in it's very significant it's a sign that like of newness it's a sign of like i'm coming into the ear getting rid of stuff that i don't need anymore it's your desk coming in and not having clutter everywhere it's your filing cabinet it's your car is your car messy do you have your insurance in your car is they're like getting everything tight and by way that whole process and me need could take like an hour right it's not like i'm talking about like oh i need a week it's like your emails i get my emails to zero delete i mean save respond like right now forget email that's how many text messages unread text messages i i i even know i mean that's eight hundred and fifteen a hundred and fifteen so i'm coming into the new year with eight hundred and fifteen obligations yeah eight hundred fifteen guilt trips that i you know the mistakes that i've made basically if i don't clear that out so you you told me before this you said hey step one get light i can't do that here because i'm at your house and so i did it and i couple things that i learned right away first of all just doing the simplest action gave me momentum because planning my year felt big and heavy it's like oh god i gotta know what i want in life and it's like dude i haven't known that for thirty seven years are my shit am i sure today is the day i could do this versus what i did was i went to my car and like you know the cup holder area like i got a i got little kids so that is like nam no now you know that that is that point everything i don't know there's a whole history of like life in that little cup holder so i just cleaned out the cup holder the simplest possible action and right away i was like felt a little lighter right like one layer off my back and then i did it to my desk i did to my subscriptions i canceled thirteen hundred dollars of monthly subscriptions of just random apps and software that we've been signed up for so i already started to get light and feel pretty amazing i cleaned up my home gym yeah which was like i didn't have to you know nobody else works out there but i do and like those are places i go every day my car my gym my desk i think it's highly significant it's the you're describing momentum and momentum is not to be underestimated you know if you start the first week you come back from the holidays and like everything's a mess and like you gotta play catch up you're going through eight hundred and fifteen texts is that a good way to start the year would you rather like do all that now in this little clean up period that we're in now you know get it all done and then come in like ready to i'm an attack mode you know i don't wanna feel like i have a a k zach weight i me i wanna come in attack mode so if you're listening to this i highly encourage you to spend a little bit of time and get organized get light get rid of things and i would think about also part of that just mentally like subtraction like what's heavy in your life you know what i mean like what relationships are heavy you know what obligations and commitments can you cut down just to get a little bit more lighter and doesn't mean to make changes immediately but i would i would put a little bit of thought in into that let's take quick break we're covering a lot of information in this episode so the team at hubspot did something really cool they took my notes from talking with jesse and they turned it into a guide on how to plan a massive two thousand twenty six in less than sixty minutes if you want those notes you can get them right now in the link in the description now back to the episode so that's the first step and you know like i said i go through i go through everything from my closet to my emails to my subscriptions to my car to my where do you what's your closet start in the closet and by way if you went up to my closet right now maybe you guys can film it on the way out i have seven bags seven bags of donate i have a very simple rule if there's a jump ball fifty fifty like should i keep this or not then i just say someone needs it more than me right and it's easy to apart because sometimes it's hard to part with stuff maybe it's sentimental or i'll take a picture of it if i don't wear it and i'll just keep it or i'll throw it in a box it's like a sentimental box but i don't want a zillion things hanging in my closet that i never wear right how about this when i walked in my closet this morning and i had all these little hangers with nothing on it and i had like seven things to grab i felt good no i'm not kidding i got felt good like i didn't feel like i was wasting clothing or space or time i know sounds ridiculous like how has this fit into planning your year or whatever it all fits into how you feel right you know yes a psychological it's a psychological momentum win to start so love that so that's which one that's jar number one join number one step one get light alright there we go what's what's number two closing out a year so every good business so after you get light you know at what is every good business do at the end of the year close the books close the books they have a review session they think about what worked what didn't work etcetera so i like to close out my ear so that process for me is pretty simple the first thing that i do is i take inventory on me so if you planned the best year in the world and you had the most unbelievable things happen but you had several things in your life that were broken maybe it was your marriage or your relationship maybe your finance your health i don't know even if you had this windfall of money or whatever if a couple of the key pillars are operating at a five out of ten and a one to ten it it's like a multiplier you know like it's not gonna multiply the way that it should just so one what i like to do is i i like to identify like where are my weaknesses okay what are the things i have to fix next year so what i do is the life on it part your life order like it's it's it's a purse like a business so it this is my little life audit it and this is what i gotta be honest with yourself without beating yourself up too much like what's the psychology around this because i wanna be you know like i'll i'll tell you one right now like i want i'm actually gonna do this but this is not like theory so i think we should actually fill this out for me at least so this is fitness let me put you through it so i want you to just just imagine you're had a blender so anyone you could do this imagine you're at a blender you're making a smoothie yeah we're making a shine smoothie i want you to take all the different categories in your life and don't rate them but just in general think about what you have do you have finances that's a big part it goes in your blender fitness your health and wellness goes in the blender friendships marriage family etcetera where you live where you work put everything in the blender and then shake it all up and now on a one to ten with ten being the best score and one being rock bottom rock bottom and you just put all these in together what do you think your overall happiness number is because at the end of the we wanna feel good what what would be your number and you can be honest with me yeah i think it's a eight okay so it's an niche yeah so what i love about this exercise is you put all this thing and your brain immediately goes to a ten and a subtract two or three things that that bring it down so what are the what are the two or three things if you don't mind sharing yeah so it would be the fitness one so i had a goal with my fitness which was this is it this is gonna be the year i'm gonna get the best shape of my life and i was like i'm gonna build these healthy habits to wear by default i gotta be in the best shape of my life that was the goal and if i'm honest with myself i made some progress but not at the proportion of how important it is to me it wasn't some important it was really important but i only got some progress not a lot of progress said so that was the one where that was like go from a ten o nine right away because i didn't get as far along there i'm not as proud of myself as i would be if i had done this the way i intended to right and what was the other the other one is in in the work category so i had great year financially but my goal this year was to actually like find another project to pour my creative energy into so the podcast has been this amazing thing over the last five years but i kinda wanted to figure out my next five years what that would be and i wandered around for a little bit trying is it this is it that and i ultimately landed on this book project and i started on it but like i didn't get as far as i thought i would and i would i'm honest even now i wander a little bit of like is that is that the right am i making the right decision so there's some uncertainty there of like am i gonna use my talents the way that i want to use them am i gonna put channel them towards something that's cool and interesting and matters to me that i'll be proud of you know years from now as it develops so couple quick thoughts so for starters an eighty you know an eight is an eighty eighty if my kid comes home with an eighty on a test that's a b minus yeah so b minus is good but not you don't wanna go through life as a b minus two you identify two things that you probably wanna put more energy to in twenty twenty six right so like most people are probably gonna have two or three things and it's gonna be usually finance or relationship or health or whatever the main the main buckets those are the things you wanna put a little bit more energy into and as themes and you're gonna wanna pick one or two things that are gonna get you excited because no one wants to work on their weaknesses you know like if you're having a bad marriage or not like that's hard to like the energy to repair that this and that but you you know there's something you have to put energy which we gravitate towards what's easy and we're good at we get immediate feedback and momentum front right right right so far to closing out the year is just doing a little bit self reflection i mean this is a a deep dive and like a little bit personal but identifying like what are the things i gotta work on going forward and what am i put a so for you fitness coming up with some newness and work etcetera could be something could be something that you wanna focus and we'll get twenty in a minute in twenty twenty six so i do a little review of what work what didn't work if i i have a calendar obviously have my big ass calendar what i like to do is i like to go through my phone and i'll write down all the highlights my calendar is my highlight wheel right i like to write down all the highlights maybe it's my kid's football game or maybe it was a concert i went to and just make sure that i have a full recap of the year so i can look at it on one piece of it's the best exercise i can look at it on one piece of paper see where my gaps were see what i accomplished was because a lot of people forget oh my god i forgot that we went i took this weekend trip or i went to this yeah i can't tell you what i did so so do a thorough review on one big piece of paper go back to your phone and then by the way now you have a great time capsule too of twenty twenty five right so i do a little personal audit i go through my entire year again it takes like twenty minutes so like i have one from this like in november it was my first basketball practice as a coach i had one weekend where we just went on at like ai and made songs so i was like we just basically became musicians for a weekend and we and we had a demo like on monday where we all played on tracks for each other and so i put that in there then i was like two like books that i read are a interesting thing that i read and a a conversation i had with my buddy trevor about fear you know about fear and the stuff he's learned in his research and so i just try to like write those now so that i kinda have it i have it you know more at my fingertips yep yep i love it and then one thing that i love to do is i write handwritten in letters i love to spend a little bit of time and write thank you letters to people that like right hey sean you know what there's eight billion people in the world you chose me to be on your podcast there's eight billion thank you so much for the opportunity to address your audience but i love sending those out so you you so i i i brought some because i wanna actually do it this year so when i i'll even do you know a couple of them today but but i'll do do some more after we we wrap up but the thing that i was gonna ask you is like how do you like when i sat down to do i was like for do i start with this and what am i so are you using the review to basically be like oh my friend who helped teach my son how to drive you know is is that kinda how you it's all feeding one into the next my kids football coaches people that had tutors anyone that had an impact on the podcast that i was on friends that i did races with some it could be someone from a afar like sean you don't even realize this but your podcast had a big impact on me i'm a fan i'm just this this this checks several boxes for me selfish officially it's a great networking tool because everybody reads their mail not everybody reads their email or the text but everybody reads their mail and there's a different energy that goes into a handwritten letter writing it getting a stamp licking it taking it to the mailbox someone receives that differently than thought send right so there's a different energy and you're not outsourcing this shot giving to an assistant somewhere no so part of selfish i'm planting seeds as a networking tool and it's just to thank you note like you know we've built a relationship and this is part of that process two like the recipient feels great about it like oh my god this guys took enough time to hand write me a letter like it that that makes them feel good i've been doing this since i'm twenty one years old even this year i'll write twenty five letters you know i'll write it to the some of my partners at the atlanta hawk say guys great year thank you guys you know people that have stepped in from me someone offered to do a speech when i was sick for me like just unbelievable gestures i recognize them i recognize i'm a goal oriented monkey what's a number i shoot for even ten is amazing ten to twenty five you can do them on the plane you can do them while you're watching the football game probably takes about three minutes per oh that's perfect i'll do this on my flight back yeah i can either watch a shitty airplane movie or i can just like kinda flood myself with you know being grateful and and and spreading some good karma out into the world there's no rule to it but i think getting twenty five that look you do it for ten years you sent two hundred and fifty thank you notes handwritten letters to people like how many are you how many have you gotten how many handwritten letters did you get last year thanking you i remember i got one from joe there you go yeah that's it i didn't write you one yet for okay it's coming well i have a separate list for people that don't drive me three out that's that you remember joe yeah this is what i'm saying like it you know like you don't have to be a genius or a brazilian to write a hammer letter but and and and that's an inks stain and your brain probably never forget it you know so inks stain in the brain i like that yeah so that that's another strategy of closing out the year part of my process i i already have one i have one for hayley hayley shout out to hayley hayley is what i call my food girlfriend she's my nutrition who will call and she calls me every morning eight am and she says you know what's the plan for today how'd did you do you yesterday and we she's like a food therapist basically talking through more of the psychology versus yeah a meal plan and you know thank you to i already know for her is like thank you for sticking with me like i know i pay you for this but like sometimes i flake out on the calls for two days in a i go dark for three days sometimes i say i'm gonna do something i don't but i feel like she always shows up with like full faith not just like doing an obligation and i really like i appreciate that you know like it takes a lot like she's she believes in me and i think that's one of the best gifts you can give someone she gave me that so i love that i'll use that as my hayley note you know step one i'm i'm trying to get light coming into the year with energy step two i'm closing out the by the way you can use your own strategy if you don't wanna write a handwritten written letter i'm just telling you what i do right i wanna get light whatever that looks like for you i wanna close out my year this is how i do it but however you wanna do it again summarizing your year closing the book on it memorial it reviewing it like you would as you as ceo of your business really point and super fun that might be like oh my god i didn't do shit this year well okay good wake up call we got a whole new year to to attack you know so it's just an honest assessment and identifying with a blender what it is i really need to spend a little bit time on that doesn't mean that's my goal for next year that it's just like being aware of the pain points right because you're not gonna be nine point nine if you have three pain points that are gonna suck you down no matter how much energy you put into the year right you gotta fix the pain points so this is cool because it's kinda like a measure twice cut once type of deal where we haven't even got to the thing i'm gonna do next year right like i think that's how i would typically have done this was resolutions you know the end of the year what's a resolution this and it's a it's a should do it's not i'm gonna do i don't put a date on it i don't really use the momentum from getting light and reviewing my ear and and taking account of what's going on to make that plan i just kinda jump into it well like that i just jump in for one second i think that anybody can have a good year like things are gonna happen and then getting get an invitation to something there's gonna be a highlight like to have an okay year you can do it who the fuck wants to have an okay year you don't get a lot of years right you're for a great year i get it right i gotta have a good year maybe it's a couple of people invite me on a great trip i get someone says when gonna go to super bowl that's amazing or i can sit down and say what's gonna light me up that i'm so excited about this year that like i wake up and i have no pressure i know that if i execute this and it this doesn't say i'm not working this is not i'm just planning me before my work work's always gonna be there i'm gonna have a i'm gonna work a lot more hours than i'm gonna do this but that's different i'm talking about the stuff that like at the end of the day your six year old kid you're young you know your kids are gonna like you you you're gonna have a photo book like that there's no zoom calls in my book there's no picture of me on zoom on in that book that stuff that i did that like immediately made me smile that's what this is i'm gonna show you how to do it right now our goal is to get you excited about this right it's not the plan a perfect year or whatever it's still make sure that twenty twenty six doesn't fall through your fingertips right and we have a lot to show for it so at the end and this is exciting to me there's a lot of days in here to you don't have to do do everything every day we got a lot of time to accomplish the things that you wanna to accomplish alright that's just just for starters it's a big long runway that we have so i do three things every year as the backbone of my planning and this is where i start now again the key is to plan my life first so my work comes around it not what most people do which is their work fills up and then whatever gap they try to fill in we flip that script upside down we're gonna play aggressive we're gonna plan aggressive we're gonna think about the things that we love to do that we wanna put our energy into we only have a limited amount of energy we wanna put our energy into the things that excite us or move the needle in the buckets that matter so to ensure that for me i do three very simple things two of them are planning and one of them is more habit you talked about resolutions but i like something that i do better than resolutions so there's an old japanese ritual call the a so you know the term and the notion around so is you do one big year defining thing every year this is really important at the end of the year you wanna have something to show for it last year for you it i might have been like man i launched this insane three day basketball camp with billionaires i launched that in twenty twenty five maybe it was i you know wrote i'm launching a book whatever it is you wanna have a podcast whatever one big really big year defining thing that you have to the point that if i were to say to you right now what you do in twenty if you asked me what you doing twenty twenty fifteen i wrote living with the cl twenty seventeen i launched twenty nine o twenty nine a business that i had twenty twenty one i did a race called ultra man twenty twenty three i rode my bike across america twenty twenty four i didn't room to rim to rim twenty twenty five but every year you should be able to you know and if you can do that how will you on thirty seven so if you can do that from if you started now and you have one big year defining goal and you lived to be eighty seven you'd have fifty monumental things that you've accomplished in your life that's a heck of a ride right heck of a ride so the first thing i encourage people to do is think about in twenty twenty six at the in at the end of the year in december by the way if you didn't even do anything else but you just did this right you're gonna like you win you win what's the what's the one thing you wanna look back on and be like you know i did this this year and you might not know what that is now but when it is put that down on the damn calendar asap because that is it's a it's a really important and i don't think it should be something like it's gotta be hard and dig right you truly you're defining not like oh it took a trip to italy that's a trip italy today's episode is brought to you by hubspot did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book but then tearing out four fifth of the pages point is you miss a lot and unless you're using hubspot the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights that are trapped emails call logs transcripts all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and so if you wanna read the whole book instead of just reading part of it visit hubspot dot com so we put down the big miss so that's one step the second thing that i do is every other month i put something on my calendar that i normally wouldn't have done i named this kevin kevin's rule up to my friend kevin kinda taught me about this but every other month i do something i so instead of watching the georgia football game i might take my kids fishing we might go to a concert i might go visit my car i have a little mini adventure because it's the same multiplier if every other month you just one thing you normally went to done this is critical mission critical if you can't do that you're really at about like you can't take one day out of every six weeks to do something for yourself like what are we doing so if you do plan like six little mini ventures whatever they are you put them on on your calendar and you know i could show you mine in a second well same thing if you're thirty seven and your lift to be eighty seven so you'd have fifty i just learned how to play the piano moments you're defining things but now you'd have three hundred many adventures on top like just think about that man fifty year defining things and three hundred mini adventures you wouldn't to had that is who's doing that right you know and i'm not talking oh i need a lot of money i don't know own my own it's easy for you to say no anybody can go to the polar plunge that's free anybody can go to mount washington that cost eighteen dollars to park and hike anybody can do a central park run you know enjoy the new york road runners club or you you know there there's just so much that this country offers if you prioritize it so the way you prioritize piano so i do those two things so that already is you know filling up my calendar there was some adventure and then i do what you do i think about what are the other big things what are the other rocks that are important to me maybe they're in my kids football games or maybe they're a college visit or i'm gonna take my kids learning how to drive i'm gonna carve out these days you know what are the big memories i wanna have at moments they go on my calendar first again the goal is to schedule your life so work fills in around it first work and your life fills around it there's a very fundamentally different approaches and so those big rocks go on the calendar first so i mean i might just be kind of bad at this but i guess for me i almost feel like you know going in i feel like i'm limited by time and then as soon as i say no i'm gonna make time for this then i realized i'm limited by my own imagination it's like i don't even really know what what would i do because i'm just not practiced at well having these un script days at having these miso mistakes it's it's almost hard like to think of them so i guess like is it hard for you to and also like how do you get better at that well first of all just being aware that i wanna put stuff on my calendar that's meaningful to me gives you a different awareness into what other people do so instead of approaching things like oh i could never do that you know which is like what i thought before i saw you play the piano by looking at what other people are doing that should be inspiration you know so you're you're just looking at the world differently like oh taylor did this race that would be end i never thought about that what would it look like sarah said to me she wants to run the disney half marathon we've been married for twenty years almost i've never seen to run once in my life you wanna run the disney half marathon she just told me now she wants to learn the dance from what you get inspiration from other people and and you so you know it's a process no one's ever taught me one to think or look at the world like that we looked at the world that like oh i have zoom call and like think about how much energy you put into scheduling your work meet all staff meetings zoom calls reviews board meetings investor meetings looking at pitch decks you know like conference calls travel like we spend imagine if you took that same energy into planning the most important thing your life you look at the world differently you start to like fill up stuff like you know what i do wanna go to the georgia football game i do wanna go you know jump in the water or whatever you i'd i've never been in a asana let me go to one of these sauna places and see what everybody's but is this thing that's going on you know you'd start to like and it becomes contagious infectious you know addictive when you start to have this kind of enthusiasm and excitement so you know we don't get taught that in school we don't get taught that by by anybody you know you get taught by being inspired to say you know what i don't wanna be an eighty i don't wanna be an eight i wanna be an eye you know take it in your own hands and say like i want this year to be my highlight reel you know another step that we should be in here is just being excited to have the up man just to be are your parents are alive yeah are your kids healthy knock going with yeah you're thirty seven years old both your parents are alive all your kids are healthy how does life get better than that like no seriously like just being excited about like jesus man i'm in this position where i can go visit my parents rather healthy i can take my kids to something don't blow that opportunity mh don't blow that opportunity you know so this isn't about planning the most perfect year at all it's about planning something that you're excited about that you feel good about at the end of the year and you're not just like if it moves the needle this much for a listener to like that i wanna be really intentional on how doing more things i don't important to me learning something spending more time with my family you you know like it's gonna be worth it so i do those two things i put my rule down i put my kevin's roll stuff as they come and i get inspiration hear ideas gonna go visit a college i'm gonna go see my parents i'm gonna take a family trip i'm gonna take my kids out from school and take them to lunch one day and surprise them it doesn't have to be but you just wanna start lighting shit up and then you put all your other rocks so you have your kevin's rule you're me soggy and then these big rocks these other moments whatever these moments are and then the third thing that i do after all that stuff is on on my calendar is i don't believe in resolutions they've never worked for me most resolutions fail right but what does work for me it's not a planning thing but it's a really good strategy as we go into the next year is to create one winning habit a quarter we're all a product of winning habits winning routines and a winning mindset if you get your habits right your mind right and your routines right you're gonna be in a great spot so you wanna do things that the towards that so for me adding one new win winning habit a quarter that could be like i don't drink enough water i'm gonna drink a hundred ounces a day i'm gonna learn a ten a ten at a ten minute a day meditation practice i'll never be late for another meeting but if you just start layering in winning habits again cumulative for this year that you have eight next year twelve the year after like you just keep layering it in and adding this stuff and do everything the same you're gonna have a great year better year just by definition if you add you learn how to play the piano or you go on these trips you have some winning habits you're gonna have a better year and it's gonna jump start a whole new process for you two other the things i wanna talk about i think balance is something that you hear a lot of and i think that balance isn't something that happens day to day it's something that you should look at over the course of the year you know what i mean because you're gonna be in and out we talked about seasons when you first got here when you're learning out a plate the piano or maybe you have a big pitch meeting or whatever you're out of balance like sweetie i'm not gonna be a around working late whatever but then you go through a season of recovery or you know action or whatever so the balance over the course of the years is gonna gonna come into play where it could level out but there's gonna be times where it's day to day way out of whack so you can't look at that on a day to day level i would look at it more over the course of a year the second thing that i would say is on a daily basis or even a weekly basis i think it's important to think about where do you wanna put your energy what are the things that you wanna put your energy into usually to me it's the stuff that's on my calendar and what do you wanna what don't you wanna put your energy towards because we only have a limited amount of energy so think about your themes for twenty twenty six you know like for you it might be fitness it might be you know trying something new at work or new launching a new project or whatever you know that would be a good clue of like where you wanna put your energy into and especially on a daily basis so for me i like to look at my weeks on a sunday night and look through what's going on on a week at a glance basis to see if like i don't really need to do this now that's not super important i have more important things to do right now than than that and even on a daily basis i like to write out the night before what my day looks like people talk about morning routines but i'm a much bigger believer in evening routines because i feel like you can't just wake up and wing it only am i gonna do today like the competition is too good the night before lay out your thing seven o'clock i'm gonna work out eight o'clock i'm taking my kids to school nine to two this two one four i shutdown down like and follow the script you know and just to create some more more efficiencies so that's sort of how i plan my year me then i put my kevin's rule down then i put all my little rocks down the things that i wanna do i think about where i wanna put my energy i look at my balance more on my the year versus day to day i don't beat myself up that oh my god i'm i'm not home today you know and then on a day to day level starting the night before yeah what do you think most people get wrong when they do this process like they they mean well they're trying but they fall into like a a common trap what's on trap a common trap is having too many goals more isn't better better better so like you had one specific goal i'm gonna learn out play the piano this year this song you know that's a really great goal and you freaking nailed it versus learned the pan i'm gonna run a marathon and like now you're like all over the place and like you're missing lessons and now your four month journey became a one year journey and everything suffers so i think a lot of people say i'm gonna lose weight i'm gonna do this i'm gonna like change my whole one every area of everything i think it's too much like that do you already have your machete for next year or not yet yes what is it i am going so i like to do physical things i'm gonna do a twenty twenty and i've calling it the everest triathlon so i'm gonna swim twenty nine thousand twenty nine feet which is five point five miles then bike twenty nine thousand twenty nine feet the equivalent of everest in elevation gain on a bike which is really really hard and then i'm going to do a twenty nine or twenty nine event which is you climb the equivalent amount everest all in the triathlon on format so back to back to back back to back to back to back i'll sleep because we'll do it like stages but back to back to back to back it's me hard like the bike alone will take will probably take me like thirty hours the swim will take five hours and the the hike will take thirty hours it's seventy hours roughly jeez i can't wait alright let's take quick break because i gotta tell you a story let me tell you at the first time i tried to run payroll for my team i was using a traditional bank and you know the type it's got a jan interface it's built like a two thousand and two tax form and it was open only during business hours and i hit send in froze they flagged the transaction they locked my account they put me on hold for forty five minutes and then they told me i gotta visit my local branch and that was the day i started looking for a new bank solution after asking a few founders what they were using i found out about mercury and so now my payroll is two clicks i can wire money i can pay invoices i can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard that's why use it for all of my companies and so do two hundred thousand other startup founders and so if you're looking at to level up your banking head to mercury dot com and apply in minutes mercury is a financial technology company not a bank bank the services are provided through choice financial group call them man a and evolve bank trust members fdic and i'm sure you get a lot of like easy for you to say you're rich free you you have all the time you want you have all the money you want you could do whatever you want and then people will self limit because i say well that's not me so i guess i can't yeah and so like what say you when i was twenty two years old i was sleeping on my friend's couch in new york city i was bouncing couch to couch to couch and i had a friend that was one of the guys that i was staying with was working and making a ton of money like quarter million dollars but you know at the time was get i all that's all the my it was like eight hundred hours a year you know but at the end of the year i did the polar plea polar plunge in coney island i ran the new york city marathon i did a staten island by i went to multiple conferences i went on a two week trip like my i've been doing this since i had zero i just didn't formalized it i didn't even understand it but what happened is when i got into my forties and fifties and i was like god this guy wrote a book this guy sold the business this guy random iron man this guy did a marathon this guy goes in sauna this guy did blah above like what's going on i'm like i don't know i just been like it adds up i've just been doing all these things and then i realized this is what i've been doing i just do it on a bigger platform now so it doesn't mean like i said you don't have to climb out everest to have a great year you have to do things that make you feel good and they don't just happen you need a system if you wait your calendar is gonna fill up and other people are gonna determine where your energy goes if you choose where you wanna put your energy like you just did then you're gonna have an amazing year it's a decision i really wholeheartedly believe that it's a system so the last thing i wanna say real quick is another thing that i do and again like i'm just talking about things that have been really helpful for me trying to just share as much as i can and and not everything needs to resonate right we just wanna inspire people to have a program and a plan that makes them have an efficient year will take you through your year is i call it the eight boxes k and this is something that i i has really been helpful for me i take a piece of paper and i make eight boxes and i pick the categories and maybe yours is six some might be before for me it was eight i think about what are the buckets that are the most important buckets in my life the things that i do wanna put the energy into and for me it was it's adventure i love going on adventures travel trips marriage obviously is super important health and fitness my children kids my business my personal goals and stuff like this my family and my personal finance and we talked about this off camera i love the way you you you meant you talked about it but what i do is i put down all the things it's like a running life to do list almost checklist now some of this stuff is for this year some and i might even put a little dot but some of its long term for example can adventure i put everything i wanna do in those buckets in here so i this is a snapshot of where i'm going from now till the end of the journey some of this stuff will get checked checked off for example i wanna do a son of finland i always wanna to do i did it last year check it off but now i have a new thing i wanna do this race called the three this thing called the three i add it so it's like a running list and what i love about this is it's like it's out of my head and it it lives it doesn't live it lives on a on a piece of paper right that i can refer to and it gives me a blueprint for where i'm going so like if you don't know what you wanna do if you don't have a vision if you don't have a dream you know like one of these things is write a book it doesn't mean i'm gonna do it right now but i have a specific book i wanna write it goes on this sheet and i refer to this all the time now some of these things are going on my calendar for twenty twenty six some of them are going on my calendar for twenty six some of them are just long term and it's still work in progress so you you basically are collecting throughout the years interesting ideas of what a great life might look like what are some of the things i wanna do before you know the clock strikes zero and this whole thing's over and then in a given year you might pull one two things put it on the calendar that's and then you see the momentum in the checklist and this is the you i think you call it the life resume right like you know you have a work i put some examples of it up here but yeah perfect so like for example sarah just we were just talking to my wife and she's like i wanna learn the thriller dance okay well that's gonna go my personal bucket right we're gonna learn the thrill thriller dance now does that mean that has to happen this week no but i'm now it's like it's exciting i have like you were saying where to get the ideas from well when you get an idea put it down right you know let it bring it to life don't let it just marinate like put it down so and and ma'am it feels good when i check these off and every year i have like you know five or six things that i've done and i've added new stuff have you ever heard of the idea of a particular activating system as part of your brain no so there's like this phenomenon if you ever a good car shopping and you start looking up maybe i'm gonna buy a bmw all of a sudden when you're out on the road you'll be seeing bmw bmw oh that's the three that's the one he was saying it comes flu yes did all those just appear no they've been there the whole time but your brain you told your brain you said hey brain and brain's normally filtering out ninety nine things which the the r the re particular activating system so once you switch that on you've basically told your brain hey start to pay attention for this so like you know you could do it for for bmw when you're car shopping but you could do the same thing for life so you know once you realized oh i've got a like a life bucket list here to to fill out this sort of menu of things i wanna i wanna do in my life it's kinda like turns on the brain to start looking for possibilities what might be in that like i don't know you know you you told me about the three you know the polar plunger or the three hundred club if i you know now that i'm looking to fill mine up i'll start to be think to myself hey would that be one would that be one is that the one want is that the one i want and now it'll become easier for me i think yeah that's what i was saying about like coming up with miss and kevin's rule it's in your ra now you know like you're think about it i'm also really lucky i live with i have a friend group that also is driven and thinks like this so when we get together like any good ideas you guys it guess heard any races or right what are you guys think about this anything cool you think we should be doing and you know that's how ideas we listen because of that we rode our bike across the country the same group did rim to rim to rim of the same group went to finland the same group you know this year is doing the three hundred club at the south pole the same group you know is continues to do these things so that's not easy to find right a group of people that would do that in fact i didn't even find that until i was in my fifties mh i didn't have that in my twenties thirties and forties you found them by doing these or you found doing them by putting myself out and saying hey i love to do that with you you know sharing it social media help right bring us together but of the ten guys that i've done these adventures with over the last seven years i only probably knew one of them ten years ago there's that's inspiring because i i saw you had that group i've watched some of your videos and when you see it and you see how close you guys already to do these adventures you sort of just assumed i guess these are just as college buddies that life i guess i missed it but you saying i do the i'm not even fifty so like what's mike's used to start you know now like i it's not you know in a way you've done it you've brought together this crew through the basketball tournament that you host and i'm pretty sure you could call hayes or any of the guys that we've meant say hey i got an idea i wanna go take a survival class in montana in the winter right i wanna do a three day that everyone's gonna put their hand up like you sort of have it right you just have to now take action into like beyond basketball right and that that's sort of what we what i did that might be one of my things i put on here is like build a crew to do these things with and you know those things for you could also be learning experiences like for you you know maybe it's not like you said you don't wanna go scale a mountain in antarctica but you might wanna take an intensive you know memory course with the a guy that never forgets a name right you could take a four day thing and and because a big one for me is creative projects so i've created like a creative bucket list it's like oh man in my lifetime i wanna i wanna make a song that's just a catchy just bang that just you know it it it gets out there in the world and other people are you know bop into this song in a car i wanna have like a board game that i make i want and so i just made a list of things i'd like to make in my life he just gabe see that yeah this just gave me one and so i'm i have this like creative bucket so for me one of my probably where you have adventure for me would be you know creative projects that i wanna go do in my lifetime like i wanna make a movie why not i have a song that i wrote fifteen years ago that i still think is a hit that i wanna put out i've just been marinating damn i don't feel pressure to like you know for projects you know like that process that creative process like it it comes in waves you know and even if it takes fifteen years it comes in waves and the same thing with this book i know balance that like i wanna do so much without you don't give off i feel rushed energy it's like it's very rare for me to find somebody who's got both of those right some people who just wanna stay in place they're content and they don't feel that rushed most people iron over the achieve types that have more ideas than they have time i yeah they have this almost like nervous energy and it's almost like oh they're they're almost not enjoying it because they i just always feel like i should be doing more i have i have both jeans i have the like ready fire and then i have i've learned it like if you're gonna put out a product like a book or a song or something that's gonna live out in the world and it's in its form that can't be altered right like we can always improve on our products but like a book once it's written kinda can't be altered you wanna you want my people probably push back on this but for me i found that i wanna make the best version that i can make right then i wanna wait a second and then i wanna try to make it ten percent better when i think it's bet done like when i did living with the seal i handed the book in i read it six hundred times six i'm not kidding six hundred times i read that five hour book maybe not six hundred let's let's say i read a sixty that's a big difference but let's say i at sixty which i probably did cover to cover do i like it edit writing notes or whatever i finally hand the book i have a deadline they like we gotta get this out the public the the amazon needs it all this i hand it in they're like great this is the best we love it thank you barbara i go home i read it sixty one the sixty first time i called my publisher the next day and i'm like i need two more weeks she's like what i'm like i i can make this ten percent better this is the only book i wanted this to be the best like and i handed it in the best book that i could write i couldn't dot write a better that was it that was the the absolute best version of that book that i could write and when know what that meant no matter what happened i felt good about it if it got one star reviews and sold eighteen copies i don't care that's the best book i could write but if i wrote a half ass version of that book i would beaten myself up forever so that's how i feel about those kind just kinda one way door projects yeah that's awesome jesse thank you so much for doing this oh thank you i love it i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal travel never look bag alright everyone if you're listening to m you probably want to make more money well i wanna tell you about a podcast you might wanna check out it's called the sales evangelist and it's hosted by donald kelly each week donald interviews the world's best sales experts who share their strategies to six seed in sales they share actionable insights and stories that will encourage challenge and motivate you to hustle your way to the top if you're someone looking to raise your income level check out the sales of evangelist you can find it wherever you get your podcasts