If you want a rich life, watch this before 2026

24:05This is not I'm just planning me before my work. Work's always going to be there. I'm going to have I'm going to work a lot more hours than I'm going to 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 going to like, you're going to have a photo book like that. There's no Zoom calls in my book. There's no picture of me on Zoom in that book. That's stuff that I did that like immediately made me smile. That's what this is. I'm going to show you how to do it right now. Our goal is to get you excited about this, right?

24:41It's not to plan a perfect year or whatever. It's to make sure that 2026 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 everything every day. We got a lot of time to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish, all right? That's 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 gaps they try to fill in.

25:20We 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 called the misogi. You know the term. And the notion around a misogi is you do one big year defining thing every year.

25:58This is really important. At the end of the year, you wanna have something to show for it. Last year for you, it might've been like, man, I launched this insane three-day basketball camp with billionaires. I launched that in 2025. Maybe it was, I 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'd you do in 2020? If you ask me, what'd you do in 2015? I wrote Living with a Seal. 2017, I launched 29 or 29, a business that I had. 2021 I did a race called Ultraman 2023 I rode my bike across America 2024 I did rim to rim to rim 2025 every year you should be able to you know and if you can do that how old are you?

26:47I'm 37 so if you can do that from if you started now and you had one big year defining goal and you live to be 87 you'd have 50 monumental things that you've accomplished in your life that's a heck of a ride Heck of a ride. So the first thing I encourage people to do is think about in 2026, at the end of the year in December, by the way, if you didn't even do anything else, but you just did this, you're going to like - You win. You win. What's the one thing you want to 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.

27:31because that is a really important, and I don't think it should be something like, it's gotta be hard and big. Truly, you're defining. Not like, oh, I took a trip to Italy. That's a trip to Italy. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20 % of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out four-fifths 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 in emails, call logs, transcripts, All that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more.

28:03And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit HubSpot.com. So we put down the big misogy. 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's rule after my friend Kevin kind of taught me about this. But every other month, I do something. 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 do one thing you normally wouldn't have done, this is critical, mission critical.

28:42If you can't do that, you're really out of balance. You can't take one day out of every six weeks to do something for yourself. What are we doing? So if you do plan like six little mini adventures, whatever they are, you put them on your calendar. And I could show you mine in a second. Well, same thing. If you're 37 and you live to be 87, so you'd have 50, I just learned how to play the piano moments, year defining things, but now you'd have 300 mini adventures on top. Like, just think about that, man. 50 year defining things and 300 mini adventures you wouldn't have had. that is, who's doing that?

29:21Right. You know, and I'm not talking, oh, I need a lot of money. I don't 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 costs$18 to park and hike. Anybody can do a Central Park run, you know, enjoy the New York Roadrunners Club or, you know, 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 with 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?

29:58Maybe they're 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 and moments? They go on my calendar first. Again, the goal is to schedule your life So work fills in around it versus work and your life fills around it. Those are 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, no, I'm going to make time for this.

30:35Then I realize 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 having these unscripted days, at having these misogas. It's almost hard to think of them. So I guess, is it hard for you to? And also, how do you get better at that? Well, first of all, just being aware that I want to 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, 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.

31:10You know, so you're just looking at the world differently. Like, oh, Taylor did this race. That would be interesting. I never thought about that. What would it look like? Sarah just said to me, she wants to run the Disney half marathon. We've been married for 20 years, almost. I've never seen her run once in my life. You want to 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 so, you know, it's a process. No one's ever taught anyone to think or look at the world like that. We look at the world that like, oh, I have a Zoom call.

31:38and 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'd start to like fill up stuff with like, you know what, I do want to go to the Georgia football game. I do want to go, you know, jump in the water or whatever. I've never been in a sauna. Let me go to one of these sauna places and see what everybody's, what is this thing that's going on?

32:15You 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 anybody. You know, you get taught it by being inspired to say, you know what? I don't want to be an 80. I don't want to be an eight. I want to be a nine, 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 opportunity. Man, just to be, are your parents alive?

32:52Yeah. Are your kids healthy, knock on wood? Yeah. You're 37 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 while they're healthy. I can take my kids to something. Don't blow that opportunity. 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, Like if it moves the needle this much for a listener, they're like, God, I want to be really intentional on how doing more things that are important to me, learning something, spending more time with my family, you know, like it's going to be worth it.

33:42So I do those two things. I put my Masogi's rule down. I put my Kevin's rule stuff as they come and I get inspiration, hear ideas. I'm going to go visit a college friend. I'm going to go see my parents. I'm going to take a family trip. I'm going to 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 want to start lighting shit up. And then you put all your other rocks. So you have your Kevin's rule, your Masogi, 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 my calendar is I don't believe in resolutions.

34:17They've never worked for me. Most resolutions fail. 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 going to be in a great spot. So you want to do things that, towards that. So for me, adding one new winning habit a quarter, that could be like, I don't drink enough water. I'm going to drink a hundred ounces a day. I'm going to learn a 10, at a 10 minute a day meditation practice.

34:56I'll never be late for another meeting. But if you start layering in winning habits, again, cumulatively for this year, now you have eight next year, 12 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, you go on these trips, you have some winning habits, you're gonna have a better year and it's gonna jumpstart a whole new process for you. Two other 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.

35:38It's something that you should look at over the course of a 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 how to play the piano or maybe you have a big pitch meeting or whatever, you're out of balance. Like, sweetie, I'm not going to be around working late, whatever. But then you go into a season of recovery or, you know, action or whatever. So the balance over the course of the year is going to come into play where it could level out. But there's going to 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.

36:11I 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 want to put your energy? What are the things that you want to put your energy into? Usually to me, it's the stuff that's on my calendar. And what do you want to, what don't you want to put your energy towards? Because we only have a limited amount of energy. So think about your themes for 2026. 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.

36:45You know, that would be a good clue of like where you want to 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 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.

37:19What am I going to do today? Like the competition is too good. The night before, lay out your thing. Seven o 'clock, I'm going to work out. Eight o 'clock, I'm taking my kids to school. Nine to two, I have this. Two, one, four, I shut down. And follow the script, you know, and just to create some more efficiencies. So that's sort of how I plan my year. I'm a Sogi. Then I put my Kevin's rule down. Then I put all my little rocks down, the things that I want to do. I think about where I want to put my energy. I look at my balance more on like the year versus day to day. I don't beat myself up that, oh my God, I'm not home today, you know?

37:55And 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 mean well, they're trying, but they fall into like a common trap. What's a common trap? A common trap is having too many goals. More isn't better, better is better. So like you had one specific goal. I'm going to learn how to play the piano this year, this song. you know that's a really great goal and you freaking nailed it versus i'm learning the piano i'm gonna run a marathon 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 life every area of everything i think it's too much like that do you already have your masogi for next year or not yet?

38:41Yes. What is it? I am going, so I like to do physical things. I'm going to do a 20, I'm calling it the Everesting Triathlon. So I'm going to swim 29 ,029 feet, which is 5.5 miles. Then bike 29 ,029 feet, the equivalent of Everest in elevation gain on a bike, which is really, really hard. And then I'm going to do a 29 or 29 event, which is you climb the equivalent of Mount Everest all in. a triathlon format. So like 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 going to be super hard. Like the bike alone will probably take me like 30 hours.

39:22The swim will take five hours and the hike will take 30 hours. That's 70 hours, roughly. Jeez. I can't wait. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about 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 janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes and then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution.

39:58After 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 I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC. And I'm sure you get a lot of like, easy for you to say, you're rich, you're free, you have all the time you want, you have all the money you want, you can do whatever you want.

40:33And then people will self-limit because they say, well, that's not me, so I guess I can't. Yeah. And so like, what say you? When I was 22 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, like the time was - That's all the money. I was making like$800 a year, you know? But at the end of the year, I did the polar plunge in Coney Island. I ran the New York City Marathon. I did the Staten Island biathlon.

41:10I went to multiple conferences. I went on a two-week trip. I've been doing this since I had zero. I just didn't formalize it. I didn't even understand it. But what happened is when I got into my 40s and 50s and I was like, God, this guy wrote a book. This guy sold the business. This guy ran an Ironman. This guy did a marathon. This guy goes in saunas. This guy did blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, what's going on? I'm like, I don't know. I've 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 Mount Everest to have a great year.

41:47You 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 going to fill up and other people are going to determine where your energy goes. If you choose where you want to put your energy, like you just did, then you're going to have an amazing year. It's a decision. I really wholeheartedly believe that. It's a system. So the last thing I want to 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 not everything needs to resonate, right?

42:26We just want to inspire people to have a program and a plan that makes them have an efficient year. We'll take you through your year. Is I call it the eight boxes. okay and this is something that 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 four for me it was eight i think about what are the buckets that are the most important buckets in my life that things that i do want to 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.

43:16And we talked about this off camera. I love the way you talked about it. But what I do is I put down all the things. This is like a running life to-do list, almost checklist. Now, some of this stuff is for this year. And I might even put a little dot, but some of it's long-term. For example, in adventure, I put everything I want to do in those buckets in here. So this is a snapshot of where I'm going from now till the end of the journey. Some of this stuff will get checked off. For example, I wanted to do a sauna tour of Finland. Always wanted to do it. I did it last year, check it off. But now I have a new thing.

43:54I want to do this race call, this thing called the 300. 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 lives. It doesn't live, it lives on a piece of paper 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 want to 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 going to do it right now, but I have a specific book I want to 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 2026.

44:34Some of them are going on my calendar for 2026. Some of them are just long-term and it's a work in progress. So you basically are collecting throughout the years interesting ideas of what a great life might look like. What are some of the things I want to do before the clock strikes zero and this whole thing's over. And then in a given year, you might pull one, two things and put it on the calendar. And then you see the momentum in the checklist. And this is the, I think you call it the life resume, right? Like, you know, you have a work resume. I put some examples of it up here, but yeah, perfect.

45:05So like, for example, Sarah just, we were just talking to my wife and she's like, I want to learn the thriller dance. Okay, well, that's going to go in my personal bucket. We're going to learn the thriller dance. Now, does that mean that has to happen this week? No, but I'm there Now, it's like, it's exciting. I have, like you were saying, where do you get the ideas from? Well, when you get an idea, put it down. You know, bring it to life. Don't let it just marinate. Like, put it down. So, and man, 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.

45:40Have you ever heard of the idea of a reticular activating system that's part of your brain? No. So there's like this phenomenon. If you ever go car shopping and you start thinking, oh, maybe I'm going to 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 series. That's the one he was saying. It comes in blue. 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, the brain's normally filtering out 99 % of things. What's that called? The RAS, the reticular activating system.

46:08So 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 BMWs when you're car shopping, but you could do the same thing for life. So, you know, once you realize, oh, I've got a, like a life bucket list here to fill out this sort of menu of things I want to, I want to do in my life. It's kind of like turns on the brain to start looking for possibilities. What might be in that? Like, I don't know. You know, you told me about the three, you know, the polar plunge or the 300 club. If I, you know, now that I'm looking to fill mine up, I'll start to think to myself, Hey, would that be one?

46:40Would that be one? Is that the one I want? Is that the one I want? And now it'll become easier for me, I think. Yeah. And That's what I was saying about like coming up with Misogi's and Kevin's rule. It's in your RAS now, you know, like you're thinking 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, it's like, any good ideas, you guys? You guys heard any races or what do you guys think about this year? 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.

47:10The same group did rim to rim to rim. The same group went to Finland. And the same group, you know, this year is doing the 300 Club at the South Pole. The same group, you know, continues to do these things. So that's not easy to find a group of people that would do that. In fact, I didn't even find that until I was in my 50s. I didn't have that in my 20s, 30s, and 40s. You found them by doing these or you found them? By doing them, by putting myself out and saying, hey, I'd love to do that with you. You know, sharing it. Social media has helped bring us together. but of the 10 guys that I've done these adventures with over the last seven years I only probably knew one of them 10 years ago there's like that's pretty inspiring because 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 are to do these adventures you sort of just assume I guess these are just his college buddies that like I guess I missed it but you're saying I did it I'm not even 50 so like what's my excuse to start you know now No, like it's not too late.

48:08Well, you know, in a way you've done it. You've brought together this group through the basketball tournament that you host. And I'm pretty sure you could call Hayes or any of the guys that we've met and say, hey, I got an idea. I want to go take a survival class in Montana in the winter. You want to do a three-day, everyone's going to put their hand up. It's like, you sort of have it. Right. You just have to now take action into like beyond basketball. Right. And that's sort of what I did. That might be one of my things I'd 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 want to go scale a mountain in antarctica but you might want to take an intensive you know um memory course with a guy that never forgets a name right you could take a four-day thing and because i'm not 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 want to I want to make a song that's just a catchy just banger that just you know it gets out there in the world and other people are you know bopping to this song in a car I want to have like a board game that I make I want and I just made a list of things I'd like to make in my life you just see that yeah just gave me one and so I'm I have this like creative bucket list so for me one of my probably where you have adventure for me would be you know creative projects that I want to go do in my lifetime.

49:26Like, I want to make a movie. Why not? I have a song that I wrote 15 years ago that I still think is a hit that I want to put out. Just been marinating? It's just, yeah. I don't feel pressure to like, you know, for projects. You know, like that process, that creative process, like it comes in waves, you know? And even if it takes 15 years, it comes in waves. And the same thing with this book. How do you balance the like, I want to do so much without, you don't give off, I feel rushed energy. It's very rare for me to find somebody who's got both of those, right? There's some people who just want to stay in place.

50:06They're content. They don't feel that rushed. Most people I know who are the achiever types that have more ideas than they have time. They have this almost like nervous energy. And it's almost like, oh, they're almost not enjoying it because they just always feel like I should be doing more. I have both genes. I have the like ready, fire, aim. And then I have, I've learned that 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 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, it kind of can't be altered.

50:40You 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 want to wait a second and then I want to try to make it 10 % better. When I think it's done, like when I did Living with a Seal, I handed the book in. I read it 600 times. I'm not kidding. 600 times I read that five hour book. Maybe not. 600. Let's say I read it 60. That's a big difference. But let's say I read 60, which I probably did. Cover to cover. Do I like it? Edit it. Writing notes or whatever. I finally hand the book in. I have a deadline. We got to get this out.

51:18The public, but Amazon needs it, all this. I hand it in. They're like, great, this is the best. We love it. Thank you, blah, blah, blah. I go home, I read it 61, the 61st time. I call my publisher the next day and I'm like, I need two more weeks. She's like, what? I'm like, I can make this 10 % better. This is the only book. I wanted this to be the best version. And I handed in the best book that I could write. I could not write a better, that was it. that was the absolute best version of that book that I could write. And we know what that meant? No matter what happened, I felt good about it. If it got one star reviews and sold 18 copies, I don't care.

52:01That's the best book I could write. But if I wrote a half-assed version of that book, I would have beaten myself up forever. So that's how I feel about those kind of one-way door projects. Yeah. That's awesome. Jesse, thank you so much for doing this. Oh, thank you. I loved it. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

52:46and motivate you to hustle your way to the top. If you're someone looking to raise your income level, check out The Sales Evangelist. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.