Transcription
Throughout my journey, in any business endeavor that I did, in anything that I did in life, I was always going to pour my heart into it to empty my tank and put everything that I had. And that took me a very far away.
Hi, I'm Jesse Sler. I've had a very unconventional journey as an entrepreneur. I started off as a kiddie pool attendant. I sold carrot and celery sticks door to door. That failed. I had a t-shirt company, failed. Marketing company, failed. Record label went out of business. I had all these businesses in my 20s that failed.
And then when I was 28 years old, I was a guest on a private jet. And when I walked onto the private plane, it was like the scene in the Wizard of Oz when everything in life goes from black and white to color. I was like, people fly like this? I want to fly like this. And by the time we landed the airplane, my partner and I were like, let's start a private jet company. So when we travel, we can fly on private planes. I was like, definitely. Except we had no airplanes and we had no experience. But we started a company called Marquee Jet. They went on to do over $5 billion in sales and ultimately we sold it to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's NetJets division.
I then was part of a coconut water company called Ziko Coconut Water, which we sold to Coca-Cola. I had a fitness company, an endurance company called 29029, which we sold to iFit. And when I was starting out, I had a company called Alphabet City, which we sold to a public company called SFX.
But I had an unfair advantage. I was mentored personally by a billionaire. And he literally gave me the cheat code for not just business, but also for life. And today I'm going to share with you this exact cheat code. The secrets and tips that he gave me that helped me not just in business but also in life.
But first, a little bit about this billionaire. So, I learned about this billionaire in a story that's relatively unknown from a book that I read. And it's a story of a family from about a hundred years ago from Russia. And this family was so poor they had 12 kids that six of the children died before the age of two. So the father decided to move from Russia to the United States of America to give his children a better life. And one by one he sent for the kids. And when the last child was sent to this country, he had lice in his hair. Young boy. So they treated his head, burnt his scalp. He had to wait till he healed. Ultimately landed in the USA. Got recruited to the army when he got a little bit older for World War I where he was mustard gassed in action. He was missing in action for about six days. They found him in a hospital where he got a medical discharge and moved back to the United States where he settled down, met a woman, got married and had three children, two girls and a boy. The boy became the billionaire.
Now, I was lucky. I met this guy, this billionaire when he was 40 years old and in his absolute prime and was able to spend a lot of time with this man who ultimately shared the lessons and the tips that I'm about to share with you right now, the cheat code.
So, for starters, he taught me that there's two sides to business. There's the business side, the financial side, which is obviously so important. We tend to overindex in the energy we put into the financial side. But then there's the spiritual side. What kind of culture did we build? Were we kind to our customers? Were we philanthropic? And sometimes we tend to neglect this side. If you have a billion dollars and your spirit is zero, a billion times zero is zero. The name of the game that we're all playing if we're in business is to get enough of this, the financial side, whatever enough is for you, without sacrificing or compromising this. And as I became an entrepreneur, that lesson became very valuable to me to focus and concentrate not just on the financial side of business, but also on the spiritual side. If something didn't feel right to me while I was doing it spiritually, I wasn't going to do it.
He taught me that one of the most important things that you can do in business is to care the most. He told me that only one person can be the richest, only one person can be the funniest, only one person can be the best looking, but anybody can care the most. And he told me that if you poured your soul into everything that you do, if you literally empty the tank that your customers and people around you will feel that. He said that customers feel soul and that you can't outsource soul and that soul doesn't live on a spreadsheet. But if you show that emotion and that passion and that enthusiasm, it's going to leak through and people are going to respond to that. So throughout my journey, in any business endeavor that I did, in anything that I did in life, I was always going to pour my heart into it to empty my tank and put everything that I had, pour my soul into it. And that took me a very far away.
He taught me that skills are important, but those can be taught. But it's attitudes that are truly what matter the most. Your enthusiasm, your passion, honesty, integrity, those aren't skills that you learn in business. Those are attitudes that we all have. And he would say to me like, even if you don't have the greatest skill, you have these attitudes. We all have these attitudes. And if we overindex in that, if we ooze the right attitudes out of our pores, then again, amazing things are going to happen.
He taught me about relationships. And he had a secret formula. And he gave me that formula to building deep, meaningful, impactful relationships. And that was to compliment, to congratulate, and to console. What does that mean? Well, he would call people up and be like, "Jesse, I just want to let you know you're an unbelievable dad. I love the way you parent as a friend of yours for so long as a mentor. It's so inspiring to watch the way you raised your kids." And he would just tell me that if you did that at a time where nobody else was doing it and you reached out to somebody and you authentically complimented them on something that you that really matters to you, they won't forget it.
He told me to congratulate if something good happens to someone. Hey Jesse, I heard your son got into Duke University. If my kid got into Duke University, I'd be on cloud nine. My family, myself, we are on cloud nine. For you and your family. And he told me to console. I actually had one of the worst things that could happen to a parent happen to me. I got a knock on my door the next day. It was my friend Doug E. Fresh, the rapper. I said to him, Doug, what are you doing here? He said, 'When you get news like that, you don't call. You show up.' If you have somebody in your life that's grieving and they don't reach out to you, you'll never forget it ever.
So, a crazy thing happened. I started doing that. I started complimenting, congratulating, consoling, and after several years, I started getting the magic word. I would get a referral. And when my business took a down tick, people would stick with me. Business can be transactional, but relationships can't. And when you build deep, authentic, meaningful relationships by pouring your soul into what it is that you're doing, the floodgates open, the floodgates open.
He told me one time the importance of ripping up the playbook. Like my wife always says the same thing that if nobody taught you how to do your job, how would you do it? If no one taught you how to go after your customers, how to send referral notes, what your business card should look like, how would you do it? That's where innovation comes from. That's where disruption comes from. That's where separation from your competition comes from. And throughout my journey as an entrepreneur, one of the greatest gifts that I had is I didn't have a lot of experience. So it guaranteed that everything I did would look differently from my competition. And that was a huge asset and a very impactful lesson.
He taught me the simple blueprint for life. And I saw it one day on his wall. It was a creed that he wrote. I saw it on his office wall. It was a blueprint I've stuck with for my entire life. It said, "Be good to your friends, loyal to your family, true to your convictions, and beat the hell out of your enemies." And that's always something that I remembered along my journey cuz you're going to get a lot of enemies. And don't be scared to step on their throat when you get the chance to do it.
But most importantly, he taught me to believe in the end of my story. That if there was only one person that could get the job, you have to believe it's going to be you. If you're single, you have to believe that he or she's out there. You have to believe in your end of the story because if you don't believe in the end of your story, who else will? And again, as I became an entrepreneur, these lessons ran through my blood. They were in my ear. It was almost like I had Yoda talking to me.
But the most important thing that I learned from this billionaire was how he showed up for his family. He never missed a dinner. He showed up at every event. He worked six and a half days of his life every week and still managed to go to everything. This man died on March 21st, 2022. He had a wife of 68 years. He had four kids, two boys and two girls. One daughter owned a retail store. The son became a lawyer. The other daughter an entrepreneur. And the billionaire's youngest son, huh? That's me. My dad never had great financial success, but he mastered the spiritual side. And as I said before, if you have a billion dollars and your spirit is zero, a billion times zero is zero. But if you have $1 and your spirit is a billion, a dollar times a billion is a billion. My dad was a spiritual billionaire and for 54 years I got advice from this man. Some of which I share with you above, some of which I'm keeping inside.
But one of the greatest lessons I got from my father was the last lesson. It was the biggest lesson and it came two years after his death when my mother died shortly after. Two years after I got a call from my brother. And well, for those that don't know, when your parents die, we decided to sell my parents' house. The process is different. They bring in an estate person and they go through the house and everything has to go. Either it gets donated, it gets sold or it goes to storage. And they went through every single item, 92 years of items in my parents' house until they got to the last section with just a bunch of books. And I got a call from my brother. I was living in Atlanta. They were in Florida. That we have a situation. I said, "What's that?" He said, "Well, the guy here that's going through the books went through one of the books, but it's not a book. When they opened it up, it was hollow and it was a safe." I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "There's nothing in the book. It's a safe." I said, "Well, what is in there?" He said, "There's some, a little bit of money. There's some credit cards, but there's a note." I said, "What does the note say?" It says, "If anything ever happens to me, here's the combination to a safe. You're the only one that has the contents. Get what's in the safe out." And I'm thinking, "Oh my god, Mom left us Apple stock at like a buck. This is unbelievable. What's the address on the safe?" So he tells me the address and as it turns out it was my summer house in Connecticut, a house that I rarely ever go to, but I was going to two weeks later for Labor Day.
So when I went there, I opened up the safe and in the safe were a couple of items that I had placed there and one thing that I forgot that had been placed there by my father and that was the book. The book from the beginning of this story. After 90 years on earth and all the things my father went through and my grandfather went through, everything was sold, the only thing that was left is this one book, the book in the safe. And it made me think, my dad, man, after all these years, was still giving me a lesson. But this one was the most powerful one. At the end of the day, the only thing that you have left is your story. That's it. Everything else gets sold off or is gone. And if all you have left is your story, then damn, why won't you make that the best story you could possibly ever make it by doing the best you could do at business, by doing the best you could do on the spiritual side and leaving your family or friends the gift of an amazing life and an amazing story.
If you are listening to this, you really have one job, and that's to live a life that you can leave a legacy where people can hear your story and be inspired. The same way my dad left a story and a legacy for me that's going to carry on from generation to generation.