946 Sara Blakely and Jesse Itzler on Marriage, Money and Entrepreneur Mindset

“Trust the seeds you’ve planted.”QUESTIONSWhat have you learned about each other during the quarantine? (1:21)How do you stay humble in success? (10:11)How do you manage energy? (16:12)What’s a new entrepreneurial skill you’ve learned in this time? (29:41)When was the moment Jesse knew that Sara was the right partner? (34:25)What’s the most important conversation to have before you get married? (43:21)How do you cultivate intimacy in an entrepreneurial lifestyle? (49:31)YOU WILL LEARNHow understanding the different styles of processing will help you create (3:10)Why focusing on success through different avenues will help you (14:31)How planning factors into good energy (19:31)How to stay connected in this time of separation (26:18)How people who invest in a message of comfort will win right now (29:10)How to be flexible in a marriage (37:39)How important humor is (41:41)How essential intimacy is (50:21)LINKS MENTIONEDRed Backpack FundBig Ass Calendar ClubIf you enjoyed this episode, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/946 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 946 with Sarah Blakely and Jesse Itzler. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Gandhi said, "Where there is love, there is life." Welcome to this special episode, a marriage episode. I want to say marriage, but a couple that is this power couple is married, talking about how they manage it all, how they manage their marriage, their money, their entrepreneurial endeavors, their kids, their friendships, their families, everything. And I've never heard them talk together about this, so we got some juicy stuff for them to share with you. And if you don't know who Sarah Blakely is, she's the founder and CEO of Spanx. And Spanx is known for inventing smarter, more comfortable products for women, including bras, apparel, undies, and of course, shapewear.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  And she was selected as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. And she's been featured on the cover of countless magazines. And in her support of her mission to empower women, she created the Spanx by Sarah Blakely Foundation. And she's signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate half of her wealth to charity. So cool what she's been up to. And she still owns 100% of the company and has never taken outside investment. She's also got a new project, the Red Backpack Fund, where she is empowering women. She's going to be donating $5 million to support female entrepreneurs in the wake of COVID-19.

• 2:00Lewis Howes?

  And she'll be talking about what this is, and you can learn more about that at globalgiving.org/redbackpackfund. And Jesse Itzler, this is Number one New York Times bestselling author. He is a good buddy of mine. He is an inspiration. He does some of the craziest things in the world with endurance running, with endurance events. Uh, he only eats fruit till noon. He loves Run DMC. He enjoys living life way outside of the box. In fact, he doesn't even have a box. He's got a number of books. The New York Times bestseller, Living with a Seal. He's also got Living with Monks. He co-founded Marquee Jets, which is the world's largest private jet card company,

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  which he and his partner sold to Berkshire Hathaway and NetJets. Now Jesse then partnered with Zico Coconut Water, which he and his partner sold to Coca-Cola. And in this episode, we talk about how to stay connected in this time of separation. The importance of focusing on success through different avenues and buckets of life. They explain why investing in a message of comfort right now will help you and your business. I wanted to dive in about the dynamics of their marriage and their relationship and how two powerhouses with different entrepreneurial minds come together and can build their businesses on their own, can support each other, who can raise kids together with different beliefs and how they handle

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  the challenges they face in their beliefs with kids. Also, the importance of humor and intimacy in a relationship and so much more. This is going to inspire you so much. Make sure to share with a friend. If you've got married couples, you know, send them this. LewisHowes.com/946. Ask them what their biggest takeaway was and what inspired them the most from Sarah and Jesse's conversation and their relationship. So without further ado, let's dive into this episode with the one and only Sarah Blakely and Jesse Itzler.

• 4:02Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School Greatness Podcast. I've got my favorite couple in the world on Sarah Blakely, Jesse Itzler in the house. Thank you guys so much for being here.

• 4:11Sara Blakely?

  Hi.

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it.

• 4:13Sara Blakely?

  We showered for this, Lewis.

• 4:15Lewis Howes?

  You showered, you put makeup on?

• 4:17Sara Blakely?

  I put makeup on.

• 4:18Lewis Howes?

  Jesse didn't shave and it's all good.

• 4:21Jesse Itzler?

  Right.

• 4:22Lewis Howes?

  You guys are probably the most loved entrepreneurial family and couple on the internet with everything you post about. You both independently have amazing businesses and brands, but then you share your lives together on social media, which is amazing and it's inspiring, it's beautiful, it's messy, it's not perfect, it's all the things. And I'm just curious, the first question I have is, what have you learned the most about each other during this time of quarantine?

• 4:53Lewis Howes?

  What have you learned? Cause you've been together for, you've been married for what? 10, 15 years now? Four kids?

• 4:58Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Sara Blakely?

  11 and a half years and we've been quarantined for five and a half weeks.

• 5:03Lewis Howes?

  Which feels like five years.

• 5:05Sara Blakely?

  And 38 minutes. No, I'm kidding. Who's counting?

• 5:08Jesse Itzler?

  Well, it's interesting because on a, on a regular day, everything is scheduled and structured. And now everything is completely unstructured. And I'm used to coming home after busy workdays for Sarah and I. And you know, we have dinner and we have our kids and the window's really short when we're together. And now it's everywhere I go, there she is. Which is a great thing.

• 5:30Sara Blakely?

  But, wait, I learned in English class that anything that comes before the but is really not the, the main message. Go ahead. You're really happy, but?

• 5:40Jesse Itzler?

  No, no, it's just, it's, but it's interesting. It's interesting because you have a lot more time to fill, you know? And, and our, and our, as parents, our responsibilities have shifted because now we have so many more hours with the kids. We have four kids under 10 that are, we have to be really together and aligned, or it's gonna be.

• 6:01Lewis Howes?

  How do you manage four kids?

• 6:03Sara Blakely?

  I love that, but that wasn't his question.

• 6:07Lewis Howes?

  What have you learned about each other during this time?

• 6:09Sara Blakely?

  You just made that up. You let him get away with that, Louis. So anyway.

• 6:12Lewis Howes?

  What have you learned about each other?

• 6:13Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, exactly. I would say that I haven't really learned anything new about Jesse, but everything that I kind of knew has just been, you know, it's, I think everything is so exaggerated.

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  Like what? Give me an example.

• 6:29Sara Blakely?

  So like, for an example, my husband thinks of ideas all the time. I would say 80 to 90% of all of our conversations in this marriage are ideas. They're either ideas or our children, for the most part. And I'm living this in real time. So he's having like 13 ideas a day. He's filtering them all through me. It's a lot. And I've been trying to talk to him a little bit about his own filter system because he has such a bias for action, which is cool. But like, he has an idea and then he's off and running and talking to three people about it. And then he's got another idea an hour later and he's got that one going. And so there's been a little bit of, a little bit of me helping him think that through.

• 7:12Sara Blakely?

  Not that he asked me for the help on that, but it's a lot.

• 7:16Jesse Itzler?

  The other night, we sat down at the dinner table and Sarah asked myself and our four kids to go around the table and explain in detail how we were feeling emotionally. I almost short circuited. I'm not wired for that.

• 7:31Lewis Howes?

  What was your response? What was your response?

• 7:35Sara Blakely?

  Guess what his response was?

• 7:36Jesse Itzler?

  My response was, I'm gonna go last.

• 7:40Lewis Howes?

  And then what'd you say?

• 7:41Sara Blakely?

  Said, I'm like, ah, wait, no. You know, and like, I call it the feelings game because, you know, I'm trying to get the children to participate in it. And I'm wondering what they truly are feeling. They seem okay, but as a parent, I'm like, this is heavy stuff that's going on. And the news is on the background sometimes when they're in the room. And so I was just trying to tease out how they might be feeling. And so it was good. I mean, we, we ended up going around. It helps if I go first because then I can set the tone.

• 8:11Lewis Howes?

  You set the example.

• 8:12Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Lewis Howes?

  And so, so, so what I'm hearing you say is the thing you've learned about Jesse is that he's got, usually his ideas are gone with his team somewhere, but he's got more ideas all the time and they're, he's taken action on a lot of stuff.

• 8:25Sara Blakely?

  And Tag, I'm it. I'm the focus group on all of them. I can't escape.

• 8:29Jesse Itzler?

  I'd be foolish trying to take advantage of that.

• 8:31Lewis Howes?

  Of course. Well, it seems like Sarah, you've had one idea that you've stuck with for 15 or 18 years with Spanx and you create new ideas within the one idea.

• 8:41Sara Blakely?

  I do, which is just a different model. I do. I shared with Jesse and he knows this. I have other ideas. So I have 99 pages, single spaced typed of ideas. And I email them to me, myself, the minute I have them. And it's 99 pages right now, which is just funny. My assistant keeps going, have you run out? Like, can we hit 100 pages? But I end up just, it's so much more important to me in sort of, instead of actioning on them instantly, it's more important to me to not lose them. I think an idea is a gift from the universe and, and I cannot take for granted that I might forget it. So the second I have it, I email it to myself. I used to keep it in notebooks, but now I do email and they're

• 9:25Sara Blakely?

  there and then I revisit them. And then they will come out of, they will come out. Like, my belly art book had nothing to do with Spanx. And that was an idea that was on that 99 pages. And, and I, some of them will knock on the door enough that I'll say, I'm going to find the extra time to make them happen.

• 9:43Lewis Howes?

  How many ideas do you think that is on 99 pages? Is that a thousand? Is it 10,000? Is that 500? What is that range, you think?

• 9:50Sara Blakely?

  I don't know.

• 9:51Jesse Itzler?

  I don't know, but you know, it's, it's interesting because we're both entrepreneurs with completely different styles. So Sarah's really good. We're both very A D D. Sarah's very good at staying on one thing, saying notice stuff, monotasking, being single focused. And I have, I like to operate in a completely different style. I need a lot of balls in the air at once. I need to bounce around from thing to, you know, from one thing to another. It's just the way I operate. I operate better with more balls in the air. So everybody has their own style. And over time, you figure out what it is that works the best. But you know, Sarah's really disciplined. She's, she's very disciplined. And she works it, she looks at things through a, a unique lens. It's, it's always customer first. It's always focused

• 10:36Jesse Itzler?

  on value. It's always focused on, she goes right to the story and how she can articulate this to the customer. And I'm ready firing. I'm like, I gotta start before anybody else starts and I'm going to figure it out as I go. Just different styles.

• 10:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I mean, are you friends with Buffett, Sarah?

• 10:54Sara Blakely?

  Yes.

• 10:54Lewis Howes?

  Then isn't he the guy who said the quote like, successful people and really successful people do things a little bit differently. They say no more than successful people, or something like that.

• 11:04Sara Blakely?

  Yeah. It's funny, when Jess, we were talking, his quote came to my mind, but there is a Warren Buffett quote that says, you know, the most successful people in life have one thing in common, their ability to say no.

• 11:16Lewis Howes?

  And you say no a lot.

• 11:17Sara Blakely?

  Many things. I have to. I have to. But it doesn't mean that, you know, another style of creating things in the world is any less. It's just, it's interesting. I, I am, I am very disciplined in what I focus on.

• 11:32Lewis Howes?

  I, I'm, I'm kinda like, I'd probably say I'm in between both of you. Like, for me, for me, like, I wanna create stuff all the time and launch something quickly and put it out there. But then I'm also like, well, you can't truly build something, an empire and something magical for the long term if you're just jumping from one thing to the next, whereas you have been disciplined for decades on building this global brand that just is so inspiring. And, and both are fun. It's like, but you get to create your, it's creative expression over here, the Jesse style, but you is, you get to create something magical. You know, that's, so.

• 12:06Sara Blakely?

  Well, I, you know, it's, the two ways to look at it is, I also look at Jesse's life as so magical. Because, no, because literally, I'm like, honey, you went, you became top of the field in rap. He was like on MTV and, you know, had hits in the top, whatever. And then he went from that to a jet company and did really well, which is so different than rap music. And then he goes from jets to coconut water and is really successful there. And now, you know, and now he's doing, he's an author and he's a motivational speaker. So to me, like, that's really fascinating that he's been able, it's very unique to find someone who's,

• 12:49Sara Blakely?

  it's not that hard to find people who've jumped from sector to sector to sector. It's hard to find people who've mastered or kind of been top of the game in all those different ones. So I always look at him and think, Oh my gosh, that's really makes for a colorful life. Like, I've been plotting along on my own journey, but he's got-

• 13:06Jesse Itzler?

  You're doing quite fine, sweetie.

• 13:07Sara Blakely?

  But he's got a million stories to tell.

• 13:10Lewis Howes?

  He does have a million stories, but you've got to-

• 13:13Jesse Itzler?

  When I was starting out in business, my philosophy was say yes to everything. Because, you know, and I-

• 13:19Sara Blakely?

  That's so interesting.

• 13:20Jesse Itzler?

  Well, it is, because it was laughing at jokes that aren't funny, going to everything. No, listen.

• 13:25Sara Blakely?

  How many of my jokes did he laugh at?

• 13:28Jesse Itzler?

  It was, it was, I had nothing.

• 13:30Lewis Howes?

  Show up to every meeting.

• 13:32Jesse Itzler?

  I had to, I had to build a network. I had to get out there. I had to be someone that want, want, I wanted an invitation to everything. I'm serious, because I didn't have the resources. So for me, I had to say yes to everything. If there was an event, I'm going, because there could be a buyer. There could be someone that, that, a connection. If there was a basket, basketball game, I'm going. I don't know who's gonna be in the audience. So it was yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. When you get married, and you have kids, and you evolve, your system has to evolve with it. So what worked for me when I was 20 years old, you know, I had dinner when I was at 11 o'clock at night in New York City. Now we have dinner at 5:30 at night. As you evolve, your system has to evolve.

• 14:13Jesse Itzler?

  So I have said, I'm starting to say no to, to things. And, you know, I have a very simple test, um, Louis, and for, for, for friends and for business. I want low aggravation for the highest reward, like everybody else. When I'm young, I'm willing to go high aggravation for high, high reward. But now, that reward isn't worth it. So I want low aggravation, so.

• 14:38Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, uh, Jesse, I'll let you start with this. I'm gonna ask you guys both a question. Jesse, what's the thing you're most proud of about Sarah that she probably doesn't know about? And I feel like you tell her all the time, and you guys talk all the time about everything, but what's the thing that maybe you don't tell her enough, or that you're really proud of that she maybe doesn't think is a big deal, but you do?

• 14:58Jesse Itzler?

  The way she uses her success, her, her wealth and her success is unbelievably inspiring. And not just the philanthropy that she does, and she does a lot of that in, behind the scenes, that no one knows about, that I know about, and in front of the scenes, but just how she treats her friends, and her family, and me, and her kids, and, um, it's inspiring, man. It's, um, it's actually unbelievable. So she's very selfless and very, um, she puts herself second. And that's a great quality. And especially because no one, you know, when you come into to wealth or success, no one teaches you how to do it. It's like we weren't born.

• 15:41Lewis Howes?

  There's no model.

• 15:41Jesse Itzler?

  My dad owned the plumbing supply house, you know, I was like, we never talked about anything about that. And she's just intuitively just figured out how to do it. She's been enjoying the giving pledge and all the stuff she's done is just unbelievable. And it's not.

• 15:58Lewis Howes?

  Where does that come from, Sarah and you to, you know, again, you were selling, I think it was fax machines door to door for five or seven years. You didn't have tons of money. And then you became, you know, extremely wealthy with owning this business and building this successful brand for 15 plus years. Where does that generosity come from at such a high level when everyone wants a donation? Everyone wants your time. Everyone wants you to coach them. Everyone wants you to speak, interview you. Everyone wants you, you've got a husband, you've got four incredible kids, you've got all your friends, your family. Everyone is expecting more from you. How do you stay humble through all that?

• 16:37Sara Blakely?

  Gratitude. I'm so anchored in gratitude. I feel grateful that I am a woman in this country, born at the right time. I've talked about that a lot. And I feel that when you stay anchored in gratitude for what you have and what you've been able to accomplish, it's, it just, it can't do anything but keep you humble. I mean, there's no reason to be any different. I really believe that. And I've said it before, I think money just makes you more of who you already were. So if you were a jerk, you become a bigger jerk. If you were kind, you become kinder. If you were generous, you become more generous. I can also mention that I've never been doing this for the money, you know?

• 17:21Sara Blakely?

  So the money has been a byproduct of following a passion. I did want independence as a woman, so I, that was important to me. I didn't want to be financially dependent on anyone, but beyond that, it wasn't like. I'm not driven by material success, really. I like experiences and I like, you know, things that can help me spend more time with the people I love. But I think that also made it easier for me not to get completely wholly consumed by the sparkle of it all. Because it was never really about the sparkle on, you know, like the shiny new car and all of that for me.

• 18:00Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. I have an inside look into Sarah's lifestyle. It's fascinating, you know, as an entrepreneur, as a marketer. It's just unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. But her decision-making is so unique. And for most of us, we make decisions based on, as entrepreneurs, ROI, return on investment. And for 99.9% of the listeners, that's the bottom line. ROI is I put this much money in, I get this much money out. She looks at ROI through a completely different lens. It's ROI, it's never, it's not really the bottom line. Of course, it's factored in. It's experiences, it's how I treat people.

• 18:41Jesse Itzler?

  ROI could be the gift she gives to our kids in the form of cooking dinner every night. You know, her ROI... Special pancakes. No, but if you look at your return on investment across a bigger platform than just what we normally look at, and that's her lens. So I think it's really interesting.

• 19:01Sara Blakely?

  You talk about this, Lewis, but there's pillars in life, right? So success is, there's different kinds of success. And so there's monetary success, that's one bucket of your life, you know? There's success in your friendships and your relationships, there's success in how you are and behave in the community and what you're contributing. There's success in are you healthy and strong and do you take time to... You know, eat the right things and work out. And so I've kind of always had all of those pillars in my mind also. And I think it's easy for people to get so singularly focused in one pillar. And that makes their whole life off kilter.

• 19:42Jesse Itzler?

  I think, one more thing I'll add, Lizel.

• 19:44Lewis Howes?

  Go ahead, bring it.

• 19:45Jesse Itzler?

  I think, I think that's a really.

• 19:47Lewis Howes?

  It's good, I love it.

• 19:48Jesse Itzler?

  Really good point because, you know, people, success to me. And everyone has a different definition of success. But when I look at success, it's being good in multiple buckets, like Sarah just said. Success, like when I was a kid, I remember going into meetings. And I would sit and I'd be in awe of these people that had so much wealth. And I was trying to do, you know, I was a young kid, 23, 24, sitting in boardroom meetings. And as I got older, those superheroes, my superheroes, some of them turned out to be unbelievably amazing humans. But others, I started looking at them, it's like, man, you're just rich.

• 20:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:24Jesse Itzler?

  I don't like the way.

• 20:24Lewis Howes?

  Nice person, yeah.

• 20:25Jesse Itzler?

  Right, so, um, success is, it's being good in multiple buckets. And that's where we put our energy.

• 20:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Jesse Itzler?

  We try to be good parents and we got plenty of flaws, man. We try to be good parents, we try to be good husbands and wives, good kids. We, both of our parents are both alive, so investing in, you know, time with them. And it's, it's exhausting, man, because there's so many buckets as you get older.

• 20:48Lewis Howes?

  This is what I want to ask you about, the, the question about energy. And, you know, you have, yes, you have, you know, financial abundance, right? Financial stability, but you still have four kids, you still have hundreds or thousands of employees and people counting on you, people asking questions all the time, people wanting from you. And you could, you'd have all the help in the world, you could have all the tutors and nannies and cooks or whatever it may be, but still it consumes so much energy of your time, your thoughts and your attention. How do you guys manage energy? Because I can't, I mean, I've got, I don't have kids. I've got a passionate Latina, which is a lot of energy I've got to have. But it's like, I've got a small team, you've got a big team.

• 21:32Lewis Howes?

  How do you, and it's exhausting for me sometimes. So how do you guys manage energy, like you said?

• 21:37Sara Blakely?

  You have to really think, prioritize, delegate what you can, and let it go. And not be too mentally hard on yourself. And as your bubble grows, you invest the time in hiring your weaknesses. So whatever, where are your weaknesses? And find the best talent, invest in the talent. And you know, if you put the right people in place in certain areas, then it will free you up to be able to prioritize your time. And then you have to take the time to do that. Like even though I have this leader in place, what is the most important thing for me to be focusing on for Spanx? Even though I may or may not have a nanny, what is the most important thing for me to be doing with my children?

• 22:22Sara Blakely?

  What's important to me? And I sat down with Jessie and we wrote out like what's important for us to be? What is the quality time that we want to have with our children? And just being intentional about those buckets will really help you figure out energy and how to use it and how to make it go farther.

• 22:40Jesse Itzler?

  I would add, I think, three things. I think we've spoken about this in the past, Lewis, many times. You know, I think the most important thing is to really be present and be where your feet are. So if we're with our kids, we're with our kids. If Sarah's at work and you know, I don't want Sarah to be guilty or resent me, you know, for when she's at work. When she's at work, she's at work and it's fine. When she's with the kids, she's with the kids. You gotta be where your feet are. So we communicate about that. Today I was on, I had to do something for two hours. I said, I let her know I need two hours alone. She was like, no problem, because I didn't want to feel guilty or, and I don't want her to resent me. So we communicate that, but you gotta be mega present. Two, you go in and out of waves.

• 23:24Jesse Itzler?

  So like, we went on a trip to Poland with 10 friends, brothers, a me, best friends, you know, overnight, best friends. If I don't speak to the guys for six months, I'm not going to beat myself up. The relationship's still there. So you have to trust the seeds and know that when, that you planted and know when it's time for me to jump back into that group of 10, I'm going to be present and everything's going to be, but you can't beat yourself up that your energy's pulling you somewhere else. That time will come back, you know? And three is you gotta plan. You can't like, we're not good enough to just wake up and wing it. We plan stuff, man. No, we plan stuff. Like, I plan that I'm gonna see my parents a certain amount of times a year. Then I'm gonna go on a certain amount of trips, one-on-one trips with my kids. We go away once a quarter.

• 24:09Jesse Itzler?

  We have, we plan a trip, alone time. We have date night every Wednesday. I might not see Sarah every single day, every minute of the day during work, but we know Wednesday nights, we're having date night. We know we have our family dinners. We know the weekends is our time. So you have to, you know, you have to plan. Otherwise, it's, it's, it's, you know, you start to spiral. And when you spiral, it's hard to get out of it.

• 24:32Lewis Howes?

  It's really hard, especially if you're in quarantine. I heard an interview that Oprah did years ago about, I'm gonna butcher this, but she essentially said at one point she made a decision in her life to throw a big dinner and bring all of her friends and family who've been asking her for money and stuff for years. And she threw this big party, huge dinner, threw the best food and gave away cash and cars and gifts and said, "I'm bringing you all here. I'm giving you the last thing I wanna give you." Because I, I assume for years, people just kept asking for more and more, and they were never happy and they're never satisfied. This is the, the general concept. I might be butchering it.

• 25:14Lewis Howes?

  How do you guys manage the expectations of friends, family, people that are just on social media that ask you for things? How do you manage the energy of people getting angry or upset or getting hurt if you don't do something for them when they think you should or could? Do you guys face that at all?

• 25:36Jesse Itzler?

  All the time. It's a great question. I mean, first of all, I don't, I don't get angry at anyone's reaction. Very time when people ask for something, you're put in, in a lose-lose situation. I remember my mother told me, and I, when I was growing up, to never, to never lend people money for a lot of different reasons.

• 25:56Lewis Howes?

  You'll be let down.

• 25:57Jesse Itzler?

  You'll be let down and, and, you know, why do I have to pay them back? They don't need the money. Or if you do pay them, you know, there's all kinds of guilt and resentment. So, you know, one way to handle this is you just... You can give people money and just say, this is a gift, not a loan. Um, but it's really case by case. It's really case by case and situational. And, um, but it, I'm not gonna lie, man, it is challenging. It is challenging.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  And how do you know when someone is like truly a friend or versus someone who's like always reaches out every year for, for something? You know, monetarily, let's say.

• 26:35Sara Blakely?

  I don't feel like we have, we have that much issue with that.

• 26:38Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's good.

• 26:38Sara Blakely?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I personally don't, I don't know how you feel about it, but I think,

• 26:46Sara Blakely?

  you know, I think it, it feels very obvious to us who, who's a friend and who's maybe someone who's in more of an opportunist. But we, we, we live our life in such a way that we're not in the situations very often that we're put in these positions. And I stay very true to my core mission again with my foundation, which is elevating women and supporting women. So it gives me an opportunity to explain or have my team explain why the funds don't make sense to go there. And that we'd love to support everyone and everything, but you have to pick a lane. And in order to be effective or possibly make an impact in that lane,

• 27:31Sara Blakely?

  you have to give yourself permission again to say no to everything else that isn't in that lane. Um, so that's been very helpful.

• 27:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Having that structure and organization and that explanation makes sense.

• 27:43Sara Blakely?

  Yep.

• 27:44Lewis Howes?

  Ha, has this, has this time, has this time shifted your guys' vision for the future? This quarantine, Corona stuff, has this shifted your ideas of how to be an entrepreneur for the future about your businesses, your brands? Being, you know, learning how to use Zoom now and is this shifting anything? Or are you, you saying, you know what? We're staying the course is our initial vision for where we had before.

• 28:07Sara Blakely?

  I mean, I'm gonna speak for myself. I'm in survival mode right now.

• 28:11Jesse Itzler?

  Really?

• 28:12Sara Blakely?

  Yes, so I-

• 28:13Jesse Itzler?

  Because of retail?

• 28:15Sara Blakely?

  Well, no, I mean, at home. I have-

• 28:17Jesse Itzler?

  She's not talking about business. She's talking about just our-

• 28:20Sara Blakely?

  My home, I'm sorry.

• 28:21Jesse Itzler?

  Our home and the kids.

• 28:22Sara Blakely?

  I'm in survival mode. I mean, we've had no nanny, no support, no, you know, we have been, um, for five weeks now with four children, ten and under, and three of them are five and under, which anybody with small kids knows you're game on. Like, from the minute they wake up, you're making sure they don't get hurt. You're just, you're just tag teaming it. We're doing around the clock cooking and cleaning and, you know, all of this. So, I, I have not had the luxury of time to think about anything much else. So it has been all-consuming for me. By the time we get the kids finally to bed, it's later and the minute our heads hit the pillow, we're pretty much asleep. We haven't watched any television in five and a half weeks, other than maybe a few minutes of news here and there.

• 29:06Sara Blakely?

  I mean, I haven't read a book. I have not had a minute, um, to do anything. But I will say that I do think that there's a sh- uh, for me, I, I'm hoping that there will be this shift in gratitude, because I think gratitude is the basis for happiness and the basis for joy. And we are, we, the whole, all of us got a reset button on gratitude. Because, you know, it's very easy when you're on autopilot. You're going to and from work. You're doing this. You know, you, you, we take certain things for granted. And now, I mean, the simplest things, when we come out of this, I'm, we're gonna have such extreme gratitude. I mean, I had to make a Target run the other day. I put on, you know, tons of beer.

• 29:50Sara Blakely?

  But I've never been more grateful to be able to go to Target, you know? And so like, I think there's gonna be all these nuggets where we come out of this and like, going to a park is gonna be such a gift. Going and seeing friends is gonna be a gift. And we were just doing it before.

• 30:05Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. It's between guys and girls. The um survival mode Sarah means is survival around around time. You know, we have to we have to homeschool four kids that have different schedules and Sarah's running a business. I'm running a business, so and there's no one, there's no, there's no one around. So we have a swimming pool, there's stuff that can go wrong. So you have to be alert and survival mode, meaning like alert. I'm a different, I'm a different animal in this thing. For one, Louis, I'm taking earmuffs, Sarah. I'm taking inventory. You know, this is a time where humans can be, can shine and become great humans. You know, I want to be known at the end of the quarantine as someone that called my friends,

• 30:50Jesse Itzler?

  called my family, called my customers. I want to be remembered as someone that didn't disappear. I want to be remembered as someone in the community. So I'm making it a point every day. I call it the three minute miracle. I just take three, three minutes, I send three texts every day. So over the month, I'll send a hundred texts and emails to friends, family and customers. If you invest 10 minutes, you'll send 300 emails in the next 30 days. And that's what I'm doing. I'm making sure when I have free time that I'm staying connected. We organized a Zoom call with our friends from Poland. I've done the same with my, with my, you know, college friends, high school friends. I want to make sure during these times, a lot of emotions come to the surface, man.

• 31:32Jesse Itzler?

  You know, you start to realize what you want to do, what's important to you. And when we come out of this, I want to put way more on my plate of the things I love to do with the people I love to do them with. And that's what I miss. I don't miss going to a sporting event or watching a rerun or what I miss is like the camaraderie of my friends.

• 31:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Getting hyped up together with the friends, yeah.

• 31:55Jesse Itzler?

  I'm going to OD on experiences. Sorry, sweetie, when this is over.

• 31:58Lewis Howes?

  You've already OD'd for the last 10 years.

• 32:01Jesse Itzler?

  I've already OD'd. But like, that's what I'm craving. I'm craving like, you know, so I'm using this time and if you're a business owner, this is a great time to, to, to do two things. One is for a lot of businesses, the narratives about has changed. So if I'm in, if I'm in the financial world and I sell insurance, let's just say, and I've been struggling to sell, the narrative has now changed because really what you're really selling. And what people want is peace of mind.

• 32:32Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:33Jesse Itzler?

  People want security. And those that can reimagine their talk track and their business and, and talk to the emotions that people are going through, taking the biggest risk off the table, giving people comfort, are gonna win. And this is a time to invest in those, in that storyline and those relationships.

• 32:54Lewis Howes?

  If, you know, I'm sure Sarah's saying, that sounds great and all, but I've got four kids to manage right now and I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed. And for those that, Sarah, those that may not have the time, even for 10 minutes, they think that's too much right now for them. They're, they're in total survival mode. They lost their job, they're overwhelmed. What do you think is the skill they should be trying to learn with the extra time that they can create? What's a new skill in an entrepreneurial mindset that they should be thinking about? Maybe they don't have time to call their friends or do this or do that because they're, for whatever reason, but they have a little bit of time to create a skill. If you could wish that for one person.

• 33:35Sara Blakely?

  If I, if I, what I would say is positive mindset is a skill. So I would say if you are that person and you're at home right now, listen to anything that's helped you have a positive frame of mind. Because right now, more than ever, your greatest weapon and the greatest thing that's gonna get you through this and maybe determine who really thrives versus who survives through this.

• 33:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:00Sara Blakely?

  Is going to be mindset. So listening to, you know, I have my favorites. I grew up on Wayne Dyer, um, you know, there's Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, there's so many great up and coming, um, people in this space. Louis, your stuff is so positive to listen to. I would do that. There's a lot of golden nuggets that you could learn also right now from other entrepreneurs. Um, but, and then I would say selling, as crazy as that sounds, I would learn to sell. I would practice it. I might listen to an audio on selling. I might read a book on selling. I think at the end of the day, selling is really important and selling yourself. So maybe you practice selling yourself. Maybe you get a piece of paper out and you write, why me? What is unique about me?

• 34:44Sara Blakely?

  Even if you're feeling so down, there's something that you are unique in the world that you do and start writing about it in, on a piece of paper and keep writing about it and get really confident about what you can contribute when this all comes through. And then practice being able to articulate it in a really concise, confident way. And that's going to go farther than a lot of things. I mean, that's really an important, important skill.

• 35:10Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. I would just add also, if you, for those that only have a couple of minutes, it's a great time to teach your kids certain skills. So one of the things that we've done here at our house is every week we're trying to, trying to teach our kids one thing. So this week, for example, let's say it's capitals and states. We're going to learn all the capitals and states. Wow. And giving the kids one big monthly goal. So for our daughter, it's teaching her how to ride a bike. So I think a lot of people came into the quarantine thinking, oh my God, I'm going to be home. I'm going to get so much done. And they put a lot of pressure on themselves.

• 35:42Sara Blakely?

  Take that pressure right off.

• 35:43Jesse Itzler?

  We have enough pressure. Our parents are older, our kids, we're worrying about our parents, our kids. There's enough pressure to put pressure on yourself that you have to accomplish so much during this time. Write the book and learn Spanish and whatever. Right. I, I came into this thing saying, week, week one.

• 35:59Sara Blakely?

  You should have seen our list.

• 36:00Jesse Itzler?

  My list was, week one, I'm writing a book. Week two, I'm doing a documentary. In a week, week three, I'm writing my second book. I'm going to take the 10,000 photos and organize them. Week four, I've done none of it. But at first, at first I beat myself up about it. And I was like, Sarah, we come home, we were like, this is, we wasted the day.

• 36:18Sara Blakely?

  What do you mean, we came home, we never left home?

• 36:20Jesse Itzler?

  Right. And, and that. In the backyard. But we've surrendered that and said, you know what? Let's get some small wins, man. Small wins every day. And that's been the philosophy. And it's worked. Take the pressure off of yourself.

• 36:36Sara Blakely?

  And just for anyone, couples going through quarantine together right now, I will say, so the first two weeks that we were doing this, um, I felt that I was carrying more of the burden of the home.

• 36:50Sara Blakely?

  And I-

• 36:51Lewis Howes?

  Responsibility, energy, effort, patience.

• 36:54Sara Blakely?

  Well, I just, I just felt like that. So I, I sat down and had a conversation with Jesse and he was very receptive. And we actually sat down and divided and conquered responsibilities. But until we did that, I just naturally absorbed more of the burden. So I was like-

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:11Sara Blakely?

  Cooking all of the meals for the kids.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  Jesse's out doing adventures in the backyard and dreaming about the books.

• 37:17Jesse Itzler?

  Listen-

• 37:18Sara Blakely?

  So-

• 37:19Jesse Itzler?

  We had different responsibilities those two weeks, Louis.

• 37:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I hear you, man.

• 37:22Jesse Itzler?

  I had to wear the create, no. But it's funny because she asked me, I'm like, I feel like I'm carrying the entire burden.

• 37:28Sara Blakely?

  But anyway, Louis, so it worked because we, we wrote down a piece of paper. So now, for example, I was doing all three meals and that's a lot of prep time and cooking for six and it's like-

• 37:39Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 37:40Sara Blakely?

  So Jesse does breakfast, I do lunch and dinner. That's a, that is a big help. We divide the cleaning in half.

• 37:47Jesse Itzler?

  What?

• 37:49Sara Blakely?

  That's very helpful. And so, and then the homeschooling, we've divided. I, I take our oldest son, which is really challenging, and then he's taking the three littles and helping to monitor their, their schedule with our teachers online. So before, in the first two weeks, I was trying to do all four kids home learning and all of that. And then I realized this isn't making sense. So I think a lot of times, communication in a marriage, Jesse wasn't meaning to do that. And I wasn't even meaning to be the one that absorbed it all. It's just kind of what happened. And now-

• 38:25Lewis Howes?

  Jesse's doing a lot.

• 38:27Sara Blakely?

  No, I mean, he's always been very helpful.

• 38:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 38:29Sara Blakely?

  I felt overwhelmed and I needed to share that.

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  Well, I'm curious, when was the moment, Jesse, that you were like, man, this is, this is the person I want to be with for a long time? When was the moment that you looked at Sarah or you thought to yourself like, I can't, I can't do this without her?

• 38:46Jesse Itzler?

  Well, before I even met Sarah, someone sent me a picture of Sarah. We were having an event for Marquee Jet, a company I owned at the time, and it was a customer appreciation event. And everybody, our reps from each territory, had to invite one person to come to this event. The Georgia rep sent me a picture and said, I think this girl, Sarah Blakely, should come. I didn't know who she was. And she sent me a picture and I'm like, don't send any more applicants. Have her at the event. And we got married a year later.

• 39:18Lewis Howes?

  No way. But when did you know? So was it when you saw the photo or when you first met her? When did you really know?

• 39:24Jesse Itzler?

  Oh, right away, there was something going on, for me, at least. You never, you know, like, I wasn't thinking about marriage or long-term relationships or anything at that time. But Sarah was, I mean, she was just very interesting.

• 39:43Sara Blakely?

  Is he blushing? Like, this is, let's play the feelings game, Louis. Let's do it. Let's go right to his comfort zone. I love it.

• 39:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:52Jesse Itzler?

  So, right away, sweetie, I knew right away.

• 39:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. What about, what about for you, Sarah? Was there a moment where you're like, man, this guy's nagging me so much? And he's courting me so hard for months and months, like, okay, maybe he's the right guy for me? What was that for you?

• 40:07Sara Blakely?

  Well, I had been single. I mean, I got married at 37 for the first time, and he got married at 40 for the first time. And so I'd obviously been dating for quite some time. And I always describe it this way. I never saw any of the people that I was dating in my movie.

• 40:28Sara Blakely?

  And it's just like, I had great relationships, some of them I really loved, but for some reason, it's just almost like I couldn't see the picture. And then as soon as I started dating Jesse, he was in the movie. Like, I just saw in the future. I saw him as the father of my children. I saw us, like, playing together in a backyard. And so for me, I'm very visual. I have a lot of manifestations in my life that are happening and that I'm doing. So I think in pictures. And I didn't see anybody else in my movie, Louis, until Jesse.

• 41:01Jesse Itzler?

  You know, it's interesting, when you get married.

• 41:05Jesse Itzler?

  I never, I thought, okay, you get married. I gotta hear this. No, no, no. Well, Louis, because you're, you know, look, this is on your horizon at some point. This is on your horizon. Now, listen. It's permanently recorded. The, there's a lot that goes into a marriage. I'm sure there's a lot of married couples and people that, that maybe are engaged, this and that. When you get married, there's a lot of things that you never considered before. Your philosophy around parenting, your philosophy around food, your philosophy around what schools you want to go to, on how you want to discipline your kids. There's a lot of, of scenarios that you never think about. And it's just, you know, you have to have a partner that is flexible,

• 41:48Jesse Itzler?

  and you have to be flexible in those main buckets, because they'll tear apart a marriage.

• 41:54Lewis Howes?

  It's be open-minded.

• 41:55Jesse Itzler?

  They'll tear it apart, man. You have to be aligned in those, in those buckets, and there's more.

• 42:01Sara Blakely?

  Aligned or willing to compromise.

• 42:03Jesse Itzler?

  Right.

• 42:03Sara Blakely?

  Because it's a lot of compromising.

• 42:05Lewis Howes?

  But you guys are both like, like driven, high achieving, stuck to your like mindset type of people, because it's what got you to where you are. What was the hardest thing for you guys to be flexible about, each one of you?

• 42:20Jesse Itzler?

  To be totally honest, food.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  Because you're a vegan.

• 42:23Jesse Itzler?

  We come from different schools of thoughts.

• 42:26Lewis Howes?

  You eat meat, right, Sarah?

• 42:27Jesse Itzler?

  And by the way, Louis, food's not so easy, because I, I don't know, the last time I checked, you needed to live. And the last time I checked, you have three meals a day, 21 a week. So if you're not aligned, and the energy is like this, you know.

• 42:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Food is the, the biggest challenge for you guys.

• 42:44Jesse Itzler?

  Well, it's something that I'm deeply passionate about. And, and very well read, and have very strong opinions on.

• 42:53Lewis Howes?

  And you speak about publicly all the time about.

• 42:56Jesse Itzler?

  Right. So it's the hardest thing for me to, to, to budge and move.

• 43:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 43:02Jesse Itzler?

  And Sarah's been very patient in this, and we've worked, we've, we've really come really far, very far. We've actually basically solved what could have been a really big problem.

• 43:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 43:11Jesse Itzler?

  Well, you know, if you, anything is a big problem, if you let it bubble and escalate, and then resent, anything.

• 43:17Lewis Howes?

  So how, how did you solve the?

• 43:19Jesse Itzler?

  We compromised.

• 43:19Lewis Howes?

  With the meat eater?

• 43:21Jesse Itzler?

  We, we compromised, we worked at it, we worked at it.

• 43:23Sara Blakely?

  But one compromise is with, the kids don't eat red meat, but we do turkey and chicken. So that was like a big kind of meat in the middle for us. You know, I, I eat these things in moderation, but it was important to me to kind of, my biggest thing was I didn't want to focus on food in our family. I didn't want it to be a big subject. I didn't want the children to feel limited or too controlled around food. And so it's very difficult when you're with someone who's

• 43:53Lewis Howes?

  Uber controlling around.

• 43:55Sara Blakely?

  Well, whose intentions are, are pure.

• 43:58Lewis Howes?

  Wants to live a long life, healthy.

• 44:00Sara Blakely?

  His philosophies make a lot of sense. I mean, let's totally, it, it's not like he's, so I

• 44:06Lewis Howes?

  You've seen every documentary on veganism, haven't you?

• 44:10Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, so it's just, it's just was, this was a messy bucket for us, but we, we continue to talk it out and work it out. And we've, we've really come a long way on that because we had to, for the sake of our family unit and the children.

• 44:25Jesse Itzler?

  But, but it's, if you don't mind, it's not just that. It's like our kids right now are, we have to decide on, on school, on where they go to school. They're in kindergarten, but we have to decide, they, they graduated from the school they're in. Now, it might not seem, it's not, and it's, it's creating no conflict or issues.

• 44:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:45Jesse Itzler?

  But my point is the alignment, you know, when you're young, when you're young, and this is for everybody that's, that's, you know, younger than us, when you're young, you don't think about that kind of stuff. And it's exciting and, you know, but as you get older, real issues emerge and elder, your parents get older. And how do you deal with that? Sarah's grandma lived to be 90 plus years and, and how we dealt with that and making decisions jointly around, should she live at home? Should she live somewhere else? How, you know, these kinds of decisions, you don't think about when you're 20. And so all I'm saying is, you know, marriage, there's a lot to it that people don't understand.

• 45:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Jesse Itzler?

  And we're not experts in it.

• 45:28Lewis Howes?

  You mean, it's not all romance and

• 45:30Jesse Itzler?

  No.

• 45:31Lewis Howes?

  Dobby Dobby 24 seven and honeymoon.

• 45:33Sara Blakely?

  I'll tell you one thing that we really do have in common, which is humor.

• 45:41Sara Blakely?

  Humor is so important. At the end of the day, I mean, you know, it's going to be next to impossible to marry someone that's going to be exactly like you are in all those buckets. But if you can marry someone that shares your common sense of humor, or can make you laugh, I mean, life's heavy a lot of the time, as we know, and this guy can make me laugh on the drop of a dime, and I hope I can make him laugh, but he might be laughing at my jokes and not mean it, based on the beginning of his interview. I have no idea if he's fake laughing, but I don't think he is.

• 46:13Jesse Itzler?

  We share, we share a lot in common, and we use humor as a tool to navigate through some of this stuff.

• 46:21Sara Blakely?

  We totally do, and that's just been a big saving grace for us.

• 46:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I would, go ahead.

• 46:27Jesse Itzler?

  No, now all these things are coming to my head.

• 46:30Lewis Howes?

  I want to hear it.

• 46:31Jesse Itzler?

  But it's interesting, because as you, as you talk to friends, and we do this all the time, about how they manage their finances, or how, like, we have our own philosophy, you know, we do things that make sense for us, and we're not, I wouldn't say we're casual about it, but our priorities are in other stuff, you know, and it's just interesting to see how other people, I have a friend of mine, who, we went, we go away, and he took the receipt, and he wanted, and he was checking to see if they had, if who had what on the menu, and this and that, and then he goes home, and it's like, it's a lot of time and effort. It's just interesting to see all the different styles that are out there, because ours is different.

• 47:11Sara Blakely?

  Everybody's will be different.

• 47:13Jesse Itzler?

  Everybody's will be different.

• 47:14Sara Blakely?

  When you get married, you won't know if yours will be

• 47:16Jesse Itzler?

  Right.

• 47:17Sara Blakely?

  food, it might be finance, it might be the way you parent,

• 47:19Jesse Itzler?

  Right.

• 47:20Sara Blakely?

  it might be the discipline, you might be over here, and your wife might be here, you might be going, what?

• 47:24Jesse Itzler?

  But you gotta find the common ground.

• 47:26Lewis Howes?

  What's the most important conversation people should be talking about before they get married? To try to set themselves up for the best, you know, possible relationship? Like, what are the main questions?

• 47:39Jesse Itzler?

  Before you even have that conversation, you have to have the intuition and the feel, and just be aligned on values. Your values, so like, we come from completely different backgrounds, Florida, New York, I mean, different, but, but if you looked at, if you looked at Sarah and myself,

• 48:00Jesse Itzler?

  We're so similar in almost every bucket when it comes to values. So even though we might vary on the way we want, how we wanna, what we wanna put in our mouths or this and that, we're aligned that we want the best interest for our kids. You know, in what they eat. We want them to be healthy. We want them to have good habits. So I think before you even have that conversation, but I would say that most of the situations that lead to unhappy marriages are either in the category of finances or parenting. And most of it is around, around children. So if I, to answer your question, getting aligned on how you wanna raise your kids, what's an important, you know, are they going to Sunday school? Are they not going to Sunday school? Are they, those kinda things. Do you even wanna have kids?

• 48:43Jesse Itzler?

  We have friends that are in marriages that one wants to have a kid and one doesn't. So, I mean, it's tough. So, I mean, getting on the same page, you don't have to get into every detail. And we didn't even discuss it, but the values were there. No, no, no, no, the values were there. So we knew.

• 48:59Lewis Howes?

  You just assumed Sarah was gonna be vegan one day.

• 49:03Sara Blakely?

  Do you remember that one time at the nightclub? When we first started dating, we were at a nightclub in New York and the music's like really loud. I'm on my third date with him or something and he yells, "I need to know if you would be willing to drive carpool." And I was like, "What?"

• 49:21Jesse Itzler?

  I didn't know. No, because Sarah's got this business. I had no idea what Spanx was. I didn't know how big it was.

• 49:29Lewis Howes?

  That's hilarious.

• 49:31Jesse Itzler?

  I didn't know.

• 49:31Sara Blakely?

  He just knew I was businesswoman.

• 49:33Jesse Itzler?

  I just knew she had a business. I didn't know anything.

• 49:36Sara Blakely?

  That was so funny.

• 49:36Jesse Itzler?

  The first time we met, I asked her if they sold their product at Barnes and Noble.

• 49:40Sara Blakely?

  He did.

• 49:40Jesse Itzler?

  Okay, so I didn't even, I know it.

• 49:42Sara Blakely?

  I was like, "This guy has no idea."

• 49:44Jesse Itzler?

  But then it hit, then it hit to me. I'm like, I fast forward like I do most in my head. I, I went out five years. Cause look, at that point in my life, at 40, I'm speed dating. Let's do everything we can do in a week.

• 49:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 49:55Jesse Itzler?

  And either we're getting married or, or we're done. So let's do.

• 49:58Lewis Howes?

  Get off the bus. Yeah, yeah.

• 49:59Jesse Itzler?

  Everything in a week. And one week, we did everything. So on the third day, I'm like, this is going, I'm going five years out. I need to know, is she, is Sarah willing to, to, to go and pick up the kids at carpool? She's like, "What?"

• 50:14Lewis Howes?

  It's a great question.

• 50:15Jesse Itzler?

  "Are you gonna get the kids at carpool?"

• 50:18Sara Blakely?

  The answer was yes. I mean, he'd had a few drinks. I started laughing. I was like, "Really? Just ask me this."

• 50:23Jesse Itzler?

  Yep.

• 50:24Sara Blakely?

  But you gotta understand, this is the guy. Took me to a Russian illegal sauna in New York for our first date, okay?

• 50:32Lewis Howes?

  Hey.

• 50:33Sara Blakely?

  I don't think he was really trying to pull out all the stuff there.

• 50:37Lewis Howes?

  I like this.

• 50:37Sara Blakely?

  I think he was just like, hey, let's do this. And anyway, I thought I was going to get a massage and that it was very sweet of him to arrange for me. But it turned out to be this, you know, it's basically what you guys did in Poland. This plazza where you go from extreme cold to extreme hot.

• 50:54Jesse Itzler?

  Good, Louis.

• 50:55Lewis Howes?

  It's great. I've got a few questions for you guys. I don't even want to ask a question because you guys, you're on a roll. So I love this, but I have a few questions for you left to make sure I respect the time. This one is about, it's more of a personal one. So feel free to tread lightly how you choose to. It's about intimacy. And I want, I want some advice for myself and for all the people out there who are in relationships and want to be in committed, long-term relationships, want to have kids, want to have a business, want to do the experiences, want to travel to Poland with crazy friends, all the things, and still want to be intimate in your relationship. How do you create intimacy when there's so much stress, anxiety, weight, responsibilities,

• 51:39Lewis Howes?

  dreams, business, travel? How do you cultivate that more than just a date night? Is that even something to look forward to? Or is that even a possibility for me? What, what do you, what do you guys think about?

• 51:53Jesse Itzler?

  Okay, sweetie.

• 51:54Sara Blakely?

  Well, I, someone told me this once and it really struck me. They said intimacy can only happen when someone is present. And I was like, whoa, because it's, you know, the way that life has been set up before quarantine, we're all running a million miles an hour. And so to think about that, that wait, I'm really only truly.

• 52:19Sara Blakely?

  Intimate when I'm fully present changed my thinking and you know I my my best suggestion would be to carve out that time to sit and be present with the person that you love. Whether it means you have a designated time in in the house that you sit and talk to each other, look at each other, whatever, whatever it is, but it's it's it's really only gonna happen in presence.

• 52:44Jesse Itzler?

  I think also it's really important that the person next to you is like your superhero. I think it's really important that you always, you know, have someone that you look up to and you respect and you value and like, because it's easy to forget all the amazing qualities. It's hard, man. Anybody who says it's not, it's easy is, I mean, I wanna, I wanna lesson. Because the kids, you know, work, it's hard. So I think one way that you have to check in, and intimacy, by the way, doesn't necessarily mean taking off your clothes and blah, blah, blah, blah. Intimacy is also a function of respect. It's a function of having conversations.

• 53:25Jesse Itzler?

  We check in with each other very often, you know, during the day, even if it's just for a couple of minutes. It's getting away and and you know, one thing that we try to do is we let our kids know, we let our kids know that we prioritize our relationship first. So like when we're going out on Wednesday night, it's it's about spending time together, but it's also sends a signal to the kids that like we we we come first. Because if we're broken, if this is broken, it's the worst thing for the kids. I mean, when I look at my life, the greatest gift I think I've gotten in life is I have parents that have been married for 65 years. Now, they didn't have it all figured out. They hadn't

• 54:09Jesse Itzler?

  give me all the best, necessarily all the best advice and this and that, but they maintained a marriage for 65 years through the depression, through wars, through putting four kids to school. And there's a lot of lessons in that. And when I look at my mom right now, my dad's 90 years old. And and not in great shape. When I look at the commitment that my mother has to my father, staying home every day, sacrificing the last decade of her life to stay with him every day with no nurses.

• 54:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:41Jesse Itzler?

  It's just, I mean, it's just an, it's an insane lesson. So, you know, it comes in multiple forms. But I think it starts by, I always, I have things I say to Sarah all the time. That's a form of intimacy too. You know, I tell her all the time, I married Wonder Woman. I can't believe, like, I praise her. When, you know, like, if, if the light is shining on Sarah, I'm so excited for Sarah. I cry every time I go to her speech. You know, like, it's like, it comes in a lot of different forms. And when you show that, she sees that. She knows how much I care about her. When you, when she sees that, it makes her want to do the same for me.

• 55:22Jesse Itzler?

  So it comes in a lot of different ways. It's not like, oh, having sex eight times a week, you know, for the next 50 years.

• 55:31Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 55:31Jesse Itzler?

  You know?

• 55:32Lewis Howes?

  Beautiful. That's a great, that's a beautiful example. That's beautiful.

• 55:36Jesse Itzler?

  It's true.

• 55:37Lewis Howes?

  I, I want to play the, uh, question game with you guys, little dating game real quick. Do you have a pen and paper, each of you?

• 55:43Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Lewis Howes?

  I, I want you to, I want you to, I'm gonna give you a question and, um,

• 55:48Sara Blakely?

  How well do we know each other?

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, how well do you know each other?

• 55:51Jesse Itzler?

  Okay.

• 55:51Sara Blakely?

  All right, let's do it.

• 55:52Lewis Howes?

  So the first, we'll start with an easy one. So, um,

• 55:56Sara Blakely?

  What are we doing, writing our answer?

• 55:57Lewis Howes?

  So you're gonna write, you're gonna write the answer down first, so the other person's gonna see. And this will be for, for Jesse, for you to, to guess, and you guys both write down the answer for Jesse. What's, what's Jesse's favorite food?

• 56:10Jesse Itzler?

  Oh, that's easy.

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  Okay, what is it? Yeah, what is it, Jesse?

• 56:16Jesse Itzler?

  Banana.

• 56:17Sara Blakely?

  Bananas. I need, I need a darker pen.

• 56:20Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay, and what's, what's, uh,

• 56:23Sara Blakely?

  I got it right.

• 56:24Lewis Howes?

  What's Sarah's favorite, you gotta write one, what's Sarah's favorite food? It's a competition now. What's Sarah's favorite food? There's two of them. Okay, let's say Sarah say it first.

• 56:36Sara Blakely?

  Wine, by the way.

• 56:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right.

• 56:38Sara Blakely?

  It might look like it because I grabbed a wine glass, but it's not wine.

• 56:42Lewis Howes?

  You say it first, Sarah. What is it?

• 56:44Sara Blakely?

  Cheez-Its.

• 56:46Lewis Howes?

  Ah, wow. Cheez-Its. Okay, who is Jesse's best friend?

• 56:53Sara Blakely?

  Oh gee.

• 56:53Lewis Howes?

  Ooh. Write it down.

• 56:55Sara Blakely?

  Wait, I don't know.

• 56:57Lewis Howes?

  Write it down. Let's see what he would say.

• 56:59Sara Blakely?

  That's a nice thing to ask.

• 57:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay, well, it could be in the top five.

• 57:03Sara Blakely?

  Okay, top five.

• 57:04Lewis Howes?

  You can put one name that's in the top five.

• 57:07Sara Blakely?

  Thank you, okay.

• 57:08Lewis Howes?

  Because he's probably got. I'm not gonna be able to guess this. He's probably got.

• 57:11Sara Blakely?

  A hundred percent you are.

• 57:13Lewis Howes?

  My best friend?

• 57:14Sara Blakely?

  In top five.

• 57:15Lewis Howes?

  Top five best friend.

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

  That way it's not, it's not, uh, yeah. So, so.

• 57:21Sara Blakely?

  Just pick a top five that.

• 57:22Lewis Howes?

  Give a, give a top five name. Doug E. Fresh.

• 57:26Sara Blakely?

  Okay, he's not on this list.

• 57:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh, who'd you put?

• 57:29Sara Blakely?

  But I mean, that's the, he is.

• 57:30Lewis Howes?

  Jesse's got like fifty best friends, so I get it. That's a challenging one. Oh, Kenny Rysman. It's a very tough one for me. That's tough, that's tough, that's tough. Okay.

• 57:40Sara Blakely?

  Top five is what I was saying.

• 57:41Lewis Howes?

  Okay, what about for Sarah? Top five, what would be, uh?

• 57:44Sara Blakely?

  I mean, he knows my top five.

• 57:46Lewis Howes?

  We, we both have a strong group of a, of a core ten friends, so it'll be tough to pick one. Okay. What is, uh, what is the greatest hit for Jesse? His greatest hit song?

• 57:59Lewis Howes?

  The song that got the biggest downloads, the most sales, the biggest views. What's the one song that was the biggest hit?

• 58:08Lewis Howes?

  It's between two, Sarah.

• 58:09Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, it's between two.

• 58:11Lewis Howes?

  I mean, let's see how well you know your husband.

• 58:16Lewis Howes?

  Who's on two? Fifty fifty chance.

• 58:19Sara Blakely?

  I know, I don't know. Okay, uh, I'm gonna say College Girls are easy, but Shake It Like a White Girl was used in a film.

• 58:28Lewis Howes?

  Oh, okay, so which one? Which one?

• 58:30Sara Blakely?

  Trumped it.

• 58:31Lewis Howes?

  Which one, though? You gotta pick one.

• 58:32Sara Blakely?

  Oh, um.

• 58:35Jesse Itzler?

  Oh, was I supposed to write it down?

• 58:37Lewis Howes?

  You could, you could.

• 58:38Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, well, I want to hear Sarah. I would have said go New York, go.

• 58:42Sara Blakely?

  Oh, well. Oh, I got it wrong.

• 58:45Jesse Itzler?

  That one wrong.

• 58:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay, Jesse, what was, uh, which year was Sarah's biggest year at Spanx?

• 58:51Sara Blakely?

  Well, that's.

• 58:52Jesse Itzler?

  That's easy.

• 58:53Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 58:53Jesse Itzler?

  Can I, I'll write it down.

• 58:56Lewis Howes?

  Her biggest year at Spanx.

• 58:59Jesse Itzler?

  Yep, good, Sarah.

• 59:01Lewis Howes?

  Wait, you better not get this wrong.

• 59:03Sara Blakely?

  2019.

• 59:04Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, last year.

• 59:06Lewis Howes?

  Every year is a bigger year for you, right?

• 59:08Jesse Itzler?

  Last year was her biggest year.

• 59:09Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing, okay.

• 59:10Jesse Itzler?

  Which is an unbelievable.

• 59:13Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy to say that your biggest year is always the last year.

• 59:16Jesse Itzler?

  It's unbelievable stat.

• 59:18Lewis Howes?

  What company does that?

• 59:19Sara Blakely?

  It hasn't always been my last year.

• 59:21Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 59:21Sara Blakely?

  But it was last year.

• 59:22Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing. What is the, that's amazing. Okay, what is the thing that?

• 59:28Sara Blakely?

  You got credit, honey.

• 59:29Lewis Howes?

  I'm two for two.

• 59:30Sara Blakely?

  You got credit.

• 59:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay, besides food, uh, Jesse, what is the, the biggest, uh, thing that Sarah would love you to change the most or to budge on the most or to adjust the most in your marriage besides food? What's the?

• 59:46Jesse Itzler?

  Right now, it's my beard. It's driving her crazy.

• 59:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, okay, besides your beard, you gotta write, Sarah's gotta write it down and you gotta write.

• 59:55Sara Blakely?

  I gotta write it down. Wait.

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  Two bets. What's the biggest thing you want him to adjust or the biggest argument?

• 1:00:03Sara Blakely?

  You have to write it down too, then, I guess.

• 1:00:05Jesse Itzler?

  I'm gonna say what it is.

• 1:00:05Lewis Howes?

  He can say it.

• 1:00:06Sara Blakely?

  Oh, he can say it, okay.

• 1:00:08Jesse Itzler?

  I know what it is.

• 1:00:09Lewis Howes?

  Not the beard, not the food, the biggest thing.

• 1:00:13Jesse Itzler?

  It's easy. It tells me all the time.

• 1:00:25Jesse Itzler?

  Good question, Louis. Wait, by the way, I hope this, these questions make our marriage stronger.

• 1:00:30Lewis Howes?

  I know, that's the whole point.

• 1:00:31Jesse Itzler?

  I was gonna say do less.

• 1:00:34Lewis Howes?

  Stop running a hundred miles, that's do less, yeah, that works.

• 1:00:36Jesse Itzler?

  Less.

• 1:00:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:00:38Sara Blakely?

  Do less is, is one too, but I'm always like, why are you doing this to your body?

• 1:00:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I know. Okay, and, and Jesse, you write down.

• 1:00:45Jesse Itzler?

  All right.

• 1:00:46Lewis Howes?

  What's for Sarah, the, the biggest thing?

• 1:00:48Jesse Itzler?

  Oh.

• 1:00:50Sara Blakely?

  That he wants that he wants.

• 1:00:51Lewis Howes?

  That you want to adjust or change that is the biggest challenge or stressor or you know, whatever, little tiff.

• 1:00:59Sara Blakely?

  I mean, Louis, your questions are no joke, man. This is like a hardcore.

• 1:01:03Lewis Howes?

  Trying to get in there.

• 1:01:04Sara Blakely?

  I mean, most people are like, what's your favorite color?

• 1:01:06Lewis Howes?

  Simple stuff. No, come on.

• 1:01:08Jesse Itzler?

  The dating game is supposed to be like.

• 1:01:09Sara Blakely?

  What's the most want to change about this person?

• 1:01:11Jesse Itzler?

  On the first date.

• 1:01:14Sara Blakely?

  He wins.

• 1:01:15Jesse Itzler?

  This is a therapy session.

• 1:01:16Lewis Howes?

  Hey, hey, it's the school of greatness, you know, we gotta go a little bit to the next level.

• 1:01:20Sara Blakely?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:01:21Jesse Itzler?

  The one thing I would want Sarah to change.

• 1:01:23Sara Blakely?

  So am I supposed to write this down?

• 1:01:24Jesse Itzler?

  Right down, I'm gonna guess.

• 1:01:27Lewis Howes?

  No, you're gonna, you're gonna write it down.

• 1:01:28Sara Blakely?

  I'll write it down.

• 1:01:30Jesse Itzler?

  Oh.

• 1:01:30Lewis Howes?

  The thing that is not the beard, I mean, not the thing about her that you're like frustrated with or whatever. It could be a fun thing. It doesn't have to be a.

• 1:01:39Sara Blakely?

  That he wants me to change?

• 1:01:41Jesse Itzler?

  Okay.

• 1:01:41Lewis Howes?

  Well, the biggest, the biggest challenge slash frustration slash argument slash.

• 1:01:49Jesse Itzler?

  Oh, God, honestly, I'm just gonna say what it was because it'll be hard. There's not a lot of things that I would change in Sarah, to be honest with you. All of it comes with the, all of it is what it is, and I'm fine with all of it.

• 1:02:02Lewis Howes?

  I mean, during this time of quarantine.

• 1:02:04Jesse Itzler?

  But Louis, if she could put a little bit less salt on the food, I'd be a lot happier.

• 1:02:09Lewis Howes?

  I love it. I love it. Okay. And the, the thing that you think your partner loves about you the most that they haven't expressed on this interview? The thing you think that your partner loves that you do for them the most? The thing they do.

• 1:02:28Jesse Itzler?

  She's the best, man. She's got a million good qualities. There's not, I couldn't even, you know, I'm not just trying to sound corny or whatever, but there's, um, Sarah's got so many good qualities. It's just, it's.

• 1:02:40Lewis Howes?

  Well, here's the thing, Sarah, what I, what I will tell you about what Jesse, whenever I'm with Jesse, he always says amazing things about you. Whenever I'm with him, whenever we're alone, whenever there's a group of people, he is singing your praises and speaking about you with such level of respect, honesty, admiration. And he's such a great role model for me and all the men that he speaks with about just how to communicate about your partner.

• 1:03:05Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Lewis Howes?

  When you're with a friend or a group of people or on stage. So just as a friend of both of you, I love the way he communicates about you when you're not around. It's beautiful.

• 1:03:16Sara Blakely?

  Well, I thank you so much. And I have to say that, you know, as a woman, going through my business journey and dating a lot of people, it was challenging for me to find someone that didn't feel inferior or threatened by my business success. And I would date guy after guy and they would always say, it's not an issue. It's not going to bother me. And then somehow it would end up becoming an issue. And so I felt very, you know, challenged and sometimes sad about that. And then Jesse came along and he is truly, and I think this speaks volumes about him.

• 1:04:00Sara Blakely?

  He is so truly happy for me. Like my success has nothing to do with how he defines himself as a person or doesn't define himself. And I always say the like brighter my star gets, the happier he gets.

• 1:04:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Sara Blakely?

  And I just felt like I won the Lotto on that with him because that's just, that's just someone who's pretty self-confident and has their own journey and feels good about themselves. And I think at the end of the day, that's what we all want in a partner.

• 1:04:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes, I'm going to mention that right now. I was just going to apologize. I'm looking at the time and I'm getting lost in the dating game that I'm butchering for you guys. No, you're great. I respect your time because I had.

• 1:04:37Sara Blakely?

  I'm so happy to not be talking to four-year-olds. I swear, we could probably go for another three hours.

• 1:04:42Lewis Howes?

  Listen, I have so many other questions on my paper that I want to ask you to read for another time, but you, you both have amazing businesses and things you're doing right now to give back during this time. And you've got the red backpack fund. Can you tell me more what that is? You made this huge announcement, making this big donation to all these women, female entrepreneurs. What is it and why did you decide to want to give so much to these women at this time?

• 1:05:06Sara Blakely?

  Well, I'm so excited. So, the Red Backpack Fund is, I decided to donate $5 million to female business owners during this time. And I know as a female business owner myself, how incredibly hard it is. And to layer on this global crisis on top of it is just mind boggling to me. And I wanted to do whatever I could to help extend a hand. These are women that bet on themselves. I want to bet on them, especially during this time. I know that funding for women is really low. I think in all the VC funding that goes out to support

• 1:05:47Sara Blakely?

  businesses, women still only get 2% of it, or around 2% of all the funding. So, I was excited to help. And the $5 million goes to giving $5,000 to 1,000 different women. And $5,000 is really symbolic, because it's what I started Spanx with 20 years ago. I had $5,000 in savings from selling fax machines and my lucky red backpack. And this behind me is the actual, real Lucky Red Backpack.

• 1:06:19Lewis Howes?

  This is it.

• 1:06:20Sara Blakely?

  This is it, from college. And it normally hangs in a glass box at Spanx headquarters, but I had it taken out recently, and it's at home right now for launching the Red Backpack Fund. But, you know, it's symbolic of like what women and what we all really need is right there on our back. And it's also symbolic of starting small but dreaming big. I started Spanx with that $5,000, and I've never taken any outside investment since, over the last 20 years, and been able to just grow the business and live, you know, live the American dream. I'm very, very grateful for it. And I want a lot of other people to be able to live that dream too. So, just trying to help out.

• 1:06:59Lewis Howes?

  How can these women be a part of this? Do they have to submit something?

• 1:07:03Sara Blakely?

  Yes. So, there is a website, and it's called globalgiving.org/redbackpackfund.

• 1:07:12Sara Blakely?

  And I partnered with Global Giving. They are doing all of the vetting. They are doing all of the selection of the women and the distribution of the funds.

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  You're not just scrolling through Instagram and saying yes to a bunch of people. It's someone else who's actually vetting it, making sure those qualifications are met.

• 1:07:32Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, there are, there are five qualifications that, you know, we, that we had to come up with. And then they answer some questions. And we, yeah, so the businesses will be chosen by them. I have nothing to do with the selection process.

• 1:07:48Lewis Howes?

  If your fans say, hey, but I've been commenting on your Instagram for years. Can you do it for me? They still have to go through the process.

• 1:07:54Sara Blakely?

  I wish I could, but for the governances and the legal stipulations of foundations, it has to be this way. But I'm thrilled that I was able to partner with Global Giving because it does allow me to give to individual women and not have to give to another big organization, which is also great. But this is going directly to these women's businesses.

• 1:08:15Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing. So how many women?

• 1:08:18Sara Blakely?

  1,000 women will each receive $5,000.

• 1:08:22Lewis Howes?

  Do they need to be from the US, around the world?

• 1:08:24Sara Blakely?

  They need to be from the US. And it's taking place over the next five months. So a million dollars will be given away every month for the next five months so that they can monitor the vetting process because it takes some time.

• 1:08:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:39Sara Blakely?

  But the next time that the portal will be open for applications is May 5.

• 1:08:46Lewis Howes?

  Globalgiving.org/redbackpackfund.

• 1:08:50Sara Blakely?

  Yes.

• 1:08:51Lewis Howes?

  If you go there, there'll be a waitlist. If it's not open right now, you can go back on the first and every month it'll open up, right?

• 1:08:57Sara Blakely?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 1:08:59Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So mark your calendars. Go there now. If you're a female entrepreneur. Do you need to be a, have a business already? Do you need to have an idea?

• 1:09:08Sara Blakely?

  Okay, so the qualifications are you have to already have a business, you have to at least have one employee on payroll, you have to be doing less than five million in revenue, and I believe you have to have less than 50 employees. There's five or six stipulations.

• 1:09:25Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:09:26Sara Blakely?

  And then the rest, just asking a few questions and talking about the need and how you would use the money and then, you know.

• 1:09:35Lewis Howes?

  I love it.

• 1:09:36Sara Blakely?

  The thousand women will be given the five grand.

• 1:09:39Lewis Howes?

  You're such a giver, Sarah. I love it. And Jesse, you've got this amazing calendar club, which you've been talking about for a year. Can you share with us more about what this is?

• 1:09:50Jesse Itzler?

  Oh, it's a new business I just launched. Yeah, I've been walking around with this big calendar for years and...

• 1:09:57Lewis Howes?

  It drives Sarah nuts. That's one of the basics.

• 1:09:59Jesse Itzler?

  It drives her nuts. I take it everywhere. But, you know, most calendars, we get filled up with appointments and schedules and weddings and, you know, we're playing defense because we don't have a lot of time to put the stuff we love to do on the calendar. So I flipped the model. This calendar plays offense. We put all the stuff we want to do in our lives down. It's a system I've been using for the last couple of years. And then you get an accountability coach and I hold your hand to the finish line. So we map out big adventures, date nights, all the stuff we talked about. And we put it on your calendar. I have a system that I've kind of, I want to say perfected. And yeah, it's called the Big Ass Calendar Club.

• 1:10:40Lewis Howes?

  Where can we get it? How can we be a part of the club?

• 1:10:43Jesse Itzler?

  It's on my Instagram. You can go, there's a link in the bio. So thank you.

• 1:10:50Lewis Howes?

  And Build Your Life Resume is on there as well?

• 1:10:52Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, it's my coaching program. Yep.

• 1:10:54Lewis Howes?

  And I've heard from so many people that have listened to our previous interviews who said it's one of the greatest programs they've been through. So if you guys want coaching from Jesse, go to, it's all on your Instagram link for all the stuff?

• 1:11:03Jesse Itzler?

  It is. Yeah.

• 1:11:05Lewis Howes?

  And hopefully we can go to 29029 in the future. This is going to be the greatest adventure of your life, climbing.

• 1:11:11Sara Blakely?

  Louis, how hard was that, though? I didn't complete it. I haven't yet to complete it. So that's a goal of mine, but you'd completed it.

• 1:11:19Lewis Howes?

  Barely. The first time, it almost broke me. It almost broke me, my spirit and my body for months because I went into it with a mindset thinking, I got this, I'll be fine. No, you gotta have humility on the mountain. And you don't need to learn how to manage the mountain.

• 1:11:34Jesse Itzler?

  Louis, I just wanted before we go-

• 1:11:35Sara Blakely?

  I'm proud of you for doing that.

• 1:11:36Jesse Itzler?

  I just wanted, every time I speak to you, probably until you're 90, and I'll be 120.

• 1:11:43Jesse Itzler?

  You gave me probably the greatest non-family trip of my life.

• 1:11:48Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 1:11:48Jesse Itzler?

  So, it was, um, that Poland trip, man, it still sits on the top of my head. The lessons, the friendships, I just, I can't even believe I was on the fence to go because it's so far. If you ever, if you ever do something again like that, and I don't get invited-

• 1:12:08Lewis Howes?

  We're not friends, yeah.

• 1:12:10Jesse Itzler?

  And you got, it was just so unbelievable, so thank you again for, for all those-

• 1:12:15Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:12:16Jesse Itzler?

  Memories and friendships, man, it was unbelievable.

• 1:12:17Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course, okay, I've taken too much time, but I have one final question, I'll have you guys share both. I think I've asked you both this, the question of the three truths at the end of every interview. So what I'll do is I'll let you each share one truth, if this is all you could share, left with the world, and no one had access to your coaching, your Instagram or content anymore, but you could share one lesson each to live by. What would you each share? Well, let, well, let Sarah go first, and then Jesse go second for individual ones, and then one together at the end you would share, maybe a family truth.

• 1:12:50Jesse Itzler?

  I'll go first.

• 1:12:51Lewis Howes?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 1:12:52Jesse Itzler?

  Soul. Put your soul into whatever you do. Every year, I, I, I pick one word that defines the year. Last year was soul. If you're gonna do it, do it with your soul.

• 1:13:05Lewis Howes?

  Okay. What's your truth there?

• 1:13:08Sara Blakely?

  Work really hard to honor yourself. Don't care about what other people think about you. Practice that. Don't worry about failing and the fear of failure, which usually ultimately ends up being the fear of being embarrassed, which leads you back to what other people think. If you can live your life not being defined by the worry of what everyone else might be saying about you or thinking about you, you're really gonna honor your one gift of life. And I feel like that is a gift, and so that's one of the best ways to honor it.

• 1:13:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, beautiful. And then maybe one together, a family truth, that's-

• 1:13:48Lewis Howes?

  That you speak about with your kids all the time, something together.

• 1:13:50Jesse Itzler?

  If you have an opportunity to create a memory, we talk about it all the time. Take advantage of it because you never know if you'll get that opportunity again. Invest in experiences and adventures, but you know, we um, we make that a priority in our family. It's really prioritize experiences over everything. It's a great gift for our kids and it's a great gift for our marriage. We've had some amazing memories and moments that we made an effort. You know, like as you get older, it's really, again, we talk about this. It's really hard to create newness because we live in routine. So, you know, you really have to work on creating newness and adventure and prioritize it. Put on your big ass calendar.

• 1:14:37Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate, love and acknowledge you both for taking the time. I know you have no time right now and so it means a lot to me. You spent a couple of extra minutes to share your wisdom, to share your advice with the people watching and listening. Sarah, you are just a beautiful soul. Every time I see your videos and photos online, every time I get this connect in person over online like this, you, you bring your heart to every moment and it just, it's amazing what you're able to do and give to so many people. I want to acknowledge you for your giving nature and your joy. You're constantly loving and joyful with everyone all the time. It's unbelievable.

• 1:15:11Jesse Itzler?

  She's the best.

• 1:15:12Lewis Howes?

  And Jesse, man, you're, you're, you're welcome. Jesse, you're just the most caring friend who brings a creativity. You bring the passion. You're, you're always willing to jump on the phone with someone and text people back. And you're just an incredible human being as well. In your own creative quirky ways, that is different. But man, you've got so much soul in you all the time from rapping to dancing to jokes at 4am, all this stuff, man. So I acknowledge you both for your individual contributions to the world and together how you guys share that with the world as well. Thank you for your time. Appreciate you guys.

• 1:15:48Jesse Itzler?

  Thank you, Louis. Thanks for having us, man.

• 1:15:50Lewis Howes?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:15:51Sara Blakely?

  Thanks for being the bright light that you are in the world.

• 1:15:53Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course. Thank you.

• 1:15:54Sara Blakely?

  Bye.

• 1:15:56Lewis Howes?

  Such a powerful conversation. I'm so glad they took the time to share their wisdom, their nuggets, their wealth of information over the years and decades of building businesses, of building their empire individually and building it together, the dynamics of their marriage, and how they raise kids. So many things in here that I'm just gonna take in and apply in my life and in my business, and I'm just so grateful for both of them. Again, make sure to check out the Red Backpack Fund. If you are a female entrepreneur, go through this process, globalgiving.org/redbackpackfund. You can check it out there as well. She's

• 1:16:34Lewis Howes?

  donating $5 million to support female entrepreneurs, and you can apply for that process right there. Also, check out Jesse Itzler and everything that he is doing. He is such an inspiration. If you follow him on Instagram, if you follow his big calendar project and all the different stuff he has, his endurance events that I've been to a couple of, he is a man that is thinking outside the box. If you want adventure, if you want creativity, if you want to push your mind and your body to the limits, make sure you follow Jesse because he will inspire you in your life. If this is your first time here, please send a text to the person that posted this on their Instagram and social media that sent you a private message to listen to this.

• 1:17:16Lewis Howes?

  Thank the person that sent you here because they wanted to impact your life in a positive way, and I hope it did. If it's your first time, please subscribe over on Apple Podcast or on Spotify, and send me a message when you subscribe. We're always looking to impact more people and pass this along if you have a friend, a married couple, that you think this would inspire as well. The link is lewishouse.com/946. And I've never seen Jesse and Sarah do an episode together like this. So to have them both come on and share their philosophies and challenges and insights, for me, it's just magic. So I'm so grateful for their time and sharing all of this. Again, in the beginning, I talked about the quote with Gandhi,

• 1:18:00Lewis Howes?

  "Where there is love, there is life." And you might be going through challenges in your relationship or your career or your business right now, and I want you to focus back on your values, back on love, back on finding peace in your heart, back on gratitude. And reminding yourself that you do matter. Whether you're struggling in your relationship, or your career, or your business, or your health, you matter, and you matter enough to improve it. You matter enough to find support, to create a game plan and goals for yourself, to take action on those goals, to get closer to the desired result that you want to have for yourself. You matter. And I want you to be reminded of how much you matter in the world today, and how we need you more than ever. Your friends need you, your family needs you, and the world needs you.

• 1:18:44Lewis Howes?

  To be more of yourself, to be more gracious to yourself, to be more giving to yourself, and more giving to others. And if someone hasn't told you lately, I'm telling you now. I appreciate you, I love you, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.