Jesse Itzler’s Secrets of Success

In this reassuring view, setbacks don’t happen to you, they happen for you, so you can grow. But, if persistence guarantees success, then when you fail it’s entirely on you. You flunked life. This belief has powerful social consequences: governments and companies have no duty of care, because everyone should take care of himself. Zig Ziglar once told A.T. & T. employees facing a round of layoffs, “Don’t blame the boss—work harder and pray more.” This belief also has implications for family dynamics. Mylett warns audiences that, if you don’t become a superlative provider, you’re telling your family, “I was more scared than I loved you.”

Itzler is remarkably free of fear. He occasionally wakes at 3 a.m. worrying about his mother, or his children—yet his confidence in his own luck defends him against vulnerability. “It’s hard to get Jesse to explain the deeper meaning of all this, even to a close friend,” his childhood schoolmate Kenny Reisman said, at Hell on the Hill. “Maybe it’s the Mrs. Itz in him, the stoic underneath.” The promise of motivation is, If I do exactly what you do, I’ll be you. But what Itzler’s clients hope to emulate may simply be the charisma he was born with.

Blakely told me, “As his wife, I would like to have conversations about feelings with Jesse. For years, I’d say, ‘How do you feel?’ and he would say, ‘I don’t know,’ and I’d get mad. And one day I realized, He doesn’t know. I gradually discovered that he could write his deeper feelings to me, or talk about them if we went on a walk together—he’s so much better in motion. I’ve thought about this issue a lot, having been with him for sixteen years, and I feel like he’s just happy.”

At the Forward Event in Las Vegas, Itzler shadowboxed backstage, preparing to deliver the closing speech. Brad Lea, who’d spoken earlier, told me he envied Itzler’s work ethic. “Jesse has it all worked out, and I just wing it,” he said. “I should fucking prepare, obviously, spend six months practicing and take over the whole fucking industry—become the king!—but I don’t, because why? I guess because I have a deep fear of trying, and fucking up, and looking ridiculous.” He laughed, surprised. “Because I’m normal, a normal human being.”

The event’s host, Neel Dhingra, introduced Itzler, who strode onstage, remarked that he hated introductions, then tore into his talk. Toward the end of his time, he said, “Nothing has had a bigger impact on me, my business, my family, and my children than what I’m about to share with you right now.” He told how Chadd Wright, running alongside him in a hundred-mile race, disclosed a secret at mile 74, when Itzler was broken and about to drop out. Wright said, “I never get tired!” That wasn’t the secret, though; the secret was broadcasting that belief. He urged Itzler to announce it to the woman at the next aid station. Too tired to protest, Itzler did—and Wright yanked him back onto the course.

“Mile 75, how do you feel?” Itzler cried, in Wright’s Georgia drawl. “ ‘I feel outstanding!’ Eighty, eighty-one miles through the dark, me and Chadd, no one around.” A photo of Itzler and Wright flashed onscreen, their headlamps piercing the darkness. “Ninety, ninety-one miles!” Dee Wiz was playing the tolling bells of “Going the Distance,” from “Rocky.” “All the way to the finish line of a hundred-mile race!” His voice rose: “The words that you speak matter! What did my son say? He said, ‘I can’t, I can’t get out of the car!’ ‘We don’t come from money!’ ‘I don’t have enough experience!’ ‘I’m not good at sales!’ The words that you speak matter! How do you feel?” He held his mike out:

“Outstanding!”

“Get up! How do you feel?”

“Outstanding!”

He repeated his question again and again, nine times in all: “How . . . do . . . you . . . feel ?”

“OUTSTANDING!”

Dee Wiz sampled an air horn. It was the obvious climax—yet Itzler continued, in a bedtime-story voice, “Now, listen, we’ve covered a lot.” He recapped his topics, from SIPPS to acting with urgency. “I told you guys I beat my dad at checkers, right? What I didn’t tell you is that when I beat my father he had no idea who I was.” We saw a photo of Itzler holding a sign that said “I am your son, Jesse,” as he explained that Dan Itzler had Alzheimer’s. “One of the last times I was at my parents’ house, I’m sitting in a chair and my dad turns to me out of nowhere and says, ‘Jess, son, do you want to play checkers?’ I was, like, ‘Yes, Dad—absolutely I want to play checkers!’ ” He went on, “Not everybody is going to have this”—left hand—“but, shit, everybody in this room can master this”—right.

That seemed like the end, for sure. Dee Wiz said, “Ladies and gentlemen, give it up—Jesse Itzler!” But Itzler quieted the applause to show a video of him in the I.C.U., not long before his father died, putting his phone to his father’s ear and playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a favorite of his. “Time is going to take everything away from you,” he said. “But—I mean this wholeheartedly—it can’t take away what’s in your soul.” Onscreen, Dan Itzler smiled and began tapping his foot, a light flickering on in a nearly abandoned house. Dee Wiz cut the hymn, but the audience kept singing: “His truth is marching on. . . .”

As the crowd filtered out, still buzzing, Brad Lea and half a dozen other speakers mobbed Itzler backstage. Keven Stirdivant, who’d spoken before him, said, “I’ve been going to these things since I was fifteen, and that was the greatest speech I’ve ever seen!”

Neel Dhingra would later tell me that Itzler had been superb, the highest-rated speaker, and that Dhingra had filled every slot in his mastermind. And yet, he went on, the ultimate success of the conference depended on your perspective: “You can think, Ninety per cent of the room got inspired—and then did nothing with it. Or you can think, It’s all a funnel, and to change a few lives you have to go through all the people you’re going to lose along the way.”

Afterward, Itzler sat in the empty ballroom as the hotel’s events team stacked the chairs. He was tired but radiant. A few parts of his talk needed tightening, he said, but in a year he’d have a totally different talk, and then he wanted everyone in the world to respond to him the way that Keven Stirdivant had. But what he also wanted—no, what he really wanted—was simply to inspire fellow-enthusiasts. “The move-the-needle is not ‘I want to be Jesse, or Ed, or Tony,’ it’s ‘I want to be like that,’ ” he explained. “ ‘I want to treat my customers differently, I want to never quit, I want to use this feeling to become better.’ That energy is my program. I breathe belief into people so they can win life.” I asked how you’d know you’d won, and he paused for a moment. Then he grinned and said, “I was thinking, I’m going to win the funeral contest—I’m going to have the most people at my funeral!” The workers drew back the curtains, and the desert sun poured in. “Thousands, I’m pretty confident! What an amazing R.O.I. on life!” ♦