In the past five years, Jesse Itzler's net worth has doubled from $ 100 million to $ 200 million. What is his secret? Well, for one thing, he is married to the founder of Spanx, Sara Blakely, who is a legitimate billionaire. He also just had the right attitude. In 1996, Itzler was 24 years old and had just founded Alphabet City Records after a short stint as a rapper frat boy. Without a doubt, Jesse Itzler is 100% involved in everything he does. He's had huge success with just about everything he touched, which makes him a very fascinating guy.
Jesse Itzler was born in 1968 in Roslyn, New York. Itzler attended the American University on a university scholarship and specialized in justice, law and society. He received his B.A. in 1990. As graduation approached, Itzler's friends were all concerned about their future. But not Jesse. He had a plan. He was going to make a record and be on "The Arsenio Hall Show". Shortly after graduation, Itzler, under the name of Jesse Jaymes, signed a recording contract. He had a hit song on the Billboard Hot 100 and a video on MTV in 1991, "Shake It (Like a White Girl)". In 1993, he won an Emmy Award for writing the hit NBA song "I Love this Game". Also in 1993, Itzler wrote the anthem of the "Go New York Go" rally for the New York Knicks that the team still uses today. He was 25 years old.
From there, Itzler plunged into his second career in sports marketing. He and his friend Kenny Dichter founded Alphabet City Sports Records. In this venture, Itzler combined popular arena songs with play-by-play calls from the team's history to create hit CDs. He has written, produced and recorded original songs for more than 50 professional teams, including the Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Mavericks and Washington Wizards. When Alphabet City had just started, Itzler launched the New York Yankees. As he left the meeting, the Yankees CMO told him that he had four first season subscriptions that had just opened. He gave them to Itzler ... for a price.
These four seats had been added to the floor plan and built directly on the ground for the World Series. There were only eight of these seats in total. Itzler asked him how many these seats were and replied that they were $ 320,000 for the season. His business had $ 45,000 in cash. He had a net worth south of $ 10,000. He was in his mid-twenties. He did not hesitate, however, and told the Yankee executive that he would take these seats. Her partner was shocked. Itzler explained that they had to buy them for two reasons. The first was that anyone could take a customer to a good restaurant, but there were only 32 of these seats in the world. Itzler knew he would make ten times his money by giving tickets to customers. The second reason was that these seats would never be available again. Itzler borrowed the money from a down payment from a friend and financed the rest.
Itzler's bet paid off. He took Jay-Z and OG Juan to match 4 of the World Series. He ended up sharing the seats with them for the next eight years. They became friends. When Itzler started Marquis Jet years later, Jay-Z booked Marquis to supply a plane for his entire tour. A year after purchasing the Yankee seats, he closed the sale of his business on these seats. For the past 25 years, Itzler's return on the investment of these notes has been insane.
These days, Itzler is father of four with his wife Sara Blakely. He wrote a book in 2015 called Living with a seal: 31 days of training with the toughest man on the planet. The book was a New York Times bestseller and was number one on the L.A. Times book list. The same year, Itzler and Blakely were part of a group led by Tony Ressler and Jami Gertz with Grant Hill, Steven Price and Rich Schnall who bought the Atlanta Hawks for $ 850 million.
The lesson here is not to go into huge debt, but rather to believe in yourself and bet on yourself.