Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 595: Joe De Sena Founder of Spartan Race & the Spartan Up! Podcast

Episode Date: September 14, 2017

In this fascinating interview, Sal, Adam & Justin interview Spartan Race founder Joe De Sena. You will likely agree this is Mind Pump's most fascinating interview to date. Joe is a master story-teller and his life is absolutely fascinating. Tales of cleaning pools for crime bosses (the REAL Good Fellas), starting businesses, Japanese Marathon Monks, starting the Spartan Race and much more. The guys introduce themselves to Joe (2:42) Joe talks about the beginning of  the Spartan Race (4:25) Goodfellas filmed in his hometown of Queens Taught life lessons from crime boss next-door neighbor Had pool business Introduced him to 700 clients! His mom got into yoga Went to St. John’s to pursue his education Graduated Cornell and got into stocks Decides to sell the business and go to Wall St. Starts own business on Wall St. and has 10-year run then sells Starts family and moves to farm town Starts wedding business Meet fitness guy that takes him to first Adventure Race Has to go through trial races to join the team Gains perspective through experiences of being challenged What kinds of people do his races? (40:43) CrossFit, Military bulk audience Everyday people What kind of growth has he seen? (42:13) China next market to bring races to In the people he interviews, what makes a person successful? (44:36) No fear Don't care what people think Upside/downside decision making What scares him now? (48:46) Anything involving his family When did the company take off? (53:45) Came up with name Spartan 3 distances and multiple races a year People can stay on track health wise Had to create a network for people to see Joe talks competition (1:00:35) How else does he monetize the business? (1:04:35) Apparel Gym Moving ahead, what is he looking to tackle? (1:06:20) People need a date Delayed gratification  Joe tells Japan story (1:10:17) Marathon Monks  Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS Prime Pro, which shows you how to self assess and correct muscle recruitment patterns that cause pain and impede performance and gains. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, this long to release this one. Dude, this is, I'm not exaggerating. One of the most entertaining episodes I've ever done. We interviewed Joe Dessina from Spartan races. He has the podcast Spartan Up. So it's a very popular podcast. If you're not familiar with Spartan races, they are the obstacle course racing kings. Yeah, they're dominating. We went to a Spartan race not that long ago. It was a great thing to experience. Our buddy Ben Greenfield competes in them. But Joe Dessina is one of those people that you just

want to hang around. First of all, he's very down to earth, very real guy, very, very cool guy. I mean, we got the best vibe from this dude, right away we love him. We talk about him this way all the time. The stories he tells in this podcast are fucking compelling. Yeah. Like, super entertaining, super compelling.

Like, if he was at a party with like 50 people, he's had a very interesting life. Very, very interesting. Like, he would be the guy in the middle of 50 people just for the whole party. He will shut up and just start listening. That's what's going to happen to this podcast. You're going to wish it doesn't end, unfortunately it ends up ending at, you know, obviously

at the end of it, but we'll have to have him back at some point. Great guy, we are going to be at the Spartan race championships, which are coming up. We'll be over there in Tahoe doing some podcasting, doing some hosting. So if you're going to be there, look out for us, come say hi to us. Josephine is taking care of us very, very well. What a great guy. Love working with the dude. So great podcast you're gonna listen to.

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You find it all at minepumpmedia.com. So without any further ado, here we are interviewing Joe Dessina from the Spartan Up podcast and from the Spartan races. Well, Joe, we should do a formal introduction. You can call me Joe. I'm actually Joseph Adam Schaefer, but we go by I go by Adam,

but my real first name is actually Joe. So it's very easy for you to remember. My name is Sal. Sal. And Justin. And you're Joe Justin, right there. Yeah, Joe. The beefy one.

Joe Sal and Justin. All right, just to Adam. I'm gonna give you a word with everybody. I'm gonna fuck our audience up. It's Adam, but my real birth name is Joseph Adam. He's Adam. So how that happened?. But my real birth name is Joseph Adam. Why, so how'd that happen? So my real dad's name is Joseph

and they didn't want to call me Junior. And so they called me by my middle name. And then when I got old enough to where I actually wanted to change it, it was too late. And I thought about it, I had a family member that you're an Adam. Yeah, so I can now. Here's the thing, here's what you get,

it's never too late bro, you can do whatever you want. That's true, I know. That's not life works. Well as a kid what I didn't like, here's the thing. You know, here's what you get it, you know, it's never too late, but I can do whatever you want That's true, you know, that's not life works Well as a kid what I didn't like here's a thing so I was I was born in the 80s early in 81 and Adam was like that was when Adam was a big name So as a kid who was like 15 16 years old Adam was a very Popular child name, so I hated it So you know how we all were when you were kids growing up

You always wanted to be older then we get older than all we wanted to be as fucking younger. So now Adam's fucking cool. I'm cool with Adam now, but when I was growing up, I hate it. I hate it. Yeah, right. So that was, that's according to that science book. Yeah, heavy, heavy science. The only reason I went with Joe was I grew up in Queens and it was very Italian neighborhood.

So as you guys were rolling your names, I thought how am I going to remember this, I got Sal, I got Joe and Justin kind of threw me off. No Justin in our neighborhood. We beat the Justin's up. We scared about it there. Go to the Irish neighborhood. So Joe, I'm so excited to have you here and I have so many questions.... you were gonna tell us the start of part of the how that did go and first of all i didn't know that it was twice as big as the whole tough mother thing what would i call that the the uh... that they're not that they're not like it

that even count broke it out how did you get it started at that all so so go way back so i grew up in queens i grew up in a a town called howard beach and for whatever reason it was organized crime capital the world um for bought big bosses of of five of the families lived in this oh wow if you were if you were the feds you just had a tap like one phone line you got everybody so you really grew up in the air of like bronx tail and shit that was logogue did you see good fellas of course yeah I watched it this morning. Goodfellas was filmed in our neighborhood.

Oh shit. And it was about, I grew up right in the middle of it. Wow. So those, the characters it's based on were neighbors. So you knew all those people based? You knew everybody. Oh shit, really.

So it gets crazy. Fuck, we like to be whole episode talking about that, right there in the cell. So it gets crazier because I started a swimming pool, cleaning business. And I started it at preteens. So you know, 10, 11 years old. And the reason I started was my dad was doing real well.

And he lost everything because real estate started to fall apart. He had some tough times. My neighbor was the, unvenonced to me because I'm preteens. My neighbor's the boss of the banana crime family. Literally my next door neighbor. But I don't know this.

He's just a big guy in many respects. Big house, big, just a big guy. And so he had daughters. He takes me in under his wing and he's like, he sees the stuff's going on in my house. And he's like, hey, why don't you clean my pool every week and I'll pay you 35 bucks a week. And he teaches me a ton of lessons,

which I think your listeners would enjoy. But anyway, it takes me in. I do a good job. He teaches me how to run a business, how to be on time, how to do all these things, go above and beyond, never ask for money. Shit could happen if you, you know, they pay you when they want to pay you.

And because a lot of people show up to do business with their hand out. And right, and that pisses you off. And we do business with people we like. And so, anybody taught me all those things. He introduces me to 700 clients over the next 12 years. When you can imagine who these people are, many of them still in jail are dead. But they were amazing clients at the time, right? Because at that time, you're growing up, it's the who, you wanna be those people, right?

You're in a product of your environment, so you're seeing all this stuff, and you wanna be those people. So anyway, I'm on that path. My mother, who divorces my dad, goes into a health food store, which, you know, back in the late 70s, was not very common in Queens,

walks into a health food store, how mothers got cancer, so that's why she's diverting from ravioli and gynolis and going to take a shot at a viancine like flaxseeds or something. And she walks in and in the back of the of the health food store is this yogi who just came in Swami Bhoa from India. He's like 70 years old or something, right? She never heard of yoga. She thinks it's a food or whatever, but she goes hook, line, and sinker. She falls into this new life in 30 minutes. She's going to study yoga.

She's going to become a yoga teacher. Oh wow. She's going to meditate. She's going to eat healthy food. She drank the Kool-Aid. If she drank like a branch sandwich. So, she gets hooked on that and my dad and the neighbors and my customers, everybody's like, your mother's a freak, right? So, she lives about, which we end up living a mile from my

dad and she's got us now on this new path. So, to your point of how Spartan started was, it was really hard because in Queens at that time through one of the yoga connections is a 3,000 mile run race. It's a one mile loop. So it's a transcendence run, they call it, right? Because you're gonna, you're gonna leave your body. You're gonna do 3,000 miles, which is one thing, very difficult, but you're gonna do it around a one-mile loop.

Just over and over and over again. And completely get rid of all the demons, everything you're dealing with in life. Anyway, she introduces us to it. My sister and I don't do it, because again, we're kids, but we see it. And we learn that between that and watch my mother meditate for like 30 days straight, levitate,

and like all the crazy stuff, monks in our living room. No shit. Oh, like you couldn't think, I couldn't imagine two more contracts. Right, I know he's got, he's got, he's got, he's got, he's got, he's got, he's got, he could fill us for a half and then he goes to the other side of, wow. Great, crazy, crazy shit. So, and stand alone, like the only person in the neighborhood into this stuff, the only part, right? So, to us, to my sister and I, she's a crack pot,

to the neighbor, she's a crack pot. And you're almost embarrassed to have a mom like this. I've got pictures of Indians with wooden things around their neck and afros in our living room. And you don't even, how do you explain that to like Joey and Frank? Well, especially in your generation at that time too. Like it's getting a little more popular now,

but back then that had been like, what the fuck is going on? It's going on track. The conversation literally, the conversation outside of heart, the conversations were ravioli's, ganoly's like, did you try Sal's new Sicilian pizza? Concrete, somebody going to jail. Like those were the, it was never about the stuff

my mom was into. So anyway, I'm gonna go all over the place here, but she introduced us. That's right, we're with you. This is great. She introduces us to that run, and seeing that, and seeing her and her brothers, my uncles go to India, and just start to believe in, like,

because we were in a Catholic school, right? And we're in a neighborhood where everybody believed in one religion and one way of thinking. And so she just opened our mind up, even though it required a crowbar to open somebody's mind or in that neighborhood, right? But she was slowly getting wedging in there this idea that the mind is much more powerful than we think, right?

We probably should eat healthy. Like all this stuff is ridiculous that we're putting in? We probably should eat healthy, like all this stuff is ridiculous that we're putting in our bodies. All this stuff you guys probably talk about and believe in now, but let me tell you, like, this was late 70s. Maybe in California, this was happening, it was not happening in Queens. Dude, that's crazy.

So anyway, I got that in the back of my head, but I want to, I want to, I want to cattle act. I want to make money. I don't, I don't fucking hang out with monks. Right, they look poor. Yeah, right. Little did you know you could have opened up the first yoga schools.

Oh, yeah. You don't even know. Oh, yeah. You don't even know the opportunity. Now looking back between the magazines in that space, the business opportunities. I just wasn't, other young people, the entrepreneurship that I had in my head,

the wheels returned to my head, not applying it to that industry at all. I didn't believe in it, it was great. By the way, there was like four customers. I was like, nobody was into this stuff, and they were all in my living room, doing yoga for free. So anyway, she introduces us to all that stuff.

I stay on track with, I'm gonna build a business. This neighbor's got me doing swimming pools, which eventually turns into concrete work and brick work and construction. And- The bearing people. You can't talk about that in here as much. But you don't even know some of the stories. I can't talk about that. You don't even know some of the stories.

I can, I can imagine. I can blow your audience away. I could imagine stories. I mean, it's almost such a bummer that I've only got you for a couple of hours take because I feel like now that you open this box, I feel like I don't even want to get to the sporting race. I don't know.

I'm all about your childhood, bro. That has to be, you've got probably one of the most amazing stories ever, bro. That's crazy. Crazy. So they trusted me, because I go in the backyard, I'm not stealing anything, and I'm not wearing a wire. So I had access to all these folks' houses.

Like I could walk in, I could sleep on a couch, I could go in the refrigerator. I was that integrated with these families. And by the way, it wasn't just all those guys. I had a complete cross section of different backgrounds, different religious beliefs, et cetera. But what it did do for me was I said to myself a little bit like Bruce Lee over this 12 year period,

wow, I'm gonna take a little bit of that from that family, I'm gonna discard a little bit of that, I'm not doing it. So from a sociology perspective, I had this look through this looking glass. What an opportunity. Like I wish I could recreate it from my kids because you can't get that,, don't get that, right?

Like, it's one thing to read up on people and maybe listen to a podcast. It's not the same when you're in it. Be in their houses and like I had guys saying, hey, could you go take care of, you know, Lisa's pulled down the shawl. He was banging, right? But I'm dealing with his wife over here again.

It's just crazy and I couldn't say anything. I had one guy, not gonna mention any names. So I had one of my customers say, hey, you gotta go see this, I'm trying to avoid using any names. Oh yeah, I don't know about it. You gotta go to Mel Basin, Brooklyn, and you've gotta take care of my partners,

Poole, who wants to put a pool in there. You gotta go see him 12 o'clock Thursday, whatever. So I get there, ring the bell, nothing, I'm waiting outside. It comes out later, years later. He was inside, he was killing the architect while I was outside. Oh shit. Because the architect was complaining about getting paid.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Thank god, I didn't want my way into the backyard or something, but so it was crazy, crazy. How old are you at this time?

At that time, I'm probably 17. 18. So anyway, build that business. My mom moves us to Ethica, New York, because in Ethica they're a little more spiritual, they're a little more open-minded. This place in Queens is crazy. That was, I think it was like the hippie capital of that area, right?

It was a hippie. It was five hours north, but because Cornell University's there, Ethical University's there, there's waterfalls. It's just, it's very, more like California. Sure, sure. So we move up there, but I still got my business. In New York, so I'm going back and forth on the weekends, and she's just trying to get us out of that environment. Anyway, up there, I open my mind up even more, even

though I'm being resistant to all this stuff. I'm leaving high school, graduating high school. My grades have been terrible. I've been focused on my, I don't need good grades. Not that smart. And my buddy, who I've gotten to know now, at Ethica High School, says, hey, why don't we, why don't we go to Cornell? I was like, well, one, my grade's suck. I'm not gonna be able to get in Cornell, but two, I got this business I'm running in Queens. Why, I don't need to go to college.

And he says, no, my dad's a professor at Cornell. He'll get us in. Coming from the neighborhood, somebody says they got a connection, it makes sense, like they'll get us in. So we both apply, neither of us get in. He doesn't get in, I don't get in. But now I'm interested, because they didn't accept me. Anyway, I'm thinking, gee, is there a way to get in? He says, well, my dad said we can go

extramural. We don't have to take regular classes like everybody else. We could take just three classes while all the kids that got accepted could take five classes. We do well in those three classes. They don't count towards anything, but if we do well, they'll accept us. They have to accept us because we've proven that we could handle Cornell University. So I was like, all right, let's do that. But if we're going to do it, I'll go to St. John's and Queens during the summer while I'm running my business. I'll do some night classes. I'll learn how to study because I haven't studied my SAT scores suck. He says, fuck that. He says, let's go to Vegas for the summer and party because we're going to buckle down in September. Why would we work hard during the summer? Complete divergent and ideas and this whole concept of being successful in life, which is something

we preach at Spartan, right? That was a key moment. He went left, I went right. So I go to Queens, I run my business, I go to St. John's at night. So you chose not to go with him? Yeah, I didn't take the cookie. He went to Vegas. Oh, wow. So which...

Big decision to make it that young age, man. Big decision to make, and it ties to something that I'm really focused on, called delayed gratification, which we talk about in a minute. But, so I decided to study, because they turned me away. And so now I'm... You're driven, you're focused.

I'm driven, I'm focused, right? So I study, I do well. We meet back in September up in Ethica. We buckle down. I am so serious about going to school now, because I've never really worked on school, ever I wasn't a good student. I've got like a briefcase. I've got like... Official, I've never really worked on school. Ever I wasn't a good student. I've got like a briefcase.

I've got like official. I've got a button down shirt. I'm going to be serious here. And we do our three classes. And we do well. He even does well coming off of the haze of Vegas for the summer. Neither of us get accepted again. And so he diverts and goes to UNLV.

And I am like fuck this. I'm going to do it again. They're not going to turn me away. I'm going to do it again. So I do another semester, I do well. But the problem is my credits are falling behind because everybody else is doing five classes. So I do it again, I reapply, no go. They turn me away.

I do it again, third semester. Yeah, you do this. Third now, my third, my third time, and they turn me away. So I'm done. I'm going to New York, I'm going to run. My business is doing great. Now we're building houses, we're doing all kinds of stuff. I don't even need school.

My mother, who's upset that she's going to lose her son, right, because I'm going back to New York, I'm done in Ethica for good. She says, you know, I teach yoga to this lady who's upset that she's gonna lose her son, right? Because I'm going back to New York, I'm done, in Ethika for good. She says, you know, I teach yoga to this lady who's at Cornell. Why don't you go talk to her? My mother was the last person that I would have leaned on for a connection, right?

She didn't, she wasn't like that anymore. She's too busy talking to monks. She would do it. No, not right. If I needed a connection, I'm fine. She's not strong on anybody. I got a way better connection to that. Are you okay?

Or something? She'd be the call. So anyway, she has me meet Professor Anita Racine. I remember the meeting like yesterday. And I go meet her and I'm already made my mind up. I'm done. They've embarrassed me three semesters in a row. Didn't let me in.

I'm way behind on credit. So I won't even graduate on time if I get in. Sits me down and she says, hey, I'm took a look at your grade, you're mother told me a little bit about what you're going through. I understand you want to give up. She says, I run within Cornell Cornell University. It's pretty amazing, unlike many schools, in that it has all these different topics of studies. You could study, you could be a veterinarian, you could be an engineer, you could study literature. One of the things that one of the programs they have is a textile department. So she said, I run the textile department. I've got 96 women in the program.

I've got no men. We want to get some diversity. We want to get men in here. Do you like textiles? And I was like, I love textiles. Right, 96 women. But I don't know what a textile is. I love the idea of 96 women.

I'm not a grown man. So she actually takes me in. And I end up doing the next two and a half years studying textile. So if we were to stop the podcast right now and go see a movie, I could tell you exactly what era that movie's from based on hemlines because I know all about

Ladies clothing unique skill. It's a unique skill So um and my wife does come to me and say hey does this look good? So that's good. I've got some an edge there but but so I get accepted and I get through it and I and I graduate Cornell while I'm running the business back in Queens When I graduate Cornell, and you guys didn't ask me this question,

so just stop me at some point. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no take as an entrepreneurship class. I meet this Italian who's awesome. And he takes a liken to me right away because I'm from an Italian neighborhood. I'm Italian. Background so we click right away. I buy him a bottle of sand bokeh. And he says to me, what are you doing? Like, why are you running this? What are you going to do after you graduate? You should go to Wall Street. And I don't know anything about finance at this point. I do know that there was the 87 crash and everybody lost a lot of money, so I assume nobody's making money there. And he says, no, you've got a hustle, you're driven,

you've got to go to Wall Street. So anyway, I graduate what he said in the back of my head. I'm running my business, I'm a big man on campus, figuratively in Queens, because I got all these customers, right? All these wise guys, I've got all this political cap, like walking anybody's house, I'm making money,

we're building houses, I've got trucks. Trucks always make you feel like a man, right? I got that. Listen into the truck start and the more I got heavy equipment, bulldozers, backhows. I got a girlfriend, everything's. How old are you right out of this time now? So now I'm like 21, 20.

Oh man, she's going to be on top of the world. Top of the world, it's world to million dollar business right on So I'm not going to Wall Street. I'd be going backwards Right and start all over I got to start all over and but I'm not really putting my education to work Right, I'm still running this business world these guys and girls that graduated are going off and I'm gonna go build careers so This guy this Italian guy mad is probably 60 at the time, continues to call me every month on the month, every month for five years.

Well, what are you doing? How are you doing? How am I going to get you to Wall Street? And I'm just blowing them off. Like, my business is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I'm just maybe I got married to this girl, whatever, everything's going well in my life. Why would I, so anyway, we're about five years into those phone calls, which anybody listen and should take, you gotta find mentors in life. You gotta find older people, older people who always want to help, just like you guys are, like you're doing the podcast to help people, right?

Always want to help, as long as you take their advice, they don't people don't want to waste time, give an advice that no one listens to. So anyway, he calls me five years in and he says, listen, if you're not gonna take my advice, he goes just buy this stock. And I'd never bought a stock before, I don't even have a stock account.

And he gives me this stock tip. And I've got to go, it's a drug company. And I've got to go a pharmaceutical to pick up a big check, like a hundred and forty thousand dollar check from a customer that owed me money. I finished the job and this final payment. And it's free money at that point. It's going right in the bank. And the guy I'm getting the money from is a pharmacist. So it's obvious to me that, oh, I'll ask the pharmacist when I pick up my check about this pharmaceutical company,

the guy's telling me to buy the stockin'. I walk into the house, he's towel drying, just got out of the shower, his guy's name's Eli. And I say, listen, my buddy just told me I should buy this stock, syntax. And he says, I can't believe you're bringing it up, because I was just in the shower, and I'm gonna buy 10,000 shares of that today.

So he sits me down and he walks me through this whole thing. You're not married, you're still making money. It'd be a great time to take risks like this. You know, if you lost him on a, you'd recover pretty quickly. Later in life, you've got kids, you can't take risks like this. Convinces me to take the whole $140,000 check

and plunk it down. So she. Pretty bold move, right? That's a big, yeah. That's a bold move. Big 21 years old, you got that, yeah, that's. No, and nowunk it down. Oh, shit. Pretty bold move, right? That's a big, yeah, bold move. That's a bold move. Big 21 years old, you got that, yeah, that's. No, and now I'm 25. Okay, 25, right?

So, so I do it. I take the whole check, I listen to them, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I 10 bucks, I make 100 grand. Right away. Right away, one day, 24 hours. Wow. I'm like, this is the greatest business ever. I don't have to do a day like this. I wasn't born to man, I didn't have to start. The trucks, this is unbelievable, right? I'm selling the business, I'm going to Wall Street. You kidding me?

Just like that. Wow. So I sit down with my guys who were Eastern Europeans. I had been very, very fortunate. The reason the businesses so well, I found Polish that were coming over, but back in the late 80s, mid to late 80s that were escaping,

the walls were up, I don't know, you guys were born later, but they were tough motherfuckers because they grew up in tough times, right? And so, they worked hard. Nothing like because they grew up in tough times, right? And so they work hard. Nothing like they never ask for vacation. They never ask for more. They just want a more hours.

Just give us more hours. And and so that was an extra. I just sat down with them and I said, look guys, I'm making a pivot here. I'm going to Wall Street. One of you guys take the business, pay me over time, whatever you can. This business is still going and they're multi-millionaires now. No ships. That's awesome.

What a cool stuff. Awesome to swing by there 25 years later and see it's thriving and they're crushing it. Oh, very good. So I go to Wall Street and I gotta take like 40 steps backwards right, because I gotta interview. And then I gotta take a $30,000 a year job and then I'm getting shit on and yelled at

and going to get coffee for people. Talk about the size of your balls to do that. Let me tell you, my balls shrunk because I literally, I remember the day, I can't even believe I'm saying this on camera, I remember the day I was crying because I was like, I was the fucking, I could walk in anybody's house, people that killed people for living.

And you're shitting on you motherfucker. Right. I had to take it. I had to take it. And, but I rebuilt myself. Hard to rebuild yourself in a brand new industry. I rebuilt myself. And I was really fortunate because I was in an industry that I had no experience in, right?

Hard to do, like you said. But what was awesome about it was I saw the inefficiencies of that business because I wasn't from it. I was looking really as an outsider. Everybody else was in it. This is the way things have always been done. This is the way we do it.

I was looking at saying, you guys are idiots. You're perspective. Yeah, you're doing this completely wrong. So I started my own business on Wall Street. We crushed it, had a 10-year run, and I'm getting to your original question, which is how I'm loving the story to this. I mean, it explains so much why Spartan is kicking the shit at everybody too now. I mean, now it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it was so easy. I called a couple of guys from the neighborhood. I was like, hey, this competitor just started up and you whack him.

That's good. So it's the last one you finally used. Yeah, resources. It's so easy. There's like seeing a business when you have those kind of connections. Yeah, we'll bring in the muscle. You know, that whole thing I said about

paying us to do some work with, go ahead and scratch that. We'll just go ahead and do some favors for you, bro. I see you. No problem. Johnny's gonna love that. So, where were we? Wall Street, you started doing that 10 year run right now. Meet my wife, and I decided we're selling the firm,

we're selling the Wall Street firm, and we're going to Vermont. I want a farm, I want chickens, cows, kids, and I'm done. So sell the business, move up to Vermont by a farm, start having babies, and I retired for like three days. Literally, I paste them back and forth. Now, did you sell everything in Wall Street? I mean, you're done with it completely, and you decide it's family time for me,

and I'm gonna sell, and how old are you right here? So now it is 17 years ago, I'm 30, I'm 30 years old. 31, 31 years old. Oh no, hang on a second, sorry, I'm 35 years old. Okay, yep. So I'm 35, 36 and I'm on the farm and I'm done. And that lasts about three days because I'm full of energy and I wanna done, and that lasts about three days. Because I'm full of energy, and I want to make stuff happen.

And I start, I start, I say, you know what? Next to the swimming pool business in Queens was this great business, still there called Rousseau's on the Bay, to wedding business, probably one of the most lucrative wedding businesses in all of New York. They'll charge a couple of hundred thousand dollars

to wedding, and they're pumping them out. Like there's four weddings on a Friday night. There's four. Must be the company that handles most celebrities that I would... No, it's more... It was handling the celebrities that were my customers. Yeah, those kind of celebrities. Those kind of celebrities. So it's becoming a machine, the food's great. They know what they're doing, but it's a little tacky. It feels a little bit like good fellows. I'm sure I'll get in trouble for saying that,

but they crush it. So that was in the back of my head. I wanna be in the wedding business maybe on this farm I have. So I start a wedding business where you can get married on a farm. We get married. My wife and I get married on the farm.

We're the first one. And it just, it starts to work. But I find myself in this weird spot because I have no room for guests and I have no kitchen, right? So the general store in town comes up for sale and I'm like, you know what, I'll buy, I'll buy the general store, we'll turn that into the kitchen

for the wedding business and it'll be this cool quaint general store anyway when people come to the weddings. So I call somebody's on Wall Street and I'm like, look, you really won't get it. Why don't you invest and we'll buy some of the things in the town or buy this general store. We'll do some cool fun stuff because if you're sitting on Wall Street sitting on a trading desk type in all day, it'd be kind of cool mentally to think, oh, I own some acreage up in Vermont. I got a general store. Right. So we ended up buying a large part of the town over time. And definitely pissed some people off.

I had to do it again. I did it differently, but so we bought that. We bought another farm. We built a bunch of rooms and we built this wedding business. One of the ways to drive traffic to all this stuff we had was races, putting on races. Because I was participating, I didn't tell you this, but while I was on Wall Street, I was participating in races.

I was doing crazy. What kind of races were they back then? So, because this is well before any, this is well before. So it's like, it's mid-90s. I just get to Wall Street and like an elevator and one of the buildings is busted. So I gotta take the stairs.

So I'm in the, and again, I did construction like push wheel barrels, mix cement. I'm in the stair, I was fit. And I see this guy carrying dumbbells in the stairs and he's a cover immense health guy. It looks it and it actually is it shredded. Sweat and six pack, eight pack. It's fantastic looking guy.

And I end up walking upstairs when while I get the dumbbells and we start talking and he's like, hey, meet me in the stairs. I work out every morning, come, you know, we'll work out together. So I start working out with him and he brings me to an adventure race. I don't know what an adventure race is,

but it's fucking awesome because it feels like I'm mixing cement again. I'm not sitting on a trading desk, right? I'm kayaking, I never kayaked before. I'm biking, I'm running. This is unbelievable. Like we're at war. This is like game of thrones.

It feels, I'm alive, right? Right, right. And so that was three hour, that was three hour race we did together, mid-90s. So just because of my person now, I'm like, what's tougher than this? I got to do something bigger. I didn't win it or anything, but I just I want to test myself. Well, you could do 24 hour, but that's, you know, that's you got to be prepared for that. You got to sign me up. I'm

doing 24 hour. So um, signed me up for 24 hour do that. In Malibu, actually, it was fantastic. I fell in love with it. I was like, all right,, I need the toughest race in the world. What do you got? You can't do that, you gotta have a team, you gotta train, I just fucking signed me up. I gotta fucking do it. I wanted, before I changed my mind, and he's like, well, I did a rod, you know, the dog's race. Oh my God, like that is.

But you could do it by foot, so like signed me up. So instead of having the dog, I'm gonna make a harder one, you're gonna say, you're a maniac, sir. So again, I don't know, I'm gonna make a harder and you're gonna say, you're a maniac, sir. So again, I don't know what I'm getting into, which is the best way to do things, because if you know too much and you study it, and I'm just an idiot that way, right?

So he's like, well, I'll try to convince this team, you need a team of four. I'll try to convince these three people. If you're paying the bill, they might take you on, but it's dangerous for them. If you're a loafer and you quit paying the bill, they might take you on, but it's dangerous for them. If you're like a loafer and you quit in the middle of the, you know, waist deep snow in Alaska, you're gonna fuck everybody.

So I gotta go through a series of tests with these three people for months to make sure that they're okay with me coming on their team, even if I'm paying the bill. So anyway, I hold my own, I convince them enough, it's probably more that I was paying the bill than it was my athletic ability, because I'm paying the bill. So anyway, I hold my own, I convinced them enough. It's probably more that I was paying the bill than it was my athletic ability because I'm not that athletic. And they take me in and they decide that we're going to do a series of races to get ready for that race. Kind of like a boxer would go into the ring and knock

a couple of guys out to feel good. Sure. And these are going to be easy like gimmies, right? Oh, one of them is in Northern Quebec. And this is just going to be a. Sure. And these are going to be easy like gimmies, right? Oh, one of them is in northern Quebec, and this is just going to be a gimme. And it was not a fucking gimme. Even these guys said this was harder than the race. We were going to Lavia. Minus 30. It's got to be seven days where it starts out with ice boating across the St. Lawrence River ice boating. I know what ice boating is. Yeah. Right. By the way, they've checked all the boxes for the organizers that I'm certified and all these I've never done. I don't know. I'm sort of climbing. What is it? Is it a boat made of ice or what the fuck? You're going across. You can bring the water and

many glaciers are smashing into you while you're going across and you've in the water and many glaciers are smashing into you while you're going across. And you've got to then jump off the boat and run with spike shoes on the snow ice to push the boat through, right? So sometimes you're way steep in the water. This is like, you know, crazy. Cold fucking water, right?

Yeah, hypothermia type shit, right here. Crazy shit. So that's the start. Like like gun goes off in the water Smash at that moment in your head you got to be thinking what the fuck did I say? I yeah the glaciers is you know shit the size of like buses are hitting the boat so anyway we were out there for six or seven days and That was a game changer for me because when you're out there, what goes through your head, and this is what we try to recreate with Spartan,

and we're gonna, when I get to the end of this whole thing, it'll answer your question, which is, you forget about payroll, you forget about relationship problems, you forget about everything except water, food, and shelter. Like, man, I just wanna get out of this boat. I just wanna get home. Like the frame of reference completely changes and it's a very refreshing place to be

because all that stuff drops off your shoulders, your shoulders drop and it's just, I just wanna live, right? I just wanna see. We talk about this all the time on the show of being ultimately present, right? Like just being, I mean, it forced it. No choice. Yeah.

It forces you. It humbles the fuck out of you. Forces you to be just mindful and present, realize that God helps him. I think it's also powerful and transcendent because you realize just how capable your body and your mind truly is. And then we go back to your regular life, your normal stresses and stuff for trivial. You know, you look at the emails and the whatever, and you're like, this is not a big deal. I was, you know, waist high and, you know, snow water.

And, you know, I had no food. And now this email, who gives a shit, it's not a big deal. That's why some of the most calmest people they ever meet are people that deal with that stuff on a regular basis. You know, I used to, you know, I've met it, you know, when you meet people who actually, there's a lot of people that think they're tough guys You know, they want to fight all the time the bar

You ever go hang out with actual fighters who get their ass kicked all the time and fight They're the calmest people at the bars because they they don't need to do that stuff. So no it's pretty amazing No, no doubt about it and and and to that point I As I'm going through all this it's like all that the stuff my mother was saying over the years about the meditation and the yoga and the fasting and everything. And I wasn't accepting, right? You're out there and way steep, snow, free, my eyelashes are frozen and right, literally frozen.

And everything she was saying was right. The other interesting thing coming out of that race in Northern, we almost died in that race, which is that we could do another podcast at some point and I'll tell you about that story. But I re-capped the whole race. I wrote it all down and I sent it to all my buddies, a lot of them Wall Street buddies. And I remember this very, very successful guy, still a great buddy, wrote back and said, shit, I thought I had a tough day today because I couldn't find a parking spot near the

grocery stores. I had to walk like two blocks carrying four bags. And I thought to myself exactly what you just said, right? Like that frame of reference of, hang on a second, that would have been a big deal, prior to going and doing something tough. So it's really important that all of us take ourselves out of our comfort zone and do, go way past any perceived limits

because it just makes everything else in life. It's simple, like all the experiences we could talk about here and all this stuff I've done or you guys have done, what it does for me in an airplane, like you could be upset, why if I's not working, you could be upset that you're stuck in this tiny little thing, you had to pay for baggage, whatever. I don't get upset because I say to myself,

the plane lands, I've won. I just want the plane to land, right? Because there's other options, the plane might not land, right? So, so. Whole new perspective. It's one of the reasons why sometimes you see, my parents are immigrants,

and when you were talking about the Polish guys that you work with, it reminded me a lot of my father and my grandfather, I mean, they're Sicilian immigrants and they were poor, and it's just, you know, they worked so hard and they were so grateful to have them. Well, they were just so grateful for opportunities to do these things, and they never complained about being tired or whatever they were genuinely happy.

And they just had a different, you know, a different point of reference. And, you know, it's interesting because humans, we evolved being challenged quite a bit. And it's relatively recently that we've got all these comforts as, you know, climate controlled. And I know I have to worry about freezing or being too hot. I have water whenever I want it.

I, we have so much water we take a shit in it for God's sakes, you know. Well, we have food whenever we want, any flavor we want of food. I can learn any piece of information I want at my fingertips. And so it makes sense that, you know, race is like yours and challenges in, you know, in that sphere are gaining more popularity because it's something that we need. You know, it's almost like we desire and we need it. We don't have it anymore. And we know something's missing.

You know, we know something's missing. We got all the stuff that we could ever want. People aren't starving anymore. People aren't dying from infections like they used to. But people aren't happy. And they can't figure out why. Why am I not happy? I have everything I want.

And respect it. Maybe it's because we just don't get challenged, you know, like we used to. We don't know what that feels like because it's, you know, similar to what you're talking about, people have experiences like that when they travel. You talk to somebody who travels to another country, especially a third world nation, they come back and they they're they're changed because it changes the perspective of things. They realize now when they were complaining about their house being small and they got too much shit

and they come home, they're like, I can't believe I have all the space and all this crap that I don't need. Yeah, I have to go kill my food for dinner, you know, and like the process, all that takes, it's just like, we just take all this stuff for granted. And there's a piece of fitness, you know, we're obviously a fitness pocket.

There's a piece of fitness there that, you know, we talk a lot about the, you know, some of the a piece of fitness there that, you know, we talk a lot about the, you know, some of the drawbacks of fitness where people, you know, they go into work and out and they beat themselves up too much and they hurt their bodies and they don't take care of themselves and don't train because they love themselves. They train because they hate themselves. But sometimes I think the message gets a little twisted and then people think that the challenging part of fitness is an important and that you shouldn't test yourself.

You shouldn't go push yourself to your limit because it's not always good to do that. But there's a lot more benefit that you get from it. It's not necessarily the physical, you know, that that race you did where you almost died in the snow or whatever in the water. You didn't come back more fit physically necessarily from. You probably were a little damaged. I'm sure you felt like shit for a little while afterwards. But the emotional and mental gains you got from that,

you couldn't have gotten otherwise. No, it helps you push, it helps you push further later. Absolutely. Whether it's whether it's lifting a gem or whether it's dealing with a business or a relationship or whatever. Well, who are your biggest, I guess, the market that really jives with your races, the kind of people that really enjoy doing those races and sign up.

Of course, you have the hardcore athletes that do it, but I gotta assume that a majority are just people who just want to challenge themselves. I had a 696 pound guy come out. And they don't know where we're at. It's kidding me. I had my mother-in-law who's in her mid 60s, knocked out our race in Tokyo last week. So I had an 81-year-old in Shanghai three weeks ago come out.

We've got seven-year-olds, 12-year-old, like they all come out and do it. Complete does complete whiteness, but if you said, Joe, who's the biggest audience? It's obviously CrossFit, it's obviously military. It's anybody that's hitting the gym and wants to be fit. That's the bulk of it, but that's only 30%, 40% when I say bulk. The balance is just anybody that's saying, I'm not happy to your point, I'm not happy, there's gotta be some other way

to define myself instead of a cubicle and some handbag I'm purchasing, right, to say that I'm cool. And so, you know, tens of thousands of tattoos logoed on their body because they wanna be, who doesn't wanna be a Spartan? Forget about our brand for a second, like who wouldn't wanna be a Spartan?

Sure. To find it, right? That just has all the values and qualities that you'd want. So how many races happened a year? So 200 events, a year, 30 countries, a million participants. Holy cow. Holy cow. And where's the growth?

You guys are televised and you're seeing a lot of growth there. A couple of television shows working on more additional shows. Big growth overseas, obviously I just did two years in Asia with my family, specifically to grow out Asia for Spartan. So China is going to be our biggest market. Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine that market with Trump ours. I got a funny one for you. So Japan was the hardest market for us to crack, which you would think sitting in this room,

Japan would be easiest, right? Those are tough people. As a matter of fact, Ninja Warrior came from Japan. Yeah, that's not for sure. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real.

It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. It's not for real. groups. We had to sit around with 30 Japanese and show them the videos and the old

wints that the barbed wire. They weren't. You know, we got to change the product and we're not sure. Nobody's going to be interested. I said, fuck it. I'm moving there. So I moved my family to Japan and to figure it out. To figure it out. I landed there. I had a race open within three months. It sold out two months later. All Japanese. I just had the race last weekend. Japanese are going crazy for it, but here's the really funny story. I get a call from a company that makes Hello Kitty.

You guys know Hello Kitty? Yeah, of course. I don't know what Hello Kitty is, right? Bring me into this thing. They sit me down in a pink chair in the president's room. And I'm gonna be crazy for a guy who doesn't know Hello Kitty, right? I don't know. I don't know what they're doing here.

And they're showing me mock-ups of the Spartan logo with Hello Kitty. And I'm like, are you insulted at this point? Or you don't know? I can't be, right? Because they're inviting me. That's a huge brand too. I mean, hello, Kim's massive.

So yeah. So anyway, I'm driving a minivan. I got Hello, Kim. Okay. So trying to soften the business. So what happened in that meeting? They sent you down. So a lot of it was in Japanese.

I'm still trying to figure out what they said. But I did see the photos of the logo with Hello Kitty and they wanna do something. Well, I think my audience would revolt. They'd probably kill me if we did something. Hello Kitty. Holy cow. It was really funny.

So you seemed, I mean, it sounds like you were born with this kind of drive and attitude. I mean, obviously look, I mean, hindsight, right? 2020, all the decisions you made were the right, obviously look, I mean, hindsight, right, 2020, all the decisions you made were the right ones or whatever, but at the moment, it would sound crazy to a lot of people. All the pivots you did in situations where you were already killing it. You were already doing great. You know, you made it. And now you said, no, I want to start over and do something else. And you've interviewed some extremely successful people.

Do you see that attitude? Is that a common attitude in all these people where they're just like, this is my new thing, I'm challenged here, I'm going to tackle it, I'm going to do it. I interview a lot of people specifically on success. That is a question I try to dive into, what makes a person successful? I think the one attribute is not really caring what other people think. Right. And so that's, forget about what other people think. And so those pivots, why would somebody not pivot? Let's talk about that for a second. Why would you not change what you're doing? Well, one you care what other people think

too is you're afraid. Like is it not fair? It's a big one. It feels big one. And so the great samurai, and I got some great stories for you fear I got to tell you about Japan But the great samurai what they would do when they went to bed every night to eliminate fear Because they're gonna go into battle and probably die Was to burn everything in their mind so in their mind they burn their family They burn their possessions everything they were basically dead they lost everything and if they can come to terms with that Well, then you're no longer fearful when you're in the battle possessions, everything. They were basically dead, they lost everything. And if they can come to terms with that, well, then you're no longer fearful

when you're in the battle, right? Because I've already dealt with it. I dealt with it last night, it's all gone. So now what, what's your next move, right? You're not gonna scare me. And so I'm sure fighter is MMA, if that's the trick, if you could just think, what am I afraid of?

And then come to terms with, okay, so. Let's say that happens, right? Here's my biggest fear, that happens now what? Now what, what am I afraid of? And then come to terms with, okay, so. Let's say that happens, right? Here's my biggest fear, that happens now. Now what? What's next? What's your next move? So, if I lost that $140,000, what Eli was saying to me when he sat me down was, it's okay, you're making money, you're young.

It'd be much worse if you had five kids and your back was against the wall and you're trying to make ends meet, but that's not the situation. So I do a lot of upside, downside decision making all day long. What's the upside? What's the downside? The upside is, if this works, going to Wall Street, I'm going to make a lot more money

and a lot less time. And for me, it was about making money at that moment of time. That was my life's purpose because if I had money, that was a tool for me to do some really cool things. Great way to put that. If it doesn't work, I already got a business. I'll go back to doing this. Right? So I don't know.

It's easier for me to pivot than maybe most people, because I use that quick analysis upside-down side decision making. And one last thing, so our interrupt you is, life is too short for me to be stuck doing one thing. I want to do a lot of things. And I didn't want to be a pool guy for the rest of my life, not that there's anything wrong with that, was not my plan.

And I didn't want to be sitting in front of a computer screen for that was not my lifelong plan. And so maybe deep down inside somewhere there was this purpose. I want to get people healthy. I didn't know that that was in there, but but if you do go out and make some money, well then you can afford to do some cool things. Like it was actually a wise guy that told me that set me down as long wooden table and in Queens in the house. I was just done working in his backyard and we were probably eating some mochic delo and tomatoes on a semolina Italian bread and he said to me the most important surprising coming from him the most important thing in life is to help people right so you know maybe he was feeling bad for some of the things he did. I don't know. But it stuck with me. So, I don't know of that answer to the question.

And so, you know, now you have a business that does that. So you get to do both. I'm very, very fortunate. You guys are very fortunate. Absolutely. And that we get paid to help people. And we get people thanking us. Right? And so that, so, yeah, I got kiss to ground, they walk on. It's unbelievable. So, so knowing that what scares you now, one of the, one of the things now you look at and say, okay, here's the fears I need to work on and tackle now. Are there any, yeah, I was going to say, are there any things that, yeah, so yesterday I put, so we just flew back from Tokyo, I packed all the family up. Our job was done when the race went off. You have kids, yeah? I've forked four children. Oh, good for you.

And I put them on a plane yesterday morning at 5 a.m. And the thing that scared me was having the whole family on a plane. Oh, right. God forbid. And so that scares me. Other than that, a lot of Italian guys just say to me, you came to this country with two shoes,

I'll go home with two shoes. I saw lots of guys make it big and then success is a moment in time. And so you just gotta know that same ladder you go up, you're probably coming down. So I'm not really fearful of that. It's really my family. Something you said that was kind of stuck with me

that reminded me a little bit of an experience I had getting into the fitness industry was when you got into some of these new industries, you didn't know that you couldn't or you didn't know how hard it was. Had you been in Wall Street or had you been in that world, you would have known how crazy it was to try and jump in and be successful. But you had no idea you went in there and it's like, I'm gonna do this.

I had a similar experience, you know, running health clubs. I mean, I was 19 years old, they gave me this big gym to run. I don't know that it was a hard thing to do. I just did it. Looking back, I thought it was, oh my god, that was crazy. And sometimes it's better. Sometimes I think it's better doing something and not having an idea what the risks are and what the challenges are. Well, one of them. No, I was going to say a guy like you, I would think too, something that it took me a while, took me a couple of businesses. We're all serial entrepreneurs.

We all have that in common. I started to realize really quick that the more scary situations or starting over situations I put myself in, the better I became too. I think my biggest fear is getting comfortable and staying in a business or the same thing for so long, I like to be challenged and the best of me comes out when I put it. Do you find that about yourself too? I think it's all of us. Yeah, as a human being, you mentioned it earlier and the way we've evolved on this planet,

I think our best does come out when we're pushed when our backs against the wall. I was gonna say something, but I forgot, but let's dive down that road. So I build these businesses in Vermont. I build the general store, the farm, the bed and breakfast, all around this wedding and event industry. And what I say to myself is I need a young Joe

to come and run that general store. I need a young person to come run that farm. I need a young person to come run the bed and breakfast. And I'm gonna give them a leg up that I didn't have when I was starting. I'm gonna, the mortgage is already paid for the cows are already purchased. There's already inventory in the general store. And it's going to be easy. I just got to find some kid with guy girl with fire in their belly to run these businesses home run.

I wish I was given that opportunity when I was not as easy to think that I had a steel stuff to I don't know right. So? So I get people over a decade. I get people to come in, run the general food and the farm. And what I found was when the going got tough, they quit. And so why did they, like I'm some an analyzing, why was that happening over and over and over? I'll tell you why, because their back wasn't against the wall, because they weren't uncomfortable,

because the cows were paid for, the mortgage was paid, right? Actually, what makes us successful, which is to your point, is the adversity, the mortgage, the fact that you told all your friends, you were gonna do this, right? So you gotta get out of your comfort zone to be successful. You have to, that's what drives success.

100% This was easy and you just walked in and everything was paid for and there were advertisers for your pie, you actually wouldn't be successful. No, yeah. It's a nice metaphor for your races. You know, they're not easy. No, they're not. And purposely, purposely designed to to to I feel like I've got to recreate what happened to me in Alaska in northern Canada. I scraped earlier and I've got hours to do that to somebody. So people look at... Is there an ice boating?

No, no ice boating. No, no ice boating. We do have winter races. Funny enough, we're very big in Eastern Europe, really big in Eastern Europe, and the reason we're big in Eastern Europe is because of my guys that I had this spoonful business with.

You're kidding me. Yeah, and so they and some others from Slovakia helped me set up the business there and our first winter race because they're the most badass people on earth, right? was over there. I said who's gonna do a winter race? They did it. I went out there and did it with it was in the snow. Wow, awesome. You still do the races? I still go out and do the races. I'm not competitive, but I go out and do them. Oh, that's insane. That's awesome. Okay. So you did the Q back one. It sounded like I think you said you had like two more races. When did the company take off first and how did that happen? Where

did it? So, so, so I do all these races. And in the back of my mind, because I'm like you guys, serial entrepreneur, I'm thinking, you know, you're out there paddling for 24 hours. You got nothing to do. I'm thinking I'm gonna put on some races. So the first race I put on is actually in the British Virgin Islands. And I'm gonna do a 350 mile event. I'm gonna put on, it's gonna include paddling, it's gonna include swimming, sailing,

it's gonna be unbelievable. And I bring in my friends now that I've been racing with for some years and we put it on. And it's a disaster. So disaster on a few fronts. Financially, there's not a lot of people that wanted this 350 mile, eight day races. So there's just not enough entry fees to pay the bills. But in addition to that, I lost the guy, literally lost a guy who was working for us in setting ropes. And apparently he was on a dinghy, on a little boat, and a storm rolled in, and the engine didn't start, and he drifted away. Well, eight days later, I find out from our staff that we're missing, I forget I said, Mike, whatever, right?

How the fuck are you missing? So eight days later, you're telling me, you're saying, well, we thought he was on the island, and when the race was over, anyway, I get Coast Guard involved. Coast Guard triangulates where somebody lasts on the storms that rolled in, and they estimate that if he's alive, he's in Tobago, which is 150 miles away. They take the choppers, Coast Guard shut, and they find them. He's on the island. He drifted 150 miles and it's literally like a day survivor where he's living out there eating crabs

and drinking bottles of water that drifted to Little Tobago. No shit. So that was the end of that format of race. That could have ended horribly. I lost a guy and a half a million dollars. Yeah. Oh, shit. That's gnarly.

So then the next format, I try to hold a bunch of formats of events. And in 2010, after losing millions of dollars, attempting this and trying to get it to work, sitting around the kitchen, came up with the namespartan, changed the format to three different distances, three mile, eight mile, and 13 mile. The thinking there was, when I go into a season racing, we start out with something easy right after, the holidays you get a little plump,

and then you're coming out and you're like, I wanna do something at this distance and then mid-summer you're doing something, and then you finish it like October November was something big, that's your big event. And when you do three events minimum, a year, and then mid-Summery doing something, and then you finish it in October November with something big, that's your big event. And when you do three events, minimum, a year, what I was finding over this decade of racing

was you actually get in shape, but change your habits, because you're always training for something, if you just have one event a year on the count just doesn't work. So the idea was, all right, well, call it Spartan, three distances, people space it out that way. Very smart. And it's gonna have a philosophy to it, right? call it Spartan, three distances, people space it out that way. Very smart.

And it's gonna have a philosophy to it, right? Because my mom had this deep philosophy to all this stuff. It's gonna be around health and wellness. We'll never have a brand that's unhealthy as a sponsor. That was the idea. Again, it's 2010, 10 years of losing money doing this. It's probably not gonna work. The most I'm gonna invest in this new idea is 50 grand. That's it.

And we'll take a swing at it because I'm done losing money in this and it's just, I don't know if I can get it to work. Well, 50 grand quickly turns into 150 grand, which turns into... Which always does, right? We know that. Yeah, and then it turns into literally 300,000 a month on my credit cards.

300,000 a month. And... What is it that's costing so much money to try and get this to work? Well, I'm an idiot. Right, I'm a complete idiot. And we talked about it before. I subscribed to Fire Ready Aim. It's a lot of fire.

But that's what you're in good company right now. Welcome to the team. So I had fired and we launched an event or two. And when you're in the event space and you launch an event, you say in July second, we're having this race. Well, you're having that race, whether it's 10 people there or 10,000 people there.

Right, if you have integrity and you want to honor the ticket you sold, you're gonna, and so you're either gonna lose a ton of money or break even, like, there's, if you don't get people that you're dead. And so the idiot that I am, we launched in Vermont, which was the wrong place to launch, and then coming out of Vermont, we quickly went to like Canada, and then from Canada, we went to UK. And when you're, if you're smart about launching a brand you build rings around Yeah, but I'm not smart so so

I've got to plunk down money to market and put on these events everywhere and I'm juggling credit cards and I remember My bookkeeper walks into the office one day and it's probably 2011 and she's like, you're almost out of money, like what the fuck are you doing? And I remember thinking, I just worked like 23 years straight between the swim and pool of construction business, Wall Street, and I've blown all this fucking money in a year and a half on trying to make this thing work. And I said to her, I said, I'm telling you, there's something here, I know there's something here. And I called a bunch of Wall Street buddies

and I said, look, you're not gonna understand this business. I have no business plan, I have no valuation, but I need money. And I need money by Monday and, or I'm dead, kind of thing. I love this attitude. And so they sent me money. And they're doing very well kind of things. I love it. And so they sent me money. And they're doing very well because of it. They were awesome.

And so I remember the day it turned was probably 2013. So two years later, I remember the young kid that was doing our accounting walks in and says, hey, we had 1300 registration yesterday. That makes no fucking way. We had 13. Yesterday, as in one day. On day, and I was like, wow.

But we were averaging, I'm making up numbers, but just to give you an idea of, we were averaging like 80 a day, 90 a day, right? A little of a sudden. And I was like, oh, you fucked up the numbers. Right, no, it's 13, and we went back and forth and we looked and it was like, wow. And so I think what happened, I think it just took a while,

like when you don't cluster and don't build rings Or it just took a while to create a network effect. We're all of a sudden everybody knew what this thing was and so It's it's always it always shocks me. It just how long a freaking overnight success takes you know what I mean? 17 fucking years 17 years and 95% of your money Wow 17 fucking years. 17 years and 95% of your money. Wow. Yeah, because people always look back

and like, oh, overnight success, Spartan race from nowhere to... Now, when this was all happening, what do you know what's going on with the other ones? Like, go rock and tough mudder. And like, did that happen after? Are they competitively going at the same time? So in any industry industry podcasts, radio,

automobile manufacturing, everybody rushes in. And at that time you were coming out of a really difficult financial crash. That's right. So anybody that was in construction that had a hammer or a screw gun was now in the, well now they were in the off-school racing business. So there were three or four hundred competitors that popped up overnight. Whoa, that made it. Oh, they're everywhere. Yeah, everywhere, everybody. But what happened was a lot of them ended up not putting on the events because to put on an event, 600,

cost $600,000 to put on an event. Wow. So if you don't have enough people there, you're going to lose, you know, it cuts both ways. It's pretty painful. So these guys all launched out of everywhere. Everybody had an opinion on how they were going to do it in a name and this and that. And we were fighting battles, competitively everywhere on just getting our brand to stand out. Now, we got really lucky on a couple of things. One is, we got like with the name, like I wish I could say to you, we sat around and strategized and had branding experts. No. It was like, Spartan, no, that sounds cool. Let's just do it. I didn't know. But that name has meaning for thousands

of you, just mean something to people, right? So that's great. Two is I, because I was racing for over a decade, was not going to do something that was just silly and about mud and about hurting people. It had to be authentic, it had to be athletic. That was just my, I wasn't gonna be involved in something that wasn't legit. We're gonna time people. And by the way, you couldn't do an obstacle.

Okay, but you're doing 30 burpees. It was gonna be painful. It was gonna be punishment. Not in a negative way, but like, you had to attempt to do the obstacle and you had to get proficient at it. And if you didn't, oh well, you're doing 30 burpees, which sucks.

Right, right? And by the way, on all these things, timing people, on making force in them to do the burpees if they can't do the, making athletic and not doing silly things, those actually hurt the business in the early days. Because they're not gimmicky. They're not gimmicky.

And people were afraid of it, right? But I stuck to it and I said no. I'm not going to be involved in it if it's gimmicky. I'm just not going to do it. That's a long term thinking there. But yeah, and again, I wish I could say I was smart, but it was just like no, it's just not me. Sure, right?

And then third was my mom and the philosophy from all those years of the monks, right? I'm sorry. Yeah, and then third was my mom and the philosophy from all those years of the monks, and the yoga and the fasting. It was like, the race is just a tip of the iceberg. Below the surface is a philosophy on how to live. And that's what's going to be oozing out of this brand. And so, again, people didn't notice it right away, but when we look back now, seven years later, 17 years for me, but seven years later from the start of sport, and we're growing at 20% a year with largest endurance running company

in the world. It's because of those silly little things. You know, they say we make a lot of small decisions in life that are seemingly insignificant, but I like to use the analogy of if the four of us were in a rocket ship right now, and there were a bunch of dials and knobs and stuff, and we turned one a millimeter to the right. You'd be like, oh, it's no big deal, except you end up on the wrong planet, right?

And so, yeah, and so the little decisions that I just described, I think are the reason we've got a moment of time where we're successful. Especially in today's market, it's not just about a product, but it's about the why, behind the product. Apple does as well as they do, for example, because of the whole thing, the whole brand, the whole philosophy, and it sounds like you guys are doing that. You've got that understanding.

What's giving you so much market share and why you continue to grow? No, that about it. And now everybody's trying to copy what we did, but it's hard because if you're not authentic about it, it's the consumer knows. Now besides the race is how else do you guys monetize? You guys have a peril and retail and stuff like that? What does the whole business look like? We do. So we have an apparel business, which should be, really should dwarf everything we do because of this name Spartan, right?

But we're just too busy with events and growing events right now, but it's a sizable business. Put it this way. Anybody would just like our apparel business big enough that it'd be a nice little side business for anybody. But it should be much bigger. We've got a little bit of a training business. We built a gym down in Miami with Barry Sternlick from Starwood. So he built a brand new kickass hotel on the

beach called the One O'Neigh. And he built us out of $5 million gym. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. You got to see this place. So we got complete creative control and a complete programming control. And he's an awesome guy. I've had him on the podcast. He's a badass. And so he helped us out with that. And we hope to stamp more of those around the world. And then we got the podcast and all the media and the television shows and stuff. But if I told you it was easy and I had a perfect strategy, I'd be lion to you. I'm fighting fires every day.

That's part of it though, and I love when people like you share that and talk about it because everybody sees the glamorous side of it. Like, oh, he's flying around all over the world and he gets this, he's got nice cars, he's all these things like that and just people think it's just like, oh come on. Driving a fucking minivan.

A minivan, I'm proud. And my kid say, what is that? And I say, well that's first class, well come we're not sitting there, well. Exactly. We have to get that photo by the way of him in that minivan when he leaves today for sure. What do you look at moving ahead, you know, excuse me, moving ahead, what are you guys looking to tackle or do now? Well, I mean, the big thing for me is

could we change 100 million lives? Big bold ambition. And how do we do that? And we want to get people eating properly, just like you guys want to get them thinking. It's a big thing, right? Thinking like a Spartan. And then getting out there and actually living it

and training and unfortunately, the way the human beings are today, to your point, unless you have an event on schedule, unless you're a very unique individual, you're not going into that gym every day and training. You guys are unique, some of your listeners are unique, but most people, they need a date. They need something that's scaring them into training. Right?

And not taking the extra scoop ice cream. So I'll tell you a funny one. So we talked about delayed gratification. Yeah. So Stanford, not too far from here, I would assume. Professor Walter Mitchell, 1972, puts out something. Very familiar with the study or quote? You know the study.

Yeah, should I? Yeah, do what talk about. So puts a bunch of kids in cubicles, offers kids marshmallow. Kids could take the marshmallow now or they could wait and get too late. We've talked about this. Yeah, it's great, great study. Most kids take the marshmallow, but they followed them for 30 years and what they found were the kids that were able to abstain from eating the marshmallow had better lives in every respect, right? Better SAT scores, better marriages, better cars, house, everything.

Yeah, the whole thing was basically, one marshmallow now, or weight, and they gave them some time, amount of time, which to a little kid is forever. And if you wait, I'll give you two marshmallows. And the ones that did that, across the board, far more successful. It's that delayed gratification,

that understanding that, if I wait now, I'll get more later. And they find that very, very common amongst all most successful people, except for the few lucky ones or whatever. Outliers, yeah. And I learned a lot of that probably from the neighborhood with those guys in some respect.

Certainly my neighbor got me started in the business. He would say to me, look, you're in the backyard anyway. Straighten up the shed, straighten up the lawn furniture, clean around the pool. I know you're not getting paid for that, but go the extra mile because when that person comes home, that customer comes home, they're gonna say, oh my God, I can't live without this guy, right? But most people would say, well, I'm not doing that,

I'm not getting paid, if I don't get money right now, anyway, I expanded that to my whole life. My son, he's six years old at the time, I'm like, I gotta test them. I gotta do the martial arts. Oh, did you? But I'm a little scared because I'm like, fuck.

What happens if he takes the martial? Right, if he takes the martial, I'm fucked the rest of my life, right? Do I want to know or not? No, right? Oh man, yeah. So we're out late one night, we're in Brooklyn. I take them on a little trip,

and we're in Brooklyn, and it's like 10 o'clock and I'd be super in a bed at eight, so already I'm justifying them, I had, well, if trip and we're in Brooklyn and it's like 10 o'clock and night. He should be in bed at eight. So I'm already I'm justifying him. I had, well, if he takes it, he's tired. Maybe he's tired. Right. There's a lot of excuses I can come up with.

I give him a scoop of ice cream. And I'm like, hey, Jack, which I don't give them junk foods. So already, I'm against the wall on this one. So I say, oh, you could wait. And I'll give you two. And my timer on my phone is about three and a half minutes and it turns to me and he says, hey, dad, how long do I have to wait to get 15 scoops?

Oh, gangster. I thought, smart kid. But you know, you want to end this thing, this conversation we're having here, we're playing for 15 scoops in life. Fuck you, right? We're playing for 15 scoops. Fuck you, so.

So don't take the cookie. I love it, dude. That's a beautiful way to wrap right there, right? That's beautiful. That's absolutely. So, don't take the cookie. I love it, man. That's a beautiful way to wrap right there, man. That's a beautiful way to wrap. It's really, it's really appreciate that you have the conversation. Yeah, Joe, the way to explain. Excellent, excellent.

What a pleasure having you down. I hope we can do something together in the future, man. We're gonna have a good time. So we're gonna do stuff. Yeah, no, I wanna, actually, let's turn this shit off because I actually wanna talk to you about business. My wheels have been turned the whole time. We've been talking about that.

You guys want me to sign off here? Yeah, go ahead, sign off. All right, so 30 days of coaching available for free, mindpumpmedia.com. You can also find us on Instagram at mindpumpmedia and our personal pages, mind is mindpump style, Adam is mindpump Adam and Justin is mindpump Justin. Okay, Joe, you gotta tell me,

you gotta tell me the Japan story, bro. So lay it down. I don't know if it's 10, 15 years ago, I read The New York Times about these marathon monks And it catches my attention because of my mom's background having the monks in the living room and and believing all this stuff And I don't I never dove deep and really understood Buddhism or any of this But but the marathon word I think with the monk got me excited, right? So I I dive in and I start learning about these guys in Japan that

Basically, let's say the four of us wanted to become monks. We would go up this mountain mountain high, anybody Japanese listening says I'm saying it wrong, and we would knock on the door. And these these these temples on this mountain have been around for like eight, 900 years, they came over from China. And if there's eight, I'm gonna screw this up, disciplines within Buddhism, six of them came from this mountain, okay? So we show up there, we knock on the door, we're like, all right, we're ready, we wanna be monks.

So like, great shave your head, throw on this robe, take these wooden sandals, you guys look, you know, fit, right, you've been training in San Jose, so you should be fine. And they're like, you gotta do a hundred days of marathons around this. There's like a trail system. A hundred days? A hundred days.

So every day we're gonna do a marathon. And along the way, it's not a race, guys. They're telling us, you pray and you've got your incense you light and you get spiritual and So we do the hundred days we shaved our heads We got the wooden sandals on we get the robes. We knock out a hundred days. We high five each other like this is gonna be awesome We're gonna do a podcast. We knocked out a hundred days. We're gonna be monks They're like all right great job on a hundred days Take this rope and take this sword now. We know you're serious. You got 800 more days to go But if you decide to quit guys,

you got to kill yourself on the course. So that's the deal. What? I'm the fuck. That's the deal. And this has been going on for close to 1,000 years. And so I gotta go see these fucking monks, right? Dude, holy shit.

I'm in Southeast Asia last year and I meet this guy just like I met you guys randomly. And I'm telling him about that. He's like, he's like, dude, I got the map from that New York Times writer. I know her. I said, we're going, I'm buying you a ticket. I got to meet these men, no matter the fact.

We're gonna go scout it out, and we're gonna bring my family, because I wanna show my kids the monks that kill themselves, because they're quitterers versus the monks that finish and are winners, right? Oh my God. So he gets the map, we go out,

we're gonna go do it ourselves, the week in advance of my family come, I can't tell my family what I'm just gonna tell them, we're gonna go for a little walk, I can't tell them. I can't talk. Right? Oh, by the way, my wife will kill me, right? So, so me and David go out, we bring a third friend

and he's trying to navigate. I didn't live in Japan at this time. I was in Southeast Asia. I don't know Japanese. He's trying to navigate the train system to get us to this mountain. No one really knows this place. We take the train, the train ends,

we get off and we're like, oh, it's gonna be awesome. The trolley that goes up the mountain is shut for the season. So we're like, well, fuck it, we'll just hike up the mountain, right? He's like, yeah, I think I could kind of figure it out. Anyway, it's like a two hour hike straight up this mountain. We get up the mountain, we're a little lost, we're going in circles and it doesn't look like

we're gonna be able to find this thing. Out of the corner, I hear like chanting. And again, I grew up with my mother in the house with the chant, I'm like, that's them. Like I'm here like little bells or something. So we hike through the woods and beautiful temple pops up right in front on the other side of the hill we come over.

And I'm like, this is unbelievable. We found the secret, I feel like Indiana Jones. We found this thing, right? I take off my shoes, I don't know if we're allowed to go in or not, but I'm going in. And we go in the thing and the incense is burning, they're praying and all of a sudden now we're praying.

This is unbelievable, right? So we come out, we walk around the stairs, we're checking the whole thing out before we try to find the course, the 25, 26 mile course. And what do I stumble upon? A fucking parking lot. And a ticket booth. It's like, it's this,

Taurus come every day. We didn't need, we could have taken a taxi. So anyway, if you're listening out there, you gotta go see the marathon monks. So we do the course. We hike the thing and it is awesome. We get a little lost, but we figured out because it's not just a straight, there's lots of offshoots on the course. We hike the thing and it is awesome. We get a little lost, but we figured out because it's not just a straight,

there's lots of offshoots on the trail. So you really gotta know where you're going and it's not something they allow you to do. We just went out and did it. The next week my family comes because now I kind of know the course and I tell my wife, I got my wife, I got my four kids, one of which is a three year old

that I'm gonna carry. I'm like, oh no, we just checked this thing out, it's awesome, it's spiritual, just go for a little hike. But in my mind, we're going, we're going 25 miles. Right. You're not telling them this yet? No, and the thing is I can't carry much because I can't say it. She would say, well, why do we have a backpack? Why do you have such a backpack?

Yeah, why do we have backpack full of food and drinks? So I can't really bring much. So anyway, we go, and I get lost. Oh, shit. I get lost, and we are like 13 miles in. Oh God. And I see this, I thought it was a wolf,

I got scared, we all got scared, it was just a dog, but it was strange, because there's nothing out there for there to be a dog. And the dog is coming at us and it leaves. And my wife's convinced to this day it was a spirit. But anyway, we walk past where the dog was coming at us and we go about another 20 minutes and there's a dead end. I'm like, oh, we must have missed a turn back there.

So I turn around now I say, because I'm about to lose, they're about to lose their shit, my family. So I gotta get ahead of them maybe 10 minutes just to try to figure it out so that I'm, oh, it was no big deal, we just didn't turn, right? So I run ahead a bit, and sure enough, 40 minutes later, dogs coming at me again. Fucking dogs lost.

Dogs lost. Run, run, run, run. Run, run, run. Anyway, we are out there, and it turns into a complete shit show, because the sun's going down, it's cold. There's no way we're going back up. That's going to take forever. We end up going down into a ravine. Stuff I would have did an adventure racing. It would be no big deal for the four of us,

but I got a three-year-old. I got to go out right. We go down into a ravine. I don't know where we're going to come out. We end up popping out in the middle of the night into a cemetery. There's crow's flying over. I mean, it's pretty fitting for what went on, but awesome experience. From my perspective, awesome experience, got to show the kids all the little tombstones of the guys that killed themselves are like, wow. So they actually just killed themselves? Yeah, they're tiny little broken, like they're not celebrating those guys. And then you see the big, the big, you know, whatever.

Tumes. Tumes, yeah, for the guys that did it, you know, number 45. I got it done. One guy, one Japanese guy was so upset with himself from World War II that he did two sessions. He did 1800 days. Oh my god. To cleanse his soul.

So anyway, if you're listening out there, make make your way to Japan go check out the marathon monks Excellent story Thank you for listening to Mindpunk if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance Check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on the ball, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs.

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