Episode 188: Joe De Sena – CEO & Founder of Spartan and the Death Race, NYT Best Selling Author

Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

All right, you guys, today on the podcast, we have my friend and probably the most hardcore human on the planet, Joe DeSena, who is the CEO and founder of Spartan.

For those of you who don't know what Spartan is, it's the world's leading endurance sports brand in the world.

It's a global brand all over.

And Joe is probably the most hardcore human on the planet.

He doesn't just talk the talk.

He walks the walk.

And you're going to listen to all of his habits and rituals that he does daily.

It's amazing.

And how we parents.

He's a New York Times best-selling author.

He's written a bunch of books.

His latest book actually is a parenting book on how to be resilient.

And he he also has a podcast called Spartan Up.

Like I said, you're going to really enjoy this podcast and be able to take some super actionable things that you can apply to your life in business, as a parent, as a partner, just as a friend.

This guy is the real deal.

I know you're going to love this episode.

Enjoy.

I came up with the greatest saying ever.

What?

I tried to

distill for my children.

We have four children.

What are the keys to success?

Wait, why are you saying, are we starting?

Okay, good.

Okay.

I wanted to make sure.

Okay, sorry, everybody.

I wanted to make sure you get this because he's been giving me a lot of little nuggets before we started.

So I just wanted to make sure we get it.

Okay, so tell us what you're thinking about.

Yeah, sorry.

So four children, and oldest is 16,

14,

13, and 9, two boys, two girls, and trying to do the best I can, right?

You never know.

A parent wrote a parenting book, but now I reflect back on it and I'm like, what the hell do I know?

You should have brought it.

I never saw the parenting book.

I heard about it.

You talked about it on Rich Rolls' podcast a lot.

Yeah.

But I never got what caught it.

I mean, the basic gist of the parenting book is we should put obstacles in front of our children, not remove them, right?

But even as a parent, even as a parent that lives a Spartan lifestyle and pushes Spartan to the whole world, I still have tendencies like every parent where you want to protect your kid.

And so I have to fight my own instincts.

But I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, I was, I was thinking, okay, we have this little family chat text thing where my wife and my kids are in it.

And so we text.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Throughout the day, throughout the day, we just sent, sent, like, I just sent them a picture of pizza because I'm trying to teach my kids

about business.

I'm like, hey, if we opened a pizza place, this is the kind of pizza.

What do you guys think?

Right.

But anyway, I said, how do I send them a message in this text chat that distills the keys to success?

I'm on the planet 53 years.

I've had all this amazing luck with all the things I've done.

And I was like, oh, I think I know what the three things are.

And please give me credit for this.

This should be a billboard.

This should be written on people's walls.

People should get this as a tattoo.

And it's so simple.

Number one, communicate like a movie star.

Like if Denzel Washington was sitting here and he got up in front of him, all of a sudden you're captivated the way they communicate.

They look you in the eyes, they make you feel like you're the most important person.

Like movie stars, I don't know if that's a term used anymore here in Hollywood, but celebrities, they know how to communicate.

Not all of them.

Not all of them.

But I know what you're saying.

You're saying like the old school movie stars, the people like the ones who like the A-list select movie stars.

A-list.

Like a Tom Cruise or a Denzel.

Do we use that term here?

I mean, I guess so.

I mean, the problem is the word celebrity is very now, it's very overused.

Anyone could be a celebrity if you're on social media.

A-list.

Now, I'm A-list.

Movie stars.

Movie stars.

Communicate like a movie star, number one.

So I think we would agree.

Yes, I would agree on that.

Number two, and this is going to be politically incorrect.

I apologize.

I don't know another way to say it.

Work like an immigrant.

You know, when I had my swimming pool business in my teens, I hired lots of neighborhood kids.

They were all disasters, including my own family.

When I hired these two kids from Poland, they outworked me.

They didn't even even own the business.

They were unbelievable.

And I quickly learned that that work ethic is who I want to be around.

That's how we get things done.

By the way, I don't care if they're American or Chinese or Korean.

It doesn't matter.

No, but I know what you're saying.

It's like when you have,

with the immigrant mindset is like they are so, they feel so lucky to be given an opportunity.

So they work so hard and their work ethic is above and beyond.

By the way, I'm Canadian and I will tell you, even me coming to the U.S., I'm not considered an immigrant in the way you're thinking, but still, it's like you have this appreciation.

So, you kind of, and you need to like make a living.

So, you have that.

You're fighting for milk.

You actually, exactly.

So, you have like an ingrained grit.

That's what it is.

And so, and so communicate like a movie star, work like an immigrant, and then have gratitude like a monk.

If you do, if you do, you know, if you, if you're grateful every day for what you have,

and you do those three things, you're like, you got life knocked.

It's that simple.

Like, there's nothing else to we, we don't need to talk about it.

You could shut down Instagram at this point because all you need is those three things.

We don't need social media anymore.

We don't need anything.

We don't need lessons from anybody anymore.

All the morning shows, the late night shows.

Do these three things.

That's it.

Stop writing books.

We're good.

Just those three things.

So, like, why don't you, why don't you write a book?

I was going to write a book, one page.

Yeah.

It was just going to be a postcard.

It was going to be a postcard.

It was more like a postcard.

Well, I can't even imagine you being my, like, my,

like, the kind of parent you must be.

Like, you said you wrote the parenting book.

I never saw it, really, but I did hear you talk about it.

That doesn't really help, like, somebody's ego.

Like, I'm here as a guest on your show, and like, you're like, I didn't even read it.

I didn't see it.

Well, only because I care about it.

Let's tell everyone how this happened.

We were doing a podcast prior to this podcast.

And

actually,

it was terrible internet.

And that's why we're now lucky.

I'm fortunate.

I'm very fortunate

you came to do this in person.

And I did know you had a parenting book, but by the time that I wasn't expecting you to be here so quickly because we only talked on the phone like five days ago, I would have actually got the parenting book and read it.

Well, I was thinking you would have had the parenting book from like a year ago when I wrote it because it was that popular and it was such a big hit that maybe you would have heard about it.

No, well, you know, because you ghosted me.

Let's let's even take it back a little bit.

So I would have had that, actually, I would have had the parenting book had I known

about it through you.

But since when we met in 2018 and we became fast friends, and then you basically like dropped me like a hot potato four months or six months later,

I kind of like was angry and like was, you know, and just kind of like went my own way.

The truth of the matter is, although you're not going to believe it based on your tone,

the truth of the matter is,

because I get so many messages, true, true story.

You could ask my kids, my phone would lock up on text for some reason.

It kept locking.

I I went into Apple five times.

They erased everything.

They gave me a new phone.

When they did that, your name disappeared, like 500 other people.

So I didn't see it.

I don't know.

Fair enough.

Right.

Although, but the world did know about the book.

Yeah, they know.

Like, they didn't need me to text them about the book.

Well, listen, the world, I mean, listen, that's true, true, true.

However, there's so many books that come out.

And because I already had like my backup towards you, because you like basically just, like I said, ghosted me.

That's what the kids say these days how many times did you because when i when we finally caught up again on text i could look at it now it wasn't like you sent three texts it was like i didn't respond to one of them and all of a sudden that was it no it was two it was two

after two you just shut a person down

i mean what if i was in greece i will tell you more i will tell you why i emailed you yeah

and and i think susan was on that email but i i was totally just ignored and social media remember i asked you about social media and you told me don't check my social media i'm surprised on the email though That's that's surprising.

See, it was like, it was a plethora of different things.

Three different ways you try the community.

There was a pandemic.

Yeah, but therefore people were on their phones more.

I wasn't.

I was doing five live workouts a day.

Had you been following me, you would have known that.

I was resent.

I built up some resentment towards you.

And then when I finally got this and I saw you on the computer, all the all the love that I had for you in 2018 just came barreling back.

Exactly.

But now you're very responsive.

Now, if I actually text you, you respond.

Well, I put your name back in my phone.

Okay, well, now I see your name.

Thank you.

And I respond.

I appreciate that very much.

And the world should know, I tell people all the time, if I don't respond, I either missed it, which is rare, or I died.

Oh,

that's it.

Okay, that's fair enough.

That's fair enough.

Okay, so tell me about what it's like, given the fact that I did not read your parenting book.

And let's just pretend, you know, that maybe a couple people who are listening didn't read the parenting book.

Highly unlikely.

Yeah, I'm sure it's not.

Maybe one or two people like missed it for some reason.

But why can you tell?

Like, what, if I was your kid, what would I say to what kind of dad you are?

Are you like, well, I can tell what kind of dad you are.

I'm not soft and cuddly, right?

My wife would definitely complain about that.

I don't have all those social cues of like hugging and I just, it's not me.

It's charming, actually.

What I am, what I am focused on is

doing the work today so that we we could reap the rewards two years, five years from now.

And I'm really consistent.

So we're getting up at 5.30 in the morning.

I don't care about.

Since what time, how old were they when they started this?

Oh, three.

Three years old.

Yeah.

You like wake them up at 5.30.

You know what?

This is a crazy story.

So I grew up in Queens, New York.

Yeah.

And my parents got divorced because my mom got into health food, meditation, yoga, et cetera.

And

my dad said, your mother's a crackpot.

And I didn't want any part of the like branch sandwiches and celery sticks.

I wanted like, you know, rigatoni and rabbit holes and chicken parm.

Eggplant prom was my favorite.

And there was a Chinese restaurant in town called Danny's Seshuan Garden.

So anyway, Chinese food was like the thing.

Once a week, you went and got Chinese food in little white containers.

And my dad said, listen, I got you an account.

You and your sister got an account at the Chinese restaurant.

So if you got to sneak away from your mother, you go eat some real food.

So I became good friends, as you could imagine, with Danny, the Chinese guy at the restaurant.

We became for like a decade with my buddy.

And so I get married.

We've got children.

We're on this farm.

Our first child's three.

I'm watching Kill Bill with Uma Thurman.

Yeah, I love that movie.

And Uma Thurman is carrying buckets of water up and downstairs, and she's getting yelled at by her master.

And I turned to my wife and I said, Why don't we get a kung fu master to live with us?

Wouldn't that be cool?

The kids could be trained in kung fu.

She said, how the fuck would we get a kung fu?

I said, well, I know this Chinese guy in this neighborhood I grew up in.

So I called Danny.

He's still got the restaurant.

And he's like, oh, no, no problem.

Where we get all our staff, I could probably get you a kung fu master.

He gets me a kung fu master.

We fly him in from China and he lives on the farm with us.

And the deal was 5.30 every morning, we're getting up, the kids are doing kung fu in the barn, and 5.30 every night, seven days a week.

And it just became a thing.

If we were going somewhere, we took the kung fu master with us.

Like it was like 365 days a year.

And I wanted all the lessons to be done in Mandarin.

So, so, so that they, because I had read

years earlier, I had read um Pumping Iron, Arnold Schwarzenegger's book, and I was fascinated with the fact that he learned English by watching American TV.

So, I said to my wife, you know, maybe the kids could learn Mandarin if we just create this Mandarin environment.

And so all the television, which was excruciating to make happen, was in Mandarin.

You could watch as much TV as you want as long as it's Mandarin, which meant I had to go find DVDs when DVDs were a thing that were translated, you know, English shows translated.

So I went to China to get them, but then you had to have a different DVD play.

It was like a nightmare.

Netflix didn't have it at that time where you could just switch over.

No.

We didn't have Net by at that time, we didn't even have Netflix.

Well, Netflix, I think the video, like you could mail them in or something.

Well, the red.

But all I'm saying is the level of commitment to stick, to say you're going to do something and then stick to it where it's not, not like 20% of the time, not 70%, 100% of the time, this is what we do.

Like here I am in LA and I woke up this morning at like five and my wife texted me.

She's like, oh, I missed the workout this morning because she knew I was going to find out that the kids missed the workout and I was going to lose my mind.

Now, anybody normal listening to this would say, give it a break.

Like, who cares?

But

it's the cumulative effect of doing things over and over and over again that really have tremendous outcomes.

Consistency.

Consistency.

My oldest son is getting recruited

to a couple of really good schools right now.

Which ones?

I don't want to mention, but

which is amazing.

And it's solely because of what we did since he's three years old.

And certainly, certainly, look,

he's got lots of flaws, just like I do or you do.

But the one thing, the common thread that we've done for 13 years is, you know, speak fluent Mandarin every single day, work out like a nut.

And now he's a wrestler.

And

yeah, so it works.

My point is, it sucks.

It's hard.

Kids complain about it.

But in the last three weeks, he sees, literally last three weeks this has happened.

He sees, oh my God, the outcome is unbelievable.

I understand now why my father's a lunatic.

No, number one, Kate, I just want to say something because I was teasing you before.

This is why I really do.

Like, I really like you.

I liked you from the second I met you because

you say what you do, you do what you say, besides, of course, avoiding me.

But like, you are the real deal.

Like, you actually practice what you preach more than anybody I've ever seen.

Like, that, this is you and your DNA.

Like, they're not like faking.

By the way, I had a DNA test done recently and they give you the result, like personality results.

Yeah.

And they were like, this is exactly it.

And I had a brain mapping thing done and they were like, same thing.

Really?

You are really like hardcore.

What did the brain map say?

What did the DNA say?

What was the kind of test?

It was exactly that.

It was like, you tend to get on things and then not let them go.

And

I am maniacal about that.

And people can find that out by mind.

People can find that out.

So that would answer another question of mine.

Is that like, is it, does it have to be innate?

Can someone learn the skill to be like?

Well, you know what?

Recently, it's a great question.

And recently I've come up with a great answer.

Okay.

You have children.

How old are your children?

Seven and nine.

Seven and nine.

They probably didn't want to brush their teeth at some point when they were growing up.

Right.

They still don't want to brush their teeth.

I have to fight.

So they fight.

Yeah.

At some point that changes, though, and they brush their teeth every day.

Because they do it all the time.

Right.

Yeah.

And so, yes.

And my point is, we can learn a commitment to things, a ritual, and then we do them over and over and over.

But what it requires is somebody putting guardrails in place and dealing with the pain and suffering of no, we're doing this.

No, we're, you know, my dad, when I was growing up, had Rottweilers.

Don't ask me why.

In the neighborhood we were in, it was a common dog was to have a Rottweiler.

And

somehow, he got a German trainer to come over.

And so we learned from this German trainer how to train the dogs.

Normally, people send their dog to a trainer.

The German trainer trained us on how to train the dogs.

And anybody listening or watching this is going to say I'm a real lunatic here, but kids are dogs.

They're animals.

We are animals.

And so it's just a matter of training them over and over and over.

And if you give in, and when they whine or complain, you let them do something else.

Well, then you got to reteach them now.

By the way, I actually agree with you wholeheartedly.

People will also think I'm a lunatic, but I believe that you, if you, you can adapt and change your neuroplasticity at any time if you want to.

Just to give you an example, yesterday, my kids on this basketball team, right?

You know, and he, he always got scared when he goes up to the, to the loot,

to hoop, I know, but to like actually throw it.

Throw it.

He pat

hoop, throw.

I don't, by the way, I like work at the NBA.

I did, did, so I should know these things.

But

he would pass it, right?

When he, like, he's super aggressive and he's fast, right?

So he'll get it all the way down to the, down, down the whole court.

And then it'd be, he got, he gets scared to shoot.

So then he'll pass because he doesn't practice.

I say you have to, if you practice, it would give you the confidence.

And confidence

equals confidence.

So if you do it over and over again, and he never want, never, ever, I never wanted to do it.

Finally, I'm like, you have to practice.

Yesterday before the basketball thing I said you have to do 500 you got to shoot 500 times outside and he whined and bitched and moaned but he did it

we went to the game and he went to the he went to the hoop and he shot and shot and he made almost every shot because of the practice because of the practice so that showed him that how important the practice is to change, right?

So what does he do the rest today?

He practiced before school.

There's been studies done, by the way.

You'll like this.

Let's just go down this rabbit hole for a second.

Is not only should you have him do 500 actual shots, but then he can close his eyes and do 500 visual shots.

And they're powerful too.

Very.

As far as wiring the brain.

And so apparently there was a famous Russian tennis coach that would have the higher level kids not even hit a ball anymore.

And they're just literally like swinging the racket.

And that would help develop them even further.

Yeah.

So um, so anyway, just adding a tool to your toolbox.

No, to the toolbox, to the toolbox.

Well, no, I think that's super important.

The problem is we're living in a very two things in a culture where it's all about video games, it's all about iPads, and to get people to get off of that.

Like, I don't know if you've seen the stat, but isn't it like more than 40% of kids now can't do what the kids in my time or your time, like even like 20 years ago or 18 years, 10 years ago?

Of course.

I mean, they're just, they're so lethargic.

So I'm I'm fighting, I'm, I'm just fighting that whole thing, not just in my house with our, with our four children, but, but, um, our business.

I mean, that's what we do is to try to get people off the couch and to do these things.

And, and, um, and it's not easy because, um, so you might not know this, but and I didn't know this, the human brain, the number one motivator for, for us is the avoidance of discomfort, right?

Which is why the phone is so successful and why ice cream and Netflix and couches are so successful right because they help us avoid discomfort so you can see how we got here and um and it's going to require a couple of us to um stand up and fight it but that means there's going to be people around us that say this is a crazy person i can't believe he's pushing his kids like and i've had many instances over the years i mean my oldest son was eight and he ran the Boston Marathon with me.

And you could imagine the looks and like.

Did he really?

Is it the same eight-year-old who's now going to be getting into undisclosed college that they want him?

That kid?

That same, yeah, same kid.

Yeah.

And then his brother at seven ran the New York marathon.

And then their sister ran one of our beast races when she was six, right?

So, um, that's incredible.

And by the way, I didn't put a collar around them and drag them, right?

They didn't really know what they were doing.

And you get a lot of looks and oh my God, the kid's going to get hurt or this or that.

You know how many kids in Africa are going, you know, 13 miles a day carrying buckets of water?

Like, stop.

Stop.

It's better that they sit on a device and sit on the couch for 11 years of their life and do nothing.

You're preaching to the converted.

In fact, that's what also is increasing mental health problems

is the iPad.

My friend, who's this very renowned child psychiatrist, was saying that it's because of these video games and

all the

addiction to the screen that's creating depression, more depression.

It changes the neurotransmitters in your brain.

Well, what happens is our brains are not designed to get as many dopamine hits as we get.

Like

earlier in our generations on the planet, we would do work and we would find an orange.

We would do work and we would kill an animal.

And now you don't have to do any work.

You hit Uber Each, you hit Uber, you hit this, you hit that, and you're getting constant.

constantly flooded with dopamine and that's got negative um unintended consequences yeah there's a whole have you you read Dope Ame Nation?

Yeah, yeah, I spoke to her, yeah, me too.

I spoke to her as well, yeah, yeah.

It was all about, and it's very true, though, right?

Like, I, I mean, I think I belong back in the 90s or the 2000s.

I think that's like was that was my era.

I'm very, I'm very unhappy with how things have like evolved in that way.

And I say it's very much like, I call it like coddle culture in a lot of ways, right?

People want to do the bare minimum, and people are coddling them, and it's okay.

Like, this whole like I'm enough philosophy that's very popular, you know, it doesn't work for me, right?

No, I should have lived in the 1700s or the 1800s.

I would have loved it back then.

Matter of fact, I'm most attracted to places and movies when it's like cold and like Shrek's hut would be a place where I want to live.

Yeah, yeah.

I really am.

I'm like, oh man, that looks awesome.

You know, they're heating that the cabin with wood and yeah.

But like, where where does it come from?

Because I know you've done like 50 ultra, was it 50 races or 50 ultra marathons?

And, but like before you even created Spartan, right?

Were you even like, what were you doing as like a, were you, did you jog every day?

Like, how did you kind of like inch your way into this like super endurance

adventure stuff?

So a couple of things.

So the neighborhood I grew up in, if you saw the movie Goodfellas, I grew up ground zero for Goodfellas, literally across the street from the family.

And everybody in the neighborhood was either either they owned a pizza place,

they owned some business, a trucking company, a tow truck company,

a cement yard, a waste management,

waste management.

All true, exactly true.

And so you were either hustling or stealing, like something was going on.

Like if you walked into a friend's house, it was highly likely that the mom had a CB radio in the kitchen while she was making sauce and was running the the tow truck business.

Like, that's like everybody was just working.

It was integrated in their lives.

And so, um,

Danny, Danny lived in his Chinese restaurant with his Chinese, like, you know what I mean?

Like, everybody was just working.

Mom, so that was my, that was my, my, my dad was wound up and all that.

He had a trucking company.

And, um, mom, find yoga, meditation, health food, but she takes it to an extreme level and she's like meditating for 30 days straight while fasting.

She's running 10 miles a day.

Her guru sets up a race in Queens, New York.

That's a

3,100 mile run around a one-mile loop that eight people participate in each year to show everybody what the human brain is possible, you know, capable of.

So

anyway, I'm seeing all that go down.

I'm seeing guys go to jail for 25 years.

Again, that's another endurance feat.

100%, yes.

Right?

So whether it was running a business, whether whether it was going to jail, whether it was the risk of being killed, whether it was meditating, running 3,100 miles, it's no surprise that,

I mean, in some ways, when you think about like a triathlon or an ultrarun, it's like it's a catered training day.

Every 10 miles, there's going to be food.

We're out here and like, this is unbelievable compared to like my cousin going away for 25 years.

You know what I mean?

True, but you don't see like you do that.

You never saw like Tony Soprano getting into this stuff or any other goodfella type of guy.

Well, one of the things that bugged me,

again, because I had, I had, if you think about it, I had both sides.

I had my mom who was a health and wellness nut, and then I had my dad.

One of the things that bugged me was I would look at these very successful men, whether they were heads of organized crime families or owned businesses.

And somehow, what ran parallel to them becoming successful was them getting fat and smoking cigars and drinking.

Right.

And I just remember playing a tape in my head saying, I don't understand why you wouldn't want to be really, really fit.

And one of the bosses who became my customer, because we didn't talk about my swimming pool business, we'll talk about in a minute, was the head of the Lucchese crime family,

little Vic, Vic Amuso.

And

I became friends with him because he was a fitness nut.

So not only was he the boss, not only did he have the biggest house in the neighborhood, but he was a fitness nut.

So every time we saw each other, right, like we had something to talk about, like, like how, you know, what you would you do for a workout today?

Would you do it for a workout today?

So, you were working out already because of your mother's influence.

Because of my mother's influence.

What were you doing, though?

What was the kind of workout you were doing back then?

I found weight training.

Oh, so you're a weight trainer?

I found weight training, but I did it in a different way.

And I don't know why I came up with this.

I came up with something called a prison workout because the only guy, the only kids that wanted to do it with me were kids that got out of prison.

And it was 120 sets

in one hour.

So we had to do every body part, which was not typical back then.

Typical back then was, oh, we're just going to do back and legs today.

Splits.

Yeah, and I couldn't get my head around that because I would say to myself,

I don't really understand.

Like if we saw an animal 300 years ago and we were hungry, would we say, oh, we can't go chase that deer today because we did legs yesterday?

Like, I don't understand.

Right.

So, so why wouldn't we just do everything and get it done and be efficient and also incorporate like endurance in it?

So, for one hour, we would do 120 sets.

Every set had 25 reps.

It was fucking insane.

Like, every time I went to the gym, I would have PTSD because it was so hard.

What were you doing?

What were the sets of what?

Give me a second.

I'll tell you, I'll walk you through it.

So, it would start out on the squat rack.

And again, this is like late 80s.

So, so I apologize if it's not cool and hip to anybody listening or not.

By the way, it's very hip and bad, and things always cycle back, right?

It kind of seems very like

hit training or like even crossfittish.

Yeah, it's crossfittish before crossfit and hit before hit.

And so, it would start out on a squat rack, and we would do 25 reps.

And I would have a plate on each side, so it'd be 135 pounds.

I'd knock out 25 reps, and you'd have to run to the next thing.

There was no like, oh, I'm gonna rest for a second.

And I ran right over to leg extensions, leg curls, 25 reps, 25 reps, calf races, 25 reps.

All right.

And then that would be four rounds.

So

insane, right?

Then from legs, we would go to shoulders.

And so it would be a military press, 25 reps.

It would be side lateral raises, front raises, rear delt raises, 25, 25, four rounds.

From there, we would go to the

pull-up machine that gives you assistance that has the, you know, the little force.

And so it'd be four rounds.

You'd do 25, and then you'd need assistance, 25, and then you'd need more assistance and more.

Chin-ups or pull-ups?

Pull-ups.

Okay.

The hard ones.

The hard ones.

From there, we would go to chest.

We would do dumbbell, bench press, incline, dumbbell, bench press, decline, dumbbell push-ups, four rounds, 25, 25 reps each one.

From there, we would go to biceps.

We would knock out preacher curl or stand-up curls, preacher curls,

chin-ups,

and then dumbbell hammer curls, 25 reps, four four rounds, and then triceps.

Every day?

No,

every other day.

Oh, okay.

Every other day.

That's crazy.

It was crazy.

It was crazy.

And there was only one kid, I forget his last name, John, who had just got out of prison, was the only one that would do this with me.

And you're the one who kind of created and thought of this.

I created it.

I had an hour.

I was running a business.

I didn't have time.

It gets me in incredible shape.

It was the best I ever felt.

It was unbelievable.

That's amazing.

Why don't you do that anymore?

It's fucking hard.

It is hard.

It sounds super hard.

But like, when did you stop that routine?

So I probably went into the night, probably to the mid-90s when I found adventure racing.

Then I found these crazy races.

And my training changed to like, I would do

a lot of stairs.

I found a backpack and a weight vest and I found a stairwell.

And I fell in love with a stairwell and a backpack.

And that was the end of the weight vest.

That became the end of that.

And I lived in the stairwell.

How much were you doing in the stairwell?

I mean,

it would be 35 flights, five rounds, so

a couple of hundred flights.

I'd spend an hour in the stairwell in the morning.

I'd come back in the afternoon.

I'd have 30 or 40 pounds on my back.

Not bored at all?

No, I put music in my ears.

And those were always escapes because I'm such a workaholic, like building a business or whatever I'm always doing, that

those are moments of meditation.

Right.

I was going to say, it's your form, my form of meditation because I can't sit still.

Can you?

I can't sit still.

Right.

So that's like, for me, I say running, anything that's like cardio or endurance.

Like, that's when you can actually like think about everything.

Think, yeah, get back to water, food, and shelter.

Exactly.

No, exactly.

It's true.

But why don't, so then, why were you doing a stairwell?

Couldn't you find like stairs outside or just because?

You know, there was something about the lack of oxygen in there was good, was good.

And

I just didn't have, again, I was always trying to fit things in like the woman I describe on the CB radio making sauce.

I was just,

I believe in work-life integration.

So it was like roll out of bed, right into the stairwell, knock that out, get to work before eight.

You know, I just, I just had to fit it all in.

Okay, so

we kind of jumped somewhere, but I wanted you to finish about your kids because I think it's fascinating.

You said that you would wake them up at 5.30 in the morning, right?

Even at 3 still.

Well, now they're what?

what they're 12 you said they're 14 9 uh 9 13 14 16 16.

okay

so what happens you wake them up and what do you do you didn't tell us what you do workout so i don't know what's the workout it's not that 120 prisoner workout kung fu master for four years

and then so what that guy lived with you for four years and what what did he do with them he was it was almost it was almost like um i don't know gymnastics but it would have been like mat gymnastics almost.

Okay.

Tumbling

single-leg squats was a thing I remember him doing in the barn with them.

It was so hard.

And the three-year-olds doing this?

They were doing it.

It was unbelievable.

Grabbing their feet, putting it over there.

I could probably find some old videos.

You could, you could, you could.

I got to get you old videos.

You got to put it.

You'd be on it's unbelievable what these kids were doing.

And

they would hang from a pull-up bar and they would do leg raises perfectly at 50 in a row.

It was unbelievable.

So that went on, which I would highly recommend.

Anybody listening to this that has children,

you have to put your kids, in my opinion, three years old to like seven or eight, they should always be in gymnastics.

Get them in gymnastics.

Forget about any other sport.

And then seven or eight to like 11 or 12, put them in every sport.

They should swim.

And then 11 or 12, pick your sport.

That's what I, that's what I would do based on what I just went through.

That's a great, that's actually a great advice.

And I agree.

I'd try and get at my nine-year-old to try as many things as possible.

Do them all, do everything.

To see what he likes.

Exactly.

So then they wake up.

So how long was this kung fu master working with them?

So they went seven days a week.

They went twice a day.

And then

twice a day?

Twice a day.

They would do two days.

An hour.

It was an hour in the morning, an hour at night.

Okay.

And

then I found, I was at dinner.

with some Wall Street buddies and I was pounding my chest on what a cool dad I was because I got a kung fu master.

And my friend put me in my place.

And he said, you know, I grew up next door to an ex-Green Beret wrestler and I didn't know anything about wrestling.

And he said,

his two children, his two boys, who were my friends, my friend is telling me, in Seattle, would go down the basement every night for an hour and a half and wrestle in the dark blindfolded because their dad believed, the Green Beret believed that if they could, you know, master wrestling blindfolded, they would crush it

in a real life match when the lights are on.

So this went on for a decade in the basement to the point where people were calling social services and it was.

No way.

Are you serious?

So I'm listening.

I'm leaning in.

I'm listening, right?

And

he's like, the story's crazy.

He goes, the kids become really high-level wrestlers.

And one of them becomes a coach at Stanford University.

And while he's a coach at Stanford University, he institutes a new policy where he's bringing neighborhood wrestlers in to mix it up with his Stanford wrestlers to give them different competition.

Which, now that I know wrestling, a lot of places do that.

You got to have lots of bodies in the room to get people used to different types of wrestling.

So,

so anyway, this goes on for a while.

And one of those neighborhood kids in the Stanford wrestling room says to the coach, who was one of the two brothers who grew up in the basement, Coach, I got nowhere to sleep tonight.

I got locked out of my apartment.

Could I sleep on the mat?

Coach says, don't be ridiculous.

Stay in my apartment, stay on the couch.

I'm going out with my buddies.

Just sleep on the couch.

He comes home.

Coach comes home, goes into his bedroom.

He's sleeping.

Guy gets up off the couch, opens the door to,

his name's Jay Jackson, opens the door to his room.

He's got a gun.

Random act of violence, going to kill the coach.

He strips the coach down to his underwear, zip ties his hands behind his back to the chair, zip ties his legs to the chair, pillowcase over his head, presses the revolver to his head, has tickets to like somewhere in Latin America they found later.

It's going to literally just kill the coach.

Coach says, Could you shut the lights before you pull the trigger?

Trained in the basement for 10 years in the dark.

Shuts the lights.

Coach proceeds to disarm the perpetrator.

I'm getting chills.

I've told the story 5,000 times.

Disarm the perpetrator, somehow pin him while tied to a chair.

Calls 911 from behind his back.

Stanford police break the door down, find a scene from pulp fiction, blood, a guy, a phone,

like tied to a chair.

I hear this story at this dinner.

I jump on a plane with my wife.

We come out to California.

I got to meet this guy.

My kids became wrestlers.

I got rid of the Kung Fu Master.

That was the end of Kung Fu.

Are you serious?

That's an amazing story.

Believable story.

Yeah,

it's in one of the books that you didn't read or didn't even know about.

Normally, I read every book.

That's so funny.

And the one person I really wanted to have in a podcast.

Three fucking books I wrote.

She didn't read it.

She doesn't even know I have a book.

No, no, I didn't know you had.

Let's just clarify.

I did not realize you had a parenting book until last week.

But I knew about the other books, Spartan Up.

Yeah.

And the other one is Spartan Fit.

Spartan Fit.

You have more than three books.

Yeah, 10 Rules of Resilience.

Yeah, that one I know.

Well, that's the one.

That's the parenting book, Ten Rules of Resilience.

Oh, that is?

Oh, I read it online.

Okay, was it it good?

It was really good.

Okay, good.

In fact, I have a lot of questions from, like, I thought that was really, really good.

And I, by the way, I wanted to be a little more forward in the title that it's a parenting book, but the publisher, which is one of the top publishers in the world, didn't want, didn't want, they're all afraid of me.

Everybody's afraid of me and the way I want to speak or the things I want to say.

I know, but why?

I don't get it.

Like, you're so motivated.

You're normal.

You're like, so you, the funny thing is, you are normal.

That is the weird thing.

Like, you seem like you're very, obviously you're aggressive in your lifestyle but the NBC was like out of their mind filming with me if you don't get them out of the cold water now we're canceling the show like calm down

doing this for a long time I know they're not gonna die and did anyone die no see I know see so but like to me that would make great TV you'd think that they would want that or they didn't want to be liable

there's a lot of there's a you know there's a lot of people in the world you know now there's lawyers involved you know you know the whole totally yeah But where was it?

That's Hollywood.

That's Hollywood about it.

That's Hollywood, yeah.

So, so, um,

no, anyway, so the kids became wrestlers.

Once they became wrestlers, um,

my wife was a high-level soccer player, so she, the girls weren't going to wrestle, so they picked up soccer.

I had to switch how many girls?

Two girls, two boys.

Okay, I had to come up with a methodology and a workout program that I could somehow execute myself every day now that I no longer have the kung fu master.

What could I do that I could actually get these kids to do?

Yeah.

That would be good for their whole body.

So I created 12 animal movements that I could name animals.

We could have some fun with it.

And I could do it anywhere we lived in the world, any apartment, outside, anywhere.

We're just going to do it every day.

As long as they did their 10 animal movements, at least I got that done.

Whatever we got on top of that was a bonus.

So, you know, there was a bear crawl.

Yeah.

There was something we called a scorpion where you'd bend over backwards, actually, and then walk like a,

you know, the deal.

We would do rabbit jumps and duck walks and it was just like every friggin day, that's what we did.

How long was each movie?

The funny thing is, it depended on the room we had or the outside.

Like if we were on the farm, I'd make them go like a quarter mile.

Like it was crazy, right?

Yes.

But but

consistency, we had to do it every day.

And now, now that they're in their sports, now they don't have to do that anymore.

Now they train the way however their team what do the girls do though they play soccer they play soccer with your wife okay so they're on and so your wife is okay with all this crazy training and you know my wife my wife um definitely thinks i'm nuts um but i think i've i've somehow gotten her to submit um on all this just because i'm relentless with it and i think i think now uh that my oldest is getting recruited to these colleges i think she sees now like oh my god he's crazy but it was it actually actually

does one particular kid or any of the kids at any given point ever rebel?

Have they ever rebelled and been like, screw you, dad, I'm not doing this or?

You know, my, my 16-year-old, Sunday morning, there was a non-require, just Sunday that passed.

I came back from the Middle East.

I landed, I was in my house for 24 hours, and then I came here.

My 16-year-old was up till now that he's being recruited by the colleges.

He was up Saturday night till 2 a.m.

doing homework.

He's got to get straight A.

He's got to take his AP classes, classes, right?

He's got to nail that.

And Sunday morning, they were doing a 9 a.m.

workout.

Wrestlers, non-required, not, they didn't have to go.

Right, right.

And

he's like, Dad, I got to sleep.

And I had a fight.

My own instinct was grabbing his feet, pulling him out of his bed, which I've been doing for whatever 13 years.

Do you actually do that?

Like, like basically

because they don't want to do it every day.

Just pull them out of their bed.

And I pull everybody out of them.

I turn music on, lights on.

I wake the whole house up every morning.

At 5 a.m.

It depends on, you know, it could be 5.30, 5.40.

It depends on what I have going on.

Even the girls still.

I'll rip the girls right out of bed.

Oh, my gosh.

And so,

so anyway, I had to fight my own instinct.

And I said, you know what?

Let him sleep.

He was up last night.

He's doing all, you know, so now we're getting to the point with him because he's 16 years old

that

now he's got, now he's got to own it.

Right, but he's already like you, like you feel like he's a proven track.

He's giving you the proof of the profile.

He knows the deal.

but does anybody how about the other three does well now the younger brother yeah now he's stepped now he's like oh my god i see now what's happening to my older brother i i got game on i gotta i gotta work yeah like this happened in the last three weeks are are any of them more just naturally innately more like you like who what that you feel is like yeah you know what well you know what's interesting is um there's little components of me in each one of them really like no nobody has um thank god for them nobody has the whole joe Right.

And they all have, they definitely all have my wife who's much nicer than I am, much more cuddly.

And

is she the opposite of you in that?

Like, is she like super, like, is she like a B personality?

She was very high level at her.

She was captain of her team in soccer, went final four.

Oh, wow.

Penn State, high, very high level.

But not because she trained every day.

I shouldn't say that again.

She trained at like kicking the ball and juggling the ball.

As far as working out, that was not her.

She was just talented, very very talented and very likable and unlike me.

And so when I look at the kids, my little daughter, and we should talk, we're going to talk about this, my little daughter is zipping around on her little scooter.

She wanted a scooter.

She got this pink scooter.

And I was like, oh, you know what?

I used to have dirt bikes.

Like she's riding those like I was riding dirt bikes.

You know what I mean?

She's got that.

And so there's each one of them has a little piece of my personality.

But the thing I would warn everybody against that's that's listening is when I reflect back on the mistakes I might have made, I think one thing we all do is our first child, we over parent them.

And our last child, I underparent.

And when I look at the underparenting of our last child, she's like a machine.

She's like, she's got to fend for herself.

She's got to figure it out on her own.

And even at 16 years old and nine years old, I'm still over parenting the 16 and underparenting the nine.

Isn't that so true?

I feel that way with my two also.

Like, because what you're first, you over, like you just like are, you kind of like are over them like it's like it's like a brand new picture yeah you do it don't eat that dirt off the ground the fourth one yeah like whatever exactly

100 i feel that with two kids you're like and but you're right they become more scrappy that way yeah it does it's a hundred percent true so then okay so that's your kid situation yeah um now can we get back into like let's go okay so now we can kind of want or fast forward back to where you're talking about going up and down the

what do you call it it, the stairway.

The stairwell.

So how did that turn into,

I'm going to create Spartan?

So how did that go to that?

So that was probably mid-90s.

And

the elevator was broken in our building.

And I needed a way to get up.

So I took the stairs and I met a guy that was on the cover of men's health in the stairwell.

Oh, really?

And

I had the background from my mom and all the crazy running and all that.

So it was already woven into my brain somewhere.

But I ran into this guy and he was carrying dumbbells up and down the stairs.

And in that journey,

I started working out with him, meeting him in the stairwell.

He taught me.

So he was also in the stairwell with, but you already were in the stairwell doing your workout.

I met him in the stairwell and that's what started my journey in the stairwell.

But that's what I'm saying.

You were already doing that stairwell workout.

No,

I was walking the stairs because the elevator was broken.

I met him

and that's what started the stairwell thing.

And then

he,

in one of our workouts, talked to me about adventure racing, which I didn't know what that was.

And I went and did one with him, and I fell in love with it.

It was just so unbelievable.

It was like it was like being Lewis and Clark.

It was like I went back to the 1700s, you know, it was awesome.

And so, the crazier the race was, um, what kind of races were they back then?

So, it might, it might have been um

the I did a rod, uh, which was a race across Alaska, typically done with dogs on a dog sled.

We did by foot.

It was uh, the raid.

Um, what would you do?

What would be like a race that you could do?

Oh, it would be typically 350 to 500 miles long.

It would be self-supported.

So you're carrying your stuff with you.

Every 70 or so miles, there's probably a checkpoint somewhere to check in and make sure everybody's alive.

And

we're going up and down mountains and across a country, Newfoundland, Switzerland,

Fiji.

How long would be each race?

Could be anywhere from five to 15 days long.

And you're losing a ton of weight and you're getting sick, probably, and you're somehow really getting to meet yourself and find out what you're made of.

And in some of them, it's 30 below zero, and your eyelashes are frozen shut, and you're like, I want to die.

And

you can't take another step, but you push through.

So I fell in love with that.

And I had a lot of time, as you can imagine,

if I did 20 of those events and each event on average was 10 days, that's 200 days of thinking where I'm alone, right?

And just thinking.

And I thought, boy, this would be like an unbelievable business.

I saw my mom change so many lives, getting people into yoga and meditation and eating healthy.

Like, could I change lives

by putting on races like this and like institutionalizing this?

Because I was finding these one-off races in the middle of nowhere.

Could I do it in a big way?

Were you doing it with this other guy, this men's health model?

No,

his limit was three hours.

And so I wanted to go, because there were three-hour distances as well back then.

And so after I had done one of those, I said, What's what's next?

And he said, Well, 24 hours, but you got to be sign me up.

I want to do 24 hours.

And then I did 24 hours.

I need harder.

What, what's crazier than this?

Well, the I did a rod is off.

Sign me up.

I'm doing the I did a rod.

Is it still around?

Yeah.

Okay.

So is he still around?

Or is he a little bit?

No, I did a rod.

I did a rod.

Yeah, you've, you don't remember, but you've seen, people have seen movies of the I did a rod rate.

You know, the dog, they typically, you know, they get on a sled and the dogs are pulling them through Alaska in the middle of the winter.

But this was without the dogs.

This was by foot.

By foot, yeah.

I probably have seen it before.

But now, like, Spartan, like, that's like much more embedded into people's ways.

Well, so, so I'm doing these races forever.

And then, and I'm.

Never got hurt, though.

Never got hurt, knocked on wood.

Yeah, I mean, and I would attribute it.

I did a lot of yoga.

One of the things that was woven into all my training was stretching and yoga, thanks to mom.

And

the other thing is I never really ran fast.

Like, I think when I think about my wife who had knee injuries or any athlete that has injuries, it's that fast running.

I totally agree with that.

Everything I did was slow.

You know, it was long, long distances, but slow.

And

then I always took care of myself.

And then...

What did you do for recovery back then?

I didn't really believe in recovery.

You know, I don't, I don't really, I did a lot of cold water therapy.

Even then, even back then, I got into cold water.

I got into cold showers in the

80s.

I got into cold showers.

And it was really because from the neighborhood,

it was kind of inevitable that you were going to jail because that was like how you made your bones or whatever.

And so, like, you know, could I carry rocks around the neighborhood?

Could I take a cold shower?

Could I like, because if I got to go, right, if that's

you got to be able to do those, right?

So.

So you were actually prepping and training for just in case you went to jail.

It's crazy.

Isn't Isn't that crazy?

Yeah.

So

were you like, were you doing anything like criminal-like?

Were you like disarming?

Stealing money from

there were there were some stupid things as a kid that you it really is unbelievable that we've all been so close to doing something that would change your trajectory of our lives.

But but

thankfully, between my mom, my dad,

I always took a liking and asked for opinions from older people.

Like, thankfully,

and the organized crime thing faded away a bit right at the time where I would have done something stupid.

So that would they all went to jail.

Even the Vince, the main guy, the main guy went to jail, yeah, little Vic.

Little Vic, sorry, is still in jail now.

He's been in jail since 1992.

Really?

I would say every three months I have a dream about him.

He's coming out soon.

Amazing.

How old will he be when he gets like 80s?

Yeah.

Wow.

Is that crazy?

That is so crazy.

crazy that you never got like you never got wrapped up in any of that stuff though they were they were um

they were really good about finding kids that worked i worked hard i would have been an earner yeah so had that thing all had that structure all stayed in place um i would have had an opportunity you know and the question is would i have been stupid enough to take that opportunity right um but but then it went away and at the same time

like we didn't talk about it so

I'm in Ithaca, New York now, because my parents get divorced.

My mother's not being accepted in the neighborhood, right?

Right.

Was she Italian too?

She was Italian.

So she's like, we're moving to Ithaca, New York.

Ithaca, New York was very hippie-ish.

There's colleges there, much more open-minded to yoga, meditation, health food, being a vegan.

Even back then.

Well, because the colleges, the professors.

But vegan?

Even back then.

Even back then.

Yeah, this stuff's been around.

I mean, we think it's all new, but it's been around forever.

So, so anyway, I'm graduating high school.

I want to get back to the neighborhood.

I want to be with tough guys.

I've got a business I'm running there.

I'm cleaning swimming pools for all these guys.

And my friend says to me, hey, why don't we go to Cornell?

So I said, how the hell are we going to go to Cornell?

Like, my SAT scores suck.

I didn't even study.

He's like, my dad's

a professor.

He'll get us in.

So I said, okay, you got a guy.

And we'll go to Cornell.

I got a guy.

Yeah.

So we both get our suits on.

We do interviews.

We're very late in the process.

We're graduating high school in like three or four months.

And

my dad's so proud that my mom and dad are so proud.

I got an interview at Cornell.

I didn't even do anything yet, right?

I got an interview.

I have my son's interviewing at Cornell.

It's a big deal, by the way.

Cornell's still, like you said, very, very, very popular and very so.

I do, I do the interview, and

neither of us get accepted.

And

no wonder.

And he says, hang on but my dad said if we go in and take uh extramural classes and prove that we could handle the workload in the first semester uh we could reapply and maybe get in so i said okay if we're going to do that i'll go to st.

john's during the summer while i'm running my business in queens i'll take a couple of classes i'll get tuned up on how to study and um and he's like fuck that he goes why wouldn't we party all summer he goes i'm gonna go to vegas party and then we'll buckle down in September.

So we, right there, I learned about delayed gratification.

I went to Queens.

I went to St.

John's.

I actually loved it while I was running my business.

We met back on campus in September.

We both took three classes each.

I worked my ass off.

I got two A's and a B, which was like I was working for NASA, like to land two A's and a B, and

reapplied and didn't get accepted.

So a bit dejected, but I'm the kind of person that gets more motivated when, so then I did it again.

He diverted.

He went to Vegas.

He went to UNLV.

And

I applied again, didn't get accepted.

I did it a third time, applied again.

Now I'm falling behind with credits because I can't take as many credits as the kids that are matriculated.

So by the fourth semester, I was kind of like, you know what?

They broke me.

I'm out.

Told my dad.

I don't know if I told you this story last time we talked, but told my dad, I'm coming back to New York.

My mom got upset because mothers never want to lose their kids, right?

So she's like, go meet this woman, woman, Anita Racine.

I teach her yoga.

I don't know if she could help or not.

Professor Anita sits me down.

She's like, I'm looking at your transcript, not your transcripts, the records we have.

And she's like, do you like textiles?

I didn't really know what a textile was.

She's like, because I run the textile department in the School of Human Ecology within Cornell that has 92 women and we're looking for diversity.

We need more men.

I was like, I love textiles.

You kidding me?

Yeah.

So

she accepted me, and I studied women's hemlines for the remainder of my time at Cornell, graduated.

So, what's your degree in text?

Well, it's a bachelor of science anyway.

Fashion?

Well, there was a fashion component, but most of it was business, the business of textiles, a little bit of science where we studied chemistry and stuff, right, to see how fabrics are made and how threads, you know, are made.

It's pretty awesome.

And still to this day, I can tell you the era of any movie based on women's hemlines because I studied so much of it.

The juxtaposition between that and your life is just, it's like just, it's like not surprising, actually.

It's awesome.

It's amazing.

But it's like, I'm not surprised to hear this.

It's crazy.

Your whole life has been kind of cuckoo, right?

Cuckoo.

So, so, um, so basically, you have a degree, you have a degree from Cornell.

I have a degree from Cornell.

I got my four years done, which was, again, monumental.

And then,

and then I met a guy while I was there.

You're always meeting a guy.

I always meet for you.

I talk to everybody and

he guided me to go to Wall Street.

And so

when you asked the question earlier, like, you know, how did you not get mixed up in all that?

Yeah.

At the same time, that was 1990 when I graduated.

Most of the guys went to jail, early 90s.

At the same time that was going down, I was getting pushed to Wall Street.

So

I ended up finding a job on Wall Street.

I ended up selling my business to the Polish kids who had worked for me.

They still run the business today.

They've done incredibly well.

They still have the business?

They still have the business today.

And I you told me you sold it for like 500,000.

500,000.

I stayed in touch with them.

And

I went to Wall Street.

I had a great run on Wall Street.

That's where I met the guy in the stairwell.

and got into adventure racing.

And it was a way for me also on Wall Street to escape reality and go like be in Alaska or be in.

I was going to say, but you just kind of answered the question, are you a loner?

Just because when you spend that much time alone in your thoughts, when you're doing all these adventure races and you're like for days on end, you're just having to think on your own, you would think that people who gravitate to that are people who like to be by themselves.

But you're a very friendly person.

I'm friendly,

but if you given the choice, like when my wife is the opposite and she loves old people over and big dinner parties and this and that.

And I'm like by 8.30 at night, night, I'm turning the lights off, picking up people's plates and trying to get them out of the house.

Like I'm not, I'm not really interested.

That said, I like meeting you and talking to you.

And then I'm like, I'm going to turn you off and not text you anymore.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

But

I would prefer to be in that hut.

on the mountain and just chopping wood for me.

I would prefer that.

So if you had your drug, so like basically, I guess your wife's a good, like, do you think opposites do attract them?

Because if she's, and not just with you guys, but I always think about this anyway.

Like, is it good when one person's more introverted and the other one's more extroverted?

Like, what do you think about opposites?

I think a couple of things.

Like, number one, I had an amazing childhood in that I cleaned 700 swimming pools, 700 different houses.

I got to peer, you know, look into and see which families worked, who got divorced, who didn't, who went to jail, who didn't, which kids were successful, which weren't.

And so I got to think a lot about what are the things I want to apply to my life.

And so

most people were getting divorced within those 700 homes.

And so it is amazing that I've been able to stay together for 20 years with my wife.

And I think part of it is I travel a lot, right?

So you get that little break, whether it's five days, 10 days, whatever.

I think that's great.

And then two is I think the fact that we are opposite so that, and then

somebody's got to bend.

Like I'm a pretty strong personality.

Right.

And so the fact that she bends and and allows me to be difficult is

awesome.

Your next guest is here.

Do I get ejected?

Do I get ejected at this point?

For those that don't know it, there's literally a thing under my seat.

You're just going to see me disappear.

You think it's important to have someone who can bend.

You're not a bender.

Okay.

So that means you think opposites do attract.

I think so.

I think,

yeah, I think it would be really,

if my wife was similar to me, we would have never lasted.

No way.

We're just, it would be, we'd lock horns and it would, right?

It would just be too much of the same thing.

Too much.

She's so malleable.

Right.

Like, yeah, so like, but like, at the same time, if you like to

run and do activities and someone else likes to like sit at home and watch Netflix, it's not going to be

I mean, that's a tough one.

Look, I'm pretty intense.

You guys have heard me.

Like, I want to work out every day.

I want to be consistent.

She's not like that.

Doesn't mean she's not going to work out, but for her, the workout is much more interesting if it's a social thing and she's with people.

And I don't need anybody.

I don't want anybody.

Like, if you're with me, great.

If you're not, I don't care.

I could care less.

What kind of workout do you do today?

Like, what's your workout now?

So I get on kicks.

And

in this wrestling room, I think we talked about it the last time we spoke.

I moved to Florida recently because I couldn't get my team to come back in the office in Boston.

No, you didn't tell me that.

Actually, I want to to get to all the Spartan stuff and your business.

We haven't even talked about that yet.

So, our business was located in Ball is located in Boston

for many years.

And when's your farm?

I thought you had a farm.

My farm is in Vermont, three hours from the Boston office.

Oh, it started in Vermont.

It became an official office in Boston, three hours away.

And then

during the pandemic, no one came in the office, obviously.

And it was driving me a little nuts, except for my assistant, Susan, who you spoke to, who religiously was there every friggin day.

Really?

She's a maniac, and she's awesome.

I holed up on the farm with a bunch of staff, and we just had cameras going like this because I was doing live workouts every day to stay in touch with our community.

My little daughter, the maniac, she was running a live workout every day.

She was getting millions of views.

She's a beast.

The nine-year-old or the other?

The nine-year-old who is seven or something.

She's unbelievable.

She was doing workouts live?

Live.

She's got the personality.

She talks into the camera.

She's unbelievable.

What kind of workouts was she doing?

Like workouts, like stuff.

We should edit something in here.

You'll love it.

So I'm on the farm doing that.

Susan, my assistant's coming at you up.

Nobody else is coming in.

Pandemic is coming to a conclusion.

I'm trying to get people back in the office, but who moved to Maine?

Who went to Minnesota?

And

I'm losing my mind.

I can't get anybody back in the office.

So I said, where could I move and kind of reinvigorate a culture and people that want to come in?

Because because I'm old-fashioned.

I want people in an office.

And so I found this place in Florida.

Where in Florida?

Lake Nona and Winter Park.

So

it's Orlando,

right outside of Orlando, not a place you and I would ever pick in the world to move to.

So you live in Orlando now?

Orlando now.

Yeah.

I mean, we kept the farm.

We'll go up to the farm two, three times a year.

But we're in Orlando.

We found the greatest school in the world, literally the greatest school in the world.

It's called Lake Highland Prep.

It's got one of the best wrestling programs in the country.

And we got an apartment five minutes from the wrestling room so that I could just walk out of my house with the kids, go into the wrestling room, and they have air dynam bikes.

And I watch them wrestle, and I knock out 300 calories, and it's hot as can be in this room.

You do the bike while you're watching these guys.

Yeah,

and that's been my

thing.

During the summer, I got on a little MRF kick.

I did 50 days in a row of MRF.

Tell people what that is.

So MRF is a 300, 300 squats, 200 push-ups, 100 pull-ups, and a two-mile run.

And so early June, I got on a kick of doing MRF every day because there was a guy I met in Florida who was doing it every day during the pandemic.

It pissed me off.

So I said, I'm going to do it every day.

And I was planning on doing it for the whole year, but then with this traveling, it got screwed up.

So I got to get back on it.

So today, what was your workout?

Today I did 30 minutes on an air dyne.

Again, again, and then I did 100 pull-ups, 100 squats, 100 push-ups.

Where did you do it?

In Sofatel Hotel.

No, but did they have an aerodyne there?

They did.

They had a, well, similar to an air dyne, they had a machine that looked like, that was close.

If they didn't have it, what would you have done?

The treadmill?

Treadmill.

Yeah.

And then you still do your, say it again, the 100 push-ups.

I didn't do the whole thing.

I did 100 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 squats, and 200 leg raises, hanging leg raises.

You must be like, you're so fit.

Like that's crazy.

You know what, you know what's funny about that, that statement is when I was doing it, I was like, I'm so soft because my workouts were usually so crazy.

I know.

But I was like, this is such a soft workout.

And I was beating myself up.

So it's funny you said that.

It's all relative, right?

To what I do that to myself all the time, by the way.

So then, okay.

So then basically,

once you finish your workout, what other...

Ice cold shower.

No, but wait, wait, wait.

What other activities are you doing movement-wise during the day?

I'm always going to take stairs.

I'll typically hit a second workout if my life allows it, right?

If I come back from work, the kids are wrestling again, I'll go into the wrestling room.

And I'll typically hit a second workout.

But, you know, again, the last seven, eight days, I've been traveling all over the world, so it hasn't happened.

But you still do the one workout?

Nope.

I always get that workout done.

So do you ever skip a day?

No.

Ever.

No.

Okay.

And then you're saying you do a cold shower.

What else do you do?

I knock out a cold shower.

I try to eat a ton of salad.

I try not to eat till 9 a.m.

in the morning.

And I try not to eat too late.

But I got in late last night and we ended up having an 8 p.m.

dinner at an awesome Mediterranean restaurant here.

I don't know the name of it, but it was awesome.

Who are you here with?

No, I came alone, but then again, like you, people always want to meet, hey, you're going to be in LA?

Can I pick you up at the airport?

Yeah, come on.

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

So you had, like, you had dinner with somebody or whatever.

Okay.

And then, so you, so in terms terms of like other habits and wait, okay, we're going to get to the Spartan stuff in a second, but habits are you work out at least once a day.

How long is the workout minimum?

Minimum an hour.

Minimum an hour.

Got to sweat.

Okay.

And then salads as much as you can.

Yeah.

Do you eat meat then?

Are you fat?

I eat a little bit of meat.

I do eat a little bit of meat.

I eat,

I probably eat meat once a week.

Once every two weeks.

When you say meat, is chicken included in that?

I don't really like chicken.

Really?

Yeah, I don't really like chicken.

I like fish.

I me too.

So when you say, it's like, would be like steak or whatever.

I don't even, I don't even like steak.

Once in a while, I'll get a burger without the bun and I'll just eat the burger.

I like mustard on a burger.

That's me too.

But it's when, when I want it, I don't always want it.

Do you have like, do you, like, do you have a big appetite or is it fueled?

I have a massive appetite that's starting, as I get older, I'm starting to, thank God, because I used to eat ridiculous amounts of food.

That's me too.

It's hard when you work out a lot.

Don't you get hungry?

I mean, for me, I'm like starving.

So I ended up gaining weight because I'm like,

I'm eating so much more.

Yeah.

I'm getting better with it.

So then nine o'clock, you eat.

What's your first meal?

My first meal I'll have, I'd like to have, believe it or not, this is the new thing when I say new the last three, four years, is salad in the morning with eggs.

Yeah.

Salad and eggs?

Yeah.

Well, I don't know where it came from that you're not allowed to have salad.

Like, why do you have to only have salad for lunch or dinner?

I agree.

And so I guess my my message to the world is just eat more salad.

And that's your big message for the day.

For the day on the nutrition front, just be eat more salad.

And

I don't eat much fruit anymore.

Is it because of the sugar content?

Because of the sugar.

So do you feel like, but why?

Is it because you feel like?

I just feel better on salad than I do on fruit.

Yeah.

Because vegetables.

It's like less, yeah.

So that your insulin is more stable.

So then do you eat lunch or?

I'll eat lunch.

I haven't eaten lunch yet today because because you're so hard driving.

I wanted to eat and you were like, no, we have to do the podcast now.

And so

it is screwing my entire

up, but it's okay.

I haven't eaten yet today,

but I will.

And what would I have had for lunch?

A Greek salad would have been amazing.

I love Greek salad.

I love Greek salad.

Do you eat dairy or is that like not?

Very little.

I will once in a while eat yogurt.

I like yogurt, but not every day.

How about oats?

What's your thing on oats?

You You know what?

This is surprising.

I was trying to stay away from oats, and I got a buddy who's a big oatmeal person, and

I found this oatmeal that has flax seed in it and chia seed and everything already pre-packaged, so it's easy.

What is it?

Bob's oatmeal.

Oh, Bob's oatmeal.

And it's got like pre-packaged, and you just put hot water in it, and

it's great.

Really?

It's awesome.

Do you feel bloated after you eat it?

It's awesome.

Really?

Yeah.

I've been eating a lot of something called mush.

Have you heard of that?

Yeah, I know.

I know.

It's like the

overnight oats.

It's very small, these portions, though.

Like nutrient-dense food is hard for me because I have, I have like volume

quantity.

Like massive volume.

That's why salads for me are.

No, I know.

I eat my salad.

Oh, you like salads?

Yeah.

I mean, I look like I'm like a horse with a trough, like literally a bowl thickest size.

You want to know there's secrets of salads?

I don't know.

So I like capers.

I don't know if you like capers.

I like artichoke hearts, right?

Of course.

And like hearts of palms.

And then what you do is put it all in there and get a scissors.

And then just start chopping the whole thing up with a scissors.

It's called a chopped salad, honey.

It's fucking awesome.

It's amazing.

By the way, the scissor is better than a knife.

No, of course, because you're chopping it.

Yeah.

But you can also like take before you.

It takes forever.

Scissors are so easy.

Put it in the bowl and just start chopping away with the scissor.

That's a very smart idea.

Actually, I've never tried it with scissors, but I do love that idea.

So I am, like I said, I am a big believer in the salad thing.

Do you like jicama?

I like jicama too.

What the hell is jicama?

Really?

So jicama is like between an apple and a potato, but like much more water content.

I didn't even know about it.

I gotta, I'm gonna have a jicama.

You've never had jicama?

No.

Oh my gosh, really?

Well, I just taught you something because it's delicious and it's a very, it's volume again.

Like I need to eat food with volume.

Yeah.

And you know what?

I would prefer, I got to tell my wife,

because we've been doing right, I adopted three kids unofficially in the last month.

really, yeah, because of the um

the school program we have, they don't have boarding, and because the wrestling is so amazing, there are families that want to be there, but they can't, so they want to send their boys.

So, where do we put our boys?

So, I said, I'll take three of them.

So, I had three boys living with us now on top of our four kids.

So, my wife's cooking a lot.

Are you joking?

Yeah, and this she had one-day notice talk about flexibility.

I was like, Oh, I forgot to tell you, there's three kids moving in tomorrow.

Oh, my God.

But she's awesome.

And where does she stay?

Okay, I guess there's three kids moving in tomorrow.

Where are they going to sleep?

We got an apartment next to our apartment.

And so they're in that apartment.

Wow.

You must be making lots of money at Spartan.

I don't make any money.

We're going to talk about that.

I know.

So

the reason I bring it up is because she's been cooking rice with the other things.

Yeah.

I like quinoa better.

Quinoa is so much better.

It's also filling and it's much more nutrient.

I love it.

It's very dry.

So we got to get rid of the rice.

We got to go all quinoa from now on.

That's a good idea.

Do you drink coffee?

I don't like coffee, but you will see me with a cup in my hand.

Today I had a cup

because

9 a.m.

I was ready for my feeding.

Yeah.

But my guy that I was meeting had me waiting outside his house for an hour.

So I was like, I got to have something.

So I had coffee.

But I don't like the taste of coffee.

Really?

Yeah, I hate it.

So how about like just in general, like caffeine, does it help you?

Do you like to say wait?

You know what?

I could drink a cup of coffee.

Let's say I did drink a cup of coffee and I was tired.

I passed right out.

It doesn't affect me.

It doesn't affect you at all.

No.

Wow.

Okay, so wait.

So let's go back now to Spartan.

So here you are.

You're doing all these adventure races.

You're thinking, okay, I'm going to try something to help you.

So 22 years ago, 2000, I'm on our farm in Vermont.

I met my wife at a race

and I'm like, you know what?

So she was doing an adventure race.

She happened to be at a rate.

Randomly, I was at a race I wasn't supposed to be at.

It was too short of a distance.

It wasn't something I was doing at that time, but friends talked me into it.

I think it was, no, friends talked me into it.

And it was on Nantucket.

And I did a swim in that race that I wasn't supposed to do because it was a relay.

So let's say you were on my team.

I was doing the sandbag carry down the beach.

And then I tagged the person who did the swim, but I was standing there saying, I didn't do enough today.

I'm going to do a swim anyway.

So I jumped in the swim.

I swam across the bay.

And when I got on the other side, she was there.

My wife was there.

I met her for three seconds.

I had no shoes on because the people that were officially doing the swim had shoes waiting for them, right?

And I didn't have shoes waiting for me because I wasn't supposed to do the swim.

I just jumped in.

I just jumped in.

When I came up the other side, I was like walking on rocks.

And she says to me, you're going to hurt your Tootsies.

And that would have been something my mother would have said.

My mother was dead at this time.

So not only was she gorgeous, not only did I like her right away, but that word was like, I got to chase this down.

So I found her.

How did you find her?

It was work.

But I chased her down, called the company.

Somebody found out a company she worked for.

They had 1,500 employees.

And I got her.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, what did you do?

You called the company, they thought she was.

You called the company,

found this girl, Courtney.

oh i know courtney how'd you know her name because it was on her like thing like the

badge or i think somebody that stayed behind i i had left the race already we like we met for 11 seconds and um

i left the race but then the tape was playing in my head tootsies and i got a check i like i can't believe i wouldn't follow up and and so then some people were still behind i said you gotta get me her name some and oh and well we got a name and we think she works here and and and then yeah it was great that's amazing story i had to lie i had to lie to to rope her in i said oh i'm starting an all-female adventure racing team and you looked really fit would you like to join the team that was

making up shit yeah and she was like what did she say like yes no Yeah, I said, well, we're doing a training weekend.

If you want to come out for a training weekend,

you know, we got to make sure you would qualify for second team.

We got to audition audition for it.

Exactly.

That's so cute.

And it's like, what, how many years later?

20, 22 years later.

2020.

Yeah.

Okay.

So now.

So we had the farm.

I got my wife.

And

you sold the company.

I still have the Wall Street firm at this point, but we own the farm.

What were you doing in Wall Street?

Were you a trader?

I had a company that

had 50 traders.

And we basically, our clients were Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch.

And when they were buying large blocks of equities or derivatives,

we were their broker.

So we traded between the banks.

Okay.

How did you grow a business in that world, like Wall Street Finance, being a pool cleaner and a home ecology major?

Human ecology.

So I

think it's funny.

I just, yeah, it's funny.

I think about it because I think about my children, right?

Our children, how do we teach them?

But again, think about the neighborhood I came from.

You figured out.

So basically, your whole life was just like hustling and figuring it out.

Like it wasn't like there wasn't any playbook.

You just kind of figured out you ended up there and you're like, okay, now what?

And just one step led to another.

Fire ready aim.

Yep.

And so that's your big thing, right?

It's my biggest

fire ready aim.

I like that.

So, so your other thing is if you are on time, you're late.

And I see now

fire ready aim.

I see who's the actress from Australia that's in, she's got her own, she's a superhero.

Oh, no, not Galilee.

Robbie, Robbie,

Margo Robbie.

Yeah.

I see that's her saying.

She stole the saying from me.

Oh my gosh.

You should sue her.

No, I don't care.

No, I don't care.

She's much more powerful than I am.

So, so

much prettier.

So, so,

so, where were we?

So, oh, the farm.

And I get the idea to start the thing, but I'm still on Wall Street.

I'm going back and forth.

And

I start putting on races, but the races I'm putting on are 350 miles long or 50 miles.

They're crazy races, so I'm not getting.

Is this a death race one?

Death Race, Expedition BBI.

What was the first one?

Death Race, though.

First one was Expedition BBI.

It was in the British Virgin Islands.

It was 350 miles long, and I lost a person.

And later.

What do you mean you lost a person?

So I was organizing the race, and apparently, one of the folks that were setting the ropes, we were going to have coastal earing where somebody had to climb out of the water.

Participants had to climb out of the water on ropes up the side of a cliff.

And while those ropes were being set, one of our subcontractors cut his leg.

So our staff said, go to the main island, go to Tortola, go get stitches.

He apparently gets in a little dinghy to go to the other island.

and drifts away and no one notices.

So fast forward eight days, the race is over, everybody's breaking open champagne, and this thing was awesome.

We're having a party.

And the staff comes over and he says, We haven't seen, you know, John in eight days.

I was like, Well, why would you just tell me now?

And they said, Well, we thought he was back on Tortola.

We didn't need him.

He needed stitches.

They tell me the story.

Meanwhile, in the last eight days, been the worst storms that the British Virgin Islands has seen in like 10 years.

So we had to get the Coast Guard involved.

They pulled out their maps and they were like, Well, if you last saw him here, based on the wind and

the currents,

we're going to go look for him.

So the Coast Guard takes off in their helicopters and they find him 150 miles away on a deserted island, Little Tobago.

Was he alive?

Alive.

So

Sports Illustrated does a story on, you know, true survivor.

And

how's his leg?

He was fine.

And we didn't get sued, and so everything was good.

And clearly, it was an omen for me not to put on races anymore.

Clearly.

Right.

But I'm a glutton for punishment.

So then

we did a second race and a third race and a fourth race, but I couldn't get enough people to come to make money.

I wonder why.

I wonder.

I couldn't get it to work.

And so

that is.

So for 10 years, I kept putting on races, putting on races, putting on races.

None of it was working.

How many people were showing up?

20, 30.

I just couldn't get it to work.

In 2000.

You were charging people?

Yeah.

I was trying.

I was lying to people.

I would tell people they were coming to a barbecue for the weekend.

But, I mean, I did everything I could, but people wouldn't come.

Oh, my God.

So in 2010,

I changed the name to Spartan.

I added the obstacles.

We changed the format.

We made it three miles, eight miles, 10 miles.

Three miles, eight miles, 13 miles.

And boom, 700 people showed up.

And then

1,500 people showed up.

Showed up where?

Like, what was the first race?

The first race was in Vermont.

Was it your farm the first race?

It was up the street from the phone.

Okay.

And

wow.

Yeah.

And then how did you promote it?

We knocked on doors, we went crazy.

We did radio.

We did social media.

We didn't have social media back then.

Yeah, in 2010, we had a little bit of social media.

What did we have?

When did Facebook start?

Yeah, Facebook was going.

Yeah.

It was like 2008, 2007.

Oh, yeah.

Buy space, Facebook.

Okay, so basically, just changing the name and just creating different levels.

And making it more accessible.

So it wasn't 350 miles.

It was three.

Right.

Much easier.

That helped.

Yeah, a little.

What happened to Death Race?

I thought that was the first big one.

Expedition BV.

I was the first big one.

After that,

then Death Race.

Death Race, but again, that was 100 people would show up to that.

But

that had already been running.

And that was something I do every year on the farm.

But that's only for crazy people.

And then, but 2010 was for the masses that was Spartan.

Okay.

And

grew it, grew it, grew it.

By 2015, we finally could make, we were making some money by 2015.

We were well between 2010 and 2015, how many people were now showing up year to year?

Oh, now I was getting 5,000 people, 7,000 people, 8,000 people at a race.

And how many, because when, didn't a private equity company come in?

They came in in 2012.

They helped me keep it alive because I was running out of money.

Yeah.

I was burning so much money.

How much is the cost to put one on?

$600,000.

To put on one race.

Wow.

And so, but if you put that out,

how much is the...

$100.

So if you have 6,000 people, you break EV.

You're breaking eagle.

Right.

So you really weren't making money.

Weren't you bringing in sponsors back then or no?

I was, but I just couldn't get the economics to work.

Right.

But,

but I kept, I'm a glutton for punch, just kept doing it, kept doing it, kept doing it.

Relentless.

Relentless.

And then

by 2018, we were on top of the world.

We were like, oh, this is working.

2019, we bought out our competitor, Tough Mutter.

Bang in our chest.

We did it.

We fought through.

I was going to ask you,

when you guys were like neck to neck, like, were you guys who was more back then were you guys like they were beating us they were beating us they were they were beating us everywhere yeah was it because it was easier or they were harvard kids that were much more savvy with social media and the internet and we were we were flintstones and right right right we were really good at putting on events and organizing trailers and trailer lanes and logistics uh because i came from a construction right background but but um

but i would say we were not uh world class at digital media um

but

they were a little too full of themselves.

They pulled a bunch of money out personally for themselves and it hurt their business.

The opportunity came up to acquire them.

We did.

But then the pandemic hit.

And the pandemic cost us $50 million, which we didn't have because we never made $50 million

in those years.

The government was kind enough to have all these programs to help us.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, $50 million?

Why?

Well, so imagine in 2020.

Right.

Imagine having sold $35 million worth of tickets

already, because the first quarter, January, February, March, I sold $35 million worth of tickets.

They're all getting ready for their races, their training.

Because how many races a year are you putting on?

At that point, I'm doing 350 events around the world, 45 countries.

Because I want to make sure people understand, because I didn't know this until I did my research, that Spartan is like the umbrella company, right?

And then you have a bunch of different races underneath it.

There are other brands.

And other brands.

So, like, there's like Anaheim, Spartan.

There's.

Yeah, yeah.

So, Spartan Race has a whole series of races around the world, right?

Three mile, eight mile, 13 mile, hundreds of events across all countries.

Then there's Spartan Trail, which was without obstacles.

Trail runs all over the world.

Then there's Tough Mutter, right?

Right.

Then there's DECA, which is another cool fitness event we should get you involved in.

I've never tried that.

Amazing.

And then, um,

and so anyway, imagine all those people signing up and spending $35 million with us.

And then every race around the world gets canceled.

And so, um, customers were not forgiving.

They were like losing their minds, upset at us.

And we were like, we didn't cancel the event.

We want our money back.

Well, there's no way for me to give.

I spent the money already.

Like, I had employees, I had trucks, I had insurance.

Like,

people that don't understand business think that when the event goes on that weekend, that's when I write all the checks.

No, the checks were been written over the last 12 months.

Totally.

Right?

And

so

anyway.

How many employees did you have?

600.

So I had to, or 512 at that point.

I had to

promise all those people, those 350,000 people, that they will get an entry to another race.

But you know what?

I'm going to even do one better because we're not bad people.

We're going to give you two races.

The next two races are free on us because we screwed you because of the pandemic.

So now I just gave $70 million worth of entries away.

So now I got to, when the world starts back up, put on those races and not collect any money, right?

I got to put on all those events.

So,

anyway, so no one really understands, like anybody out there watching or listening to this that thinks, oh my God, Joe made us do burpees.

He's a, he's,

you have no idea the burpees I've had to do to get this business to continue on.

But you know what?

Like, I'm not in jail.

I'm not dead.

I'm not living in Siberia.

It's not 30 below.

Like, and my kids are healthy, and my wife's like still talking to me.

So, it's not that bad.

It's not that bad.

So, wait, how did you get yourself so that's still happening?

How did you, how did you crawl out of that?

We are literally knife fighting every day

and finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now.

Already, but the last six, oh no, I, I, I owe um the government $25 million.

I mean, we've got our challenges ahead of us,

but we're digging out.

We're digging out.

We're knock on wood.

It's metal.

Knock on wood somewhere.

How about here?

How about here?

How about here?

Knock on wood.

It's looking better.

So it's good.

Well, then you're for sure staying with me next time you come to LA.

You have to save that money on hotel.

I didn't realize it was that brutal.

I know.

I wish you would have invited me.

I mean, here I am spending all this money on hotels just to do this podcast.

Oh, yeah, I know.

You bully ghosts.

So it's really, it's you to blame.

But anyway.

So then it starts up again.

And the private equity company, how much do they own of the business?

So

before the pandemic, who owns it, by the way?

What's the private equity company?

So at that time, it was called Raptor.

They were the guys that came in in 2011, 2012, but we bought them out when we bought Tough Mutter.

We were on top of the world.

We were feeling so good.

We bought them out.

Oh, wow.

And so everybody got paid.

I've yet to, again, I'm not asking anybody to play a small violin for me.

No one should feel bad.

I've got the most amazing life, amazing fan.

Everything's great.

But I've yet to take a dividend from this company in 22 years.

You've not made any money on Wall Street.

I've only put money in the business.

I've only put money in.

I've never taken money out.

So, um, how are you?

How are you surviving and adopting three kids in a way?

I've literally, thank God, I made a little bit of money on Wall Street.

Thank God.

And I've literally been burning through savings this whole time.

So, um, are you joking?

No, no, because I would have thought by now you would have been like a multi, like a multi-gazional, like a billionaire.

Yeah, like a like you're like you're the founder of Spartan.

I should have pulled up in like a Rolls-Royce or something.

Yeah.

Right.

Or like a or like a Bugatti or something.

Something.

Yeah, two Bugattis.

Yeah.

I go towing one behind the

absolutely.

Instead, I have a goat and a chicken and a farm.

I'm like, by the way, this is impossible.

So like, I would think the founder of Spartan, that is like the most well-known famous adventure racing company in the world

would have like

a pot to piss in, basically.

Yeah, no, I had to use your toilet.

I know, I know, it's true.

And you have an apartment in Florida.

And I have an apartment.

So you have a farm.

I do have a farm.

How big is the farm?

It's big.

It's big, but I paid.

I mean, we're having, look, I go back and forth how much I want to tell you, but

I see all these people on Instagram and all these people, like they're all standing in front of whether it's their own or some rented Ferrari and all this stuff.

And I was actually thinking about it today because here in the Hollywood Hills, I saw a Ferrari and I thought, I am so opposite all these people

that like

I show off a picture of me in a chain or a kettlebell and they, right?

And they are standing in front of me.

But I thought for a minute, maybe I should stand next to this Ferrari and make believe.

Like, I have a Ferrari.

Maybe that would be interesting to people.

I don't know.

No.

And

so I bought that.

My wife and I, we bought that farm in 2000.

We bought that farm in 2000, 2001 for $400,000.

It's a 700-acre farm.

It's unbelievable.

People come there and think I'm a billionaire.

Yeah.

It's $400,000.

You know, you don't remember.

No one remembers.

Real estate used to be cheap.

Yeah, it's true.

You know?

Right.

But if you sold that farm now.

You know,

it's not Beverly Hills.

It's not New York City.

It's the middle of nowhere of Vermont.

And the reality is, um,

not everybody wants to live in Vermont, which is why I like it so much, right?

That's why, so it's not, it's not like or Orlando, or Orlando, yeah, but not to say that again, I'm not asking anybody, like, we have a great life, and I could pay my bills, but seriously, like, how?

I mean, if you were on Wall Street literally 22 years ago and you owe all that money, how do you not take even a small salary?

So, so

from 2000 to 2010, while I was building this business, I was, I still had my foot in Wall Street.

So I was able to pay all my bills and start this business using my money I was making in finance.

Yeah.

So I still had that career going, right?

But it's over now.

It ended, I would say it officially ended around 2011, where it was like all in with Spartan.

So it's been, it's been 11 years of just burning through savings.

And that's a lot of savings.

It's a lot of savings.

Or I'm very frugal.

I mean, we only eat celery.

Yeah, I was going to say, right?

Or big salads of like just like iceberg lettuce, even not even like the organic.

You can't go.

Kale's too expensive.

Yeah, I was going to say, so is it just iceberg or maybe a romaine if you get lucky, if it's like a

special evening?

If I'm feeling, if I'm feeling frisky.

Yeah.

Holy moly, that's crazy.

So

that, that really, like, that blows my mind, actually.

It really is.

It's not even believable.

And

the thing is,

most people that, I mean, you know better than anybody, you've started businesses, would just have packed it in.

They would have just said, and I didn't tell you.

So we bought out our partner, but along the way in 2015 or 2016, Hearst became an investor as well.

So right now, Hearst owns a little piece.

We didn't buy them out.

They're an amazing partner.

We bought out the early investor.

Hearst is still a partner.

They own roughly 18% of the company.

What magazines belong to them?

They own a ton of magazines.

They own a piece of ESPN.

They're wildly successful.

They've been around 100 years and they're the greatest people in the world.

They challenge me on everything, but they don't drive me crazy.

That's good.

And, you know, I got an immediate phone call during the pandemic and said, don't worry, we'll be here for you.

That's amazing.

So then you basically get, you have Hearst as a partner.

What other sponsors and partnerships do you guys have?

I don't know.

We got a whole list of sponsors and partners now.

Obviously, we had more pre-pandemic, but now they seem the doors seem to be, they're knocking on the doors again now because the world's coming back.

When do you think you can be, you personally can start taking money out of the company and be

even a salary of 50,000?

No, I'm sorry.

I get paid.

I just don't get paid like a CEO of a

lot.

So you take a salary.

I take a salary.

Yeah.

Okay.

So

I would say I could probably make some money.

I mean, we owe the government money still from the pandemic, so I'm probably 2025

if all if all continues on.

So, probably, you know, three years from now, two and a half, three years from now.

Right.

So, are people then like it now because now people are itching to do something and getting out?

Like, has the pendulum now swung completely the other direction?

And now you're going to be able to do that?

I mean, I would say next year I should be normalized back to what 2019 looked like.

So, it's not the pendulum is not swinging to a point where I was like, oh my God, this is like, it's going to just get back to 2019 next year.

And the reason I believe that is, first of all, the worse the economy does, the better for us.

If the stock market was to completely crash, that's great for us because you're going to not go to Europe on a trip.

You're not going to go to Disney.

You're going to come and crawl under barbed wire for $150.

Exactly.

It's like cheap entertainment.

Cheap entertainment.

So that's number one.

Number two,

the issue is with people not back in offices.

If you and I were working in the same office, you're excited about doing tough mutter this weekend or Spartan, you're telling me, and I'm like, I'm in, I'm doing all you, but you're not in office.

And those conversations are not necessarily

happening on Zooms.

So, um,

so that's a challenge.

Yeah, that's true.

And then the third challenge is this huge volume of people that were crazy about our races, they've literally grown roots on their couches the last two years.

Yeah.

And so, and so, when we look at our numbers, they're almost all new people, brand new people.

And the legacy racers, like they need a kick in the ass.

They need to get back in the game.

How are you, what's your plan or marketing plan or what's your model to get them back engaged?

We ordered a thousand black vans from Amazon and we're going to just drive to their houses and rip them off their couches.

Kind of like what you do with your children every morning at five o'clock.

Okay, just

if your doorbell rings three times, it's us.

Oh my gosh.

And I wouldn't be surprised if that's actually accurate and true.

That's amazing.

All right, so we're going to have to wrap this because we do have to, you know, you have to.

What would part three cover?

Like, we're up to the point.

We're up to the point where we covered Spartan, we covered the kids.

No, I have like a lot of intricate questions, but I'm not even going to tell you.

Then you won't come back.

Okay.

Okay, fine.

I was thinking for the audience, like, what part?

Why is she excited about that?

I want to talk about your CNBC show, right?

Which is a big one.

Is there or is there not going to be a season two?

It's going to be up to everybody out there.

How are the ratings?

Ratings were okay.

They weren't great.

They did better during the afternoon than they did at night.

I just think it's about getting people to know the show exists, the education piece.

It can take a while because it's a new show and people may not know who you are.

But your style, I think, is exactly what...

people actually are attracted to in TV because it's like super extreme.

You know, that's my, that's my opinion, but we can talk offline.

There's other things too, but you know what?

We're going to wrap it and you're going to come back.

This is now going to be part three

with Joe because he's so, you're so amazing.

I'm like, this is one of my favorites of favorites because you're so hardcore and like so nice at the same time.

You're like, you're so likable.

I got to tell my wife.

She thinks I'm going to do it.

I'm going to call her, Joe.

You should call her.

I will.

Give me her number.

I'm serious.

Yeah, please do it.

I mean, mean, this, okay, so just for the okay, so as you're texting me your wife's phone number, how do people find if they want to do a Spartan race?

Yeah, yeah.

So anybody out there that's a friend of yours,

let's see, I'm going to give you all until September 15th.

Not a friend of mine, because maybe this won't be up at that point.

Tell them about where to look into Spartan or yourself.

Well, you could just send me an email.

If you write me an email, it's got to be one or two sentences only.

If it's longer, then I'm not going to read it.

Joe at Spartan.com.

J-O-E at Spartan.com.

Shoot me an email.

And then if you want to do a race,

they'll get in touch with you.

No, no, no, not me.

Well, just hear me out for a second.

Okay.

They'll get in touch with you after you listen or watch this episode.

You put all their names in a spreadsheet.

They're all racing on me.

It's free.

But don't keep it out there forever.

You got yourself in trouble the first time with this $70 million thing.

Why would you do that so much?

I don't mind.

It doesn't matter.

I'm happy to do it.

At the end of the day, when I think about

why I do this, it's because of the emails emails I get that say, hey, I'm back with my husband.

I'm back with my wife.

I lost 300 pounds.

I no longer drink.

I no longer do drugs.

It really doesn't have anything about the money.

Like, if you receive those emails, that's current.

That's how I get paid.

So

do I want to be sustainable and be able to make my payroll?

Of course.

But

I got to pinch myself.

I'm the luckiest person on the planet.

So just

get people to do the race.

And if, and if the price or I don't have the money or whatever the friggin excuse is, they're going to come up with, like, let's not, let's not put barriers in front of them.

Let's just get them there.

Get them there.

Yeah.

Um, and if you want to look, if you want to like know more about Joe, go, he's on now social media all the time.

He's doing live workouts.

I don't know if you're still doing the live workouts, I don't do them anymore, but your content is great.

Thank you.

It's at Joe DeSena, D-E.

Oh, it's at,

I don't even know what it is, at real Joe DeSena, maybe, maybe, something like that.

And go to the sub, go to the Spartan website because there's like a million different kinds of uh events.

Oh, check out, um,

check out

project seven at Spartan.

Check out project seven.

What I did was I assembled our seven toughest events around the world, and I challenge anybody out there to tackle one or two or five or seven of these.

It's pretty unbelievable.

You got to see I assemble these seven.

That's amazing.

Crazy.

By the way, you should put a whole group together.

Here's what we should do.

You need to put a whole group together and bring them to the death race end of death race?

Yeah, end of June 23.

You want to have some fun.

We bring the cameras, we bring a whole group under you, and they do the death race.

I'll do it, but does it have to be the death race?

Do the death race?

Yeah, no, there's the death race on the because it's on the farm.

Can't wait.

Okay, well,

um, maybe.

Okay, so, Joe, I love you, and goodbye.

Habits and hustle, time to get it rolling.

Stay up on the grind, don't stop, keep it going.

Habits and hustle from nothing into something.

All out, hosted by Jennifer Cohen.

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