Barbell Shrugged - 116- Spartan Race and Spartan Death Race Founder Joe De Sena Teaches Us To Spartan Up!

Episode Date: May 7, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Joe DeSina, founder of the Spartan Race and Spartan Death Race. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. And my ass was never the same. That sounds bad out of context. Welcome to Barbell Stroke. I'm Mike Blutzer here with Doug Larson and Chris Moore with CTP behind the camera. Of course, we are here. We have traveled to the strange land of Vermont.

The beautiful and strange land. Pittsfield, Vermont. And to talk about Spartan racing. It's an intense topic. Is where people come to get their asses kicked? Long story short. Like we did this morning. I remember a couple years ago I discovered Spartan race because there was like all these videos online of people just going for days and days and days up in Vermont and up in the mountains. And it was the water and ice and all sorts of was there fire, terrible conditions.

There's fire. There's fire. Yeah, that's fine. You got to jump over it. I've been challenged many times to sign up for it. And I'm like, yeah, I should do that. When it comes time to sign up and put your credit card information down. I once looked at the registration page. All the further you got. What kept you away? Well you know weightlifting because. Sounds like fear.

The race happens. Sounds like fear kept you away. The race happens so close to like weightlifting and the time of year, and there's just not enough time between the two sports, and they're so different. You would train so differently. You saw me this morning. It wasn't pretty. You're still breathing heavy.

Yeah. For the record, you and I both were taking up the rear on the one-mile warm-up, quotation marks, warm-up jog in the 5 a.m. or practically icy, cold, rainy conditions on that driveway out there. Yeah. We thought that you guys had gone for coffee. Yeah. We were gone. You had

half of it right. Well, Chris and I were having a discussion. It was very philosophical, deep conversation. Stall tactics is what it was. CTP kept going, oh, let me take a break. I got to get some of this footage off to the side. For your sake. is what it was ctp kept going oh let me take a break i gotta get this some of this footage i gotta get my camera off to the side for your sake it's funny it's funny because um the camera doesn't work when it's that dark out so i knew that was a tactic oh you knew you were full of shit there's

no lights it's a it's a technology man you wouldn't understand right, Joseph, how'd you end up in, how'd you end up in Vermont running these death races? So, um, crazy story. Uh, I had done, uh, adventure races all over the world. And every time I did one, I thought, could I live here? You know, you're out there kayaking or biking or hiking and, uh, just Vermont or the woods in the woods and mountains. And I mean, everywhere, Switzerland, Northern Quebec, um, down in South America, you name it. I was doing these races and I was I found myself in Wyoming, in Jackson Hole. And on the plane on the way back, there was a magazine that had, I don't know if you know, the ranches in Wyoming are like 70 million dollars, 140. So they were out of the price range. And there was this farm property in Vermont with a covered bridge, horse barn, acreage, mountain

for $390,000. So very inexpensive relative to the $120 million properties elsewhere in the mag. $390 million is practically free. $309,000. For some people,9,000. 3,000. Like for some people, Doug. Sure, sure. So we checked it out

and we ended up here. And then we got married on the farm. My mother-in-law was dead set against it. Who gets married on a farm? Well, it's a nice farm, in all fairness. I just want to stop real quick. CTP, I want you to film

right out this window right here there's somebody training out there i just looked out and there's a guy running through the woods or is he or is he's going home i know we have a lot of guys out in the wilderness as being mountain men is his is that joe also uh that could be i can't see who it is but every other person up here is named joe there are a lot of hard-ass working Joes here. A lot of Joes. Except for the guy that really lives in the woods. One of the guys actually lives in the woods, right?

Yeah, Matt. Matt eats squirrels. I don't know what he eats, but he is tough. He survives somehow. He doesn't come in town for food. He just eats what's out there. We see him in the general store every once in a while. He doesn't talk much.

He just loves maintaining the trails. But he's a sweetheart of a guy if you can actually break through. He's just, I think he's been alone so long in the woods. He's getting, turning into like. The wild man. He's like feral. Mountain man. Regressing back to his primal state.

Legitimately. He's not just wearing a primal t-shirt. This guy is fucking primal. Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Yeah, yeah. And you also have some guys, we won't get too far off that, but some guys living in barns. It's just some tough, tough individuals around here.

It's cold water, cold living. Yeah. So we get the place. Mother-in-law says, who gets married on a farm? I say, don't worry, we're going to fix it up. We've got nine months. I call all my adventure racing buddies who are used to doing eight, ten days out in the wilderness. So how long have you been doing the adventure racing?

You've got all these friends. So at that point, I had probably done a decade, 11 years of crazy races. Call up a bunch of buddies, five or six of them show up, and we dismantle the barn we're in as well as the other buildings really quickly. We're doing 24, literally 24-hour days, just taking the stuff down because the winter's coming.

And we put in new foundations. We stand everything back up. We make it just in time for the wedding we get married here and uh a bunch of people ask at the wedding hey could we have our wedding at the farm so that starts a wedding business which will help pay the taxes help pay the bills and uh and lucky enough we land uh theo ebstein gets married here he was uh managing the red socks at the time young young manager, and people in Boston go crazy for him. So that really just helped this wedding business

in a big way. And then a bunch of other famous people I'm not supposed to mention because we have to sign NDAs, showed up and get married here. And from there, we said, oh, you know what would be awesome is if we had an actual working farm

with cattle and vegetables growing and things so we could supply all the food, not only for ourselves, but for the wedding. So we got a farm going. And then the general store came up for sale. And they were going to turn it into apartments that had been around since like the 1800s. So we grabbed that. I called some friends in New York to raise the money and we bought the general store and figured, oh, then the farm could supply the general store and the general store could do the cooking for the weddings. And we could build

this really cool, uh, self-sustaining little economy. Yeah. We made that point earlier in our guest today. You're constructing a whole new economy and it's otherwise very small town. How many people, it was a 500 400 people yeah 400 people and you're constructing these awesome facilities it's really fantastic and every one of them is extraordinarily beautiful and well done we just um there are more chickens here and moose than there are people which is difficult it makes it difficult some people would hate that sign about moose crossing earlier i've never seen a moose crossing sign before the first time i've ever seen these crossing. So can you explain everybody

what the Spartan race is? Uh, the first thing that ever popped up on my radar was the Spartan death race, because that's like, you know, uh, the most Epic. Uh, sometimes I see like five or 10 K I'm like, yeah, yeah. And really I'm like, it doesn't really register, but then I see, registers with me and I see something that's like two or three days long and I go, whoa, that's serious, man. And I have got some friends that have done it since then. But can you tell us a little bit about the Spartan race and then how you got into racing? And I'd like to hear about, kind of touched on it yesterday when we came in, just how you were in Manhattan at one time.

So before we came up here and did everything I just explained, I was running a Wall Street firm and knock on wood, doing okay. But it wasn't fulfilling. Everything was about the money each week and how much you were making and the dinners and the drinks and really looking for something else, which is why when I was doing the races, I was looking for could I live here. And the opportunity came up to pack it in, leave the city life, leave a lot of money on the table, and come up here and just live a different life. And so Courtney, my wife, was interested.

We did it. We pulled the trigger. Now the weddings are rolling. The general store is open. The farm's moving with steam. But we need more people here. You can't survive on chickens't, uh, survive on chickens. So, uh, so, uh, I said, Oh, why don't we put on a death race? I was with my buddy,

Andy, who you guys haven't met yet. And, um, he had this experience through life. He was a swim coach and, uh, he would always look for great athletes, just like any other coach in any other sport. Swimming is pretty serious, right? These guys are putting in five, six hour days in the pool, huge training, huge training volume.

And, and, um, he'd be disappointed because 90% of them wouldn't, wouldn't commit at the level he wanted them to commit at. I had experienced the same exact things through my life, but in business, I'd,

I'd been running businesses since I'm 13 years old, massive training volume with me. Cause I like to work 20 hours a day and very few people could keep that pace. The only people I found that would stick with me were Eastern Europeans. They were animals. They worked. He's a tough sort of person.

They are different. I couldn't hang with them and I just fell in love with their whole philosophy and they had a different frame of reference on life like they were fighting. You ever see Cinderella Man with Russell Crowee it's an amazing movie no so so he's a washed up boxer he's uh he's going for a heavyweight title fight he breaks his hand like during regular work or whatever or maybe got in a fight and um he has no business going back in the

ring he gets the title fight and the reporter comes up to him and says, why are you fighting? Like you're washed up, you're out of shape, you got a broken hand. He says, I'm fighting for milk. Now you can't compete with a guy fighting for milk. He's got no money, he's got nothing. You can't compete with that.

And the Eastern Europeans were fighting for milk. And so that just intrigued me. So Andy had this perspective on swimmers. I had this perspective on trying to find these great employees and partners. And we said, we were out on a 12-hour snowshoe hike through these mountains one night. Why don't we create a race

that just purposely breaks people? Not unlike the military. The military does like, we're not gonna pat you on the back. We're not gonna have water stations. Nobody's cheering for you. This is just gonna break you. And the one person or 10 people that are left when it's over, those are people we wanna hang out with. not going to have water stations. Nobody's cheering for you. This is just going to break you. And,

and the one person or 10 people that are left when it's over, those are the people we want to hang out with. Those are the people you'd want in the swimming pool or running a business with you. So that was early 2000s, 2004, 2005. And, uh, and the race takes, takes a turn for, for the better. All of a sudden, uh, Olympic athletes are showing are showing up, all kinds of people, three, 400 participants. Well, New York Times picks it up and they come out here and they film and all of a sudden,

reality TV show folks are calling my house. My wife's like, we're not doing a reality show as well. Hold on, honey. Hold on.

Let's listen to what the man has to say. Let's just listen, right? Yeah, let's just listen. So, Marion,

remember, Marion's walking around here with a camera and private jets start flying into Rutland, Vermont. And very rarely do private jets flying through Rutland, Vermont. And they're the reality TV show folks. So the guys that owned Ultimate Fighter, the UFC,

owned Orange County Chopper, Ghost Hunters, 13 hit TV shows, shows up. And he's like, I want to do this with you. I love what you're doing. Death Race. We're doing this. And we sell the show in five minutes. Discovery 13 episodes. It's going to be a giant deal. This is like 2009 ish, 2008, 2009. So we're excited. And so I was thinking, you know, we're going to have this TV show. We got this great race. You know, we got a big opportunity here and a big platform when this is on TV

to change lives, to really go out to the masses and get people to experience the stuff we've been experiencing. It can't be over two days, three days, because the public's not going to participate. It's got to be something that's an hour, two hours, three hours, and we get people off the couch.

And so Spartan Race was born. So we were on dual tracks. TV show's coming for Death Race. Spartan Race is born. And the funny thing about Spartan Race was I called up all those adventure racing buddies that had helped me with the barns here and stuff and begged Andy, begged everybody.

And as exciting as the idea sounded, I begged my brother-in-law and my family. Everybody said, it's ridiculous. No one is going to go jump over a fire and crawl under a bar. You can't make that business work. So nobody wanted to invest. So whatever I said,

I'm going to invest just a tiny amount of money and I'm going to get some friends to run this thing. And and we did it and it exploded. It became, as you know, a big business. We'll have maybe a million a million participants this year. That's amazing. A million participants. You clearly put your finger right on something that people were begging for. People who are chained up in whatever life they're living.

We're not happy with the traditional fitness track of typical gym stuff. This is ignited something in a whole lot of people. Yeah. I think people needed it, right? There's people working in cubicles, they're sleeping on their couches, they're eating crappy food. And we gave them a vehicle to change that, to be a Navy SEAL for a day, to be an Olympian for a day, being a tour de France for a day, right? Just feel badass-ass to face themselves. Really? Yeah. Find out what they're made of and then force themselves to wake up early, go to bed early, not drink that extra glass of wine. And so, so it worked. And, um, so what are they experiencing during these races? You mentioned jumping over fire, which probably nobody else does. I wouldn't think like what other things

are in these races that are unique. Yeah. Well, there'll be fire. You'll be jumping over a lot of fire. Every obstacle you can envision in a military obstacle course. So like really this sport was born out of the military in the early 1900s. These guys were setting up walls and rope climbs and things that you see at Spartan Race or even in some gyms these days. They're purposely, we purposely designed them in a way that are meant to break you. So you might do a rope climb, and then all of a sudden you've got something

we call a Hercules hoist, so now you're hurting your arms again. And we do that because we want you to feel in doses a serious obstacle that you've got to overcome mentally and physically, and at the end, then the medal means something and you start thinking you know what

I'm tougher than I thought I was that kid screaming in the morning I mean he's not so bad the fact that the car didn't start it's not so bad the coffee being cold is not so bad we go into an airport

I don't know about the coffee being cold you're on a whole other level you mentioned yesterday this is ridiculous over dinner, whatever. What this actually does is sort of strip away everything from your life. And it reduces you down to a state where you're like,

I just want one glass of water. If I had one glass of water, everything would be okay. I think that's not something that most humans in today's world, at least in, you know, typical Western place is ever going to experience. Or that I would really just die for one bite of anything.

Anything food. That's fighting for milk. Yeah, that's fighting for milk. You get a taste of what that is actually like. If it's just for one hour, imagine it's a transformative experience. We've got to get Zach. We've got to make a t-shirt that says,

fight for your milk. Fight. Oh, yeah. There you go. Zach's all over that. Zach passed out from that workout this morning. I'm trying to find, I'm trying to find, man, someone shot me a message. I can't remember if it was on Facebook or Twitter.

They said to ask you about a story about pennies. Oh, the pennies were good. Pennies were good. So, so going back to the death race. So death race every year has a life lesson. So the year that that listener is asking about was the year of money. Is money important or isn't it so we decided that we were going to have everybody carry um 50 i believe it was in pennies which is about 35 pounds in their backpacks a lot of pennies man now when the race starts you can imagine you're going to be going whatever 72 hours um or more the finish line's unknown and um and you're carrying all this weight plus all

your other gear and an axe and so forth and if we say to them which we did you can get rid of the money you can donate it we had a donation booth you can donate it all you can give it to another team somebody else's racing yeah you carry this this is heavy or you keep it because you might need it like well shit what if there's an obstacle later that I need money to pay for? Okay. So people, just like in life, people had to make this decision. And so one guy ended up keeping all his money

and collecting other money. And Marion will remember this oh too well, but they were going through a pond. And I see where this is going. And this guy gets pinned underwater. Yeah. And Marion, they happen to be filming. And I just randomly happen to be coming on this situation.

I mean, we cover thousands of acres here with this race. I just happen to be at this spot in this moment. And I see him burst out of the water. I don't know exactly what happened yet. And I, you know, he's breathing heavy. He's laying on the side, just trying to, and I turned. He's on shore. Yeah, he's on shore.

And I turned to the camera people and I said, weren't you going to save him? They were like, yeah, we had to get the shot first. We have priorities, man. Content over that guy's life. But when you see this shot. He signed the waiver, right? He signed the waiver.

When you see the shot. The five or 20 page waiver you've got. It is scary. I mean, his head goes on there and there's life. But when you see this shot. He signed the waiver, right? He signed the waiver. When you see the shot. The 20 page waiver you've got. It is scary. I mean, his head goes on there and there's silence. Wow. And there's nothing. No bubbles, nothing. He's just underwater

just running or something? Well, he can't get the backpack off. Grab on the camera. He's like, this is great. This is real. Is that footage that we can clip into the show? Yeah.

Like right after this we clip it in real quick. Yeah, Marianne can give you that. During the commercial break, we should play that. It's an incredible scene. Scary scene. And I immediately pulled the pond from the race after that moment because, yeah, that was dangerous.

Good story. Did he come out with the pennies? He came out with the pennies. Or did he leave the pennies? He came out with the pennies. I think he became a monk after that. He doesn't care about money anymore. He's like, walk along the bottom of the pines when he got out.

Money's not important to him anymore. I can say that is a brilliant twist, man. That is fantastic. You do not get that kind of experience in a typical fitness contest of any kind. Strength contest, no matter what. That's fantastic. And that message, right? Good message.

Yeah, yeah. You're drilling way past fitness and strength. That's amazing. Yeah, so during lunch, I read the prologue of your book, uh, the story about being in Canada and doing like 350 miles and negative 30 degree temperature or something like that. Can you briefly touch on that story? It was a crazy story. You can't read that story without being like, I should read the rest of this book. I'm not a reader. So I need to hear it. So it was funny about that was, um, was, uh, we had signed up for the i did a rod

which is the dog sled race across um alaska i've heard i need to see that that looks awesome well we were doing it without the dogs or the sleds i heard it was hard with the dogs so um so we go out there well before we got there um my friends who were getting me into this sport suggested that we do a tune-up practice race in Northern Quebec. It's going to be easy. We're going to just go win it, right? 350 miles, right? Crazy dudes, man. Well, it turns out it's none of us had ever experienced this before. Certainly not me. I was new to the sport and the guys that were supposed and girl was supposed to be taking me through this had never experienced a winter uh race like this so anyway we get we get out in the wild out there it starts out in a um ice boating uh challenge so you got to jump in this ice boat as um in the

st lawrence river as chunks chunks the size of volkswagens of ice are smashing into your boat you're jumping off the boat to to run with your spike shoes on the ice to get the boat moving again. Needless to say, you get to the other side of the river, you're soaked. It's 30 below. It was terrible. And then we got on our bicycles and we traveled through the snow, which don't work very well in snow. And then we were trekking and we found ourselves at one point, I don't want to ruin the book, in a situation that was dire. We were on top of a mountain and the team before us was rappelling down

about a 1,500 foot rappel and the ropes aren't long enough. There's not one rope that makes that. They're anchored in and then you switch over to another rope. Well, the guys that had set the ropes failed to tie in the first, whatever length that rope was, let's just call it 200 feet was not tied into the mountain so as he was going down this guy

happened to have enough experience it was in the night it was two two three a.m he happened to have enough experience that he felt the looseness of the rope and and braked in the dark in the dark and stopped oh my god so we get to the top the mountain, which took us about 12 hours to hike up this thing. And we got this situation where the ropes are shut down because they got a guy dangling from the rope. So we waited for a couple hours and it must've been colder than 30 below because it's the middle of the night.

And my team is a pretty aggressive team. Again, they were taking me there to win it, to get ready for this next race. And the requirement was you had to bring a tent. My team didn't want to carry the extra weight. So they cut the tent in half with a scissor before we went. So we really didn't have a tent. We had, we met the requirement of having a tent,

but there was no, there's only three sides to the thing. So, so. Yeah, that's not. Cause you didn't intend to actually use it. We didn't plan on using it, right? Three sides does not make a tent though. So now we're stuck on top of the mountain and this guy's dangling and the team says, all right, we got to dig a hole in the snow and just kind of,

you know, huddle up next to each other and try to stay warm until they fix this. Well, it never gets fixed. I remember laying there thinking, and again, this is my first big experience with something like this thinking, if the baby, when you were a baby and you came out of your mom, it must be a pretty horrific experience for the baby. This is worse. Whatever I'm going through right now is worse than what the baby feels. And so we ended up hiking down the mountain, which I'll save it for the book, but it was a brutal experience that should have really killed all four of us. And then it gets worse from there.

It has to be more intense than birth because as stressful as that is and as eye-opening as that is to sort of gain consciousness in this world, to lose it or to really believe you're about to lose it in an icy hole with other guys who are also terrified for their lives, that's going to change the course of your life. But, and then what I say is, but it could be worse, right? And then you think about those guys in Bosnia that have no roof, no heat, no money, no food. So is it really that bad?

Like, yeah, it was tough. It was dirty below. We didn't have a tent, but. What was that quote we heard yesterday on traveling up? Oh, yeah. It's like, no matter what the problem, you could always make it worse up? Oh yeah. It's like the, no matter what the problem, you could always make it worse,

right? Yeah. There's no problem that you can't make worse. Yeah. That, that was the exact one. And that sounds like what you're in. Yeah.

My whole life I've been saying it could be worse. It could be worse. I was, I don't know what I was up against recently, but I, I realized there was no more variations of it could be worse. I just said I could be dead, right? There was nothing,

there was nothing left. There was no, there's nothing left. I was bump I could be dead, right? There was nothing left. I was bumping up against the ceiling. You told us that, what was it, just this morning or late last night, that no matter how hard you might be suffering at something, no matter how much pain you might be experiencing, what's the alternative? Death. So this is actually a privilege to be able to experience whatever it is you're experiencing. Anything's better than death. The alternative is experiencing nothing. You don't want that. You want to put that off as long as you can. Everything's better than death. Yeah. So you nothing. You don't want that. Right. You want to put that off as long as you can. Everything's better than death.

Yeah. So you told us a little bit about the Spartan races, kind of the easier of the two, although I probably wouldn't call it easy. What's the difference between the Spartan race and the death races though? So not to take anything away from Spartan race, because I don't want to say death race is all this and the public's doing a race that's easier, but it's more accessible. It's very authentic. It comes from these roots of a brutal event. But Spartan Race is accessible for the public.

I mean, we've got 74-year-old grandmas out there doing it. We've got four-year-old kids doing it. Four-year-old kids. Four-year-old kids come out and compete. Now, we have a kids race. Well, yeah, sure. But still, it's more intense than t-ball practice. Speaking of young kids doing races, your eight-year-old kids. Four-year-old kids come out and compete. Now, we have a kids race. Well, yeah, sure. But still, it's more intense than T-ball practice. Speaking of young kids doing races, your eight-year-old ran the Boston Marathon?

He ran the marathon. Hey. Yeah, last Monday. CAF is a new charity for us. That's the Challenge Athletes Foundation. And they're awesome. They get prosthetics for people in need that want to compete in sports. And Jack and I went to, my son Jack and I went to a running event on the Friday night before the marathon.

And at the running event, they had a treadmill set up, and if you ran a mile, they donated $100 to the charity, to CAF. So Jack does that, and then he sees some of the victims come in from last year's Boston bombing. Jack is your son? Jack's my son, and he gets moved by seeing it. And he says, hey, dad, why don't we run the marathon? And I thought, all right, well, I got a number.

I don't think I can get a number for an eight-year-old. So what we'll have to do is just like walk alongside the spectators and maybe he'll make it four or five miles. Well, man, he ends up going 24 miles. And we get to his mom, my wife, and we're two miles from the finish and he looks great and he wants to continue. And of course my wife saying, you know, I'm a nutcase. Can't, he can, uh, he can't continue. He's only eight years old. And so, uh, there's a police officer and the police officer said, you know what, you're better off packing it in here because if you get

to the finish, they're probably not going to let them go through. So we were, I was thrilled. We get, we go through the gates and I said to my wife, Hey, where's the car? She parked two and a half miles from where we were. So we ended up getting miles in anyway. Yeah. Okay. So I derailed you. So, so back to the death races, like what specifically is, makes the death race so much more unique than the Spartan races? Well, death races, I like to say Spartan race is a baptism into this new healthy life like that you guys promote. Um, death race and exorcism death race is, um, is going to get rid of all those demons you've got. It's going to push you to your furthest limits. Um, the most hardened military men, women crack at death race.

And I'll give you, this will say it all. I'll give you one quick story. Last year's race, we put everybody in a pond, a reservoir. It was 50 some odd degrees. Everyone got hypothermic. They had to swim a mile with a life jacket on for safety, especially since the pennies incident and um after they came in on the mile they went to the dock and there was a roulette wheel

99 of the roulette wheel said get back in the water and do another mile one sliver of the wheel said you're done so what would happen what would happen is really interesting what would happen is um as the person started to swim out to do the mile, they started to convince themselves, man or female, that they were going to come back and it was going to land on, they're done. And so when it didn't, you'd see them break down on the dock, cry.

Didn't matter if six foot Marine, four foot woman, didn't matter. Everybody cried. And they had to get back in that water shaking. So at 1 p.m. in the afternoon, we were only allowed to use this gentleman's dock until 1 p.m. At 1 p.m. I had to have a cutoff allowed to use this gentleman's dock until 1 p.m. At 1 p.m., I had to have a cutoff

and there were three people that hadn't finished their third lap. Pulled them from the water. Two of them were six foot five military guys, ripped, you know, 3% body fat. One was a woman. I gave them the bad news. Hey guys, you're out.

You missed the cutoff. It's 1.15. The two guys hit the ground and they start crying. The woman takes her leg off. She has a prosthetic leg, dumps water out and some sand, puts it back on and says, hey, do you mind if I continue anyway? So think about how, that's the frame of reference.

That's what we're talking about, right? Here were two hardened military guys hit the ground crying and she's like, that's all right, I'm continuing anyway. Wow, she's gone through some rougher shit, I'm assuming. Yeah, so that's race. That's powerful. That's race. I got a crazy... We talked about the farm.

You guys up for a crazy story? Absolutely. That's why we're here. I guarantee. How many have you done? How many of these podcasts have you done? It's going to be 116. 116. Guarantee you've never had anything like this, what I'm about to tell you. Ready.

Pricing for impact. So the farm we're looking at here, I don't know if you want to get some footage out there. When we were doing that work I told you about, I needed to hire contractors, people that do work here. Very hard to get folks that want to work up here around hunting season. I land a local guy that is willing to

do the excavation work and get everything ready for that winter. Again, we're in a rush to get stuff done because winters are pretty harsh here. Guy says, I'll take the job, but I need at least a few days for hunting season. Look, you can't take any days off. We got to get the job done. Reluctantly, he starts running the machine. Fast forward a week, hunting season has ended. It's now Monday. And I don't know anything about hunting. I show up at the house. He's sweating profusely. He's like, I got to get out of here. It's five o'clock in the afternoon. I just finished work. Calm down. What's up? He says, well, you know, my whole life I've hunted. You didn't let me hunt. I was operating the machine right out there in the backyard.

And a deer ran by and I couldn't help myself. I jumped out of the backhoe and I tackled it and killed it with a handsaw. Swear to God. Oh, my God. So I'm processing that. Handsaw. Handsaw. I'm processing that.

And at the same time, I was saying, well, why, what's the problem, right? Let's assume that's true. What's the problem? And he says, I didn't tell you I'm a felon and, and hunting season ended yesterday and the deer doesn't have a tag, which I don't know what that means. And, uh, I got to bury it in the yard. And I said, well, don't bury the deer in the yard, put it in the bucket of the back home. Sure. there's a hunter in town that went hunting and didn't get anything and he would take the deer. So he puts it in the bucket of tobacco and he lifts it off the ground and he leaves. Fast forward. There are other workers on site. There are a couple of Eastern Europeans because I've had a lot of luck with them. They don't speak any English. They just speak Slovakian. I go to bed. I wake up in the morning and I noticed the deer is not in the backhoe. I had called a local guy to pick it. I assumed he picked it up, a hunter. I go to the general store for lunch that day. And the manager of the general store says to me, hey, Joe, do you want some venison?

And I said, hey, Mike, how do we have venison? And he said, strangest thing. He said, the Slovakians were done work and they were, they were carpenters in the back barn. If you look back there, that Brown barn and, um, they found a deer in your backhoe. So they threw it on their shoulders and they carried it to the general store and they gutted it and they hung it in the freezer. Now this might not be weird in Tennessee. I don't know, but this is pretty weird here. So fast forward. So I'm in, uh, I'm in New York and, um, every once in a while, uh, the flights get canceled because of snow or whatever. And I get, I convinced this, uh, Turkish guy to drive me up here. It's a, it's a driver. Uh, I would use every once in a while for 10 years while I was on wall street, Tony, Turkish, drives me up to Vermont.

We're about five minutes from Pittsfield. And he says, anywhere to get any deer meat? So I said, funny you should ask. Funny you should ask, Turkish Tony. Turkish Tony, go to the general store. Michael will cut you a piece. Fast forward two weeks. Slovakians are taking off for the holidays.

They surround me in my garage and they're screaming in their language. I can't understand them. And these are pretty rugged guys. And I'm trying to deal with the situation. I call a friend of mine who translates and he says, they're pissed off. They were taken off for their holiday and the deer is missing from the general store.

Yeah. So I call Michael and I said, Michael, what happened to the deer? And he said, well, that guy, Tony, Turkish Tony came. He took the whole deer, stuck it in his trunk and he left for New York. So wait, it gets better. So now it's spring. I'm in New York.

I need a driver. And I, cause I never paid attention to the deer thing again. I call Tony, somebody else answers the phone. I said, Hey, you know, is Tony there? Oh no. Tony's no longer with us. So I'm convinced that the Slovakians, whack the guy, whack the guy. You stole our deer. Yeah. So, um, so there's some crazy stuff that goes on up here. But is he, is Turkish Tony? No no I don't want to investigate I don't want anything to do with the deer

the handsaw the whole thing you figured this the concentric circles of the story were only getting wider and more intense like let's just not

investigate this deer I don't want to be part of it Slovakians are going to hear this podcast that's right so yeah you hang out with a lot of

rough-nosed dudes who was the guy you were talking about that you ended up hiring that wrestled in the dark growing up that's a great story you want to about that you ended up hiring that wrestled in the dark growing up? That's a great story. You want to hear that story?

This story is crazier. For sure. You can tell it on here too. You know so many interesting people through this Spartan stuff. Oh man. It's like you

and this town attract like It's a vortex. Some of the most interesting individuals. I mean, as we were talking, a guy that we had seen and met in a general store

a few hours ago was just running through the woods. Going home. I mean, yeah, he's probably, was that the guy that lives in the woods? Could have been. Yeah, very likely. Or maybe he was running to his home in the barn with the goats.

When we hit a million, and then I'll go back to that wrestling story. When we hit a million fans on Facebook for Spartartan i sent out a facebook post my wife flipped out i invited every fan i said anybody can come to pittsville you invited a million people they're not gonna come in all fairness she's probably right on this particular issue they've been coming well only one percent come but that's a thousand people it's a lot of people yeah more than that excuse me so so um all right so you saw this morning my kids do uh kung fu yeah just for the record we were in here doing we ran a mile what about a mile you probably

thought it was nothing i thought it was like 10 miles we came in here to your barn very nice barn did a series what was was a hundred reps of, you know, kettlebell swings and burpees and one like a pistol ups, double unders. Yeah. A wide array of rope climbs is very intense. And the whole time I'm thinking,

I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. And the whole time your kids are doing the splits and picking their heads up behind or their feet up behind their head and put it against the beam, counting reps in Chinese while their Kung Fu master instructor and wrestling guy are instructing them that his son does bear crawls like a wolf across the barn floor running like a frigging. I'm not,

that is, I wish we had video of that. I was, I was, I was stretching or something. So my head was real close to the ground as they were starting the, uh, the bear crawl drill.

And I, it sounded like a pack of dogs were running by, but it was just three kids. I was thinking the whole time, these kids would kick the shit out of most kids in this world. I was sitting there doing burpees, and I hear, down, up, down, up, and I turn around, and you're, what, she's six? Hi.

Your five-year-old daughter's doing pistols behind me going, down, up, down, up. Very casual. It's like 6 a.m. Laughing and giggling and then doing cartwheels at high speed down the thing. It was intense. It was amazing. So needless to say, yeah, they're doing that training. And again, I don't have any fighting skills. I wasn't trained in that stuff and I don't have a lot of knowledge in that area. But Spartan Race hooked me up with a lot of MMA fighters. Spartan Race hooked me up

with a lot of military special forces. And in those meetings, I learned a lot about wrestling, American wrestling. Special forces wants American wrestlers. MMA guys want, MMA trainers want American wrestlers. So I started to investigate and have more conversations about American wrestling only to hear this incredible story, which blows me away and which is why the kids train the way they do. So a friend of mine says, listen, you want to hear the best story ever? I grew up in Seattle next door to two brothers. The dad was an ex Green Beret. And every night after dinner, he had the two brothers go down the basement for an hour, put on a blindfold and wrestle in the dark. He said it's cool once or twice.

He did it for 10 years, seven days a week, every night to the point where, you know, the wife wanted to leave, the social services were being called. So fast forward, he becomes a coach at Stanford University, a wrestling coach. And they allow in some other wrestlers from the neighborhood just to mix it up with the kids. Well, I guess one of the kids coming in to mix it up, a neighborhood kid, it turns out he'd been really casing this coach,

one of the two brothers that trained for the 10 years. So he asked the coach one night, hey coach, can I sleep on the mat? I got locked out of my apartment. Coach says, don't be ridiculous, stay at my house. Well, coach comes coach one night, hey coach, can I sleep on the mat? I got locked out of my apartment. Coach says, don't be ridiculous. Stay at my house. Well,

coach comes home that night, sees the guy on the couch. He goes to bed around 2 AM. He wakes up with a gun to his head. This guy, um, they was very nice to let him sleep over. Uh,

apparently you've been casing him and for whatever reason, wanted to kill him, stripped him down to his, uh, boxers, put him in a chair and, uh, zip tied his hands behind him down to his uh boxers put him in a chair and uh zip tied his hands behind his back to the chair and zip tied each leg to the chair put a pillowcase over his head duct taped his head and uh i guess was getting ready to shoot him

the uh wrestler the coach convinces uh the perpetrator to shut the lights. Figured that's the only chance he has. Perpetrator shuts the lights and he goes into his expertise, which was wrestling blindfolded in the dark. And somehow takes this guy down because all he has is his head and pins him and calls 911 from behind his back. Police come, break down the door, can't believe what they find, save him and call his dad and tell the, break down the door, can't believe what they find, save him, and call his dad and tell the ex-Green Beret, I got to tell you, we've been to car accidents,

motorcycle crashes. We've never seen anything like what your son did to this guy. Brutalized him with his head. Tied to a chair. So I immediately flew out to California to meet Jay. And we're good friends now. And we got to be good friends with Jay. You don't want to be his enemy. And, and so,

yeah, so now my kids are training like wolves. That's awesome. Oh man. Yeah. So as we were talking about earlier, there's, this is a vortex that attracts some of the most interesting people.

Some of the most, some of the most interesting people some of the most some of the toughest people and as you were talking about before uh the spartan death race and things like that kind of serve as a filter so that they can you know have the most interesting and uh the toughest and the most hard-working people possible you know working with you and just being around those people and what we got to do we came in yesterday and we didn't know what to expect really. We had never really been to Vermont or anything like that. Not like this. And you know, we had to drop, we flew into Albany and we drove up and we're like, this is really small town stuff. Like I didn't expect it to be this small town. So we get into the end last night, you called us up and we go to the general store. We got to talk in a bit and we're like, I save a lot of this for the podcast tomorrow. Cause if we talk about it,

we'll get a ruin. But, uh, we ended up hooking up this morning during the workout, but then we went to the general store afterwards and people were filtering in to the store as we were all sitting there eating breakfast and you were introducing, Oh, this guy just moved in. Uh, and he's living in the cabin up here. This guy's kind of living out in the woods. These guys like moved out here to train for Spartan Race or they just wanted to live the Spartan lifestyle. And so CTP got to interview and we all got to talk and people got to talk to the camera about what brought them here, where they came from, what they're doing here. And then we also got to meet a farmer Joe and he's running a sustainable farm here just right down the road with goats and some greenhouses and stuff like that. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a break

real quick and CTP is going to edit in all that, all the footage of the guys talking. And so all the Joes was just like three or four Joes. I met so many last 12 hours. Uh, so you're going to add in all that. And then what else are you supposed to edit in? Oh, the guy with the pennies, the guy with the pennies, the guy drowning dramatic moment. So, yeah. So, uh, just want to let you guys know that I don't be skipping over this part in the middle because uh ctp says it's going to be pretty epic what he's going to edit in it's like a bonus footage of us training apparently the only number you know is 100 because when we got to the workout this morning he was like all

right 100 pistols 100 pull-ups 100 burpees 100 wall ball shots what else did we do 25 rope rope climbs oh yeah yeah i didn't want to do 100 rope climbs just something casual you know a little warm up in the morning you know so stick around watch that during the

you know during the break and then we'll come back with more than likely some more epic stories we should end it with Top of the Mountain Hike yes

we'll do that excellent and we're back we're here with Joe DeSinaina of a spartan race spartan death race and uh i'm still confused about all that but i still want to get some examples about all the crazy shit that happened to the death race what was the one where they had to like they got rid of the chain on their bike and they had to like carry the bike for 48 hours that's the one i've heard something like that that's like the first story where I heard people were getting fucked with before. And I was like,

Oh shit. Yeah. So is that, is that true? What's the whole story there? Yeah. So the thinking was, um, you, you talked to Michael Phelps coach and he'll tell you, he purposely threw obstacles at Michael Phelps before the Olympics, like, um, screwing with his flight tickets, breaking his goggles, doing things that would just frustrate the hell out of a competitor at that level. It's genius. And it was all to get them ready for the big one, and it worked. So the idea here was let's take their bike chains off their bikes,

tell them to bring their bikes. So now they're expecting they're going to ride and never let them ride and just carry their bikes around. You sneaky. I mean, I heard that story, and I was looking at, because Kevin Lowe, hi, Kevin. I know you watch the show. Hey, big boy.

Of course you do. He told me, he was like, dude, you need to sign up. And as I said before, one of the big reasons I didn't is just because conflicting sports. Fear. And fear, mostly fear. It takes a lot of training to do something like the death race. The seasons don't match up. Whatever you say you're around. Yeah, that's true. Uh, yeah,

you got to spend months and months preparing. So you got to take a break from one and then take another couple months to recover. But, uh, I, I got us, I was looking at the registration page and I was looking at the gear list and I had heard that story before and I was looking and you guys had snowshoes this is probably two years ago two or three years ago you had snowshoes listed on there and I was like was it September is the when the races or something like that and I was like snowshoes I don't know if there's snow up there I was like that's just bullshit bringing snowshoes for no good reason because I knew that you'd made people bring bikes

and they didn't get to ride them. Yeah, no, that's exactly the game plan is just, you know, when's the race start? We might respond with, and, you know, don't forget you should bring sunblock. And the guy's like, but I just asked when the race started. What am I going to do with sunblock?

So the game starts before you even show up. Way before you show up. One year we had somebody, a woman manning a station where they had to check in and then get instructions to go to the next station. She only spoke Mandarin. So the competitors are there. They're exhausted.

They go up and they'd say, all right, I'm done. And she'd respond in Mandarin. And the guy or the girl, like, what am I supposed to do with that? So we do like to mess with them. Was it your race where they had to memorize the 10 first presidents? That was the one I did, yeah. The first 10 presidents in order. In order.

Had to go up to the top of the mountain. I'll let you tell it. Get it wrong and you're going back to the top of the mountain. So you had to go up to the top of the mountain, come down come down list them in order and then if you got it in the wrong order or missed the name then you gotta go back up read the list again and the guy who ended up doing the best was like british is that correct funny that's right he was like he wasn't even american all the americans like i have no idea we had a challenge once we had um we got them completely uh we chainsawed a hole in the pond

because it was all ice and everybody had to get in and stand in it for 20 minutes so they were frozen. They didn't die? No, and then handed them a pistol, a loaded pistol, and they had to hit a target.

No one tried to shoot you? How long is the waiver for the race? Yeah, it's a pretty serious waiver, but you only had one bullet. So if you missed the target, it was four or five mile hike, top of the mountain, there was another bullet for you. Oh, man. What kind of pistol was this? How far was the target?

It was probably 50 yards. 50 yards? 50 yards. How big was the target? was the uh the target it was probably 50 yards 50 yards yards and um how big was the target it was small target there's no way you're hitting it it was the apple on a stick was it nine millimeter no no no no i don't i don't even know what uh what i don't even know what kind of pistol it was okay so if you're shooting a nine millimeter with a five inch barrel, you're accurate at about 55 yards after that, you know, who knows that's the rule. So, uh, you had at 50 yards, there are no rules. That's all set on the assumption that you weren't just in freezing cold water for 20 minutes. That's right. No one, no one tells me that goes down. I had no, no one hit it.

So they go up. They got to get another bullet. They come back down. And then at what point do you say, okay, move on with the rest of the race or you're done or what happens? Yeah, that's the thing. We get to just change the rules as it goes because we are looking to see how people are reacting, who drops out.

Most of the time in something like that, people just start dropping out. I heard this whole story about a frat house. People had to show up at a frat house. Is that true? No. No? No. I can't think. Something like a frat house. People had to show up at a frat house. Is that true? No. No? No, I can't think. Something like a frat house

and they had to chug a beer at some point. No, no, no, that's not, we wouldn't put something like that. That's not a death race. That's Coachella. That's called college. Yeah, you're mixing.

I did the death race one night. It was all over campus. Got really drunk, man. Had to run home naked. So how long is the death race one night it was all over campus got really drunk man had to run home naked so how long is the death race usually last one day two days uh could be one could be two could be three it's it's once enough people have quit okay so once a certain amount quit then you call it and we call say 15 is that right and whoever's like we like 15 so whoever's furthest down down the line of the race is the winner? Yes, whoever's completed the most at that point. And you guys had to cancel it.

You guys canceled it one year or shut it down early due to a storm. Is that right? No. No. We love storms. We love storms. I'm just like, I heard all these stories. Here's what you heard.

What you heard is in Boston at a Spart race oh um we had a hurricane roll in it was it was uh it was irene and um irene rolled in and boston shut that race down for us oh so we posted on facebook we're sorry but we can't host the race because of the hurricane and it was our stupid boston Stupid Boston. It was our worst experience with Facebook. We had never been attacked on Facebook before, and so the comments started rolling in. This is BS. This is crazy. We want our money back.

We should race. And so I told my whole team, who were very experienced at responding on social media, stand back because I'm responding. And I responded, anybody who wants a race in the hurricane, I'll be there 5 a.m. and uh so some people some people showed up now the local town went crazy the police fire everybody went crazy but like I was gonna give them what they wanted and uh yeah and so we

we uh we had about 150 show up and uh that was the first hurricane heat at a Spartan race so now at every almost every race we have something called the hurricane heat at a Spartan race. So now at almost every race, we have something called the hurricane heat where a bunch of the really excited Spartans, we'll call them, the overambitious ones show up. And it's- They all sound overambitious to me. Well, it's very much like a couple of hours

in military style training. They're carrying tires, they're working together. And it's turned out to be a really cool experience for those that maybe work their way through Spartan have done a ton of Spartans and someday might want the exorcism of a death race. Death race is really, uh, it's like climbing Mount Everest.

There's lots of mountains in between, um, Spartan races for the, for everybody else, but somebody that's looking for that really risky, uh, push the limits event. Transcendence. Transcendence.

You guys have done some team stuff as well where no one's allowed to quit because if one person quits, everybody gets DNF'd. Yeah, again, rules are made on the fly. We're reading the crowd. The most fun we've ever had is down in Mexico. Uh, this past, uh, winter, we put on the Mexican death race. We first time. It sounds so much worse. What a great event name. Oh man. I want to go watch. Do you start with drinking a glass of river water? Then you go.

Wait until you hear this. And then you could actually cut in some video of this if you want so um so the idea was let's put on a traveling death race not tell anybody where it is until like the last minute so i didn't hear about this everybody everyone had to have their like passport ready yeah so everybody got ready signed up ready to roll and then last minute it was all right it's mexico so a bunch of military guys couldn't come down because Mexico city is off limits, off limits. So, um, so about a hundred came down and, uh, they got in a bus and the bus drove for two hours, real luxury bus. It was beautiful. They got meals, they watch videos. And then the bus purposely broke down. The bus broke down. The only, the only means of travel after that was a cattle, cattle truck. So, uh, those are the trucks where the bulls and the cattle go in

and there were some remains of cattle and you know, feces and stuff. And they climbed in and we put like six or seven racers in each, so they were stuffed in there with their bags. What was most interesting and most proud of is some support crew had come for some of the racers, like a girlfriend or a buddy and they were there to help. And so at that point, we made it clear that if you were support,

you either, you and your racer leave Mexico at this moment or the support is in the cattle car racing. So all the support climbed in the cattle car. Holy shit. And then the cattle cars were lined up the same way they line up bulls into those, um, corrals where you can't see out, you know, it's like an eight foot concrete wall. We lined them all in, we zip tied them and zip tied their hands and, um, let them know that once the gate is opened, uh, they would be released into where they didn't know where they were going,

uh, to go get their bib number. So the gate opens, they go in and there's a live bull in the bull ring. Their bib number is on one side of the wall. They've got to go get that and find their shirt, get their jersey on. Then they're allowed to leave the ring. Well, all hell breaks loose. That sounds awesome. I'm sitting there with a colonel from SOCOM

from the military and he says to me we gotta stop this this is crazy and I'm thinking those guys are crazy like this if this is crazy

we're really crazy so within minutes people are flying through the air the bull's getting people holy shit you gotta see this video are people still

oh we definitely do oh yeah zip tie yeah got to see this video. Oh, we definitely do. Oh, yeah. Zip tie? Yeah, you got to see this video. Yes, we do. So you're doing this in Mexico because if you did it in the U.S., it just wouldn't fly?

Wouldn't fly. All right. So we came up here because... Wait, hold on. Did anyone die? Have you had a death in the death race? No one's died. Knock on wood.

We don't want anybody to die. We just want to get them right to the edge, really push their limits. We only want them mostly dead. Yeah, you don't want to actually kill anybody, but you want them to have that near-death experience because that's what changed your life. Your brain actually gets reprinted.

They actually can see if they scanned it that when you push yourself to that limit, you've physically changed your brain. Wow. That's pretty intense. Yeah. We came down here because, or up here. It's up.

Not everyone here knew where Vermont was. CTP didn't even know what city it was. What city is Vermont? The response was, I had to Google where Vermont was, and then I realized it was what city is Vermont the response was I had to google where Vermont was and then I realized it was a state not a city but you know Zach Avinash he said hey you guys

gotta come up here you didn't do the voice man bro you guys gotta come up to Vermont well I was about to say what he said do his accent though Zach uh bro there you go bro you got to come up and hang out with uh joe decina and i was like who's joe decina and he's like the spartan race guy go oh okay i know i know okay as soon as he said that i was like oh okay so you know i've been following that for a long time.

But when I was like, I don't know what, I had no idea. All I know is that you guys did this crazy race, and then you guys had the smaller races all over the place. That's all I knew. So we came up here, and we're like, he's got a book coming out. Was it May 12th? May 12th or 13th, yeah. May 12th, 13th.

He's got a book coming out. I was like, man, uh, those guys, I know they're doing great things. I've always followed. Obviously I keep hearing stories. I've got friends that have done the race. Uh, I was like, why not? Let's go up there and check it out. Interview, uh, Joe. Uh, but I want to hear about this book and why you wrote it. Yeah. So the book I've been writing for, uh, 30 years in my head and, um, and really it was, it was a way, um, for me to solve this problem we talked about earlier, which was, um, why did the Eastern Europeans work so well for me when I was building businesses? Why, why were they the

ones, um, that really crushed it and wanted to work the long hours? And, and so I, I've been studying that for 30 years. What makes somebody that's just fighting for milk successful? And so the book recounts a bunch of those stories and it talks about helping you change your frame of reference. Like this morning, we killed ourselves in the barn and you know- Well, we killed ourselves. You looked fine. You recovered like five minutes after. So by putting yourself through that pain in the morning, and each of us does it in a different way, what it does for me is it helps me more easily deal with the headaches of the day that are going to come, right? Because we're all

going to have headaches. You're going to get a bad email that says this, or somebody you're working with quits, or a customer no longer needs your service. And it's tough, right? It's tough to get through that stuff. But if you, if you reset your frame of reference in the morning, at least for me, that's my way of doing it just makes the rest of the day easier. It's like, well, it could be worse. Could be doing 300 burpees. Right. So, so that's, that's, uh, one of the important takeaways from the book. Um, and other important takeaways, just getting out of your comfort, learning how to get out of your comfort zone and commit to something. I like to commit publicly because it really puts you on the hook.

And so I don't know if you guys do that, but like even for your weightlifting, everybody has a tough time staying motivated. But if you're honest with yourself and you let your buddies know that, hey, I'm going to do this, whatever this may be, I'm going to marry that girl or I'm going to bench press. Sounds like a terrible commitment. I'm just kidding. that girl or I'm going to bench press. Sounds like a terrible commitment. I'm just kidding. I love my wife.

That's not funny at all, bro. No one laughed at that shit. But making that public statement and that commitment helps you stay motivated. And then this other thing of just being gritty and being able to, to push through when things get ugly. I like to say, you know, you go to do a hundred mile run, you're at peak excitement at the starting line. This is going to be great. It's all downhill from there. The second the gun goes off and it's not just a hundred mile run, it's wrestling or, you

know, whatever sports we come from. It's just all downhill. What the hell am I doing here? This is terrible. I'm exhausted. Then the naysayers pile on. Like I told you, you couldn't do this. This is silly. And, um, at that, at that deepest, darkest moment, it's decision time. You're going to quit or you're going to keep going. And most people quit. And, uh, look, Thomas Edison, right? I don't know what the number was, but, but, but let's say it was a thousand light bulbs, literally a thousand light bulbs he had to tweak and work on before he got one to actually work. He could have quit at two and five and 10,

but he didn't. And I think people are so close to success when they quit, they don't even realize how close they were. I love, I saw this cartoon once where there's this guy mining away with a pickaxe and you can see that the light, I mean, he's inches away.

You know, he'd been mining for whatever, two weeks. He's exhausted. He's just about to punch through and he quits. And most of us do that. So the book is, you know, how do you stay on until you get success? No matter how you define success.

It doesn't have to be money. It could be anything. It could be not dying in a death race. It could be not dying in a death race, right? You ever hear who said this? He said that most people's biggest successes in life come right after their biggest failure. Because until you have your biggest failure,

you don't learn what you need to know to have your biggest success. So a lot of people quit too early. They got to go through that failure. Once you have the failure, you shouldn't quit then because that's when you actually learned about yourself or about whatever your industry is or about whatever you need for getting better at your workouts or whatever.

Until you have that failure and you push through it, you're not going to be successful. No, I was just not being specific about which unit I was with. I was just down with the military and I was with their commander and this is a very elite unit and he said they push for failure. They want failure because, because it makes you better. And I believe adversity is the road to success. So I, I don't think you could have true success without having tons of adversity beforehand. So, so I think failure is great because it teaches you a lot. You get back up, right? Can you touch on how you, speaking of

failure, how you hire people? You got like a filter for a hiring process. This is probably the most extraordinary thing I learned about you, Joe, all weekend. The most impressive thing. You are people and how you deal with them, how you cultivate them. Just this process. We were talking about hiring this morning. You had some great thoughts there. I was saying the best way to hire somebody isn't to interview them, it's to give them an audition. Actually let them do what they're going to do and see if they can actually do it. And then you can hire them once you know for sure they're able to do what they say they can do. So we just learned right now, Zach, we would hire as a waitress. Big Z, bro. Zach has shown up with our green juices.

That's right. He can be our gopher. Dude, you are a kind human being, man. He's auditioning. Zach, I will pay you in peanuts to do this all the time. Hey, you want to know what? Can you do this for us seven days a week? Seven to seven every day.

Whatever I'm asked to do. Whatever I'm asked to do whatever i'm asked to do i do it to 110 percent like i'm not into doing anything half-assed and i think that's a ticket to hiring like you find somebody that will always want to do shit even if it ain't in the job uh what do you say description they just want to be awesome at everything that's that's the case so so you know to your point is um i've just been doing it it's awesome at giving me that green shake real quick at everything. That's, that's the case. So, so, you know, to your point is, um, I've just been doing it. You'd be awesome at giving me that green shake real quick. But no, I think, I think you're dead on. I've been doing it instinctively. Uh,

never really, uh, spend a ton of time on resumes or this or that, because like you said, uh, people could be lying. They're going to put their best foot forward. I just want to know that they have grit and they can get the job done. Um, most people, uh, succumb to instant gratification. They want what they want now. One of the greatest, uh, uh, job interviews videos I've ever seen. I'm sure some of you, some of you have seen it. It was, um, first of all, you guys know Shackleton posted, I talk about this in the book, and I'm going to screw this up, I'm sure, but basically wanted men for hazardous journey. Oh, I love this post.

That was the best. Isn't that the best? Return unlikely. Rations low. Like it was just the worst job description and 5,000 people actually signed up and said, I want to go. It was for, they were traveling by ship. Yeah, they got stuck for two, I think for two years.

But anyway, my point is there's a current video where they do something similar, it's a joke. And they basically, they put out this post for this terrible job. 24 hours a day, you've gotta work. You can't- Slavery. You gotta stand up. Come got to work um you can't slavery you've got to stand up come be a slave you can't sit down the only time you could leave for a bathroom break is when your partner i mean it just it goes on and on the list of how terrible this job is but but they get eight

people to actually do the interview and they and they film them they skype them it's hilarious and and the people sounds like an adventure the people are shaking their head like it's is that legal and at the end he says oh by the way there's zero pay right and so there's silence and and and a couple of the people come back and say who who would possibly sign up for your for that job and the guy says your mom that's what that's what a mom does I got to call my mom, man. Sorry. Breakdown in tears. Yeah, but the point is, like Zach just said, there's some people, and those are the extraordinary ones, that they don't care. They act like a mom, right?

They just get the job done. It's not about, what are you paying me right now? Or how much vacation time do I get? Or this job sucks. It's just get the job done and do it well. Yeah, the whole culture here is just what you said a second ago it's about being tough being able to have some grit and be able to grind through a rough situation and not quit even when you want to and so it sounds like you just invite people up here to work and you don't promise them anything and you just say yo if you can if you can hack it you'll stick around and if you're a pussy and you want to fucking go

home you're more than welcome you offer them space in the goat barn or in the woods we had uh the shortest duration uh we had a couple people come up and they lasted um five hours five hours so someone thought they wanted to be here in five hours and these are people that took like 12 15 hour bus trips packed up their life and came here and five hours five hours so what do they do for five hours that That just made him go? Nope. Well, we threw, we threw this particular guy I'm thinking of, and I don't want to, he's a good guy, but, but, um, right away, right to the mountain, grab a bag of cement. We got to go up the mountain. We got to put some cement down and we did multiple trips. And, uh, I told him meet us six o'clock that night. We're going to do more trips. And he was just, he was done. He was on a bus out of here five hours.

And you're not a, we mentioned this this morning, you're not a do as I say, do kind of guy. No. So beautiful. So you're not asking anybody to do anything apart from the money thing, I guess. You're not asking anybody to do anything that you are not willing to do. You're up at five, you're down bed late, you're working your ass off all day. You're up that mountain with them. You know, it's extraordinary situation. No, I love, I love, uh, I love being involved. I'm not as, uh, not as physically fit or as strong as I was when I was 20, but, um, but I love being out there and involved. I'm, I'm, uh, I can't sit still. So if somebody, uh, are there any positions you're looking to feel right now? If someone's going, Hey man, I just want to go to Vermont and mountain cement job open. Listen, when I, um, when I was trying to get on wall street, I, uh,

I called incessantly. I begged to get that job. And, um, most people, yeah, anybody could send us an email. Anybody could show up here. It's not going to be easy. I might not respond to the email. I might give you some hurdles to get through, but that guy, Mark Jones, you guys spoke to this morning, the endurance guy, the coach, he's got it. And so we've gone through maybe 70 to get to him, but he's got it. Damn, 70. Yeah. Dennis might have it, but it's that kind of attitude, that level of intelligence, no complaining, yes, sir. Not that I want to be addressed as sir, but it's that kind of person that no matter what you throw at them,

they just get it done. Like your buddy Don who sat in the river for four hours to move that 2,000-pound steel I-beam? Don's an animal. Why was he doing it in the river again? We were doing a winter death race, and Irene, Hurricane Irene Irene knocked that bridge down. We had to get the,

I didn't, I honestly, I didn't think we'd get the beam out. I think it was just going to be a challenge that would break people, but we got, we got the damn beam out of the river. So you say he spent four hours in the river? Four hours standing in the river in jeans.

In the winter. In the winter. In Vermont. Yeah. If you don't know where Vermont is, look at a map. We're basically, we're almost in Canada.

I just left summertime to come to where it was like 30-something degrees this morning. Tough farming up here. You can see why they moved to California years ago. Absolutely, yeah. So what's your favorite part of your book? What's the part that you're like, man, that's the part you got to read? Because Mike's not going to read the whole thing. What part should Mike read?

Maybe I should just have my wife read it to me bedtime stories the thing the last chapter came in quick wasn't planned Spartan Race has a lot of advantages somebody asked recently do you love what you're doing?

it's a lot of work, a lot of emails but I get to meet guys like you got to do that thing with the military the other day. And one of the things we got, I got to go hang out with Richard Branson for a weekend. Oh, cool. And I was down on his island, and Chapter 10 talks about that. And there's a guy that leads from the front and older, obviously. Terrible storm on a Sunday.

I'm sitting in his house, and he says, I want to go out sailing. Who wants to go? So obviously I raised my hand. I'm in. He's like a death race guy. Come on. All his sailing people and all the guests that were there were like, sir, you cannot go out. It's terrible weather.

And I mean, everybody was telling him not to do it. And so we jumped in the boat and it was rough. And here I am. It's not like I'm a great swimmer or anything and we um hanging out with him and watching him go through that and see you could see why he's successful so so if you can't read anything else read chapter 10 got it so he was there just smiling and sort of this is fantastic right there with you yeah i was just living just you two guys on that boat that was great it's probably pretty nice boat though it's probably

not but no it's a catamaran it was a sailboat. I mean, he's as wealthy as he is and as well as he's done and all the things he has. Yeah, he's not one of those kind of guys. Just a simple boat. Simple sailboat. Simple, yeah. Cool.

That's Necker Island. Is that what it's called? Yeah. Or where is that again? I hear people talk about it, but I don't know where it is. So British Virgin Islands across from,

I'm trying to think how far it is from Peter Island. I don't think how far it is from Peter Island. I don't know how far it is from Peter Island, but Peter Island's nearby. Is that roughly what continent is that next to? I really don't know. Oh, no, no, no. So you're going right off Florida. You're heading right down there and British Virgin Islands.

Oh, okay. So near St. Thomas, near the U.S. Virgin Islands. Nice. It's not in Africa. It's no, did you miss the friendly confines of your treacherous mountain trails and barns and workhorse mentality here? Because down there, I guess you'd have trouble running your recruitment strategy there

with gorgeous beaches. I'll tell you what, I'm not a, and you may disagree hanging out here, but I'm not like one of these lavish guys like i've always not enjoyed sitting around and watching tv that's not been my thing but i haven't seen a tv in your house by the way i think but no there's tv over there but um i like to once i torture myself like we're gonna go on this hike when this is over oh you're gonna tell a story by the way about about the Indian statue.

When we go see Chenoa at the base of the stairs and we get that workout done, then I don't mind. Then it would be cool to hang out in Richard Branson's lavish living room. Oh, yeah. By the way, before we do this treacherous hike, which I'm kind of nervous about, by the way.

It's not like I'm not already pre-fatigued from doing a mile run warmup, which last time I ran a mile was in college. I'm not, I'm ashamed to say it, but should I bring a peace offering to this Indian goddess? Say, please bless me on this journey. I make a small offering of respect to the mountain. So the story, yeah, I mean, you should, because the story with her is there's a stone staircase to the top. And the truth is that stone staircase was built by death racers. But we like to say that Chinoa used to live, we're going to go to her cabin. She used to live up top and that she put the staircase in and that she used to pull her canoe by herself to the top of the mountain every day. And some people still see her ghost. So I would, if I were you, I would bring a peace offering.

This is the kind of story that like 20 years from now or 50 years from now, people will be like, there's this ghost, you know, this should be submitted into people's consciousness, this should be real. That's right. Chinoa is no joke. Chinoa, I'm making my offering.

Cool. Well, let's wrap this up. What, where can people find your book? Spartanupthebook.com. Spartanupthebook.com. Spartanupthebook.com. Do you want to tell everybody about the real title of that book? Can I? Yeah, go for it.

Yeah, so basically we got in a big fight with the publisher. We wanted to call it Spartan the Fuck Up. But the publisher, which we think is a great name. I mean, it's succinct. It says what it needs to say. It's catchy. Catchy. It's certainly noticeable.

And it would be very noticeable in airports and things, but the publisher is old school and wanted to go with Spartan Up you went with a publishing company that was too big you should have gone with a smaller one I had no experience doing books yeah me neither I was just an assumption

I'm just making shit up I'll be in the airport Joe and I want to see your book right next to Bob Harper's paleo treats and diet cookbook. Spartan the fuck up. What we were going to do, we should do with you guys,

we were thinking, what if we printed a bunch of them, Spartan the fuck up, and then went into airports and when the lady wasn't looking, actually put those on the shelf and switched them out. We fly all the time. We could do it. Wouldn't that be funny? Yeah, that'd be great. And then you and when the lady wasn't looking actually put those on the shelves we fly all the time we could do it wouldn't that be funny yeah that'd be great and and then you can see the

lady trying to scan it and it's not scanning and she's confused we've talked for over an hour right now what the fuck and we've talked we've talked over to like the last you know since last night i can't remember if this was said here on the podcast or whatever but uh we can repeat it i don't have a problem with that. You just made the reference next to someone who has these paleo treats. Like, I'm making paleo cookies, which I love. I love to eat those things. Don't get me wrong.

But you're not going to lose any fucking weight eating paleo cookies. I promise. They're still cookies. No, no, no. I love eating them. Don't get me wrong. But if you're trying to lose weight, that's definitely not the way to do it. Joe was not eating any fucking paleo cookies

before he goes out for his 5 a.m. job. No, but one of the things, one of the things we were talking about is just, you know, you,

you really encourage people to get in shape by just working hard, like, you know, no shortcuts, no magic pills, you know, no math or science,

you know, required. People always publish these little diet books and stuff like that, and he's like, you're like, no, just, just work hard and don't eat sugar. Well, we would sell a lot of books. Like if it was called Spartan the fuck up and there was, it was just like three steps to, you know, get in better shape, lose weight, be successful. We'd sell a lot of, but that's not the book. The book basically says you got to work hard asshole. And, and people don't necessarily want to hear that, but that's, that's the book. The book basically says you got to work hard, asshole. And, and people don't necessarily want to hear that, but that's,

that's the book. That could be the subtitle. Spartan the fuck up. You got to work hard, asshole. What's the matter? Get out of here. I should hire you guys to be publishers.

You were going to print our publisher company. Hey, Hey, I might, I might start a publishing company. Kind of technically do. All right. Anyways. Uh, yeah. So, uh, you know, a publishing company. Kind of technically do. All right, anyways. Yeah, so that's the general message of the book.

I think it's awesome. It's very sincere and genuine. And yes, I will read the book, even though I have to sound it out all the way. All right, make sure you go to barbellstrug.com. Check out our newsletter. Sign up for that. And you'll enjoy all the tidbits you get from CTP.

He always signs off reign supreme and starts it off with a cool subject line. You need to open those emails because CTP is a funny guy. He writes some good emails. CTP won't say something. Don't go anywhere quite yet because I'm going to insert some super crunk footage of us trying to climb this mountain to meet old Fraggletooth or whatever. Fraggletooth. She's going to smack your ass down up there, man.

Obviously, people can go to bookstores and to Amazon.com to get Spartan up. Where else should they go? You got websites and whatnot. Promote yourself, please. Yeah, Spartan.com is our new site we're tweaking now, and that's please. Yeah. Spartan.com is our, is our new site. We're, uh, we're tweaking now and that's, that's going to house everything Spartan. Nobody had Spartan.com. How'd you end up with that? Greatest story. Greatest story on Spartan.com. So we started

Spartan race and I was going well and I get a call from a guy who's now a great friend of ours and works for the company. And he said, Hey, listen, I own Spartan.com and all the trademarks and everything. And I'd love to be part of what you're doing one million dollars that's right no you would be blown away he's he's awesome and i just wanted to be part of the mix so it was a great phone call to get and he's a great guy yeah very cool man i wish you're a good point your equipment costs more than damn wow another good point like it's guys like you who are working as hard as you do and being honest and open as you do

it's amazing how certain things just kind of come it just happens it comes your way doesn't it it comes your way it really does

it's not mysterious think of something and it just happens and it's not I think anybody could make their own luck you just gotta actually work hard

I think it was Thomas Edison said you sure like that Thomas Edison I love Thomas Edison but damn it I'm to screw up the quote, but it's something like... It's in the book.

The harder I work, the luckier I get. Something to that. I thought that was Thomas Jefferson. Who knows? I don't know. One of those Thomas guys. That's just a good quote. Who cares who said it?

You said it. Michael Bledsoe. If you go to sp Spartan.com, that's where people can sign up for Spartan races and things like that. Yeah, that's where it all is. All right. And you host those all around the world, by the way,

in like 40 countries next year? 40 countries next year. As you can imagine, I mean, we just had a problem with the Pope. We were putting a race on. There's a lot of people that have a problem with the Pope. We were putting a race on in Rome last weekend. And, uh, you know, because there was like 6 million people there because of what he was doing and the soccer game got moved. Pope stuff. Pope stuff. We normally have, um,

you know, 10 days to get a race ready. We had 10 hours. So, um, but we pulling off in Italy and we got France, we got Spain, we're all over the place. And we had Obama land at the airport, left me in the air for an extra hour in Austin, Texas a couple weeks ago. Thanks, Obama. Traffic was crazy,

screwed up my whole day. I'm going to hook you up in Austin in a big way. By the way, that sounds like a very first world problem. My plans were delayed by an hour.

Fuck this guy. I'm so special about that guy anyway. All right. Thanks for joining us, Joy. One sec. One sec. I want to keep chiming in on this one.

But just like we appreciate five-star reviews, if you like us, you can probably do Joe a big favor. If you like his book, give him a review on Amazon because that really does help kind of the visibility of the book. So if you like it, definitely review it. I think we would all agree that this message and that, that mindset and these kinds of tests would be so valuable to a vast sea of crosswords out there who need to see,

need to put these tough wads a little bit more perspective. Maybe you can dig a little deeper and set your perspective and push harder and drill really deeper into what you are. You can always push harder. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right,

guys. Thanks. All right, Joe. Thanks. Thanks, thanks joe thank you that was great you guys are awesome good call zach really good call