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

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Pre-order Jen’s New Book: Bigger, Better, Bolder today: https://amzn.to/3hvtqYp Joe De Sena is CEO & Founder of Spartan and the Death Race, NYT Best Selling Author. Possibly the most hardcore individual on the planet, Joe describes every part of his life and every torturous routine he put himself and the people around him through. It’s pretty incredible. Consistency being the key. Pulling his kids out of bed at 5 am every morning, having a live-in Kung-Fu master to teach his kids, doing a triathlon, and deciding to do the swimming portion even though he wasn’t supposed to because he hadn’t worked hard enough. That’s just a shred of ridiculous things he and Jen talked about in this episode, but he gets results. You’ll have to listen to hear how he and his kids’ lives have benefitted from the strictness, and how he used that mentality to build his Spartan races from the ground up. Give it a listen. Youtube Link to This Episode Joe’s Website – https://joedesena.com/ Joe’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/realjoedesena/ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits in Hustle. Fresh it. All right, you guys. Today on the podcast 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 hard core 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 he parents. He's a New York Times 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 also has a podcast called Spartan Up. Like I said, you're gonna 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, it just as a friend, this guy is the real deal.

I know you're gonna 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? I thought we were live. I thought you were starting.

Okay, good, okay, I wanted to make, 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 for. So yeah, so tell us what you're for. So for children and oldest is 16, 14, 13 and nine, two boys, two girls, and trying to do the best I can,

right, you never know. My 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.

But I never got what hot in here. 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 the Spartan lifestyle and pushes Spartan to the whole world, I still have tendencies like every parent

where you want to protect your kid, you're like, and so I want to protect your kid. Of course. And so I have to fight my own instincts. But I don't know, a couple of weeks ago 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, I just sent them a picture of pizza because I'm trying to teach my kids about business.

I'm like, hey, if we open the 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.

If we, 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 part. Like movie stars, I don't know if that's term you use anymore here in Hollywood. But celebrities, they know how to communicate. Not all of them. Not all of them. But you're saying like the old school movie stars, the people, like the ones who, like the A-list select movie stars.

A-list movie stars. Like a talking cruise or a dance. Do we use that term here in Hollywood? I mean, I guess so. 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. Got a fear 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 on that. 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. 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 hire these two kids from Poland, they outworked me.

They didn't 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. Yeah. By the way, I don't care if they're American or Chinese or it doesn't matter.

No, but I know what you're saying. It's like when you have, what the immigrant mindset is, like they are, so they feel so lucky to be given an opportunity. So they work so hard and they work ethic as above and beyond. By the way, I'm Canadian and I will tell you even me coming to the US, 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 add you need to like make a living. So you have that you're fighting for milk. You actually exactly you have like an ingrained grit. Yeah. 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, 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. Yeah. That's, that's simple.

Like, there's nothing else to, 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. That's it. So like, why don't you write a book? I was gonna write a book, one page. Yeah. It's just gonna be like a postcard. It was gonna be a postcard.

It was gonna be like a postcard. Well, I can't even imagine you being my, like, my fault. Like, the kind of parent you must be. Like, you said you wrote the parenting book, I never thought, 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 don here as a guest on your show and like you're like I didn't even read it. I didn't see it. I don't 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 that you came to you came to do this in person and I did know you had a parent in book But it 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, you know, because you ghosted me. Let's, let's even take it back a little bit. So I would have had the, actually, I would have had the parody 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 the truth in the, you know, and just kind of like way away. The truth in the matter is, although you're not gonna believe it based on your tone. The truth in the matter is, because I get so many messages, true story, you could ask my kids,

my phone would lock up on text for some reason. It kept locking. 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. Although, the world did know about the book. Yeah, the world didn't need me to text them about the book. It was the world. I mean, listen, the true, true, true. However, there's so many books that come out. And because I was, I already had like my backup

towards you because you like basically just, like I said, ghosted me. That's what the kids say of these days. How many times did you, because 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. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, two. It was two. No, after two you just shot a person down. No, no, no, no, I'll take what happened. I mean, what if I was in Greece? I will tell you more. I will tell you why, I emailed you.

Yeah. And I think Susan was on that email, but I was totally just ignored. And social media. Remember, I asked you about social media. I don't show my social media. I don't show my social media. I'm surprised on the email though.

That's surprising. See, it was like, it was a flatthrow of different things. Three different ways you tried 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 present. I built up some resentment towards you. And then when I finally got this, and I saw you on the computer, all the love that I had for you in 2018 just came Gamerling back exactly, but now you're very responsive now if I actually text you you But I put your name back in my phone. Okay, I see your name and I respond. I appreciate that very much and the world should know I tell people all the time if I I don't respond, I either missed it, which is rare, or I died.

Oh, 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 of people who were listening didn't read the parenting book. I really like that. I'm sure it's not. Maybe one or two people missed it for some reason.

But can you tell, if I was your kid, what would I say to a kind of dad you are? Are you like, well, I can tell what kind of dad you are. But. I'm not so often cuddly, right? My wife would definitely complain about that. I don't have all those social cues of hugging and I just, it's not me.

It's charming actually that I am what I am focused on is doing the work today so that 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. You're like, wake them up at 5.30. I, you know what, I am, this is a crazy story. So I grew up in Queens, New York. 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 so on. So, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like,

I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like,

I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, So anyway, Chinese food was like the thing once a week. You went and got Chinese food and a little white containers. And my dad said, listen, I got you in account. You and your sister got an account of 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, 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 the umat and I love that and umat 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? What that be cool the kids could be trained in kung fu? She said how the fuck would we get a I said cool? The kids could be trained in Kung Fu. She said, how the fuck would we get a, I said, well, I know this Chinese guy, in this neighborhood, I grew up in. So I called Danny, he still got the restaurant, and he's like, oh no, no problem. Where we get all our staff,

I could probably get your 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 got up the kids are doing kung fu in the barn and 5 30 every night 7 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, because I had read years earlier, I had read Pumping Iron, Arnold Schwarzenegger 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 by, if we just create this Mandarin environment. And so all the television, which was excruciating to make happen, was it, you go watch as much TV as you want as long as it's Mandarin, which meant I had to go find DVDs when DVDs were thing

that were translated, you know, English shows, trailer. 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, at that time, we'd even have Netflix. Well, and Netflix, I think the video, like you could mail them in or something.

Oh, the red stuff. 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 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 gonna find out that the kids missed the workout and I was gonna 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 he's got lots of flaws, just like I do or you do. But the one thing that the common thread that we've done for 13 years is, speak fluent Mandarin every single day. Work out like a nut. 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 the last three weeks this has happened. He sees, oh my God, the outcome is unbelievable. I understand now why my father's lunatic. No, number, okay, I just wanna say something

because I was teaching you before. This is why I really do. Like I really like you. I like 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, of course, avoiding me. But you are the real deal. Like you actually practice what you preach more than anybody I've ever seen.

Like this is you and your DNA. Like they're not like fakie. By the way, by the way, I had a DNA test on recently and they give you the result like personality. And they were like, this is exactly it. And I had a brain mapping thing done and they were like, same thing. Like you are really like hardcore.

With a brain map, say, with a 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 my mind. And people can find that out. So that would answer another question in mind. Does it have to be innate? Can someone learn the skill to be like that? 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. Yeah. At some point, that changes though, and they brush their teeth every day. Right. You can do it all the time.

Right. Yeah. And so, yes, in 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 a rot wilers. Don't ask me why in the neighborhood we were in,

it was a common dog, it was to have a rot wiler. 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, I'm 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 wind or complain, you let them do something else well then you got to reteach them now. I by the way I actually agree with you wholeheartedly with people will also think I'm a lunatic but I believe that you if you you could 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, you know, and he always got scared when he goes up to the loop.

To scoop, I know. But to like actually throw it. Throw it. He pooped. Throw it. I don't bother with, I like work at the NBA. I did, so I should know these things. But he would pass it.

Like, he's super aggressive and he's fast. So we get it all the way down to the down the whole court. And then he gets scared to shoot so he then they'll pass. Because he doesn't. I say you have to, if you practice, it'll give you the confidence and confidence brief equals confidence. So if you do it over and over again, you know, equals confidence. So if you do it over and over again,

and he never ever done, never wanted to do it. Finally, unlike you have to practice yesterday before the basketball thing, I said you have to do 500, you gotta shoot 500 times outside. And he wind and bitched and moan, but he did it. We went to the game and he went to the hoop and he shot and shot and he made almost every shot

because of the practice. So that showed him how important the practice is to change. So what is 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 them do 500 actual shots, but then he can close his eyes and and and do 500 visual shots

Yeah, and they're and they're powerful too As far as wiring the brain and 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 even further. Yeah, so anyway, just add in a tool to your two ball.

No, to a tool that, to the toolbox. 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 game. It's all about iPads and to get people to get off of that. I don't know if you've seen the stat, but isn't it like more than 40% of kids now can't do the kids in my time or your time, even like 20 years ago or 18 years. Of course.

Now 10 years ago. Of course. I mean, they're just, they're so lethargic. So I'm fighting. I'm just fighting that whole thing, not just in my house with our, with our four children, but, but 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, and it's not easy

because, 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 it's going to require a couple of us to stand up and fight it.

But that means there's's gonna be people around us that say, there's 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 boss of marathon with me. And you could imagine the looks and like, really?

Is it the same eight year old who's now gonna be getting into undisclosed college that they want that kid? That same, yeah, same kid. 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, that's incredible.

By the way, I didn't put a collar around them and drag them, right? They didn't really know where they were doing. And you get a lot of looks and, oh my God, the kids are gonna get hurt or this're saying, you know, 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. It's, you're preaching to the converted. In fact, that's that's what also is increasing mental health problems is the iPad.

My friend who's a very renowned child psychiatrist was saying that it's because of these video games and all the addiction to the screen that's creating 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. 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, you're getting constantly, constantly flooded with dopamine. And that's got negative unintended consequences. Yeah. There's a whole thing. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the all warm, all fuzzy, all self-care, zero self doubt you. Grab a with love today. Vitamin water, zero sugar, nourish every you.

Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O. Bebred, dope with me nation. Yeah, that's what I spoke to. Yeah, me too, I spoke to her as well. Yeah, it was all, and it's very true though, right? Like, I mean, I think I belong back in the 90s or the 2000s. I think that was my era. I'm very unhappy with how things have evolved in that way.

And I say it's very much like, I call it like, caudal culture in a lot of ways, right? People want to do the bare minimum and people are caudling 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'd run away. I really am. I'm like, oh man, that would look awesome. They're heating the cabin with wood. But where does it come from? Because I know you've done 50 races or 50 ultra marathons. But before you even created Spartan, right? What were you doing as like a, did you jog every day? How did you kind of like insure way into this like super endurance?

So 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, waste management, all true, exactly true. And so you were either hustling or stealing,

like something was going on. But 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 tow truck business out. Like that's like everybody was just working, it was integrated in their lives. And so, Danny, Danny lived in his Chinese restaurant

with his child, you know, like everybody was just working. Mom, so that was my dad was wound up and all that. He had a trucking company. And mom finds 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%. So whether it was running a business, whether it was going to jail, whether it was the risk of being killed, whether it was meditating, running 3100 miles, it's no surprise that, I mean, in some ways, when you think about like a triathlon or an ultramarine, it's like, it's a catered training day. Every 10 miles is going to be food or out here and like, this is unbelievable compared to like my cousin going away for 25 years, you know what I mean? So true, but you don't see like, you never saw like Tony's

the product getting into this stuff for any other good fellow type of guy, you know, maybe. Well, one of the things that bugged me, again, because I had, I had, things about it, I had both sides, I had my mom who's health and wellness and not, 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 own businesses, and somehow what ran parallel to them becoming

successful was them getting fat and smoking cigars and drinking. 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 they had a look, look, a Casey crime family, little Vic, Vic Amuso. And I became, I became friends with him because he was a fitness nut. So not only was it a boss, not only did it have the biggest house in the neighborhood,

but it 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 would you do for workout today? Would you do for workout today? But you were working out already because of your mother's influence.

Because my mother's influence. What were you doing? No, what was the kind of workout you were doing back then? I found weight training. That's your weight training. I found weight training, but I did it in a different way. I don't know why I came up with this. I came up with something called the prison workout,

because the only guy, the only kids that wanted to do it with me were kids that got out of prison. It was 120 sets in one hour. We had to do every body part, which was not typical back then. Typical back then was, oh, we're just gonna do back and legs today. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd split, 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 three hundred 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 why wouldn't we just do everything and get it done and be efficient and also incorporate endurance in it? So for one hour, we would do 120 sets.

Every set had 25 reps, it was fucking insane. Every time I went to the gym, I would have PTSD because it was so hard to do. What were you doing? What were the sets of what? I'll tell you I'll have PTSD because it was so hard. What were you doing? What were the sets of what? 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 I apologize if it's not cool and hip to anybody listening or watching. By the way, it's very hip and bad and things always cycle back. It kind of seems very like like hitch rating or like even cross fitness. Yeah, it's cross-fidget before cross-fidget and hit before hit. And so it would start out on the squat rack and we would do 25 reps. And I would have a plate on each side.

So it would 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. Yeah, yeah. And I ran right over to leg extensions. Leg curls 25 reps, 25 reps, calf raises, 25 reps. Then that would be four rounds.

Insane, right? From legs, we would go to shoulders. 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, a little bit. And so before rounds, you do 25 and then you'd need assistance, 25 and then you'd need more assistance and more. And ups or pull-ups. Pull-ups. Okay. The hard ones. 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 reps each one. From there, we would go to biceps. We would knock out preacher curls or stand-up curls, preacher curls, chin-ups, and then dumbbell hammer curls, 25 reps, four rounds, and then triceps. And...

Every day? No, every other day. Every other day. That's crazy. It was crazy. It was crazy. And there was only one, I forget his last name, John, where it just got out of prison.

It was the only one that would do this with me. And you're the one who kind of created and thought about this whole thing. I created it, I had an hour, I was running a business that I don't have time. It gets me an 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's probably, it's really hard. It's probably, it's probably, it's really hard. But like, when did you stop that routine? So that went, that 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 the backpack and a weight vest and I found the stairwell

and I found a little bit of stairwell and a backpack. And that was the end of the wait set. And 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 hundred flights. I'd spend an hour in the stairwell in the morning. I'd come back in the afternoon.

I'd have 30, 40 pounds on my back. Not bored at all? No, I put music in my ears. And those'd have 30, 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, as we say, it's your form,

my form of meditation. 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. Yeah. That's when you can actually like think about everything. Just think.

Yeah. Yeah. Get back to water, food and shelter. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But 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. Yeah. It was good. And I just didn't, again, I was always trying to fit things in like the woman I described on the CB radio and 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 I just had a fit at all in. Okay, so we kind of jumped somewhere, but I wanted you to finish what about your kids, cause I think it's fascinating. You said that you would wake them up at 5.30 in the morning, right? You met three still? Well, now they're what, they're 12, you said, they're 14. Nine, nine, 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. What workout? So I do. It's a 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 would he do with them? He was almost like, I don't know gymnastics, but it would have been like matte gymnastics almost. Okay. Tumbling, single leg squats was a thing.

I remember him doing in the barn with that. That's 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, I gotta get your old videos.

You gotta put it, you'll be unbelievable with these kids we're doing. And they would hang from a pull-up bar and they would do leg raises perfectly, 50 in a row, it was unbelievable. So that went on, which I would highly recommend that 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 would do, based on what I just went through. That's a great, that's actually a great advice.

And I agree, I'm trying to get my nine year old to try as many things as possible. Do all, do everything. To see what he likes. Exactly. So how long was this Kung Fu master working with them? So they went seven days a week, then went twice a day, and then,

Twice a day? Twice a day, then the two days. An hour a day. It was an hour in the morning and hour at night. Okay. And then I found, I was at dinner, It was a day. It was a day that the two of us. Right, an hour and a half. It was an hour and the morning and hour and 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 Baray 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 Baray believed that if they could 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 story. 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, 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 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 J. Jackson. Open the door to his room. He's got a gun. Random act of violence.

Gonna kill the coach. He strips the coach down to his room, he's got a gun. Random act of violence is going to kill the coach. He um, 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. Um, it's going to literally just kill the coach. Coach says, could you shut the lights before you pull the trigger? Train 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 a story 5,000 times.

Disarmed 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 resters. I got rid of the Kung Fu master. That was the end of Kung Fu. Are you serious? That's an amazing story.

Unbelievable story. Yeah, it's in one of the books that you didn't read or didn't even know about. Normally read every book that's that funny and the one person I really wanted to have in a podcast. Three fucking books I wrote. She didn't read, I should have even know I have a book. No, no, I didn't know you had let's just clear

If I did not realize you had a parenting book until last week But I knew about the other books sparring up. Yeah, and the other one is Spartan fit It's far fit even more than three books. Yeah, ten rules are resumbed. That's that's what I know I got that well that's the one that's the parenting book ten rules Oh, I I read it online. Okay. It was a good. I got that. Well, that's the one. That's the parenting book. 10 Realizations. Oh, I read it online. Okay, it was a good, I mean. It was really good. Okay.

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 book 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.

You're still normal. I'm so normal. You're like, so, the funny thing is you are normal. That is the weird thing. Like you're seeing, like you're very, obviously, you're aggressive in your lifestyle, but you're not. CMBC 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. Mike, calm down. We're not really doing this for a long time. I know they're not gonna die. And did anyone die? No. See? I know.

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. That's reliable. There's a lot of people in the world. Now there's lawyers in the whole world. world. Now there's lawyers involved. You know the whole world. Totally.

Yeah, but that's Hollywood. That's Hollywood. That's Hollywood. Yeah. So, um, no way. 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 to boys. 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 had I could do it anywhere we lived in the world, any apartment outside, anywhere we're just going to do it every day. So only 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 part of 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 it each move? 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. Oh my God, it was crazy, right?

Oh, yes. But consistency, we had to do it every day. And now that they're in their sports, now they don't have to do that anymore. Now they train the way however they're teaching. What do the girls do though? They play soccer. They play soccer, do I have to say.

So they're on. And so your wife is okay with all this crazy training and schedule? My wife definitely thinks I'm nuts, but I think I've somehow gotten her to submit on all this just because I'm relentless with it. And I think now 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 works. It actually works.

Did any, does one particular kid, or any of the kids at any given point ever rebelled? Have they ever rebelled? And then like, screw you, dad, I'm not doing this or. You know, my 16 year old Sunday morning, there was a non-requite, just Sunday the past. I came back from the Middle East. I landed him. 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. He's got to take a second classes right. He's got to nail that. And Sunday morning they were doing a 9 a.m. workout. Wrest, non-required, they didn't have to go. Right, right. And he's like, that, I got to sleep. And I had to 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 basically? Oh, I pull them out of his head. Because they don't want to do it. Everything, just pulling out of her bed. And for everybody out of my put, put turn music on, lights on, I wake the whole house up every morning. At five o'clock, 5 a.m. It depends on, you know, it could be

5 30, 5 40 depends on what I have going on. Even the girl still. Oh, the girls right out of bed. Oh my gosh. And so so anyway, I had to fight my own instinct. And I say, you know what? Let him sleep. He was up last night. He's doing up, you know, so now we're getting to the point with him because he's 16 years old. Yeah. That now he's got, now he's got to own it.

Right, but he's already like you feel like he's a proven track record. He's giving me the proof of proof of the proof of the deal. He knows the deal. He sees it. Yeah. But does any, but how about the other three? 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 got, I got, I got a real one. He's like, oh my God, I see now what's happening to my older brother. I got, I got, I got a real one. Yeah, like that's happened 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? I mean, what's interesting is, there's little components of me in each one of them.

Really? Like, nobody has, thank God for them. Nobody has the whole joke. Right, never really. 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 and that?

Like, is she like super like, is she like a B personality? Like, she was very high level at her. She was captain of her team in soccer, went final four, Oh wow. 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, but she just talented, 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 overparent them. And our last child, I underparent. And when I look at the underparent thing of our last child, she's like a machine. She's like, she's got a 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 under parenting the nine. Isn't that so true? I feel that way with my two also. Like because at what you're first,

you're over, like you're just like a, you kind of like are over them. Like it's like a brand new. Yeah, so you do like them. Don't eat that dirt off the ground. The fourth one, like, they're like, they're never exactly. I don't know where she is. 100% I feel that with two kids, you do it. Don't eat that dirt off the ground. The fourth one. Yeah, like, whatever. Exactly. I know where she is. 100%. I feel like two kids, you're like, and but you're right, they become more scrappy that way. It's 100% true. So then, okay, so that's your kid's

situation. Yeah. Now, could we get back into like, let's go to, okay, so now we can kind of, or fast forward back to where you're talking, but going up and down the, what do you call it, the stairway. So how did that turn into, I'm gonna 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. And I had the background for 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 and I started working out with him meeting him in the stairwell. He taught. So he was also in the stairwell, but you already were in the stairwell doing. I met him in the stairwell and that talked to him. So he was also in the stairwell, but you already were in the stairwell, doing your own thing. I met him in the stairwell, and that's what started my journey with the stairwell.

But that's the same, you 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, and one of our workouts talked to me about adventure racing,

which I didn't know what that was. Okay. And I went and did one with him, and I fell in love with it. It was just so unbelievable. It was like being Lewis and Clark. It was like, I went back to the 1700s. It was awesome.

And so the crazier the race was, what were the races were they back then? So it might have been the I did a rod, which was a race across Alaska, typically done with dogs and a dog sled we did by foot. It was the raid. What would you do? It would be like a race. 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, New Finland, Switzerland, Fiji.

How long would be each race about? It 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. 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 and I had a lot of time, as you could 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 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 next? And he said, well, 24 hours, but you gotta be, I'll sign me up, I wanna do 24 hours. And then I do 24 hours, I need harder, what's crazier than this. Well, I did a rod,

as I'll sign me up, I'm doing the, I did a rod. Is it still around? Yeah. Okay. Is he still around or is it still around? No, I did a rot as a sign me up. I'm doing the I did a rot. Is it still around? Yeah. Yeah. Is he still around or is it still around? No, I did a rot. I remember. Yeah.

You don't remember, but you've seen, people have seen movies of the I did a rot rate. They typically, you know, they get on a sled and the dogs are pulling them through or they ask in the middle of winter. But this was without the dogs. This was by foot. Yeah, I probably have seen it. You see Spartan, that's much more embedded in people's

side. So I'm doing these races forever, and then, and I'm... Never got hurt, though. Never got hurt, knock on wood. Yeah, I mean, and I would attribute, 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. I didn't really, I didn't really, I did a lot of cold water therapy. Back then even? Even back then. I got into cold water. I got into cold showers in the 80s. I got into cold showers. Yeah. 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 the thing, you got to be able to do those, right? So you're actually prepping and training for just in case you went to jail. It's crazy, isn't that crazy? Yeah. So, um, But were you like,

were you doing anything like criminal like, were you like, disobeyed? No, I mean, they were stealing money from what's going on. No, there were some stupid things as a kid that you really is unbelievable that we've all been so close to doing something

that would have changed your trajectory of our lives. But, um, thankfully between our lives, 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. Yeah, little Vic. Little Vic, sorry. It's 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? Eighties. Yeah. Wow, wow that crazy That is so great and that you never got like you never got wrapped up in any of that stuff though. They were they were 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 structural state in place I would have had an opportunity,

and the question is, would I have been stupid enough to take that opportunity? Right. But then it went away and at the same time, we didn't talk about it. So I'm in Ethiga, 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 Ethica, New York. Ethica, 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 of colleges and professors. But vegan, they were even back then.

Yeah, this stuff's been around. I mean, we've like, it's all new, but it's been around forever. So. When you download the Croger app, you have easy access to savings every day. Shop weekly sales and get personalized coupons to get the most value out of every trip every time, whether you shop in-store or online. Download the Croger app now to save big. Croger, fresh for everyone, must have a digital account to redeem offers.

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Check out. Think it out. RBI co-op, all out. Visit RBI.com. So anyway, I'm graduating high school. I wanna get back to neighborhood. I wanna be with tough guys. I've got a business I'm running there. I'm cleaning swimmer 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 gonna go to Cornell? Like my SAT score is suck. We didn't, 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, we'll go to Cornell. I got a guy.

Yes, so we both do, 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 sons interviewing Cornell, so I do by the way Cornell still like you said very very very popular very so I do I do the interview and Neither of us get accepted and No wonder and he says hang, but my dad said,

if we go in and take extramural classes and prove that we could handle the workload in the first semester, we could reapply and maybe get in. So I said, okay, if we're gonna 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 he's like, fuck that. He goes, why wouldn't we party all summer? He goes, I'm going to go to Vegas party. And then we'll buckle down in September. So right there, I learned about the late 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 over, I got two A's in a B, which was like I was working for NASA, like to land two A's in 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. They did it a third time. Apply it again. Now I'm falling behind with credits because I can't take as many credits of 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 mother's never wanna lose their kids, right? So she's like, go meet this 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 transcript, 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. Getting me. Yeah. So I, she accepted me and I studied women's hemlines for the remainder of my, my time at Cornell, graduated. Switzer degree in text, in like, Well, it's a bachelor's science anyway. In 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 was pretty awesome. And still to this day, I can tell you the era of any movie based on women's headlines because I studied so much of it. The juxtaposition between that and your life is just, it's like not surprising actually. Like in, 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 like kind of, like, kuku, right? Kuku. So, so, 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 I met a guy while I was there.

You're always meeting a guy. I always meet people. I talk everybody. And he guided me to go to Wall Street. And so when you asked a question earlier, how did you not get mixed up in all that? Yeah. At the same time, that, 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 in 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 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 am. 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 being Alaska or being. I was gonna 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 upon themselves, but you're a having to think on your own, you would think that people who gravitate to that are people who like to be upon themselves, but you're a very friendly person. I'm friendly, but if you give it given the choice, like 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, I'm turning the lights off, picking up people's place, trying to get them out of the house. Like I'm not really interested. Right. That said, I like meeting you and talking to you and then I'm like, I'm gonna turn you off

and not text you anymore. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But I am, I would prefer to be in that hut on the mountain and just chop and wood for me. I would prefer that. So if you had your drug that was 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 I always think about this anyway Like is a good one one person's more introverted and the other one's more extroverted like what do you think about I think a couple of things like number one I had an amazing childhood in that I I cleaned 700 swimming pools 700 700 different houses I got to peer you know look into and see which families worked who got the divorce, who didn't, who went to jail, who didn't, which kids were successful, which weren't. And so I got to to think a lot about what are things I want to

apply to my life. And so most people were getting the divorce within those 700 homes. And so It is amazing that I've been able to stay together for 20 years with my wife. I think part of it is I travel a lot. You get that little break, whether it's five days, 10 days, whatever. I think that's great. Then, too, I think the fact that we are opposite so that... Somebody's got to bend. I'm a pretty strong personality.

And so the fact that she bends and allows me to be difficult is awesome. Your next guest is your do I get a jack? Are we gonna jack that at this point? For those that don't know it, there's literally a thing under my seat. You're just gonna see me disappear. You think it's important to have someone who can ban 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. Yeah. We're just, it would be, we lock horns and it would, right? It would just be too much of the same. Too much. She's so malleable. Right. And then, 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 home and watch Netflix, it's not gonna be something like that. I mean, that's a tough one. Look, I'm pretty intense. You guys have heard me like, I wanna work out every day. I wanna be consistent. She'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. 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 with me great if you're not, I can 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 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. I wanted to actually want to get to all those Spartan stuff in your business. We haven't even talked about that yet.

So our business is located in Boston and for many years and when... Where's your farm? I thought you had a farm. Farm is in Vermont, three hours from the Boston office. Oh, okay. 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 spoke to, who religiously was there every frigging day. Really? It's a maniac, and she's awesome. I hold 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, staying touch with our community. My little daughter, the maniac, she was running a live work out every day. She was getting millions of views. She's a beast. And the nine year old or the other nine year old, who was seven or something, she's unbelievable. She was doing workouts live. Live.

She's got a personality. She talks into the camera. She's unbelievable. What kind of workouts was she doing? Like workouts. Like stuff. I go, we should we should edit. We should edit something in here.

You'll love it. So, so, so, so, so So I'm on the farm doing that, Susan, my assistant's coming in, nobody else is coming in. Pandemic has come into a conclusion, and 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 can I move and kind of reinvigorate a culture and people that want to come in because I'm old-fashioned, I want people in an office. And so I found this place in Florida. And- 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. I mean, we kept the farm, we'll ever pick in the world to move to. So you live in Orlando now? Orlando now. I mean, we kept the farm. We'll go up to the farm two, three times a year. But, but we're in Orlando.

We found the greatest school in the world, literally the greatest school in the world, it's called Lake Island 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-dined 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, wow, so that's been my that's been my thing

They're in the summer. I got on a little murf kick. I did I did 50 days in a row of Murph. Tell people what that is. So Murph is a 300, 300 squats, 200 pushups, 100 pullups and a two mile run. And so early June, I got on a kick of doing Murph every day because there was a guy who met in Florida who was doing it every day during the pandemic. It pissed me off. So I said, I'm gonna do it every day. And I was playing on doing it for the whole year, but then with this traveling, it got screwed up. So I got, I got to get back on it. So what did you, today, what was your workout? Today I did 30 minutes on an air dine again.

Again. And then I did a hundred pull-ups, a hundred squats, a hundred push-ups. Where'd you do it? In the sofa tell hotel. No, but did they have an aerodyne there? They did. They had a, well, similar to an aerodyne, they had a machine that looked like that was close. So. If they didn't have it, what would you have done? The treadmill?

The treadmill. Yep. And then you still do your, say again, the 100 push-ups though? I did a hunt. 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's funny about that statement is when I was doing it, I was like, I'm so soft, because my workouts were usually so crazy. I know. That 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? Yeah. Yeah. I do that to myself all the time, by the up. So it's funny to say that. It's all relative, right? Yeah. 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... High school 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. I'll typically hit a second workout, but again, the last seven, eight days I've been traveling all over the world so it hasn't, it hasn't happened. But you still do the one workout.

No, I always get that workout done. So do you ever skip a day? No. Ever. Okay, and then you're saying you do it cold shower. So do you ever skip a day? No. Ever. Okay. And then you're saying you do it cold shower. Yeah. What else you do?

I not got 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. Where? 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, hey, you're going to be an LA, can I pick you up at the airport? Yeah, come on. Oh! Okay, okay, okay. So you had dinner with somebody, whatever. Okay, and then, so in terms of like other habits,

and we didn't even, 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. Gotta sweat. Okay, and then salads as much as you can.

Yeah. Then are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you say meat, chicken included in that? I don't really like chicken. Really? I don't really like chicken. I like fish. I mean too. So when you say meat, it's like, would be like steak or whatever. I don't even like steak. Once in a while, I get a burger without the bun. I don't just eat the burger.

I like mustard on a burger. Me too. But it's when I want it. I don't always want it. Do you have a big appetite or is it fuel as a... 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 didn't have 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 then 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? Like why? Why? Why? Why? Why? And so I guess my message to the world is just to eat more salad. And that's your big message for the day. For the day. On the nutrition from it.

Yeah, I know. Just be eating 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 Because you feel better on salad than I do on fruit. Yeah, because vegetables. Yeah.

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 you're so hard driving. But I wanted to eat and you're like, no, we have to do the podcast now. And so it has screwed my entire nutrition. I apologize.

It's okay. I'm not even yet today, but I will. And what would I have had for lunch? A Greek salad would have been amazing. I love Greek salad too. I love Greek salad. Do we 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 Oh, what's your what's your thing? I know 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 I found this oatmeal that has flax seed in it and chia seed and everything already prepackaged so it's easy what is it bobs oatmeal oh bobs open it's easy. What is it? Bob's oatmeal. Oh, Bob's oatmeal. Yeah, it's got like pre-packaged and you just put hot water in it and it's great. Really? Do you feel bloated after you eat it?

No, it's awesome. Really? Yeah. I've been eating a lot of something called mush. Have you heard of that? Yeah, I know. I think the overnight, it's very small these portions though.

Like nutrient dense food is hard for me because I have like, like, quality, yeah, like massive volume. It's like salads for me are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know

I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I You want another secret to salads? I don't know. So I like capers. I don't know if you like capers.

I like artichoke parts. I love course and like hearts of ponds. I was born right. And then what you do is put it all in there and get a scissors and just start chopping the whole thing up with a scissors. Yes. It's called a chop salad, honey.

It's fucking awesome. It's amazing. By the way, your... But the scissors is better than a knife. No, of course, because you're chopping it. Yeah. But you can also like take before you... Takes forever. Scissor's 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'm a big believer in the salad thing. Do you like hikama? I like hikama too. What the hell is hikama?

Really? So hikama is like between an apple and a potato, but like much more water content. I don't even know about it. I'm gonna have a Hickama. You've never had Hickama? No. Oh my gosh, really?

Well, I just taught you something. Cause it's delicious. And it's a very, it's volume again. Like I need to eat food with volume. Right. And you know what? I would prefer, I gotta tell my wife, because we've been doing right,

I adopted three kids on officially in the last month. Like, really? Yeah, because of 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 wanna send their boys, so what do we put our boys?

So I said, I'll take three of them. So I have three boys living with us now on top of our four kids. So my wife's cooking a lot. So I used to show kids. Yeah, and she had one day notice, talk about flexibility. I was like, oh, I forgot to tell you,

there's three kids moving in tomorrow. I used to. Oh my God. But she's awesome. And where's she say? Okay, I guess there's three kids moving in tomorrow. Where are they gonna sleep? We got an apartment next to our apartment.

And so they're in that apartment. So, you must be making lots of money at Spartan. I don't make any money. We're gonna talk about that. I know. The reason I bring it up is because she's been cooking rice with the other things she's... Yeah.

I like Keema better. Keema is so much better. Me too. Quinoa is so much better. It's also filling and it's much more nutrient. I love it. So we're gonna get rid of the rice. We gotta go all quinoa. That's a good idea.

Do you drink coffee? I don't like coffee, but you will see me with a cup of my hand. Today I had a cup because 9 a.m. I was ready for my feeding. But my guy that I was meeting had me waiting 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 gotta have something so I had coffee. But I don't like the taste of coffee. Really?

Yeah, I hate it. Just in general, like caffeine, does it help you? You don't like to say what you're saying? 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. Doesn't affect me. It doesn't affect you at all.

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and you won't get surprised with any bogus fees. Visit carbona.com or download the app to shop for a vehicle. Carbana, we'll drive you happy. Avalibility may vary by market. Okay, so let's go back now to Spartan. So here you are, you're doing all these adventure races. You think, okay, I'm gonna try something to help people.

So 22 years ago, 2000, I'm on our farm in Vermont. I met my wife at a race, and I'm like, 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 gonna 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? Because they had-

Of course, I didn't have shoes waiting for me because I wasn't supposed to do the swim. You 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 gonna hurt your tutsis. 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 that I like her right away, but that word was like, I got to chase this down. So I found her. Had 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. Wow.

What did you do? You called the company, they've 15 years. Called the company, They call the company. Found this girl Courtney. Oh, I know Courtney had you know her name because it was on her like saying like no, no, I think somebody that stayed behind. I had left the race already. We like, we met for 11 seconds. And I left the race, but then the tape was playing in my head, tootsies, and I can't believe I wouldn't follow up. And so then some people were still behind.

I said, you gotta get me her name, something. Oh. And while we got a name and we think she works here and then, yeah, it was great. That's an amazing story. I had to lie to Roper 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. I got it. Yeah. And she was like, which you say? Like, yes, no. Yeah, I said, well, we're doing a training weekend. Have you want to come out for a training?

We got to make sure you would come up with a specific team Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. And so you sold the company that we are still after. I still have the Wall Street firm at this point, but we own the farm. Well, we do have Wall Street, we use trader. We 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 there 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 am. Oh yeah, human ecology.

It's funny. 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 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 it wasn't a playbook, you just kind of figured it out. You ended up there and you're

like, okay, now what? And just one step led to another and fire ready aim. Yeah. And so that's your big thing, right? Fire. Fire ready aim. I like that. So, so, um, your other thing is if you are on time, you're late. And I see now fire ready aim. I like that. So, so, um, 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. Um, oh, no, not Gal. Robbie Robbie, uh, Margot Robbie. Yeah. Yeah. I see that's her saying saying she stole the saying from me. Oh my gosh. You should you should sue her. Oh, I don't care No, I don't care. She's much more powerful than I am. So so I'm pretty. Yeah, well, so so So where were we so oh the farm and I get the idea to start

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 all of it. Is this a death race one? Death race, expedition BVI. Who was the first one death race though? First one was expedition BVI. It was in the British Virgin Islands, it was 350 miles long and I lost a person.

And later, if we meet and I lost a person. And later, if we meet who lost a person. So I was organized in the race, and apparently one of the folks that were setting the ropes, we were going to have coastal leering, 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, where I'm on a party. And the staff comes over and he says, we haven't seen John in eight days.

I was like, well, why would you just tell me now? And they said, well, we thought he was back onto a tola, we didn't need him, we needed stitches, they tell me the story. Meanwhile, in the last eight days, we've 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 them here, based on the wind and the currents, we're gonna go look for them. So the Coast Guard takes off in their helicopters, they find them 150 miles away on a deserted island, little tabaga. We'll see a lie.

A lie. So sports illustrated does a story on a true survivor. And how's his leg? He's fine. And we didn't get sued, 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. 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're 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 1500 people showed up. Showed up where? What was the first floor? Our trace was in Vermont. And was it your farm, the first floor? It was the first place was in Vermont and was at your farm the first was up the street from the farm. 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 Yeah, in 2010. We had a little bit of social media. What do we have? When did Facebook start? Yeah, yeah, Facebook was going Yeah, it was like 2008, 2007. Oh, yeah, by space, Facebook. Okay, so basically just changing the name and just creating a different level and making it more accessible. So it wasn't 350 miles. It was three.

Right. My cheer is here. That helped. Yeah, a little. What happened to Death Race? I thought that was the first big one. Expedition BVI was the first big one. After that, I mean.

Then death rates, death rates. But again, that was 100 people would show up to that. But then 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, I was born. Okay. And, uh, grew it, grew it, grew it by 2015.

We finally could make, we were making some money by 2015. We were, um, between two, two, two, two, two thousand and ten and, and two thousand fifteen. How many people were now showing up year to year? Now I was getting five thousand people, seven thousand people, eight thousand people to 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. Burned in so much money. How much does the cost to put one on?

600,000. To put on one race. Yeah. Wow. And so, but if you put that on, how much is the? $100. So if you have $6,000, P.B. you break even seven thousand.

You break even if you don't write to. You really weren't making money. You weren't you bringing in sponsors back then or no? It was, but I just couldn't get the economics to work. But I kept, I'm a glutton for part, just kept doing it, kept doing it, and not for that list. And then by 2018, we were on top of the world. We were like, oh, this is work.

And 2019, we bought out our competitor, Tough Mudder, banging our chest. We did it, we fought through. I was gonna ask you, when you guys were like neck to neck, like, who was more back then, were you guys like neck to neck? They were being us, they were being us, they were being us everywhere.

Was it because it was easier? Or Harvard kids that were much more savvy with social media and the internet. We were Flintstones. And we were really good at putting on events and organizing trailers and trailer lanes and logistics because I came from a construction background, but I would say we were not world-class at digital media.

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 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, why 50 million? Why? Also imagine, imagine in 2020. Right. Imagine having sold $35 million worth of tickets, right? Already, because the first quarter, January very March, I sold $35 million worth of tickets. They're all getting ready for their races, they're training. Because how many races a year are you putting on this time?

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, right? And other brands. And other brands. So like, there's like, Anaheim Spartan, there's a high...

Yeah, so Spartan, there's a high... 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 is without obstacles. Trail runs all over the world. Then there's Tough Mudder, right?

Right. Then there's Dekka, 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 dollars 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 events. Right. 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,

people who don't understand business think that when the event goes on that week and that's when I write all the checks. No, the checks were been written over the last 12 months. Totally. Right. And so anyway, I mean- 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 it's funny.

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, 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. Right? I'm not dead.

No, I live in in Siberia, it's not 30 below. And my kids are healthy and my wife's still talking to me. It's not that bad. So wait, how did you get yourself up? But that's still happening. 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.

Oh, red. But the last six, oh no, I owe 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. Hubwood here, hubwood here.

Knock on wood. It's looking better. So that's good. Not come wood somewhere. Hubba here, Hubba here, Hubba here. Not come wood. It's looking, it's looking better. So that's good. Well then 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. Here I am spending all this money on hotels

just to do this podcast. Oh yeah, I know, you will, you go. I so it's really, it's you to play. But anyway, so then how so then it starts up again and The private equity come how much do they own of the business? So we before the pandemic Because it by the way, what's the private equity? So at that time it was called Raptor They were the they were the guys that came in in 2011 2012 But we bought them out when we bought tough motto. We were on top of the world. We were feeling so good. We bought them out. 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 got me any money on the business. I've only put money in the business. I only put money in. I've never taken money out. So how are you surviving and adopting three kids?

I'm 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, are you joking? No. No? Because I would have thought by now, you would have been a multi, like a multi-calfillian. Like a billionaire.

Yeah, like a billionaire. Like you're the founder of Spartan. I should have pulled up in like a Rolls Royce or something. Yeah. Or like a like a like a Bugatti or something. Yeah, two Bugatti's. Yeah. I go to the sewing one behind the bread like I should have.

Uh, instead I have a goat and a chicken on a farm. I'm like, by the way, this is impossible. I should have had. Instead, I have a goat and a chicken on a farm. So by the way, this is impossible. So I would think the founder of Spartan that is the most well-known famous adventure racing company in the world would have like the pontipissen basically. Yeah, no, I had a user toilet.

I know, I know. It's true. And you have an apartment in Florida. And I have an apartment in Florida. But you have a farm. I do have a farm. I know, I know. It's true. And you have an apartment in Florida. And I have an apartment in Florida. But you have a farm. I do have a farm. How big is a farm? It's big.

It's big, but I paid, I mean, we're happy, 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 are standing in front of me.

I said, 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 and and so I bought that we 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 I'm a billionaire. Yeah. It's 400,000 dollars. 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 and nowhere of Vermont. And the reality is not everybody wants to live in Vermont, which is why I like it so

much. Exactly. Exactly. so it's not like... Or Orlando. Or Orlando, yeah. But not to say that. And 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,

you owe all that money, how do you not take even a small salary? So, from 2000 to 2010, while I was building this business, 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 of finance. What, 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 what's important. So it's been 11 years of just burn it through savings. And that's a lot of savings. It's a lot of savings. So, or I'm very frugal.

I mean, we only need celery. Yeah, I was gonna say, right? A big salad of like just like iceberg lettuce, even not even like the organic, you know? You can't go, okay, cows too expensive. Yeah, I was gonna say, so is it just iceberg or maybe if you remain, 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 really, like that blows my mind actually. It's not even believable. And the thing is, most people, I mean, you know better than anybody, you've started businesses, we 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, Hurst became an investor as well. So right now, Hurst owns a little piece.

We didn't buy them out. They're an amazing partner. We bought out the early investor. Hurst is still a partner. They own roughly 18% of the company. What's with 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. So that's good. And I got a immediate phone call during the pandemic and said, don't worry, we'll be here for you. So that's amazing.

So then you basically get, you have Hurst 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 to be the doors. They're not going to 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? I'm in a salary of 50,000. No, I'm sorry, I get paid. I just don't get paid like a CEO of, yeah. Yeah, oh, 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 20, 25. If all continues on, so probably, three years from now, two and a half, three years from now. Right. So are people then like, now because now people are itching to do

something and getting out, like, has a pendulum now swung completely the other direction and now you're going to be busy. I mean, I would say, I would say next year, I should be normalized back to a 2019 look 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 gonna just get back to 2019 next year. And the reason I believe that is, first of all, the worst the economy does, the better for us. If the stock market was completely crashed, that's great for us.

Because you're gonna not go to Europe on a trip, you're not gonna go to Disney, you're gonna come and crawl into 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 matter this weekend or Spartan, you're telling me and I'm like, I'm in, I'm going, I'm doing a way, but you're not in office and those conversations are not not necessarily happening on happening on zooms so

So that's a challenge. Yeah, 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've literally grown roots on their couches the last two years. Yeah, totally. 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, what's your plan or marketing plan

or what's your model to get them back engaged? We ordered 1,000 black vans from Amazon and we're going to just drive to our houses and rip them off their couch. Kind of like what you do with your children every morning at five o'clock. Yes, for sure. 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 What would 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 Now I have like a lot of intricate questions, but I'm not even gonna tell you then you won't come back. Okay fine I was thinking for the audience, like what part? Why is she excited for it? 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? Dun dun dun dun. 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 because it's 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 it's exactly what people actually are attracted to in TV, because it's like super extreme. I like that. I like that. That's my opinion, but we can talk offline.

Yeah. 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. Part three. We're 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. You got to tell my wife, she thinks I'm too. I'm going to call her. Do you?? I will give you her number. I'm serious

Yeah, please do it. I mean this a case so just for the case so add your text to me your wife's phone number How do people if they want to do a spark? Yeah, yeah, so anybody out there that's a friend of yours Let's see I'm gonna give you all until September 15th Not a friend of mine because maybe this won't be, I'll put that point. Tell them about where to look into Spartan or you can. Well, you could just send me an email. If you write me an email,

it's gotta be one or two sentences only. If it's only then I'm not gonna read it. Joetspartan.com. Joetspartan.com, shoot me an email. And then if you wanna do a race, they'll get in touch with you. No, no, not me. Just say, just hear me out for a second. Okay. Get in touch with you. No, no, not me. Just say, just hear me out for a second.

Okay. 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 this again?

I don't mind, it doesn't matter. Happy to do it. At the end of the day, when I think about why I do this, it's because of the 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. 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 got the unlucky person on the planet.

So just get people to do the race and if the price or I don't have the money or whatever the frigging excuse is, they're going to come up with, like let's not put barriers in front. I'm always just get them there. Get them there. Yeah. 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 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 anymore, but your content is great. Thank you. It's at Joe DeSena, DE. Oh, it's at, I don't even know what it is. At real Joe DeSena maybe. Maybe. Something like that.

Okay, good. And what are the stuff? Go to the Spartan website because there's like a million different kinds of events. Oh, check out, um, check out, um, 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. That's pretty unbelievable. You gotta 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 June. Death race.

Yeah, end of June, 23. You wanna 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 happen to be the death race? Okay, do the death race? group under you and they do the death race. I'll do it. I just have to be the death race. Do the death race?

Yeah, no, the death race. It could sound the farm. Can't wait. Okay. Well, um, maybe. Okay. So, Joe, I love you and goodbye. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm Heather Monahan, host of Creating Confidence, a part of the YAP Media Network, the number

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