In Search Of Excellence - Joe De Sena: Every Man Dies, Not Every Man Lives | E102

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Welcome to In Search of Excellence! You're listening to part two of my awesome conversation with Joe De Sena, the CEO of the global fitness and wellness brand Spartan, which has a community of more than 10 million athletes around the world.If you haven't yet listened to part one of my conversation with Joe, be sure to check that one out first. In this part, Joe shares his incredible story of perseverance, the importance of mentorship, and how pushing your limits can lead to extreme success and personal growth.Time stamps:00:58 From Cornell to Wall StreetThe entrepreneurship class at CornellWon a $5000 prize in a competition for the best business ideaThe advice from one of the judges to go to Wall StreetWent back to his pool business05:00 Joe’s bold stock investmentBuys Syntax stocks and earns $ 100,000Sells his pool business for $500,000Blew it all on the wrong stock investments07:25 How to get a mentor?Mentors are looking for basic human skillsRandall’s experience with his mentorsEarning a mentorship – a story about Max13:35 The importance of taking meetingsYou might add value to their life, they might add value to your lifeMoney comes from the most unexpected placesYou never know where a meeting could lead17:46 A risk to peruse your dreamLeaving the shore is uncomfortableTake the chances, you can always come backAn incredible red barn story21:20 The Spartan Company 24 years agoGetting people outside their comfort zoneIn the beginning, it didn’t workPeople don’t want to buy discomfortThe change that came with Facebook23:18 The Death RaceIt’s like a Navy SEALs or Delta Force eventSpartan’s toughest event meant to break youYou look in the mirror and find out who you areWhat does the Death Race look like?26:27 Serious health issues in JapanJoe was stressed out about his businessWoke up one morning and couldn’t see anythingEnded up in the hospital – and was told a part of his brain is deadHe decided not to accept that28:59 Why do people come to the Spartan race?When people experience the transformation, it’s addictiveEven if it sucked while they were doing itJoe’s philosophy - nobody cares, work harderOptimize your health and wellness to be able to operate31:01 The fear of failureFailure is a learning opportunityA lot of our fear is just fiction32:48 Three most important ingredients for successPersistence, Personality, GratitudeThe level of hard work needed for successYou must be willing to sacrifice and save the fun for later35:45 The importance of extreme preparationJoe is constantly working and always preparingHe prepares months ahead37:42 Joe’s ultimate dreamA year of some form of military service post-high schoolDisconnecting all water heatersKids doing burpees before they come into the schoolIs a work-life balance possible?38:55 Fill in the blanks for excellenceSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

If you want to be the best in the world, you're going to have to outwork everybody. You're going to have to out-prepare everybody. That requires sacrifice. There's no way to have it all. Your family's going to have to suffer a little bit. Your fund is going to have to suffer. I was saying, save the fun for later.

Yeah, so death race could be exactly that. We could have a 26.2 mile barbed wire crawl. We might have folks do 3,000 burpees out in the field. We might put them in a bullfighting ring and release a live bull. We just come up with crazy shit, all meant to be insane. You're listening to part two of my awesome conversation

with Joe DeSena, the CEO of the global fitness and wellness brand Spartan, which has a community of more than 10 million athletes around the world. If you haven't yet listened to part one of my awesome conversation with Joe, be sure to check that one out first. You still had your pool business while you were at Cornell. And when you graduated, you moved from Ithaca back to Queens. At that time, the business

had 750 customers. You were making 200K a year, which back then, 30 years ago, was just a shit ton of money. Can you tell us about the entrepreneurship class you took at Cornell and the entrepreneurship competition and your tough hoodie with the metal spikes and how one of the judges there changed your life forever. And then go into the Syntax Roche merger, where you invested $140,000 one day, and you made $100,000 the next day. How the hell do you know all this? So I'm graduating Cornell, and I find out about this class, this entrepreneurship class at the business school of the core components to that class was create a business from scratch, present that business, and we'll have a competition. And the Ryu Nidi wine family

will then choose who wins a $5,000 reward to start that business. So my business, you know, I looked at sweatshirts on campus. I looked at sweatshirts at other campuses. I was studying textiles at the time. I really liked the satin letters in the Cornell champion sweatshirt, you know, the champion was the brand. But the way those sweatshirts were made was a champion sweatshirt was purchased. Some women sewed the letters on locally. And I think back then it was like $21 in cost, I think, for those shirts to be made with all that handling. And I said, well, we could just make those sweatshirts in Asia. And we could sew the letters on in Asia. And we could actually enhance the sweatshirts and make them a lot cooler, a lot tougher. We could put, you know,

spandex in the wristbands and the waistbands so they don't blow out. We could do really cool stuff with these sweatshirts. Anyway, we made our pitches. I won the award and I became friendly with one of the judges. One of the judges was Italian, the buddy of mine. I was talking to him last night. He's 80, 80 some odd years old now. And we got to know each other. And he said, what are you doing when you graduate? And I said, well, if I don't, if I don't get into this MBA program, I'm going to go back and run my business. He said, you're an idiot. I said, why am I an idiot? He said, you, you have a personality. You have what it takes to do well on wall street. And I said, I don't really know wall street.

I remember the 1987 crash. I don't think people are making money there anymore. He said, you're an idiot. He said, you got to go to Wall Street. You got to cross the river from Queens, get to Wall Street. Anyway, I didn't listen to him. I didn't get into the five-year program, graduated, went back to the neighborhood. I was actually going backwards in some ways, right? And I ran my business. Every month for 48 months in a row, this guy, Al Capucci, called me every month. Hey, Joe, it's Al. Did you go to Wall Street yet? Looking for a job yet? Did you sell that pool business? Al, love you. Leave me alone. I'm not leaving the neighborhood. I'm getting close to all these organized crime guys. Things are going

great for me. I'm the big man on campus. I own a backhoe now and Bobcats and tractors and trailers and trucks. Call me the next month, the month after. On the 48th month, he called me. He said, Joe, I want you to buy this stock. I want you to buy this stock, Syntex. It's a drug company. I said, Al, I appreciate it. I don't have an account. Anyway, later that day, I was going to pick up a big check from a customer of mine, Eli Novak. I got to Eli's house and knocked on his door. He owed me, whatever, $150,000. I had done a lot of work. You picked up the check for $150,000. I picked up the check for $150. So I picked up the check for 150K. I said, Eli, my friend wants me to buy this stock, Syntax. I know you're a pharmacist.

He said, I can't believe you're bringing up Syntax. And he's towel drying his hair. He said, I'm about to sit down and buy, I forget how many shares, but quite a bit of shares. And he sits me down and he says, Joe, you're single. You're making a lot of money. Now's the perfect time to make an investment like this. And he calls up a broker in front of me and he convinces me to buy 10,000 shares, $140,000, $14 stock, 10,000 shares.

It was crazy. It was bold, but it shows in life you need to open up your mind and to the universe. The next day the company got taken over and I made a hundred thousand dollars. And I said, this is the greatest business ever. I am selling my pool business, getting out of putting down the chainsaw and heading to Manhattan. And I went and found the job and that was, that changed everything. So you sold the business for $500,000, which is, again, just a ton of money. I mean, when you think about it, you're doing better than your friends who had gone to Harvard or Cornell,

who are working in investment as bankers at these incredible firms like Goldman Sachs. That's a ton of money. What did you do with all that money at the young age? Were you the kind of guy that saved it? Did you spend it? Did you buy yourself a Porsche? I never bought things, right? I was never a believer in superficial things. I always loved that little Mercedes at that time, the SL,

but I would never buy it, but I admired it. I loved seeing a Humvee. I admired it, but I would never buy it. I would look at land. I guess my father taught me at a young age. I would look at opportunities to invest in things that could spit off returns. Shamefully for me, that $500,000 plus the money I had saved, once I got to Wall Street, I quickly thought I was as smart as my buddy Al. I started investing in stocks and I basically blew it all. In retrospect, it was the greatest thing that ever happened because it taught me what not to do at a young enough age that I could recover.

You've had a number of people who have changed your life because they saw something in you. They want to help you. They want to mentor you. What are these people seeing in you? And why do they do it? I think they see what you and I talked about. As I sit here and I talk to you, I think about my own children. And I think what they see is that person that's willing to lean in, that doesn't have his hand out, that's willing to listen, that is so basic, as you said earlier. And I said, like, these are normal skills that every human being should have. But because most don't, I stand out. You stand out. I wake up earlier. I go to bed a little after the work is done. These are just simple things. They are simple. I've had a lot of people who believe in me as well over the years, and I'm grateful. I remember every single person that helped me along the way. I had an amazing mentor, David Page, who passed away now, I think 15 years ago. He was the head of Detroit's biggest and most prestigious law firm, this firm you could make

partner there in four years, interest-free home loan. And I remember sending him as a first-year law student where you can't get a job your first year, even if you're working or you're going to a very prestigious school. I went to Northwestern. I think at the time it was ranked the 11th best law school in the country. And I remember sending him a list of, I think, 243 firms on Excel spreadsheet, which I really didn't know how to use and saying, hey, I sent these letters. Do you know people here who can help me get a job? But I didn't tell him that I'd created the list. And he said to me, did you create this list by yourself? And I knew him because he was my brother's best friend's dad. And he was my brother's little league baseball

coach. And I had known him since I think I was five or six years old. And at that point, he saw what I had done. And he was very impressed. And that's what he told me. And you're getting a compliment from Mr. Page. And by the way, I called him Mr. Page. Once our company had gone public and I thought, OK, I was 33 years old. I think maybe now it's time not to call Mr. Page. And I call him by his first name, David. And it's interesting. Eli Broad, who was my boss at Sun America after I had completely failed in my career, hired me as one of three guys who had started two Fortune 500 companies back then. And I wrote him this crazy letter. We could talk about my letters some other time. Hopefully we'll have time.

And when I went in to meet with him the first time, he said that I've never taken a meeting with a cold letter. And I was so prepared. He said, you have the biggest set of balls I've ever seen in my life. But he liked me and he saw something in me and he gave me a chance. And so I think like you, I did it. It's really so important. You earn your mentors in life. And I think it's really important to earn mentors in life. But what are some of the, how do you go out and get a mentor? Let's say, Joe, you're a really well-known guy. You're famous in the fitness world. People would love to work with you. What would it take for you to mentor someone you didn't know? You know, first of all, I love that saying. I get a great saying or two every day from somebody,

and I just have to start remembering them all. Earning your mentor is fantastic. There's a young kid, Max, who I'm going to connect you with, who's in L.A. Are you in L.A. now? Yeah, I'm in L.A. All right, I'm going to connect you with Max. Max has earned his mentorship with me. He was relentless. He missed a few meetings in the early days at 16. I hung up on him. I blew him off because I was pissed. But he has since bounced back. And this kid, Max, is fantastic. And because he brings value to me, number two on our list from Bananos, right? Because he brings value to me, I take his calls.

I gave him great advice yesterday. I said, Max, you are so good at connecting people. You're 17 years old. I said, I don't like the fact that you woke up late this morning because he texted me at like, it must've been noon Eastern standard time. So it was up at nine, right? I said, Max, you should be up at six. I said, but because you're such an amazing networker, here's what I would do. Here's the advice I gave him. I said, Max, I want you in the next 18 months to build 300 incredible relationships like you have with me. You are going to be known as the networker. And as you're doing it over the next 18 months, I want you to write a few paragraphs each day for the book that you're

going to teach to other people on how you did it. And you're going to get to know Joe DeSantis' birth date and his family's names and what problem he's trying to solve. For 300 people, you're going to do this. And as you're writing the book, it's going to force you to think about what you did today to move towards that goal, what you did today that made you better as a networker. And he took notes. This was last night I said this to him. He took notes. And hopefully today he's on it. And so when you say, how do you earn your money?

The fact that he listens and he does what I say makes me feel like I'm adding value. I'm not wasting my time. Here's a kid that's getting after it. He's not afraid to text me, call me. I need you on a phone. You know what I mean? He's earned that that's getting after it. He's not afraid to text me, call me. I need you on a phone. You know what I mean? He's earned that mentorship. I like him. I like the kid. I'm going to connect you with him. I love to meet him. I'm excited to meet him. In today's day and age,

it's easy to do an email. It's easy to do a Zoom. It's even simpler to do a phone call. Why don't people take every meeting they can get or get on every phone call? And I tell people, if you can do it in person, do it in person. If the flight's $400 and you think that person can change your life over the course of your lifetime, what's $400? Go there in person, show them that they matter, show them that their time matters. If you have to travel, you got to pay for the flight, hotel, do the research. I have so many students and mentees who have the attitude, Joe, hey, that meeting is going to be a waste of time. I had so many meetings. I had complete failure as a lawyer. I wrote 300 letters to 300 CEOs of big companies asking for a meeting. There was no Google back then. I wanted a service called LexisNexis. I went back, researched 20 years of newspaper clippings and magazine clippings.

And everyone said, you're not going to get a single meeting. And at this point, I had nothing to lose. I took every meeting. I got 80 meetings, the CEO of Disney, Sumner Redstone, CEO of Marriott, every studio in LA. And when people suggested a meeting with me, even if it was someone who wasn't a CEO, I took every meeting. Why are people not doing this? And why are they so lazy by getting on a fucking phone call or a zoom call instead of driving around for 20 minutes or getting a five hour drive? What's going on there? You, you said it before you asked the question, you said, Joe, I don't understand why he said, don't ask for money, don't have your handout. By taking the meeting where you don't know the outcome, those people that don't do it are basically putting their hand out and saying, unless I get something for that meeting, why would I go?

And what Bonanno is saying and what we're saying, what you and I are saying is, no, take the meeting. You might add value to their life. They might add value to your life. And when I made money in my life, real money, it usually came from the most unlikely place. It was like some person I met randomly. What was the one that happened? Oh, you're going to love this. Last week, I'm in Denver. Here's the reason to take the meeting. You ready? Last week, I'm in Denver. And I shot out to Denver. It's obviously a pain in the ass. I got to get on a flight. I got to shoot out to Denver, do the meeting in person. I'm with Leprino Foods. Leprino Foods in Denver makes mozzarella cheese. And they're showing me the factory. And I'm questioning why the hell I'm out here, but they're nice people. And turns out they're the biggest mozzarella cheese manufacturer in

the world. Old man Leprino is in the office. 70 years ago, he started. And I'm thinking about the mozzarella cheese in Brooklyn and Queens, where I grew up, and all these savvy Italians and organized crime. How could it be that in Denver, where there's no real Italians, I'm sorry if you're in Denver and Italian, like, how could it be that this guy became the biggest in the world? It's impossible. And he said, well, he said, I took a meeting that I wasn't supposed to take many years ago. And in that meeting, a guy said to me, I want to start this thing called Pizza Hut and I need some cheese. Guy makes two billion pounds of cheese now this like a year because he took that meeting. So so again, again, you could either you could either vet every meeting and say, what am I going to get from it before I commit to give my time?

We just take the fucking meetings and you never know where it leads. It might it might be Pizza Hut on the other end of that, on that phone call. When you were making good money at the pool company, you're saying to yourself, I'm sure I'm making 200K a year and I got to give that up to go do something else. And again, as part of my coaching, as part of my professional coaching where people pay me a lot of money. And again, I love changing lives. They said to me, you know, Randy, I'm making $500,000 as a lawyer, even if I want to start my own company. I've got kids, I've got kids, I've got a family, I've got a mortgage. And basically, I'm stuck. I have golden handcuffs. When's the right opportunity for someone thinking like that?

And at what point, what's the right level of risk to pursue your dream? Well, it's very hard to leave the shore. When you're on your beach and you got your little database there, Sandy. Huge database. Biggest database in the world. You got your huge Sandy database that's missing Howard Beach. We got it. Joe, we got it. I'm going to send you the link when we're done.

And you're asked to leave the shore. That's uncomfortable. That's scary. It's very comfortable being in that job, earning that money, have those golden handcuffs. But if you're capable, if you know you can land on your feet, if you know you add value, that you show up early, that you can get any meeting you want, that you've got a reputation, who cares? Turn the boat around. Come back to shore if you have to.

But take the chances because you don't want to get to the end of your life. I don't want to get to the end of my life and say, I should have done this. I should have done that. I can't believe I missed this. So you got to take the shots and you got to know that you could always come back. You could always come back. It's your ego that typically doesn't allow that because you don't want to be embarrassed. You had a very successful 10-year career on Wall Street. It was during this time you began pushing yourself and entering endurance challenges. You completed 50 elite endurance races by the time you were 40 years old.

Can you tell us about a coffee table book that your wife Courtney purchased just after you started dating and the picture of a barn on your trading desk and what happened next? Crazy story. Crazy story. I had a barn on my trading desk. I knew someday we'd buy a red barn. Someday I'd buy a red barn. I didn't know my wife at the time when I had that picture on my desk. I met my wife and I knew she was the one. And I just started looking. We just started looking for a barn, for a farm. Couldn't find anything.

Didn't even know where to look. I was looking in Idaho. We were in Wyoming. We were in Connecticut. We were in upstate New York. And her grandmother gave us a book, America's Greatest Barns. My wife then wrote, you know, don't worry, someday we'll find something together in the inscription. A year later, we found this barn for sale in Vermont, which Vermont was not on our list.

We ended up buying the barn and the farm in Vermont. And then I found that book, which again, I had gotten a year earlier and it turned out right across from the inscription, don't worry, we'll find a barn together someday, was the barn we bought, which is absolutely crazy. You moved there and you started a company called Spartan. Tell us what it is. And for a lot of us, people are going to look and see the story of what you're going to explain in a minute and say, you are fucking nuts and I'm never going to be able to do that. Yeah. So look, the idea was, can we get people outside their comfort zone? Can we get people to do things they otherwise wouldn't do,

all in an effort to be healthy? Climb ropes, crawl under barbed wire, run three miles, five miles, eight miles, ten miles. Just do things that you just would never do, and it would force you to start to live the life you should be living. It'll force you to go to bed early. It'll force you to wake up early. It'll force you to take the cold shower. It'll force you to start to live the life you should be living. It'll force you to go to bed early. It'll force you to wake up early. It'll force you to take the cold shower.

It'll force you to put down the cookie. Because you know you've got a date on the calendar. You've got this race coming up with fire and rope and barbed wire. And you're doing it with your friends and you don't want to be embarrassed. So that was the idea 24 years ago. And for most of those years, it didn't work. People don't want to buy discomfort. They want to buy comfort. They want to buy easy. They want to buy fast. But eventually,

Facebook came to be. A lot of folks were coming back from the Middle East after serving, doing some tours at war. And the perfect storm occurred, and 700 people showed up to a race, more than I'd had the entire decade before. And then 1400 and then 2500. And before you know, we're in 45 countries, 300 plus events, 10 million people have done one of our events somewhere in the world. And the way I get paid is, Hey, Joe, I'm back with my husband. I'm back with my wife. I lost 200 pounds. I gave up drinking. I no longer do drugs. I didn't kill myself. And so I've got literally 10 million stories of life transformation that I get paid by or paid with. Let's get into the details here because people are going to listen to this stuff,

Joe, and they're going to say, why? Let's talk about the death race, which I believe you started in 2004, which I think you have to sign something, a waiver that says you may die. Death race is like our Navy SEALs or Delta Force of events. It's our toughest event. It could go 72 hours. It could go 100 hours. And it's really meant to break you. In that process, you look in the mirror and find out who you are. You get to build those resiliency muscles. So somebody that's done a bunch of our other races eventually works their way up to the death race, the granddaddy. I've got one going on this week and I have to leave this interview. I leave this interview and go to a winter death race on the granddaddy. I've got one going on this week and I have to leave this, this interview. I leave this interview and go to a winter death race on the farm in Vermont,

actually, where we're going to absolutely torture people in the snow and the ice. And, and the goal again is to get them to quit and, and, and see the last man or last woman standing. Uh, that's not the race that we put on, you know, somewhere in your neighborhood, somewhere around the world. It's just, you know, somewhere in your neighborhood, somewhere around the world. It's just, this is our most extreme version for folks that really want to test their grit. People that come out and experience death race, they might go on true story. They might go on and row and row a rowboat across the Atlantic ocean or go climb Everest

or you name it. It's really a leveling up tool. Can you describe some of the details? I want to talk about doing a marathon under barbed wire to tell people some of the things you have to do and then also tell people what the normal Spartan race is and what that's about and what they have to do, because I want people listening who want to do this to know what's what and hopefully you're going to get some more people to sign up and change some more lives. Yeah, so death race could be exactly that.

We could have a 26.2-mile barbed wire crawl. We might have folks do 3,000 burpees out in the field. We might put them in a bullfighting ring and release a live bull. We might have them swim three miles in frigid cold water where almost everybody becomes hyperthermic. Could be an 18-mile canoe carry. We just come up with crazy shit all meant to be insane and break people. And if we see that they're doing really well, we might bring them into a local church, sit them down and have them listen to a two-hour sermon where they fall asleep, only to wake them up again and get them back out on the mountain. So yeah, it's a crazy event. Now, a regular Spartan race, like I said, three miles, eight miles, 13 miles,

could be a tough mudder event, another brand we own. It's going to be getting you dirty. It's out in the mud. You're climbing over obstacles. You're climbing walls, crawling under barbed wire, climbing ropes, jumping over fire, all in an effort to get you, like I said, uncomfortable but better prepared

for life. You've done well. You've had since 2010, hosted more than 800 events in 42 countries, which is amazing. Congratulations. Like so many businesses, though, Joe, you started, things don't go well. It took a long time for things to kick in. These are expensive things to host. I think some of them cost 600K to start. You're in serious danger of your business failing. Tell us about what happened in Japan and the sacrifice of you moving your family there. And what's your advice to people who are on their last leg who said, gosh, this isn't going to work and I have to throw the Hail Mary in there? Yeah. Well, I mean, the entire existence of't going to work and I have to throw the Hail Mary in there? Yeah. Well, I mean, the entire existence of Spartan, especially what I just went through with the pandemic, there's touch and go moments where I just say, I got to pack it in. Like,

it's just not going to make it. We can't make payroll. We're out of money. But you keep fighting to live another day. The low point for me outside of COVID, three years of hell, was in Japan. I woke up, I couldn't see one morning, so stressed out, building this business, stretching it into 45 countries, and ended up in the hospital. Turns out I have a hole in my heart. 20% of the world has a hole in their heart. And with all the flights I was taking that week, had a little bubble in my leg jump over, one in a billion, from one side of the heart to the other, travel up into my brain and block a little vein that controls part of your eyesight. So I couldn't see. Basically a stroke. A young doctor in the Japanese hospital saved me,

threw me on an MRI machine, quickly got my blood thinned out. I was in the hospital for 30 days. They told me, look, a part of your brain died. It's never coming back. I decided to not accept that answer. I started standing on my head in the hospital every day. I started taking cold showers. I was doing burpees. I was running up and down. I started standing on my head in the hospital every day. I started taking cold showers. I was doing burpees. I was running up and down. I was disconnecting all the wires and all the tubes that they had on me. Every time I did it, they thought I died. They ran into the room because everything had flat lines. They disconnected everything. And, um, you know, 60, 90 days later, uh, when they did a scan, uh, my brain was back to normal. Somehow, I got it back. So that was a low

point. That was Japan. And you saved your business. Saved my business, saved myself, and somehow still standing. A lot of your customers, clients, do you call them customers or clients people who do the race what customers customers come back again why are they coming back and why are they coming in the first place well you know you can't turn iron into steel on the couch watching netflix you've got to heat it you got to pound it you got to drown it. You've got to pound it. You've got to drown it. That's how you transform it. People out there can listen to a podcast. They can read a book. They can go to a conference. That's not going to change you. If you want true change, you've got to be heated, pounded, and drowned. That's the deal. And when people come out and they feel that transformation take place, even though it sucks while you're doing it, it's addictive. It used to happen to me. I was doing these races all over

the world. I'd be in the middle of the race saying, this is so terrible. I can't believe I'm doing this. This sucks. I'm never coming back. As soon as I crossed the finish line, I signed up for the next one. Let's talk about your philosophy on life, which I think is amazing. What's the crux of it? Tell everybody what your philosophy is. I mean, at the center of it, it's basically nobody cares, work harder. It's this idea that we should just be getting after it all day, every day, and then making sure you optimize your health and wellness to be able to operate that way. If you don't take care of yourself, like my dad didn't take care of himself, and you push the limits 80, 100, 120-hour weeks, something's got to give. Something breaks. So my philosophy is wake up early,

take care of yourself all day, do the hard things, add value to, you know, yourself, the people around you, the planet, and rinse and repeat and do it. Do it until you can't. So many people are afraid to do things. Starting a new company, maybe they're afraid to do the race. They're afraid of failure. How do we overcome our fear of failure? And are our perceptions about failure and what happens true? I would just change the word failure to learning. Like I love Thomas Edison when somebody said, you know, you, you tried to make a light bulb 998 times and you fail. He said, I didn't fail. I, I learned how not to make a light bulb 998 times. Right. So like I would view it

as a learning opportunity. Um, again, if it's not fatal, if, if that failure is not fatal, then you're just learning. Dust off, get back in the game. And by the way, the greatest stories of our time, the greatest books, the greatest movies are of folks that go into valleys and come up to peaks. They're not flatline stories. Flatline stories are boring. They're boring for you. They're boring for the person that hears about them. So you got to go into those valleys and you got to climb those peaks. You said that a lot of our fear is fiction. What do you mean by that? It's bullshit. It's not right. Oh my God, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. This is going to happen. And you speak to elders that are on their deathbed and they say, all those things I was worried about, all those things that were concerning me, none of them came true. It's just a waste of energy.

And so it really is in 99.9% of the cases, fiction. Our fears are never as bad, not never, but often, most of the time, not as bad as a reality. Most of the time. Let's talk about the ingredients of success. What do you think are the three most important ingredients for us to be successful in our lives? Well, definitely this idea of persistence, which we've been talking about, probably the most important. Personality or communication communication skills you've got to be able

to communicate sell your ideas sell yourself right and then gratitude yeah i would say persistent personality and gratitude be grateful that you get to do this. Oh my God, it's so bad. You get to do this. You're not living in the gulag right now. I tell people something a little different. I have my own list and one of them is work ethic. I put that at the top of my list. There's a lot of other things as well. We share some of those. We talk about Elon Musk said we should work 120 hours a week. We go to Jack Dorsey, who said, no, you shouldn't do that. Does extreme success require extreme sacrifice? And what's the level of hard work that most people should do? It depends what you want. As far as what level of hard work you should take on,

what is the outcome you want? If you want to be the best in the world, you're going to have to outwork everybody. You're going to have to out-prepare everybody. So that requires sacrifice. Sacrifice, there's no way to have it all. Your family's going to have to suffer a little bit. Your fun is going to have to suffer. I was saying, save the fun for later. Save the fun for later, right? You've got to be able to sacrifice all that stuff in the

pursuit of your goals. There's a great blog. It's called, Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? I was telling Max this yesterday. I'm going to connect you with this kid, Max. I said, Max, as a UK rowing team, there's no way they were going to win the gold. They weren't good enough. They had 18 months to train. The coach said, every decision we make, we will ask ourselves this question. Will it make the boat go faster? Hey, guys, we had a great day. Let's go have ice cream.

Will it make the boat go faster? No, we're not having ice cream. Hey, guys, we had a great week. Let's go hang out with the girls. Will it make the boat go faster? No, we're not hanging out with the girls. If it doesn't make the boat go faster, you don't do it. But that requires sacrifice. That requires delay and gratification. That requires saving the fun for later. If you're not willing to do that, you're not going to be one

of the best. There's a saying about that that someone told me a long time ago. And again, this is part of my coaching because so many of the younger mentees, people who are either graduating college or they're in their mid-20s, I said, and they're focused on money. And I said, my advice is learn in your 20s, earn in your 30s. And I think a lot of people are just not focused on learning as one of the most important criteria in their careers. They want to get rich fast. Agreed. We talked about what it takes to be successful. You mentioned preparation. I have a topic that's made me successful called extreme preparation. When someone prepares one hour for something, I'll usually do 10. I want to be the most prepared person who's ever walked foot into any room or podcast. Can you talk about an example or two of how extreme preparation

has contributed to your success? Yeah. I mean, I think about a lot of examples of stories I've heard around extreme preparation and how this person won the Olympic trials or, you know, go down the list. But in my own life, in my own life, you know, I don't take weekends off. I don't stop working. I'm constantly in my mind under threat from the competition, from whatever it may be. So I'm in constant preparation. Like it just doesn't stop. I don't take a pause and say, hey, now let's just focus on preparing for what, like I'm always preparing. I'm preparing for the worst. I'm preparing for the best. I'm just always preparing. Does that mean if you have an important presentation or meeting that you're waking up at four in the morning when someone else is waking up at nine in the morning? So you walk into the room, you know that every single question that's coming your way, you're going to nail it?

It's worse. I'm months. I'm preparing months ahead. I start working on things. I back into my driveway rather than pulling in front because I'm preparing for when I leave. Because those extra seconds of backing up where you're making the three-point turn,

you're doing that, what are you doing that 2,000 times a day? It really adds up. It adds up. That's right. So what is your ultimate dream? My ultimate dream is to get the government, not just of our country, but every country, to have our children all do like a year of some form of military service post high school. My dream is to get everybody to eat a little more salad. My dream is to disconnect all the hot water heaters.

My dream is to have burpees at the front door of every school before the kids walk in. And I'm serious about like this is stuff I get excited about. Like if we could institute those things, I'd be really excited. You talked about working weekends and hard work. I know you work your ass off, but you also have a family. You have four kids, your wife, Courtney. I know you have a great relationship with her. What's the appropriate work-life balance? And why do you only let your children watch TV if it's in Mandarin? Well, there's no such thing as work-life balance. I mean, if you want a great family life and you want to be with your family all the time, well, then your work is going to suffer. If you want to have a great career or you want to build your bit, then your family is going to suffer a little bit. So I call it work-life integration.

And I try to integrate both. So I'm doing business in the house. I was doing it this morning so I can hang out with my kids another half hour, my wife. This balance thing, it's just not possible. Not if you want extreme success in some area of your life. A lot of people are not willing to make the sacrifice and they wonder why that's exactly right how many women do your race the spartan races and how many have done the the death race about 500 000 women a year do our races around the world. Probably if I had to guess from 2005 to 10 years, there's probably been three or 400 women that have competed in our death race. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, fill in the blank to excellence. Are you ready to play?

Let's do it. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is nobody cares work harder my number one professional goal is change 100 million lives my biggest regret is my biggest regret i don't really have any regrets. Because we learn from every experience. I wanted more kids. My biggest regret would be I wanted more kids. I've got five kids. It's the best thing in the world. I live for my kids, and there's nothing more enjoyable

than hanging out with my kids. It's probably the greatest thing I've done in my life as well. The one thing I've dreamed about doing for a long time but haven't done is? Running the Great Wall of China. The one physical challenge I've dreamed about doing for a long time but haven't is? Running the Great Wall of China. The craziest thing I've ever done is? Did a rod by foot. By the way way do you know who mike horn is the world's greatest explorer yeah he was on my show some of the shit he's done is just crazy um great stories if you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to your 21 year old self what would that be? Patience, young grasshopper. If you could be one person in the world,

who would it be? Shackleton. If you were the president of the United States, what are the first three things you would do, not including the things you mentioned when I asked you about your dream? I would tax the hell out of ultra processed food. I'd subsidize super, super healthy foods, veggies, veggies and fruits. I'd put every kid, I have to say it, I'd put every kid in the military for at least a year. I'd move all the retired generals and colonels and senior enlisted folks into running neighborhoods that are having a tough time and schools that are having a tough time in the United States. I turn off all the hot water heaters. And I put lights out at 8pm. Everybody go to bed at eight. The one question you wish I'd asked you is what is the one? Do I ever cheat? Do I ever cheat? Right. And I, I will have a scoop

of ice cream here and there. What's your favorite ice cream? Vanilla. Joe, you've been someone I've admired for a very long time. I love what you're doing on the fitness side. You've changed millions of lives. I love the fact you've got 10 million people in your community. I'm looking forward to watching your progress, watching your success. How can people find you? And is there something on our show right now before we conclude that you want to promote? A couple of things. One is just shoot me an email, joeatspartan.com, but I'm on Instagram. I'm on all the channels. Um, we have a race coming up. I believe it's 24 March weekend, LA Dodger stadium. Uh, you and your audience are all welcome. You've just got to capture a bunch of emails from me on who wants to go. It's on me. Uh, I'll figure out a way to fit you in the races pretty much sold out, but I'll get in.

Um, I believe that that comedian Bert Leischer, is that his name? That comedian? He's going. He's going to be racing. A bunch of famous folks in your L.A. crowd are going to be out there. And then I'd love to see anybody, if they have kids, bring them to the death camp on the farm, which is in June, and find a Tough Mudder, a spartan whatever if you can't make la feb 24th reach out to you and i'll hook them up that's awesome so i appreciate all your time today super motivated

as one of my favorite podcasts that i've done in the three years i've been doing my show so thanks a lot for being here appreciate Appreciate you. Thanks for having me. You're awesome.