Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 917: Joe De Sena & Friends

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

In this episode Sal, Adam and Justin talk with Spartan Race founder Joe De Sena about the business of the Spartan Race, marriage, the challenges of raising children, having lunch with Pauli from the Rocky movies and a lot more. Joe also brings a couple of his colorful mentors on to share wisdom they have gained over the years. Joe the Maniac: Always Doing the Unconventional Things. (5:22) The Unintended Consequences of the Technology Revolution. (9:18) How Long did it Take for him to Get Out of the Red with Spartan? How Much Did He Have to Invest Himself? He Shares Experiences of his Families Business Practices Early on and How You Must Work for What You Get. (10:50) The Challenge of Raising your Kids to Understand the Value of a Dollar, ‘Feel the Pain’ & the Art of Rejection. (21:00) How Happiness Comes from Taking Things Away. (33:40) How We MUST be Reconnected with Ourselves, Others & the Earth. (35:25) The Largest Endurance Competition Sport in the World: Spartan. (36:53) What are the Biggest Challenges He Faces with the Business? (37:43) When did He Piece Together Money didn’t Give Him Quality of Life? (40:45) What has He Found that He will spend some Extra Money on? (43:35) ‘Work Now, for Later’. (50:00) The Order of Importance in his Life. (53:28) Has He ever seen a Gold Bar? (54:45) What is the Biggest Area of Contention between Him and his Wife? (56:05) Larger than Life: Conversation with Jimmy Benz on CTE in Sports, Stories from his Life & MORE. (59:00) People that Answer the Call at Every Time: Joe’s Personal Board of Directors. (1:28:15) Adapting to Your Environment: Hook or be Crook. The Thin Line Between Being Moral and Breaking the Rules. (1:30:00) Rounding Out the Conversation: Joe’s Marriage Advice. (1:40:50) Joe’s Best Piece of Business Advice. (1:42:30) Featured Guest/People Mentioned: Joe DeSena (@realJoeDeSena)  Twitter James J. Binns Products Mentioned: December Promotion: Enroll in Any MAPS Program – 1 Year of Forum Access for FREE! Mind Pump Episode 595: Joe DeSena Mind Pump meets Spartan Up - a conversation with Sal DiStefano Watch out, retailers. This is just how big Amazon is becoming The Hateful Eight (2015) - IMDb Lyle Alzado, 43, Fierce Lineman Who Turned Steroid Foe, Is Dead 10 years later, did the Big Dig deliver? - The Boston Globe

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Always an adventure with Joe DeSena. I love Joe. Oh yeah. Every single... Never disappoints.

You don't know what to expect with the guy. You know, people ask all the time what are, you know, I think we, we rep Paul Check a lot this and that, but if I had to say, and I'm reminded of that after having another conversation with him, I connect the most with Joe out of all the guests that we have, and I like him more than any guest that we have. He's just 100% my people for sure. He's super authentic, he's very, very real.

And he is who he is, that's the impression you get when you meet with him. And I like his friends, which we get introduced to. We got a few of those in this podcast. This episode was just a fun conversation. We talked about everything and then halfway through it because this guy, what he does, he comes in, he's got food with him, he's like,

I'm just gonna start eating while we record. Well, I don't know if that's a good idea. We have to set up the mic so that he can stand because he really wants to down. He doesn't want to sit down when he's recording. So he's standing. He's like, antsy the whole time. Yeah, and then he's like, oh, we should call my friend real quick.

He dug, connect this to us, we have to pause and start the podcast because he wants to call his friend to tell a story. So I ended up calling two of his friends who are mentors to him who are hilarious. I also think it's important if you've if you've never heard Joe on our show or you don't know who Joe is, I would recommend listening to his first episode. It's a big call.

Because we kind of glazed over his story because we know him so well and we were assuming that a majority of our audience knows who he is. And I think it's important to hear his upbringing, you know, and he talked a little bit about his pool business as a kid and working for a lot of the guys from the, you know, the movie Godfather, those were all based off of real characters. Joe was the pool boy for many of those characters.

He shares that in the first show that we did with him. And then from there, the money that he made from there, he pivoted into, well, he went to Cornell and he finished his degree. Then he pivoted over into the stock market and was working on Wall Street. And then from there, he invested a lot of his money. Oh, I forgot this construction company that he also ran for a long time was very successful. And then he also took all the money that he had made and invested in the Spartan. And Spartan was for 15 15 years, losing money before it got out of that.

So he's got a great story that leads up to Spartan. We kind of pick up from there and just kind of catch up with him. So if you've never heard Joe talk, I think the first interview we did with him was phenomenal. Also, so if you want more of this guy, or you haven't heard and you're starting to listen to this, go back, listen to that one, then listen to this.

You for sure will enjoy. He's also a good storyteller. You know, a lot of times, sometimes when we have a guest and I'm enthralled by them, or I almost forget that I'm interviewing them, I'm just listening to them talk. I later on, I try to pick up on what made them so enthralling because I'm trying to improve my skills as a podcaster. Joe is one of the best storytellers I've ever talked to. He tells stories so well and you get so involved and they're so funny and great and just it's a great skill. I told him that when he interviewed me up in Spartan

on his YouTube channel, I told him that he said he goes, I bet you tell everybody that. So no, I said you seriously have the best storytelling. That's a really good interview also. So maybe Jack you will can link the Spartan YouTube video that he did with you, or the two of you were talking when we were just up there last. So link that in the show knows Jackie. It's a good time. Also, if you are interested in any of our fitness programs, we've designed a lot of fitness programs for different goals.

We have goal people. We train, we design some programs for people who want to be, look like bodybuilders or who want to sculpt their body like a bodybuilder or a physique competitor or a bikini competitor or a figure competitor. We have programs for people who like functional athletic performance.

We have programs for people who just want to build strength or for people who want to train in unconventional ways like strong men. We have correctional exercise programs. We have a ton of programs that we've designed ourselves and some of them in collaboration with other experts in the field. And that's what we provide. That's the type of product that we provide.

So if you have any questions or you want to kind of look into any of them, just go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and we have information on each of those programs. Also, this month, all months long, enrolling any maps program, and you're gonna get something for free. You guys wanna guess? Get out of here. What is it? It's not a sticker.

They don't get a free sticker. Okay. Scratch and sniff. It's not that. A hug? No. They get one year of access to our forum for free. You're out of your fucking mod.

That's better than a temporary tattoo. Free access to our formats in $97 value, just enrolling any of our maps programs, any of them. So maps in a bulk, maps for formats, maps aesthetic, maps split, maps strong, maps hit, maps prime, maps prime, pro, did any more? Yeah, pretty much.

Okay, so any program, get one year free access to our forum all month long, phenomenal promotion. If you wanna find out which math program is best for you, just go to mapsfitnessproducts.com. And that's it. So I think there's not much else to say. You gotta listen to this episode. Joe always brings it.

So here we are talking to Joe DeSena. So have you always been a maniac or is this something that happened later on? Always been a maniac. And I think about that a lot because, I'm sorry I'm eating, but, and part of the reason I'm having a stomach issue too is I'm eating these bars and right bars.

He's like, I stomach issues, he's even working for a con process food bar. You started with the whole food, so that's not bad. Well, what happened was I got in late last night and I'll answer the question about the mania. I got in, I got to bet at like two. I was like, I gotta see these guys at 9.30. They're telling me it's an hour and a half away.

I gotta hit whole foods. So I gotta wake up at like six and bang out burpees cause I gotta get my workout in. So I did 300 burpees and then I was in the car the whole time and I was starving. Right, so now what happens when you get the whole foods? I'm looking at giant plant-based bucket of cucumbers and quinoa and stuff,

and then these cool looking bars, you're starving, you're ravenous, right? I wanna eat the wrap or everything. And you got three drinks right there. I don't even know what are those drinks there. Yeah, I can't but you can butcha. Just a bunch of kombucha. Yeah, so tell me about this whole maniac thing.

I feel like, are you just always crazy? It's funny, when I meet people who know you, they say the same two things every time, and I meet someone like, oh, you know Joe, yeah, I feel like, are you just always crazy? It's funny when I meet people who know you, they say the same two things every time. And I meet someone like, oh, you know Joe, yeah, I know Joe, they'll say the same two things. Fucking great guy. I love that guy. And he's crazy. Yeah. He's a maniac. Everybody says the same thing. And I don't, I don't even say this in a funny way. I don't think I'm crazy. That's what crazy people would say. No, but I think, I think the rest of the world is crazy. Oh necessarily third world countries, but in the first world, look, you could imagine Spartans become a big business. There's lots of people that come out of the woodwork that want to buy the company.

I say to myself, yeah, it would be an unbelievable number. It would change my life financially. It would change my life financially. It would change my kids life, legacy the whole thing. But, and I look around and people are like on computers and eating crappy food and not active. And so like, am I crazy or are they crazy? Like, yeah, that's right. That's a good point.

So like, heart surgery is pretty extreme, right? Like, doing 300 burpees in the morning doesn't sound too extreme to me. So I don't know. I don't think I'm the crazy one. Well, it's all right. It's because we've celebrated technology for so long and we talk about all the positive things

that's done for our life. How convenient, probably you probably took an uber over here. Nobody's asking the end of 10 o'clock. Yeah, nobody talks about, well, now that you don't have to get out of your house, walk to your car anymore, now that you no longer, you one talks about, well, now that you don't have to get out of your house, walk to your car anymore, now that you got door dash, serving your food, right to your ass, like now that we can be on a computer and pretty much purchase, surf, get answers

to anything. I mean, nobody talk, those are all awesome things. I mean, control. These are all awesome things, but nobody really talks about what's the unintended consequences. This reminds me, and you're old enough to know this show, you're a little older than I am, do you remember when processed foods really started gaining traction and started becoming a thing, right? And when I was a kid, and I'm sure for you as well, nobody really asked, wait a minute,

should we not be eating all this processed food all the time? It was just, it was a new thing, it became popular. My mother did. Your mother did. Well, she was an outlier. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But nobody else was asking those questions. So when I was a kid, it was totally normal for breakfast you'd have something that you warmed up in the microwave

and then lunch was some fruit roll-up shit and then dinner was... My mother wouldn't take a microwave, the TV dinners, the whole thing, she wouldn't do it. Yeah, she didn't. But she was considered crazy. Not only by the neighborhood, not only by my dad, but even by me, there wasn't normal. Cause your friends were doing all the other shit. Yeah, and so when you say, Joe, your maniac,

like I keep thinking about, like I'm not really a man, my mother wasn't a maniac. It took me 30 years to figure out my mother wasn't a maniac. Right, yeah. But everybody would have referred, if my mother was still alive, and the same way you talk to friends and say, I'm gonna see Joe just on say, oh, I'm going

to see Joe Desanis. Oh, she's nuts. They were excited about my mother. But she wasn't. Yeah. No, that makes it because it reminded me a lot of that because now people are starting to look at the unintended consequences of this processed food revolution, which to be quite honest, there were some positives.

You know, you had long shelf life and people were able to get, you know, calorically dense food for much cheaper, which for most of human history, that was a problem, right? People just didn't have enough calories, I was a real issue. So nobody was asking those questions later on after we had a couple generations, we're like, hold on a second, you got kids getting diabetes now. Let's take a look at the unintended consequences. I feel like that's, it's that like that today with technology, with technology, nobody's take a look at the unintended consequences. I feel like that's today with technology. With technology, nobody's asking those questions.

Yeah. So let's go back. I'm going to screw up the facts on the story, but it's like France, 1600s, and the new technology is sewer system. And they install the sewer system, and it's awesome, because people go to the bathroom, runs right out of the house, down the hill, right through the pipes. Problem is the rats come in through the pipes, right? Unattended consequences.

So now what do they do? New technology here or- We get the plague. Well no, here's what we're going to do. We're going to pay people to kill rats. They bring us the tales we pay up to any of the government, right? We're going to solve the problem. What people did was they

outsmarted that and they started rat farms and they're just sniffing out. Now there's more rats. Without tails running around, right? So like. I did not know that. Unintended consequences. Yeah. People need to ask those questions, I think. And your, your, how's your company growing right now? Last time we talked to you, it was blown up. Is it still on that upwards? Directly. Wait, we let her national. Let wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, it was to start Spartan financially, how long it took to get out of the red and where it's at today. Can you tell us that?

Well, we've made so much money in the last year. We're going to actually buy Amazon. Yes. It's no longer people don't know, but I'm the wealthiest guy in the world. I might even throw it in. Did you see the article on Amazon that just came out about what, 50% of it? The projecting to do 50% of all e-commerce.

A nationally, all of it. Half of it. Yeah, I wish I could say I had the foresight to see it when Amazon first came out. I was on a trading desk. And the stock was, God, it was single digits. Ah, sure. Before I can't even tell you. Yeah. And there was no way they were going to make it work. But Jeff Bezos did come from the smartest hedge fund on the planet, D Shaw. So he was a smart guy and he was around smart people. And but who

would have guessed that, right? Like he just kept grabbing market share and closing stores and, right? And clearly those people that were investing with him saw the future, which was this guy's gonna own commerce. For you know what I mean, e-commerce, commerce. Period, right, yeah, right? Yeah, he's one of the most disrupting companies

in terms of market disruption ever. Absolutely completely changed. You wanted to take a hit. They actually took some levels. One thing that blew me away is they took the way people searched for products online was Google and they flipped it. Now when people search for a product, they'll go Amazon first.

Oh, that's awesome. And look up the reviews. It's gonna be awesome for us. I mean, once we close the acquisition. Yeah. So tell us about Spartan. You're going to have so many people awesome for us. I mean, once we close the acquisition. There we go. There we go. There we go. So tell us about Spartan. You're gonna have so many people believing in it.

Yeah, yeah. Investing in Spartan. You can't wait to change the name from Amazon to Spartan. Spartan products. Spartan products. Spartan products. So when you, how long did it take you to profit with Spartan when you started in, you know, moving along,

how long did it take you before you started? How much did you invest in it along the way? I wanna hear this. So, um, so it's pretty much been an overnight success like you guys, where it was 18 years, 15 of which we lost money. God, 15 years of losing. Wow. You know, my advisors within the company, the woman,

our R CMO and our head of PR would say, hey Joe, this isn't a smart thing to say. People don't really feel sorry for you, but the reality is I've still never taken money out of the company. So, wait a minute, you don't pay yourself? Now I get a salary, but as far as I can distribute, yeah.

It's always just been put it in, put it in, put it in, and because I'm a believer in this thing. And I was taught at a young age, take care of a company, and then it takes care of you. So 18 years is probably a little extreme, but thank God I made some money in finance to fund this thing. So the dollars, how many dollars do you?

Yeah, I wanna know how much you had to make in order to do something like that, because obviously if you weren't bankrolled, you probably couldn't afford 15 years of losing. I know that we were blessed because all of us had other careers, other businesses that were successful, so we were able to... And you and your trust funds. I mean, you guys have that trust. Yeah.

Yeah. Adam's Adam's Snapchat secs. I believe you can make making all over this. I mean, when I come in just because is the second time I've been here, when I see the four or five Teslas parked out front, it is, I don't know if it's a good look for you guys. We don't try and hide it though.

That's some of the people working out next door across the world. But I started in Queens. I started in Howard Beach and my dad was actually wealthy when I was growing up the first seven, eight years of my life. And then times turned on him. He was over-levered. the real estate boom, not unlike what we saw recently and probably seeing again right now. It was the 80s. It was the first time real estate was really exploding and he just had an act for it. He was building stuff, he was buying stuff, turning them apart with buildings in the condos. It was all financed by a business

he had at Kennedy Airport, which was a trucking company. But it became a big trucking company. He basically had the contract for IBM, all the IBM freight that came into New York's airport into JFK. He had control of which meant pick it up at the airport, bring it to a warehouse, consolidate it, break it down, ship it back out into different parts of the world in New York City. And that was funding all this real estate excitement he had. Well, he lost the account, the guy that was running the account at IBM,

met a Japanese girl and moved the whole operation to Japan. Whether it was smart or not or related to the relationship who knows, but then the faucet was shut and he couldn't fund, and then the stock market crash hit. So anyway, he starts to go bust, and when you go bust in many cases, it's not like overnight. It's a slow-drawn out process.

So it's reading, bro. Yeah, like the banks have to come and take your stuff and the phone's ringing nonstop and the debt collectors. And don't forget, in the neighborhood we were in, you had to have the right partners to do that kind of business at Kennedy Airport at that time. And those people, the mentality is fuck you, pay me. It doesn't matter. You know, it doesn't matter.

What's going on in the environment? It's not like, oh, tough times. No, we were making money together and times are good. We never stop making money. That's your problem. And so, so that was an interesting component to what was going on in my childhood. But anyway, that was the spark for me to say, I'm going to go make money on my own. Thank God, because the other alternative is to throw up your arms, right? You got a rich dad and you don't really, um, I, I didn't have that work at the get. Holder, are you here pre 10? It was just somewhere between seven and 10.

Is this the transition where you get into doing the pool service? Yeah. So my mom, my parents get divorced because my mom's into yoga, meditation, health, food, my father's, losing everything. So they split up and my mom goes to buy Chevy. She's got a new car. She got a little settlement from my dad. She just sold the house, and she's going to get a Chevy,

which was a downgrade. We had Cadillacs, my father's doing well. And next door to the Chevrolet dealership is a BMW dealership. And I'm with her and I see the BMW, and I'm savvy enough to know at that age that that's a nicer car. And she's like, you could have anything you want, I just gotta work for it.

And that sentence, you never know what a kid is gonna absorb but that sentence really grabbed me and I say, I gotta work, I gotta work for it. Next time I was with my dad, my neighbor was out, my neighbor was ahead of a banana organised crime family. Wasn't really, I didn't understand that. As a kid, I just knew that everybody respected him and deferred to him and there were lots of nice cars

that showed up all day long with pizza boxes and granoles and stuff which probably had gold bars in them which we're gonna get into that story on the gold bars. But so anyway, he says, hey, he knows I'm, we're struggling and he says, hey, he knows I'm, we're struggling. And he says, want to clean my swimming pool? I'll pay you $30.00 a week. And he teaches me some great lessons

in those first few months with him. He's like, look, if you say you're coming at 8 a.m. on Saturday, you better be in at 7.45. If you say you're gonna clean the pool, you better straighten up the loan furniture, you better clean the shed, go above and beyond, clean the tile around the pool, make it so that you're indispensable.

And he was teaching me, one for himself, because he wanted his backyard taken care of, right? Two, probably a little bit to take care of me. Three, who knows where I'd be at 18 years old, right? They'd have his claws into me. I would be, I would become an earner. That was a term used for guys that earned money that you'd have to then be partners with somebody.

And the other thing is he had every boss, everybody in that lifestyle, he was gonna then recommend me too. So he wanted to make sure I didn't make him look bad. So anyway, fast forward, I build that business and I'm in college and I've got 700 customers, most of which were those kinds of guys. And when I think about why I ended up here at Spartan or why I do the things I do or why you call me a maniac, it's really that journey. I had 700 customers that I could walk into their house

at any point in time, grab, open their fridge, without it, just walk in the house, open the fridge, sit on the couch, that's the kind of relationship I have with all my customers. And he taught me that, and the neighborhood taught me that. But I got a bird's eye view as a single young hard work and kid on kind of like what Bruce Lee said, right? Take the good, discard the bad.

I saw these families operate, including my own. My parents get divorced, my father loses the money. And I just, I guess I took all these nuggets, unbeknownst to me, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna do this when I have a family, I'm not gonna do that. How many guys would send me to go clean, a pool, or straighten up some brickwork or something to their girlfriends?

How small I'm there with their, why I mean, it was just craziness. And so I just built an operating manual for how I was gonna do my life. The challenge is, with my life now, with four children, is they'll never have those experiences, right? They'll never have a guy that owed them $60,000 where like they just don't, I don't know how to recreate that.

I feel like you're a smart enough guy because you went through it that you also wouldn't allow yourself to spoil the shit out of your kids and allow that to happen either. So are there things, we talked about this on the show actually a lot of love when and sell, share this with us as little things that they do to teach them the value of a dollar and these lessons. Without also being a dick and being like,

sorry kids, we have no money when they know you fucking do. What do you do? How do you do that? So the challenge is, and I'm learning because I'm a new dad. I've got a 13, 11, 9, and 6. So I've never done this before. And I think about this a lot.

And so some examples, I'll come up with you, you're gonna love, but the challenge is, and I think you got anybody married here and everybody listening, this married, your wife and you have to be on the exact same page. And that's impossible. It's just not possible. Because she has a completely different set of glasses

she sees the world through, then it doesn't make it right or wrong. It's just different. We're just different. I had a different set of experiences than she had. And so I naturally, because of what we're talking about here, want to be harder and harder and not to be a jerk, but to try to like manufacture adversity

and get as close as I can to some of those experiences I have, the ones that I think helped, right? And plus not only mine, but even from the stories I've heard of other successful people and you guys have heard. And so one great thing I did with the boys one day, two boys, two girls, the boys are older, and I'm chopping wood. And this was probably four or five years ago. I'm chopping wood in Vermont before I moved overseas.

And I said, all right, boys, you're stacking wood. And I purposely made the pile they had a stack, you know, a hundred yards away. So they're picking up the piece, I'm splitting. And you get a penny a piece, right? Every piece, you stack, you get a penny. So we're about 120 pieces in a charlie, the younger brother says,

dad, I'm really thirsty. I said, no problem. 20 cents for water. And he's a great face, you know, and forget it, I'm not thirsty. So we get to whatever, a couple of bucks they've got each, right? They've stacked a couple hundred pieces of wood,

have bring them to the general store which we own in Vermont. And I call in advance where they don't hear me and I said, look, we're going to be coming in. We're going to, they're going to dump a bunch of pennies on the counter. I want you to tell them the only thing they could afford with the amount of money they have is green juice, right? So we get there, pockets, they dump their pennies, their nickels, and she's like, you know, the woman behind the counter is like, listen, great job guys, whatever, you know, I understand

you're working for your money for the first time, but you know, all you could afford is green juice. And my older son, the smart bastard, he looks at her and it takes him like 10 seconds, he's like, no problem, we'll go across street to the other store. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Problem solved. He's a smart bastard. Yeah. That's great.

But, you know, that would consider, be considered a little extra. I've got obviously much more extreme examples, but even with me doing those things, they have it too easy. Well, Justin, you gotta share what you do. I, Justin's way that he, he beats his kids randomly. I did. No, no, no, they have it too easy. Well Justin, you got to share what you do. Justin's way that he beats his kids randomly. I do, no, no, no, no, share with Joe.

I think Joe will appreciate what you're doing. And I think so were the listeners that have never heard of the show or us talk. Well, I just display it so it's like visible. So they see the money, like, and I put it on clips. And so I write out like basically what everything's worth. And so they can see it and then they have a goal and they have a specific goal and like I want you know this specific toy and so then they see like okay it's this many dollars or it's this

many cents that I have to acquire and so then I have a lot of chores that are worth value and so it's just basically like creating the economy of it and showing them like okay if I do this it translates to this, you know, if they complain about it, I just go back and refer to, well, you didn't put the work in there for, you know, you didn't earn it yet. You also set it up. I love what he does with like, because it's one of the things that we have to combat right now, which I'm sure you have the deal with is this, you know, in front of our phones and our computer. So he also does it. Right. Which I, this is the part that I wanted you to talk about.

Okay. It's brilliant is the amount of time, like, okay, if you want an hour of TV time or iPad time, that's valued at $1.75 or whatever. See, earn, yeah, the entertainment that you can experience, like on, like playing V2 games or watching TV that way. I like that a lot. I think if my dad didn't go bust and I didn't have that moment with my mom

and see the differential between the Chevy and the BMW and like make that connection, I wouldn't have gotten it. Somebody had me recently on a podcast and an interview or something and we were talking about this exact thing. And you guys will appreciate this now but I don't know how you teach this to a kid. I, here's a silly example.

I would come in with a pool truck and then we'll go back to your kids. I would come in with a pool truck, let's say 11 o'clock at night. I started at five in the morning, right? Long day, seven days a week, never a day off in 10 years. Sounds like the grandfather that walked both ways up hill, but I'm telling you, that's what it was. And by the way, I didn't want a day, I never even occurred to me to take a day off.

Right. Just want to make money. And I'm in the truck, it's 11 o'clock at night, you're exhausted, you want to go right to bed. But I quickly learned that if I didn't unload the truck, clean it out, restock every shelf, I was gonna be fucked the next day. What did that mean? If I drove an hour and a half to go do some guy's job

that was like a $600 job and I didn't have the parts in the truck, I just blew my whole day. I blew a thousand dollars. But if I didn't have that connection, which is what you're talking, like, then I wouldn't stay up past 11 o'clock at night. But until I felt that pain a few times, my whole life changed because last night

when I got in at one, 30 in the morning, and I knew I had a drive an hour to come see you guys, right? Who would want to wake up early in the morning and do 300 burpees before coming here, unless you felt the pain of not working out. That's right, right? You gotta have that contrast here, because I don't think, I don't think a lot of people

realize that they're in pain, because this is just how they always are. You know what I mean? They just always feel shitty. And so I like it when I would start training clients and they'd start to improve their fitness and start eating, right? And then they'd fall off a little bit

and then they'd come back and they'd be like, man, I feel terrible when I eat bad. I feel like I used to be able to eat that way and say, well, no, I think you just don't realize how bad you felt. You got used to it, but now you have the contrast. It's with kids, it's funny because you had to learn the lesson of how to earn your money. I think your kids are probably going to have to learn the lessons of how to keep it and. I think your kids are probably gonna have to learn the lessons of how to keep it and invest it,

might be a little bit different, right? Well, I mean, I've gotta make them feel that pain, right? I didn't feel the pain until my dad lost all his money. And so how do I recreate? And the thought has crossed my mind. Again, you're gonna reference me as a crazy person, but at some point in the future, in the next three, four years,

we should probably, if I get my wife to buy into it, we should probably move to like Kazakhstan or... Have them live somewhere, yeah, to go there. I mean, it sounds, you're laughing, right? And it sounds ridiculous, but actually, I owe that to them. I should force myself to live in a really shitty situation for a year and just say, hey, kids, sorry, just didn't work out. Now, the irony in that is what probably drove you as a kid was to make sure that you didn't

have to do that, though. So think about that for a minute. But why companies don't last very long? There's very few companies you can count that have been around a hundred years. Families don't last in succession very long. And so I think the exact thing we're talking about is the reason they don't last. We start to rest on laurels, we start to have expectations, we suffocate ourselves as companies. But you go like Batman Begins, Christian Bale, right?

He goes and lives in a Chinese prison. It's a great, great story. But like I think the kids need to be in... What's the thing, Sal, you say the strong man? Oh, yeah. What is it? Good times, you know, bad times breed, strong men, strong man, create good times, good times create weak man, weak man create bad times. That whole cycle. That's the cycle. Yeah, one thing that I started going to this church on and off and one of the last times I went,

that they were talking about these missions that they send kids on. And I thought, wow, that's brilliant. That's a brilliant, what a brilliant way to teach your kid, especially if they're in a well-to-do situation. You know, they're not, they don't have lots of challenges, right, their dad, their mom and dad,

or whatever make good money, they have everything they need. What a great way for them to learn number one, how privileged they are, number two, how hard it can be to live in, and also just that's a difficult time to go on a mission and have to go help other people for like a year. I feel like there's so many lessons in that, and I thought that might be a-

Yeah, I love that. I just, I think, I think you there's so many lessons in that and I thought that might be a- Yeah, I love that. I think you even have to go a little further than that, right? I think because if you're on a mission, right? And you're from a wealthy family and the kids going and it's like, oh, I'm covered. They got my bills, I'm just going to help some people that are a little desperate.

Somehow we have to create that, in my opinion. You want them to feel the same way? They gotta feel that pain. We gotta be selling carpets on a busy street and like we're not eating today if we don't sell a carpet. Sorry, it sounds crazy, but I don't think I'm crazy on this. Now, are you seeing things,

because you have a 13 year old's oldest, you said, right? Now, are you seeing things in his behavior, it's your boy is the 13th, are you seeing things in his behavior, it's what your boy is the 13th, are you seeing things in his behavior that concern you that you need to do that, are there certain things that you've seen? Yeah, giving things. You know, so when we were in Singapore two years ago,

I said, guys, you gotta start businesses. So the four of them, I sat them down. And it's not, what I'm gonna describe right now is not effective because I'm the one pushing it on them. Right? They're not pulling it from me. All right, so, all right, what are you gonna call your business?

Guys, what do you think about this? Again, they weren't populating a yellow pad full of ideas. I'm putting it on them. So we came up with four business ideas. I showed them this thing online. You spend five bucks. They could work on a logo. We created logos. We created a narrative around the four businesses. I had T-shirts and hats made, you spend five bucks, they can work on a logo, we created logos,

we created an narrative around the four businesses, I had T-shirts and hats made, which I paid for again, failure, right? They should be chopping wood or something to pay for that stuff. And then I had them go on the beach during the summer and I had them go to different places and sell the T-shirts and hats.

My wife is horrified, right? And you can't blame her, right? Cause she's like, it's embarrassing. My husband's got the kids selling t-shirts to our friends and hats and stuff, but I want them to get rejected. I want people to say, no, I'm not interested, right? And sure enough, many days they'd come home

and my daughter let's say, she sells most shirts and most hats. And it's like, all right, well, let's talk about why she crushed it and you didn't. So they learned some things there, but it really disappoints me. They don't, like, when I was that age, and I'm sure when you guys were that age, like I had literally cut out a hole

in one of the encyclopedias on my shelf, where I could hide money. So you'd open the encyclopedia, it was cut out, the money was in there, I knew exactly how much was there, I added to it whenever I made money, they lose their money, they sold their shirt, like, no regard for what we're talking about here. Yeah, right?

It's crazy too, because you look at, in modern societies, like this one, things like anxiety, depression, you know, these type of paranoia, mental disorder type things, on the rise, like crazy. And I think it's combination for problems. Yeah, I think it's a combination of, you know, poor health, right, so physically they're just feeling

more anxious and depressed. But I also think it's just, you know what it reminds me of? It's like when you look at all these celebrities that commit suicide, and I'm not making light of this, okay, I think it's a terrible thing. But the suicide rate among celebrities seems like it's higher than average, or at least it's higher than it should be considering these are celebrities.

They have all the money, all the women, all the sex and drugs and whatever they want. And yet they're absolutely miserable. And I feel like today in modern societies, what's happened is we've gotten everything we've think we've wanted, and then we realize, this is not it. I have a theory on it.

I mean, happiness is obviously a big discussion because the people killing themselves, and it's not just celebrities, you get veterans, you got all kinds of things going on. And by the way, do we know with the numbers that the numbers are higher today than another time or they're just more pronounced because now we can read about them on the internet.

Sure. But let's assume, which I think you're right, the numbers are higher. I think happiness comes from actually taking things away. I don't think it, like, every spiritual gratification. And every spiritual practice says that. By theification and every spiritual practice says that by the way every spiritual practice says take away and you know Yeah, don't identify with things, you know, and you'll be you'll find more that piece or happiness my mother

We were probably 13 and 15 my sister and I were living in Africa now. I had my business back in Queens with my dad Wake up one morning and my mother has, and she had a practice. She was in India, she was fasting for 30 days. She was doing stuff that even people today would aren't doing, right? At the level she was doing them, meditating straight

for 30 days. She was crazy. And wake up one morning, she threw away everything. All material things in the house. It just got rid of it. Including you. Can you imagine that? Including my stuff, my sister's stuff,

her money, everything. How pissed are you as a little teenage boy, man? I was like, what the fuck? Mom, you can throw away your stuff, right? Because again, she's crazy and like, she's lost her mind. The neighbor who I was friendly with was like, they're going through the garbage,

they're finding money, they're taking everything, right? But the lesson, just like I want to take the kids to India, the lesson was material things are not important. You cannot be attached to material things and it took me 30 years to really understand it, but I think you want happiness, you got to take stuff away. Do you think that speaks to, you know,

what's going on now speaks to the recent explosion in popularity for obstacle course racing in events like yours where people need to manufacture adversity and stress and pain because we feel like we need that to recreate this whole process. Yeah, I think it's more, you know, it's not just obstacle racing, right? I mean, you feel it in a marathon,

you feel it in a long cross-fit workout, right? I just think we just need to be reconnected, reconnected with ourselves, reconnected with like other people, eye to eye, right, not on text, and reconnected with the earth. And when I say the earth, it's not just walking around barefoot. In the dirt, there's something powerful about looking,

I was cold the other night, it was in Vermont. We went up to Vermont. And the moon came up, it was a full moon. And I looked at them, and all of a sudden, I wasn't cold anymore. It was like I was soaking in, and I don't need to sound like a spiritual, weirdo, or anything, but like

there's something to be said for just like absorbing the environment, which we don't do. So I think it feels really good. I think to your question, it feels really good to be outside sweating, breathing heavy, absorbing the environment and that feels better than a cubicle on your phone after two hours of traffic and a shitty meal. I would have to agree with that. We're not robots.

Yeah. Talk about the growth of your organization right now. It seems like it's accelerating. Am I accurate in my observation? We are. And I say this carefully because I recognize that it's very hard to maintain a trajectory that you're on in business, but we're the largest endurance company, endurance participation sport in the world, right? 275 events, 41 countries, 1.1 million participants a year, and it's

overwhelming. It's like, I'd rather be looking at the moon and from my perspective, it is fucking overwhelming. But if you're not growing, you're dying. And so I have no choice but to continue to grow and try to iterate and make sure we don't go the way the dinosaur. Yeah. What are your biggest challenges with that right now? Because I think sometimes when you look at a business and it starts off with I guess pure would be the right word to describe it pure organic and then it grows and it becomes

something else. Do you have any fears of that? You know, I think a lot about like I everything we're talking about here by the way, I don't get to live that way. Like I'm on the computer, I'm doing the stuff everything we're talking about here. By the way, I don't get to live that way like I'm on the computer I'm doing the stuff that we're talking about not doing but but and I mean this. I'm not just selling you fluff when I say this I'm doing an important job. We not me. We the team is doing an important funny enough. Let's talk about the team for a second The team is bumping up against 300 full-time people around the globe, right? 273 hundred and this year I said you you know what? I just a week ago. I said, um, we're never going beyond 300. I said one

I bet you any organization could clip 20% of the people and you wouldn't even feel it true To I'm probably just emotionally attached to a bunch of projects and things that don't even move the needle. And that's why they get rid of CEOs, they bring in somebody known, they make smart decisions. Three is, we got 2800 years of history with this number 300. Like, we should be the 300, right? But we're doing really good work. And so, really good work. So whatever, it's my job to struggle and suffer every day a little bit so that hopefully we change some lives. The biggest challenge with the business is all the challenges any business has. So what we just spoke about, like how do I, look, if we didn't have budgets, you guys run a private company and so you might have a different, I don't know if you have investors or not. If you don't have investors,

you don't have the struggle I have, which is I gotta make my numbers, I gotta grow, I gotta do this budgeting process, I gotta every quarter, I gotta sit down with these investors and the board of directors, and that part sucks. It sucks because I would probably still run the business at slightly better than break even,

and have a much better life, and be changing more lives, and have a much better life, and be changing more lives, and measure profitability in life's changed. But when you've got the pressure of, we gotta grow, I need better EBITDA, I need this, I need, fuck. What do you regret that sometimes,

like having investors? I mean, is it possible where you're at financially to get out of that? If we didn't have investors, we wouldn't be where we are today. Like if they didn't push me and make me uncomfortable, the way I just investors, we wouldn't be where we are today. Like if they didn't push me and make me uncomfortable, the way I just described, we wouldn't be where we are today. If I didn't have all that pressure that I don't like,

look, if you came in the morning, this morning, six a.m. and worked out alone, it'd probably be an enjoyable workout. Just like my 300 burbies this morning, although they sucked, they sucked a lot less than if you were next to me doing them with me. Because you would have up the game, I would have up the game and it would have been just terrible.

Right? And that's what we're talking, like my investors and my board make me uncomfortable, which is exactly what we're talking about here. That's what I want to do to my kids, right? My kids would be like, this dad wasn't here, life would be fucking great. But like, no, my job is to make them uncomfortable.

Right. When did you put together that, because you said something about, you know, working more than just barely over breaking even having a better life? When did you piece together that it wasn't money that gave you quality of life? It was all these other things. By the way, it's easy to say that. So if you're listening out there, it's easy to say that when you have some money. So like, you know, and I wouldn't be able to say that. So if you're listening out there, it's easy to say that when you have some money. So like, you know, and I wouldn't be able to say that. If I didn't land on Wall Street and I didn't have that 12, 15 year run, there's very few industries where you could make that kind of money in that short period of time. Maybe Hollywood, you know, actor and actress,

construction, you could, if you could really build a substantial but there's very few industries where you could do it. And so I only realized that after I had money. How much did you need? Because I asked you that early, I didn't get to it. How much money did you make during Wall Street? And did you need in order to give you that run rate of 15 years of being in the red? I always had in my head the number changes, right? What's your number? Is it a fun question, right? When I was young it was you know, I had a million dollars because that's just a number that everybody talks about. Then it quickly became if I had 10 million dollars, well, you know,

I need 50 million that like and so the number moves, but I was very You know, I need 50 million, like, and so the number moves, but I was very fortunate in that those lessons my mother gave me with throwing out the material things and talking about stuff that really matters. I was able to say, okay, if I burn, I'm making up numbers, I'm not gonna give you actual numbers because it's a private, sure, but I'll satisfy your thirst.

Okay. If I was burned in 250 grand a year in my life with having a family and children in a farm, I just did the math and said, I wanna run out of money right when I'm dead. And what year am I gonna live to? And the price of, you know, it's called-

Did you really work it backwards like that? And I worked it backwards. And there was a lot of stress up until the time I was 40. I'm gonna be 50 in a couple of weeks in a month. Up until the time I was 40, there was a lot of stress just like everybody listening has, which was I gotta save more. I need more, I gotta make more. And then when I was 40, something happened where lot of stress, just like everybody listening has, which was, I gotta save more, I need more,

I gotta make more. And then when I was 40, something happened where it was like, wait a minute, actually I don't need more, I just have to spend a little less. And if I live to 90, or if I live to, so I started actually doing the math, and it really was a relief.

Once I flipped that, it was like, I don't need, I don't need the stress of investing in stocks or I don't need all that. I just have to make sure, you know, drawing a chart that my life runs out at the same time my money runs out. Yeah. Now, being a number is guy, because this is something I think about a lot. Are there certain things that, because we're talking about not needing money, not materialistic

things, but at the same time too, there's something nice about being financially set and not having to stress about money and then having certain things and the ability to do stuff. You talked about being a food snob. I'm sure having money is nice because you could probably go to a five star restaurant and sneeze at a two three hundred dollar bill and not worry, but where other people may not even get to experience that. What have you found are the things that like,

hey, I appreciate that I've worked hard for this money and I enjoy these things and I'd like to keep this going. Well, let me go back on the food snuff thing. I'm not, I don't like fancy restaurants. When I meant by that was I like an organic apple. Like if I had my choice, I go to Whole Foods. There's some, to me, Whole Foods just tastes better. I don't know why, everything in Whole Foods tastes better than me. So having the ability to me. Whole food just tastes better. I don't know why everything in whole foods tastes better to me

So so having the ability to go to Whole Foods and and grab breakfast at 40 bucks All the work was worth it. I don't even think like I didn't look this morning and say oh shit Now on the other hand everybody says what the fuck like I'm I flew here to see you guys. Yeah, I fly from here to Singapore from Singapore to Japan, Japan to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Beijing, and Beijing to Iceland all in a week. Okay.

One week? Yeah. In the cold in nine days. Whole week, yeah. So no first class, I sit in the back of the plane. So that to me is not important. Like going to whole foods and spending $40 on breakfast and getting what I want, like that, all the plane. So that, to me, is not important. Like, going to Whole Foods and spend the $40 on breakfast

and getting what I want, like that, all the work was worth it, but I'm not gonna blow money on a first class ticket, because in my mind, I say, well, I biked, across the United States on a tiny little seat. I could sit in a fucking airplane seat and watch movies. This, right? Like, I don't need, so.

So what are the other things that you do? Because for example, I make example, I like nice things and there's certain things that I like that I'm willing to spend what other people might think a ridiculous amount of money on. For example, my bed or a TV that I like to watch as I love movies, there's certain things like that that I will spend more even though I don't need to.

Are there things like that in your life that you do appreciate that you can spend a little extra money on? So, I'll answer the question around that way, we'll just have some fun. So the friends that I accumulated and we're lucky enough to become friends with over the years on Wall Street are very wealthy individuals.

They earn, many of them earn $25 million plus per year, okay? So, if you saw their houses in the Hamptons or New York City, these are $40, $50, $60 million homes. I'm not interested in any of them. Like, I love my farm in Vermont. Our farm in Vermont, I paid 400 grand for. Now, we renovated it, and I spent some money on it,

but not anywhere, very affordable. Even in places like the Hamptons, I would choose a much less expensive on the water as opposed to being in the neighborhood next to whoever. So to your point, everybody's got their own thing. So if I could buy healthy healthy organic food and not have to look at the bill, I'm not gonna waste money at some ridiculous restaurant where they get not interested. I'd rather get fresh fish coming right out of the ocean in Japan, like to be able to afford that.

I like to be able to just go skiing with the kids. And bed? Yeah, I'm not gonna buy a $5,000 bed. I'm, you know, if they've got some memory foam, I'm still gonna try to find the deal. Like, yeah, like we can renovate the house. So when you renovate the house, did you build a big kitchen? Did you build a big living room? Did you gotta see my wife wants to kill me? A kitchen's tiny.

It's all like barn wood and like crooked tie. I'm proud. When I see movies, you know, you guys, we all listeners out there watch a movie and then you immerse yourself as if you're in that scene. Right, we all do that. The scenes that I'm most interested in living in are the ones where it's like a cabin on the side of the mountain

and it's like dirty and there's a broom hanging like like what was the the hateful eight? Right? Like that I want to live in places like that. So I'm not I'm never in my mind chasing some modern concrete home in LA at the top of the right right. Could care less. So we tend to we tend to partner up with people that are kind of the opposite. So is your wife into nice things? If she, if you gave her free reign to do whatever, what was there?

She doesn't, you know, I, listen, I've never been married before. Hopefully I'll never be married again. And, and um, she, I think is awesome in the sense that, like, I hear a lot of horror stories with wives where they're shopping and buying boots and this thing and that thing and no the biggest challenge I have where she just with the kids will just go out and get a bunch of stuff and like new lacrosse gear or whatever like no just go get used stuff let them like because I remember I didn't have access

when I filed a law I didn't have access for When I finally lost my, I didn't have access for, what's the helmet name, Redel, RIDD? I couldn't afford one of those. So I wanted it bad, right? And so I saved money, I convinced my grandfather to give me money for ice cream, which I didn't buy, and I saved it, and I got that helmet. And then that helmet, I cleaned.

My kids are not gonna clean that lacrosse equipment. It's like, we just go to Dix, spend 300 bucks. So that's the only rub between my wife and I. And I think it's because she comes from a household where they were very focused on it. She was soccer player. She was big time soccer player. And that's the focus, like going to soccer games.

And I feel like you dealt with so much adversity growing up and you work so hard to be successful just so you can add more adversity to your life. Yeah, but you know why? But you know why? I mean that's kind of like, let me turn it around. You worked out really hard in a gym so you could look good so you could do more workouts. Right? Because you learn to realize the value. The value of doing those workouts and how it made you look and how it made you feel. And so I realize the value of that work

and the benefits it gives are not necessarily the money in the bank that allows you to go buy a really fancy mattress. It's all the, it's your ethos. I feel like that's the mentality that, it's a very empowering mentality in the sense that, you get a lot of challenge or adversity, and you look at it instead of saying,

the sucks, pour me, wow, look what I'm gonna learn from this and grow from this situation. Was that a hard thing for you, or are there times in your life where you were depressed and you couldn't figure it out? I was watching something on the plane out here last night, like a talk show or a movie where there was, I don't know who it was, something on the plane out here last night, like a talk show or a movie where there was, I don't know who it was, somebody on Conan or something,

it was talking about being depressed for a year. I've never been depressed, ever. So I'm really lucky, but I think the secret to it is, it's hard work. Like I just, I just get a hat, like, you guys just got to help me distill this thought. We talked about it a little bit earlier, that cycle, right? That we talked about, like,

what I used to see in these homes, these 700 homes, was, here's a silly example. The wife or the husband is driving the truck, the car. And he hears squeaking on the brakes. Now, you should stop, go to the mechanic and get the brakes fixed. But you don't want to deal with it right now. You put it off. And then the next day, the brakes don't work at all, and the husband can't get to work.

And so he flips out and he starts fighting with the wife and then the kids hear it. And it's increased this whole shit show that could have been resolved if you just had the fucking brakes fixed yesterday when you heard the squeak. Right? And so it's kind of like your body. As soon as you feel a little ache or pain, you start stretching, start working on it so that it doesn't manifest itself

and turn into something. And so I think the problem for most people is that they just don't understand. You have to constantly be doing the work. Like, oh Joe, just stop and smell the roses. Who the fuck is watering, maintaining, trimming the roses, fertilizing? Who's doing that? If everybody's smelling the roses, there'd be no roses to smell. I don't know. Right? You got to do the work. And so, I was

running a marathon with somebody, and we're running, and I learned very early on, just like we put one foot in front of each other, that's how you get to finish line. Oh, let's stop. My leg hurts, this hurt. I just keep moving. I foot in front of you. That's how you get to finish line. Oh, let's stop. My leg hurts, this hurt. I just keep moving. I want to stop and get water. Okay, you get water while you're walking. And this went on for five hours, this discussion.

Move. No, let's stop for a second. Move. I got a stretch. Just keep moving. We get to the finish line. It's 459 on the clock. It's 100 yards away.

At the pace we're going, it's gonna be five hours and 30 seconds. And this person says to me, fuck, I wanted to beat five hours. We've been having a fucking discussion for five fucking hours about just keep moving. Now you're not happy with the result and everybody does that. And I don't know how to verbalize that well. But that, if I have one knack, I'm always working now on later. Is that sacrifice today for tomorrow? We do the things that we do the things that we have to do today,

so we can do the things that we wanna do tomorrow. Yeah, and I think there's some freedom in that. Like, again, I don't wanna do my burpees this morning. Providing to do my burpees this morning, my alternative was I was gonna say to you guys, hey, do you mind if I do burpees while we do this interview? And that would have sucked.

It would have sucked for you, it would have sucked for me. And then if we didn't do that, I got meetings later, I would have had to do my burp. Like, you know what I mean? I knew that it would incur so much pain for me. Fuck it, just do it now. Yeah. What's the first thing that you put off

when you need to put something off, when you need to reschedule something or not do it? Very important question, and you gotta help me verbalize this too, is I think, if I have any skill, I can prioritize. Prioritization is super important, right? Like, what's more important is taking some phone calls, doing some emails this morning,

more important to Burpees is taking cold shower. Like, and I could quickly prioritize what, like, and so, oh my health is first and foremost. I gotta get my Burpees done. Right, because without your health, none of those other things. It's like on the airplane, right? You take oxygen first and you'll help the person next to you.

So I'm able to prioritize very quickly in business and what is important and what isn't at this particular moment right now. Now that drives people crazy because you might have a plan. You guys laid out your whole strategy for 2019 and then I would just be like, no, today we're doing this instead. Because I can quickly, you gotta be malleable.

You gotta be able to move with the environment. Do you drive your staff crazy with that attitude? I drive everybody crazy. People will come up, women and men will come up to my wife. We go to a race and we're like, oh my God, your husband's unbelievable. He motivates me. She's like, yeah, live with them from one to three days.

You're really cool for three days, Joe. You know, you glaced over something that I actually want to ask you because I've never actually seen one in real life. Have you seen a gold bar like the Italian job? Yeah, so my neighbor, when he finally gets arrested, so I'm probably 27, 28 at the time. And I think the number was 14 million dollars in gold bars in in restitution and I was the only one allowed in his house to like clean up and do stuff because I was working in the backyard And I got to tell you over the years. So I was 27 so For probably 12 or 13 years. I was in and out of that house in the attic and the basement moving boxes helping his wife

There's fucking heavy boxes I'm moving around. Thinking back after I, right, those were gold bars. How would you hide $14 million of gold bars in your house? I mean, these weren't, this is not like a California mansion. It's a 40 foot by 100 foot lot. It was a nice house, a brick house. But like, it's not a lot of places, though, 14 million dollars in gold bars.

And then I said to myself, how the hell did he get $14 million in the house? And I gotta tell you, for those 12, 13, 14 years, the pizza boxes and the canollies and all those cars pulling up every day. Little by little. Wow. That's a heavy pizza.

Yeah, that's heavy. What's the biggest area of contention between you and your wife? Like, what do you guys fight the most about? I think it's about, I have some non-negotiables and it's literally if you looked at my text between Har and I, I'm, she'll say something like, hey, it's a beautiful day, great day.

I'll be like, math, Mandarin, green juice, work out. Hey, it's a great day, have a great day, have a safe flight, math, Mandarin, green juice, workout. Hey, it's a great day. Have a great day. Have a safe flight. Math, Mandarin, green juice, workout. Right. So I've got these non-negotiables for the kids that I ask her to push because you can't do it alone. It's a team effort, right?

If your wife's not on the same page, the kids could figure out quickly how to get around it. And I think, I don't think my wife is as excited as I am about the benefits of consistency. Right? Like, you can't, in my opinion, you can't just do Mandarin. Oh, we'll just do it. Well, today's a birthday. We'll skip it today. No, it's every fucking day. It's seven days a week. I know it sucks. I know I'm annoying, but it's every fucking day. It's seven days a week. I know it sucks. I know I'm annoying, but it's every day because I know so many Chinese kids that wish they

still spoke Mandarin. And when I talk to them about why they don't speak Mandarin, it's because their parents didn't push on them. But yet when they were home, the parents were talking to them Mandarin, but then they write the English language just kind of, so, honey, let's not be upset when the kids don't get into a good school. And it's the exact conversation I just have with the breaks. I know what's going to happen when they're 18 and applying for schools. I know what's going to happen when they get to live in the basement because they don't have a job.

And I want to avoid that pain. Right? By the way, if they did the math every day and they did the math during every day and they had their green juice and they did the work out and they did all the things and they lived in it. All right, well we did our best. But I want to have regrets and say,

well, fuck, I guess there were just too many birthdays. You're the hard ass then and she's the one that kind of helps soften it. So you probably need a little bit about that. Oh no, that, listen. If there was two of you, it would be terrible. It would be terrible. Yeah, your kids would revolt when they get 18.

But yeah, no doubt about it. She is the shining light and like I am rain and hail and snow and cold and she, it's sunshine around her. So, but, but, but I think we agree here. You need, you need some of that. And I think they, I think you're right. I think maybe the kids may, may feel like it's range and hail and snow and shit now, but down the road, I think they'll look back and go, man, I'm glad my dad made me.

I did what my mom, my mom was the hard ass. Right. I did what my, I know, like, I already know that like my wife and I go away, let's say for 30 days. And we come home, one comes in the front door, one goes to the back door, no one's coming up and hugging me. No one, they're not even looking at me. They are on her like a fly trap, right?

But 30 years from now, they'll say, hey, he was right. I'm curious to hear your thoughts as far as like, with football, you're seeing all this information coming out as far as CTE and you get A lot of parents like taking their kids out of these opportunities to play a sport like that And you're gonna see this more and more often in terms of like what science studies come out in terms of like how this is affecting development of kids and you know potential problems with that how this is affecting development of kids and potential problems with that. But for me, that was an essential part

of my developmental process and how to deal with overcoming stress and adversity and all these types of things and to eliminate that for me. I'm having a tough time with that, you know, with current. You wanna have some fun right now? Yes, can we dial somebody in on this call? Oh, somehow.

We might be able to. If somebody could work on that, I would say we hold that question, and we dial my buddy. I could just put up my phone. I could dial, I don't even know where my phone is. But tell us, tell us what, why dial him in first.

So my buddy, Jimmy Bens, was the head of the World Boxing Association. He's 80 years old. You gotta have him on the podcast. It just popped in my head, because you asked that question. Okay. And for whatever reason at a young age,

I always found myself listening to older people. A lot of people don't do that. But my feeling was an older person, probably from the pool business I picked it up. An older person already made mistakes. Why do I wanna make those things? Now, I still make a lot of mistakes, but for some reason, 70 and 80 plus year old people,

I actually want to impart wisdom from. And Jimmy has our ethos. Jimmy is a Spartan at heart, right? He's used to do a thousand set ups every day, ran marathons with work boots on, becomes a lawyer, not just in one state, where most people take the bar in one state where most people take the bar in one state, but he goes out across the entire United States.

That wasn't enough, learns Latin, and that was enough, becomes a police officer. And he's had some, he represented Don King up against Mike Tyson, was the head of the WBA. He's just, he's larger than life. The Rocky statue in Philly, he put it there. Oh, that's great. Yeah, he's, actually I got a funny story. You want me to tell you a funny story?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. So Jimmy says, hey, you want to go hang out with, what's his name in Rocky, Pauli? What's his real, the real last name? I don't know what his nano he's talking about. Bird, bird something. Anyway, he says, come on, we'll have dinner with Bert.

I forget his last name. And so I said, yeah, let's do it. So I stopped by my friend's house on the way, and I had just come from a Spartan race. So we do a lot of cash sales at Spartan race for merchandise and stuff. So I had a leather bag full of cash that was our system in the old days

of getting it to the bank, right? Like they would get me the leather bag. I got this cash. bag full of cash that was our system in the old days of getting it to the bank, right? Like they would get me the leather bag. I got this cash. I'm on my way to go see Paulie from Rock and I'm going to have dinner with. I'm bringing my two buddies from Goldman Sachs. It's going to be fun for them. It would be fun for all of us to have dinner with Paulie.

So Jimmy carries a gun at all times. Sometimes two guns because of people he represented or people he put in jail, whatever, he just wants to protect himself. And he's extremely dapper. So he might have a purple Versace suit with purple socks, purple shoes. The whole thing is purple. The holster for his gun, the handle of his gun is purple.

If that's the suit he's wearing, right? And a purple Jaguar for that day. That he's wearing purple. And so just to set the scene. So I get to my buddy's house from Goldman Sachs to two twin brothers, and we're gonna go see Paul. They were gonna have dinner, and I got this bag of cash. And they're a friend that they met at NYU is over.

And he's just a regular neighborhood kid, this kid, he just loves hanging out with the two brothers from Goldman Sachs. And he's friends with all of us. And he goes, what are you guys doing? I thought we're gonna see, we should Google his last name. I can't get him. Bert Young, Bert Young.

Yeah, Bert Young. So we're gonna see Bert Young, Paulie from Rocky. And I said, you should come along. He said, what are you doing him? And I don't know why it just came out of my mouth. I go I own 50 grand. I got to give him 50 grand. I had it on me. It was just a joke right?

Like no, we're just doing dinner with him, but that just spurred it out of my mouth. So he's like, yeah, all right, I'll come along. So in the car and the way over, I said listen, do me a favor because this is the first drop I got going with him. Because you're going to have to, I'm going to put the money in, you check it in in the code with the code check woman. And I'm going to need you to give them the money. All right,

you'll understand later, but I need you to take care of it. So, so anyway, we go into the code check. I check my bag, I get the little ticket, it says number 52 on it, whatever. I give it to the kid, Brendan is his name, and I said, you're gonna have to, you know, about 10 minutes into the dinner, you're gonna have to give him the bag. So Brendan, about 10 minutes since, says he's gotta go to the bathroom,

he's probably nervous, he doesn't know what the fuck is going on, why is this happening? And when he goes to the bathroom, Jimmy pulls out two guns and puts them on the table. And now they're playing along. I tell them while he's in the bathroom, what we're doing. And Brendan comes out of the bathroom and he sees Jimmy and he sees the guns and he sees Bert.

And everybody's got a serious face at the table. We're all joking, obviously. And Bert leans over to him and says, Hey, Brendan, the drop's light. And Brendan's a black kid, right? And he turns white. and Brendan's a black kid, right? And he turns white. And there's complete silence for like 30 seconds, right?

And then everybody starts breaking out laughing. So with that said, we gotta call Jimmy. Let's call him. Let's call this guy. I don't know if he's gonna answer, but we're gonna give it a shot. Oh, it's good he's not gonna get any feedback. If you get feedback, you should put it down. Yeah, but if you can hold it if you want Joseph Jimmy, what are you doing?

I'm just driving up from Northfield, New Jersey. I just Started to head back to Philly. I had to take my leather jacket down because I Had to get a couple of Before you before you before you tell me too much, I have you on a podcast and there's a million people listening to us, so don't say anything too crazy. Thank God you told me that. How did the satisfaction start training in Latin, a damn Kurele Kisekite, you've been to Dan Mayam. That's from my older boy days. I was just telling them about you and I said, you know what?

I can still say this who's sheepy at. I said, we gotta call this guy. You're gonna love this guy. So I was telling them you're a badass. One of the questions that came up was, you know, As far as I'm a badass, I'm a little, abiding older gentlemen. I, they,

who, when a quarter time will stand as ground. Greg. The question came up about kids and if I'm pushing the kids too hard and should kids be fun. Where do you know where I am when I'm? I know, I know. So we're gonna talk about a little bit.

They were asking about football. Should you let kids play football? Should you let them box? No. And I said, we gotta get Jimmy on the phone little bit. They were asking about football. Should you let kids play football? Should you let them box? And I said, we got to get Jimmy on the phone. Yeah. So what are your thoughts? Well, I did both.

And the worst mistakes I've ever made in my life. So it hasn't caught up to me yet, but it will sooner or later. I just saw the other day was a video. It wasn't a podcast, but it was on the internet about Lyle Alzato, so played for the Raiders, and they died of a brain tumor, but he abused steroids. Can you still hear me? No, no, no, we hear you well. We were listening to 10 times.

Yeah, but I mean, I've seen so many fighters, you know, I used to fight when I was 18. That's when I started to fight when I was 18. That's when I started to fight. And so I did it just for two years. And I may say I excelled at it. But even then I knew, just from looking around the gym, that if I stayed with it, it would have some very deleterious effect. So then I actually started to do some research into it

because I didn't know anything about the fact that there had been campaigns over in Europe for hundreds of years trying to Bayon boxing. And then of course, I became the only lawyer in the world for the World Boxing Association. And I knew so many fighters, like on a first name basis. And I watched them all just deteriorate from genuine physical specimens,

and intellectual specimens as well, to what the Mohammed turn out to be. And then I did some more research. And I, the worst happened to sugar ray Robinson. And the reason being that these guys had great fears and they could take a lot of punishment. And my theory about boxers is that the boxers who achieve the highest pinnacle of the sword or the ones that are most intelligent, because it's that coordination between the brain and your hands and legs that elevates them above the ones that are not so gifted. But the problem is that it's a sport that eats up all the beauty, it just eats it away

and they end up being unable to talk or walk or communicate because that all those nerves that control your speech and your gate, they all come way over the temple mandibular joint and each time it gets displaced there's damage and each time you're punched in the gym forget fights talking about sparring. Each one of those, you know, was a straight left hand jab, every time it hits cause a concussion. So I haven't heard now. I haven't heard in the military the explosives that we're using in training are as powerful as a hit in the NFL or hit in the room. Yeah. Well, you see it. I mean, you flinch yourself when it happens.

You flinch when you hear a gunshot. You flinch. So, uh, you don't know anything about gunshots, though. About which gunshots? Gunshots. Yes, I do. But in any event, uh, that's for another day. But in it, but what I'm saying to you is anybody who would allow the, I used to see people put their sons in the ring

against one another at ages five and six. And I thought, how stupid could you be? I left out an adjective, but I just can't believe people would subject a little tiny brain to that type of punishment because one source brain cells go, they don't regenerate, they never come back. Never come back. Jimmy, when you come out to California,

where do you go? Because these guys, where am I right now? San Jose. I'm in San Jose. San Jose. Are you anywhere near San Jose when you come out here? No, my grandchildren live in Rodinio Beach. Got it.

Something California. Got it for me California Yeah, doesn't matter, but they can listen. They can Google me Google Jimmy bin We we have we have Jimmy and why why we have you on here before you go one question No, listen, I got a drive for an hour and ten minutes Shit, okay, then I got I got a question for you. I know I know that you've And listen that guy that you're sitting with I used to charge him big money for gold shit That's right. That's right. You know, he's kind of a cheap ass. So I can't believe it. We got can we can we

Can we talk about before you ask that question? Can we talk about the air conditioner scene? When you when you just That was anored that was that see but that was an injustice that was rated. So what happened was that I I after living in my C-shore house for about nine years I started to wake up every morning about

three or four o'clock in the morning and I didn't know why you know and so when they walked out in the garage and I see this wrench or a pair of pliers or something vibrating it was housed in a you know piece or wouldn't have it. So I go over there and I see this thing is shaken and I discover always because right outside this wall are these air conditioning, that's good what they're called. But you know the things are the fans in them. And so, happened to be an air conditioning guy working a couple of doors down, I said,

take a look at him, please. They went on a couple of them are out of round and they're making some noise, he said, but they're not yours. They said, well, you mean you're not mine. So they belong to the house next to you. The interior house, there were three houses, I wanted one in. So they belonged to that house over there. So I didn't think anything about easements or any of that stuff, but I talked to the guy who owned it and I said, hey, yeah, you got to do something about them. And he said, that's Bobby's area. I said, well, I don't care who's area is you got to do something about it because it's

waking me up at night. I'm not happy. So anyway, sometime I went by and nothing happened. So then I pulled out my documents, you know, and I see where the guy who built the houses just on his own put him there and ran all the lines through my house. So I checked to see if there were any easements there weren't. I got a local lawyer down there who says, not totally through my house. So I checked to see if there were any easements there weren't. I got a local lawyer down there who says, not totally got a move him.

So he didn't move him. And then you're being, but you're being a lot more PC when you were calling me. Oh, you told me I couldn't talk regular. Oh, no, you can talk regular. I'm still rated or a podcast. Yes, I know. Oh, no, no. So I said, you got to get the fucking things out of there.

And so we didn't do that. So I went to a local HVAC guy said, come over here. I want you to look at this. And he said, oh, Mr. Beans, he said, I don't want to get involved. And this is not going to end happily. There's no problem. So I call you know what?

Cold Joe Anthony said Anthony, whoever you're, it's he. Yeah. I'm calling. So you guys call me up. I said, go down. There's a two ones on the end. Just, uh, unhook them, but do it professionally, you know, cap off everything and then put them in the back of the garage next to me, which he did. So this guy calls me and says, well, he says you did something illegal. We're going to get you and this, not that, but so then some cop calls me and he says I want to talk to you so what about and he said well there's a I'm investigating so what are you investigating so

there's no nothing no crime to investigate I'll decide that so when then you know I talk to me talk to my lawyer he was his number phone so I gave my real estate lawyer so then I went down there just to make sure they didn't try to put them back on and then sure if there wasn't two men and this lady this next door right else on my house you know so I go down and I said to guys and said look I said I don't know you gentlemen or I said I'm going to get here HVAC people I said you were just standing on my lawn and you didn't ask me if you could. And I said, I'm not even going to look at this lady screaming over here, because I don't

care what she says. But don't go back on my lawn unless you ask me, or then I will have a problem with you. You got that? Yes, sir. Okay, that's the end of the conversation. So then all of a sudden three cops show show up and they arrested me. So anyway, cutting right to the quick, they went up and said, good print of me, blah, blah, blah.

And then they ended up paying me $105,000 and the neighbor paid me $12,500 and moved. That's the end of the story. No, but that's not the end of the story. Then you became a cop. Oh, yeah. Well, then after that, I did go to the police academy. I enrolled in the police academy when I was 73 years of age, and I graduated when, first in my class, when I was 74 years of age.

In fitness and everything first and everything but but but now i uh... and they uh... i teach cops how to write harley's and we write harley david's in road king motorcycles and i am now the deputy chief of my department and i am a nationally certified uh... harley david's in motorcycle instructor let me let me tell you just you gave me an idea for a story.

I want to tell them. Can I tell them the story of the garage? Which one? The one that you had Anthony build? You can tell him. Yeah, so just feel, feel free to interject. So this kid Anthony is a friend of both of Jimmy and I. And he's a contractor.

So Jimmy says, hey, Anthony, I want a garage in the back. I need a place to put my Jaguars. That's nice and clean, and it's all the weeds back there, and I don't really like the way it looks, because Jimmy's got OCD and everything's gotta be clean and neat. And he just didn't like the way the land next to his house. No, I mean, they had to do a lot of work back there because they, you know, it's a pretty big garage.

Yeah, so he says says i want this garage built now that this is anthony telling me the story now jimmy's gonna have this perspective so i don't know anything knows i was there and so you know that you know i think telling me the story i want you to interject if i get anything wrong from your perspective and he says jimmy calls me once been to build a scribe to go back as all weeds

i lay it out i take the surveys and i say, hey, Jimmy, Mr. Bins, I think he calls him Mr. Bins, that's not your land. Like, it looks like that's somebody, Jimmy says, I don't give a fuck, I can't have weeds in everything in the backyard, I need a garage there. He says, I understand Mr. Bins, but that's not all your land.

No, it wasn't exactly that, it was something to do with the telephone company or the electric company and wires running back there not his not his way that they had a newsman not as land so we've got that all so so so and then he bills the garage and now he's got the second story going up with the roof but he can't get the roof in because the wires from the fact that electric company and the telephone companies are running through the land, which is not Jimmy's where he built the house.

So Jimmy now, it's been like two months and Jimmy's losing his mind. I got nowhere to put my fucking cars. There's weeds back there. It's muddy. I need this thing done. Mr. Bins, I understand. I'm trying to get the electric company and the telephone company here to move the wires and I built the garage. It's not on your land. Dan, I'm trying to get the electric company and the telephone company here to move the wires

and I built the garage that's not on your land. Jimmy says, calls him, summons him to his house according to Anthony one morning. Jimmy's in his whity tighties, 5 a.m. Says Anthony, I want the fucking garage done today. So Anthony calls his guys and he says, get a ladder and some bolt cutters and meet me at Mr. Ben's garage 6am. So Anthony gets there,

according to Anthony, climbs up on the ladder, takes the bolt cutters, closes his eyes, because he doesn't know what's going to happen, and it starts clipping the fucking electric wire. Oh my God, the fucking phone wire. And he said sparks are shooting out of his teeth, or he's fucking clipping these wires. And he leaves his form in there, and he said, sparks are shooting out of his teeth. He's like, clipping these wires. And he leaves his form in there and he says, all right, quickly get the roof on. And if there's a problem call me and he goes to another job,

he says about three hours later, he gets a call. I think you should come down here. He said, he gets there and it looks like a commercial for like Verizon, the electric company. Apparently half a South Philly is shut down. Gas stations, hospitals, that nobody's getting getting power or phone because he just shut. Now I don't know, that's Anthony's side of the story. And apparently they're arresting Anthony. They're putting him in the car.

He's got his handcuffed and he's trying to get to his phone. And the cops says, what are you doing? He's some trying to call Mr. Bins. I got, oh, this is Mr. Bins garage? Yeah, oh, on Cuffham. We didn't know. And that was that. So I adjust the story accordingly, Jimmy, but that's what I was thinking.

No, it's the parts of it could be a powerful but in substance that's the story. But then nothing happened to Anthony or to me for that matter. Yeah, so you just, you, he get to do whatever he wants in Philly. So if you guys decide to go park it. Well, it's not exactly that way, but, you know, kind of. So, so Jimmy, I gotta, I gotta ask you, you've probably defended and been around a lot of prolific people.

What is the, and I know, according to Joe, that you carry one, sometimes two guns on you. What is probably one of the, at the moment, at the moment, the moment in my shoulder holsters sits a five shot chief special with 38 hollow point bullets and all my hips sits a Glock 19 with 15 in the magazine

and one in the chamber. Nine millimeters. Now a better question, does it match your suit though? Well, if I was dressed, but see I'm dressed the motorcycle close now Because I was gonna ride until I saw that fucking cold it is I ain't gonna go out So I want I want to ask you obviously if you carry guns like that. There's there's definitely a reason I also have an a or 15 in my trunk Has a nice scope on it. Okay, shit gets really crazy, right?

Well, you never know, shit happens. So, what has been one of the scariest moments in your life that's led you to make sure that you always are carrying something? No, I don't have scary moments in my life. I just want to be prepared. You know, you never know. I see stuff that happens to other people on television and I hear Things and I know about crimes that take place nothing has ever happened to me But I don't want it to either so I have taken measures to make sure that it doesn't

Okay, I was telling them about um Bert from Rocky Polly Rocky's brother Yeah, when we went to dinner and we were Brother and Law you mean Bert young Bert young yeah, I was telling him about Bert young and when we played the joke You put your gun on the table I forgot that Jimmy I remember when I first saw his apartment down in Miami He had a wall of suits purple yellow green orange every suit socks, holster, gun. It was all lined up perfectly. That's all true. That's true. And he won't start his car until he's clean the whole dashboard, the steering wheel. Everything's got to be clean and perfect. They're looking at pictures

of you. I don't get sick. I don't get sick. What do we got to do to convince Jimmy to come down to the studio? What do we got to convince to get you over here? Where are you? We are San Jose, San Jose, California. Now there's no chance. I don't play anymore. Listen, I used to spend a half of my life on an airplane between Vegas and Philly and Atlantic City and Europe and England and Ireland and all the places because I flew virtually every weekend to a fight somewhere in the world, you know, and now on Tire I can't take that bullshit going through the airport with these people touching me and wanting me to remove my shoes. I don't do any of that shit.

So tell them about Tyson when you were up against Tyson. Well, I mean, Tyson's a friend of mine. So, but he asked me to represent him in Suing, Don King, but I was already representing Don King. So I told him I could do it. And the story's too long. But anyway, Tyson in the great guy and you know now he's landed on his feet he has a nine-year-old daughter

who can rally tennis balls with uh... highly rated men professionals her name is molan well and then she can go home and take her t.v. i mean her tennis racket uh... put a tennis racket away and sit down play classical piano notes true did not know that excellent well how about next time you're in redondo beach visiting your family we we fly down to you and interview you there but i even told my daughter not coming back after anymore because that three

hours has always fucked me up so bad uh... i could fly to Europe easier I don't know what it is about my body clot but whenever I go out there I would be like in a trance for the whole weekend or however long I was there you know I never I would never leave my I'll get these guys I'll get these guys to come to Vermont and and we'll figure out a way to get them on these coasts. I ain't going to Vermont anymore either. This motherfucker took me up to Vermont and I used my ass or email my grandson who at the

time was only like nine he said, pop, we gotta get out of here and I said, you know what, let's go. And we left. Jim is going to build, I said, I built a special house just for you and like a jerk off I believed them. So I go there, there's no fucking, he's no hot water, no nothing. I know what you're talking about.

I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about.

I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking about. I know you were talking to him. Do you have a Joe's turn? I know. No, no, no, let me explain something to him about him to you.

He's fucked up. I became friends with him via some girl that I used to go out with and then I became very friendly with all of his relatives and hismother, his aunt, and so one time he was driving home, well he wasn't driving, somebody else was driving to work for him, and the car went off the road, and the hit a tree head on, Joe, his hit came completely out of the socket, they took him to some little hospital somewhere, and his interns stood up, pulled on his leg and popped the socket, they took him to some little hospital somewhere and his interns stood up pulled on his leg and popped the socket the ball back into the socket. So this was during the time when he was making gobs of money up on Wall Street. So he, without going to a hospital or a physician or anything, he on crutches would walk from his apartment, down the Wall Street, every day, every day, every day. And then, so we sued the driver,

it's kind of like a friendly suit, but we, somebody else owned the car, so we had a sustainable cause of action. And when it came time to try the case, that dumb motherfucker had run something like 46 Marathons, 30 Iron Man races and this is an I'm up there trying to get a verdict, you know what I mean? The amount of rhyme was there was no doctor, the test file was no nothing, and on bullshit alone

I got him a $500,000 jewelry bird. Oh, wow. Yeah. All right. I even had to prostitute his new bride to come in and say how much it affected their honeymoon and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she's Catholic so she probably has been the confessional already.

That's since wiped away. The truth of the matter is my leg ripped out of my hip. I went through the window at 85 miles an hour woke up on the side of the road, but I did recover very quickly. No, but listen, you're in the presence of the strangest man in the history of the universe. He's right there, but he's got to stop with his children and he's got to stop making them move like carpet baggers to one end of the world, to the other, to here, to there. He's got to live like a normal person, you know, by a nice little semi-detached house or something like that. Forget about the money. He can't spend the money that he owns,

that he already has made. So what's the difference? You know what I mean? I know, Jimmy. I'm trying to convince this guy to buy himself a nice fucking bed he won't even spend a couple bucks on that the guy's so cheap oh no no listen to me he sleeps on floors and shit like that he's he's insane I'm just telling you right now he's a certifiably insane I'm here by the way. But he's a great fucking guy. Yeah, we think so sure. We love him. That's why he's here, man.

We love him too. I just want to tell him when I used to take it down to the Trinity gym, teach you how to box. It's true. He used to bring me down to the gym. But I just wanted them to know that I got back up if they bothered me too much or give me a hard time. We never tell anybody that, Joe. Just say... i don't think you should have said that

uh... jam will catch you later thanks for doing this be safe guys thank you jimmy she buddy well what a character i told you he's awesome i want to get him on the show

yeah you gotta get him on the fuck we'll fly to him i don't give a shit yeah exactly if you guys do a trip to east coast with coordinate i'll hit you got to get him on. Fuck, we'll fly to him. I don't give a shit. Yeah, exactly. If you guys do a trip to East Coast, we'll coordinate. I'll get you like five or six people like that. Oh, really? Oh, a lot of that. Old-to-old timers.

Actually, I got three, I got like three old wise men that are Jimmy's one of them. Marty Fox is the other one. And Marty will tell you some crazy stories about Wall Street finance. Oh, four. I love that. And then you got Al Capucci. So I got three old-timeers for you. Oh, I love, I love talking to older people.

There's so many stories in the wisdom alone. It's just fantastic. Yeah. Absolutely. How often do you keep up with someone like him? Do you guys talk pretty regularly? Do you mean I talk a lot? Like he'll just call me, there's very few people in my life.

You guys probably have the same thing where anytime, any doesn't matter, three in the morning, whatever, the phone rings and you answer, like he would answer anytime I call him, I told you. Like he just picked up. And I'm the same way with him and a couple of other friends. And they're triple A personalities, so they're always awake, right?

And so people that answer your call at any time, you're just gonna call them all. Now was there a time because I feel like with people like that there's something that happened like where you knew this guy's gonna be lifelong for me. Was there a moment in your guys' relationship where you're like, okay, this is like family for me now. Well, you don't forget, my mother died at a young age,

my father died. I don't really have anything left in the neighborhood. My grandparents, everybody's gone. So these three old wise men are like my guys, right? My neighbor who was my guy went to jail. Like, there's not, you know what I mean? Yeah. So they just became... Like mentors to you? Yeah, you know, a woman I interviewed once on a podcast said to me, everybody's got to have a personal board of directors Before I ever heard that these are like my personal board of directors and one of them One of them I owe everything to because he got me out of the neighborhood like like my father

I guess whispered to him. I didn't know this before my father died whispered to one of them and said I tried to get him out of the neighborhood for a long time You did it. So I want to thank you for that said, I tried to get him out of the neighborhood for a long time, you did it. So I want to thank you for that. Like I was an hammer, just like you guys would have been an hammer with the neighborhood and the money and the gold bars and the gunolis, right? And all that stuff. And so I didn't want to leave that, but this guy convinced me to go to Wall Street and

that changed everything. Do you think there's a thin line between the people that succeed and do it the right way and the people that succeed and maybe do it on the other side of the law? Do you think that there's a lot in common with them and maybe it's just a little bit in the conversation? I got a guy to call. You want to call a guy on that one? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything.

Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything.

Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything.

Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. Yeah, we're gonna guy for everything. And so he disconnected his phone and I gotta yeah, it's just hard to get him but hang on Let me cuz he didn't want to pay the phone bill. He doesn't want to pay the phone like he looks at every like penny But you got a hand to him. He's been retired for 40 something years Hi Joe. Hey, doing it's I got I got you on don't say anything dirty because I have you on like a podcast right now Is Al there?

I want to ask him a question. Um, I'm sick and bad. Oh, sorry about that. No, and he's down the cellar and I don't think he has his phone. All right, then forget it. Forget it. I'll call him. I'll call, I'll call down to him and see if he'll go get his phone.

All right. And then you want him to call you or that'd be great. Yeah, yeah, I haven't called myself. That'd be perfect. Okay. All right, bye. Bye. Yeah, sometimes I think that, like I think if I grew up differently, maybe if I had a

bad upbringing or I wasn't brought up with good morals, if I would have gone, you know, in the quote unquote wrong direction. I think I'd still be working in hustling, you'll have stuff, but it probably would be in an adapt to your environment. In that direction. I think that's true of anybody that's a hustler. If we didn't get guided the right way,

we would be doing it. We, the hustle wouldn't be gone away. It's just you do it the wrong way. I might have to go soon. Hang on a second. No problem. Well, imagine being somebody who's been in the black market of cannabis for 30, 40 years. Now it's a legal market. Now it's a complete legal market.

It's like, man, you could have established yourself as one of the best of the best in that space in that field. And everybody looked down upon you as this evil bad person. And then here we are, you know, fast forward 10, 20 or 30 years. And it's not seen in this prohibition. Oh, Al Capone, you know, and now you got Bud Weiser and, you know what I mean? Yeah, same hustle. He could have actually, what's that whiskey?

They wrote Jack Daniels. One, they were bootlegs. They were bootlegs, right? Oh, I bet, I bet most, I think about that all the time. Like when I think about my first business, it was by hook and by crook. And I'm sure you guys in the very beginning to get going, unless you're funded like in Silicon Valley,

you're doing whatever you have to do to get it going. Joe Kennedy, they had it, they had it in SEC, was like a, you know, sometimes I believe, when I look at some of these massive companies, and I see what it takes to get to that level, and now experiencing that myself, I go, Oh, those guys are pit bulls. Yeah, and how much of that was funded on money

that we don't know about, or how did those guys get to that point to have that kind of capital to make those types of moves in it. Movies emulate life. And so if you look at the Godfather where he eventually tries to get into a clean bit, I think that happens more often than not.

I think being around business is long. It's pretty rare. It happens. Like my best friend in life is clean as a whistle. It made insane amounts of money, just did it the right way, but it's rare. It is, right? It's rare to be at that level and not have,

I mean, I think about the big dig in Boston, for example, I don't know if you guys know that tunnel that was being done 15 years ago. I think they went 18 billion dollars over a budget. Hold on, this is my buddy. Ow. Yeah, Joe, what the? I got you on a national podcast.

So, so don't say anything too bad. I got a, I got a question. I got a question for, I was telling them about my super mentors. What, what were we asking? Oh, we're asking Ow. They wanted to know like if you, if you're going to go the right way, or you're going to go the wrong way, explain the question again. Yeah, so the question is, you know, people who are very successful and do and do it the the law abiding way and then people who are successful but kind of Break the rules or maybe in the black market that there's a very thin line that separates them

What are your thoughts on that out? I don't know Then that line is My feeling is that you know, I my first job after graduate school It at Cornell was the Security Exchange Commission. The SEC clearly. The law is pretty clear. We had a guy there who was a pretty well-known person. He did something which was illegal.

Pure and simple. So I took it to the commission and they said to me, the came back and they said, well, really nobody got hurt. And I said, look, the law is pretty clear here. If you're off the direct or temperate stockholder, you're subject to insider trading. And this guy's broken. So my feeling is, if not a sin line, if you know the rules, they're pretty damn clear.

But you had said to me, Owl, when I was in Queens, and you were trying to get me to Wall Street, you had said, listen, Joe, you just go on the other side of the river. You get to Wall Street. They're doing the same things things all those guys in the neighborhood doing only they're doing it legally right they they know where the law is okay and they stay on the right side of it but in terms of the morality of what they're doing that's another question right and i think that's what you're saying yeah yeah yeah because there's still there's still i think

there's still a sense of morality. It's just not legal. Well, look, even today, there's some question about whether insider trading is illegal. Okay. Now, the way that the evidence is pretty damn clear. The rules of the Security and Change Commission are this. The reason that people have caught within the market is that we have clear rules. So if some people are in the stock market and are operating on instant information,

that makes it not fair. In a society like ours, if people view the rules as unfair, you break down the rules of society. Right. So, you know, what I was telling Joe is the guys and queens were just stupid because if they just learned where the rules were and say to the right side of them, they'd be okay. And the rules are pretty clear. But I would disagree with the assumption that it's a thin line.

You know, you can say that as you want to. But I mean, if you go to a stop sign, I'm in a red light, and the light is red, you stop. If you're going to, because it's so yellow, come on, you broke the law. So I't think it's cool. I don't think Sorry, I disagree with the thing is it's been lying. I just so you guys know I was a stickler Alza shakie is very very detailed oriented and clear I wanted to take the opportunity. I was with these guys out there But they have about a million people listening to you right now. So sorry to put you on the spot Um, and I wanted to dial you in. I was telling them about my mentors and obviously you're one of them. So, by the

way, this is one of the wealthiest guys you'll meet. He's down in the basement. It's a concrete floor, unfinished basement in the dark, no heat. And he's on his computer like what the fuck are you doing it's a big out of the four before we let you go i know we're bothering you right now do you have a do you have a story on joe i mean obviously you talk to this guy still there's something about him that you've been attracted to for this long do you have a story about joe i guess that the I'm most proud of is this.

Joe is a situation where Joe and I were both right in the argument, but he took my side of it. And here it is. When Joe was going to Cornell, he was busy with full visits, okay, and he was successful at it. So he said to me, I don't think I need this. And I said, well, I think you should continue, because you want to be a legal one after two years.

I said, look, Joe, I think you don't realize that you have a certain cash share, you're gonna be out to the side, and if you have a coin on a green, I give you a certain credibility. So I was writing a sense that he should continue, but he was writing the sense that he didn't need the degree. No he's a natural entrepreneur, works his tail off, he'll be successful with or without the point of degree. The point of the degree he gave him certain

cash and I think he realizes that but it's the case where he didn't have to go to continue a point of the success. But that's a case where he didn't have to go to be a continuing Cornell of the successful. But that's a historic change. Change my life. Finish in school for anybody out there listening. I recently had this discussion with my sister-in-law who said there's lots of people that are successful at alcohol and college, but for me it changed my life. But I needed the credibility because of where I was from. needed that I didn't grow up for Valley and and

All right now, what else? Yeah, what were you gonna say good luck? Good luck. So where are you? I don't know somewhere I say California San Jose Okay, yeah, all right partner. I'll see you Okay, good. All right. All right, partner. I'll see you. Good talk to you.

See you next. Bye. Well, that's excellent. You got these friends like that? It's amazing. Everybody's everybody's, by the way, I don't think there's a successful or older person that wouldn't help anybody on that's listening to this.

You just have to ask and then you have to do what they tell you to do because otherwise, anybody can ask me for a favor, whatever, and I'll do it, but if they don't listen, I'm not gonna do it again. That's one of my biggest pet peeves. Like, I'll give the shirt off my back. I'll give all the time I have in a day

to somebody that's willing to ask the questions and then actually go put the work in. And I have a lot of respect for people. I do it. What it is, it takes humility to do that. And a lot of people. It's all right, yeah, it's all right to ask. Back to the original question that I got to run, my wife.

So I had this theory, again, I saw these 700 houses, when I was cleaning the pools, and I saw a lot of divorces, and including my own family, and I thought, how could I set up my situation to make it less likely there would be a break up in the family, that I could keep a solid family? And I thought a lot of KPIs in this, can't do that, can't do this, definitely don't

have a girlfriend that doesn't help the relationship. But one was, I want to marry a younger woman. If I'm lucky enough to find a younger, beautiful woman that would marry me, I think that would help me because I think a lot of guys, and I'm sorry if people listen and are saying I'm a jerk, when they get, they start to stray later, went, went, right? And so if I could set myself up, because I figured, I figured by the time I'm 50,

I'm on my way downhill at that point. I'm gonna do my burpees, I'm gonna do the best I can, but I'm on my way down. And if my wife is still hot at that point. I'm gonna do my burpees. I'm gonna do the best I can, but I'm on my way down. And if my wife is still hot, at that point, like, it's gonna be more likely that I'm focused on. And so, um, so I- What's the buffer geniuses? I think it's like, well, for me, it's nine years. So, nine-ten years for me, like, and number one, and number two, I should get married later. Look, two important things for me. Three was make money before I get married

because the stress of making money and that pressure on the family, I thought it would start to crack some of the foundation. And so there's probably 10 things, but those were three that I focused on. And Joe's marriage advice. How long have you been married? I'm married now about 18.

You know, my wife will be pissed because I probably got it wrong, but about 18 years, 17, 18 years, so I'm like, I do. Before you go, was there any advice you could give our listeners to for success, business success? Yeah, so I just, I got this.

This is gonna be, you guys, if you do a book, okay? You don't need anything but this page for business. It could be a one-page book. It'd be really cheap to print. And I got this from Theo Epstein's, a friend of my wife and I. He took the red socks to the championship and then he took the cubs. Youngest general manager ever, took him at 80 plus years slumps.

Theo, how did you do that? You didn't just do it once, you did it twice. He said three things. One, set your vision of mission. Everybody knows that, we've all heard it, but make sure everybody buys into that vision of it. Don't just stick it on the wall, like take people out, climb a mountain,

make sure everybody buys into vision of mission, only hire people that really get the vision of mission and buy into it. Two, make sure the people you hire are resilient. Like, it's cool to have domain expertise to make sure that it had to use the computers in this room and the audio equipment, all that stuff. But if they're not resilient, they're not gonna work

because business requires resilience and the ability to bounce back. So all his scouts, everybody that does recruiting for his teams, they've got to show examples of resilience in their life and baseball, et cetera. And then the most important one was no one is allowed to take success for themselves. In other words, if the pitcher had a great night, the pitcher cannot say that it was him. He's got to say thanks for the catcher, thanks for the midfielder thing.

And when something fails, you've got to own the failure. Don't own the success, but own the failure. And he said, once everybody on the team, including the success, but own the failure and he said once Everybody on the team including the management are doing that. He goes you got a team And so it's hard to do I'm trying to do it like we talked about earlier. How do I become a better CEO? and And it's it's how do I get the whole team because it's it's a human trait to sit around in a room with a couple of senior people and Complaint about something like no we own it. We got to own it And so I'm working on that sit around in a room with a couple of senior people and complain about something, like no, we own it. We got to own it.

And so I'm working on that. But I'm gonna leave you guys with, we're in search. My team's gonna kill me for this, for a new CEO for Spartan. And, I'm still coming with this. Yes, you guys gotta figure it out. So have people send in resumes or whatever.

And, We'll filter them for you. You'll filter them for me. I feel like we have a really good relationship. I'm in high seat. You and I are sexting on a regular basis, so I feel like I can. We can even have my three wise men. Right, right.

We'll do a little call-in too. Yeah, it could be fun. So we'll work on that. Let's, why don't we say, by the end of 2019, we'll have somebody. All right, can we do that? All right, let's put it all out. We're a global search.

Yeah, all right. They've got to, they probably can't be married, only because they're, it could be male all out, a global search. Yeah, I'm right. They probably can't be married, only because, it could be male or female, by the way. I'm gender neutral. They gotta be able to fly a lot, and I don't wanna put that pressure on somebody that's got a young family. Sure, sure.

So they gotta be able to jump around, they've gotta have great, you know what we need. Just get me one. We got you. Absolutely. No problem, man. We got you, Joe. He's always recruiting here, right? I say international business. It's always. We got you. Absolutely. No, you're good. Oh man. We got you, Joe.

He's always recruiting here, right? I say international business. It's always an adventure with you. Yeah, every time. Yeah, cool. I love it. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body,

dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPunkMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal and Amin Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout nutrients in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having sour, animal justice as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction

of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a 430-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. you