The Rich Roll Podcast - Joe De Sena On True Resilience, Choosing Your Hard & Why Discomfort Is Oxygen

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

We all have big dreams. But are you willing to pay the price required to make them manifest? There’s a big difference between those who quit and those who commit. At the core of that difference is one’s ability to tolerate discomfort. Discomfort is the price we pay for resilience. And resilience is the foundation of growth. Few grasp and practice this truth better than Spartan Race founder and CEO Joe De Sena, returning to the podcast to usher us into the new year correct and jumpstart our new year’s ambitions into action. Joe last graced the studio in December of 2020 (RRP #567), a conversation that probed his absolutely fascinating backstory and left us with powerful insights on the limits we impose on personal possibility. Continuing in the spirited annual tradition we have here to launch the new year with an uncomfortable kick in the pants, I thought it fit (literally) to invite Joe back for a more focused elaboration on the truths, mindset tools and motivation to translate ambition into positive results. For those new to Joe, he’s the entrepreneurial mastermind behind Spartan—the obstacle course racing series that became a global phenomenon, and the evil genius behind Death Race—perhaps the most absurd sufferfest ever conceived. He’s also an absolute endurance freak. Example A: in a mere week, Joe completed the Vermont 100 mile run, Ironman Lake Placid, and the Badwater 135. In addition, he crushed 50 ultramarathons and 14 Ironman events in a single year (a certain kind of insanity that must be some kind of record). And he’s the kind of guy who, on a whim, once ran from New York City to Vermont. Joe’s most striking talent is his facility for motivating the best out of people—a skill committed to print in his new book, 10 Rules For Resilience, which is a guide to developing mental toughness. Today we deconstruct resilience in all its forms—why it’s crucial to growth and how to cultivate it. We also go deep on discipline, courage, and discomfort. The importance of personal values in adhering to your goals. How to navigate failure. And why your reaction to challenging situations defines you. And finally, we explore the importance of imbuing these principles into our parenting. Joe is a force of nature—a bullshit-free and 100% authentic lunatic. But his heart is huge. His experience-based message is powerful. And paired with practical tools fundamental to shattering stagnation. To read more click here. You can also watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. May his words propel you to craft your own challenge for this impending new year—something extraordinary. So let’s dive into it 2022 headfirst. Or, as Joe is fond of saying, fire, ready, aim. Peace + Plants, Rich

I believe that the number one motivator for a human being is the avoidance of discomfort. You wake up in the morning with the greatest intentions to exercise or work on that book you're writing, and before you know it, you're instead making coffee and reading the news and checking Instagram. That's your brain avoiding the uncomfortable work. You've got to recognize the resistance you're going to face consciously and subconsciously, and then you've got to commit to just bite-size action, and it's got to be consistent. If it's bite-size and you broadcast to everybody that this is who you are and this is your new plan and you say it over and over and over, you have a chance. The Rich Roll Podcast.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast and welcome to 2022. To usher in the new year correct, today I'm joined by my buddy, Joe DeSena, the founder and CEO of Spartan Race. We're turning to the show for a bit of a boot in the rear to shake the cobwebs loose and jumpstart those resolutions. Joe last graced the studio a little over a year ago in December of 2020. That episode, RRP 567, which went deep into his absolutely

fascinating backstory was a hit. So check it out if you missed it. And so in the spirited annual tradition that we have here to launch the new year with the mindset tools and motivation to embrace your new year ambitions properly, I thought it fit, literally, to have him drop by for a more focused discourse on just that. A few more items to add before we dig in, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of

care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you.

Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to

find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it.

Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life and recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, so Joe DeSena. So the thing about Joe is, above everything else, this is a guy who really walks his talk. In addition to founding Spartan, Joe is also an incredibly tough ultra endurance

athlete in his own right with a litany of impressive accomplishments to his name. He's a New York Times bestselling author and relevant to today's conversation, just a rare talent when it comes to motivating the best out of people. He's got a new book out. It's called 10 Rules for Resilience, which is essentially a guide for not just you, but also your young ones, for your family, to develop what he calls true resilience. What is true resilience? Well, we talk about that. We also talk about how and why cultivating resilience,

as well as its siblings, things like discipline and courage, can and should be built into parenting. We discuss the importance of personal values in adhering to your goals, how to navigate failure, and many other topics. Joe is a character, that's for sure. He's a force of nature, maybe even a bit of a lunatic, but I love him and I hope you guys dig this one. So let's welcome 2022 with Mr. Joe DeSena. Well, good to see you, man.

I think it's been a little over a year since I saw you last. Lots has happened. We got a lot of stuff to talk about. Yeah, on the way in the pandemic, right? And the way out. Yeah. I come through LA.

Thanks for having me. I love your new space. Yeah, I appreciate that. And you've been all over the place. You were just in Abu Dhabi, right? For the world championships. I don't know if I told you this, but, and I don't remember exactly when I was here last,

but I never stopped traveling, even with all the bands and everything that we were told not to go anywhere, I went everywhere. And I don't know if people listening will say, oh, that guy's so irresponsible, but like it was awesome because, and I'm so pissed that I don't know if people listening will say, oh, that guy's so irresponsible. But like, it was awesome because, and I'm so pissed that I didn't film it because airports were completely empty like Arbogeddon. I was in Rome at the Colosseum.

I was the only person, the only person there. It was unbelievable traveling around the world. And I just capped it off with a trip to Abu Dhabi. We're right in the middle of what they call the empty quarter, which is this massive desert, the kind that you would envision if you and I were in Lawrence of Arabia, right? That old movie, camels, falcons,

like in the middle of nowhere. And we put on a race. It was unbelievable. I was out in the desert. I took my shoes off because I couldn't walk on my shoes. And it was like, race. It was unbelievable. I was out in the desert. I took my shoes off because I couldn't walk on my shoes. And it was like, I had to pinch myself. I can't believe I'm out in the middle of desert. Like remember in the cartoons where you'd say,

gee, I wonder if I could make it without water. Is that an oasis? Is my mind tricking me? And is that really water? It was like that. Wow. It was unbelievable. And symbolically just, you know, the messages Spartan is back.

I mean, it's been rough for you guys having all your races canceled, 500 employees having to weather all of that. You couldn't make it up. I mean, we were on top of the world. We bought out our competitor right before the pandemic. Finally, after 15 years of hell, profitable, had some cash in the bank, and then this hit,

and had a shutdown of 45 countries, had a furlough of 400 people. And I'm still feeling the pain, I'm reeling from the pain still today. There's nothing, the government's done a lot for us, but they can't do enough. Yeah, I mean, I'm just looking at it thinking, how did you even keep it together without going bankrupt?

It's pretty hard. I almost broke down and started crying here for a second. It's been- But it's like all everything, I mean, the occasion for the podcast is this new book that you wrote, 10 Rules for Resilience. Like your lifetime of building up this reservoir of resilience and all of these tools that are lifted from your many experiences and adventures

are now being tested at the ultimate level. I was pressure tested for sure. The team was pressure tested. We lost some good people just because I'm sure people are like, oh, these guys gonna make it or not make it. And I've probably been, there's probably been five moments in the last 18 months where it was like touch and go. It was like a couple more days,

we're gonna have to just pull the rip cord. And then miraculously there's a PPP loan or there's another government loan, or you're gonna love this. I became friends, he's gonna kill me for telling you. I became friends with the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue. And the reason I became friends, he's gonna kill me for telling you. I became friends with the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue. And the reason I became friends with him is we randomly met through a third party

as you meet most friends. And we were in Colorado skiing. And he goes, I wake up really, I go, I wake up really early, right? I'm sure you wake up really early. I work out, what do you do? Or whatever, he gets business done. Yeah, like your gaydar for the other guy

that like lives your lifestyle. Yeah, and so I go, you know, I got this rusty chain, this 83 pound chain that I usually drag around in the mornings, which I brought with me to Colorado. I go, I'll swing by your house early in the morning. I'll drag the chain over. It looks like on the map, it looks like you're only a half mile away.

Turned out he was five miles away, right? I dragged this frigging chain because I wanted to the chain over. It looks like on the map, it looks like you're only a half mile away. Turned out he was five miles away, right? I dragged this frigging chain because I wanted to be on time, I'm hustling. And we became good buddies. Well, believe it or not, Saks Fifth Avenue has done incredibly well through the pandemic. Lots of people that have been getting government checks,

which should not be shopping at Saks, have been using those checks to go buy things they shouldn't be. And then he spun off the.com. There's a lot of good things happening to him. And one day my wife's like, have you read the FedEx on the kitchen table? And this is when it was really touch and go with our business.

And I'm like, no, I'm like, oh, great. Now the IRS is suing us or who knows what I'm dealing with now. And I open it up and I'm like, oh, a customer sent me a $10 check or something to say, you know, we support you. It was a million dollar check from him. And it was like, it was a little handwritten note. And he said, Hey, I just had a really good week. I just want you to know, I love what you're doing. Use it. Don't use it. Stick it in a drawer for a rain a day. I hope I didn't embarrass you. And so I've had a bunch of friends and the government

and the customers and vendors. This'll blow you away, cause you're a lawyer. Wilkie Farr, right? Big, am I saying it correctly? Yeah. Big law firm. Wilkie Farr and Gallagher. I don't know what it's called now. Maybe it's just Wilkie Farr.

Giant law firm. They helped us get the Tough Mudder deal done. And it was a big, we have a bill with them. And I called them like all the other vendors and they were like, pay us whatever you want, whenever you want, we're behind you. That's very unlawful. How often does that happen?

Yeah. It's like, this is unbelievable. Wow. Well, it has to be a testament to the goodwill that you've sown over many years. It's like if you're someone of character who's conducting themselves in a certain kind of aspirational way,

and you've treated people well throughout the course of your life, like karmically, it's not surprising, me knowing the kind of person that you are, but also very affirming of the goodness of humanity that people would do that. It makes you feel good. And look, I can't say I've done everything perfectly

in my life. You can't, right? We've made lots of mistakes, but I do the best I can. And again, when we talk about the book and kids, like I guess you gotta be humble, right? You gotta have, come with your hands down, not with your hands out, right? Don't always be asking.

And the universe somehow has kept us from failing. And now races are coming back just in time for the Omnicron. Yeah, we're in another wave. So we'll see what happens. It feels like everything is very tentative right now across the board. So much to get into with you.

But before we go any further, there's this exercise bike here that like a couple of weeks ago, there was an email. I can't remember what it was from somebody on your team. Like, oh, Joe wants to send you this bike, look out for an email. And then there was another email, like we're gonna install the bike on this day.

And a bunch of guys came in and installed this stationary bike machine here. And I was like, I don't know what this is about. Is this Joe's bike? Does he wanna ride it during the podcast? There was no like background on what's happening here, but there is a bike over here. Like, do you care to explain?

Well, first off, I make a lot of mistakes and the big mistakes I make is I'm really quick with email and I'll just send an email and there's no context and you can't figure out what's going on. I apologize for that. But what happened was, again, it ties into this book. This guy I got to know, Gordon Kaplan, was tied up in that whole Varsity Blues scandal.

He was a big lawyer. College tuition thing. Yup, he was a big lawyer, chairman of a law firm, attempted to get his daughter into a school, got caught and lost his license and got kicked out of his law firm and basically hit the depths of despair. Being from the neighborhood I'm from

where I know lots of people that went to jail and got out and survived, I befriended him and I said, I could help you out. I'll introduce you to some guys. They'll let you know what you're in for. And he came out and he was very appreciative that when a lot of people wanted to distance themselves from him,

I was actually saying, no way, I'm your friend. Like, don't worry, whatever you need. Wasn't like he killed somebody. He made a mistake like many parents make. You could easily see by the way, how it's a slippery slope. Like, I wanna help my kid out. I wanna get him in a good college. And maybe you don't go there.

Before you know it. Right? You're making up stories about him or her being on the sailing team and all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Test scores. So he comes out. And that whole thing was unbelievable.

Unbelievable. And let's get into that. But he comes out and he got involved with this bike company called Carol. And I said, look, Gordon, I'm not into it. Like I'm the last guy to send a bike to that's supposed to get you in shape with 10 minutes a day. Like if you told me it's a bike that you carry,

it would make sense, right? You don't even ride it, you carry it up a mountain. And they sent it to me and I wrote it. And for anybody listening, like I don't wanna sound like a commercial because it's just a bike, but it's pretty cool. And it's a good way for me to warm up before I do my big workout.

And if they were guiding you and I and how to advertise for it, I would not be the guy to say that because their pitch is you can get in a great workout in 10 minutes. My pitch on it would be that 10 minutes is my warmup and then I go do other stuff. But they've been bugging me that like,

we wanna get to Rich Roll or whatever. And I was like, I know him, but I'm busy. And I just kept putting it off. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to see Rich Roll. Why don't you send them a bike? And when I get there, I'll show it to them. But then I forgot about it. I did not expect to see it.

And then you walked in, it was here. I was like, please explain why there's a bike here. Yeah, cause there wasn't a lot of, you know, kind of background or explanation, right? But I appreciate it, it's cool. I haven't given it a spin yet, but. Give it a spin, see if you like it. And if you don't, carry it around the neighborhood.

Yeah, well, the whole subject of parents getting caught up in the greater welfare of their children and then sliding down a slippery slope of making some ethically dubious decisions that get them in trouble is sort of apropos to the themes of the book, "'The Ten Rules for Resilience," which is really all about,

I mean, you've characterized it as a parenting book and I wanna hear the backstory behind that, but it's sort of a Trojan horse in terms of being a parenting book. And I wanna hear the backstory behind that, but it's sort of a Trojan horse in terms of being a parenting book, because as you know, you can't teach your children any of the principles that you articulate in the book if you're not living them yourself, right? So each chapter you have these 10 principles

and each chapter is really about like how to cultivate this in your own way, followed by sections around, okay, here's how you now transition that into how you parent or imbue your family with these ideas. Yeah, and the thinking is kids watch you, forget about listening, they're watching and you're modeling whether you know it or not.

And so you have to live the life you expect them to live. My father worked really hard. My mother worked hard around health and wellness and you're just picking it up through osmosis, right? And so don't expect if you're disappointed in your child and they're not honest or whatever the things are, well, it's a reflection on- You have to look in the mirror.

Yeah, you gotta look in the mirror. It's a reflection on you. The book came about because when we had children, my wife and I, we have four kids, we started skiing in Vermont. That was our first sport. And I remember my two little boys skiing with me and we sat down for lunch and I sought out

the healthiest meal I could in a ski resort. And we sat down and we're gonna get right back out there. And the guy next to us put like two cookies on my tray and said, hey, give it to the kids. And I was like, can I curse here? Yeah. Why the fuck are you putting two cookies? Like, you know how hard it is for me to keep cookies

away from these kids? And you just did that. And then it happened in a bank where I was trying to teach them how to deposit $10 and how deposits work and how banks work. The teller was giving them lollipops. And then in challenging them to run around the neighborhood

or one day we were carrying kettlebells for a mile, people would stop. And I remember this one instance where a lady stopped, she screeched her car and she said to the kids, not to me, directed right at the kids, are you okay? I saw you carrying these heavy weights for the last half, is he harming you? What are you talking about?

She's gonna call child services. I mean, that's what it came to. And then I thought, hang on a second, it's really not her fault. She hasn't seen a child on a sidewalk in like a decade, right? She certainly hasn't seen one carrying a kettlebell around the neighborhood, right? They might as well have been wild animals.

So I started messing around with this idea. We need a book that like breaks some eggs and is a little bold and is gonna piss people off, but is a little more hardcore parenting. And it's not, use all the terms we hear, like we're not snow blowing, right? We're not helicopter parenting. We're like, we're flamethrower,

I'm putting obstacles in their way. Yeah, and you've really done that. And it's impossible to read the book without reflecting, I have four kids too and thinking, yeah, I didn't do that so well. I think on some level we parent either to honor the traditions of our parents. And it seems like you've taken the best

of how you were parented and tried to imbue your parenting with that. Or we try to parent in opposition to the way we were parented because we were traumatized or we feel like we were led down some dark alleys or whatever. And I just know in my own case, my parents were great and they provided for me and they weren't overly rough,

but there was high expectations set. And I strived very hard to meet those expectations, but I always felt like I couldn't quite get there. And I think consciously or unconsciously, when I had kids, I thought, I don't wanna do that to them. And so I've probably been on the spectrum of things softer than my parents were for better or worse.

And my kids aren't athletes, they're all artists. And luckily they've all pretty much found things that excite them. And so we challenge them in that regard and push them and hold them accountable, but they're all pursuing things that they enjoy, but I'm not the kettlebell guy or the guy who's getting them up at five in the morning

and making them, you know, take cold showers and stuff like that. And I've seen what you just described. I remember the neighborhood I grew up in was all organized crime and the next generation, I always scratched my head as a kid and said, why is the next generation softer when their dad does that for a living? And it was because the parents had tough upbringings

and they wanted to make it easier for a living. And it was because the parents had tough upbringings and they wanted to make it easier for the kid. That's the dilemma of like every successful person who pulled themselves up and, you know, built a big life for themselves. And then they have kids and suddenly they're living in a huge house. Like Kevin Hart talks about this, you know, all the time. Like my kids are, you know,

I can't get them to do anything. They're hopeless, you know? Yeah. to do anything. They're hopeless. Yeah. And so I got a little sense of that. And I always reflect back on the movie, Rocky. I don't know if it was Rocky III where he had the kids and he had the money and all of a sudden he became complacent. And so that really stuck in my brain,

especially with the backdrop of the neighborhood, kids being softer, a lot softer than the hardcore parents. And I said, and my wife went along with it, let's try to make the kids tougher because life's tough. Like when my kids complain to me, they like all kids do the other day, whatever, Charlie was saying something about like, oh, my arm hurts or whatever your arm hurts.

I gotta make payroll this week. You know what I mean? Like suck it up. And my wife will say like, oh, you're too hard on them. Like I just lost my best employee. Like, you know what I mean? So I don't know. I feel like we're raising adults

and wouldn't we want them to practice with us on how hard that's gonna be rather than when we're not around. Yeah. And if I fail anywhere, as I listened to you, I push the workout stuff too much. They should be working on a hardware store a couple of days a week.

They should be doing some other, learning some other things, doing some artwork. Like you said, I'm constantly drilling the exercise and to the point where I'm afraid someday they'll be like, Oh, thank God he's gone. We don't have to exercise. We can finally take a break. Exactly.

But wait, how old are they now? They're like 16 and down. Yeah, 16, 14, 12, eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my older two are a little bit older, but then we have 18 and 14. So, you know, in the zone. In the zone, yeah.

And they're seeing the benefits of the hard work. You know, they go out and do a physical fitness test at school and they perform really well. And hopefully they make that connection. Okay, that's because dad was driving us nuts. And you gotta have a partner that goes along with it. If my wife didn't go along, it would be really a disaster. Right, but she didn't think you writing this book was such a good idea.

She did not want me to write the book. We actually fought over it because, you know, there's a history in America of folks writing parenting books and being completely wrong. Like what the hell do we know? We're all just trying to figure it out. And then we have, I'm friendly with a psychologist who was willing to put her name on the cover as well.

And that gave me enough credibility that my wife said, all right, if there's a psychologist involved, then maybe you go fishing for the one. Exactly. Who would approve of your methods. Yeah, well, that's what I did. The dark arts. We called 983 psychologists. And then finally Dr. L answered the phone was like, all right, well, that's what I did. The dark arts. We called 983 psychologists.

And then finally Dr. L answered the phone was like, all right, well, I need some extra money, I'll do it. There you go. Well, we have a bit of an annual tradition here on the show where we try to kick people off into the new year with their heads straight. We've had a bunch of Navy seals, et cetera, that serve that purpose.

And I just thought like you, you're sort of the perfect person to do this year, this moment when we find ourselves plotting our goals and our ambitions for what's to come, pledging that this year is gonna be different, that you're not gonna give up this time. But at the same time, I think it's important to kind of recognize

or reconcile with the fact that like this year is kind of different because we're coming out of two years of this pandemic and we've all had our ebbs and flows and setbacks professionally and personally, we've had those battles with, you know, our mindset and our habits and our discipline and our schedules and our ability to kind of, you know, deal with the Zoom culture that we're in right now.

But I sense that a lot of people have kind of played that out. Like they're like, okay, I did the Netflix thing and I walked around my house in my pajamas for seven days straight without taking a shower. I know what that reaps and I'm not happy and I'm depressed. And with that, I think some people feel stuck, but also fed up enough.

And the symbolic nature of like January 1st is kind of like, okay, how am I gonna move forward? How am I gonna shift this? I don't wanna continue to live this way. Proverbial New Year's resolution. Yeah, I know. Which is problematic in many ways, but also at least it creates a conversation

around the idea of personal change. And I think, you know, we're both big believers in the fact that people can transform and we see it all the time. And our work shares that sensibility of trying to help people understand that we all have it within ourselves to change those things that we don't like about ourselves.

Yeah, just because you've been one way for half your life doesn't mean you have to be that way for the rest of your life. Just because you have a thought in your mind doesn't mean it's true, right? And so you need to start changing that narrative. I'm obviously a big, I mean, this is all I preach is it doesn't matter if it's January 1st or July 2nd,

or it doesn't matter, just start. So here's what I believe. I believe that the number one motivator for a human being is the avoidance of discomfort. And it's not just me, I've done a lot of podcasts too. I talked to some smart people like yourself and we will avoid discomfort at all costs. It kept us from freezing for thousands of years

on the planet or falling off cliffs. And we don't even know we're doing it. You wake up in the morning with the greatest intentions to exercise or work on that book you're writing. And before you know it, you're instead making coffee and reading the news and checking Instagram. That's your brain avoiding the uncomfortable work. And so the quicker you could recognize that that, it's me.

I didn't get my 300 burpees done this morning. I got 180. I've somehow found 22 phone calls to make that I could have lived without because I just didn't wanna get the 300 done, right? And so you've gotta recognize that that's what's driving you consciously and subconsciously.

And then you gotta commit to just bite size action. And it's gotta be consistent. A lot of people, I'm gonna go in the gym, I'm gonna do all these things. And then, you know, life does get in the way and you don't get that three hour workout or whatever that thing is you're committed to. And then all of a sudden you fall off completely

and you don't do it. But if you commit to, I'm just gonna walk a mile a day, or I'm just gonna take stairs instead, whatever the thing is, I'm just going to have a salad with every meal. I'm still going to eat cake. I'm still going to eat meat, whatever, but I'm going to have a salad. Like if it's bite size and you broadcast to everybody that this is who you are and this

is your new plan and you say it over and over and over and you recognize the resistance you're going to face consciously and subconsciously, you have a chance. And then the last thing I would add is you gotta have a date on the calendar. You gotta have something pending that's coming up, right? That's a little scary. It's a little scary, but you gotta have a date on the calendar.

We have a wedding business in Vermont, my wife and I, and we've been doing it for 22 years. And I get to meet the couples a year before they get married. And they're one size and shape when they show up to book the place and they're a different size and shape when they show up to get married. And so they have a date on the calendar, right? And I started toying with it.

Oh, wait a minute, when I have these races on my own personal calendar, I wake up earlier. I go to bed earlier, I don't eat as many cookies. So very few of us do it without a date on the calendar. Right, so it's this tension between the date on the calendar which is the big scary thing and the daily bite-sized things that are very digestible.

And I think people lose enthusiasm around the bite-sized thing because are very digestible. And I think people lose enthusiasm around the bite-sized thing because it's not sexy, but that truly is the way that you move everything, right? It's just adherence to that small thing that you can do every single day. And when you do it, even after a few times, you become much more emotionally engaged and connected to that thing,

because there's something ephemeral, but also powerful about momentum that doesn't make sense. But once you've created a little bit of momentum, a lot of that resistance starts to fade. Yeah, momentum, the fact that it's a ritual that you get to break a streak that you get, hey, 60 days in a row I've walked. And I have lots of people telling me they've done it.

And so, yeah, you just have to start. You just have to start. And consistency is more important than I would say quality really or quantity. It's just consistency. Why do you think most people, the vast majority of people fall off their new year's resolutions?

Well, I think they bite off more than they can chew. I'm gonna go to the gym every single day and work out for an hour and a half, or I'm gonna, whatever the thing is, it's just too big. And it's too big of a change from where they were. Look, I've talked to lots of Olympians, as I'm sure you have, and lots of successful businessmen. And there's one thing in common that I find,

and it's something I employ, which is, I don't feel like doing this, right? I know I said, I just don't feel like doing it. I don't feel like doing my 300 burpees. I'll tell you what, Joe, we're just gonna do 10 today. We can live with 10. And then you do 10, you're like, I got 20 done, right? 20, I can get 30 done.

I'm embarrassed I don't get 40 done. And cyclists that have five hours to ride every single day tell me they're just gonna do 30 minutes because they don't feel like doing an hour. I was with two world champion rowers in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, same thing. They gotta go out there seven hours a day. All right, today we're just doing an hour.

Right. An hour turns into two and turns it, right? So like- That first bit is always the hardest part. Just get going. Getting out the door. So don't bite off too much. Tell yourself, lie to yourself and say,

we're just gonna do a little bit today because a little bit's better than nothing. And stop with the BS of, I don't have the time. Are you kidding me? Just track how much time you spend doing nothing. We all do so much nothing, right? Well, we also dilute ourselves around that too. We think we don't have time and we think we're busy

and we're productive throughout the day, but I've engaged in this exercise where if you get, like carry a journal around with you and write down what you're doing every 15 minutes, it will blow your mind. It blows your mind. How much time you just waste doing things that don't move the needle, right? write down what you're doing every 15 minutes, it will blow your mind. It blows your mind. Yeah. How much time you just waste doing things

that don't move the needle, right? It's not a time thing, it's a priority thing. It's a priority thing. So exercise has to be first and foremost, because if you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else, right? What's the point of doing all this work and trying to accumulate all this money

if you're not healthy? So it's gotta be first and foremost, first thing in the morning, no matter what's going on, I have to do my workout. I'm sure you're the same way. I have to do something. I also think there's a problem with our instant gratification culture.

So yeah, you're enthusiastic about your goal, but when you're not seeing immediate results or the results that you want in a dramatic fashion in a pretty short period of time, people lose enthusiasm for it. You mean a hundred pounds overweight, I don't have a six pack in two weeks? Right, yeah, that thing.

And I think we overestimate what we can accomplish in short periods of time. And we're not wired to think more long-term about these things. But I think one thing that you've done very well is you need all of those things to create that level of engagement. But at some point,

you develop the habit and the practice to be doing them just because this is who I am and this is what I do. It's not necessarily tied to a date on the calendar. It just becomes your value set and who you are. Well, there's no doubt about it that you have to put on a board, put on a bunch of post-its around the house,

if they still even sell post-its, I don't know. And what are your values? What are the things you stand for? What do you wanna stand for? And then make sure that your actions every day align with that. Two days ago, I was in Florida. I went into in Lake Nona is attempting to be this health

and wellness, I have to get you down there. This health and wellness capital of the country. And they have a- What part of Florida? Orlando, funny enough, right by the airport, 17,000 acres that they got a Deepak Chopra there. They brought in a bunch of companies all around health and wellness. So I'm down there and they wanna test me

in their performance center. And I'm not like, it's three in the afternoon. I just had lunch. I already did a two hour workout in the morning. I don't feel like doing this thing. And it's the first time ever that I've like pushed back and I could see everybody's face like, this is Joe, the Spartan guy.

He doesn't want, it's like, fuck it, all right, I'm doing it. And I did it because of exactly what you said, like that's who I am. I'm supposed to do the hard things when I don't want to. I asked the whole world to do the hard things when they don't want to. So I got on the bike and I did the 40 minute test.

They check, you know, lactate threshold or whatever. And I felt better. There's no, the only bad workout is the one you don't do. I've never not felt better at the end of it. Never. I've never not felt better at the end of a cold shower. It sucks getting in, but getting out, you feel alive. You do that every day still?

Every day. And it sucks. It doesn't get easier. It never gets better. Yeah. Sucks. Do you do the ice baths and all of that, the plunging? When there's a place for me to plunge into, yeah.

One of the things that you talk about in the book is this different, I mean, it's all about resilience. So we should define resilience, but you define resilience in contrast to this idea of like true resilience. So maybe define resilience and why true resilience is something a little bit different. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people talk about,

and I've evolved actually, since I've written the book with this concept, which a lot of people just think it's just that ability to stand there and take the beating, right? And be able to bounce back. But I also think it's the that ability to stand there and take the beating, right? And be able to bounce back. But I also think it's the ability to pivot, right? And move because we could get so stuck in our ways. I've had many failures in my life because of that.

Like you're just so obstinate that I'm not gonna move that you've gotta be open-minded enough to make a left or make a right or do something slightly different because whatever you were doing is not working. However, it's really important that you keep in mind your mind will play tricks on you. You know this as good as anybody else. I've had, call it 10,000 conversations

with individuals doing our races one-on-one and they pivot, quit at times when they didn't need to because their mind was playing a trick on them. And I like to say, if you and I were climbing Mount Everest, let's say, and my value system was to be the greatest climber that ever lived. And this was my window

when you and I were a hundred feet from the summit. This was my window to set the world record. You, your value system was to be the greatest family man that ever lived, have the greatest podcast ever. And we're both about to go and the weather gets bad. I probably should go for it, no matter how I'm feeling because I got a different value system. You probably should turn around and go down.

You wanna be the best, right? So you gotta have enough resilience. You got to be able to really reflect and dive into what's going on in your head and say, am I quitting because it's just hard? Or am I quitting because it aligns or pivoting because it aligns with my value system? So it's being open-minded and true to yourself enough to be able to answer that question correctly. Yeah, I think that's a really important point to make because in the context of fitness,

you have fitness fanatics who set a goal and they become very narrowly focused on that, but maybe they have kids or their value set is broader than just performance in that one specific realm. But they kind of push all their chips into that for a short period of time. And resilience in that context means, you know, being flexible or less rigid when,

hey, listen, you know, you gotta go to the recital today. Like you're not gonna be able to do that workout that's in your training program and not like losing your mind over that. I see a lot of that. So we think of resilience as like, you gotta be tough and you gotta be able to go out when it's pouring rain and freezing,

but it works the other way, same time. Because most people are not professional athletes. No, you use the better word than I did, which would be less rigid. And I see it a lot in business, right? I wanna hire a lot of people at the company that really believe in the brand, but there are some that really believe in the brand

that don't really wanna work. And that's a tough one to understand because if they're crawling under barbed wire and they're running every day and they clearly wanna work, but that's fun in some ways, you know what I mean? The hard work is going to the recital maybe or sitting down and doing the emails. And so you do have to be non-rigid enough

to be able to do it all, right? Right? How do you think about rest and recovery and kind of periodizing all of this, given that the fact that we all live like busy lives and we have multiple things competing for our attention. I think on the surface level, you could strike somebody as being the guy who's like the hustle porn guy.

And like, you never stop. You just keep going until your body just completely breaks and you got nothing left to give. Well, I mean, again, my ideas around this, my intelligence around this have evolved. From the guy who like did 50 ultras in a year and almost like blew up his marriage. Yeah, I am, my wife is amazing that she's still with me.

But my statement to that, had you asked that question five years ago is I'll rest when I die, right? My exit strategy is death. Right, what are you like 52 now or something? 52, yeah. And I'm tired. But I've lived three lives in one.

My assistant thinks I'm a lunatic, right? Because if I'm coming to LA to see Rich Roll, we could squeeze three other meetings in, right? And then I can get on a red eye and go home. And so rest has never been a priority. I sleep when I can, not when I have to. So if I'm on a plane, pass out, wherever I am, I'm just falling asleep to catch up

and then just get recharged. People refer to me as the guy like on a phone battery that always is really close to running out of juice, but never quite dies. Just at like 8% all the time. And then I had a Navy SEAL who's a sleep expert on the podcast recently. And he was the same way.AL who's a sleep expert on the podcast recently. And he was the same way.

And the Navy SEALs were the same way. And he tried to talk to the folks that are in charge of the Navy SEALs. And they all laughed at him. He's like, I think we should have them sleep a little more. They should take naps. And they left them out of the room, which you would get. I would have laughed them out of the room, right?

You need eight hours. I think here's what I came to the conclusion. Ready for this? Your audience is gonna love this. You and I should go on this mantra. We, and this is from my buddy, Nick Morris, two days ago. We need to set our alarm clocks for when to go to bed, not to wake up.

That's a super interesting idea. We have it backwards. If you set your alarm for that time to go to bed, you should never need to set the alarm to wake up. Yeah, and that's, I think our problem, in the last week, since I was on with the Navy SEAL, I've been in bed by no later than 9 p.m. On my own, I was up at four and change this morning,

like no problem. So if it starts to bleed into 10, 10.30, 11 for some people who knows what time for others, it's too late. Yeah, and the thing, you know, for the younger people listening, when you get older, I'm waking up at four, 4.30, no matter what. So I better go to bed at nine

because I can't sleep in no matter what. So it's super important to me to be in bed at nine. So we should start this narrative that everybody's got it wrong. You gotta set your alarm clock at night to go to bed. And I don't know if you believe this, but I believe this. There's really nothing good that happens after 10 p.m. Anyway, what are you possibly doing after 10 p.m.?

Now they have the, you could meet a girl or a guy online. You don't even need to like go to a bar or any of that. Right, well put. So let's get into these principles for resilience. You have 10 of them, right? And the first one is you can't until you can. I mean, they're all like, I read this book and I'm like, yeah, I mean, I live this like, I read this book and I'm like, yeah, I mean,

I live this and I understand all of these things, clearly many people don't and need it. So it's a service that you're doing this, but they're all pretty self-evident. Yeah, I mean, listen, we talked about it before. My kids say it, I'm sure your kids said it when they were growing up, right? I can't do that.

And I just say, you can't yet, right? We all can't do something yet. Isn't it amazing, I'm sure you've studied this, where there's a world record broken in running or cycling or whatever. And then all of a sudden there's 13 more people around the world that break the same record that couldn't be broken for 15 years.

So it's really our minds that limit us. And the sooner we could teach children, they can't yet, the better children we're gonna have. So we shouldn't be limiting ourselves on what's possible. We should not put limits on anything that's possible. My oldest son will say, well, does that mean I could fly, dad? Well, I mean, the Wright brothers figured it out.

Get on that problem. Maybe, just cause no one's done it yet. Exactly. Who knows? The idea of living your values is one of them as well. And you touched on that a minute ago. I think it's an important exercise to be journaling or connecting with what your values are on a regular basis, because our values are shifting

depending upon what's happening. But I think a lot of people just, we're not in a culture that is really encouraging us to think about that, right? So I think there's a lot of people who are like, I don't know what my values are. Like I wanna provide for my family and like, I don't know, watch football on the weekend.

Like it doesn't go much further than that. So how does one who's never really wrestled with this even begin to unpack what that might mean for them? You know, I just had somebody that read the book. I didn't know he had bought the book for his family as young children. He said, I really love this idea of values. My family and I sat down and we made a list

and we were shocked at our oldest son who was like nine and what his values were. And so it's really as simple and as hard as sitting down with a piece of paper, giving it out to your wife or your husband and the kids and just taking a stab at it. Like, what are the things that are important to you? What are the things that you value?

Do you and the family wanna be incredibly healthy? Do you want to be known as the hardest working family on the block? What are the things that, that are going to move the needle? What if you, if this was a thousand years ago and you had a family crest, what would the saying be on that crest? You know? And so for us, for me, one of the big things is like, I don't care win or lose guys, but we gotta be known as the hardest working family on the planet. Like I can't have this business out there

where I'm telling people, like we don't quit. But what if your kids have a completely different set of values and they're like, that's good for you, but that ain't what the life I'm living. Well, I don't care who you are. You should be a hard worker, right? I remember my son was skiing. We were in the ski program at Killington

cause they grew up on a farm in Vermont. And I go in, it's nice. The parents get to go in and have lunch with their children. So they go ski all morning with the ski instructors, come in, have lunch, and then they go out again for the second half of the day. And the lady says to me, oh, your son, he's already in. I said, but it's only 1130.

I thought it was, oh, well, he was cold. He came in early and I was so furious, right? But I had to temper myself. It's tough to be your kid, man. All right. I have compassion for your kids. And I go over. If they wanna come and like live with me for a while.

I'm gonna expand on that for a second. So I'm like, Jack, and he knows, right? He's probably six years old at the time. I go, I was really cold. I said, oh, you know what? This team might not be the right team for you. You're on my ski team now. Let's go outside.

Let's put our skis on. We've got a half hour before lunch, come on. And's put our skis on. We've got a half hour before lunch. Come on. And he puts his skis on and I proceed to penguin walk up the mountain with him. And we're walking up. What are we doing? I said, oh, well, my ski team, we don't take chairlifts.

You'll never be cold again. And we hike up the whole mountain. And I, isn't this great? You never have to go on that ski team again. We work so hard. He never wanted to be on my team, my ski team again. He's gonna tell that story to his therapist. For sure, my wife says that all the time.

But I want us to be hard workers. Obviously the parents have an influence on what the family values are. I don't think you could take a six year old and expect like, you know what I mean? You've gotta guide that a little bit, right? They don't have a prefrontal cortex yet. So it's not like they're gonna spit out perfect values

at that point. You gotta guide it a bit. I think there's a practicality challenge here too. It's one thing if you've been doing this all along since your kids were really little and they're like, okay, this is what we do and this is dad's deal. But you come in hot when your kids are like 14, 15, they ain't having it.

That's a fair point. There's a book everybody should read called the One Minute Manager. It was written by a guy named Ken Blanchard. And one of his concepts is when you manage people, which is like managing children, you have to set really tight expectations in the beginning. At the moment that person joins the organization,

you can't let them run free and then clamp down the vice grip seven months later. Does not work, right? They're gonna lose their mind. Same with your point. You can't at 14 years old say, all right, now here's what we're gonna do. You've gotta start laying the tracks early on.

And I definitely laid tracks early on that we work hard as a family. We chopped wood. We hiked up the mountain. When Charlie was four years old, I might've told you this, when Charlie was four years old, he was not the most ideal before Christmas.

So everybody got presents that year, but his presence I put on top of the mountain. And so in his little feety pajamas with snowshoes on them, we had to go. God, are you kidding me? There was a note from Santa that said, "'Look Charlie, I'm sorry, but because you didn't give a thousand percent, I couldn't get the, you know, the presents to the house there on top of the mountain.

Get out of here. Oh my God. So we, this is not new. They know, they know what they're getting into with us. My wife is definitely the softer side. Now I will tell you, well, you know, we put on this death camp on the farm, right? And there were many kids at the death camp

that will say to me, oh my God, this is so hard. I said, can you imagine what it's like being my kid? When you guys leave and you get to go home, my kids, this is their home. I wanna read their book when they're 28. Yeah. But- You gotta get value straight.

Yeah, values are, you know, look, I completely a thousand percent I'm on board with that. I mean, I think the tricky thing that I've experienced as a parent is the balance between like setting the hard boundary and what happens when that expectation isn't met, how hard do you come down on that kid? Because especially when they're in those teenage years,

like the communication is so critical and I don't wanna do anything that's gonna shut that down. And if I come in really hot, I risk them just clamping down and then they're not telling me what's going on in their life anymore. And keeping that communication open, I think is critical when they're trying to figure out how to navigate,

you know, their social circles and drugs and alcohol and the temptations that teenagers face. Like I want them to feel like they can come how to navigate their social circles and drugs and alcohol and the temptations that teenagers face. Like I want them to feel like they can come and talk to me about that stuff. But if I'm too disciplinarian, then I'm not gonna be the guy that they're gonna come to when they need to like clear that stuff.

Well, in our family, and I didn't go in with this plan, it just happened. So it's a good model to use. My wife is the pressure relief valve. So they'll go to my wife and they'll open up and talk to her about anything. There's no doubt about it that based on my communication and our family, they know that I'm hardcore and I have high expectations.

I've tried really hard to explain that my expectations aren't, I don't care if you get A pluses. I really, they, by the way, they're all striving for it. Like I didn't get A's, I got C's. They all like speak Mandarin and stuff. They all speak Mandarin. They do extra math, but it's not, I know some people are rolling their eyes

that might be listening. It's like, again, we don't take tests in Mandarin where my expectations, you've gotta do this or that. No, you just gotta, it's kind of like, you gotta exercise a little bit each day. You gotta speak another language with a teacher every day. Well, the Mandarin thing started because your daughter came to you and said,

I wanna learn Mandarin, right? It was a little bit of that. It was, we had a Kung Fu master living in the house, which was another story. How old were they? They were very young. I saw the movie, Kill Bill when they were young and Uma Thurman had a Kung Fu master.

And I turned to my wife and I said, wouldn't it be unbelievable if we had a Kung Fu master living on the farm? So I called a friend of a friend of a friend and I convinced a guy to come from China who didn't speak any English and would train them every day in Kung Fu. And then my daughter said,

Hey, I'd love to learn. So then it started. So did you take the Kung Fu also? I didn't. You didn't? I didn't, I'm a wimp. What did they learn from that? Discipline, tremendous discipline. And it's really, the Kung Fu is kind of like

almost gymnastics, if you will. So they had gymnastics class with a Mandarin speaking master for three or four years before we switched to traditional sports. Yeah, I think from all of this, if you could drill down on the message, it's really like get in the habit of doing hard things, learn how to face your fears and walk through them.

Don't be afraid when you fall down, like failing is part of this whole thing, get used to it, acclimate to it. And just develop that skills whole thing, get used to it, acclimate to it, and just develop that skillset where you're used to facing obstacles and weathering through them because life is hard and you're gonna have to deal with that at some point. And so if you're doing your pushups,

figuratively and literally, you're just in a better position to be able to roll with whatever life throws at you. And basically zig when everyone's zagging and try the hard things that no one else is, you know, wanting to tackle. So two responses to that one, you're dead on. You just triggered a thought.

So as the Kung Fu master was teaching my kids in the barn every single day for four years, my cousin lives next door to the farm and they have their first child. And so I said, well, I'm paying for this Kung Fu master, bring as many kids as possible, right? It's good for me too, because my kids wouldn't be alone. She happened to walk in the barn one day

and the kids were crying. Cause like it's hard. And she extracted her son from the program, never to come back to the Kung Fu master. Last night, I got a text from her. He's now a high school wrestler. He wrestled up a weight. He pinned his kid.

They're proud like, so it's hard. It's hard to put the kids in those situations that are tough. But now she's recognizing the value of doing, any chance I get, I've taken him into our program. And now she recognized that her husband was more like you. Her husband had a really tough upbringing. Now she recognized that her husband was more like you. Her husband had a really tough upbringing. I don't want, the kids should make their own decisions.

I don't wanna disrupt the possible two-way communication between us. If they don't wanna do Kung Fu, let's not have them do the, if they don't wanna do wrestling, that doesn't really develop the muscle to your point, the muscle they're gonna need to fight through life. When 45 countries get shut down, you furlough 400 people,

you're about to go bankrupt five times in a row during COVID. Like, thank God I had that muscle. Yeah. Right? Pay now, love it later. There's a better one. I picked up a hitchhiker one day. He said to me, save the fun for later.

Yeah. That's a great line. My wife and everybody, my kids, they wanna have fun. I say, save the fun for later. Yeah, that's one of the principles in the book, right? Basically, you know, fun comes after the work. Do the work first, then you get the fun. And I think maybe that piece is getting missed here.

You're all about the fun. You're not like, you know, you're not the great Santini, I guess is what I'm saying. I'm not the great Santini. And I, you know, if you watch the movie 300 and it's not unique to me, this is 2,500 years ago, they're joking in the face of adversity. And if you go to any Spartan race around the world,

the racers are dying out there, but they're joking and they're having fun with it in the middle of the desert. You know what I mean? So you can have, I have fun with it. I have fun with it. Yeah, well, that's another thing that I think gets missed. This idea that hard things means that you're gonna have to be this martyr

and you're just gonna be punishing yourself. But we experience joy in doing hard things. That's what we're wired to do. But our society is set up to give us a completely different message that obviously we're realizing is moving away from that joyous state that we seek, that we can feel and express,

even though it's hard, we all know what it's like in the aftermath of doing something hard and that feeling of satisfaction and the conviviality that you have with the people that you've done it. And that's what we're missing. I mean, that's what Spartan really does. It serves people in such a meaningful way for that.

Okay, here's a question for you. Anybody listening, do you think your children at the end of their life would say, I wish my dad had let me sit on the couch more, eat more cotton candy and watch more Netflix. There's no fucking way. What the kids are gonna be talking about, the grandparent at that point is those amazing stories

where my daughter didn't have boots and we hiked the mountain and got stuck in a snow storm. Yeah, you tell that story in the book. I'm like, that seems a little extreme. That wasn't planned, but it happened. So like those, but those are the stories, right? That you tell, you probably tell about yourself, those amazing stories where you fought through.

Sure, for myself, but I can't say that I've like, kind of recruited my kids into that world. Like they're not interested in what I'm doing. And I've struggled to get them, interested in some aspect of the things that like get me out of bed in the morning, but it's tough, man. You probably started too late to your point.

And you were probably overly sensitive because of the way you grew up. And my kids are great and they're all doing really well. It's just, they don't share this interest in this kind of stuff that I do. And I don't need them to. And it's sort of wired that way. Like your kids become your teachers

because you think like, oh, they're gonna be little mini me's and they're gonna wanna do all this shit. It doesn't work that way. No. And it shouldn't work that way. And the jury's out, right? Like if you still have me once a year on your podcast

in 10 years, we might find out that my kids are all artists and they, right? Or you just, you come over to my house for Christmas and you're the Christmas gift for the kids and you live with me. See what happens. That's right. I can't get them to your Vermont farm,

but I can bring you to my house. I could do that. I could come over, no problem. Yeah. Let's talk about failure a little bit more. And we touched on it. We're so afraid of failing. We're afraid of looking bad amongst our peers

and it prevents us from trying these hard things. Like we're so caught up in our, you know, self image that it hamstrings us from just getting out there and letting go of all of that stuff. And understanding that developing a healthy relationship for failure is really the only true path to success in anything. Well, it's just part of the process.

You gotta fail. My son, during COVID, I pushed my two boys really hard, like beyond what we're talking about here in wrestling because we had the time, like crazy training, trying to catch up because of all those years doing Kung Fu, we got behind on wrestling. And my son didn't do well at a tournament

and he was like a little depressed about it. And I said, well, you only have to lose like another 700 matches before you get good. Like that's just part of the deal. And once you recognize that, like, you know, think about Edison with the light bulb, what famous saying, right? No, I didn't learn how to make a light bulb once.

I learned how not to make it 900 times. And so that's why I go back to what I said earlier, which is if we could instill a value of hard work, like it's a given we're gonna fail. You and I have to agree with that, right? That's just the reality of life. It's a given that we're gonna face hard times, that stuff's gonna be challenging.

So if those are givens, then we have to accept that failure is part of the process, welcome it, talk about it to other people, don't be embarrassed by it and use it as fuel, use it as stepping stones to success. I've probably failed, God, I've probably failed, you know, 40 times in building this probably failed 40 times in building this business, 40 times.

Check this stat out. I didn't know, I told you, I have this TV show we're working on. I didn't know 95% of businesses fail in the first 15 years of existence, 95%. Is that right? It's unbelievable. The longer you play the game, the more likely you die.

So, right, like you better get used to failure. But getting used to it is an interesting discussion. Your co-author, Dr. L, I think she's the one who talks about this in the book. It's really about the story that we tell ourselves about what that failure means. And that story often depends upon or is dictated by, kind of your blueprint or your past experiences

or your kind of presets, like, are you an optimistic person? Are you a pessimistic person? And people that are very defeatist about their failures are people who are caught up in that kind of negative self image narrative. So to reframe your relationship with failure almost involves like some reprogramming around your neuroplasticity so that you can frame it

as just, this is good. I failed because everybody who succeeds fails. So maybe I'm on my way to succeeding, right? No, and that's what I tried to explain to Jack, my son, right? Like, so what? You have to fail so many times to succeed. So let's look at all the winners in life across any discipline.

It doesn't matter, sports, business, relationships. Like you gotta fail a lot in order to succeed. And once the world accepts that, I think we'll be a better place. It won't be a dirty word. Right. On the subject of wrestling, you have two kids that wrestle or one?

Two boys. Two that wrestle. One of the rules in your book is earn not given. So if I could be so bold, I suspect that like you're not a big fan of participation trophies, right? No, not at all. And I don't think the kids are, I don't believe the kids are big fans of participation.

I wanted to throw this one at you for your reaction because I think it's super interesting. Jordan Burroughs, you know the wrestler? Yeah, so I met him recently. I did a speaking engagement in Illinois and got to spend some time with him. Like what a wonderful guy, like just an amazing champion. But he posted on Instagram or Twitter recently,

this counter argument. I mean, Jordan, he's a five-time world champion, Olympic gold medalist. And he tells this story about getting a participation trophy in like one of his very first wrestling matches. And basically said that even though he was like last place or whatever, he was, it gave him a level of enthusiasm that like kept him in it.

So it's rare that you see somebody who's so accomplished that would offer a counter perspective on that. I had a very similar, the same counter perspective from Rod Dixon, Olympian out of Australia, who said something that I didn't expect, which is what you heard from Jordan, which was, look at a certain age, Joe, we gotta keep the kids in the game.

And then beyond that age, the kids know it and they know they shouldn't be earning the trophy at that point. And I would say for wrestling, oh my God, it is a tough sport. I mean, you get beat up all day in practice, you practice to death and then you go and lose. That's just the deal for a long time.

So anything that could just make them feel like, oh, cool, I'm gonna stay in it. I needed that little nudge. And one of the things, look, it doesn't have to be a participation trophy. It could be not giving the kid that's new a match up against the kid that's been wrestling for three years.

That's what you're doing is you're actually decreasing the amount of kids that would wanna wrestle or whatever the thing is we're talking about. You have to toggle or calibrate the level of pressure, right, and if it's too much, you're just gonna burn these kids out. You're gonna burn the kid out. Why would the kid ever come back if he goes in and wrestles?

Like I always joke with my kids when they're about to go into a tournament, like, oh man, I saw your competition. They just let them out of a cage outside. They were feeding them raw meat, beating them. I hope you guys do well today. Good luck. Oh my God.

Similarly, I can't imagine that you're a fan of the four-day work week proposal that's going around. You made like a little video about this recently. Oh my God, I got killed for that. You're born out of time, my friend. Here's the thing. I was in China, right? And I'm talking as a collective here, not individually, but as a collective, we compete with the rest of the world,

whether we like it or not. And you can't compete with a four day work. Like, there's just no way, I'm in China and I'm in this office that has a thousand employees. And the guy, the owner of the company is walking me around and I see a bunch of folks sleeping at their desk. And I'm like, what's up with them? You let them sleep. I'm shocked.

And he goes, no, those are the, they do 20 hour days. So every, at lunch, we let them nap for 15 minutes. All right. And then, and then I see tents in the corner, actual like North face type tents in the corner. What, oh, those are the folks that work three days in a row. We let them sleep a little bit in their tents. And so I know, again, I know folks are rolling their eyes and they're saying, oh, Joe, you're like out of touch, baby boom or whatever. And, and all I'm saying is be careful what you wish for

because if you're going up against, as a country, as a city, whatever, you're going up against a group that's fighting for milk, you're not gonna win. I had a 13-year-old Chinese boy and his mom show up in my office last week. I was leaving the office and I see this boy outside and I opened the door and Mr. DeSena, yes,

I'm one of the Spartans from China. It's true story. I'm one of the Spartans from China. I came with my mom. He's got the book. Yeah. I read the book. I've done 10 of the races in China.

I wanted to come meet you. You've changed my life. There's not many American kids and their moms jumping on planes and going to like, you can't compete. He came to America. Came to America. Mainly to meet you. Yeah, unbelievable.

Wow. So I'm not saying I'm spitting, I'm just saying like that attitude, we are, look, you're gonna get pissed at me. We're fat, lazy and sick. And four-day work week, go to a two-day work week. Why four days? The way I look at it though, just because of the way

I'm wired, if I was working in a regular job situation, I would look at that and say, well, that's just more time for me to work out. No, of course, I like the workout time, but as a collective, there's very few rich roles, right? Most people don't work out. Most people can't get past January with the New Year's resolution.

So what are they gonna do? They're gonna sit on the couch more. They're gonna eat more chips. They're gonna watch more TV. That's what we're gonna do. And if you don't believe me, look at the stock prices of Facebook, Netflix, go down the list.

They're doing pretty well because that's all people consume. What are we gonna do about this, Joe? I think this is an easy solve. You and I go to the White House, doesn't matter who's in office. I thought about this a lot. I think about it every day. We put a couple of things in place.

You ready? Number one, we have to do a mandatory draft. There's gotta be like an 18 month, just like Israel, military right of passage. They don't actually have to see war. We don't have to send them to some battlefield, but they gotta go through hell. They gotta go through a bootcamp for 18 months

and we rewire them. We show them what they're capable of. Number two, we gotta give credit for people that take care of themselves with insurance providers. So if you take care of yourself, you get like really discounted insurance. Let's motivate people to get after it. Number three, all you have to do

is tax the hell out of junk food. Tax the hell out of it. Everybody that's out there that's a freedom seeker, I get, oh, Joe, this is ridiculous. Government can't be overreaching. Somehow it's okay to wear masks and get vaccinated, but it's not okay to take away Twinkies. No problem.

Well, we have to untie the subsidies that artificially keep those products cheap. Let's reverse it. Let's use the money from the Twinkie tax and give to carrot growers. So now carrots are less expensive. It's definitely upside down. It's upside down.

And then the fourth thing is so obvious that I know you'd agree with is let's just shut the hot water off across the country. Everybody takes cold showers. So easy. You need to start your own authoritarian regime and somewhere near China, make that happen. Yeah, North Korea.

Well, the kind of compulsory service thing. I mean, that's, we live in a culture, in a society that's premised on individualism and there's something beautiful about that. But I think in the pursuit of that, we lose this respect and appreciation for, you know, the common good and what does it mean to be a member of the community?

And I think some level of compulsory, you know, service would solve that because we don't have those rights of passage that we used to have. We have to artificially create them in the form of Spartan races because we lack that in our heritage as something that young people do in this transition between being children and adults. There is in Israel, if you meet Israelis,

there's a tremendous bond created cause they all go through that. And I'm not saying Americans aren't bonded together, although we are attacking each other every chance we get right on social media and everything else. It would be amazing. And it's so simple to execute these things. Anyway, I'm really furious about the whole thing.

Tell me about this TV show. So a couple of years ago, right before the pandemic, I got a call from CNBC. I'm not supposed to talk about it, so don't tell anybody. And they love this message that you and I bought into and said, could you apply it to business? So I said, yeah. So just like we talk about 10 rules of resilience for families, we do it for business.

So I go in, I meet a business, I ascertain where they are, what the issues are, bring them back to the farm in Vermont, beat the shit out of them, hopefully to focus on those three issues, highlight them and send them back and then check in with them in three months. So it's like a shark tank with a little bit of survivor

and a little bit of Spartan in it. So how, it hasn't come out yet though, has it? You're shooting it right now? It'll launch in February. That's cool, man. Yeah, we're filming right now. It's been outside of nearly going bankrupt five times with Spartan through the pandemic. It's been one of the hardest things to do.

We've filmed now for like 55 days. And they all come out to the farm. And they all come out to the farm. You make them run up the mountain too? Well, so we design tasks specifically designed, you know, to highlight that particular issue that companies have. And every company has issues.

So companies are nervous about exposing their dirty lawn, but like I have issues, you have issues, like we all have issues. And we tend to avoid dealing with those issues because of what we said earlier, we don't wanna be uncomfortable. Right. Right. So we keep doing the things that are comfortable

and not paying attention to the things that aren't and then you end up like Kodak. Right, doubling down on your strengths and not paying attention to your weaknesses that ultimately become the undoing. Exactly. Of the whole thing. What's it called? It's called no retreat.

No retreat. Because a company would normally go on a retreat and then go to spa or whatever. This is the furthest from a retreat. I'm sure there's some good stories coming out of that. It's incredible. Yeah. It's been very, very hard, very challenging,

but incredible. What happened with the, we talked about this last time, the documentary that you were doing with Cal Fussman. So that came out. Oh, it did? Yeah, we put that out. Oh, I didn't even see it. Yeah, you're out.

You're in there. I'll send you a link. Yeah, I wanna see that. I'll link it up in the show notes. Yeah, so anybody that knows Cal, Cal was one of my tougher patients. He, amazing writer, right, from Esquire magazine, been around forever, knows everybody, wanted to lose weight.

But he and I were like the odd couple. I had him with me for about 18 months and I would just torture him and try to get him away from ice cream and make him work out. And he would say, why Joe, you need to relax more and smell the roses. And so it was that constant tension

during the whole thing. And he's sort of comic relief too. Yeah. He does it with tongue in cheek. He does it tongue in cheek, but it seems to be okay being in the middle. The foil. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Are you still having people come out to the farm to train and stuff like that? People come out to the farm. I would say once a week we get a call or an email and then let's say there's 50 people a year that reach out of the 55 actually show up. There was a kid that showed up this summer on a used bicycle.

He was at Babson, needed a change, bicycled from Boston to Vermont, 300 plus miles, lived on the farm all summer. Wow. Ended up winning the death race. Wow. Completely transformed. He couldn't finish the kid's death race we did. We put him in the kid's death race, couldn't finish it.

Came back for the adult one, licked his wounds and ended up winning it. Wow. Is he the kid that's in the book? You tell the story about him? Where the, I think the, like the mom wanted to pull him out or something like that. No, that's a different kid, yeah. Well, we had a big problem with parents,

with kids texting their parents and saying, "'This guy Joe is nuts. "'This farm is a prison camp. "'You gotta get us outta here.'" And there were some parents that pulled the rip cord that came out and parachuted their children out and ultimately regret it because it wasn't that bad. I mean, carrying a rock.

Yeah, but your perspective on that is not normal. No, look, I could think of an instance, right? One night where we had the kids on the farm and for those that don't know, cause Rich and I just dove into it, it was many weeks. We had a one week course, a two week course. There's many weeks where I would invite friends and family,

Rich's kids, let's say would come, billionaire's kids, inner city kids, whoever I could convince to come to the farm and mountain warfare school drill instructor wakes them up at five in the morning. It's just like you would envision a bootcamp. They're in cold water in the pond. They're getting screamed at, they're getting organized.

They're learning some basic things that everybody should know. And then they're getting breakfast. They're hiking up and down the mountain most of the day. At some point we give them an hour in the river where they get to play and frolic around in the river and then back to hard work. And they go to bed at like 8 p.m. every night.

Well, I would give them their phones back at night. And I didn't realize that they were texting their parents. Like this guy's nuts. You gotta get me out of here, prison camp. And some parents that were friends of mine wouldn't engage with the kids. Like one, it's hilarious to read this one set of parents that said, oh, it sounds like a Peloton class. The kid is like, F you, you don't even know how hard this is.

You and dad would die if you were here. Oh, but you'll get a six pack. Get me out of here. Oh, do you want us to talk to Joe? Do not talk to Joe. You clearly don't know him. He's a crazy person. If he knows that I texted you,

those texts would be taking place at a time at night where I might be giving them ice cream because they had a great job. They did a great job that night. So juxtapose, you know, I'm seeing a visual of them having a good time and they're texting like the sky is falling. Right.

And so you gotta be aware, right? Because kids know how to push buttons. And if we constantly rescue them from, I didn't sign them, they didn't join the Chinese military. Right. Right? This is like, come on, I'm a normal person. Kinda. One of the things that you do with these kids

or just any of these people that have come, you know, come through the farm, and I'm sure you do this out on the Spartan race courses, is when they reach that point of saying, I'm gonna quit, you're like, okay, just go 10 more meters, then you can quit, it's totally fine. And just get them to like, it's back to that like little digestible step

that you can take to shake free of whatever that mindset is that is telling you that you're done. I learned that from a woman named Lisa Smith, 25 years ago, 27 years ago. I was learning how to run these long distance runs. And I said, I just wanna quit. She was running with me and she said, well, why don't we just run to that telephone pole?

And then you run to the next telephone pole. And before you know it, you've run to 870 telephone poles and you got the job done. And so it has to be bite-sized chunks because it's just too big for the brain, especially a kid's brain. Yeah, you could quit, but not until later today. Later today, we have the quitting bus coming.

Oh, it didn't come tonight. Tomorrow you can quit. I'm sure the bus will be here. Yeah. With all the people that have come through the farm and all the people that you've touched through Spartan, what do you think, if you have to extrapolate from that data set

of human beings, what are the themes or the kind of commonalities or sort of things that you see time and time again, where people are like losing the plot or like failing to see what's right in front of them that could free them. I'm in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago and a guy comes up very common guy comes up and he,

Joe, oh my God, I read your book. Don't say anymore, come with me. And I go get a camera because I've seen this play 10,000 times. We got a little camera rolling or a phone. Somebody's holding a phone. And I said, all right, tell me the story. He said, I'm from Idaho and I've never left.

I'm a farmer, farmer's son, married my wife, high school sweetheart. And I looked down as he's telling me and he's missing his leg, I didn't even notice. And so I said, what happened to your leg? He said, I got run over by a tractor, married my high school sweetheart. We're both about a hundred pounds overweight.

Because of that, we kept trying, she couldn't have children, but her body wasn't working. Somebody gave us the book, never left Idaho, my life. Read the book, started doing Spartan races. We both lost a hundred pounds. We had three children, right? He goes, my third child is three and a half years old. And he starts tearing up.

He said, she died. She fell in a pool, she drowned. He said, but I have no regrets. Of course I miss her. I have no regrets. I did all these Spartan things. I hiked with her, I carried her. We rode bicycles together.

And he's all teared up as he's telling the story. And he says, now I'm in Abu Dhabi. He goes, I never left Idaho. And so that's typically, you hear stuff like that. Like the person developed the muscle we spoke about earlier. They faced something hard because we all face, doesn't matter, we're all gonna face something hard. They felt like they had a little more strength

to get through it. There's usually a great health and wellness story. I gave up drinking, I gave up drugs. There's usually a love story. I'm back with my husband, I'm back with my wife. And I scratch my head sometimes and I'm like, it's only an obstacle race, but it's not. It's those obstacles, they emulate life's challenges.

And they force people to do stuff and travel to places that they otherwise never would have. And it's, Rich, it's different than a triathlon and it's different than a marathon because in a triathlon, in most cases, and you could disagree with me, we would get so caught up in that that you start saving four ounces on your bike seat

and you buy that special wetsuit that's gonna take a minute off your swim time. But that really was never what it was about. It was about pushing yourself past perceived limits. And that doesn't exist out there in Spartan. There's no bike seat that's gonna, you know what I mean? It's just like- Just you and you.

Just you and you, and you gotta grind through and somehow get this done. So for the person who's listening you know, listening to this, sitting on the couch saying, God damn it, like, I just can't live this way anymore. Like I've gotta make this change, but I don't really know where to start. Like, how do you get people,

like what's that first step to like cattle prod them out of that mindset and that, you know, paralysis? Well, first thing is we all have to agree that our brains, our reptile brains are gonna force us to avoid discomfort, anything uncomfortable. So we're gonna fight face resistance every day. Number two, you gotta have a date on the calendar

and I'm not selling you a race ticket. You could email me joeatspartan.com. I'll give you the race ticket. I don't care. Like you just gotta have a date on the calendar. It could be a 5K, it could be learning a new language. You gotta have something hard where there's that payday. And then you just gotta do it in bite-sized chunks.

You gotta do it every single day. You gotta scream from the rooftops to your friends and family. Every year I put on the death race. Death race is the hardest race we have. And I've been doing it, call it 20 years. And every year, like 300 people sign up, 90 grandmothers would die the night before the race.

Somehow, you know, everybody's grandmother died. They couldn't show up. And then when they get there of the remaining, call it 210 people, 105 of them quit, gear check the first few hours. And I got so frustrated with it, I said, look, you're not allowed to do this race unless you get an article written in a local paper.

If you get an article written in a local paper, I know you're serious. And then you're on the hook. Right. And all of a sudden- Your whole town knows that you're doing it. The whole town knows you're doing it. And you're gonna finish.

It has to say, you're doing the death race and you're gonna finish. And now you're gonna be held accountable by all your friends and family. And all of a sudden, Rich, grandmother stopped dying. People started finishing the race. So you gotta scream it from the rooftops. You gotta ask friends and family to hold you accountable

and you'll get it done. And how do I, 10 million people have done one of these events. That many? 10 million people. Wow. It's a fraction when you look at 7 billion people on earth, but it's a big enough sample set that it works.

Yeah. So Death Race, I mean, we talked about this last time but correct me if I'm wrong, do you change the course every time and you don't tell people like when you're starting or they don't know what they're getting involved in, they don't know when it's gonna end or how far it is or any of that, right?

They don't know anything and the reason is- So it's a total mind fuck. Well, and the reason is, this is really important, is because here I am, I launched my races again, we're out of the pandemic and Omnicon shows up. Mm-hmm. I'm like, whatever the hell it's called, right? So you don't know in life, like what's gonna happen.

Right, life is the death race. Life is a death race. So I purposely did that because people will train and they'll be like getting the four ounce lighter weight seat or the better wetsuit. They can't with death race. It's a control thing. You wanna be able to control all the variables

and the whole purpose of death race is to say, you can't control this. What does it feel like to be totally out of control? Yeah, I would see videos of how the whole group, the whole class that's coming in that year is training. And I would say, oh great, we're not doing any of that then. Right?

Yeah, if you're training for the Death Race, don't share it on social media. That's right. That's a surefire way of making sure that you're training improperly. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

How many people sign up for that? About 300. Yeah. Yeah. What is your sense of like what COVID is doing to young people? Like it's been obviously very difficult for young people. They're, you know, having to navigate

through those formative years, like these sorts of setbacks and challenges. And you can look at it from one perspective, which is how terrible and how awful, but on some level, the flip side of that is they're being sort of compelled to develop resilience around certain things that like we didn't have to when we were that age

and everything was just kind of like normal. Well, I mean, a couple of thoughts I have on it. One is I tried like how for our family to just make it business as usual, continue to study every day, take off your pajamas in the morning, all the stuff we used to do, we never stopped doing. Number two, I think, yeah, it was a challenge, but I mean, I don't know.

I think we as parents, we as adults need more than ever to get these kids moving and get them challenged and sign them up for some sports, something, make them learn a new language, make them read more. It doesn't have to be this book, make them read Rich's stuff, whatever. But I think the kids need to know that, yeah, school was closed and you had to do stuff on Zoom,

but like, I don't know, I think it's our job as parents, as adults to show them, I always show my kids how much worse it could be. I got a buddy, Marco, fastest runner in the country on prosthetics. He had both his legs chopped off. It's another story would take us 20 minutes, but he, whenever the kids are complaining about anything,

let's get Marco on the phone. How's he doing with his two prosthetics? You gotta do Zoom class. That's a ninja move. Yeah. I mean, I think sort of more broadly, this swath, this age group of young people, they're being told that the world is a scary place. And when they go to certain places,

like their health is at risk. And like, what does that do to their like mentality over time when they're being impulsed or messaged with that constantly? Eat more salad. That's what I tell them. Like, you know what I mean? Like I try to show them that news is a business.

Food companies are a business. Dad used to work on Wall Street. If we had, if Rich and I owned a food company or a news company, and we had, when we were the most altruistic people on the planet, but we had to make our quarterly numbers, we'd figure out a way to sell more news. We figured out a way to sell more product

at a cheaper price. So any chance I get, I try to teach them, it's a business. I'm not a conspiracy guy. I'm just a reality guy, right? Take care of yourself. I get it. What do you think is like, what's your big struggle right now?

Like what is the thing that you're trying to like develop more resilience around or- Personally? That you're overcoming? I mean, is it just getting over the hump with the business of Spartan or, you know, what is the challenge that you wanna take on for yourself this year?

My biggest challenge right now for the business, which is now I've dropped a bomb on my family is I can't get anybody to the office. You know, and everybody's moved to like, they wanna be on the coast in Maine or wanna live in Vermont or wanna live here and everybody's re re-imagined their priorities, their values and so maybe I'm old fashioned,

but I want everybody in an office, not seven days a week, right? But like we should be able to get in the office four days a week. We should be able to build a culture. We should be able to collaborate, work together, share ideas. We do put on 400 plus events when things are humming.

It is a complicated business. Oh, but Joe, I waste so much time driving. I could just do it on Zoom or whatever. I get it, but then why are we pushing kids to get back in school? Why don't they just all do it from their computer? Like there is value to being together. So I'm opening an office in Florida.

It's not for tax reasons. I'm hoping that I could get folks together in an office in a state where folks do still get together. And my family's moving to Florida. Oh, wow. And so my wife is in Florida at this moment, decorating an apartment. We broke the news to our kids two weeks ago.

They're moving to Florida. Wow. And so it's gonna be a personal challenge and a business challenge. Now the Boston office will stay, the 20 people that are coming to do it, it'll just be a smaller office. Any new hires will take place in Florida.

And so I'm gonna completely disrupt my life. I'm gonna make it really hard on myself for the business. And that's what we're gonna do. You're not the first. I was just talking to some friends yesterday who are lifelong New Yorkers and they're getting ready to move to Florida too. A lot of people.

Yeah, and by the way, I would never move to Florida. It was never- Yeah, it doesn't seem like the place for you. Not a place for me. I would never do it. But I was talking to a guy, you're gonna love this, and he's got 80,000 square feet in New York. And we were on the phone three months ago.

And I was like, Ryan, I'm losing my mind. I can't get anybody to come to the office. And he showed me around his office. There was no one there, 80,000 square feet. He said, but my office- Midtown office or something. Downtown. Downtown.

But he goes, my big office in Indianapolis is booming. Everybody shows up to work with their lunch pals. They've been getting, they never skipped work. And so I flew to Indianapolis because I wanted to see this. It was like unbelievable. And so I started to explore opening an office in Indianapolis.

And my friend from Saks Fifth Avenue said, you're an idiot. Wherever you open this office, you have to move to to get it going. Are you gonna live in Indianapolis? And so Florida became the better alternative. Wow, man, that's a big shift. Do you ever get the itch to race

and dip your toe back into that? Or is that too dangerous? No, it's not dangerous. I would love to race. Maybe it's an excuse when I say this, but like once I started having kids and I have the business and you and I talked about resilience before

and the definition of that, how can I do all three? Because racing, I was pretty on. Like, I'll see you guys later, right? I gotta go to Switzerland. That's what I meant like dangerous, like, cause you'll check out. I'll see you guys later, right? I gotta go to Switzerland. That's what I meant like dangerous, like, cause you'll check out. I'll check out.

And look, I got a little fix of my addiction in Abu Dhabi. I got to run around the desert, right? I get little quick hits going to our races. I was in the Atacama desert. I get to go to cool spots. And without the requirement to put in those, crazy weeks of training away from everybody. Yeah, let's wrap this up with some parting thoughts

on resilience, the importance of discipline, all of these skills, this toolbox that I think we all, need a little bit more of in our lives as we're, you know, contemplating, manifesting, finally the shit in our lives that we wanna see happen. And correct me if I'm wrong, and we'll leave it with this, like characters in books and in movies,

or even if you're listening to a podcast, characters that have tremendous discipline and grit and like, you know, virtue and just stand in the way of everybody and just get the job done. Those are people like we like to read about. Those are the heroes. Those are the heroes. And so why wouldn't you wanna be a hero?

And it all starts with you, whoever you are listening to this, why like be the hero. And you could do that by walking a mile a day and eating a salad and taking a cold shower. Like it's so easy to be a hero today. You know? In the four day work week world.

Never been easier to stand out. It's so easy to stand out. So the parting words would be, just be the hero of your story. Think about that kid I just described from Idaho. This is so easy. It's so easy. It would be much harder if this was the great depression,

World War I, World War II, there was a lot of competition, right? Now the competition's a 13 year old Chinese boy that showed up at my office. Words to live by. You're awesome. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, people.

Thanks, buddy. I appreciate you. The book, whether you have kids or not, I think is an instructive roadmap for all the things that we were talking about today. It's really well rendered. So congrats on the book, 10 rules for resilience. Joe's pretty easy to find online,

sign up for our Spartan race, get involved, get active, and don't wait and sit around until you have everything figured out and all the answers to your questions resolved, you have to just begin. So the best pair of running shoes is the one that's already in your closet. The best bike is the one collecting dust in the corner

and just get out there and start and go on an adventure with it. I wanna leave one more thought on that. I was in Florida, I told you when they did that test, that lactate threshold test two days ago, I had these jeans on, I'm sorry if I smell a little bit, I had these boots on, I was not prepared, but that's the way I operate, right?

Like, if I don't have the gear, it doesn't matter. So no excuses, get out there and do it and be the hero. Right on. See you guys. All right, man, come back and talk to me again. Every year. Peace. That's it for today.

Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts,

on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg.

Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and AJ Akpodiete. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace.

Plants. Namaste. Thank you.