The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep. 16 - Joe De Sena on Grit, Endurance, and Building Empires

Episode Date: July 1, 2014

Joe De Sena is the co-founder of The Death Race, Spartan Race (1M+ competitors), and more. Among other things, he has personally completed the famously grueling Iditarod dogsledding race...by FOOT. What about the Badwater Ultramarathon, Vermont 100, and Lake Placid Ironman? He did all of those in ONE WEEK. The man is a maniac, but he's also strategic and tactical. This episode covers his story, as well as his approaches to grit, endurance, and building empires.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. Guten tag, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Let's start off with a little munch munch, a little snack for your brain. And these are proverbs. So the first is from Japanese and it is, Sarumo ki kara ochiru. Alright, sarumo, that means monkey also. Ki kara, tree from, ochiru, falls.

Sarumo ki kara ochiru. That means, don't fall into hubris. Don't get arrogant because no matter how good you are, you might still fall out of the tree, even if you're a monkey. All right. The second is from German, and we'll see if the Japanese messes it up because when I speak Japanese, it tends to actually lead me to mix up my R's and my L's.

And that's not being racist. Don't hit the big red racist button. Chill out. It's because they have they have this sound that doesn't differentiate between the la and the ra. It's actually more of a combination of R, L, and D. Those are the syllables in their syllabary. So moving to the German, this one means in English, I'll give that first, during hardship, the devil eats flies. So the English equivalent might be beggars can't be choosers or desperate times call

for desperate measures, which is very appropriate to this episode. And this one is, in der Not frisst der Teufel fliegen. All right. In der Not, which is during hardship, frisst, eat, which is actually, it's fressen instead of essen, which is kind of interesting. But frisst der Teufel, that's the devil, flist, eat, which is actually, it's fressen instead of essen, which is kind of interesting. But frist der Teufel, that's the devil, fliegen, flies. All right. So during hardship, the devil eat flies.

The devil eat flies, he say. No, speak of the English. Okay, moving on. Sorry, I've had a lot of caffeine. I'm feeling frisky. This episode is featuring guest Joe DeSena. Joe DeSena is a maniac. He is a crazy man.

He's also the CEO and co-founder of Spartan Race. But prior to that, because Spartan Race, perhaps as you know, has been attempted, perhaps completed by a million plus people in a dozen plus countries around the world. It's a huge business, a massive success, a phenomenon. Prior to that, he did things like run the Iditarod, which is the world's most famous dog sledding race, by foot. Why? Because perhaps he's a masochist. I don't know what drives someone to do such a thing. But we explore why he might do that. He's done things like the Vermont 100, the Badwater Ultra Marathon. He's completed many other races that would kill most mortal men, like the Lake Placid Ironman. And he did all three of those in one week, by the way.

The predecessor to Spartan Race was called the Death Race, because in effect, it was designed to kill people. And in his spare time, prior to, I think, that epoch in his life, he was a derivatives and equities trader on Wall Street. But he came from very humble beginnings. And I find that Joe is very tactical. He's very astute. He has very pragmatic philosophies of life that you can apply. And I found his stories fascinating. We really tried to dig deep, or I tried to dig deep. I hope you enjoy it. Two last things. Number one, for all the show notes, links, including to his book, which is a new book, Spartan Up, I encourage you to check it out. Go to 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast,

right? 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. You can find links to all sorts of episodes with other folks as well and all the show notes. Last, please check out the Tim Ferriss Book Club. This podcast is something I love. It's a project of passion, but it needs to be self-sustaining. Every month, I highlight a book that is underappreciated and is underexposed, really, that has had a huge impact on my life. So there are four or five of them up at the moment. If you go to 4hourworkweek.com forward slash books. All right, I'll give you a second to write it down. Fourhourworkweek.com forward slash books. You can check these things out. They are my

teachers. Hopefully they can be your teachers. You can click through and they'll take you to Amazon and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So without further ado, Joe DeSena, here he is. Thank you for listening. Optimal, minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seen a perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

Me, Tim, Ferris, Joe. Joe, thank you for making the time to jump on the phone. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. And quite the story that you have. Now, you were introduced to me by Josh, I believe it was, over at Summit Series. And, of course, you seem to be in all places at once. And what would be great as a starting point is to just give a little bit of background on who you are for those people who may not be immediately familiar with you. Yeah.

So just background on me and where I came from? Yeah, exactly. So I grew up in Queens, New York. If you've ever seen the movie Goodfellas, I literally grew up right in the center of that. We lived right near Kennedy Airport. It was a crazy life. My dad was a super aggressive entrepreneur. He had to be back in those days. He had a greenhouse. He had a trucking business. He was in air freight. He had a disco. You name it, he had it. And around the mid-80s, started to have some real trouble just because he was overextended.

And parents got divorced. Mom moved to Ithaca, New York, to get us out of that insanity of, you know, it was basically just a big organized crime area where we were. It was probably the organized crime capital of the world. And thank God she did. But I had my dad's DNA regarding work ethic. My mother completely made a left turn and got into health and wellness in a big way, traveling to India, becoming a yogi, vegan, into teaching meditation, and complete opposite of where we had come from,

the first 10, 12 years of my life, and really influenced my sister and I to focus on that stuff. Although back then it was not mainstream, it was not normal to be into that, maybe if you were in California, but certainly not where we were from. So she was shunned and battling a pretty big tide of non-believers that were focused on, certainly in Queens, focused on sausages and hot dogs and not everything except what she was into. And so I had these two different lives. If I went to go visit my dad back in Queens,

we were out all night at Chinese restaurants or Italian restaurants and getting to stay up late as kids. And if I went back with my mom, it was a very strict focus on health and wellness. And then he lost everything. And it was like the best thing that ever happened to me because I had all those creature comforts and amenities being around a successful entrepreneur that all of a sudden vanished. She couldn't pay the mortgage. She couldn't pay the heat bills. We were losing the house up in Ithaca.

And it's just a switch went off that, hey, if I want those things again, I got to work. And so I started a business. The neighbor of my dad was, unbeknownst to me at that time, was the head of the Banana Organized Crime Family. And he said, hey, I know you're going through some trouble. Why don't you clean my pool? And so I started cleaning his swimming pool. And before you know it, I had every organized crime figure as a customer

in the, not in the tri-state area, but certainly Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, even Staten Island. And it became a pretty big business. Now, my mom was in Ithaca, so she was pushing to get away from that and get into education. So I ended up applying to Cornell, which I had no business going to. I wasn't smart enough. I didn't have a good enough grade. I didn't do that well on SAT scores because I had this pool business that I wanted to build.

And I applied, and they denied my application, and that only made me more interested in getting in. I found out that you can go to many colleges extramurally, which means you could take up to three classes or nine credits and be non-matriculated. So you're not getting credits for anything until you get accepted somewhere. Most kids were taking 15 credits, so I figured, well, I'll do nine credits and I'll just prove myself and then they'll have to let me in. So I did my nine credits. I started my butt off and did really well and reapplied. And they didn't want to set a precedent and show that there's a back doorway into an Ivy League school. So they denied me again, which only made me more furious. And so I did it again. And I was on my fourth try, four semesters in. They almost broke me.

This is like Rudy. It's like the movie Rudy. It's just like the movie Rudy. And I had this pool business was growing and growing. And so now I'm starting to make some really good money. It had turned into a construction company. And so for the summer, I was going down to New York. And I'm thinking at that point, four semesters in and not accepting me.

There's no way to win here. I'm just going to go to New York and run my business. And who needs college? And my mom says to me, you know, I know some people at Cornell. She hadn't said a word. I would have never expected her to have a connection. You know, the kind of people that I had connections with are people back in New York, like my dad. Right.

And it turns out she's teaching a woman yoga that is head of admissions at one of the schools at Cornell. She sets up a meeting, and the woman sits down with me and says, all right, well, I'm in the School of Human Ecology. Cornell has many, many schools, many, many focuses. And one of the schools within Cornell was Human Ecology. And they had a textiles department, which studied the business of textiles, clothing. And so she says to me, you know, I know your mother. She told me you've been trying.

You're four semesters in here, haven't been accepted. I've got this department. It's like 90 women and one man. Would you be very interested in that? That would be perfect for me. Do you have any interest in clothing? I love clothing. And they accepted me.

And so that professor, Anita Racine, had changed my life. And she accepted me into this program. If I had to do it again, I would study it again because I could watch any movie anywhere and tell you when that movie takes place based on women's hemlines. I'm an expert in clothing now. And so it was awesome. It was an awesome experience. I broke out of a multi-generation of people not going to school, got into an Ivy League school, and it literally changed my life. I did not know the college story at all.

Now, you've done so many different things. You ended up on Wall Street at one point. Am I right? Did that happen right after school? Yeah. What happened was I was so excited that I got into Cornell that I found out. And again, I was kind of figuring this out on the fly. I really didn't have parents that were guiding me on this because they had no experience with college. And so I found out

that there was an MBA program at Cornell that you could do in one year. So you could finish undergrad and grad in a five-year program. So I figured, let's just press my bets and go for it. And I took a class to get familiar with the MBA program, an entrepreneurship class, and I won the entrepreneurship award. So during that class, I met a bunch of judges who were very successful people that had graduated Cornell, gone on their own.

And one of those judges took a real liking to me. I didn't make the MBA program. They didn't accept me. And I went back to Queens to run that swimming pool and construction business, which was doing very, very well at that point, because I was able to apply all the things I was learning at Cornell to my business. So, so, uh, so I go back and I'm running the business and that, that judge stays in touch with me and he calls me literally first of the month, every month and says, when are you going to get out of the pool of business?

You got to go to New York City. And I was in Queens. And I said, I'm doing really well. I met this great girl. I'm 22 years old. I don't need to go to Manhattan. And every month, he drove me crazy. And one day, he says, all right, if you're not going to listen to me. And now I'm probably two years out of Cornell.

And he sees that he's losing the battle. And he says, if you're not going to listen to me, I want you to buy this stock. And I had never bought a stock before. And he tells me to buy this stock, Syntax, which is a drug company. Now, this is an older guy that's been trading and managing money for years, and he'd been watching this stock for 25 years. And he says, I want you to buy this stock. It's $14 a share.

It's a drug company, and he's an old-time tape reader. And I'm thinking, I don't want to, I've been working so hard. I'm not going to invest in a stock. I mean, I remember the 87 crash. I'm like, this guy's crazy. And I go to one of my customers house that day that owed me quite a bit of money for finishing a big construction job. He owed me $140,000, give or take. And he's towel drying his hair as I ring the bell to pick up my check and I said hey you know you're he was a pharmacist and I said listen um what do you mind telling me to buy this stock it's in your industry is it's called syntax and he's out of these towels around tears I can't believe

you're asking me he goes I was just in the shower and I'm thinking of buying some today so you're like first pay damn bills, and then we can talk about what you're buying. But yes. So he sits me down as this customer of mine, and he says, here's the deal. He goes, you're single. You're making quite a bit of money now running this business. If you're ever going to take chances in life, now's the time to do it because you don't have a family. And he convinces me.

He calls his broker because I don't have a broker. I don't know how to do this. And he convinces me to take the entire check, the $140,000, and buy the stock, right? And I go from not wanting to invest, and everybody's crazy, to within an hour later, I'm investing the entire check in this stock, and the next day, the company gets taken over. And it was no funny business, it was just, these were old-timers that, I guess, read the tape well, and I made $100,000-timers that, I guess, read the tape well. And I made $100,000.

And I said, I'm going to Wall Street. This is unbelievable. This is crazy. So I spent the next two years trying to get a job on Wall Street because, really, I'm a pool and construction guy from Queens. I have a textile degree. I have no business getting a job on Wall Street. I'm already making, at you know, really good money. And so any job I'm even lucky to get would maybe pay me 30 grand a year. And I'm so lucky that I was guided by this guy at Cornell because he guides me to the

institutional side of the business. And I ended up getting this job where they trained me in the whole industry. I worked in research. I worked in investment banking. I worked in research. I worked in investment banking. I worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And literally, I spent two years just bouncing from department to department, learning the entire business. And as I was there, the company got sold to ING for $600 million. And so I thought to myself, again, because I lack intelligence sometimes, I said, you you know what I could start my

own investment bank firm I know everything about swimming pools why don't I start an investment bank so um so everybody told me at the firm you're crazy you know what institution is possibly going to do business with a pool guy and so I started a little business and they were right nobody when we first started would do business with us and then day, just as we were about to go out of business, a guy from Cornell that has since become one of my great friends and life-changing inspirations in my life, he calls me up and asks me to purchase a bunch of equities and derivatives, which he pays me a nice commission on. And just like the head of the Manana Organized Crime Family that changed my life in the pool business, and just like Professor Anita Racina changed my life getting into Cornell, he changes my life with this order. And we ended up building this giant business right before, you know,

just when it was darkest and we were going out of business, because I couldn't get anybody to deal with this brand new firm that had no business. Like the phoenix from the ashes. So I have a couple of really quick questions just because the story, I mean, there's so much more to the story, obviously, but what did that judge see in you that led him to contact you on the first of the month

and continually ask you to get out of the pool business? What do you think the characteristics were, the conversations that you had? What are the things that led to him pursuing you like that? Well, I think I'm sure you see the same things as you make investments or you're hiring people or partnering with people in that there's very few people on a percentage basis that have that fire in their belly. It's not necessarily specific knowledge because I certainly, I'm not that smart of a guy but I have an enormous fire

in my belly from the time my eyes open to the time I collapse on a bed every day to just get stuff done it's not always the smartest way I attack things but I'm just relentless and I think that's rare yeah I think it's rare and I think he saw that and it would have because I look for that I'm sure you look for that and I think he, wow, this would be a waste to have this guy stuck in Queens. Now, you don't know it. Me, I don't know it at the time that that would be a waste. I'm feeling like I'm killing it. And he sees much bigger opportunity for me.

And, you know, my dad later thanked him because, again, all these people just changed my life. But I don't think it's by accident and by chance those things happened. I think I just put myself out there like you probably do or anybody that's had some luck in life. You kind of make your own luck. You don't say no to anything, right? You take every meeting. You listen to every phone call. And stuff just happens for you.

The entrepreneurship award that you won, what did you do to win that award? Was it a project? Was it based on the track record with the pool business? What caught the attention of these judges who then gave you that award? So it's funny. It wasn't when I remember when asking the professor, Professor Ben Daniel, I'll never forget his name because it was pretty big for a guy that couldn't even get accepted to the school to win the award. It was really the fire in my belly that they saw when I stood in front of the class and made my pitch. It wasn't the idea. Well, just out of curiosity, what was the idea? Do you remember? Yeah.

So back then, and probably still in existence today, champion sweatshirts were the rage. They would take silk lettering and put Cornell University on the champion sweatshirt. And I believe back then they were selling them for about $50. And I thought to myself, it's kind of ridiculous that they're taking a champion sweatshirt made in the U.S., shipping it to some old women to sew the letters on. They're selling them for $50. First of all, I think I can make a better sweatshirt. I think I could import them because, remember, I was studying textiles at this point. And there were problems with the sweatshirt. They used to blow out around the waist, and they used to blow out around the sleeves. And if I could incorporate some lycra into the waist and the sleeves, sew the letters on myself, I could probably produce a better product for less money. So it wasn't like some earth shattering technology or anything. It was just a very basic business. But the pitch, I think, was they saw that here was a guy that was relentless

and inspired because there were better ideas. It's just that's what got them. Got it. So speaking of relentless, I want to come back to the investment world, obviously. And we'll get there, I'm sure. But just what time is this? What year, when the company was saved by this particular order for derivatives and equities and whatnot, where was that relative to the birth of the death race, which I'm sure we'll get to, but sort of how many years prior was? So death race, let's say it was 2004. The day I got that order when we were on the brink of literally closing the doors, I would say it was 1998. Okay. Got it. And so what was the path from the doors are reopened, Wall Street's looking a little more attractive, from there to Death Race and obviously Spartan Race. But how did you end up making that transition

or that discovery? Yes. So what happened was the pool and construction business got me in incredible physical shape because I worked 20-hour days physically. And when I went to Wall Street, that changed. I had weekends free. I didn't know what to do it myself. You sat on a desk all day. I'd never done that before. And I started to gain some weight and I just didn't feel as healthy as I had always felt. And so I was looking for some exercise or something. And I stumbled upon a guy in the stairwell of my building that I lived in in Manhattan who was on a cover of Men's Health and just was the epitome of him.

This guy was ripped. And I met him in the stairwell, and I just was inquiring, and I wanted to work out. And he said, jump in the stairs with me every day. And we started doing stairs together. The first day, I could do like five flights and then ten flights. And he started to get me motivated by telling me about these things called adventure races. And so he hooked me. He got me to go do a small three-hour adventure race in Texas,

and I was hooked. I was outside. I felt alive again. And I said, man, what's the next level? I've got to do something bigger. And he said, well, you know, you could do a 24-hour race, but you've got to really sign me up. I've got to do it.

And whatever I did, I had to find the next level, whatever the, you know, give me the craziest race in the world. And we said, well, you know, you could die. There's this one, you know, the Iditarod in Alaska, they do it in the middle of the winter and it's by foot and it's 30 below, but you got to have a sign me up. I got to do it. And, um, so the crazier it was, I had to get back to this place where you just want water, food, and shelter. And all the craziness of my life, this Wall Street life I had taken on, would go away, would melt away. That stress all day long of, I mean, you make them lose $30,000, $40,000 in minutes, screwing up an order or having customers tell you that they're no longer going to deal with you.

It was a very stressful business. So to get back to the core of life, just water, food, and shelter, was very liberating. And so I kept seeking that. And it kind of connected with me because since I was very young building that first business, I was having a tough time finding people with fire in their belly. And here in these races, I was seeing people with fire in their belly. Anybody that was out there doing this crazy stuff had that thing I was seeking my whole life. And so when I got to Vermont, so fast forward, I sold that Wall Street business business met my wife at a race got married moved

to Vermont to have a family and to remove myself from New York City because I was afraid if I was around the possibility of doing business while I was trying to grow a family the business would always win right I'm addicted to business so I had, I had to literally put myself in a padded room. That room would be Vermont mountains with a 400 person town and just dedicate some time to a family, to grow in a family. And while I was there, that lasted like two days. And I said, I want to create a race that helps me find those people with fire in their belly that like Russell Crowe and gladiator or Mel Gibson and brave heart, or just these amazing people that just get it done under when their backs against the wall.

And what if I created with, with a buddy of mine, this race that purposely broke people, uh, not the way, not the way the races I had done or marathon does, but actually, actually where I would actually drive the participants crazy.

Not tell them when it's starting, not tell them when it's ending, not giving them water, giving them buses during the middle of the race and saying, hey, you could quit here. Just get in the bus. This is not for you. You're too weak. And worse than military. Like, just really just break people. And that was the beginning of my race business. So that was the death race, right?

That was the death race. That was 2004, 2005. Literally called the death race. Literally called the death race. And that, from just some of the reading I was doing, I mean, excavating tree stumps, heavy rocks, sleep deprivation. Were those some of the crazier elements or were there other aspects to it? Did you have any real catastrophes or did you self-select, for the most part, the most successful or grittiest folks who tended to make it through to the end? What percentage of people who started the death race finished the death race?

Well, we knew, I'll answer those in this order. So we knew in the beginning we had something, we had eight participants show up and immediately five quit. Like within the first three hours. What broke the, I mean, was there any moment that was really like the straw that broke the camel's back that led these five to quit? Well, I don't, I don't think they knew what they were getting into because we had never done it before. And one guy, I remember specifically one guy started crying and he was like, I'm a really good runner. I just don't know how to chop wood. Because no one knew, we didn't tell them what. And so Doug Lewis, who's an Olympic-level skier, downhill skier, is about, you know, whatever, 15, 18 hours into this thing, and he is cracking. I mean, he is broken.

And he turns to me and says, I made the Olympics. You know, like, I trained my whole life. I'm a pretty tough guy. He goes, this is fucking crazy. Sorry for my language. I don't know what we're allowed to curse. Oh, no, you're allowed to curse. It's totally fine. So at that moment, we knew

we had a winner here. And Doug finishes. And so, yeah, and then it just took on a life of its own. Doug and two Vermont guys that eat like shredded steel for breakfast. These guys have been chopping wood their whole life. They were just hearty. The Ashley brothers, between Doug and those two guys, we knew we had something. And then they started

training other people for the next year. And then the New York Times picks it up. All of a sudden, lights out. My home phone starts ringing from every TV producer in the U S whether it was, you know, discovery channel, um, Nat Geo, uh, BBC, my wife's fielding calls for reality TV show screaming at me, we're not doing a reality TV show. Well, let's just listen and see what people have to say. And, um, and then, and then ultimately, uh, the top guy in reality outside of Mark Burnett, this guy Craig Peligian from Pilgrim Films called and flew in on his private jet to Vermont. And we met and shook hands and we sold the show to Discovery in six minutes. They bought 13 shows. This was going to be unbelievable.

We started a casting call and that's when i started to learn everything about television because the new ceo came into discovery the the ceo that bought the show from us got fired and he the new guy comes in and says i'm not taking any of the old shows because i have no upside you know if it's bad i'm going to get yelled at if it's good i'm not going to get any credit right he drops it and then we spend the next whatever years trying to get a TV deal. In that timeframe, I started up something called Spartan Race. And while we thought we had a TV deal and Spartan Race was an attempt to tone the death rate down a bit and, and make it for the masses to maybe find that fire in people's belly and, um, get people off the couch and get them healthy. And I thought maybe 50,000 people would compete in the Spartan Race.

I thought, you know, I'll invest. I'm not going to invest more than $50,000 in this. I'm kind of retired in Vermont. I haven't flown the Death Race. And I begged everybody I knew to run it or invest in it. And everybody said, who's going to crawl under barbed wire and jump over fire? And it sounds ridiculous. Like no one's going to do that.

And that first race, you could see the look on people's faces. Like there was something there. They went primal. And all the things I felt when I did those adventure races, they were feeling. And now there was a social network where they could share that feeling that coincided with the Spartan race and it just exploded. And so now, you know, this year we'll have a million participants

in Spartan. We'll be in 131 events around the globe in 17 countries. And I went from trying to grow a family, being retired in a small town in Vermont to never being home and living on a computer. The full circle of heroes journey. So the death race at its peak,

how many participants were participating in the death race on an annual basis? So even today, even with, you know, the death race now has a lot of visibility thanks to Spartan Raid. Even today, the most you'll get on an annual basis will be 400 participants in death race. 15% of them each year will finish. That's our goal. So in other words, if 400 people started today, the race is over in our mind when we get down to 15%. So when 60 people are standing, if that takes two weeks, it takes two weeks.

And that creates an interesting element, it takes two weeks. And that creates an interesting element because it drives people crazy. We try to pick all the things that are going to drive people crazy. From when I did races or my partner did races in Death Race, we know what almost broke us or did break us. And those are the elements we add to Death Race to drive people crazy. So two things, if you could give just a couple of examples of some of the feats that you're well known for endurance wise, I think that would be interesting to folks. I've of course read some of the stats, but I'd love to hear that. And then second part to that is what are the things that drive you crazy when you're doing that kind of

thing? Yeah. So back to that stairwell with that, um, men's health cover guy, when I started doing those races, I, um, again, I think what helped me, which has really helped me through life is a lack of knowledge. I think, I think sometimes people have so much knowledge in a particular area, study it so much that actually they talk themselves out of doing something. And because I didn't have any knowledge in this endurance area, I just signed up for things. And so I signed up for that, you know, the Iditarod, they call it the Iditarod sport, where you do it by sport. And that was 350 miles, 30 blow temps, and three feet of fresh snow over existence. It was terrible. No dogs, just feet. Yeah, no, I was the dog. I was the dog.

This race called the Yucatec. Well, an easier way to explain it is if anybody knows the Eco Challenge, Eco Challenge had a bunch of competitor races that all had different names, whether it was the Discovery World Championship or the Raid, and they were all over the globe. And so I ran around the world for a bunch of years just doing every race possible. I would just leave my office on Wall Street and go disappear in the woods or the snow somewhere and just kill myself.

There were such intense races that when the race was over, I would sleep 24 to 30 hours straight, just literally collapse. And you wake up and you don't even know what day it is. And you get addicted to it. You get such a proud, exhilarating feeling from pushing yourself that hard that, uh, then you want to do it again. You did the bad water ultra along with two other races in the same week. Didn't you? Is that, am I making that up? Well, that was, yeah, that was a mistake. What had happened was, um, I got into this thing where I was doing all these races. And so anybody

would come out of the woodwork and say, Hey Joe, let's do this. Or, Hey Joe, let's do that. And I, my standard response was, yeah, let's do it because that was an easy way for me to, to commit just to, you know, I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to turn down a challenge. And so one friend had said, Hey, let's do the, the bad water and yeah, whatever, let's do it. And so sign me up. Another guy said, Hey, let's do the Lake Placid Ironman. I said, yeah, no problem. Let's do it. And then somebody else said, Hey, let's do Vermont 100. And that was like six or eight months before these events. Well, about just because of the way I am, I'm kind of a scatterbrain about three or four weeks before these things, my assistant says, Hey, you realize these are all in the same week? No, I did not realize that. And so I said, Oh,

you know what? Let's try to do it and maybe we'll get some press. And so I figured, no, I did not realize that. And so I said, no, you know what? Let's try to do it, and maybe we'll get some press. And so I figured, all right, I'll train hard for it. I didn't have much time and did a ton of Bikram yoga, a ton of running in the three, four weeks leading up to it. I mean, a lot. And again, I'm not a – the stuff I read about you and your thoughts, you're very methodical in your training. I was more of a throw everything against the wall.

The more training there is, it has to be better. And I definitely pushed the limits and went and did the Vermont 100. And then a few days after the finish, I made my way out to Badwater, which is the lowest Now, 100 is 100 kilometers, 100 miles? 100 miles. 100 miles through the hills in Vermont. Finished in under 24 hours, which is your goal when you're running 100. Finished that, flew out to Vegas, drove however far the distance is.

I forget to the lowest elevation in the U.S. is Badwater. Ran to the top of Mount, well, not to the top, but to the finish line of Mount Whitney, and then jumped on a private plane. My wife said the only way she was going to let me do it was if I hit a wedding that week. So I had to get to a wedding, which was the worst part, you can't tell her, of the whole damn week because my feet wouldn't fit in the shoes. She wanted to dance, and then from the wedding, made it to Lake Placid. And did great in the swim in Lake Placid, did great in the bike. And when I got on the run, I thought, you know, I'm going to kill it. I already ran 235 miles this week, and my legs just gave out about mile five.

I was in so much pain, and I never drink, and I never take any aspirin or anything. And I'm in so much pain, I'm looking around for like an aspirin or an Advil. I'm asking spectators. And I got somebody to give me a few aspirin, and I ran a few more miles, and the pain wasn't going away. And I saw a couple of kids with backpacks full of beer and I never drank. And so I was like, you know, I have a few beers and I literally got drunk and finished that. And they filmed it. The Ironman folks filmed that. But that's how I got through the run. And I stopped at mile 20 for two burgers. I ate two. I was so hungry.

And so I was drunk and full when I came across the finish line of the Ironman. So just to put this in perspective, I mean, obviously that's insane on so many levels. But to put this in perspective for people listening, the Badwater Ultramarathon describes itself as the world's toughest foot race. I know a number of guys who have run this. It's 135 miles. It starts, like you said, below sea level and then goes up to more than 8,000 feet of elevation. And it usually, I guess, takes place in July. Yeah, it's hot.

But in the shade, very commonly 120 degrees. It was 131 degrees. My shirt melted and my 120 degrees. It was 131 degrees. My shirt melted and my sneakers melted. It was terrible. So there are people who will have support vans following them with basically coffins full of ice to revive them in case they collapse. So we don't have too much time. We'll probably have to do a round two with this at some point. But let me ask a couple of sort of rapid-fire questions, and then I'd love to hear what you're up to and obviously tell people about the book.

What do people consider you world class at? And ideally, things that are coachable or learnable skills. I'd be curious to know what other people consider you world class at. I'm definitely not a world class athlete. I'm not fast. I was never a good athlete. I would say I'm just relentless. I just don't give up. I'm persistent as hell. When I get on something, it's like a pit bull. I just don't let up. It's definitely a sickness because I'm so focused on that thing. It's like I have blinders on like a horse would in a race. I just don't see anything else. I just got to get this done.

And so if the race was like forever, I would do really well. If it just kept going until the last person was standing, I would do well. But if it's speed or athleticism, I'm not your guy. Right. When you're hiring people, how many employees do you have for a Spartan? So we've got about 40, 45-ish in Boston, and then about the same number overseas in a bunch of different countries. And then with every race we have, we bring in 500 volunteers, which kind of act like employees for the weekend. So it's not a giant operation on

a daily basis. But every week, we have almost two and a half events. And so then 1000 people come in for those events. For the full time hires, what do you or your people look for? What are the criteria, at least for the first like the early hires, the first say five to 10 people? What what were you looking for in those people? Well, I don't, I mean, I'm definitely no expert, and again, there are much smarter MBAs on how to approach this in a methodical fashion, but for me, since, again, since I'm 10, 11 years old, it's really the passion, the fire in the belly that I'm looking for, and it was always, and it's going to sound terrible to Americans, but it was always the Eastern Europeans or like a third world country person, guy or girl, that just outworked anybody else, including myself. So I'm always looking, and that's what intrigued me so much.

And that's really what the book is about, is how do I, first of all, why do they outdo us? And how do you not lose that edge if you're that kind of person? And then how do I find more of them? And then is that more important than exact skill sets for the job? And I believe it is. I believe you can teach that really aggressive, fire in their belly, persistent person the task at hand, as opposed to finding an expert in the area and then trying to teach them passion and fire i don't i think it's hard to teach the other thing which is that aggressiveness no definitely have you found any other commonalities for instance i know that some companies like emc for instance which is uh mass data storage often recruits former football players

are there any other commonalities or patterns that you've seen in the people who've been there? Yeah, it's funny you ask. This is a really interesting one for me because I would have never guessed this. I don't think anybody listening would guess this, but downhill skiers. I see a high correlation. And then because I'm a skier and because I have children that I take skiing now, I get it. And if you think about skiing, if you're a downhill skier, the moment you make the decision that day to go skiing, it's 50% miserable experience, right? The boots don't fit. You forgot your poles,

the goggles, it's snowing, it's fleeting. And if you're a racer, and that's really what I meant to say, they're downhill ski racer. You're a racer and you've raced a large part of your life, you probably stood on top of the mountain for hours freezing, waiting for your slot to go. And that builds grit. Right. So, right, because it's one thing you and I, if we were hiking up the mountain, you take your jacket off, no matter how bad the weather is, you can deal with that. But standing still in the cold, getting pounded takes a certain skill set in uncomfortable boots, right. And uncomfortable weather and gear. So that's what I found.

Excellent. Yeah. That's, that's very interesting. You should say that because I've only recently gotten to know a couple of really highly competitive downhill skiers and, uh, it makes perfect sense. You know, now that I know them a bit, that, that does make perfect sense. Now that I know them a bit, that does make perfect sense. Are there any books, for instance, besides your own, which I want people to check out, that you've returned to again and again or suggested to other people that's had a large influence on your life or how you look at life? Yeah, I would say I loved Atlas Shrugged. Read it often. I love Shogun. Yeah Shogun. Shogun puts everything in a proper frame of reference for me. I mean, what that guy is going through. It puts your day in perspective. And then, funny enough, I love The One Minute Manager. That little book really helped me in

business. And I'm not a giant reader, but those are big books for me. And of all the things you could do, obviously financially you're doing very well and have done well at many different things, which has always been very interesting to me. Why write a book? I mean, Spartan Up, of course, chronicles your journey. And I mean, we didn't even get into half of the stuff that you do. Maybe we'll get a chance another time. Including a lot of your investments, some of which have panned out extremely well since you started Spartan. But why write a book? And what do you hope that Spartan

Up will achieve? So for me, I've been writing this book for literally since I was able to drive that pool truck. And I would look over to my right and figure out who my employer partner was that day. And were they going to make it the whole day? Cause we were working until 11 o'clock at night. And it just intrigued me and it's going to sound silly, but like Rocky Balboa, right? Rocky was a big movie back then. And it really intrigued me that, that in the movie, and granted this wasn't real life, that he was broken and fought to get ahead and he wins the fight.

And all of a sudden he's got money and then he gets soft. And I'd look over to the right in that pool truck and I'd think, what makes this guy soft or hard? Why is it that when I finally found the Eastern Europeans, they were tough? And I just, just like the question you asked, like what correlations you're seeing, it's just, it's literally intrigued me for 30 years and I've been writing this book in my head and why at a young age did I want to take cold showers and like anything I didn't want to do, force myself to do, how do I pass that on to my kids? And so I've been writing this thing for a long time and

I mean, I retired in 2005. I was done. I was in Vermont. I'm building my family. Awesome wife, awesome kids. And then we do this Spartan thing. I've got people saying we changed their life and it got them off the couch and they're losing weight and their relationship is better and they're off drinking

and they're not doing drugs anymore. And I'm thinking, we're doing something really good here. But even if I reach a million, if we reach a million people this year, there's still 8 billion people to reach. And a lot of them are just not going to come do the race. They're not going to get moving. And so maybe the book is a way to reach a bunch of people and just get them to do something.

Because life is such a waste. Like that guy at Cornell that got me to move to New York, he changed my life. That professor changed my life. So if I could change just a few lives with the book, people that wouldn't go to the race, I win. I'm happy. Right? What else are you going to do in life?

You can't just make money and worry about it. You've got to do some good things while you're here. Life is fast. It's going to be over soon. That was really the impetus for this thing. Yeah. I love your story. Every time we talk or I text you or anything else, you're always off doing something interesting.

I think that, like you said, it's not enough to just collect monopoly chips and make money. Yes, money is useful. It makes a very helpful tool and a terrible master, but you should build things. You should make something interesting with your time that you have on this planet and really create something compelling that excites you. And I think that your story is really inspiring. And so I hope people check out the book. It's Spartan Up, A Take No Prisoner's Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life. We will have to have a part two to this, I think, at some point. But where's the best place for people to learn more about what you're up to and perhaps Spartan itself? We have a website. It's spartanupthebook.com or just spartan.com. I'll tell you about the races.

But spartanupthebook.com will get them to the book. And yeah, I'm excited. Today actually got launched today, the book. So I'd love to get feedback from people and see what they think. Yeah, I'd love to hear what people think as well. So I'll have them check it out. I'll put that in the show notes. And Joe, I'll let you get back to the life and times.

And I know you're at another person's office at the moment. So I'll let you get back to all the various adventures. And we will talk very soon. But thank you for taking the time. Thanks for having me. A huge honor being interviewed by you. My pleasure. Obviously, a lot of respect for what you've done and I'm sure what you will continue to do.

So to be continued. And until next time, thanks very much. Thanks. Bye. If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to 4hourblog.com. F-O-U-R-A-T-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com. Where you'll find an award-winning blog,

tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter. It's twitter.com slash tferris. That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Or on Facebook at facebook.com slash timferris. Until next time, thanks for listening.