Interview with Joe De Sena: Choose The Hard Thing (Every Day) | Rock Your Goddess Life

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Hello, we are here with Joe Disena today and he is a founder and CEO of Spartan Race. He's a New York Times best selling author and he is also widely regarded as an authority on resilience, mental toughness and grit. And he is just an all around extraordinary human and I am in awe of all that he has created. So welcome, Joe.

Thanks for having me. You make me feel good. It was a tough day today so far, but now I'm back on top.

Okay, well, that's good.

That's good.

And I appreciate you for so many reasons. I mean, you have been a dear friend for my husband, but you are just the example, like the definition. If you look up grit, I just.

Think of Joe Decenta, you know, thank you for that. I would say there are days I don't feel tough. You want to go down a rabbit hole for a second? Because I had a conversation with someone today about this.

Let's do it.

I believe. And I had never thought about this before. I'd like to riff on this topic on social media after, after we do this call about this. I've had NFL players or Green Berets or all kinds of tough people come out and do races and I've been surprised when they're doing a Spartan Race. How to tough they think it is. And I'm like, but you're a Green Beret. You're an NFL player, you're this, you're that. I've been surprised in life where I've met wrestlers that have gone and done something and then that was really tough for them. And I came to the conclusion today with a friend that I think what it is, is no matter how tough we think we are at our craft, writing books, writing, running a business, whatever, if we do that thing every day, it's no longer tough every day. It's part of our purpose. We live it. As crazy as it sounds, I woke up, my boys wrestle four hours a day. They lose seven. But they do it every day. They do it every day. So when you go do something else. And so that whole CrossFit philosophy of Switch it up every day, I think applies to your whole life, right? It's not just fitness. You need to shock yourself every day if you really want to be tough, if you really want to have grit, I think the closest, and maybe you'll think of other ideas here, but I think the closest thing we have in life to shocking us every day and making us truly gritty outside of like the 1800s, building the railroads across the country, where everything was trying to kill you. Outside of that, in the world we live in today, it's running a business because you walk in and it's like. It's like, you know, you get that box of chocolate from. From what was the movie? What was the movie? Forrest Gump Chocolate every day. And he didn't know. Right. Life is like a box of chocolate. I don't know what. Well, every day in business, it's like a box. You. You walk in, you get punched in the nose, you got to make payroll, your factory burned out. Like you. There's no getting used to anything. There's no, like, it just sucks every day. You're chewing glass. Yeah.

So I love that. I. I totally agree. I love all of that, and thank you for sharing that. I just had a flashback when I first met Courtney and we were talking Courtney as Joe's wife and at a Spartan. I forget where it was, but sure. And I were having this debate of, like, we've thought parenting and motherhood was harder than having a big business. So it's like I put both of those in there, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I. The thing about. All the moms are going to hate me. You're going to hate me. Courtney's going to hate me when I say this. The thing about parenting that makes it easier is like, we have four kids and the fourth one, we just forget. Like, she just. She's on her own. She just figures it out. Right? Like, but with the business, you can't. Like, it's just. You have to make payroll.

Yeah, right.

And you might say, as a mom, you might say, well, you have to feed. She figures out how to eat. She like, stays at somebody's house. Like, they're self sufficient. Like, businesses don't do it on their own.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, moms, we love you. I'm going to push back on you a little bit. On that is because there is in Courtney, if you listen to this, I love you too. That there is the invisible work that shows up the emotional. Like, moms are always on guard. So even your four, your fourth one, yes, she's figuring it out, but she's doing it in the space of an invisible bubble of at least motherhood. Like, Courtney knows what's going on.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. I'll give you that.

Maybe I'm wrong, but there's like that load of motherhood that a lot of women talk about. It's like invisible. Like, we're always on. It's different than you know, I think the masculine that, you know, you know.

The ancient Spartans, and I'm sorry, you had a whole plan for us to talk about things. I'm sorry, I'm just jumping in.

Perfect. No, this is great.

The ancient Spartans. The mom only had the child, the boy. The mom only had the boy, the son, until seven years old. And then, and then that boy was on his own on the mountain with one cloak and had to steal food to eat and not get caught. They were allowed to steal, but if they got caught, they got punished because they needed to learn some street skills, you know, street smarts. But, but mom, that invisible hand had had her way until 7. I don't know why, I don't know why that popped in my head. But, but anyway, I think it's great. I'm not that gritty. I, I, but I've been running businesses for a long time, since I'm a little kid, and it just sucks. It just sucks. Like, like I started this business, this spartan business because I loved doing the thing that we sell. I loved being with your husband and carrying a kettlebell up a mountain. I loved going to do a race. But being in the business of offering that service and product is not the same thing. It's the dark underbelly like that. It just sucks. I just had a guy email me. He's on 150 Spartan races. He's waiting on some gear from us. He's got stage four terminal cancer.

Oh, wow.

And I'm writing him back thinking he wants the gear. I can't get him the gear right away. He's dying. You know what I mean? Like, we've got 15 million customers across the finish line anyway. I don't know where I'm going.

Yeah, well, but I think, I mean, I think it's great to hear. Right? And I know you, you just tell it how it is always. That's why people love you. Of like, it's easy to say, oh, I had this call to adventure. I'm gonna create Spartan. And then spark like sparkles and unicorns just showed up. And everything was amazing because I decided to follow my bliss, right, of wanting to create that. So I love how you just bring that up. Like, no, it's hard. There's lots of challenges like every day. So how do you navigate that? Right. So how do you navigate and what's your mindset around those challenges? Because they show up every day. Like most of us want to be exonerated. We just want to sit back and have it be comfortable and Like, I just want life to be easy. But you, on the other hand, are like, you put yourself in the fire day in and day out. What keeps you doing it and how do you manage it?

Yeah, I don't know how to articulate this. We got to work with you and your husband on this one. But all of us want to avoid discomfort all day, every day, every chance we get. The team is working today on T shirt designs for one of our brands for 20, 26. And of course, of course the finisher T shirt is an important thing to focus on, but the reason they're focused on it is because there's 27 other problems that are much more complex and much more important and require much more energy. And so the brain goes to. Let's focus on the easy things. And no one wants to hear that I'm saying it about myself too. And you, we all, this is what it's going on in the background in our brain. Avoid the hard stuff. Do the easy stuff all day long. Somewhere along the line I made, I made not doing the hard stuff, not getting on the bike in the morning, whatever the hard thing is, right? Not tackling the big problem. I made that worse for, for myself. If I didn't do the hard thing, my day was worse. I regretted it more. And, and I don't. But I don't know how to articulate that. I don't know how to teach that. But when you do figure it out, it changes everything because, Because I lean towards the hard thing. I go into the storm every day. Even though it sucks. Even though somewhere in the back of my mind there is a dream of mine that I want to throw this phone off a cliff. I want to just chop wood and carry water. I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't want payroll anymore. I don't care about finisher shirts. Like, you know what I mean? Even though that's a dream somewhere, I still every day go into the friggin arena. And when we figure that out, when anybody listening or watching figures that out, that changes everything. Because then, then you don't miss the workouts. Then you do do the work.

Then like you show up and you transform, right? That's like the true transformation that happens that doesn't happen on your couch, which I know you're trying to get millions, billions of people off the couch.

Yeah, yeah, maybe. And maybe it happened at a young age with my, with my first business. Maybe. Maybe I got yelled at so much by customers or something that I was like electrocuted. Into I better stay up late and pack the truck and organize things and do the hard work and wa up early because if I don't, the pain of dealing with not doing that is much worse than the pain of dealing with it. Right?

Yeah, but you've also, you put yourself in those situations. Right? Like a lot of people, a lot of us have a ton of fear. We don't even want to step over, cross over the threshold. To use Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Like, you're like, oh, it sounds good, but I don't actually want to step in. You've consistently put yourself in that fire, like over and over, you've crossed the threshold. So do you think it's like you had that as a kid or that's something that you developed or like, what makes you say yes, like, bring it on. I love pain.

You know, I read somewhere they were looking for why these tennis players were coming out of this little town in Russia. And so it must be the oxygen or the water or the tennis rackets or the balls or something. But when they investigated, it was like, it was like a terrible court, it was like terrible weather, it was, you know, no resources. And it was just like this coach and this environment that created these world class tennis players. And they did the same thing with running out of this place in Africa that they found that the 400 meter track was actually a little longer and a little less paved and like, you know what I mean? And. But the big thing in both those examples was the environment. The other people were all elevating each other and holding themselves accountable. The neighborhood I grew up in just ran into a person I didn't know as a kid at a conference just the other day who came out of the same neighborhood. And we were talking and I think it was just like I described in the tennis example or the running example where our neighborhood were just a bunch of grinders. It was queens, it was 1970s, 1980s. Half the people were going to jail for doing bad things. And, and they were proud of that because if they did 10, 15, 20 years, that was like going to college and then they proved their loyalty, etc. So imagine growing up in an environment where half are doing that, half are buttering the bagel, starting the trucks, 5am like everybody was grinding. If, like you either got involved or got out. And, and so I bet if we interviewed, if we had anybody on your show from, from back, like, you'd find all the same personality traits just like you would in that tennis example or that running like, so I grew up in an environment where that's what I learned. If I grew up in a greenhouse where we sat and watched Netflix all day and drank coffee, then I'd be really good at that. That's what I, you know what I mean?

That's. Okay. So I want to talk about this later, but I'm gonna bring it up now. How do you do that with your kids? Right? Because you have four kids. Like, how. What's the environment? I know you've written books on this, but what is. And talked about it, but what is the environment that you've created for your kids so that they create this grittiness, resilience, confidence, character.

Well, I'm faking it, right? I'm manufacturing. Because we're not in a favela. We're not in a shitty, shitty town in the middle of India eating garbage. Like, we're, we. We've got a, a two car garage. The kids have credit cards. So, like, I'm already up against the eight. Like, against. It's a problem. It's a big problem. And so I gotta, I gotta manufacture. We've gotta manufacture adversity every day. But, but going back to the very first thing I said when we were talking, like, they get used to that. They get used to, like, yes, I drive them absolutely crazy, including my wife. I drive everybody crazy because I'm just relentless and I say it over and over and take your vitamins and we got to do this workout and how come you're not setting SATs and, and, and it's just, it's just like relentless to the point where they just can't wait for me to leave the house. And so it makes them a little tougher, I would say, you know, the kids are a little tougher. It's noticeable in their sports. The coaches notice it. Like, they just, they don't complain. They just, they do the work. But they're not as tough as that kid from, from the favela in Brazil or the inner city in India. Like, I got to, you know, you know, maybe they can handle, maybe, maybe my kids can handle not having electric windows in cars and having a crank because they're so tough. You know what I mean? Like, but they still got a car. It's not like we went on horses and carriages. So. Yeah, I do, I, I do my best with, with, with the, with the cushions we have.

Right? Like the book. I'm sure you've read it. The Comfort Crisis.

It's a comfort. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt and I. And I made. I made some mistakes, too. I never had kids before, and. And I wrote a book on the damn thing. But. But some of the mistakes, looking back, we were always optimizing. My fault. We were always optimizing for more ski runs and more time on the mat and more math reps. And what I wasn't optimizing for, my mistake was we forgot our gloves. Too bad. Ski without a glove. Oh, you don't have any pencils. How the hell are we going to get pencils to do the math? Or you don't have a calculator? You know what I mean? Like, I should have been. I should have been throwing. Obviously, we had lots of obstacles in the thing we were doing, but I should have been just throwing general life obstacles. And instead of. Instead of preparing all the ski stuff in the morning so that we got there early and got more ski runs in. No, we should actually been laid it and forgotten stuff. And. But who the hell wants to do that? As a parent. Yeah.

No, that's one of my biggest challenges, right? Of, like, having them be responsible for their stuff. And if they don't have it, then. Then it's like, on. But like, having them develop that. But it's like, who wants that?

Nobody does. Right. You really want to drive 12 miles to the ski resort, you know, they forgot the gloves. You want, like.

Totally. That's awesome. I love that. So then you create. I mean, like, so that would be a tip for parents of, like, creating a little bit, like, having them take responsibility for their life a little bit more. And there's stuff and like, figuring it out. Adaptable, which we need in the modern world. Right. If there's any skill, it's like, attention and adaptability and resilience. Tell me about that. How are you preparing your kids for the future?

Well, so there's a great Michael Phelps story on this topic. He's obviously great. Everybody around them is probably optimizing, I would imagine, for more reps, more time in the pool. Keep him motivated, feed him. Right. Like, do every. Wipe his butt, do everything we can because we can see where this guy's going. Yep. And the coach was smart enough to do what I said. The coach was like, no, break his goggles. Don't tell him.

Oh, wow.

Right. Right before the race. Oh, lose his flight tickets. Don't tell him. Have his bag get checked on the wrong flight. Don't tell him. And. And so they were preparing him to be completely flustered and win anyway. And. And so I think that's the Lesson. I think that's the lesson for us. But he was, he was a, he was a coach that was being paid. You and I are parents that are looking.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay. So I'd like to talk about failure. Failure for like you as well. Like, how have you embraced failure? What's your. Because that's a big fear for people. If I'm going to go for my dreams, if I'm going to do something, what if I fail? So can you talk to us about the lessons you've learned? Maybe some of the ways you've failed that you wanted to share?

Well, I mean, this is easier said than done. Nobody wants to fail. Just like we don't want the kids to leave their ski gloves behind. But we really have to figure out how to internalize this concept that there is no way to win without failing. It's got like, like there's just no way. No one, no one signs up for the first race ever in some sport or takes the first. Like there's just no way. So whether it's business, whatever it is, you just know I, I coined this term. I fire ready, aim. Yeah, right. And, and so just, just implying that you're going to take the shot first and you haven't really practiced and you're not organized and just. It implies that you're gonna fail. But, but, but you're gonna be learning and failing and iterating all at the same time. And eventually it's gonna work. And so when I think about, you know, as a teenager, young teenager, in my first. I didn't know what I was doing and I ruined my customers, swimming pools, the first few, because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. But. And it sucked. And I didn't want, I never want anybody, no one wants to customer mad at you or anybody mad at you. And, and, but, but I took care of it and I fixed it and I learned. And now the smarter thing probably would have been to go work for somebody first and learn some things and read a book on it. But, but, but I don't know, I just, I just get in there because I'm. I guess I'm afraid I really understand. I would say one thing I really understand is the value of time. And I'm just always in my mind running out of time. So, so that's why I fire and I iterate and I learn and then I get ready and I aim and that, you know, and I fail all along the way. But I don't want to fail. But it's just. I learned at a very young age that it's just. It's part of the process. So if you could teach the kids, if you could teach yourself that, like, it's not a dirty word. It's not a bad word. It's just. It's just part of the deal. And by the way, the faster you fail, as long as it's not fatal, you don't want to die.

Yeah, exactly. Don't die. But everything else is okay.

Everything else is like, it's not even a failure. It's just like, I'm learning.

Yeah. 100. Well, it's amazing. We do that with Emerson is amazing. You know, he plays chess. Chess, which I'm sure you've heard from Brian. And he just has that growth mindset in. It's in who he is. He either wins or wins. Wins or learns like he does. He loses and all these kids are crying and he's like, what can I learn? And I'm never going to make that mistake again. And it's just catapulted him. And it's been inspiring for me to see not growing up with that growth mindset of like, oh my gosh, what's possible if you just have that, right? Like, what can we do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Carol Dweck, right? Growth mindset. It goes back to everything we just said. You know, I was so enamored when my first business, I. I was hiring people from the neighborhood who were tough, like I just said, but they weren't tough enough. And then I met these Polish kids that had just come back then. You know, the Eastern bloc was. It was like real Eastern Europe. And these guys were tough. I mean, there was. They had the growth mindset because it was like, wait a minute, you're gonna pay us, you're gonna feed us, and all we gotta do is work. They didn't have the food. Like, they didn't have all those accoutrement. Those things where they came from. So. So I think it's easier to have a growth mindset if you come from a tougher place. Yeah, like, like, like if you, if you. I use this analogy. If you and I were plants and we grew up in a greenhouse and we were watered on demand and everything was like perfect and the environment was perfect. Versus. We grew up on the side of mountains and it was like snowy and windy and barely got water and the sun was harsh and our roots had to wrap around rocks. Like, probably have a growth mindset. Like anything is looking up anyway.

My two cents and then do you also think, I mean, my experience is I, it's, you know, knowing that my comfort zone lives, my infinite potential lives outside of my comfort zone. Right, I know that. But then there's the feeling of like, I don't really want to do it. But then when you do do it, you feel alive. Right? Like, that's like the key to living an amazing life is to be on that cutting edge. Right. Otherwise, if you're just that plant and you're sitting around watching Netflix, you're dying. I mean, you're literally dying, Right?

Yeah. Can you imagine, at the end of our lives, are we like, man, I wish I sat on the couch more and watched more Netflix. No way. But, but what I tell people all the time, which is why our business works, is you create those stories living on the side of the mountain, wrapping the roots around the rock, hanging on bad storms. Those are the greats. That's the whole Bible, by the way, or whatever religion you believe in. Like those, those are the stories fighting through and surviving. And, and so, and the beauty of it today, as opposed to 2,000 years ago, is there's not any real locust storms or like floods that are like, it's. Yeah, there's a couple of things that happen here and there, but it's not like, you know, we're not being attacked by bears waking up, there's a snake trying to kill us, there's a scorpion on our neck. And so if you can go out and take on some adventures, even with khakis and patent loaf for shoes, on up a trail, right? Like, and get a two mile hike in. The only workout, the only adventure I regret is the one I don't do. The only one I regret. I'm debating now. My friends are asking me, hey, Joe, come out to badwater. And for November 11th, they want to run. They're going to run Badwater with a flag for Veterans Day. And I've got a lot of shit going on and, you know, there's always a reason why I can't. But I'm going to try to squeeze it in and see if I could get out because I know if I go out and see them, maybe I'll have my son come out. That'll be a story. It's another story.

Yeah. And then at the end of our lives, like collecting those stories, right? Of like, those stories of we're going to remember those, right? And then the reality of we have a very short period here.

And it's getting shorter.

It is definitely not getting younger.

Time.

Okay, so then talk to me about leadership, because you have a global, incredibly successful business. You are a leader, an entrepreneur, a businessman, a father. Like, I mean, you are leading day in and day out. Talk to me about your leadership style. Like, what do you have tips for people on leadership and how to be a great leader.

I mean, I never learned it formally. I. You know, I. Again, I was in the neighborhood. I had these little businesses. I had to inspire people. I had to inspire customers to give us business. I had to inspire the people around me to work much harder than they intended on working. I had. I had to convince them to skip holidays to be with me and do these things because we were doing these great things. So I would say the one attribute I have is I have. I have an ability to infect people with this excitement around doing something that they didn't plan on doing. My friends used to say, growing up that they would come over my house to watch a movie. Back then we had VHS tapes, and they were excited to come over and watch a movie because my dad had the cool equipment. And the next thing you know, they had, like, a broom in one hand, a shovel in the other hand. They're like, how did we end up doing this construction job? And. And. But that was my dad's knack of, like, the thing I learned, which is getting people excited about something, getting people to do things they otherwise wouldn't do. That's what I'm really good at. So that's my. That's my. My leadership. I generally prefer not. I don't like to manage people. I want people to be excited and just go do it and get the job done. Hopefully, in this world of AI, it'll be easier for me to measure. To measure who's naughty and who's nice, who's getting the job done. But really, that comes down on me and us, right? Like, if I can inspire people more, then there'll be more people grabbing the broom and the shovel and just doing it. And if I can't inspire people more, then maybe the broom and the shovel are tucked away in the closet and they're not working. We don't know.

Okay, so then, like, transformation, like, getting people to actually pick up the broom to do the work. Like, how do you manage pushing people too far? Because I know you. You have pushed people to what they never thought was capable, that they were capable of doing. You know, whether that's a Spartan or just in your life, right? Friends and family, what's. What's your, like, secret for that? Like, when do you, like, stop pushing? Like, what's the, what's the line?

I don't think I ever stopped pushing. I think definitely the problem in my household. My son looked at me this morning. He had just done a wrestling practice and ran three miles home. He was sitting by the plane. I. Right away, as soon as he saw me, I was, I was hitting him with stuff. What about this? What about that? He's like, could you go back inside, please? Can you please just go back inside? And so I don't. I think I'm pretty relentless. I think if somebody has a really strong opinion, I get excited about that because. Because, okay, then you got it. You own it. Right. You got a good. You got a good opinion. You want to do it. You want to run with it, Run with it. And I'll let people fail. That's okay. I, I learned a long time ago when we first started this business, we, we pushed out our idea of Spartan all over the world for 45 countries. And then our people in those 45 countries started doing things that were not what we envisioned back home.

Yeah.

And the knee jerk reaction was, well, hang on a second. You got to follow our policies, our procedures. But there were things they were doing that we hadn't thought of. So we started bringing those things back home. And so very early on, I realized we can't think of everything. We can't have all the good ideas. And so if you can inspire people and let them run, before you know it, they're no longer using a broom and a shovel. They got like an electric sweeping machine that we didn't even.

Yeah. So you're building like, leader. I mean, you're building leaders, so. Because there's only so much that you can do. Right. And like, run with it.

Yeah.

And that, and that openness and willingness to have humility. Right.

And teamwork might not always work. Might be a problem, but that's okay. We're in it. We're in it together.

That's so great. So awesome. Okay, so what would you recommend? Like, if somebody's like, I really have this creative dream, I want to start a business, I'm right at that threshold. What tips would you have as all of your experience from all the things you've done?

There is no idea. There is no business. There is no dream. If you don't have a customer, go get one customer. Yeah, go get a customer. You don't have to leave your job. You don't have to leave your family. You don't have to sell your house. You don't have to do anything. Get one customer. And when one customer says, oh my God, this is unbelievable. I can't believe this pretzel you make. This is the best pretzel I've ever had. Right. And the second piece of it is, what's the virality coefficient? I didn't know this word. And we were building Spartan and we were having a tough time because before social media and Zanga, the video game, I was lucky enough to get on the phone with the founder of Zanga and he said, we got to look at your virality coefficient. I said, what the hell is that? And he said, well, when we build games, we spend $5 million developing each game and then we put it out in the market and we watch. It's like that one customer. I just said, right. Does that one customer with the pretzel or in this case, the game, does that person tell five people, one people, one person, 50 people? Because if they only tell themselves and they don't share it with anybody, then it's dead in the water. Then we can't invest anymore in that game because we, we can't afford to market one. And done. We can afford to market one to five. So, so, so, so that dream that you have, that, that, that creation that, that it's nothing if you don't have one customer and you don't watch that customer tell some other people about does it won't work? Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. And just listening to you, it's like, I'm talking to my husband. Sounds great.

Oh, my gosh.

I know why you guys are like so tight.

My buddy, what's great about him? I'm so jealous of him because he goes off social media and phone calls and everything for like six months at a time. Then, then he'll reappear and he's be like, where are you? And I'm like, where have you been?

Like, people like texting. And he's like, sorry, I turned my phone off for three months.

Yeah, exactly like, like, yeah, I want to do that too, Brian.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. I love that. That is amazing on the advice because a lot of people are like, I'm going to.

I'm going to interrupt you. Here's what we're going to do. Next time he texts me.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm going to make believe I have a forwarding thing on. And I'm just right back. Joe is not here. Joe followed Brian Johnson's advice and is taking six months off. Return soon. Bye.

You should Totally do it. You should. And he'll be like, can you believe it?

I can't believe it. How irresponsible is that? Yeah.

Anyway, that's awesome. So I do love what you shared, because I think just on the tip for the business or whatever it is, the creation, because a lot of people think they need to quit their jobs or they need to do anything. So that's, like, just solid advice. One person. And also, as you were sharing that, I was thinking Spartan. Is that right? I mean, you have. You have, like, cracks of code on that. Because it's like, hey, I did this thing. I did this thing. I'm doing this thing. Like, there is this energy around doing a Spartan that, you know, you want to tell all your friends, like, you want to. Hey, I want to see the pictures. I want the medals. I want to be muddy. Like, there's. So obviously you designed that. I mean, I don't know if you intentionally designed it that way, but that's the way that it's played out.

Yeah, that's the way it played out. Now. Now, the problem with our virality coefficient is you might finish a race, one of our events, right? And you might tell 20 people, but your friends don't want a piece of that. They're, like, too hard, not in shape. You're crazy. Why would I possibly get dirty? My whole life, I've been told to use Clorox and keep everything clean. So, yeah, well.

And I think we've had probably through our events, we've probably had over a thousand people. Would never have done a Spartan. I mean, we don't have athletes in our community. There's, you know, one. It's like a moment that I remember. She was a very large woman, and we were like, just show up, and the team will support you. She couldn't even get over the first wall, like, to start, we had 10 people lifting her over. She finished. Like, we almost. She almost didn't finish because it was, like, dark, Right? But so we've had so many people who are like, you've expanded their possibility. They're like, no way. I'm not doing this, Spartan. And I always say, show up. We have hundreds of people. We will support you, and you can do it. And Joe, it's like one of my highlights of our events. I get. They cry almost every time, watching these people scared to death to start it, and then them finish, and they're like, their whole life changes.

Everything changes. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Obviously, I agree.

Yeah, yeah. But tell us, so what. What do you think is that transformation that's happening for people, that they can do hard things? Like, what do you. What have you seen?

I think it's a few things I didn't set out, although I loved competing, and I felt transformed. And the few people I would bring to race with me, like, I didn't set out to build a business on transformation. That wasn't the goal. It was just, like, I like doing this, and it'd be cool if we could get other people to do it. And when I think about, how could it be that barbed wire? And, like, it doesn't make sense. Like, I. People come up to me. Some people think, is this an AA convention? Like, because everybody's coming up with, like, crying, and you change my life, and I'm back on my husband. I'm back with my wife. I lost £200. I gave up drugs. I gave up drinking. I didn't kill myself. How could it be? And I was like, oh, I see. It's sunlight, it's weather, it's outdoors, it's community, it's struggle, right? Like. Like, if you and I had a dog and we walked in the house and the dog was watching Oprah and the dog was painting her nails, and she had her hair in a bun and she was smoking a cigarette, that.

Would be weird, right?

If we came home and the dog was running outside and just killed a bird and was running through mud and, like, was happy, and that would be normal. And the dog is an animal, just like you and I are animals. And so how could we expect that that animal could feel healthy and optimal and. And be doing all the things it could do in its life if it's sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette? Like, I'm being dramatic, obviously, but. So when we act like the animals that we are, we feel good, right? I mean, that's. That's why we transform.

Mm. Yeah. It's like the wildness in us, right? It's igniting that wildness and, like, letting go of the domestication.

Yeah. I mean. I mean, imagine. Here's a better one, actually. I just thought of. Imagine you and I went to the zoo, and we saw a couple lions at the zoo, and we were like, you know what? Let's open the gate. And the lions went out in the wild, right? And then we were like, I wonder how they transformed, because they've been in the zoo for 10 years, right? Like, walking in circles. And that's. That's us.

Yeah, 100%. That is exactly us. I think about. I feel sad, like, I go to the zoo and it's amazing to be so close, but then I'm like, so sad. Like, that lion is meant to be, like, sprinting and, like, hunting, and it's like. But then I'm like, worth that. Where that.

My dog. My dog. We got this great new dog, and she gets the zoomies at night and she turns wild lion. She is, like, flying through the house. And that's what it is. She's like, what am I doing in this house? Get me out of this house.

Totally. Okay, so I want to know about the Spartan. Like, did you. You designed it, like you said, which I love is how to start any great business. I just love this, and I want to give it to people, right? But then, I mean, it's like a perfect hero's journey. Like, the whole process. Did you, like, do any sort of thinking about that or any of it? But you just, like, just intuitively this just makes sense. And then people, because they get that experience of a mini hero's journey.

All of it.

The cross of threshold, the facing your dragons, your demons, and you return back with the boon. I mean, all of it.

No, I didn't have any intelligence around it when I competed myself. After sitting on a trading desk for so long at that time of my life, I remember the moment of feeling so alive and so awesome that there was some kind of a business there. But I. I didn't. I didn't even know what the hero's journey was. I didn't know any of this stuff. And. And. And I happened to have a guy with me on the first race we put on. I had a guy with me from Discovery Channel. He wanted to do a TV show with us. And he. We were sitting there all day, and it was probably at 700 racers. And this is actually a funny story. The first race I put on, we had this idea to put a gladiator in the woods at, like, mile two. So imagine runners were going through the woods unsuspecting, and this guy jumped out with a. With a big jousting stick and started pummeling people. And that was a scene, right? Like, you're not even expecting it. And then you get tackled by this guy. And I just happened to have this guy on the farm in Vermont who was a big, funny guy, Anthony. And we got on this big jousting stick, and he was just pummeling people. And so me and the Discovery guy are in the festival area, and we're noticing that there's not many people left in the festival area. They had all migrated to the woods to go see Anthony attacking runners.

Yeah.

Anyway, throughout the day. Damn it. I forget his name. The guy from Discovery Channel, Tom. Throughout the day, Tom is watching everything unfold. Probably knows a lot more than me about the hero's journey. And. And at the end of the day, says, hey, Joe, you see what's happening here? Like, literally, people are transforming. He's what? And he walks me through, like, the science of what you're talking about here. And he's like, you. You really got something. And I didn't quite understand. That was just too deep for me at that. Like, I gotta figure out how to buy barbed wire at a discount. I. I gotta. There's other stuff, you know what I mean? But, yes, later on. Later on, I figured out, and I started doing speeches and writing books that. Yeah, this is. This is unbelievable how it. How it takes people through that whole journey.

And it's just great because they can also. Like, there's the lessons. Like, what do you think the top lessons people learn in a Spartan race that they can then take to their life, or they learn it and then they go implement it into their life?

Well, I think the biggest one for sure is perspective. Right? Like. Like whatever you thought your thresholds were before, you just stretched yourself to a point where you're like, you could pretty much do anything. I remember I had. I had done a giant race, and I. Every time I personally raced around the world, I would. I would write a recap. I would just vomit up all this stuff on a piece of paper because it was fresh in my mind. And the last 11 days, however long it took me to do that race, I couldn't. And I would send it to all my Wall street buddies. And I remember Steve Weiss, who's a very successful family, wrote me back and said, boy, I couldn't find the parking spot near the grocery store today, and I had to park about a block away. That was a nightmare. After reading this, I can't complain. I can't complain about that anymore. And so that's the perspective shift. Yeah.

Yeah.

And. And I think that's what happens to people. I don't have an umbrella in the rain. That was a big problem yesterday after I've done the Spartan race. No big deal. Actually, I don't melt in the rain. Right. So there's a lot of. A lot of. A lot of things starting then. The other big one is, oh, my God, I can't believe the power of having a date on the calendar. Remember a wedding business. My wife and I. On the farm in Vermont, and I got. Over the last 20 years, I'd see a lot of brides and grooms come book the place, and then a year later get married. And what I started to see over and over and over was, oh, my God, they look completely different when they show up to get married. They're fit. They had a date on the calendar, cameras there. They had family there. Right. And so they took themselves more seriously. And so that's when I started to understand this whole data. We're not going to do the work unless we have a date on the calendar.

Yeah. Because it's easy to be like, maybe I'll start next week.

Start next week.

Oh, yeah, next year. Next year when my knee is better. Like, oh, next. Yeah, next year I'm gonna lose 30 pounds. Then I'll do it. Right. Versus put it on there and do it.

People say to me all the time, I'll do it when I'm in shape. I'm like, you stupid mofo, if you were gonna do it when you get it, you'd already be in shape. Yep. In shape. Because you don't want to get in shape. And so the only way to get in shape is to sign up for the damn thing.

Yeah, totally. It's amazing to see what people in our community who would never have done a Spartan, then they sign up, and all of a sudden they're like, I'm training. I'm going to the playground to work on monkey. Like, they think I'm doing things I've never even thought of doing. Right.

They have no choice. Yeah.

Okay, so you mentioned Courtney. I do want to talk about Courtney. So talk to me about Courtney and how you supported her. I mean, she is kind of. I always, you know, people always say, behind a great man is always a great woman. But I always say it's not behind. It's right next to, like, let's be real. She is right there next to you. How do you support. How have you supported her? Kind of on her goddess journey, her heroine's journey.

I. I would say I'm terrible. I. I would say Courtney is awesome. Like, I think it's so random the way men and women meet. Right. Like, they might meet at a bar. They might meet. Like, it's so completely random and it's risky because you don't know that, like, you don't made for each other or not had. I not. I don't think. I'm not just saying it. Like, there's very few women in the world that would have Put up with me. There's just no way. I'm like, she gets five minutes notice I'm going away for five days on a business trip, whatever. And she's completely cool. So it is pretty unbelievable how she supports me and the mission. And. And then I would say, and every man. Every man and woman should learn this. What I'm about to describe. Then I would say she. She hurt her knee once and a couple times. She was a soccer player, and she came home and she and the kids were like, oh, mom's upstairs crying or whatever. Like, what the hell is she crying about? I go upstairs, and she's crying because she hurt her knee. It looks like she's got to get another surgery or whatever. And I'm. You know, my answer is going to be, suck it up, tape it up, get, get, get, get on with it. And so she says to me, look, I know you're just gonna say, deal with it or whatever. I need you to say these words right now. I said those words. Whatever she told me to say, I said, and she was cool. And so how powerful is that? If partners could figure out how to just. Like I've been saying to a lot of people that I know in relationships, hey, Courtney did this once. You might want to try it because. Because if you. If you could be humble enough as the recipient of that information to just do or. Or, you know, not have a big enough. Your ego be in enough check for. For Courtney to be able to say, just say this to me, right, Because. Because most of us are going to want the person just do it, figure it out their own. And so that's. Oh, I know. The question was, like, how do you support her? And I'm giving you, like, how she supports me, but, like, she's just awesome. And I don't know. I don't know if you could build a business like we built in 45, you know, across 45 countries, 15 million people across the finish line. If. If I took time away from it and spent more time focused on her or the family or whatever. Like, people say, well, work, life, balance. And I say, well, something's going to suffer. Like, the family might do really, really well. The business is going to suffer. The career is going to sell. Like, you can't really balance it all. I believe in integration. You got to just integrate the whole thing. And so I would say. I would say. And I don't say it in a mean way. I'm not thrilled about it, but I'm thankful for it. She's been definitely the supporter and I've been the taker in this deal. Now the reality is, because we work so hard, because I worked since I'm a preteen, we have a roof over our head. We have food. I've always got extra kids living in the house that were taken care of somehow. There's nine or ten kids show up every day after school. They're eating. People sometimes are in the house cooking. I don't even know who they are. So. True. True story. Like, you.

Like. Like people. You or kids or both.

Big kids could be people. Like, it's just. It's a very open, fun house.

Yeah.

And. And. And so when you say, like, how do you. I guess that's what I support. Like, there's no selfishness around anything that's ours is yours, and that's fine. And she. And. And because I found a mate that is like that. She. She's. I think that's fun. Thanksgiving, for example, we got coming up. Right? You're gonna love this. So she wants to go to her sister's house, which we should. We should be with family on Thanksgiving and all go there. But I got this friend in Saudi who is. Could be very influential. Is very influential, could really help us in a lot of ways with our business. And he lives in Saudi. He's from Saudi. And he says to me, I always wanted to become a sheriff, and that's not easy. Like, if you said to me, be a sheriff, like, how do I go? I don't know. Go figure it out. So I made some calls, and he's coming in on Thanksgiving, and I'm going to get him deputized in Philadelphia, and he's going to become a sheriff. And. And so. But that means we gotta do Thanksgiving dinner in Philly. And my wife's like, all right, well, it sucks. I want to be with my sister. But if we gotta go to Philly with the family to go deputize a Saudi to become a sheriff, that's what we'll do. So.

So that is great. And you guys are in Florida, right? You have a Vermont. Vermont. In Florida, right?

Vermont and Florida. We're in Florida. We found an unbelievable wrestling pro. It'd be like if you. Brian.

Yeah. Right.

You found a chess program and you'd be there. Yeah, probably. There probably is one in Siberia. I gotta tell Brian.

Yeah, we're gonna have to go to Europe at some point. For sure. We have to go somewhere in, like. We're going to have to go somewhere for Emerson, definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So that's Great.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if that was a good answer or not. Like, no, it's great.

I mean. I mean, I love Courtney. I've only met her once, but, like, she just had so. I just loved her. She had so much fire. And I would agree, knowing what I know about you and love you, Joe, There has to be a certain specific woman that would deal with that. And why I can say that so clearly is there is also equal to Brian. It's not all. You know, it's like you guys are just your own people, and you have such big energies and such big visions that, you know, there. There has to be a level of. You got to know what you're getting into.

By the way, I say all the time, like, no ego here. If anybody else could do this, I'd much rather be running up and down the mountain. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I. You know, like, as long as the job gets done. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

To be me, I'd rather not be me. Yeah. So I don't know.

For now it is. So what would you say? Tips. How long have you and Courtney been married?

2004, so 21 years.

Okay. So what are some tips for 21 years? For kids, what would you recommend?

Well, definitely all the business trips help. Right. I'm always on business trips, so you need those. Yeah, I think those breathers are. Yeah. Fantastic. I think they're great. Because, you know, when I was building my pool business when I was young, I had 750 customers, and I saw a lot of families. I stood. The Senna family, the Johnson family. This one. That one. I saw how. And in general, husbands drive their wives crazy. In general, there's lots of wives that drive their husbands crazy, but in general, drive their wives crazy. And. And so taking that break and getting and getting. You know, I go on these trips all the time. It just. It helps. And then I think somebody could be the man, could be the woman, but somebody's gotta be that person that does what Courtney said, which is just say this right now, like, because we're not going to. Well, either side. We're not going to say the right things when we're supposed to. We're going to screw things up. And so you got to be able to. You've got to have a solid enough ego or no ego to be able to just understand that we're not perfect. This is a really long road for this to work, and we're going to have to just make it work.

Yeah. For sure. Well, I think that is, like you said, the humility. And a lot of times, I think the partners don't. I love that Courtney did that. They never say the right thing, you know, And I don't. Women probably don't say the right thing either. I think women are more sensitive to saying the right thing than the men are. You know, like, Brian's like, just tell me how it is. And I don't like when he just tells me how it is. He wants me to just say it, but I'm like, I don't really like, in that tone of voice. And, like, I'm not. Could you say a little bit different?

One of our biggest battles, Courtney and I, was over dogs. She doesn't like dogs.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Yeah. She's afraid. She's afraid of dog. I think she was bit when she was a kid, I think. And so. But I love dogs. I want more people in the house, you know, parrots, and. And I like it all. And. And so I. I got this dog, Waffles. I saw this picture of this dog. We named them Waffles because my son said, don't. Don't name them something tough. Mom will definitely not. We got to name him, like, a soft, cushy name. So we came up with Waffles. But anyway, he was sick, and we saved them, and she was just deathly afraid of this dog. And the dog was becoming. In the six months of U.S. saving him, the dog was becoming closer and closer to being like, my. Like, he was unbelievable. Like, any bff, big time bff just shut. Sit down in the car. He was just unbelievable. And. And it was. This was like the toughest moment with our marriage because she was like, it's the dog or me. And. And so I was sitting here one day at lunch by the office, and some guy was in this restaurant where I was going for lunch, and he was like, man, that is a nice dog. And he was just sitting. You know, dog waffles are just sitting next to me at attention, and. And I was like, yeah, you want them? And I gave him away. No, I gave him away. And the guy's got him. He sends me pictures, and then the universe always works out for me. So, like, a month went by, and I was in Saudi or somewhere, and this person I know in town here was playing pickleball and said, hey, look at this little puppy is for sale. And it was the exact same dog, same coloring, same everything but a puppy. Oh, wow. So I was like, I'll take it. But now I Got to figure out how I handle Courtney. So. So anyway, around. It's awesome. Around Christmas time, 10. Ten months ago, I said, listen, you know, we can go get this dog, whatever. But I had already committed. And she's like, did you already come? And I said, well, not really. We could. We could decide. Let's go together and we'll see if we like the dog. But the people were like, hey, you got to get this dog. You told me. So I take Charlie at my two kids. Two kids come with us. And we get to the people's house, and I see through their front window, in the back window, I see they've got. The parents are jumping up on the balls and hanging. You know how those pit bulls do that? And they're scary, right? They'll jump up. They're hanging, and they're bouncing. And the husband and wife were like, oh, do you want to come in the back and meet the parents? But I can see that. I was like, no, no, no, no. And I turn Courtney around because I don't want her to see.

Yeah, yeah.

The bigger dog's doing that, and the little puppy comes out. And the little puppy looks like a fuzzball. You know what I mean? She's tiny. She's like five, six weeks old. And surprisingly, Courtney was like, yeah, yeah, we'll take it. And. And so now the dog is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's turning out to be the same size dog, the one I gave away, but. But I think she's okay with it now. She seems okay.

Yeah, it's good with a puppy, right? Like, you can kind of grow it. Grow with the puppy a little bit more.

I mean, I'm fine. Puppy big. That doesn't. I just love dogs.

Yeah, but you. You haven't been out. You haven't been here yet. Have you been here?

I haven't been there.

Yeah, we had.

We.

At one point, we had five dogs.

Oh, wow.

So we have. We are like the dogs. Because we live in the country. We have had, actually five dogs come to us, and I've taken in all of them.

I love it. I had a great story. I was talking to a guy recently. I don't know if it was a podcast or whatever, and he said he and his dad went and got a dog rescue. The guy was like, I don't know if you want that one. You want. You probably. And he goes, no, no, we want that one. And. And. And about eight months in, the dog came in with a rabbit in its mouth, like I'd killed A rabbit was like bleeding or whatever and, and then a few months went by and it came in with like the leg of a deer in its mouth. And the dad and him were starting to say like, this doesn't seem like a regular dog. And then five, six months went by and they couldn't find the dog. And the dad went up and over the mountain in the backyard in Connecticut and looked down and, and it was standing at attention and was holding court with like eight coyotes. And they were like, this is a wolf. We don't have a dog. They had a wolf. They had rescued.

My gosh, that is awesome. That is awesome. Yeah, we, we. He. I called him a wolf dog. He was, he ended up getting hit by a car because he was wild and would not be domesticated. And he was amazing. Like, it was, that was really hard for me. But he. Cow bones, cow head, I mean, like bunnies. Like, I'm like, welcome to the country. Like, no joke. We had bones like everywhere. Like he was getting in dog fights. He'd come in like all bloody. He'd get in dog. Had to break up dog fights. It was like. It's been a whole thing that I've been not used to. Like, welcome to the country of Texas.

That's funny.

Awesome. Is there anything that we missed? Any like, final wisdom that you have?

I would say, and it's going to sound self serving but. But it's not. I would say if you're listening or watching, not only should you take on one of those adventures and it doesn't have to be ours, but you should, you should do it in random places. So like we operate in 45 countries and when I go out to an Abu Dhabi, let's say, and I'm in the desert and I'm climbing dunes and I'm meeting people that are different than me and maybe they're, you know, have different religions. Like that's even a. That amplifies the story even, even more. So not only to sign up for hard things and I'm happy to give anybody in the world a ticket, no charge. I'm never going to let that get in the way. But do it. Go travel, do it, do it in different places. You really get to see. You got to do it outdoors, you got to be outside, you got to do it somewhere in the world. You got to meet new people and it's no different, you know, if you only did biceps every day in the gym, like we talked about when we started the conversation, you're not going to grow.

Yep, yep. And Just the traveling gets you out of your comfort zone, too, right?

No doubt. You got to travel.

I also bridges that. Like, when you do hard things together, you are in the sun. Like, you get a level of challenge, but also fun. Fun. And, like, it's like a peak experience.

If I. We could literally solve all the world's problems. If I had, like, I've always said we got to have races in North Korea, Iran. Because if. If you. My. You, me, and. And people in these different. If we did these things together and the leaders did them together, all the problems would go away.

Yep. Yeah, I would. I would agree with that totally. Yeah.

If you put all the dogs in your living room and you don't let them out, they're all. They're. They're all killing each other in no time.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Or just destroying the house, which I had also.

That's the problem. Yeah.

And that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing to each other.

That's right.

Yeah. And it's like, this is a great avenue to, like, get it out. Expand your comfort zone and just go on your own minute. Mini hero's journey, goddess journey, and you won't regret it. It's. I love it. I mean, I don't race for myself anymore. I mean, I did a couple like that, but now it's just to be with a hundred of people or hundreds of people in our community to support them and to watch them, you know, lift them over the walls and help them, you know, like, it's just watching them is, like. It's very moving for me just to see.

Same. Paige, I'm so glad you invited me.

Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad you came. It's so great to meet you. Please tell Courtney I appreciate her, and I do want to interview her. I know she thought we were kidding.

She's so nervous about it. She's like, it's not me. I don't do.

Oh, my gosh.

Tell.

Tell to call me. Maybe we'll talk before.

If you want to get her. Want me tell you how to get her? Just send a text and say, hey, I heard you were the best ever at the Presidential fitness Test back when you were young. Is that true? Just say that.

Okay.

That's like an inside joke, nine paragraphs back.

So important for, you know, I mean, this is. I appreciate you coming on the Rock youk Goddess Life podcast, but it's so important for women to be, like, to hear her story. Right. Because, I mean, you potentially could have done with what you've done without. Without her. But I would guess that she's, like, pivotal, and it's like, she has information and she has wisdom for all of us of, like, how do you support somebody like you? You know? And she's.

She just.

She's done so many things. She's an athlete. I mean, she's raised four kids. I mean, she is, like, amazing. So I'll send that to her, but appreciate you. Thank you for being here. Lots of love. Okay, bye.