Heroic Chat with Joe De Sena: Get To The Starting Line

Foreign.

P.m. plus six minutes central time, which means it is day one today. I am thrilled to have my dear friend, soul brother Joe Disena join us. I'm going to give him a proper introduction in a moment, but Joy, if Joe, if you can wave and say hello, that'd be great.

What's up, people?

Let's go. All right.

Is Pete Cohen out there? My buddy, Pete Cohen.

Pete Cohen, are you here? If so, hand up. Let's go. If you've done a Spartan race, hand up. Let's go. We'll see how many of you have done a Spartan race. We should have had a poll. Get. Get an actual hand up. That'd be cool. All right, we're throwing it up here. You know, if you've been part of the community, if you want to graduate the Heroic coach program. Perfect. Meet us on a Spartan race course. Face those obstacles, get a little bit stronger. We obviously have Joe to thank for that, but let me say hi real quick. Vinnie, great to see you. Kira, Dina. Anthony, Lou, Hugh. Shannon. April's in the house. Lori Knapp, lydia. Anissa, Troy, Alex. 94 climbing up strong, dude. Coach Lanning looking solid in the hat. Heidi, Laurie, Kyle, Fernando, and Timmy B on my first screen. I am thrilled to be here today. If you just spend, like, two seconds listening to me, you know how big of a fan I am of Joe Disena. So Joe is the, among many things, founder and CEO of Spartan Race, and we've covered a ton of his work. I just did a quick search. Joe, in our app, right? So you come into our app. Oops, that was a picture. Let me go into the app. You come into the app. You know you can do a lot of different things, right? If you do a search for Spartan, what you will find is 61 references in those daily heroic plus ones that I do. I've covered four, I think all four of your books, right? Spartan Up, Spartan Fit, the spartan way, and 10 rules for resilience. Spartan up changed my life. I didn't even know what a burpee was before I read Spartan Up. I'm like, burpee, let's go, hero. That sounds like fun. Went at it, did my first Spartan race. Got really into Spartans. I think the first time we talked, I had the twister on my office wall back in the day in Ohio. Like, what's. That's how it's done. Spartan Fit and then the Spartan Way, which is basically the 10 Spartan virtues. And then Joe's most recent book, the 10 Rules for Resilience. Parents Read this book to figure out how you can parent the next generation of heroes. It's phenomenal. And I actually did a Spartan training, one on one class as well. So that's. Joe. I'm excited to have you share more about your story, but I think Angela Duckworth summed it up most powerfully in Grit. Maybe she was just a blurb somewhere for you. Angela Duckworth, of course, wrote the book on grit. Coined the word grit to describe the intense passion, intense perseverance of those who really make a difference in the world and achieve what they set out to achieve. She describes Joe as a paragon of grit. And I think that's the most concise way to describe at least that facet of you. You're also a family man and just a good human being. So I love you. I appreciate you being here and I appreciate you dedicating your life to being a radiant exemplar and pushing us out of our edge and all that good stuff.

Thanks for having me. I. I get a smile when I see certain people and I see a lot of people, and you're one of those people that give me a smile. So thanks for having me.

Right on, dude. Thank you for being here. And let's get to work. So this is Heroic Chats with Masters, in which I invite some of my favorite people such that we can hear about your heroic quest. Obviously all in on heroic in this idea that we're all here to live our best, most heroic life. And your story really, really inspires me. So tell us who you are, how you got to this point, and then we'll talk about some of your favorite heroes, some of your favorite guides, some of the biggest transformative lessons you've learned in your energy, your work and your love. But, but I just want to start at the top. Tell us about you. Tell us about what brought you here.

Including, yeah, let's say, let's go way back and everybody just start raising your hand to Brian if you're. If you've already heard the story. But back in the, in the 70s, I was born in 69 and in the early 70s in Queens, New York. If you've ever seen the movie Goodfellas, I grew up right there. Ground zero for the non heroes that did crazy things, ended up in jail, all the wrong things. But as a kid, you don't, you don't know any better, right? You grow up in that environment, you become that. My mom's mother, my grandmother was sick. She had cancer. This was a time where people were not believing in Breast milk. They were. They were using powdered milk, they were smoking cigarettes, they were eating McDonald's. They were throwing the McDonald's garbage out the window of a car. Like it was just a crazy time in our past. She goes into a health food store to try to save her mother, meets a yogi who just landed at JFK airport, the airport right next to where I grew up. And that yogi convinces my mom in that meeting, while she's in this, probably the only health food store on the east coast at the time, convinces her to give up the sausage, the peppers, the cigarettes, the raviolis, and completely change her lifestyle. She becomes a vegan overnight, starts practicing yoga, starts eventually teaching yoga, starts meditating, fasting, cold showers. Everything that's cool and hip today and seems so new. She was pushing. Well, somebody was convincing her. And then she was pushing. Back in the early 70s, that guru goes on to to start a race in Queens that still exists today. A foot race solely meant to show how powerful the mind is if you allow it to be. And it's called the Transcendence run. It's a three, 100 mile run around a one mile loop. You continue to run circles for 50 to 60 days. About eight people a year sign up for it. I get introduced to it. My sister gets introduced to it at a very young age. My mother starts running. She doesn't complete that event, but I start to see what's possible. And even though I'm against it, I start eating more salad. And even though I'm against it, I'm seeing yoga and monks and beads and chanting in my living room. My parents eventually get divorced. My mother moves to Ithaca, New York. I go on. It's a crazy story how I ended up at Cornell because I didn't even know where college was. I had no intention of going to college, but I want to get back to the neighborhood. I want to get back to making money. I want to be with tough guys. Am I tough enough? Was the tape that kept playing in my head. I didn't really want any of this crunchy stuff that my mother was into. It was way too forward thinking, it was too weird. And I made my way to Wall street and I did what everybody does, right? I built a career and started making money. And I thought that was what I wanted, that was what we were supposed to do. And I found myself on a trading desk on Wall street making plenty of money, doing three dinners a night. Because the more dinners I had, the better we did as a business. And I don't feel Good. My cousin, my mom dies, by the way, cancer. Her sister dies of cancer. Well, her sister's son, my cousin hits me up, I'm on the trading desk, I'm in full swing and says, you got to try this hot yoga. It's unbelievable. I go, here we go with the yoga again. I thought I was done with that. And he says, no, you're going to like it. It's hard. Like it is hard. And so I go out and do a hot yoga class, fall in love with it from there. Find crazy adventure races all over the world. The harder they were, the more challenging they were. The more likely that you would quit or die during the race, the more interested I was in it. There were tremendous escapes for me. I found that taking people out to dinner, taking people out to drinks, doing the normal things that you do with clients and potential clients was okay. But when I, when I did hard things with them, it was, you know, it 10x the return. Not only did I have fun, but I built strong bonds with those people. So I found myself doing these races, completely transforming our business with clients. And in the middle of like a 19 hour kayak or paddle or canoe, I was actually in a canoe with a buddy of mine who just died climbing Annapurna. We were in this canoe, we were paddling. Lots of time to think. 19 hours in a canoe, hallucinating. I thought, wouldn't it be great to do this as a business, like to give up what I'm doing? Like my mother gave up that lifestyle if I gave it up and I could actually make a living doing this every day with the fog coming up and I was growing a beard on this canoe. It was awesome. Wouldn't this be great? And the idea was born and that was 1999. So 23 years ago, the idea of turning my passion, this crazy adventure racing, push your limits, extreme wellness thing became a business. And my idea was, could I create like a, a social network of crazy people, People like Brian, people like myself, 50,000 of us I figured existed around the world. They would climb Everest, they would row a rowboat across, you know, the Atlantic. But there weren't that many of them, I surmised. But I thought they inspire the world. They get shit done, they get us moving. And so the first iteration of it back in 99, 2000 was peak P E A K. Because I, I was into mountain climbing and I don't know, it seemed like the right word. The URL was available, available four letter URL, peak.com. and I started messing around with it. And from 2000 to 2010 I lost a lot of money. I couldn't get people to do these events. The format was wrong. I was asking people to do 350, 500 mile races. Remember my Fama reference? We was the 3100 mile race that my mom had introduced. My mom fasted and meditated in her room alone for 30 days once. Right. So my, my vision of what we should be doing was just ridiculous. It wasn't for the masses. Well, after 10 years, by 2010, after 10 years of losing money and lying to people to get them to do races, I used to tell people it was a barbecue that they were coming to, but in fact they were the ones being barbecued. And, and by 2010 I was, I was quitting. It was irresponsible. I had met my wife, we were having children. The financial crisis had just occurred. I wasn't, I wasn't going to do it anymore. And I had a buddy of mine who I would train with. We would grab 50 pound dumbbells in each hand and we would try to get from the base. We have a farm in Vermont where the kids were born, where my wife and I got married. And it's a 1 mile hike from the base of the mountain to the top of the mountain. And so for the longest time I would, could I carry two 50 pound dumbbells from the base to the top? And it's much harder. Sorry, my phone is ringing and it's a guy by the way, that has cancer, a friend of mine, he's got the battle of his life going on. But could I, could I carry him up? And we would drop him. But we had, you know, four or five hours of discussion trying to get these dumbbells up the mountain. And in those discussions it would come up, he would say to me, you know, you should change the format. It should be military inspired obstacle race, barbed wire. And I said, that's ridiculous. Who would ever want to crawl under, like so stupid. But we continued to attempt to carry these dumbbells up the mountain. It was a silly thing we were doing. And fast forward, I took a shot, I took a shot in 2010, early 2010, change the name from Peak to Spartan. Seven hundred people showed up in Vermont at our first race. Then 1500, then 2000. Facebook was becoming a bigger thing. Folks were coming back from the war in the Middle East. CrossFit was becoming big and it just exploded. By 2019, pre pandemic, we had, you know, close to one and a half million registrations per year, 45 countries, 350 events, and we were on top of the world. We bought Tough Mudder, our competitor. We expanded into trail running. Couldn't be any happier. Everything was going perfect. And then the universe said, hold on, it's way too easy for you. We've got to throw an obstacle in your way and see how you handle. We need to test you, Mr. Decenta. And so we got tested. We got shut down in all our countries. Other than you're going to love this for your heroics. The only place we didn't get shut down was Eastern Europe. My buddy runs Eastern Europe for us. He's run it for 12 years. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Czech, Slovakia, Romania. He navigated and never stopped putting on events because that's what Eastern Europeans do. That's what that mindset does. They don't let anything get in their way. And I'm just too soft. I'm too American. I couldn't figure it out. I got shut down everywhere else. We lost $50 million, which we didn't have. And I don't think I ever cried about it. I mean, a lot of. I lost a lot of sleep over it. It's been incredibly hard to get this thing back on. Somehow we survived. We should not have circusylate it. And Silicon Valley bank didn't just survive 36 hours. Credit Suisse didn't survive 30. Somehow we've survived 36 months. And. And why do I do it? Because I get an email. I just got one, like 10 minutes before you called. I get an email. I get eight, ten emails every day. I lost a hundred pounds. I'm back with my husband. I'm back with my wife. I gave up drinking. Two kids just sent me. They gave up drinking. Two young kids gave up drinking. I gave up drugs. I didn't kill myself. I was going to kill myself. I had a gun to my head and remembered I had a race next week. So I get paid in this unbelievable currency called Transformations. And I wouldn't do it otherwise. It's way too hard. I would not do this if I didn't get, like, if it wasn't so purposeful and it wasn't doing what my mom had set out to do. And she paved the way, like, I. I wouldn't do this.

There are about a hundred different threads I want to pull there. But first I'm going to make a note. I get paid in the ultimate currency of transformation. Yeah. So I want to go back to your mom. I want to come all the way through to the. When the pandemic hit because you and I had connected right around that time. I think we had moved out to Austin. We got together. You're doing something in Austin, recruiting somebody or something, and you told me where you were. I thought we had it hard, you know, wow. That's one way to get the heroic gods, the Spartan gods, to bless you with an opportunity to see how strong you are. And I do want to talk about what you did because you did do specific things, which is what I teach, which is quadruple down on your fundamentals. So then all of a sudden you went next, next, next, next level. You're doing daily shows, you're working out harder than ever, you're showing up more powerfully. But before we go there and then some other places, I want to go back to your mom because I just got off of a call earlier this morning with Sean Casey, former major league baseball player, one of the only 200 players ever to bat 300 lifetime. And he spent the first X minutes talking about his dad and how his dad was the one who did this and that and was his ultimate guide. Like, the hero gets a guide and then they get buddies. It's one of the big frames that we use, of course, but just feeling the love that you have for your mom and your mom's courageous quest that she was on as her own hero of her own story, and then becoming your guide, showing you what's possible, and then she had the guide of the guru. I mean, it's just such a cool real time demonstration of the importance of each of us answering the call, being the heroes of our own lives, such that we can become the guides for our families, for our communities, etc. So I just want to take a moment and celebrate your mom in the process and remind everyone here that you are the guides, the coaches for your kids. Or not. Which is the point Joe makes in 10 rules of resilience. Toughen up. You want tougher kids. We want to raise the next generation of heroes. Be that hero now again, we can talk about that for a weekend then. And my mom did the same thing to me. Then we come up all the way through peak. You know, the good times that that was. We pivoted to an insane idea. Yeah, let's go. Oh, my God, it sticks. Tons of dragons we can talk about in that quest, but then come back up to the pandemic. So if you're open to sharing the specifics of what happened to your business that you shared with me and X revenue, down to X percent of that revenue. And then what you did in that moment, because I want to shine a light on the hero just gets hammered by the heroic Spartan gods. What did you do in order to navigate it that you think we may benefit from from hearing from you?

Well, number one. So we get shut down. I guess I'm the ultimate optimist. It doesn't really matter what's going on in my life. Within a few seconds, at most 20 seconds, I'm already on to something else. Like, I just do not get stuck ever. And we remember the word stuck because I got to tell you a story about that. And so I do not believe at that moment that this is going to last more than a week or two or three. I happen to have a friend who runs Saks Fifth Day.

Let me just start. Let me just clarify. When you say we got shut down, what Joe means is his business could no longer operate. He couldn't run the dozens and hundreds of races that he had scheduled. And the revenue went from what it was to zero. Basically overnight. Correct. Or close to that.

Went to zero, couldn't operate. But it's worse than that. It's not like a regular business. I had already sold $45 million worth of tickets, so I had to make good to those people. But I spent that money already because when somebody, a lot of people don't understand how kind of like an airline, if you buy the ticket for that flight, they're paying for insurance and fuel and running their business as soon as they receive your money. So if the flight gets canceled at the last, they already spent the money. It's already gone. No different than us. We already rented the venue. We already paid for the insurance. We already paid the employees. I already moved the trucks. Everything was already paid for. $45 million is gone. But now they all want their money back. Well, I can't give them their money back. So my only choice is to say, look, I will give you another ticket. I'm going to give you two tickets. I'm going to give $90 million worth of tickets away because that's the right thing to do. And we're going to be open in two or three weeks anyway. Well, that never happened. So now I'm carrying. You know, at that point, I reduced my staff from five. I don't know how many we had at that time. We 500 now, but let's say from 500 to 150 people. I furloughed 350 people. I kept a 150 because without them, when this machine turns back on in two weeks I won't be able to do it. I have, right? So. So I'm paying 150 people just for two weeks. But then it goes to three weeks, five weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, years. And I carried all those people and when we turned the machine back on, imagine, now I have to go rent 350 venues. Now I have to go hire back all those people. Now I have to go pay for insurance. Oh, and by the way, I'm not going to receive $90 million anymore because I gave those tickets away. So complete disaster. It couldn't be any worse. Yeah, it couldn't be any worse. But I stuck with the mantra that the standards don't change. That became my mantra, which, which to me meant that you aren't going to catch me in pajamas at 9am If I woke up at 5am before being shut down, I was waking up at 5am after being shut down. I immediately put on a global quote unquote warrior call. Every morning, 5:30am I had folks just like you have them, Brian, all around the world that would join. And we, every day, for 100 days in a row, every day we had the person in Japan, the person in Malaysia, the person in the UK give their updates from, from their different markets. Anybody could join. And it just kept us sane. I did my four workouts a day. I started filming like crazy to stay in touch with our community. I did all kinds of content. I think we called it Unbreakable CEO just so that I convinced myself not to break. And you know, we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun and I just kept telling myself, we'll be fine. I did receive, I did receive a great phone call along the way early on from Hearst. Hearst is our partner. They're the 100 plus year old media company. And they called and they said, well before I tell you what they said, the week before they called Bank America called and said, oh, by the way, that $15 million loan you took, that's, you know, you don't have to pay for three or four years. We want it back tomorrow. So that was a, this is when.

We met, by the way. So we met. That happened like the day or two or three or whatever it was before we got together. I'm like, all right, this is how it's done. I'm channeling Joe D. Here. When I'm going through any challenges I face, I'm like, what would Joe do?

That was a strange phone call to receive. But then Hearst called and I hadn't even Broken the news to Hearst yet? And said, just so you know, we got you whatever you need.

Wow.

So that. That was a nice call to receive and kind of gave us a safety net that we would. We would not be vanishing.

Right.

We were going to have tons of work to do that would come at a cost, but we would not be vanishing. By the way, this is the best one, though. And I don't know if I told you this. We're about three or four months in, and it's getting really ugly for us. And I'm home and my wife says, you need to look at that FedEx. And I'm like, oh, great, the IRS sent me a fed. Because she's tearing up, right? They're coming after us now. And I open up the FedEx and I'm like, oh, that's nice. Somebody sent like a dollar check, like they want to contribute to our debt disaster. It was, you know, it was nice. And I look again, and it's a million dollar check. And it's my buddy who owns Saks Fifth Avenue, and there's a note in there, true story. And it says, listen, I had a really good week. I just want you to know I love what you do. Stick it in a drawer, use it if you want, but we got you. And there's not too many. I can't. I mean, just. Who would do that? It was unbelievable. He's not my family. He's my friend. And so I get chills again, telling you.

Me too.

So anyway, we fought through. We turned it back on. We're just about back. And this is last August. You're going to love this. We're just about back. But what we're fighting last August, what we're fighting is convincing people that we're here to stay, that you could trust us, that you could sign up for an event and know it's going to happen. And I get a call August from the Wall Street Journal, and it's a reporter. And he says, hey, I heard you weren't paying your bills or whatever. We want to do a story on you. Just so you know, we're doing a story anyway, but we'd love to get your take on it in the bankruptcy section of the Wall Street Journal. Cover story, by the way. And. And I'm like, fuck. Like, it can't get any worse. Like, are you guys kidding me? I'm trying to be like, how is that doing anything good for the world that you want to write this story? But Spartan and Tough Mudder are big names, and so if you write this story, you'll probably get a bunch of clicks, and you'll be able to tell your boss. So I get it. And I'm sitting there thinking, man, I didn't quit in 23 years. This would be a good time to quit.

And.

And then I'm like, wait a minute. I know exactly where I am in the road to success. I. I have a map in my head on anything hard, whether it's running a hundred miles, building a business, staying in a great relationship with your wife or your kids or anybody. And I'm in the Valley of Death. And in the Valley of Death, at its lowest point on any journey, the naysayers show up, and the naysayers test you, and they say, told you you couldn't run that marathon. Your knees were no good. I told you you couldn't build that business. It wasn't going to work. I told you she wasn't the right one for you. And 99% of us, when the naysayers show up, we quit. Very few of us continue on. It's hard to dig yourself out of that hole when people are basically pulling you down. But because I remembered where I was on the map, I was like, oh, Wall Street Journal. It's just a naysayer. He just showed up to test me, that's all. And somehow I fought through. And I could literally talk to you for three hours between last August and today. How many miracles have occurred. But knock on wood, we're not completely out of the woods, but I can see blue skies.

Dude, that's so good. Goosebumps. Many times through with your buddy at Saks hooking you up and those hidden hands coming when you needed it. You know, Hearst coming in, and then, you know my story. So we had, you know, a year ago, I had the UPS driver deliver a letter. You know, I'm like, I got the team out. We're two days before we're going to launch. Heroic right. I have goosebumps right now. Team is literally in my kitchen. You know, at the island or whatever. UPS dude comes out. Hey, bro. Micro moment of awesome. How are you doing? Little skinny envelope. Whatever, no big deal. Made out to the legal department. Wait, we don't have a legal department or a ring. Heart rate's going up. Zip it open. Letterhead Security and Exchange Commission. I'm pretty sure that's not a good sign. I come in and read it. I'm hoping for a letter of commendation congratulating us for being the first company in history to raise 5 million on their new Regulations. Instead, it's a friendly heads up that they wanted to look a little bit under the hood and see what's going on. And literally, I don't remember this, but Michael's there, my right hand guy, you know, and he tells me that after he's looking at me, he's like, what's he doing over there? You know. Apparently the first thing I said was, the heroic gods have blessed us with an opportunity to practice our philosophy. Let's get to work. And I'm chatting with Joe Disena at this point. At this point, like, what's brother Joe do here? You know, we navigated that in eight months and usually takes 24. All good, etc. And I slept well, knowing I had done everything right technically and morally. Lost a lot of sleep trying to figure out what you do when you get a storm like that. And all the things you described, we had our version of. But the way I framed it up was we're trying to summit Everest. So we're on a heroic quest. Rule number one, it's supposed to be hard. You're going to have, I call it the U. You're going to have that valley of death, the valley of despair, in which you don't see, you know, the, the promised land. Midway through the process, the naysayers come out, the dragons are there, et cetera. But my mantra was, look, first and foremost, when you're climbing Everest, you don't complain about the weather, so you understand that there's going to be some big storms that come in, some of which may blow supplies off, might even freeze some people on the mountain, et cetera. So our mantra has been navigate the storm, emerge stronger, fulfill the mission. Navigate the storm, emerge stronger, fulfill the mission. And you genuinely, literally have been in my mind and what you've done with the Spartan race and why I encourage everyone who's capable of showing up at the starting line. And not all of our people are. Some literally are quadriplegic. And we find other ways for them to express their potential within that constraint. But why we have them go to a race is you have operationalized the science of grit, the science of antifragile confidence, the science of hope. The pep talk I give on the Saturday morning before we go do your race. And I'm proud to have either the first or second or third or whatever it is, top two of the three, I think now, biggest teams going out. I literally say this is the science of hope was showing up at a Spartan race first. You gotta see a better future. You Gotta know you can get to the finish line. You gotta. And you gotta see it and feel it, who you will be. Then you gotta believe you can do it. And you gotta show up at that starting line like you say, so you can know at the finish line what you're capable of. Then you gotta be willing to go over and under and through the obstacles. But what you've created is this. The perfect demonstration of it. And then your embodiment and then the business and every single thing about it, dude, is so inspiring. So thank you for modeling what one does in the face of, you know, the first of many storms. You know, again, that. That humility to realize that's just the first of a ton of them, dude. So much we can talk about. What do we got, 20 minutes? Anything else you want to add on that before I bring us back and then and kind of dance around heroes and guides and that sort of thing?

No, I think. I think that's. I love the way you said, operationalize the science of grit, and I thought it'd be great. I don't know if the backdrop you have right there, but you should give me some clips because I. The biggest challenge for us is getting people to the starting line. I mean, it happens to me. Like, I. I sent out a. A message to the wrestling coaches yesterday, and I said, we're doing multi Murph. Sunday morning, 0500, I put all the dads in a text thread. I put everybody. The kids. And all I got back was, why 5am I don't understand. Why do I have to do a 5am I'm all kinds of nonsense that I would. I get it. My brain would do the same thing. But how do we. How do we get people to the starting line? Because there's no. There's no bad workout other than when I try to find the craziest things. There's some guy in Florida here has a lucky lake swim. It's a guy with a backyard that goes into a pond. And you're lucky if you don't get eaten by an alligator if you do the mile swim. And so I round up the family. I go, we gotta go do the lucky lake swim. We got to go do it. And I try to always do these crazy things, and I can't think of one moment when they weren't awesome. And so how do we get more people to the starting line so they could feel awesome? I guess is my question.

Yeah, well, I think you're doing it first and foremost. I mean, you've had millions of people show up, take that gun off their head and show up and do it. And then those people become the people who become the inspiration for the people. Um, and again, longer chat you and I have had of where. Where. Where'd virtue go? You know, where'd the Spartan ethic go? Where you're truly trying to close the gap. And, you know, I talked to a guy very, very senior in naval special warfare, and within 30 seconds, we're just. It's like me and you, you know, he's like, we've just gotten soft. Like this idea that things should be easy. Forgetting rule number one, that it's supposed to be hard, et cetera. But one of our beautiful members, Kimmy, asked a question. Okay, so you are one of the. My heroes and guides and soul brothers. That inspires me to show up and to show up when I don't feel like showing up. Right. Who. Who has and does inspire you? Who are the individuals that you look to, you know, living dead. Like, how do you think about that couple?

Couple? One is certainly my mom. Certainly my dad was a workaholic maniac. I don't recall a moment where he wasn't working at 5 in the morning. He would wake up, probably went to bed at midnight, would dial on the rotary phone in the kitchen. The yellow phone we had would dial. Some of the guys he had to go pick up to work, hand me the phone and say, joseph, I want you to keep listening. Let it ring. While we try to wake up my workers. I'm going to go knock on their doors at the same time. So from a very young age, I just saw this relentless, like, we don't let anything get in our way. And so certainly mom and dad and the whole family, the mistake dad made was. And my friend who was just calling me, who I mentioned has cancer, the mistake dad made many of us make is we have that get up and go mentality around business, but then we don't have the same mentality around health and wellness. And so you can't work like that, like the way we work and not take care of yourself. Just can't do it. You can't shoot for a gold medal every day in business, but then treat yourself like a sloth. You've got to treat yourself like, yeah.

Let'S go back and forth on that real quick because this, again, our dads have a lot in common as well. So my dad worked in the grocery store. So the day that my dad got married to my mom, she's 17, he's 22, just got out of the Navy. Literally that week, he loses his first job. He was, you know, unloaded trucks at a toy store and then he had the exact same job for the next 40 years at a grocery store. So I grew up. He's working in the produce department on Christmas Eve. In those days before, I'm the little kid running around picking up his chainsawed little stump so we can put him in a tree so everyone could buy their Christmas tree. But then I started day I turned 16, my birthday, I started work at Lucky, you know, which is now Albertsons here in Southern California. You know, let's go. I'm in the produce department. And my dad taught me that. That hustle, that ethic, and also service. You know, just a simple thing of when someone's looking at the apples, go offer them an apple. You know, be. Be kind, be generous. Just the sweetest thing. But my dad didn't get two things. My dad understood how to work hard, and he worked his butt off to provide for five kids, Catholic school and a blue collar income, et cetera. But this is why I'm so excited about the app. And we've talked about it a little bit, but you got to get the big three right. You got to start with your energy, then you bring that energy to your work, but then don't forget the love. And this is something that was really hard for my dad. It sounds like it was hard for your dad and for me, it led to the alcohol for him, you know, for the alcoholism and all those things. So that idea of getting your energy right and then remembering that it's about more than just the work. It's about being that person in your work and in your love. Just felt the power of that, you know, and it's what we try to encourage our community is get your energy dialed in, then bring that to your work. And don't forget the most important thing, which is your love. And again, you do that, dude, at such a high level, as hard as you work and as much as you travel and all that, you know, we're often trading tech. I'm at my kid's wrestling tournament. He's doing two state championships in a weekend. Like how you do that, dude. So your hustle, not just at Spartan Inc. But with your family, is something that I also really admire.

And.

And I think you're the embodiment of. And I can't wait to see what you do, you know, as we talk about our app and actually see who you. Who are you at your best and your energy Your work and your love. So sorry about interrupting you. I just wanted to highlight the power of that.

Yeah, you got it. You got to take care of yourself. There's no. There's no two ways to do it. And then, you know, everybody should read. I don't know if it's. If you've reviewed it or not, but everybody should read A message to Garcia. It's a book that was written in the late 1800s.

I have, but I haven't done a note on it. That's a tiny little thing, right?

Sold 35. Sold 35 million copies in the late 1800s.

Oh, my goodness. All right, cool. I got to come back to that.

It's a big. It's a big deal. It was written by Ron L. Hubbard's dad, and. And the idea was, everything we talk about, which is going that extra mile, going the extra distance, so that. That's a book that inspired me, obviously. Shackleton, two years stuck in the ice in his boat. The Endurance doesn't lose a man. They eat their dogs to survive, adrift. Another unbelievable story, I think. Stephen Callahan, 72 days at sea, and his story, accidentally trying to shoot a fish because he was able to have a harpoon gun taken off the boat that he was on, that sunk, misses and shoots the raft. The raft is sinking. He's being attacked by sharks. He's blowing up the raft. Like. Like, I. For me, the daily inspiration as we go through these battles is just thinking, like, it could be worse. It could be worse. It is not that bad. It's never that bad.

I think you're also reminding yourself we were just. Joe. Joe's got a tombstone behind him. I picked up my memento Mori coin when I. When I saw you get that. That tombstone. Ready? Tell us about the tombstone, dude.

No, it's just like, I have this saying, it could be worse whenever I'm feeling it, and I go to a place when it's really awful and said I could be dead. And so I just have to remember that anything is better than dead. Anything. So. So there's nothing you could throw at me, right? Nothing that should stop me, because I'm not dead. I still have. I get to do this. I get to fight through. I get to suffer. I get to do this. Not everybody. Not everybody gets to do this.

Yep. That's so good. As you said that, I was thinking on the Navy seal, you know, not dead, won't quit. You know, just not done.

And then.

And then I was just hit for a moment, thinking about that Spartan World Championship That I came out to and we did an interview. And you had a. I forget what it was, but I think it was some special warfare group that had celebrated you and thanked you for some things you'd done for their community. But it just made me think, what are you most proud of in your life?

Well, certainly the family convince my, my wife to marry me. We got four great children. But I, I, if I had to pick one thing, it would be the transformations. It would be being able, to use your word, being able to be of service to all these folks. Life would feel meaningless without it. I don't. I would just be another person that's taking from the universe. Right. And I'm not taking. I'm giving. And so that feels. That feels really good.

Beautiful, dude. And that, that was, you know, William Damon, by any chance? He's not a really well known guy, but he's a, he's the world's leading scholar on moral development. In his 70s now, Stanford professor. But he wrote a number of books on purpose, and he joined us not too long ago. And that was his thing. He says, fine. And it's, it's obvious when you say it out loud, right? We'll find a purpose bigger than yourself. But it's, it's so different to go from theory on that to practice and to truly dedicate your life to that the way that you have. And then just to say it out on this context. We talked about the etymology of the word hero.

I, I believe you. And I did, but please.

Oh, yeah. Yes. And then always worth bringing up, especially in your presence. So the word hero, you know, in ancient Greece, you know, they're coming up with the word for hero. What'd they come up with? It wasn't tough guy or killer of bad guys or super disciplined guy or whatever. It was protector. So a hero, etymologically in ancient Greek, means protector. And the basic idea in the way we extend it is a hero has strength for two. And ultimately a hero's secret weapon is love. And to hear you and how moved you are by the transformations you've occurred with these aren't abstract numbers. You've worked very, very hard to create a business at scale, to reach people at scale. And you got 100 million people you want to rip off the couch, get to your starting line to show them what they're capable of. But it's one person at a time, you know, and just feeling your love in that being your ultimate source of meaning and your ultimate source of power to endure the poop. Emoji storm that you endured over the last X years. And before that you don't do that. So you can throw some more numbers on the board and you can impress people with whatever other metrics impresses people. It's like no, no, no. People are counting on me. Let me get, let me get up at 5am and do my first of four workouts. And so again, I just want to celebrate you one more time as a true exemplar of that. What have we not talked about you want to make sure we talk about. And then I'm going to highlight quick hit on transformative kind of lessons learned.

I think the biggest thing, first of all, I love that you guys come out every year and put on the giant team that you do. But I would challenge. We've got seven crazy events all around the world like our, our tip of the spear, scare the, the poop out of you kind of. Kind of events, right? M2O toughest paddleboard race in the world in Hawaii. La Ruta. Toughest mountain bike race in the world in Costa Rica. Death race on the farm in Vermont. Death race. I'm now calling it a Death Festival because, because it's all week long in Vermont leading up to like July 2nd. It'll, it'll wrap up. I would invite at no charge anybody you want in your entire community to come up to the farm and be part of that death festival and just see what goes down and maybe if they want to throw on a backpack and come hike around and just like you can't even believe what you see happening. It's just not even, it's so much fun and so hard and so crazy. Yeah, I'd love to get people out to the farm would be amazing.

That is amazing. Yeah.

And this year I tied in Norwich University, which is just up the street. It's the oldest private military school in the country. And we're, we're going to have some classroom stuff going on talking about resilience, perseverance, etc, so that you could then be on the farm, get beat up, go in the classroom at a military and then graduate on campus which, which would be kind of cool.

That is amazing. And we're going to have a separate chat about some stuff we're doing with another military academy. That's exciting. And just the crossover there. And then we had talked on one of our hikes in which Joe was carrying a 50 pound kettlebell by the way, the entire four mile up and down hike that we went on. I'm like, all right, how you doing? Let's go about coming out, dude, I want to figure out what the number is to get a race on your property in Vermont with our community. And Joe's been super generous too, by the way, allowing for the discount. If I saw some comments in here that some might not be able to afford it, we'll figure that out and how we can support you. We don't want that to become an obstacle heroic wise. But Joe, I appreciate your generosity and just so fired up to continue to do everything I can to shine a light on what you're doing and to answer your question you posed before of how do we get more people to the starting line. You keep on focusing on the asymptotic. Truly crazy. What I feel called to do is to meet people where they're at and show them that they can do the sprint. You know, we had the second fastest racer in LA when we did it last time. And the last place finisher and your team, dude, they stayed like an hour after the finisher. Our last finisher came in with six people on our team. Lights up, you know what I mean? It's pitch dark. Everybody on your team stayed overtime. Tears in my eyes. But you can do it. You know, when you do it with a team, you do it with a community and it's so transformative. This woman's life is completely different. The men who helped her across the finish line, tears much and over every single obstacle, their lives are completely different. One guy on our team is like, that was the most special moment of my life to help, to help her go through the race. So I'm focusing on you don't think you could do it, but let's get you there. You know, let's do it with a team and we'll keep on pushing down your asymptotic, crazy, crazy slide. But dude, all in on doing everything I ever can to support you and it's.

And it's on me. If it's in your community, just send them my way and we'll torture them.

Yeah, I love it. Bless you. All right, dude, so then quick hit real quick with the last six minutes we got before we get you off on the hour again. I get my big three. I got overwhelmed by Stephen Covey's roles and goals, Tony Robbins categories of improvement. I'm like, all right, well, I got like a hundred things I want to change in my life. Freud said that a good life comes down to two things, your work and your love. I don't agree with Freud on a lot of things, but I thought he got it right on that. But I said, look, if your energy sucks because of poor lifestyle choices, good luck in your work and love. So our entire app and everything I teach is get your big three right. Energy, work, and love. And then you to me are a radiant exemplar and master. So I want to know, how did you move from theory to practice to mastery? And what was the most life changing thing in energy, in work and in love that you think we would benefit from hearing from you? So again, the most life changing thing that you learned and then you actually practiced and you mastered that, we couldn't pay you to not do these things. Energy, work and love.

Well, let's talk energy first. And this is simple. It's not one thing. Go to bed early, wake up early, sweat, drink a bunch of water. Drink a bunch of water first. In the morning, don't even brush your teeth yet. Drink a bunch of water before you brush your teeth. Make sure you sweat. When you're done sweating, take a cold shower, jump in a cold pool, whatever it may be. Eat salad. I don't care if you eat meat, but eat some salad. Stay away from processed foods. If you do those things, life, like is so much easier. It's so much easier. It's like you're wrapping yourself in obstacles. If you don't do those things, you're making whatever's hard five times harder than it needs to be. Work. I think the biggest thing for me was realizing that I had to have a work life integration, not a work life balance. So yes, I could shut my computer down at 5pm Yes, I could say, I'm not doing this until that, like I could put these boundaries in place. But if I did that, then something was going to suffer. So for me, I just integrated it into my life. So I might be. This is going to sound ridiculous and there'll be plenty of people that push back, but I might be on my computer right before dinner, at the dinner table, I might be on the computer right afterwards. I just, I just make sure that I'm always caught up because maybe when I took a Psych 101 class years ago, my first class in college, and I learned how much stress, unopened mail and a messy desk makes for a human being. I said, I never want to be that far behind. I always want to be caught up and on my front foot, not on my back foot. So that was a big one for work. And then love. Love was completely lucky. I just met an awesome woman. If there were 500,000 women that would consider marrying me. Let's just have some fun and say that there was only one that would last with me, and I got the one. So I am a crazy person. I'm impossible to be around. The standards never change. It's never good enough. I'm relentless. I wake up early. Like my wife says, it's fun to be around in the beginning. It's very hard long term. So if I didn't have the right person, it would be a disaster. The other thing is with my kids, as far as love goes, of course I love them. I'll do anything and jump in front of a car for them. But I don't really care if they're mad at me because I'm demanding excellence. I don't really care what other people think. What I care about is what kind of adult they're going to be. That's my job. So those are my strengths.

Dude, that's brilliant. Everything about it was just so spot on. The. The energy stuff, you know, you're wrapping yourself in obstacles. You said, right? Talbin Shahar taught the largest class in Harvard's history. He joined us not too long ago. He says that not working out is like taking a depressant. You might as well start your day. I want to see if I can make myself more depressed today, you know, so this idea, we come back to that all the time. Physiology, drive psychology, all the things. But your comment on. And then bless you and how blessed we both got with the women we have in our lives. And trust me, if Alexander was here, she would say yes. Affirmative. Pain in the.

Just crazy.

Bill, let's go. But work life integration is so cool. Starting with your purpose driven. No, no, I want to.

I want to.

I want to be alive. I want to help people become alive. And I want to get paid to do that. You know? And then the. I'm uncompromising. Yeah. What I feel from you. And I've seen you do this with her. And just from our exchanges in all the different contexts, when you're with your kids, you're with your kids. So you're all in on whatever it is you're doing in that moment. Yay. And you're all in all the time in your energy, in your work, in your love. And there's no balance to any of it. It's this full expression of moment to moment to moment. Beautiful, dude.

By the way. By the way, guys, listening. If I'm at a wrestling tournament, we had to wake up at 5am and somehow I missed my workout. It would Be rare. But let's say I missed my workout. I know at that wrestling room we're going to be waiting two hours for the seating and the wrestling to start. I'm finding a pull up bar, a bike, a place to do burpees. I'm in an airport. I had to get up at 3am to get to Paris airport. I didn't get my work. I'm doing burpees in the airport. I don't care what people say. I'm not going to get on a nine hour flight and lose energy. To your point, like it's, it's, the standards don't change, full stop.

And then it becomes a game to keep the streaks alive. In our app we have streaks, you know, so I'm, I do my few things a day, you know, my pull ups, whatever. So the other day, literally I'm at the national championships for Emerson, who's into chess, as you know now. And you know, where am I going to do the pull ups? You know, they had kind of gone in the shower in the hotel room, didn't work, didn't make it to the gym. So I'm literally like, where am I going to go? Oh yeah. If I jump up on this door that people are coming in the other one on, you know, they're just laughing like. It's actually a really cool opportunity to connect. I'm doing my burpees in the walkway and people are literally looking at me and you can tell a little bit of more juice was brought into their life. Seeing someone that was unflinchingly, you know, living a life at, at a high degree. So Bless you. So Spartan.com, obviously, if you haven't checked out Spartan and all the content, get on it. There's few more powerful ways to change your life than to follow Joe's lead, to push yourself, to use those obstacles to get stronger. Joe, bless you. Great to see you, man. Go get it. Thanks for taking the time and look forward to the next time we connect.

You're amazing. Love you guys.

All right, day one. Let's go. Get out of here, dude.

All right.

What are you doing?

Trying.

Oh, too fun. All right, no questions today, but there you go. As you can tell, I love that man. He is just so good. Seriously, check out Spartan up. I didn't take care of myself the way I do now until I started really getting into his stuff. And it was years ago now the first time I went to a Spartan race. As you know, if you've been to a Spartan race with me, I almost didn't go. I'm like, I can't do this. This is going to be way too hard. And then the second Spartan race. Oh, I'm not ready for that. It was a little bit longer. Third Spartan race was the long one, the Beast. I'm definitely not ready for that. I haven't been training. Almost didn't go. Literally almost didn't go. And the only reason I went was because I had told people I was going to go. I'm like, all right, I can't kind of tiptoe out this back door. I've made that public commitment. Let's go. And I'm looking at Anthony. I'm looking at so many people that have been to a race with us. And it is so transformative to get to the starting line, which is the hardest thing. And as Joe says, you'll know at the finish line. But you got to get to the starting line. You've got to know that you're capable of a lot more than you think and push through that first obstacle in your head, which is the story you're telling yourself about why you can't do it. And again, who cares about a Spartan race? As I said to Sean Casey, who cares about hitting.300 in the major leagues? That's irrelevant. In the big picture, it's a context to flourish, but ultimately, it's irrelevant. What in your life are you not stepping up to? What starting line do you know you need to sign up for the metaphorical race in your life, whether it's reaching your optimal weight or moving forward in a relationship or a business opportunity or repairing a relationship or any of the 101 things that are always begging us to step up and show up. But Spartan up is fantastic. Then Spartan Fit was his next book. Then he wrote Spartan Way, which is fantastic. And then We've got the 10 rules for resilience again. Parents check that out in particular. And then I used to go off on plus ones even more when I was super into Spartan, et cetera. So there we go. Another beautiful day with another wonderful human being. Hopefully you got something that you can take into your rest of the day and into your life. Nat, after our breath, if you can facilitate the breakthroughs, that'd be fantastic. As always, if you want to stay, please do. Tomorrow, 10:01, Michael's actually hopping on a plane to go to our director of operations wedding. So we're going to do it at 10:01 a little early. But Patrick, bless Patrick, is getting married, which is exciting for everybody. But 1001 we're going to have a kind of a masterclass meets workshop meets invitation to heroic coach how to activate your heroic potential and help others do the same. Let me see if I can find something else real quick. We're working on. Did I not put that in here? Let me show you something really quickly. Give me one take. Take a shake it out. Do all your little tension things you do. And I'm going to see if I have something exciting to share with you. I just texted you. Yeah, so I wanted. I wanted to get rid of how to. Did you guys do that? Oh, my God. Is that the one that I'm looking at at the top? Holy moly, dude. That's tight, isn't it? So I had. Michael and I have been just hammering. We didn't talk about my day to day because it wasn't the context to do that. But I practiced the philosophy that I talked to Mike about yesterday of how I show up and what I do. As you may recall, I got really clear that it's time to lean on the book as part of catalyzing the movement, the next fundraising, et cetera. So I had a great chat right after our 101 yesterday with the CEO of a publishing company that we may partner with in order to create our own imprint right out the gate and go for that top 10, top three, number one New York Times bestseller. So this morning I had the very clear intuition that I wanted to drill forward on that. As it turns out, the field is at work. He's flying out to New York next week to meet with all the buyers at Barnes and Noble to meet with the buyers at Target. Perfect timing for us to go out. So he needs certain assets in order to do that. He wants a video. He wants a book cover. Goosebumps. So the team this morning, we dominated the book cover. Speed is a force. We had a working cover that was okay with a different title that I actually had the best book designer in the world design, Chip Kidd, who designed the Jurassic park logo that, you know, the little skeleton dinosaur. He is the best book designer in the world who gave us the frame that we've now adapted. He has two TED talks you can check out. Chip kid. Amazing. But check this out.

Wow.

This is beautiful. I find it striking. We had how to activate your heroic potential. And then we realized, no, no, three lines is more aesthetically powerful. Let's make it a demand. So activate your heroic potential. Then we got the virtue compass that Michael had the insight to drop behind. Fade it out. That's how you do it. We've got Phil Stubbs's quote at the top, which is from the forward of the book. This. This book will change your life. And if enough of us commit, it will change the world. We've got the subtitle, which dropped for me 57 minutes into my meditation yesterday. Ancient wisdom, Modern science, Practical tools to win the ultimate game and fulfill your destiny. There's so much I can talk about here, but there's elements from 7 Habits of Highly effective people. How to win friends and influence people. Atomic habits. When I'm obsessing about their covers and trying to find the right weight and ratio and whatnot. So there's elements from each of those covers on this cover. Dude, Michael, that's so cool. Well, well done. Yana on our team, her friend, the designer. What do you guys think? Is that tight or what? Yeah, baby. Oh, shoot. She got the. She got double logo on. I saw that too. I'm gonna hold back. I'm gonna hold back on that right now just to make it. I got you. No, I'm gonna hold back on that right now just to keep that private. But dude, everything about it is just so beautiful. And then they also wanted. He wanted a video, so he wanted a video that he could share with the buyers. Just, you know, how long do you want it to be? You know, two or three minutes. All right, cool. So then this morning I literally did exactly what I told Mike I do, which is I had an intuitive hit that I needed to get the COVID there. But that was easy. All I had to do was draft it to text to Michael and Yana with some basic instructions of what I wanted and encouraging them and asking them to make it their win. What's important now and to see how heroically fast we can create it. Then. My job was kind of done there. Then I needed to create the script for the video. Well, we've installed heroic at some places I may be able to tell you about that I've been flirting with. And we're finally getting approval. I may never be able to tell you about it, but it's pretty awesome. I had to record a three minute intro. Didn't have to. I had the opportunity to record a 3 minute overview, overview video. So I already had the style, I had a basic script, and then I came in and I hammered it. And I'll actually, I'll just share that with you right now because it's again, a demonstration of. I'm going to. You can't see it. Just because I wanted to be off for that. So then I open up paper, which is Dropbox thing that I use for all my writing. I write everything in Dropbox paper. I can do it all fine. I've gotten used to it, etc. So then I got to create a video that a buyer can watch in three minutes that articulates what heroic is, right? So perfect. So I forced myself to get a script of version one that frankly, I wasn't totally happy with, but pretty happy with by the end of my deep work time. Just like I said to Mike the other day, get it done. Don't get it 50% done or 60% done or 70% done. Get a version one, a crappy version done, and know that you'll iterate it, but get it done. So this is what I created, and we'll share it with you. I'll share the video that we did, but, you know, and then I sent it to the CEO. I'm like, how's this? He's like, I wouldn't change a word. Perfect. And then I immediately texted my assistant, who does a teleprompter thing for me so I can record in this studio. And then literally five minutes later, I'm recording it. Five minutes later, I did it. One take. And then I had a little take at the end I needed to redo. Michael's already got our, you know, our post production guy. We're gonna get that thing turned around in 24, 48 hours. And it's been such a fun day because I know what my whims are. And I journaled it again this morning. I'll do my. You want to see this morning's sheet? Here you go. I tell you every morning I start my day right. RT equals heroic. 51. 2051. A million equals a billion. Equals a billion. Heroically antiform fragile socials launching number one New York Times bestseller. Let's go. 90 seconds. And then my mind's now thinking, what's the win? What's the win? What's the win that's going to drive this thing forward? And all of that is how I'm striving to practice the philosophy. But again, team, this is so cool. I can't wait to share. We'll follow up more on the. On the other side of it. Where's the bow arrow icon? It is underneath my name. In the heroic app, we played with those options. We had an option that was a big mark or iconic red mark. We decided the compass, at least in this rev, would be cool. But we'll send this to you and we'll get feedback. You know, it'll be fun for us to play with that. What are we looking at there, Michael? We got more treats. Yeah. So I just want to share. This is the let's go page. If you're an Ambassador, you have a flyer that QR code links to this page for use. That's the page where folks are sitting. That video or a version of the video we've dropped on that page. So folks are already loving this. There's also a page with just video. This one's not for the book. This is for the platform itself. But a version of that video we've shared in the Ambassador platform. Can you link that up right here, right now? So that share people. You want. What? Just can you link to that here? Is that shareable? Just the general let's go link. Oh, there we go. Cool. Yeah, yeah. So this is the video by itself. And then the let's go link. And then we also just got this. This latest review came in. Literally this one came in like an hour ago. So we dropped that on there as a great one. It will transform your life. It's the best investment I've ever made. You haven't yet dropped a review on the app of your choice. Please do so. It might show up in places like this, but I dropped both links in the chat. Check the video. It's amazing. Did I want to see that quote? Where is that quote? Is that an image in the chat somewhere? It's on my screen. It will transform your life. It's the best investment I've ever made. I will screenshot it and drop it in the chat. Beautiful. All right, cool. As you can tell, I'm having fun. Work life integration. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right. Day one. All in. Let's go, hero. I shared in the call with Sean. We also got a text. This morning I got a text from our team with some wins. A Marine stationed in Okinawa, Japan, sends us a note saying, you know, my nine year old girl is a little bit of a cynic. I'm not sure how much she's into heroic. Right? And you know, we've been watching the plus ones together, etc. This morning I celebrated a virtue that she embodied and how she navigated the complex situation. Bless you, Robin, for the recommendation on that. And she says, dad, apparently she looks him straight in the eye and says something that I'm paraphrasing. Not as well as she said it. That was yesterday. Today's a new day. Day One all in. Let's go, hero. Full body goosebumps. Oh, shoot. We've got a young 9 year old hero training the heroes, baby. And again, we're all guides. We're all coaches. Whether we officially call ourselves that or not. Every. Every single thing we do, every single day of our lives is affecting those in our sphere. Therefore, let's show up, do the hard work, have the strength for two and create those ripples we want to create. And with that, we will officially wrap up. Nat, if you can get ready to navigate us, let's flip the switch. Grounding all this energy, very importantly, with our breath, with our posture, shaking it out, bringing a smile to our face, assuming that best, most heroic version of ourselves presence. Sending some love and gratitude to Joe Disena for the incredibly hard work that he has put into crafting his life. Modeling for us what's possible when we live a purpose driven, mission oriented, truly heroic life. Think about who you are at your best in your energy, your work and your love. Know those identities, know those virtues. Know the top targets that you hit when you're at your best. Make that your new baseline as we take the next steps in activating our heroic potential so we can help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051. Starting with us. We're putting a match to the movement is what I feel right now. This is a special moment. It gets me emotional, feeling the power of our community coming together with a shared mission or idiosyncratic expression. But this is it. Day one. All in. Look forward to seeing you soon. Hey, I'm remembering we didn't do the little intro. Didn't we? Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, we did it for sure. And we jumped right into the good and food channel. So then let's do it. So then you can cut this out in the beginning if that's appropriate. But as you know, we are raising a round of crowdfunding right now and attorneys encourage us and inquire and to throw this up. We talked about the business today. Imagine Joe Decenta on the social platform. He and I have talked about the fact that he's got five plus million people years ago on Facebook. Joe, come on. They belong on heroic. So we've already had discussions about what we can do to make heroic the primary social platform for the Spartan community. We are the official app. We're the official wellness app of Spartan race. I should have mentioned that. But if you've been to a Spartan race recently, you've seen our banners, you've Seen our flags. We're really, really proud of that. But that's just the tip of the spear of what we can do in terms of partnering with organizations like Spartan Race in all of the other places that we're so passionate about committing. Your local yoga studio. Oh yeah, they got a Facebook business page. Where's the heroic business page? Where's the community around their yoga community? Outside of the toxicity of all these platforms, these are all things I've been obsessing about for the better part of the last 16, 17 years since I took my first swing at it. And we are exhilarated. So there's more about the future of the business. If you want to learn more about the opportunity to invest in our business, it's we funder.com heroic what's beautiful about this is we're a crowdfunded company. So unaccredited investors who otherwise wouldn't have access. I haven't shared this and why we did this, but unaccredited investors who otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to invest in startups like ours can via we Funder. I haven't raised a dollar from a venture capitalist or from institution and we've raised $16 million for heroic in every single dollar. Goosebumps, tears in my eyes. Every single dollar has come from you. You know, Sean Casey's put in a significant amount of money into our business. Brandon Guyer. Significant amount of money. One of our other big investors I met through Ben Pikulski. But we have 3,000 investors from 75 countries around the world and the average investment is 3,000. 16 million is closer to 5,000 now it's upper weighted because we've got some big investors. 100, 200, 350 plus thousand dollars. But we have hundreds and thousands of investors who have put in $100. 250, 500. A thousand. As I've said, I'm going to be talking about it a lot more. But we're proud. We were the first company to ever raise $5 million from our community the first day you could, which is what I playfully say. I wanted the SEC to send me a high five. Let's go hero. But we're really proud of that. Again, wefunder.com heroic more coming soon. Thank you for that reminder, Michael. And with that, I feel great. You feeling good, Michael? No, I'm not. Yeah. Yeah. Michael and I trade text like a thousand texts a day. I broke his messages on his computer because we've traded so many texts. It's how I communicate. I don't do slack. I rarely do email, so he and I go back and forth. But I'll say, dude, do you feel good about that? And he'll I don't like getting a thumbs down in messages, you know, so it's become a joke. But he'll give me the thumbs down. No, I don't feel good. I feel great. Let's go. Day one. All in. All right, man. Love you, brother. Thank you, Nat, and look forward to seeing you all soon.