Interview: The Spartan Way with Joe De Sena

Foreign.

You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson.

More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimize podcast. Today I am thrilled to be chatting with Joe decenna, founder of the Spartan Race, author of three different books. We've covered two of them so far, Spartan up and Spartan Fit. Yeah, you will soon have access to our notes on the Spartan Way as well as you know, if you follow me and what I'm up to these days. I am absolutely all in on Spartan Race. As I was telling Joe, I've. I've read a fair amount at this stage. I've been impacted by a lot of people intellectually and wisdom wise and I was just talking to my wife Alexandra about it before our interview. I'm not sure anyone has impacted me quite as much as Joe has. Both energy wise, athletic wise. The Spartan races have truly been transformative for me, which is a thing we'll talk about today. And that Joe says again and again with the 5 million people that have done Spartan races so far en route to his hundred million goal, but also entrepreneurially and in every other way. I just read the book and literally it's like I just feel this call to be a better person. And Joe, I appreciate you how all in you are to your commitment to embodying the virtues of the Spartan lifestyle and just who you are as a human being. So thank you for being you and thank you for taking the time to chat today.

Everybody listening. You are awesome. You probably don't ever get any praise like that, but I have been seeing this guy that does some little pieces on our books and I'm getting them sent to me from all over the world. This guy is awesome. I'm like, who the hell is this guy? So I didn't even know, by the way, when you hit me when I was doing this podcast today that you were the guy until I saw your face and I'm like, oh, this is the guy. So you should know that your stuff is in Singapore, Japan, Mexico. Folks are sending me your link saying, we follow this guy and he likes you, Joe. That's funny.

Right on. Yeah. Well, I tell you what, I've been, I've been not only the, you know, notes on or the videos on the books, but I've just been talking about it all the time. We've actually got 17 little micro plus ones and I kind of apologize. Yeah, I'm talking about Spartan again. Here we go. I've got a spear throw in my backyard. I've got a herk hoist, I've got a rope climb, I've got two wall traverses, my ceiling's decked out with your rig and twister, etc. And again. So I appreciate your kind words and I appreciate again, just kind of the, I don't even know how to put it, but just the catalyst you are as a human being and your organization is the audacity of your vision and then the grit with which you've executed that vision. It's transformed my life and it's a family thing and I sell it all the time. But you and I were chatting about the fact that last weekend my family, my wife and two kids went to the Spartan race here outside of la. I ran the competitive age group, guys took a few minutes off, ran it again with my wife who's a former All American athlete and getting into it, and then I took a few minutes and ran it with my 6 year old son, the half mile version. And my 22 month old would do it. She's got great crazy, great grip strength already, you know, but she's too young. But it's a family thing, you know, and your commitment to using obstacle courses as a physical metaphor for the challenges we all face in our lives and having people brush off the Dorito crumbs off their chest, get off the couch and go get to work is just epic.

So again, listen, it's been a long time coming, so it wasn't easy and I had a lot of self doubt along the way as to whether or not it was going to work and was I crazy and everybody questioned it and so it's pretty awesome to be in this place. But you know, we can't rest on our laurels every single day. I've got to get a lot of people into the system signing up to pay for this machine that we built. Like now it's over two, it's like 275 events in 41 countries, right? So imagine knowing you got to spend that money putting on those events and we got to fill the bucket every day with a bunch of looney tunes like you that are willing to commit because life is easy and it's a lot easier not signing up for that. You know what I mean? We're selling hardship and commitment and discipline and go to bed early and wake up early and don't drink the extra glass of wine and don't eat the cook. It's a hard sell, right?

It's never been more important to make the sell. I love the economic risk you've taken. I mean, in one of your videos, 600 grand, whether one person shows up or 5,000 people show up, times 275, that's not a small number. And the, you know, the. Again, just, again, the audacity of your vision and the commitment you've made is astonishing. And then let's talk about the virtues. So, you know, the Spartan way, Spartan up is all about. Just Spartan Up. It's a phenomenal book. Your first one, Spartan Fit is a little bit more on. Okay, let's take it to the next level. So Spartan up got me to do my first race and I did my first burpee after reading that. Right. And now you've got me, as I told you, doing 100 a day, 40,000 a year. Awesome. All in, you know, and then Spartan Fit is about fitness and how to particularly train. I use your warmup every single day. I carry, every other day I carry my 50 pound bag, sandbag, and then I alternate that with my 50 pound Spartan sandbag and my 50 pound bucket right up the first five minutes. So that was great for that. And then the Spartan Way is your newest book, which we're going to focus on today, which is about virtue. And in my work, I summit, it all comes back to virtue. So I lean a little bit toward Athens vis a vis Sparta in terms of my intellectual orientation. But, you know, going to Aristotle, who told us the whole point of life, the summum bonum is eudaimonia. It's not happiness, it's flourishing, it's good soul. Right. And the way to get there is virtue. In a word, arete. So you breaking down the 10 Spartan virtues is what this book is all about and kind of the fuel really for your essence and who you are. So I'm excited to chat about that.

These principles I struggled with for, I don't know, three or four years where I thought about anything hard I've done in my life. Starting a business and you being a philosopher, I'd love your take on this. But starting a business, starting a family, running whatever I was running 100 miles, in my mind, I went down this road in each one of those challenges. And those roads started in a place and ended in a place. I would have these virtues on index cards and I'd say, well, this one comes first. Literally for three or four years, I'm. I couldn't agree with myself as to what came in what order and then finally agreed and wrote the book. So I'm psyched that at least one person read it.

That's awesome. Well, we know many more have, and I'm excited to support many more in doing so. So, 10 core virtues. You want to run through them or you want me to run through them real quick?

Well, let's run through them. And you give me your take. And I'll tell you what I was thinking when we came up with it, but knowing your true north, or as Simon Sinek says, your why. Right? And so for me, I struggled with this idea of when are you supposed to turn around? This guy, Ed Visters, he's an American mountain climber, says getting to the top of the mountain is optional, getting down is mandatory. And you know, you've been in a lot of races. I've been in a lot of races. We've started businesses. You got people that are in marriages. And you know, is it okay to get divorced? Is it okay to quit the race? Is it okay to close the business? And you know, if you, if you just knew me from the outside, you just knew this spartan brand, you'd say you never give up, you never quit. But yet Ed Vistor says, right, getting down is optional. And so I struggled with when is it okay to quit? When should you turn around? I've come to the conclusion, but I love your take on it, that it really depends on your true north. It depends on your why. Because if you want to be the greatest dad, the greatest family man that ever lived, and you are within 100 yards of summiting Mount Everest in a terrible storm, you should probably turn around because dying is not an option, right? But if you're about to set the world record for climbing and this is, you know, Guinness Book is there and NBC is filming with helicopters, and I don't know, maybe you go for it because that's your true north, Right. You know, Leonidas and his 299 men, right, they stood their ground, but their whole life was being warriors. That was their true north. So I don't know, does that make sense to you?

Yeah. And that's to bring a point to it on the virtue. Self awareness is the virtue, right. And knowing your true north and you walk through so many different ways to arrive at that. For me, what I felt was the self awareness of kind of fast forwarding to the end of my life and thinking of the eulogy and what do I want to be remembered for? What's my legacy? And you have a way of independent of when you quit and whatnot. Just, are you giving us all you got? That's probably perhaps what I get from you more than anything. And just Getting that clarity on what's your true deep why. And in the note I did on your book, I talked about what some people call hell, which is right before you die, you meet the person you could have been cruises in the room and boom, there they are, radiantly confident, just bouncing. And they're still alive because they did the little things you didn't do, you know, and here you are on your way out. There's hell. And so I think what I get out of it is the challenge to be that right now. You know, you know what you're capable of and are you actually living it. And of course there will be the edge cases where you got to decide whether you, you know, this value or that value and the trade offs you make, etc. But that's kind of, that's, that's what I get and why I think that was such an imperative and important first.

I've never heard that before. I love that, that moment of hell. That is awesome.

Yeah. I get nauseous every time I even think about that.

That's a way for all of us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is going back to the, the whole Aristotle Eudaimonia. He calls that ideal person the eudaimon. Right. The good soul. So I named my soul. It's Optimus, you know, and Optimus is there every moment of every day asking me, are you, are you being your best? Are you stepping forward?

He lives in the shadows.

He's right there. He's right there. He doesn't miss the thing.

Yeah, right turn. What's that makes every right turn? He does everything right.

He does. And he knows when you don't, you know, and this is. Yeah, so that self awareness, you know, of having the courage to actually be honest with yourself when you aren't stepping up on the big picture. And then also moment to moment to moment and to your point, that's a hard sell, you know, I'm selling virtue. This is, this is what I'm selling all day, every day. Virtue, Virtue, virtue. It's a little different than the six pack on Instagram, you know. Yeah. But the exciting thing is it's the right sell, you know, and I know you know that and I see that. And it's so a lot of people.

That are morally correct and broke and.

Want it, you know, and, you know, antifragile wise. Good opportunity to serve a profound number of people. Right, Go ahead.

I was just, I was going to talk about commitment. Right. Being committed, but really committed. I think about. I spent some time in Japan Mount hi with the marathon monks. And they're pretty committed. They're doing 900 days of marathons, and they carry a sword and a rope for those that don't know the story. And if they decide to quit, they got to kill themselves. And you and I are not suggesting suicide. But that level of commitment, you can Google the rap preacher, and he tells this great story about a kid who wants to make money. You've probably heard this. And the rap preacher says, you want to make money? Come meet me on the beach at 5am and the kid shows up and wear a suit or whatever, and he goes, I don't understand. I want to make money. And he brings the guy out in the water, and the kid's thinking, I don't understand. I want to make money. What the hell am I doing on the beach while I'm in the water? Go further and further and further out, and finally he holds him underwater. This kid's thinking, this guy's nuts. And he comes up and he's gasping for air, and he says, well, when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, you're going to be successful. That's the lesson. That's the level of commitment we're talking about. No matter what you're going after, you want to be the best monk, you want to be the best mom, the best dad, the best endurance runner. You got to commit at that level to. You know, I'm sorry to just hog the airwaves here, but I started a bunch of businesses in Vermont when I met my wife. And I had this idea that I would take away the struggle that I had when I was building a business. So, in other words, I bought this general store, I fixed it up, I stocked it, and I was going to find an entrepreneur and just put them in and take away all that struggle. They wouldn't have a mortgage payment. They wouldn't have to worry about borrowing money to stock the store. I even bring in customers. I did the same thing with the wedding business, and I did the same thing with the farm. I got a tractor, I got cows, I got chickens. Greenhouses took all the struggle away. They all failed because none of those people were committed. It's almost like this isn't counterintuitive, but part of the reason I've been successful is because I've had no choice. The monks have no choice. If they don't do the 900 days, they have to kill themselves, right? When you beg, borrow, and steal to run a business, backs against the wall. You have no choice. And so that's the kind of commitment we're talking about.

Yeah, I mean, that's. And then, even then, though, you do, but you don't. And I think that's the. That's what I get out of you and your work is that it's the, you know, Mark Divine, Navy seal, it's the King Leonidas. You know, in theory, they had choices, but they didn't because they were living to a higher value system and they were committed to something bigger than themselves. And then you put in all the material, you know, all in this. I'm in the same position. I mean, I read your story about peak.com and laugh because, you know, I've raised, you know, 10 million bucks just to finance my three businesses and raised 2 million for this venture. Four years in, wasn't working. We were, you know, hitting our stride and doing okay, but I knew it would never be what I needed it to be. Blew it up, took it back to zero. And that just hurt. But my brother put basically his 401k in. There's no scenario, there's not even a remote possibility that he isn't not only seeing his money, but getting a great return. So there's that, that level of commitment. And it reminds me of a mentor of mine. When I was 24, 25, I started my first business. We briefly started talking about, called E teams. We built websites, CMS systems for families in sports. Little League baseball, wound up using it. But there was a point when we raised $5 million, won the business plan competition at UCLA. I hired the CEO of Adidas to replace me as the CEO, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we'd have these awesome drives from LAX when you'd fly in from Portland to my office, which was horrible. And we. Westwood, right? And he told me right when the market crashed. The obvious. But it's easy to start something. It's not how you start something, it's how you finish it. And just that willingness to dig deep and to have the grit, which is another one of our principles. And to truly be committed is where it's at. And again, we could talk about that forever.

But it's important for people listening, like everybody listening, wants to be successful at something. Whether it's the marriage or business or raising children, there's something they want to be successful at. These principles, these virtues, you'll nail whatever you're like, I didn't invent these. This has been around forever. But if you don't master these, if you don't have a practice in these, it's going to be tough.

Yep, yep. Yeah. And this gets back to our conversation we were having before that. I want to get back to when we get offline. But just the support too, right? And just the doing it day in and day out. And this isn't an occasional thing. This isn't even a do a spartan race and prove you can do something and then go back to your old lifestyle. This is about a ruthless commitment. And let's use that as a segue into we're going to get off the virtue for a moment. But your friend Leo, tell us about your friend Leo. And I think of this because you use it as that metaphor for moment to moment commitment. That is so good. Tell us about Leo.

So Leo, I think Leo started. Leo is a kettlebell. He's a 20 kilogram kettlebell that I've been carrying around for a long time. I think it started because I don't know if you know this story. I had a guy who was 696 pounds who came through one of our races and I heard about him and so I called him up. I got in touch with his office, the company he worked for, Comcast, and I convinced them to release him for 18 months. And I took him to the farm and I got him as committed as the monks in Japan. I took his wallet, I took his car keys and he was on lockdown and we got this guy down to 200. I want to, don't quote me 60 something pounds, 69 or 65 pounds. I asked him. It was a very simple program, hard but simple. It was, you're going to do 10 miles every morning, you're going to do 10 miles every night to walk. You've got all day, you're not working. I've got to work. You're going to carry this little 20 pound sandbag which would go up in weight. He was pissed off and I thought maybe it was aggressive and he was going to eat raw fruits and vegetables. And so I said, I'll tell you what, as you lose weight, I'll start carrying more and more weight because I wanted to be like a team member to him. I got to a hundred pound sandbag and I had to carry this thing in front. That was my deal. It couldn't go on my shoulders. It was a bear. I mean, 100 pound sandbag was a bear. I was doing that for a while and I was staying in shape. It was kind of awesome and it sucked at the same time. And my family and I were moving to Asia and I couldn't bring the sandbag, it just wasn't going to work. As a matter of fact, I tried to bring the sandbag the day we were getting on the flight with the family and it went through the scanner and it had a bunch of metal BBs in it. That's how it was, £100 and they rejected it. The guy that was dropping us off took the bag. When I landed in Asia, I said to my wife, why don't you order a kettlebell for me? Like a 20 pounder. I was tired of carrying £100 and she ordered a 20 kilogram because we were overseas. It was a mistake. That's how I ended up with this friend of mine.

So the friend is Leo, which is, I assume you share what it's short for without people guessing it.

Yeah, Leonidas. This is Leonidas and Leonidas. I've lost a bunch of them. What happened, unbeknownst to me, I just found out recently is all my flights between New York and Boston, I tend to lose them. They don't end up on the other side. I thought either A, they're worried because of 911 or B, there's somebody working back there that's a fitness nut that's been grabbing all my kettlebells. One night about a month ago, I decided to stay and wait. In fact, baggage claim. And I was going to make a stink. I'm not that kind of guy. But I decided. I'm getting so annoyed. And we waited and waited and I went back and forth with the lady and I said this is ridiculous. It's been so many kettlebells and it's not big money. I wasn't even looking for the money back. I'm just frustrated. Well, it turns out they get stuck on the belt. So the mechanic wanted to kill me because they. They're replacing these belts and trying to get the friggin. I felt terrible. So anyway, that's why I was losing a bunch of kettlebells.

Carry on now. Right? That's super funny. And to put it in perspective, Joe actually brings his kettlebell everywhere he goes. So he goes to a business meeting, he's got the kettlebell boom on the dining table at the restaurant. He's fine. He brings it as that metaphor of your commitment and life isn't easy. Right? And you're willing to carry extra weight, you're willing to do the work, to have the strength for two. We talk a lot about another ancient idea of the etymology of the word hero. I didn't know what it meant. You know what it actually literally means? The Word hero in ancient Greek. So it didn't mean tough guy or killer of bad guys. It meant protector. A hero is a protector. And the idea this is. Chris McDougall shared this in Natural Born Heroes. And it just blew me away, you know, this idea that a hero is a protector and a hero has strength for two. And their secret weapon is love and compassion, and they're willing to do the work to have the strength for two. So when I see you carrying that kettlebell, you know, and you challenging us to go out and do these races, that is why I'm so all in on this and why I'm so committed to supporting you in your cause. I don't have any brands that I associate with, but I'm now holding up a little wristband and showing Joe in a little video chat here. I've got the only thing I have on my desk, other than my water whatever, is a little spartan wristband on a beast, which is my preferred distance to remind me to be a beast and to be strong and to have that strength for two and to be a hero. So, again, I think that's ultimately what. That's what my work is all about. Become the best version of you, which is what optimize literally means. Optimist equals best. That's the eudaimon and that's the hero. Have that strength, and you gotta have it physically. Which brings us back to our virtues here. Right? So we've got. Let me run through them real quick. So everyone has a gestalt, and then we'll have fun with a couple more of them and then get the book for more details. But self, awareness, commitment, passion, discipline, prioritization, grit, courage, optimism, integrity, and wholeness. If you had to pick your next favorite, which one would it be?

I would say depends. It depends. If you ask me in business, I'm really good at prioritizing. Because you got a million. I guess it's not just business. I guess it's family. It's everything, right? Your relationship, running 100 miles. I'm really good at quickly pushing to the back the white noise and the things that don't matter right now and focusing on the fire at hand. And I think all of us could use more of that ability because I see so many people and you probably see so many people that get caught up in the things that don't matter. I'm thinking about a race going across Alaska, and I'm feeling a little blister in my foot, but there's 20 other things going on. There's a Snowstorm coming in. We're deep, waist deep in snow already. Our compass is not giving us the right reading. But like, this blister is probably the most important thing to deal with right now because if this blister gets any bigger, it's gonna stop the race. Right? Like we could be lost for a while. That's okay. We could deal with a snowstorm. But I have an ability and I think we should all practice this and get good at it, at deciding and focusing on the thing that matters right now. That makes sense.

Yeah, it does. So what's the specific practice you recommend we think about?

I think one is at the end of each day, at least for a while or certain days a week, we should look and see the things we did today, keep track of what we did and analyze that and say to yourself, how many of those things were actually important? How many were just a complete waste of time? And I think when you reflect back and you analyze that, you start to quickly realize, oh my God, I wasted 80% of my debt. Actually, the thing to focus on was this thing. Right? I think I'm really lucky because at a very young age I ran a construction business and I had to. We'd get home at 11 o' clock at night and we were exhausted because we started at 5 in the morning. And I quickly learned that I had to completely clean out the truck at 11 o' clock at night, clean the whole thing, restock it and get it ready for the morning. But that wasn't instinctual. But I learned that because the next day, if the truck wasn't cleaned and restocked and I drove 40 miles to get to a job site and I was missing some parts. I lost 1000 bucks for an 18 year old kid. That was like burning your hand and face on the stove. You do that for a decade and you quickly learn to focus on the stuff that matters. I think you got to reflect on your days and then I think you got to plan ahead. I think the night before the Sunday night for the whole week. If you're not instinctually good at this, and nobody's born with this, you got to look at your whole week and say, at the end of this week, what is the thing that really moves the needle? Then the third thing I'd say is, I love this blog. Check it out. Will it make the boat go faster? Just ask yourself, when you're doing something, is this moving me closer to the goal line for us, we want to change 100 million lives. Hey, Joe, we want to go partner with this company. Well, is that partnership going to get us closer to changing 100 million lives? Okay, well, then we should really consider it. Right? So review your days, get way ahead and organize yourself way ahead. And then three, just ask yourself a simple question with every decision you make.

Right on again. We can run a weekend workshop on that, but I love it. We'll leave it at that. First things first. Second things. Not at all. As Drucker would say. Right again. I don't know if we talked about this before, if we actually mentioned it in our recorded chat here, but Angela Duckworth describes you as a paragon of grit. And when I read that, I felt like that captured the essence of you perhaps better than anything else anyone could ever say. What does grit mean to you and how do you strive to exemplify that in your life?

You know, grit is that ability to stay pumped and motivated and happy even when it looks like you're not getting to the finish line when you're running 100 miles. Sorry to keep using this example. I remember the first hundred miles I ran. This woman, Lisa Smith, I said, how the hell are we going to do this? I've never run more than 30 something miles. She said, Joe, the first 70 is going to be easy. I said, I just couldn't even grasp it. I've never run. I've never even run half of 70. And sure enough, she was right. At 70, the wheels fall off. But what was interesting, because I've run a bunch of them, is until you get to like 80, it's not even going to happen. I'm never getting to the finish line. This is ridiculous. I can't even believe I signed up for this thing. But a gritty person somehow stays pumped, motivated through that whole experience, right? A woman through pregnancy and giving birth. Right? Extremely gritty, right to the end. A person running a bit. I mean, running a business. Elon Musk said, what did he say? He said, running a business, like chewing glass and looking into the abyss. I said, he's missing that one part of the sentence, which is, while people are throwing knives at you. So, like, it's just that ability to have. My father used to say, you want to be an entrepreneur, you got to have the stomach for it. I didn't know what that meant. I was with a guy recently. He said somebody told him, when you're building a business, beware, you're going to want to jump off a roof. And he said he was about eight months in and he called the guy and he said, hey, you told me that when I was building this business, I was going to jump off a roof. I want to tell you, you were wrong. I want to jump off a roof every single day. But that grit is that ability to somehow smile through it. Right? And the Spartans, by the way, they used humor. Remember in the movie 300, the arrows are coming over from the Persians, and they're like, well, I guess today we'll fight in the shape. The military does it all the time. They turn it into a humorous interaction to kind of get through the tough times.

That's awesome. And I love that you love Pressfield and his Gates of Fire and all of his work. Huge fan of him as well, and inspired by that. And I love that line of, well, I guess we're gonna be fighting in the shade today. What are some other how to. You know, somehow, like, what are the other hows that you've engaged in in your life to get through.

To get through the tough times?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you've heard not to. Not to use cliches, but, like, how do you eat an elephant? Right. One bite at a time. And I guess, again, these are not things you're born with. But I guess I just learned, I guess it's important for everybody to put themselves in a situation where you can't turn back. What do I mean by that? You have your wife, your girlfriend, your friend drop you off 40 miles from the house without money. You got to get home. The rule is you can't take an Uber. You get no phone. You got to get home. You'll trudge and you'll force it. And maybe for you, it's not 40 miles, maybe it's 20. Whatever it is, put yourself in a situation where you've got to do something so outside your comfort zone. And what it does, it sets a new bar. Then once you've set a few of those bars, like doing the Beats or the Ultra Beat, whatever it is, you start to be able to reflect on those tough times and learn and realize, all right, just one foot in front of the other. I might not be the fastest. I'm eventually going to get there. Rain is not going to kill me. Right? Like. Like, you just need something to be able to pull from some memory. And so, unfortunately, you got to do it right.

And this brings us back to the Spartan Race, because even for me, like the first one I signed up for, I nearly didn't show up. And you talk about how you got to get to the starting line, you'll know what the finish line is. The tagline Right. And what you say when people ask you, well, why, what do you get out of doing a spartan race? Well, you'll know at the finish line, right? It's different for everybody. But then you also make the point that the hardest thing is actually to get to the starting line. The first like five races I did, I nearly didn't do each of them. I had never tried. I hadn't done more than like my four mile, you know, three, four mile loop here on my mountain. So the beast was like three times other than the super, which was eight, which was double what I had done then. The beast, I'm like, I don't even know if I could do that. You know, it's up and down ski slopes and for me it was, it was resetting. And I know you know this and this is why you do what you do, but it's that, it's that resetting of what's possible. I finished my first one and I'm like, really? I almost didn't do that. What else in my life have I almost not done? And then I went from and I shared this with our community. But I did my first beast in the open division. I was like 12, 70 out of 5,000 or whatever, right? And then the next six months later I do it. Maybe it was a year later I do it and I'm in the age group, competitive guys, right? And I do it and I'm still pacing myself and I got a lot of training to do and I'm in this one. It's non qualifying or whatever, but I'm in the top 10 in the age group, you know, and I'm kind of stoked. And I look at my time, I would have been number 10 out of 512, 70 to number 10 had I raced in the open division. And so I look at it in my athletic career ended at age 12 and I was a 4 foot 1181 pound freshman in high school, you know, So I look at this and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is such the perfect metaphor for this latent potential that wasn't tapped. Where else in my life am I leaving so much on the table? And that's how I what I've gotten at the finish line. And again, when you talk about being dropped off 40 miles from your house and coming down, make it easier. Go do a spartan race. Go do a spartan race. And the first obstacle is the story you're telling yourself about why you can't do it. My mother in law is 65 years old and she hammers them. She's awesome with my wife, you know, Gives me tears in my eyes. She did one before I.

One.

I'm like, okay, if she's doing it, I'm doing it. Yeah. It's just so awesome. Yeah. Well, we're up on our time that we had talked about. What have we not talked about? Do you want to make sure our community hears from you in terms of optimizing vis a vis the Spartan virtues?

I think I'll give you some fresh off the presses, fun stuff that you really, really appreciate. I was in Sparta, Greece, and for anybody out there listening, and I promise you, I'm not selling you on this. Our race in Sparta is unbelievable. Maybe it's more unbelievable for me because of the history there, but I don't think so. It's just incredible. I mean, you get to run through the ruins. Don't tell anybody. It's so unbelievable that we're in Sparta. And there's little coffee shops along the way, so people are sitting, drinking coffee and they're hearing and they're seeing the runners go by. Anyway, I'm there, and I'm talking to the preeminent Spartan professor, 75 years old, and he's done his whole life's work on ancient Sparta. And I'm like, give me some tips. Virtues, principles. What were they into? Tell me from your perspective. And he said, number one, structure. And I said, what do you mean by that? He said, this. Their structure, their body. Just kind of like a building structure. They felt that if you take care of the structure, your life's going to be more efficient. Everything you do is going to be better. But first and foremost, you have to take care of this machine, this body. What's the second thing? He said, you got to set up your personal life to take care of the structure. Put yourself in a position, so. So live in a healthy place, whatever that meant to them in the ancient world. We could apply it to our current world, but you'd want to have friends that believe in that stuff. You'd want to live near a gym, have a water filter, I don't know, whatever those things mean that you're set up to be healthy. The third was make sure you're in a society where everybody have friends that believe in that. The fourth one was be holistic about it, and you'll love this one. It's not just weightlifting or it's not just running. It's poetry and math and dance and be holistic about it. Don't take yourself too seriously. I think that's some of the humor. Like, oh, I guess we'll be fighting in the shade today. The one that really got me was we all get focused on legacy and leaving something behind. And they believe that you shouldn't focus. According to him, you shouldn't focus on that. You should focus on here and now and doing it as perfectly as you can and best as you can. Like you said, for that shadow. That's right. Be the perfect person. And if you're the perfect person or as close as you can get to whatever that means, you're naturally going to leave a Legacy. And like 2800 years later, we're talking about them still, right. It wasn't about money. It certainly wasn't about big coliseums or anything that they built because there's nothing there. It's just a pile of rubble. But we're still talking about them. Interesting.

That's super cool. And just. I saw that there was a race there. But you're saying it's now an annual kind of thing.

It is our. So don't ask me why I'm a glutton for punishment. I've created a three championship series. So it's Tahoe, the Beast Championship, it's Sparta, the trifecta championship. So you're going to do a trifecta that weekend in Sparta and you qualify by completing a trifecta throughout the calendar year. And then our ultra championship, as many laps as you could do in Iceland, which I think again, you're hearing it first here, is moving to Sweden and I'm going to. We have a million dollar purse. So it's kind of like the horse racing, what's it called?

The Triple Crown.

Triple Crown. And so we created this and we're going to actually pay down not just a winner, we're going to pay down a bunch of places. So, you know, it's hard enough to create one championship. I created three. I don't know why. I'm a psychopath.

You're passionate, which is our third virtue. We didn't get to. So this is good. So for my own benefit here, you're saying you do a trifecta, qualify to go to Sparta to do a trifecta over the course of a weekend?

Yes. But it gets better. I am working with the city of Sparta. It might not come this year, but it's coming. Guaranteed to build a giant marble tablet. I mean giant. And I am going to chisel the names in Sparta of the people that have completed the trifectas in Sparta.

Wow.

So you'll have that, like, forever.

That is awesome. Right on. You'll get there moment by moment by moment. That's so cool. Yeah. Well, I'll sell it for you. And I'll continue to sell. People getting off their couch.

You need entries for anything? I'm easy. It's not about the money. It's about just getting people out there.

No, of course. Well. And our business is a public benefit corporation, so we're a C corp with one paragraph added, which basically says I have a fiduciary responsibility as a CEO to honor all stakeholders. And money is important. I mean, this idea of using profits as the, you know, the red blood cells. We don't live for the red blood cells, but we need red blood cells to live. So just that conscious circulation. And again, I'm repeating myself. This is in my mind. Your organization is so worth supporting, so thank you. Obviously. Spartan.com go check it out. Anything else you want to. You want to leave us with?

We got the book, we got the podcast. I don't know how you get to the podcast. Spartan Up Podcast. My email is joepartan.com anybody can always email me. You're always invited to the farm in Vermont if you want to come. One time I invited 3 million people on Facebook. My wife lost her mind, but not that many people come. People, I have to say, are pretty respectful. They don't email me with silly things. Everybody says, you put your email everywhere. People don't really bother me. And the emails I do get, I want to get.

All right, man. Well, big hugs. Thank you.

Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.