How to Develop Resilience with Joe De Sena

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Welcome to Lead On Purpose.

I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself.

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In life, resilience is not a nice to have, it's a must have. In today's episode you're going to get to hear from Joe Disena. He is an amazing individual. He founded the Spartan Races, the Spartan Death Race some of you may know it as. And he wrote a book which is Rules for resilience, the 10 rules for resilience. And it's all about mental toughness. It's for families and it's for businesses. Look, in today's episode we talk about resilience, developing grit and the magic in suffering. Joe is a New York Times bestselling author, father, husband and absolute legend. After he built a multimillion dollar pool and construction business in college, he then went on to create a Wall street trading firm. And then he set his sights on ripping 100 million people off their couches by creating the Spartan lifestyle. Throughout his lifetime, Joe has competed in any extreme sport adventure he could find. Testing his mental and physical endurance against nature. He turned an interest in endurance racing into a passion. His racing resume is the stuff of legend. Over 50 ultra events and 14 Ironman events in one year alone. Please sit back and enjoy. And before you do that, if you can, please take a moment to subscribe to my podcast to rate it and review it and maybe share it with one friend. I'd really appreciate that. Enjoy the show.

Joe, a massive welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thanks for having me. This is awesome. I can't believe I am connected from Florida. I'm sitting in Florida right now to New Zealand. This is great.

Yeah, that's what the world's all about right now. I love this hyper connectedness and talking about the world you actually, you just got off a plane recently, you got back from the Ukraine border. Tell me a bit more about what was going on on there.

Yeah, so it turns out, you know, I've been putting on races for 22 years and very early in our life cycle, a friend of mine, very close friend, is Slovakian. And so he said, hey, can I bring the races over to Slovakia? And I couldn't see a reason why we wouldn't. I didn't really know much about Slovakia. I know I like Eastern Europeans because they're hard working, they're gritty people. Right? They grew up a little harder than we did. And we shipped over the concept to Slovakia and it exploded and it bled into the Czech Republic, it bled into Romania, Hungary.

And it started to do really well. So well, in fact, that some people in the Ukraine reached out and so we started putting races on in the Ukraine. So we've had this thing going on there and it goes really deep. Like it's very deep rooted because like I said, they feel and act and live like Spartans over there. So anytime I go, I'm like a movie star in Eastern Europe. It's pretty bizarre.

About two weeks ago, a guy that advises for us maybe three weeks ago, said, how come you're not over on the Ukrainian border helping out? And I said, don't be ridiculous. I have a family here, I have a business. What the hell am I going to do on the Ukrainian border? There's professionals that are handling that. And he said, look, your image, your ethos, everything you stand for, you should be there, tip of the spear, helping out. And honestly, it went in one ear and out the other. I thought about it for a few minutes, but it just didn't seem logical. Fast forward two days later, one of our folks in Slovakia text me an image of our trucks online delivering supplies to Ukraine. And I was like, what? How are we doing that? And they said, well, Joe, you don't remember, but we have a warehouse in Slovakia 40 minutes from the border. We've got tons of trucks, and so these are our brothers and our sisters in need. And we just started bringing supplies over.

That's amazing.

That's awesome, right? So I had my team post that on social media. And sure enough, it got all kinds of praise. And my friend in Slovakia said, that's not really fair. You didn't do anything, Joe. We did all the work. So between those two conversations, the advisor pushing me and then this guy needling me and saying I hadn't done anything, I said, you know what? I'M flying over. What do you guys need? And they said, well, every round trip we do the Ukrainians, as well as our office in Kyiv. We have an office in Kyiv that's still in existence right now. And we're talking to our people there. They want night vision goggles, bulletproof vests. So I said, how the fuck am I going to get night vision goggles and bulletproof vests? Right? So I started to do some research in the US and it turns out even if you can get them, they're extremely expensive. How the hell am I going to get them into Slovakia? Because the US just doesn't part with military gear so easily, which I was happy to find out. But it turns out, and this is really going to blow your mind, a member of our Slovakian team is a member of the Slovakian Ministry of Defense, and he's a lawyer. So I didn't know this. So we connected him with the US military. We have lots of connections here in the US and then they said, yeah, no problem. You could. You could bring these vests over. I called my buddy who owns Hudson Bay Company, one of the oldest companies in the world, and they wrote a big check, thankfully, because we're a little short on funds these days, coming out of COVID and I shot over there and we brought the vests and we got a bunch of gear and we brought some attention to the border. And I had an opportunity to kind of see what was going on. As I was mentioning before we started the podcast, very organized.

At least on the Slovakian side. There's about 700 to 1,000 women and children coming across each night that are stuck in the refugee camp without a place to go. They don't have a plan. There's tens and hundreds of thousands more that have a car or away or a friend or someplace they're headed to. So what I got to see were only the people, which is a lot of people. And like I said, It's 99% women with a child, like, a lot of children.

And then they're just trying to find out, like, is there a hotel we can go to? Is there a house we could live in? They're just trying to figure it out.

And then I saw the trucks, including our own, lined up, delivering things. There was a restaurant there at the border. I have to say, I'm going to be playing it down. I know there's a lot going on. 350km, four further into the country, away from the border. That's where the fireworks are. That's where the Destruction is. But where I was 350km away, it might as well have been a truck stop. A very organized, very clean truck stop.

And as you came back to the US from that, how are you feeling? Like, has that impacted where you're taking your thinking or what you're trying to, the impact you're trying to make over there? Is there anything else you want to do now after coming back?

Well, I mean, look, I saw some comments on social media. Some people said, look, there's a lot to do in the US in our own country before. And that's true. I mean, we walk by and have blind spots around homeless people and all kinds of situations, businesses failing, things happening in our own family in the US but somehow we get really excited and want to help when it's far away and it's another country. So I would say there was a great lesson I learned over there that I think we can all apply to our lives. Me included. A friend of mine runs a special forces unit and he was kind enough to leave his post and come hang out with me at the border. It was good for him too. He needed to do some research on what was going on at different checkpoints.

And he was telling me about his two children, two boys, he has a three year old and one year old. And he noticed that the three year old on FaceTime every night when his wife FaceTimes him from the US his three year old is giving little play cars to the one year old. And he thought, wow, we must be doing some great parenting because kids don't usually share toys. Upon further inspection the next night, he noticed that all the cars he was sharing were the ones that didn't have eyes. They were the less valuable cars to him. And so they did a test. They put the cars without eyes under the pile and sure enough, the kid dug through all the cars and got the ones without eyes and only shared those with his brother. And so my friend's message to his.

Group of soldiers and even the soldiers from other countries who were supporting this effort was, hey guys, we have to give cars with eyes to everybody. And what I mean by that is it's gotta hurt. If it doesn't hurt, you're not really giving. And, and so even me jumping on a plane and going to the border and it was very calm and we got to go to restaurants and I got workouts in and I got to jump in a cold lake. All the things I like to do, I didn't, it didn't really hurt, right? Somebody else was kind enough to write the check. And all I did was organize a bunch of stuff and get some press. And.

I think when you ask, like, what did I learn? We're not really giving. None of us are really giving anything anywhere. Unless it hurts. It doesn't count otherwise.

That's really powerful. Yeah. Like the $25 donation you make the UNICEF each month. How hard is that?

How hard is that? Doesn't even hurt.

No.

So we got to make it hurt.

I love that. That's really good for thought, for those that are listening right now is like, if you are giving and want to help, how can you do it in a way that you actually feel the pain?

You got to feel some pain.

Now, look, 14 ironmans in one year. 50 ultramarathons.

Were you always built like this, or was there a different Joe? A different Joe that did different things beforehand that then ended up. There was a switching point.

Look, I was a soft, chubby kid growing up. I always wanted a six pack. I always wanted wide shoulders. I always wanted to roll $100 bills in my pocket and a fancy car and some. You know, I wanted to be tough because that was the neighborhood I grew up in.

I think the switch went off when my dad took a turn for the worst in his business. He lost a bunch of money, and we no longer had the nice things we had before. And I remember going to a car dealership with my mom. She needed a new car because they were getting divorced, and she could only afford this, like, the lowest level Chevrolet that there was. And next door was a BMW dealership. And I thought, man, I want one of those. And she said, it's easy. You just got to get a job and work. And that's when the light bulb went off. And I said, all right, I got to do it for myself. So.

From there, I realized deep down inside, something we all have and I had was just a tremendous amount of grit and resilience and fire in my belly. And I just had to activate it. And that moment, my father not doing well, and you never know what somebody's going to say that triggers a kid. My mother saying that just triggered it. And I. And I went nuts. And I never. I never looked back.

And so, you know, look, I always wanted to know, how far could I go? How far could the human being go? And the magic for me, for all of us happens. You know, this morning I was working out, right? And I've been living lately on these assault bikes, and I'm using the assault bike, and I'm going nuts on this Thing. And I planned on hitting 200 calories in a set amount of time because I had to go. And I found my mind, started saying, well, you've already done 10 minutes. Right? Let's.

And then I fought with myself like you always do, and I got to the end and I felt better. And I was able to reflect back on the struggle there for the few minutes and thought, like, that's where the magic happens, right? It's in the struggle. And I wish we could somehow, if we had a pill or we had a way to just put a chip in everybody's head and teach them this. On the trip to the Ukraine, to the border, I brought a guy from this office here in Florida who is a programmer and crafted an app, bring them home, Ukraine. And he can envision the app being used in all natural disasters or situations like this where people could crowdsource the finding of other human beings, friends, families, loved one. I thought it was a good idea, so I had him tag along on the trip. You know, he was. He's a. A medic. Veteran, was in the military. Didn't have, for whatever reason, came out of the military feeling a little depressed. Been taking some antidepressants and things, and just, you know, it wasn't even working until recently. Smokes a lot of cigarettes. After four days with me on the border and the workouts and jumping in the cold lake, and he's given up cigarettes. He did 100 burpees here in the office yesterday. He's completely transformed. And I guess my point is, like, how do we take that spark that my mother gave me or that spark that I gave him and multiply it by 100 million people, 500 million people, because they're going to be happier. The world's going to be better for it. Putin probably wouldn't be acting the way he was if we had them doing more burpees.

So.

Love it.

I know I ramble a lot.

No, it's great. I love it. And the whole Spartan. For the person that's listening right now that doesn't know a lot about Spartan, what's the whole reason behind Spartan? What motivated you to create it?

Hey, James here.

I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers. About how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in in the show notes.

I think, you know, I watched my mom rope people into yoga and meditation and get them healthy and watch them transform and then talk about it for years later. And for me, it was ultra endurance stuff. It was crazy stuff like, like you said. And the more I did well, the other thing is a little selfish secret is, you know, a boxer.

Doesn'T train all the time. A boxer typically trains when they have a fight coming up, a date on the calendar. And I found that the more dates I had on the calendar, the more forced I was to live the lifestyle. So I just wanted to share that with the world. I wanted to share this idea with the world that.

You can be better than where you are right now, no matter where you are right now. But it's going to require some work and I've got a hack that's going to get you to do the work. And that was Spartan.

Love it. That's so cool. And when you think about say so the 10 rules for resilience. So for those folks who are watching this, you'll see that I'm holding it up. For those that are listening on Apple or Spotify, please go and grab a copy from Amazon or head to Joe's website, joedesena.com, but 10 rules for resilience. So I read this as a dad and I read this as a business owner and as a coach. And I seen that there was such a crossover between the messages you had in there, between business and fatherhood or motherhood. So what inspired you to sit down and write the book?

Well, I'm always two books ahead.

So.

I just, I know it drives my team nuts. Like, why are we working on another book when we haven't even published the book we have? And it's just for a rainy day. I just know there's going to be a moment. So that book started years ago when, you know, I had had my younger son. I said, let's go swim across the lake. I don't know, four years old or something. And we start swimming. He has a life jacket on and it's a mile and the sun is going down. And next thing you know, one of my neighbors is out there with a kayak screaming at me. Get the kid in and we're fighting over my son, which is not helpful, right? Because then he thinks his dad is nuts. And ultimately we finished the mile swim a couple of years later. Years later, we're carrying kettlebells down the street for about a mile, me and the boys and their friends. And a woman screeches her car, her brakes right up. What are you guys doing? Are those kids safe? I've been watching them walk out in this heat carrying heavy weights. Are you a coach? Are you kids? Are you okay? And I thought, you know, can't really blame her. She hasn't seen a kid on a sidewalk in a decade, right? These look like foreign creatures and they're carrying heavy weights. And I just thought, you know, how could you expect kids to become adults and stand on their own two legs if you don't.

Teach them how to overcome adversity, how to do hard things? Like PE has been ripped out of schools.

We call our kids teachers and solve their problems for them. We wipe their butt, we do everything for them. Even a gritty, resilient dad like me, who's writing books about it and owns a company called Spartan. Even I'm too soft on my kids. And so again, I go back to those Eastern Europeans. The reason they're grittier, the reason they're tougher is because they had tougher childhoods. So you really love your kid. Make it harder on them. Don't make it easier.

After I read the book, when I read the book, it was so transformational for me. So I grew up in Northern Ireland, and Northern Ireland had its own fair share of challenges. But as a 4 and 5 year old, I was out around the fields, out around the neighborhood. I had a hatchet in my hand building tree houses. There's no. I've got a five year old boy. There's no way I can imagine that nowadays, right? Just. No. I'm in New Zealand, a relatively safe country. But as soon as I read the book, it was a rainy morning, we got a little Labrador pup, and I was looking outside. Oh, geez, we should. We'll walk tomorrow. And I read the book and I thought, what would Joe do? I was like, finn, get your raincoat, buddy. Let's get out.

That's awesome. I love to hear that. Because that's, that's what I, you know, I just saw a video. We didn't. We forgot. We edited a video a year and a half ago and we found all the old videos. When my kids were tiny and I had convinced a kung fu master to move in with Us on the farm. And I got videos of this kung fu master training these kids. And then they got into wrestling. The reason they got into wrestling. This story is going to blow your mind. So here I was with the kids. I got this kung fu master living with us. He's training them twice a day. And I meet these guys I know from Wall street, and we're sitting down and we're having dinner and I'm pounding my chest. What a tough dad I am. I've got this kung fu master. And they said, joe, you know, we grew up next to a guy who was a Green Beret. And his two sons were our friends in Seattle. And he was a wrestler of the Green Beret. So the kids naturally wrestled. And he would make them train every night for an hour and a half in the basement in the dark, blindfolded. Because if they could wrestle blindfolded in the dark, imagine how good they'd be in the light. And this went on for about a decade, to the point where the mom wanted to call social services, the neighbors, like it was a whole shit show. Anyway, the kids went to a very high level in wrestling, but they never, never made it to the Olympics. One of them became the coach at Stanford University. While he was the coach at Stanford, he instituted a new policy where he allowed neighborhood kids come in and wrestle with his wrestlers to give them different, you know, opponents. One night, one night, one of the neighborhood kids said, hey, coach, I got nowhere to sleep tonight. I got locked out of my apartment. Could I sleep on the mat? Coach said, don't be ridiculous. You could stay in my apartment. You could stay on the couch.

About one o' clock in the morning, the door opens up to the coach's bedroom. And the guy who didn't have a place to sleep is going to commit a random act of violence. He's got a gun. And he gets the coach on a chair. Zip ties his legs to the chair, zip ties his hands behind the chair, puts a pillowcase over his head and presses the revolver to his head. And the coach, in a muffled voice under the the pillowcase, says, can you shut the lights before you pull the trigger? Because he had trained in the basement in the dark for 10 years. And the perpetrator shuts the lights. And the coach proceeds to disarm him, pin him on the ground while tied to a chair, blindfolded, and call 911 from behind his back.

Stanford police break down the door. They find what looks like a scene from Pulp Fiction. They don't know who the good guy is who the bad guy is. And guy was going to kill him. Guy had a ticket to somewhere in South America. I heard the story and I became even more convicted that we have to train our children to be tougher because I mean, that's a one in a billion chance something like that would happen. But there are things that happen all day, every day to adults, to us, and we want to be better prepared for it. So my kids gave up kung fu and became wrestlers overnight when I heard that story. We have not instituted the dark blindfolded training yet, but they do.

Come on, Joe, step it up, man.

I got to step it up now.

Let's think about that for a second. So the one thing I took from the book was you can't until you can. So you can't until you can. I love that. So what's the cost to business for the business leaders out there? And what's the cost to society if we don't push our kids, if we don't stretch them, if we don't let them go outside their comfort zone?

Well, let me answer it with an analogy. Let's make believe we had one society, Ukraine, for the next 20 years rebuilding, right? Let's make believe Russia ended its invasion and it was able to peacefully rebuild itself. That's one society. Those are pretty rugged kids. They grew up in rubble, they're going to be rebuilding their houses, war torn country. And then let's make believe we had another society.

I don't know, pick up New Zealand. And in New Zealand everybody got to grow up in a greenhouse and they were watered on time. You know, they were like plants, right? They were watered on time, they had the perfect temperature. Later on in life, the kids from the Ukraine battle, the kids from New Zealand that grew up in greenhouses and they face all kinds of challenges throughout the day. They're in business challenges, they're in personal challenges. Who's going to be better prepared?

Clearly the Ukrainians.

Clearly the Ukrainians. And so if we're going to live in utopia and everything's going to be perfect like a greenhouse, then I guess you can grow up in a greenhouse with everything being spoon fed to you and you're not having any shocks to the system. But. But if you're going to live in this world where everything that can go wrong does go wrong and relationships end and people die and you're faced with business challenges and you name it. The shit we have to deal with, I have to deal with on a daily basis. I think every day. How would my kids be Dealing with this right now, how would I prepare them for this?

That's so powerful. And the whole premise of the book is all around building resilience. You had your own pool cleaning business, then you had a trading firm on Wall street, and now you run Spartan. So you'd obviously had Spartan through Covid. Covid's probably the biggest test of grit and resilience. So what's been the impact on Spartan and how have you responded?

Well, it's a disaster. I got shut down in 45 countries, nearly went bustling five times. I mean, I'm still struggling to come out of it.

And it just made me a better person. I got to dust off every single day, put my cleats back on and get back in the game. And I just keep telling myself, this is what I tell people. So let's make sure it's true and just keep putting one foot in front of the other and let's get this done.

But I'd be lying to you if I, you know, if it wasn't hard. The advantage to having a really big, audacious goal, a purpose of trying to change 100 million lives, that advantage is that even when it sucks, I'm able to refer my brain back to that purpose, back to the reason we're doing this, and live to fight another day. But I'd be lying to you if I didn't want to quit every single day. Like, you know.

All that vision, what's behind that? Why 100 million people? What difference is that going to make for you when you see that you've transformed those people? What difference in the world will that make?

Well, I thought this is going to sound silly, but if I could change 100 million lives, I get a free pass into heaven. But then recently I got an email that said, joe, I'm a churchgoer. I heard you say that. I want you to know that's not the way you get into heaven. I'm sure I'm gonna piss some people off, but.

I don't know. My mother said, doesn't matter what religion you believe in. Doesn't matter what background you come from, doesn't matter what business. What matters? That you're a good person. We gotta give cars with eyes, right? We gotta just be good. And so I guess to our point we mentioned earlier, it hurts me to give, to try to change a hundred mil. It hurts. So I guess I'm giving 100%.

100%. And it's funny, this came from the book as well. Commit to no bullshit. And I really see you walk that walk. So how does someone really get to know themselves and walk that walk and commit to no bullshit in their lives?

Well, you only meet yourself under stress and you think you know who you are and people think they know who you are. But it's only when you're really tested and your back's against the wall and everything's going wrong that we get to find out who we are.

And that's when you can go beneath the surface and say all this other fluff and all this other nonsense is bullshit.

I'm not a big excuses guy. I love people that call me out and hold me accountable when I come up with some excuse. Because we all do it. And I said to my kids coach yesterday.

I was saying, well, in fairness, I just did a 40 hour trip back from the Ukrainian border and I'm a little dehydrated. And he goes, why they didn't have water on the plane? And that's a great answer. Right? Like you're right. How could I? No excuse. I should have drank more water. So, and so anyway, you meet yourself under tremendous stress, you got to put yourself under stress. In doing so, you become stronger.

And you got to get rid of the excuses.

Yeah, because there's distress and you stress. Right. And so actually putting yourself under stress is not actually a negative thing.

No, it's a very healthy thing. I mean, when you want to build biceps, it seems to be okay to put yourself under stress. When you want to learn math, it seems okay to put kids under stress and have them take tests and study.

But you've got to put your whole life under some good healthy stress. You got to manufacture some adversity just to make sure you're always grounded. By the way, it's not intuitive. You'll be a hell of a lot happier. Because if you're in a place where everything's going well, what tends to happen? With 99% of the population, it doesn't matter what country is. We tell ourselves we would be happy if we just had that. If we just had. And you continue to chase the next that the next thing. Whereas when you manufacture some adversity, what happens? And I just interviewed a 90 year old Holocaust survivor from Russia. She says the exact same thing, which is when you're under stress like that and you practice that, whether it's purposeful or not. In her case, it was done to her at 8 years old, you know, because her situation, you then wish for the thing you were complaining about before. I just wish I was suffering in that way. Because this is worse, right? And you're not chasing that Ferrari, that nicer house, that different relationship that, like, those things that are so elusive, never bring happiness. The quickest way to bring happiness is remove all that stuff, suffer a bit, and then just let yourself sit down. After that suffering, you're like, oh, my God, I'm so happy right now. I'm so glad I'm not doing burpees. I'm so glad I'm not in that cold shower. I'm so glad whatever it is is not happening to me right now. And that's how you quickly find happiness, not even mentioning all the drugs being released in your brain for the next 20 days. There's so many tremendous benefits to doing this stuff. You got to do it.

That's powerful. When you talk about stress, it reminds me of this. There was a study done. They had two trees, and they put one tree outside in a forest, and it just grew normally. The other tree, all the same conditions, except one thing. They put it in a large greenhouse. So that had no wind, zero wind. Both trees were growing equally, roughly the same speed. And when they got to a certain height, the one in the greenhouse just fell over, just collapsed. And the other one kept growing. What? And the trunk kept widening. And so they like, well, we need to do this test again. That must have been a dead tree. So they put like 30 trees in the greenhouse, 30 trees in the forest. And again, all the trees that are in the greenhouse, this no wind condition, they all fell over at a certain height. And they found out the reason why that tree that was outside kept growing because it was under stress, the wind was blowing it. So the trunk would develop thickness and develop that resilience and keep growing.

So even I didn't know about the study. And I've been telling that story forever, so I'm so glad you said it. Send me this study because it'd be cool if I had something to refer people back to, but I've been literally saying that forever. I say, would you rather be the tree that grows up in the greenhouse or the one that grows up on the side of the mountain with your roots wrapped around rocks and hanging on for dear life?

I love it. It's so good. And excuses thing going back to that, I chatted with a great friend in your neck of the woods, a guy called Chester Elton. I should connect you guys. He's an amazing guy. He said, james, excuses, even when valid, are never impressive.

Yeah, I love that. I love that.

There'S no room for excuses. I was trying to get a young kid to work out this morning, and with her mom, we were all on the assault bikes, and she just was coming up with all kinds of excuses. And I was basically saying stuff like, they're not going to help get to where we're going here today. So it's waste of energy, waste of time. You better stop them. But we all do it, and it's nice when people hold us accountable 100%.

And values are often a great way for us to see the world. So one of the biggest takeaways from the book was live your values. So I wrote down here, work hard, be nice. So I go into so many company offices, and they have these beautiful words, integrity, hard work, teamwork. Up on the wall, on the stairs leading up, they've got all these things. And you go in, you spend a couple of days, and you don't see any of the values coming from the majority of people. So how does someone embody their values?

Well, you got to just do it and the way I recommend it. And so I kind of like the company puts it out there on the wall. When I do that personally, and I tell the world on a podcast like this, like, this is who I am. I wake up and work out every day. I do this, I do that. I'm doing so publicly, so I'm on the hook. I don't want to be considered a fraud. So maybe that company in question needs to all hold hands and go to their local newspaper and say, this is who we are and this is what we do. And then ask their consumers, ask their customers, like, do we live up to this? Because you're right. If you're just putting the words on the wall, but nobody's holding you accountable, you're not checking in with people to see that you're actually doing what you say you do, then I think it's easy, especially in a world of social media and being able to hide stuff and take pictures, that we're doing this when we're not really doing it, but it looks like we are.

Yeah, I think you got to have some people around you that are just shining a mirror in your face, you and your team's face, and saying, like, are you really doing that?

That's where a good. Whether it's a coach or a mentor or something, your board of directors is going to come in and actually hold you to account.

No doubt about it.

Now, let's for a second, just talk about the show. No retreat. So for those business leaders out there, I want you to Know that Joe works with families. He works with all the athletes, elite performers, but also he's got this show. So tell us a little more about the show.

So for 22 years on the farm, companies have come up. The Goldman Sachs, the Nikes, the Facebooks, the Googles, and we basically beat the shit out of them. But we do it in a purposeful way. We try to highlight what issues all companies have issues. All families have issues, all people have issues. We highlight and zone in on those issues. Three big issues. And then we emulate. We create challenges on the farm, obstacles that'll really highlight that issue they're dealing with. And in doing so, we get folks to pivot, to make a change, to finally address the stuff they've been just walking over every day in the office. And it's crazy that I'm going to say this, but surprisingly, when we check back in on them, because now it's a television show, and CNBC said, we got to go check in on them, three months later, the results are unfriend. Believable. You can't believe the results. It's almost not believable. And you say, why? Well, yeah, the company could have listened to a podcast. They could have read a book. They could have went to Harvard Business School, but that doesn't really force change. We force change on the farm. We address the issues on the farm, if that makes sense.

I love it 100%. And so if you were to take Spartan, so yourself and your leaders to the farm and Joe was running it, what would he find with your business? What are your three biggest challenges that he would uncover and how would he build those?

Well, I mean, I think a lot of my people would quit.

Because, like, my kids and my family say, dad, all these other people get to go home. We never get to go home. We have to live with you. Right? So it's always on. And I think that's, in fairness, that's hard for those people that work around me. I'm always on, I'm always pushing. It's never enough. Right. We're going further, we're going bigger, we're under stress, and. And it's hard for people to do. I mean, the main issues our company has is we're a distributed workforce, so we've got communication issues for sure. We're definitely feeling a tremendous cash crunch. I don't know what obstacle I'd come up with on the farm to deal with that, because we're coming out of COVID and I was shut down in 45 countries. So that's a nightmare. And I'd say being self critical, we're doing too much.

It's my fault. I love doing more. Like we're going to get into the nutrition space, we're doing membership, we're doing this thing. And it's a lot for me to ask of my teams but.

Yeah, there's examples that I just gave and I know, I know what's wrong. Maybe I need somebody else on the farm to put me through it.

Sounds like it. That'd be a fun way to finish the series off.

And hey, Joe, one thing that really holds, I find a lot of us back, including myself, is just fear. Like the fear of failure, the fear of disappointment, the fear of letting others down, the fear of success even. Right. So how do you approach dealing with fear and overcoming it?

Well, I face fear. I learned very early on, I don't know why, that when I'm afraid of something I have to just do it. I have to use it as fuel. That's how I met my wife. I was doing a race and my, my leg of the race was to carry a backpack full of sand on a beach and run. And when I got to the end of it, I tagged the next person in the relay to, to swim across the bay. And I looked out at the bay and I thought, I don't want to swim out there. There's a lot of seals, there's probably sharks. I'm afraid of sharks. And once that popped in my head and I, you know, I had that self talk. I said, well now you got to do it now you got to put your big boy shorts on and get in the water. And I swam across and I came up on shore and I met my wife on the other side. So I can't think of many examples in my life where I haven't done something I didn't want to do. Well, you'll appreciate this one. I was in Scotland, we were putting on a race and I saw we had tent weights that look like dumbbells holding the tent down. They were about 50 pounds each. And my mind immediately thought like, oh, I should do the course carrying those two dumbbells, don't do it. And I had a little fear because of the way I operate my life. I said, well now that you said you're not going to do it, now we got to do it. And I went out and convinced a bagpiper, Scottish bagpiper, to follow me the whole way while I carried these weights on the course. And there's an example in the Memories in my mind from that, I can't believe I didn't videotape it. Are just epic, just unbelievable memories. Can you imagine walking in the hills of Scotland, right, with these two wings? It was unbelievable.

You know what's funny about that, Joe? So I'm a pipe band drummer, so a bagpipe drummer. All my life that's what I've done as a kid. I started doing it and so it's funny that you bring up the bagpipes randomly on the show.

Yeah, yeah, I love the bagpipes. I mean, yeah, there was just something really authentic about doing that in the rain. It was great.

I love it. No messing around. And what about. So I've got a lot of listeners that are into elite sport and some of them are professional athletes. So for them to be developing grit, what's your suggestion like that long term perseverance. How does an elite performer develop that grit?

Well, if you want one specific task, I'll give you a few cold water.

Lots of cold showers, lots of cold plunges.

Finish your last meal at 5pm at night. The next morning, wake up and do something that's going to deplete your yourself, deplete you of all your glycogen. Let's just say 300 burpees or 300 calories on an assault bike or you know, something that's just going to wipe you at 5,000 calories. Rowing a 10 mile run, fast run. So now you've got no glycogen left, you're feeling a little lightheaded. Drink as much water as you want, but you can't have food. Throw a 40 pound pack on your back and go out for an eight hour hike. That, my friend, will develop some grit. You're completely, you're starving. And by the way, if it's raining and cold, that'll be a bonus, right? You're starving, you've got no glycogen, you're lightheaded. You're gonna be fine. You're not gonna die fine. It's just gonna be very uncomfortable. And, and you out there for eight hours and, and three hours in, you're sitting down on a stump somewhere, on a stoop somewhere and you're like, what the hell am I doing? I can't believe I listened to this podcast I made this guy. I listen, you know, I did this. But then you muster up enough energy, do another hour and another hour and another hour and before you know it you got eight hours done. I used to do that for 14 days.

And that's the way you become really gritty, powerful.

And for the guy who's sitting right now in the car with his suit and tie on, driving home from his corporate job, and he's a leader there or she's a leader there. How do they develop that grit to perform in their lives?

Well, it could be the cold showers. It could be some really, really hard workouts. Remember, when we think back to what I said earlier about you're not giving unless it hurts, you're not developing grit unless it hurts. And it doesn't have to be negative hurt. It's not. We're not. We don't want permanent damage. We're just. We just want to be really, really uncomfortable. I used to do all my running when I was training for long ultra runs. I would make my shoes wet. I would go into a river, and then I would put sand in them. And it sounds ridiculous. Why would you do that? That's not. And my thinking was, like, the one thing that knocks you out of a race, typically, and I'm sure there's a metaphor for business, is a blister in your foot. Before you know it, you're walking a little funny. Then your hip starts to hurt, your shoulder hurts, and you're out of the race. And I said, I'm just going to beat my feet up in all my training so that when I actually race, I have no. And I never had a foot issue, ever.

Amazing. And so for the person who's running the business, it's like, hey, how can we, under times of harmony, put ourselves under stress? So when the proverbial hits the fan, we're ready to go.

We're ready to go. You've been running with sand in your shoes and they're wet for a year. This is no big deal.

I love it. And look, just before we wrap up, I've got two last questions. One question is this. What's it like to be the life partner of Joe?

Oh, you got to ask my wife. I'm sure there are days. I know there are days where she's like, this sucks. Like, what am I doing with this guy? I'm not walking in the house hugging. And, like, that's just not who I am. When I walk in the house, I want to know, did the kids do their Mandarin right? Or did they do their math? What are we, like, what's our plan for the morning? I'm just always on, and that's gotta be really frustrating to live with.

But it's just. It's who I am. It's not A cop out. It doesn't mean that I can't be better in those areas. I should be, but I just try to squeeze out all the performance I can for myself and those around me, and nobody really likes that. You like the outcome, but you don't like the process.

Definitely. And in terms of rest and sleep and all that stuff, what's your thoughts around the immediate hours of sleep a night?

My mantra for 25 years was, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Lately, I get to bed, I try to be in bed no later than 9, 9:30, and I'm up at 5 in the morning.

That's good.

Yeah. And I've got some really cool products. People send me products all the time. I got some really cool herbal product that's. My God, I've been taking it for the last few weeks. And when you go to sleep, you might as well be in a frigging casket.

What is that product?

I got it. I don't even know the name. Stay tuned. It's unbelievable.

Brilliant. I'll keep an eye out for that. And look, Joe, before we wrap up, one last question. So you are very old man and you're in your last breath and one of your kids comes up and says, hey, dad, one last question. How do I lead my life on purpose? What would you say?

How do I lead? Like, with purpose?

Yep.

I would say. I would go back to what we said earlier in the call, which is like the best thing we could do on this planet. I heard this from a wise guy, believe it or not. Growing up, I lived around a lot of organized crime guys. And this is a guy that killed people for a living. And he said the best thing you could do while we're on this planet is help people. So if you believe that, which we have to, that's got to be an accurate statement, right? It's the best thing we could do. Not help ourselves, help others. And we believe that you're not really helping unless it hurts.

I guess my statement to my child would be like, make sure you're helping others and make sure it hurts. And you'll derive an enormous amount of pleasure from that. Because I do.

That's really powerful. I love it. Thank you. And folks, for those that are listening, please take a second. Go to Instagram, follow Joe Decenna there. Go to Amazon and buy 10 rules for resilience. Mental Toughness for Families. Apply it to your business as well as your family. Joe, is there anything else you'd like the listener to do and take action on?

Right now cold showers. I want 30 days, 30 burpees a day and 30 cold showers and then let us know what you think.

Dan, I do the cold showers already, but I'll add the burpees in for you. I love it. Hey, thanks a million, Joe.

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