Joe De Sena Recap: How to Develop Resilience
5 Apr 2022 · 8 min
Joe De Sena, founder of Spartan Races, shares three lessons on resilience: you're more capable than you think, real giving should hurt, and a daily routine stabilizes your emotions and performance.
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I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there.
Welcome back to Lead On Purpose. It's that time when I drop the key leadership highlights from our previous full length episode. So previously I had Joe Disena on the show. Joe is an absolute legend. He's the founder and CEO of Spartan Races. He's a New York Times bestselling author, father, husband, an absolute legend. After building a multimillion dollar pool and construction business in college, he went on to create a Wall street trading firm. Then he set his sights on ripping 100 million people off their coaches by creating the Spartan lifestyle. And look, he commits to himself. So you know, his racing resume is phenomenal. Over 50 ultra events and overall 14 Ironman events in one year alone. So it was amazing to sit down with Joe. He'd actually just got back from the Slovakia, Ukraine border where Spartan and Joe were getting supplies delivered across to the Ukrainians. And an amazing guy who gives a lot of, who pushes himself to the absolute limit. So look, I wanted to share with you the three key takeaways from our chat together. So grab a pen and paper and see if you can implement one of these in your life, in your business, in your family. And hey, please do not forget, if you're on Apple listening to this, please leave me a rating and review. And if you're on any, whether it's Spotify, whether it's, whatever you might be listening on, please leave a rating and review. If it's possible, share it with a friend. Subscribe. That's. That's the only way I can help impact more lives. So here's number one, you're even more capable than you think you are. And coming from Joe, that's quite amazing. You know, he pushes people to their absolute upper limits. He takes organizations, so corporate organizations, figures out what their top three challenges are, then brings them to his farm on Vermont, sets up very difficult physical challenges that represent those challenges they're having at work, and then shows them how to overcome it physically and then applies it in a theoretical way so that they can traverse their challenges. So you're even more capable than you think you are. So if you can't run that hill, well, you probably can. Why don't you walk it? To start with, if you're afraid to put that investment memorandum together because you might screw it up, how about you just do draft one and get started? You're way more capable than you give yourself credit for. Second, big takeaway. If it doesn't hurt, you're not really giving. And he was saying this in relation to philanthropy. So when you're donating something or giving something of your time, Joe said, look, if it doesn't actually hurt, then you're not really truly giving. So if you're giving $20 a month to Oxfam or UNICEF, is that truly hurting you financially? Is it. Is it a big dent in your pocket? How about $2,000 a month? Now all of a sudden you're having to work your butt off to make sure you've got that extra 2k that's hurting. You know, if it's getting out there and helping people, you do an hour of maybe delivering something or maybe soup, you know, you're serving soup, do it for eight hours. That's Joe's take on life is like, if you're going to give, really give, go the extra mile, push yourself. And I know that's not for everyone, but for him, you know, he's very much focused on pushing himself to his upper limits, pushing the people around him to his upper limits. And I really admire his approach. Third takeaway was this, and I think this is an important one for all of us to re embrace if we're not already embracing it. And that is to dedicate yourself to a daily routine. When you have a solid daily routine, you have structure, you can traverse those chaotic times. You can really, absolutely respond in a more proactive way. I'll be honest, when I'm out of my routine, I do not respond as positively, as optimistically, as enthusiastically, as patiently as I do when I'm in a really good, solid, recurring routine. Right? Yeah, I'm a bit grumpier and maybe a little bit shorter. I can't really get much shorter in physical stature. Not exactly a leprechaun, but I'm not exactly 6 foot 5. So for me, it's really, really important to when I'm getting out of the habit of the daily routine to get back to it. So once I notice that I'm out of that routine, that's my trigger to get back into the routine. And I'll Be honest, I'm pretty committed to, to a solid daily routine. But sometimes life happens when you're a dad or something's happening in business, or something's happening globally or locally and you got to change things up a little. But there's certain non negotiables. So it was great chatting to Joe. It was a great reminder that dedicating ourselves to a daily routine, whether that's in one hour, like a power hour in the morning where you do your meditation, your run, bit of reading, whatever you might do in the morning, whether that's, you know, at lunchtime you go for a jog or you know, at lunchtime you go to yoga, yoga. Or at lunchtime you just get off site and eat and enjoy company with others. Maybe that's an evening, a three, two, one routine at night where three hours before bed you don't eat anymore or drink, two hours before bed you don't do any work related tasks and one hour before bed you have zero screens, no TV, no iPad. Whatever your routine is, embrace it and make sure that it really helps you optimize your energy, optimize your focus, optimize your emotions. Because as leaders, that's how we make decisions. We make decisions on emotions, we don't make big leadership decisions. On logic. Often when you think of let's take a war, when someone wages war and decides we're going to war, they don't do that on logic, emotion drives those decisions. So everything that you do around your daily routine, I want to challenge you to ask yourself, is it serving me? Is it helping me to manage my emotions? So dedicate to a daily routine. Look, I hope you've enjoyed those takeaways. There were so many more takeaways. So please do go back and listen to that full show. It was an absolute honor to sit down with Joe decenna, an incredible high performer. I'm looking at some point to do some work and collaborate with him here in New Zealand, which is very exciting. So watch that space. But for now folks, please get out there and lead your life on purpose. Share the show, maybe rate it, review it for me. But share this link with one person that might enjoy it. I'd really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you guys in a couple of days. I've got an epic guest coming your way.
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