Joe De Sena built Spartan into a 6 million-person community where people get tattoos and bond through brutal races. He says finishing one rewires your brain: everyday problems stop feeling hard after you've pushed through real pain.
Questions this video answers
About 6 million people.
Chapters
Who is the community? Where are they coming from? And how do they engage outside of your core product of just the races, you know, I mean, you guys are pros at marketing. And I wish I could say, like, my answer may be a terrible answer, which is, it's a Marine, it's a mom, it's a monk. Literally. Monks show up in robes. It's big, tall, short, skinny, fat. It's everybody. It doesn't matter what country, what culture. So people just don't feel first world. You just don't feel alive. You don't feel good, right? You have a little too easy. And so a friend signs up, and then a friend gets eight buddies to come out. And it's a 6 million person community. And they get tattoos and they feel like they're part of this tribe, this Spartan tribe. And there's nothing negative about the brand. It's just a positive brand. And, you know, if you went into a restaurant, you'd see right away who the Spartans were. They're just, you know. Dean, I think you spoke about your mindset shift, right? You don't get upset anymore about things, and I think I call it a change of frame of reference, right? It's just you're putting on different glasses. And once you've suffered through this, like, you don't. Like, you cut me off. That's all you got. Like, I'm not running through barbed wire right now. Like, who? Right?