What Everyone Ought to Know About Entrepreneurship, Health and Success to Make Your Life and Business More E.L.F.™ - I Love Marketing Episode #355

The eight miler, the one in the middle is probably going to take you two and a half hours and then the three miler, take you about 90 minutes. So I like to say 90 minutes of suffering or 90 years, your choice.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and this is the I Love Marketing podcast.

Joe DeSena, founder and CEO of Spartan, the world's largest obstacle race and endurance brand, has demonstrated his entrepreneurial drive since he was a preteen. Following a successful career on Wall street, desena set his sights on ripping people off their couches by creating the Spartan lifestyle. With over 1 million annual global participants in more than 250 events over 40 countries, the brand has transformed 6 million plus lives since it was founded in 2010. Decenna is the host of the Spartan up podcast, a New York Times best selling author and has written three books, Spartan Up, Spartan Fit and the Spartan Way. In this episode you'll gain insight into the qualities that make a true Spartan, how to improve your frame of reference to change your life and how to improve the lives of those around you. You'll hear how Joe views commitment and how to achieve more in less time. If you'd like to join Joe Decenna, Joe Polish and 400 more of the world's greatest entrepreneurs at this year's Genius Network annual event, visit geniusnetwork.com joinjoe.

Hey, this is Joe Polish with Genius Network and I'm here with Joe Decenna who owns and founded Spartan.com. tell us about who you are, what you do, what is Spartan?

First off, honored to be here. I know people pay big money to be next to you, so I'm just happy you're not charging me. Spartan is a military inspired obstacle race. It's a global movement. It is really meant to transform individuals. My mother was into yoga meditation years ago. I noticed that everybody she talked to, she got healthy and then that spread the word. It was like paying it forward. I wanted to do something that was badass with a badass name that people would get inspired by and get motivated and get outside and get off the couch. So.

And a million people a year going through it.

Yep, million people a year.

So what is the best thing and the worst thing about running this fricking monster? Very many moving parts, you know, Million people a year. That's a lot of people. It's a lot of humans. It's a lot of activity going on. What's the best part and the worst part about it?

Yeah, so I've run businesses my whole life, as have You. And it's no easy feat. Even when you're doing something as purposeful as this, you know, that feels good. You wake up energized. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong on a daily basis with any business. Right. Payroll. At the end of the week, people quit. Competition, you name it. There's always a problem every day. Logistically challenging, I would say, is the biggest thing here. Because you're in 30 countries, you got 200 events, and event business is tough. I don't want to use the analogy of a circus, but imagine moving a circus around. Right? Right. To 30 countries. Cultural challenges, legal and permitting challenges. But the biggest. The biggest hurdle, and I can't complain, I'm not complaining here, is digital marketing.

So what do you mean, digital marketing? Explain it.

So we're dealing with all these different social channels, Right. We're dealing with email lists that are just growing massively. Email platforms, 30 different languages. Right. Because we're all over the world and tying all that together. So I kind of feel like when we were a smaller company, we were a rowboat, and I would turn to the right and say, hey, we got a little water in here. And scoop it out. Turn to the right. Now it's like a cruise ship. Right. Maybe the brand vision that I have in my head doesn't make. We got 200 employees. It's very difficult.

Yeah.

But I can't complain about anything. I'm having fun.

You know, you're solving problems for profit. That's what entrepreneurs do.

Yeah.

What problems is Spartan solving for people?

So I think the biggest problem we're solving for folks is people are lost. I think in this age of consumerism, certainly in the first world, where we have everything and we live in bubbles, people don't necessarily know how to define themselves. And if they do, they're not defining themselves the right way. So maybe they're chasing a fancy car, they're trying to keep up with their neighbors, cheating on a relationship, addiction with alcohol or drugs. And when they stumble upon Spartan. I mean, I got a story for you. I'm at a race three years ago, and a guy comes up and shakes my hand. Oh, you're the founder, right? Yeah, the founder. He's missing his teeth. I gotta tell you, you saved my life. I said, tell me the story. What happened? He said, I'm driving my pickup truck. He says, I'm an addict. I'm on crystal meth, the whole thing. And I hear a Spartan race radio advertisement in my truck. He goes, I stopped the truck. He goes, I listen to it, I look it up on my phone. He goes, I parked the car and I went into the woods. I don't know how much of this is true or not. He goes, I spent two weeks in the woods, I cleaned myself up and I'm here now and I'm racing. And you changed my life. Now, that's an extreme example, but we get hundreds and thousands of those kinds of emails coming in and those kinds of messages. I had a guy in Japan last week, took a train, six hours to come see me in the Navy. How you doing? I said, you know, what's going on? He said, well, a year or two ago, I tried to get into the military and they wouldn't let me in. I was too heavy. He goes, I found Spartan, stumbled upon it, lost a ton of weight. Now I'm in the Navy. Just wanted to come and thank you. So there's a less extreme example, but still amazing. So we're solving problems.

This was probably back in 2008, 2009. I'm in the offices with a beachbody talking to Carl and Jonathan, who are the founders of eachbody. And they were telling me that in order to make their infomercial with Tony Horton, who I've interviewed before work, they couldn't get it to work initially with the infomercial because here they were selling a very difficult workout, the way they described it, whereas their competitors are selling machines that don't do anything. And their whole thing was, you're going to work your ass off in order to get in shape. And it wasn't a very appealing thing. So how do you actually message that in order to get people to respond? But they have marketing stamina. And what they did is they applied themselves and they figured it out. They figured out the hooks and they tested and they tested. In the real world, it's called failure. In the marketing world, it's called testing. And so they just tested it and they did it. What is the hooks? What are the ways that you message this that you feel most effectively? Draw in the people, because having a million people a year go through this, you're clearly doing something that is appealing to people. What is it that you think they're responding to?

Well, let me back up and I'm going to answer with a little bit of a story and then a question for you because you're the expert here. I'm not. My mother first introduced me to this kind of stuff, late 70s. She introduced me and my sister to a 3,000 mile foot race in Queens. It goes around a one mile loop. Eight people sign up here. It's not a moneymaker, right? And they spend 60 or 70 days going around a one mile loop to try to knock out 3,000 miles. So you see that as a young person and you're like, wow. The human body, the mind is capable of things unimaginable. So fast forward, I find Ironman, I find adventure racing, crazy races all around the world, I get involved in. When I decide to start this, I had that DNA imprinted in my head. It was going to be badass, it was going to be hard. It was going to be authentic, legitimate. This is something the Navy Seals would be proud of, right? We weren't gonna hurt people just to hurt them. It had to be athletic in nature. And if I was really successful, we're gonna get this in the Olympics. This is gonna be an Olympic sport. The problem with it is everything you just asked me, this is a hard sell. I'm not selling cotton candy or this is P90X times 50. So how do I sell that when on the other hand, they got the color run, people go out and do a 5K and splash color all over each other. And there's music like, how do I position that and sell it? And I made the decision, right or wrong, that no matter what, even if no one buys into, doesn't matter because this is who I am, right? If they don't want it, oh well, I guess I'll go out of business. But I'm not changing who I am and what we're selling. I don't know anything about brands. I'm figuring this out as I go. You have all this experience, you're writing books. And I said, you know, we gotta create like a. I don't even know what we call it. A brand roadmap, a guideline. What are our values? How do we speak to people? Because when it was just me and a guy in a room, I just told them what the values were. I, I just explained it. Now it's six levels down and I got to make sure no one screws it up. The guy in Slovakia that's doing our events over there doesn't. He has to understand what this is. So anyway, we spent the last two, three weeks putting together this thing. And I had a company wide meeting yesterday, yesterday afternoon. And we all got on the phone and I spit it out and I verbalized this whole 52 page document and I said, here's who the brand. This is the brand. This is how we speak to people. And we never compromise. Like if we say we're going to do a burpee mile, it's not 100 yards, it's a mile, because that's who we are. We have integrity. Like, that's our brand. And I had to really punch that home. And the feedback I got from a few of our employees, which. Which is legitimate feedback, they said, well, you know, there's people in some of the other countries, they say we got to soften the image a little bit. And it, you know, people are having a tough time selling it. And I said, we don't soften the image. This is who we are. I'm sorry if those people don't buy into this. But my opinion, not being an expert, if we soften the message, then we start to become a sellout, and then we're just like everybody else. Like, I don't want to compete on having a taller obstacle or a shorter obstacle, or I want to compete on authenticity. This, right? This is who we are. There's nobody else like us because we actually, we. We do this ourselves. We live this. I don't know if that answered the question.

No, no. I mean, I think it's great because, like, I think the best expert is the marketplace. I mean, they're either showing up or they're not. They're either responding or they're not. And you deal with people at the level at which they respond. And I think great marketing attracts who you want to attract and repels who you don't. And with you positioning yourself, I mean, you're very hardcore and you probably always will be. So.

Because I don't want to do it any other way. Like, if you mentioned earlier, if it was just a business, then it's different, but it's not. This is not just a business for me. This is like a. This is my purpose in life. So death is my exit strategy.

Gotcha. That's funny. That's funny. Let me ask you, what the hell goes on in your mind every day? I'm sure a million things. But I mean, what's Joe's value system? Where's the drive come from? What sustains it? What causes you discouragement? How do you deal with it when you get it? I mean, I'd like to get into some of those things from this context. People watching this. I'm sure there's many people that have participated and do on a regular basis with you that couldn't even fathom that they could do this and pull it off. Many are immediately attracted to it. Others are, like, with probably the most fear and apprehension going into it. And others are, there's no fucking way in hell I'm going to do any of this. This is bullshit. This is crazy. It's dangerous. I'm going to get hurt. That sort of stuff for you. You are a convert of your own system. Like, I learned marketing because I needed to eat, I needed to survive. I never thought I'd teach it to other people. I just somehow turned it into what you were good at, to a business. Yeah. And therefore, it's been very beneficial to other people. And so you've been able to take this interest of yours, this lifestyle of yours, and you've been able to enroll other people into it, accidentally or not, you're doing something huge. Right. I'd like to find. What's the causation of this?

Like, where'd it come from?

Yeah. What drives it and what keeps it going?

As I answer that right now, I think I'm figuring out myself. Like, I haven't really thought about it, but I go back to my mother. I go back to those early days in Queens, right. She got into yoga, she got into meditation. She became a vegan in an Italian neighborhood that represented Goodfellas. Goodfellas was filmed in the neighborhood we grew up in. So the reason I say that is she was up against the tide. No one was accepting this craziness. Right. They used to say, oh, your mother feeds you branch sandwiches. And she was a crazy person. Now, 40 years later, this is normal stuff everybody's talking about. So she was right. And the people she did convert were happier, healthier. Right? And I saw that. So deep down inside, there's that my father was like a relentless entrepreneur maniac. Killed himself literally, just. Just working, you know, 24 hours a day. And so I got that. You know, I wake up and I sit up like a robot. Literally. My eyes open, I sit straight up, and I'm typing and I'm working. There's not 12 seconds that go by from the moment my eyes open to I'm not sure if I'm motivated today. I don't know what I want to do. I'm already. It's almost like I was working while I was sleeping. And it's just a continuation. So I'm naturally driven, I'm naturally motivated. I'm an entrepreneur at heart, which means I go right to, okay, how can we make this profitable? And then I'm really, really fortunate because I've had a lot of businesses in my life, and none of them were purposeful. Purposeful in the sense I Needed to make money. That was my purpose. I want to make money. You're my psychologist here. I probably wanted to make money because my dad went broke. I saw my dad go broke in the early 90s, and so I'm just avoiding that.

There's a saying, I think it comes out of Al Anon, which is that which is hysterical is historical. So when everyone is responding in a hysterical way, where the response, be it on a low level, like they're not responding, responding or it's over the top, it's not because of what's going on, it's something historical. And I think you look at people's lives, it makes sense is what they do that they do and good and bad. So traits that. What parts of you are difficult? Like, what's the most difficult part about.

You being with me, like my wife?

Well, you can talk about either or yourself because I always think of it this way. The best thing about being your own boss is you're your own boss. You can do what the hell you want. You have a lot of freedom and options that many people don't have, especially if you get to a position where you have money. But the worst thing about being your own boss is a lot of times you don't have anyone that you're accountable to and you kind of can go off.

I think that's the biggest challenge for me. As you asked the question, I have no guardrails. I see things differently. I assume that the people around me see the same thing. I see I don't get it, that they don't get it. And there's no rules really. I mean, obviously I'm not talking. We're not going to do illegal things. Right. You know, when I got into cleaning swimming pools, nobody's going to pay for that. Why are you going to do that? I say why not? Right? Right. Like, of course we can get this to work. Everybody else says it doesn't work. So I think it's the biggest opportunity for me and biggest asset I have, but it's also a liability because when you're a person like that, which I'm sure you're like that, it's very frustrating when everybody doesn't buy into it right away.

It's like having a vis. The ability to have that vision is because other people just don't have it. They don't see it. So you're, you know, I think then.

You got to explain it. Right. And then they don't. Still don't get. And that's the biggest challenge.

Gary Halbert who was this crazy copywriter who I originally first learned marketing from, he said this great line, which is, the world advances on the backs of its neurotics.

That's great.

And, you know, and I sit and look at all of the crazy people out there doing all kinds of wacky shit. And my friend Peter Diamandis says, you know, the day before a breakthrough, it was a crazy idea. And if you look at every breakthrough, in order to have a breakthrough, you got to break something. And that is very difficult for people who are in a certain comfort zone. And I imagine with Spartan, you are literally ripping people out of their comfort.

Zones right off the couch.

And that is one of the most difficult thing for humans to do, is get out of their comfort zones. They're just in their own conditioning. So for people listening to this, for one who shouldn't go to a Spartan.

Thing because, listen, if you're unhealthy, right, if you've got high blood pressure, you're very overweight, you gotta get yourself checked out. Because this is an intense event, very intense. And it's gonna put you, I believe Einstein said it, right? Adversity introduces a man to himself. You are gonna meet yourself at this event. There's gonna be moments you don't like what you see. It's gonna be tough. And so you gotta make sure you're in decent shape. Not Olympic level shape, not even high school track shape. Just to the point where you're healthy.

Yeah.

That said, I had a 696 pound guy come out and attempt a race. Everybody finished a race in 90 minutes. He was out there seven hours. He couldn't get over every obstacle, but he was out there. He wanted to make a change for himself. I found out about him. I recruited him to come back and live with us on our farm in Vermont. I helped him lose. He got down to £260. Wow. £260. So just because you're unhealthy doesn't mean you can't come out and do this. I'm just suggesting that, you know, check yourself out first before.

Has anyone died doing this?

People die. People die. That said, if we put a million people in a room, somebody's going to die, right? Just statistics.

How do you deal with the injuries and stuff?

Believe it or not, our injury rates are actually less than a marathon. And I think the reason for that is, you know what you're getting into here because you see the imagery and this is going to be tough and so you prepare better for it. Whereas maybe with A marathon, people run out and bite off more than they can chew. I think if we look at anything catastrophic, it's simply the numbers again. New York Marathon is 50,000 people. We're a million people a year, right? It's a very big number.

Describe for people that have. That don't really know what goes down, like, describe what, what they're really. What you would really be enrolling in what is going to.

So you and I would be lining up right now at the start, right? They're gonna give a little speech for us. They're gonna get us motivated. And the gun goes off. We're wearing timing chips because it's very important we be held accountable. You know, within 200 yards, we're gonna see a wall. No big deal. You gotta get over a wall. Be surprised how tough it is to get over a wall. Up and over a wall. Now we're gonna go through a wall. A little opening in the wall, like a window. We gotta get through the wall. Now we're gonna go under a wall. Hard for a lot of people actually to bend down and get under wall yet. The human body for a million years on earth was meant to climb, crawl, jump, swim, right? But yet it's hard to do these things. So it just goes to show you that we're not necessarily living the right way. We'll run some more. There might be a water pit and it's cold water and that's a little uncomfortable. And then we're crawling out and we're sliding in the mud. We'll run a little more. Maybe we see some barbed wire and we're doing a 100 yard crawl under the barbed wire. It's uncomfortable, right? We're on our elbows, we're on our knees. It's not something you do in the living room every day. We climb up a mountain. There's a bucket to fill with rocks. We've got 80 pounds of rocks. We're carrying for 100 yards. We've got to lift up men and women, men and women. We've got to lift up a giant cement ball. We're dragging a chain attached to a block. We're jumping over fire, which is scary for people. We're throwing a spear, which we did for a long time on Earth. We haven't done in a while. We're trying to hit a target now. The other thing I did, which made this event exponentially harder and harder to sell, is if you miss an obstacle, if you don't want to do an obstacle, you can't do an obstacle. You gotta do 30 burpees. You know what burpees are?

Well, we just did them earlier.

Yeah. You know what burpees are? 30 burpees changes the game, but it holds everybody accountable. Because I said, I'm not going to be involved in an event where people just skip obstacles. Right. Or they make believe they're trying it. No, you're going to train for it. You're going to work hard, you're going to attempt it. Otherwise, you're doing 30 burpees because no one wants to do 30 burpees. It is. It is the devil's exercise. Right, Right. So I don't know if that answered the question. No. No.

And so how long does this go on?

So I have three different distance events. I have a 3 miler, an 8 miler, and a 13 miler. To put it in perspective, the 13 miler is the equivalent, I would say, of running a marathon. As far as how long it would take, it's going to take you five, six hours. The eight miler, the one in the middle is probably gonna take you two and a half hours. And then the three miler, take you about 90 minutes. So I like to say 90 minutes of suffering or 90 years, your choice. Right. Come out, suffer for a little bit, clean yourself up, find out what your weaknesses are. If you can't bend over, if you can't get over a wall, that's a problem. Right, Right.

How many of these have you done yourself?

A lot more than that.

Not even counting them.

Oh, my God, a lot. I've done way too many events. Yeah. But I love it. I love it. If I had my choice, that's all I'd be doing, is be out in the mountains climbing and running. Yeah, I love it.

How does your family respond to this craziness?

I'm very proud of what I'm about to tell you, and I'm sure the listeners are gonna say, this guy's a complete lunatic. When my mother went off the rails and got into yoga and meditation, my dad thought she was crazy. My dad said, hey, I'm gonna get your sister and yourself an account at a local Chinese restaurant so you could eat normal food. Just sneak out of your house because they got divorced and go and have some Chinese food. I became friends over a decade with the Chinese restaurant owner, and I learned the Asian culture because I used to hang out in this restaurant. When we got married, my wife and I, and we had kids, I said, you know that movie Kill Bill with Uma Thurman? I said, wouldn't it be awesome if we had a kung fu master living with us and he would train the kids, you know, wake them up, because we'd never had kids before. And so anyway, she goes for it, the Chinese restaurant owner, I call him up, he gets me a kung fu master to fly in from China and he moves in with us. And so for the last, I don't know, it's gotta be six years, seven years we've had a trainer, a master who lives with us, wakes the kids up every morning at 5:45am and literally it's like Kill Bill, puts them in the barn, trains them, and then at night we do it again at 5:30. So what's it like? What's my family think? I'm a crazy person. Right, Right.

No, that is clear.

This is seven days a week. However. However. My eight year old boy ran the Boston Marathon. My other eight year old when they were eight. My other eight year old when he was eight ran the New York Marathon. So it's amazing, right, to see what a child could do if they're trained. Now if you saw the movie the Accountant. Yeah, right. My wife's afraid that that could happen to our kids, but that's what they think.

That's funny. That's funny. Are you a happy guy?

Happiness doesn't come out in smiles with me. Happiness is when I'm busy. I like to be busy. I like to be productive and get stuff done. When I was in college, I was working as a bar, back in a bar and all my friends were drinking and I'm carrying things up and down and moving bottles. And somebody, a girl, a guy came up to me and said, man, you gotta have some fun. I thought, I'm having a blast, I'm getting paid, I'm lifting boxes. You guys are idiots, right? You're all drinking, you're not gonna feel good in the morning. So happiness for me is just different maybe than happiness for other folks. I'm not necessarily happy if I'm wasting time. I don't know if you feel that. You seem like the kind of guy that gets stuff done.

I will sacrifice peace and joy for productivity. Now, do I want to be miserable? No. But I certainly, I get a real. I get a real sense of fulfillment from achievement. I'm definitely not a lifestyle entrepreneur. I'm an achievement entrepreneur. That being said, I'm not big on doing things that make you miserable, but it depends.

Miserable like going out in the rain and running?

No, I mean miserable like where you're dealing with people in situations. That are annoying. For instance, let's take exercise. It is not easy to work out, really. Meaning, like my friend Dan Sullivan says, nothing feels good in the middle. Like, I would imagine the middle of a Spartan race.

The middle of the burpees. Yeah.

That we did. It doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel good.

But there's a beneficial consequence out of certain things that you do. It's kind of like Hugh Downs. I don't know if you remember Hugh Downs. I interviewed him when he was 87 years old. He's now in his mid-90s. And he said, the difference between stress and distress, he goes, you want to put stress on yourself. That's how you build muscle. That's how you get better. Distress tears you down. So it depends. Because you're not putting people in happy situations. What you're doing is you're putting people.

When we put the metal around their neck at the finish line, they find out who they are. Right, Right.

So the way that I would describe it is. No, I mean, I certainly think there are certain pains that will. You're going to suffer, but there's something that's going to come out of it. It's the suffering that there's nothing beyond it. That's the stuff I want to avoid.

I'm a big believer. If you have everything, you appreciate nothing. You have nothing. You appreciate everything. And so when I found these races myself, and I was out in the wilderness, I found that I just wanted water, food, and shelter. It's not a place most people are used to getting to in the first world. Right. In these bubbles we live in. But when you get to a place where you just want water, food and shelter, oh, my God. You appreciate everything. Right. You could eat a piece of burger in the dirt and it's. Right. You could lay on rocks and say, this is the most comfortable place I've ever slept. You could be in the rain and say, this is fantastic. I'm just a believer that we need to take some stuff out of our lives to appreciate what we do have in our lives. Right. If that makes sense.

No, that makes total sense. Yeah.

The great samurai used to burn everything in their mind before they went to bed, so when they woke up, they appreciated everything.

Do you have empathy?

I think I have some. I think we gotta ask the camera person, do I have empathy? Yeah. Joe's gotta. I hide it, but I have empathy. Yeah.

So when you're seeing someone who's really struggling, I would. Cause I'd love to have you imagine the person Watching this is in a state of hopelessness. They are stuck. They can't get off their ass. They're depressed, they're sad. You know, there's two different approaches. You can take a compassionate approach or you can be like, you know, get on with it. I mean, come on, let's. So how do you deal with excuses?

How do you deal with, I don't do well with excuses. Like you said, you've got to clone yourself, right? Or clone that offering. So I can't do this with everybody, but you can give me any person at the bottom of the barrel, heroin act, doesn't matter. You know, we can go do a marathon overnight so I can get that person off the couch and I can get them pumped up and motivated. I'm one person. How many people could I do that with? So. And how am I going to do it? Which I guess is your question. You know, I'm not going to walk in screaming at them. We're going to do it together, right? We do the first step together and the second step, and before you know it, I mean, that kid that was £696, I made him do 20 miles a day. I'm carrying a sandbag. 20 miles a day, right? We were only eating raw fruits and vegetables and drinking water before he met me. He was eating eight egg McMuffins and two Sprites. Two two liter Sprites every day. So I didn't scream at him. I don't think I screamed at him. We filmed it, right? I wasn't screaming at him, but there were moments where I had to scream at him. I did it with him. I'm with you. All right? We're going down together.

For someone that is in a position where they have a job that they hate, they are financially not able to get out of a situation that they are barely scraping by. They don't know what the hell to do. They're looking for a pain pill. What do you say to them?

It's the first step, right? The whole thing is that first step, that commitment. And what I like to do is commit publicly. Because if I commit publicly now, I'm on the hook. And so what I suggest people do is tell everybody they know I'm gonna run a marathon or I'm gonna get married, whatever it is, I'm gonna start a business, whatever that thing is, to get them from that place you just described. They've got to do it and they've got to do it publicly and they've got to maybe spend some money, which is why you do that with the genius network. Right. People have to spend because if you don't do that, you're not going to do it. We all would get the paper done in college or in high school an hour before it was due. So unless you have a deadline. Right. It doesn't get done. So you got to publicly commit. You got to set a date for whatever that thing is, otherwise it doesn't get done.

Yep. Okay.

It's got to be an embarrassing situation that you're nervous. Right. Like you don't want to be embarrassed. You want to actually deliver on what you told people you're going to do. Most people are going to respond to that.

Yeah.

Got it.

So what are some of your rituals that are just essential that make your life non negotiables?

Got to work out every day. I got to get an hour, 90 minutes in every day. Non negotiable. My kids have to work out every day. Non negotiable. Right. I don't drink. I don't drink coffee. I work hard.

You good sleeper.

You know, I thought I was a good sleeper and somebody sent me one of these rings. Now they have. That measures your sleep. Not such a good sleeper. And I don't sleep enough.

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

I don't sleep enough. The charts. Yeah.

How about food advice for people since.

You'Re so I'm convinced the absolute perfect diet that no one listening is going to do, this is all the way on the right. This is the perfect diet. Raw fruits and vegetables. That's it. And then all the things you're going to hear from your audience right now that are watching this, well, what about protein? What about that? All you need is raw fruits and vegetables. All you need to drink is water. That's it. No one's going to do it. No one is going to do that. I can't even do it because socially that's what we do. We sit down, we eat. But the closer you can get to that, the better off you are. The closer you can get away from processed foods, even restaurants and so forth. And the closer you can get to that pure, uncooked food, the better off you'll be.

Gotcha.

So that's my opinion and I've done, you know, 10, 12, 13 day races where you're out there in the wilderness and 30 below temperatures on your own, believe it or not, on like raw peanut butter and carrots and stuff. So I've tested my body in those situations and hands down, that's the best diet.

And you function Better when you, a.

Thousand times not even your body gets so efficient. That's the way we were designed to eat. All my paleo friends will be watching this and saying, I'm an idiot. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm telling you, perfect diet. Wow.

Okay, cool. When I say the word hero, who comes to mind?

Give Hero. You know, I was attracted to older people at a very young age. I don't know why, but I wanted to get advice from older people because I thought that would help me bypass mistakes. So there's a couple of. There's one 70 year old guy and an 80 year old guy that have guided me through a lot of my life. And they are absolutely, they're like my second dads and my heroes. One's Jewish, one's Italian, one's in New York, one's in upstate New York. If it weren't for them, I might be cleaning carpets. I might be one of the guys buying your kits. Right, right.

Okay. So what would you say to your younger self in 18, 20 years old if you had to give yourself advice?

Have patience. I have not been a patient person. And when I look back, I should add more patience because, you know, when we used to race, when I would do the long races I just described, you'd be in the middle of that race, you're six days in, you're lost and you're feeling like, what the hell am I doing out here? I'm uncomfortable, I'm tired, I just want water, food and shelter. And I'm going to lose anyway because I've been lost for five hours. And ultimately what I found after doing so many of these events is that you just have to get to the finish line. You'd be surprised how many other people were lost and quit just by showing up at the finish line, you're actually in the top five. You didn't do well, you weren't trained, but just getting to the finish line. Right. And so I would have, I would have told my younger self, just be more patient. It's through attrition that you win. And the other thing I would have told my younger self is really the competition you need to outlive, right? Not you don't need to out earn or need to outlive. So when you're thinking about health and wellness, Right, Great.

So you've asked a lot of people what their definition of success is. So what's yours?

I think it's being happy with what you're doing. I don't think it has anything to do with monetary success or fame. I think it's. Are you completely comfortable where you are to be able to wake up every day and do something you love? Who's better than me or you like? You love it. I love it. You don't even have to pay me. I'll pay you. Yeah, exactly.

And what's funny is that so many of the things in life that really make such a difference don't really require any money whatsoever.

No.

Yeah. Just effort.

Effort.

Yeah, yeah. What are some books or anything that you've been introduced to that either gave you a different perspective, shifted your paradigm, taught you a skill or a capability that has been instrumental in your life? Any sort of things that other people could get access to, read, watch, listen, movies, anything that just was.

I mean, I'm gonna stop really boring here and I'm just like a broken record. But there's a book called Adrift. Guy was stuck at Sea for 72 days. That was a game changer for me when I read it. Because.

Adrift.

Adrift. Because it. True story. Literally adrift for 72 days. And it goes through the whole experience. Everything that could go wrong goes wrong. He has a harpoon gun that he pulled off the boat when the boat went down, but it's not working properly. And he finally finds a fish cause he's starving, as one example. And he shoots it and he misses and it goes through the raft he's in. I mean, that kind of stuff happens for 72 days. Again, I'm a big frame of reference Guy. You're reading that book and you're saying, what could I complain? I can't complain about anything. You're complaining. You're in traffic, you're not in a raft for 72 days. Right. Being attacked by sharks. So Adrift was a big one. Shackleton's story, the Endurance, Right. Was a big one for me. These are all. It's all in the same genre of shogun. Those are big books.

So you're probably not sitting around reading Eckhart Tolle Power now and stuff like that.

No, I'm not. I don't know why I'm not. Just not a big, you know, Tony Robbins. I like Tony Robbins and all that stuff, but I'm just not. I'm self motivated, Right. So I'm more interested in reading about really tough situations people were in. So I could just put stuff in perspective.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting because I've thought a lot about as I've gotten older and different ways that people Behave and respond to life. And one thing, being an addict and spending so much time with people that are struggling with addiction, it has given me a tremendous amount of empathy, I would say, and a tremendous amount of being willing to see that people's behavior has a lot to do with their biochemistry. Like, if you suck the serotonin and dopamine out of somebody's body, they're simply going to change. You know, if they're jacked up on cortisol, if their testosterone is too low. I mean, there's so many hormonal things that have to do with human behavior. And I give myself more slack than I used to because, man, have I driven myself really hard to the point where I would drive myself into a wall. Like, I'm always a guy that could drive, and I'm using, metaphorically speaking, I could drive 150 miles an hour. But if I start going 200, I'm running into walls, I'm flipping, that sort of stuff. And another thing that an old mentor of mine said is as people get older, what they sometimes look at is wisdom is simply fatigue. And I think there's seasons that you kind of go through. And one of the things, like, before we started, I'd mentioned this is the first time I actually had a cold in a long time. I used to get sick all the time. And I really worked on just eating healthy, being super clean, exercising a lot.

You look great. And you said that coming in.

Thank you. Yeah. And I started thinking, like, wow, Looking at parasympathetic system, sympathetic system, nervous system, and all these things that sort of get jacked up and wondering, at what point do you kind of step back and say, I'm freaking driving myself. So is there a side of you that. Where you look at someone and you're like, you know, maybe putting it all out is not the solution? Or do you find that almost most things can be overcome if you just bust your ass?

You know, the sleep thing that I got, the ring that I got was a real eye opener for me because, as you can imagine, my mother was pushing very hard. This whole idea of meditation slowing down, right? And my dad was the complete opposite. They both died. So. But. But I would argue she had. That she had the right direction. I don't think it's healthy working the way I'm working. It's probably not healthy working the way you're working. But I say to myself, certainly with the Spartan business, man, I'm changing lives, right? And so there's a day where I'm like, I just want to throw this phone off the building. I don't want another email. I don't want another phone call. And then I'll get an email from somebody that says, hey, I just want you to know I lost £200. I'm back, whatever it is. And I'm like, all right, bought me another day. So I don't think working like this in business is healthy for any of us. Right. I don't know how you build a business any other way. You know what I mean? Like, people say, oh, stop and smell the roses. I say, that's great. Who's fertilizing the roses, who's watering the roses, who's clipping the roses? Because they don't just happen on their own. Right? Right.

That's the thing to always question is not just what you're doing, but how you're doing it, how it gets done. And everyone's different. What I've also learned is people have different motivations. I mean, because of the world that I'm in, I'm dealing with famous authors and lots of people that build their personality brands. And I think a lot of people are more interested in being well known than well paid. And there's different motivators that people have. For me, I'm just trying to increase my consciousness, whatever that is for me, if I can do that, I look at that as progress. So your latest book, your most recent one is called Spartan up, and you have the first beginning of the chapter, and you tell a story about a guy who's basically tied up and gagged.

So, first book was Spartan up, the book you were talking about. Spartan Fit.

Yeah, Spartan Fit. I'm sorry.

The game changer. The story, yeah. You want me to tell the story?

Yep, please.

It's my buddy Jay, and I'll tell you how the story came about and why my kids now no longer do kung fu. And they wrestle. I'm on previous Wall street career and I'm out to dinner and I'm bragging as I brag to you about my kids doing kung fu. And the guy I'm with says, oh, that's nothing. He says, I grew up in Seattle where the two brothers had a dad, our neighbors. And the dad was ex wrestler vet, tough as nails. And he said, every night after dinner, the brothers are going to go downstairs and they're going to train in the dark, blindfolded wrestling, because if they could wrestle in the dark, they're going to be that much better in the light. This went on for 10 years to the point where, like, the wife was upset with the husband. The neighbors are calling social services. Anyway, fast forward. The kids become incredible wrestlers, as you can imagine. Every night in the basement, fast forward, and they make it to the Olympic level. But they don't medal. One becomes the coach at Stanford. While he's the coach at Stanford, he lets other neighborhood kids come wrestle with his students because he wants to mix up the competition. One night, one of the neighborhood kids says, hey, Coach, I got nowhere to sleep tonight. Do you mind if I sleep on the mat? Coach says, don't be ridiculous. Stay in my house. Kid stays on the couch. Coach goes to bed in the room. 2:00am Bedroom door opens up. Freak thing. This guy had been staking the coach out. And he's gonna kill him. He's got a gun. Zip ties the coach behind his back, zip ties his legs, undresses them down to his underwear. Pillowcase over his head, duct tapes it, presses the revolver to his head, and he's gonna kill him. Coach says, can you shut the lights before you pull the trigger? Because he trained in the basement for 10 years in the dark. Guy shuts the lights. Coach proceeds to beat the shit out of the perpetrator. Disarms him, pins him on the ground. Pool of blood on the ground. He's still tied to the chair. He calls 911 from behind his back. Stanford police break down the door and they find what looks like a scene from Pulp Fiction. They don't even know who the bad guy is, right? The guy tied to a chair. They vindicate the dad, basically, right? Because the police called the dad and they said, we've been to car accidents, we've been to motorcycle. Never seen anything compared to what your son did to this guy while tied to a chair, blindfolded. My kids, immediately we got rid of the kung fu guy. I got a wrestler because I said my kids are going to wrestle. Point is, shit happens in life. Stuff goes wrong. And you've got to be fit. You've got to be fit to deal with it, right? You want to be a great CEO? You're going to be that much better of a CEO if you're eating healthy and you're staying fit. Hopefully that story doesn't happen to any of us, right? But stuff does happen. I was in a bad car accident. I recovered quickly, I believe, because I was fit. You're fooling yourself. If you're putting your health on hold while you work on some other party, health's got to be first, right? You can't do anything else without Health.

Totally. One of my friend Christian, he's the one I first heard this proverb from, which is, he who has their health has a thousand dreams. He who does not have their health has only.

We just heard that yesterday. Did you. Is that somebody. Yeah, that's a great one.

Yeah. Because it's like, you know, I always say to him, you know, the fact that you've got aspirations, you can run a business, you're able to go in to grab lunch is because you're not laid up in a hospital bed somewhere, sick as hell.

So that's first.

Yeah. It's got to be the number one thing, because once you lose that, you will do anything to get it back. What should I have asked you or could have asked you that I have not?

You know, we talked a lot about physical transformation that occurs, but there's a big mental transformation, which we touched on. This idea of changing your frame of reference. When I give speeches, this is what I talk about, changing somebody's framework. Because if you change somebody's frame of reference, you change the world. I hired Eastern Europeans when I had my first business 30 years ago, and I had previously hired neighborhood kids because those were the kids that I knew. And they lasted a day. They lasted, too. We worked too hard, right? It was like carpet cleaning. We were cleaning swimming pools. It was just. The work was too hard. I found these Eastern Europeans, they outworked me, the owner. They didn't want vacations. They didn't want a raise. They just want more hours, right? They didn't care about lunch, more hours. And it really stuck with me. Between that and watching Rocky Balboa, right, go through his cycle of having money and then falling off and not fighting well, because he wasn't hungry, he wasn't fighting for milk. And that I thought, man, the Eastern Europeans and the first Rocky just had a different frame of reference. They were fighting for milk every day. And if I could somehow keep that mindset even when I had stuff, I'd be a winner. And so that's what we're trying to impart on people, to keep that fighting for milk mindset. Love it. Love it, right?

So what is a Spartan?

A Spartan is somebody who doesn't crack under pressure, right? Has integrity, extremely disciplined, resilient and gritty. You know, has some humor, too. I think. You got to be able to look at all the stuff that happens in life and laugh at it. You got to be able to laugh at it. And it's something that, you know, in the ancient world, the Spartans actually taught the guys, you know, there's a scene in the movie 300 when the arrows are being shot by the Persians and they're coming over these 300 guys and they look up and they're like, well, I guess today we'll fight in the shade. We're all fucked here. You gotta laugh about it, right?

No, that's great. That's great. How do people find out how to get in one of your Spartan, what do you call them? Racist Competition, Race, Spartan event.

How do they become Spartans? You gotta go sign up. And I have a policy. If you're out there and you don't have the money or the means to just send me an email. Joe, I'm a pretty easy going guy. It's more about changing lives than it is to make, you know, the extra 100 bucks. But my new policy is if you're going to email me, don't email me something stupid. Because somebody emailed me the other day that they lost their little rubber wristband and they needed help getting a new one. Are you kidding me? You know how busy I am, right? Right. I'm going to work on getting you a 10 cent wristband. You can find one, Go to the race and get a wristband. Point is, if you really need help, we'll help you. Joartan.com. great.

And so Spartan.com is the website and if people want to watch any of your videos and interviews. Where's that at?

Yeah, that's a good question. We have a podcast, Spartan up there's the podcast. I don't know all this stuff. Just check it out. Spartan, we are Spartan. Anything you look up in Spartan, you'll find us.

Great. Great. And any famous last words.

Famous last words. I am so glad I made the trip to Arizona. You're awesome. You make me look like I'm standing still and moving backwards. So I'm glad we made.

Yeah. And thank you. And I appreciate you forcing me to do some.

You didn't really force me to crush the burpees. Number one so far amongst all the CEOs. Very good.

Really? Well, that's good. Awesome. Great hanging out with you, man.

That was awesome.

Thanks. So check out Spartan.com and read his books and if you do one of the races, then let me know how it goes. Tell your friends the ones you really care about and even some that maybe you don't because maybe it'll give them a paradigm shift that they badly need.

Don't miss another episode of I Love Marketing. Subscribe today@ilovemarketing.com subscribe if you'd like to access the video, show notes, or the exercise to help you take action on what was discussed, please visit ilovemarketing.com 355. Sam.