Joe De Sena Turns Quitters Into People Who Commit

Do hard things. Become unbreakable. Let’s end the year on a high note. It’s time to turn quitters into people who commit, courtesy of one of the toughest people on the planet. Fire ready aim! If the name Joe De Sena strikes a familiar chord, it’s likely because he’s the entrepreneurial mastermind behind Spartan—the obstacle course racing series that became a global phenomenon. Fewer know he’s also the evil genius behind Death Race—perhaps the most absurd sufferfest ever conceived. Under appreciated is just what an utter machine this guy is. An absolute endurance freak, in a mere one week period, Joe completed the Vermont 100 mile run, Ironman Lake Placid, and the Badwater 135. In addition, Joe knocked off 50 ultramarathons and 14 Ironman events in a single year (a certain kind of insanity that must be some kind of record). To top it off, on a whim, he once ran from New York City to Vermont. A man of questionable masochism, Joe knows hustle. But his relentlessness isn’t limited to athletics. It begins with business, servicing mafioso swimming pools as a Queens high schooler. It appears in academics. It took him four attempts to secure admission to Cornell. And, most importantly, it shows up in service. At his Vermont farm, Joe freely welcomes all who dare join in his legendary daily grind. Everything Joe does—be it Spartan, his books or public speaking—reflects his genuine commitment to helping millions of people live healthier more fulfilling lives. Today he shares his extraordinary story. This is a conversation about commitment to an ideal. How to manifest the better self within. And pay it back in service to others. It’s about Joe’s colorful life path. His Goodfellas-esque upbringing. His natural-born entrepreneurial inclinations. His insane endurance feats and unique relationship with suffering. And the impenetrable focus required to accomplish lofty dreams. But more than anything, this is about turning quitters into people who commit. It’s about why doing hard things makes you better, happier and healthier. And it’s about the potential we all possess to catalyze radical transformation. From the heart, Joe is bullshit-free and 100% authentic. His message is powerful. Entirely experience-based. And paired with practical tools fundamental to shattering stagnation. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. May his words propel you to craft your own challenge for this impending new year—something extraordinary. So let’s dive into it headfirst. Or, as Joe says, fire, ready, aim. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Well, so I'm a big subscriber in this idea of fire-ready-aim, right? Just get started. Just take that first step. Just go outside. You know this. I think we all get stuck sitting around. Subconsciously, our legacy hardware and software is avoiding discomfort. Like, it kept us from falling off cliffs and freezing out in the snow and drowning. And the sooner you recognize that that's just like old hardware that you don't need because you're not going to get attacked by a lion when you go outside or drown in the rain. And so if you can change your mindset to like embracing tough stuff and committing to it, you just have a better life. Just take that first step. And that first step leads to another step, and before you know it, you get it done.

• 1:47Rich Roll?

  That's Joe DeSena, and this is episode 567 of the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:03Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, what's happening? Happy holidays. Welcome to the podcast. The gift giving season is upon us. And although I'm both sad and amazed that we are temporarily sold out of my new book, Voicing Change, we should be restocked in the next few weeks. At the same time, I happen to have just the thing for your secret Santa or stocking stuff or needs in the form of our Plant Power Meal Planner gift cards. Kind of a perfect way to help your loved ones finally and enjoyably up their recipe game and finally master cooking nutritious meals once and for all. Right now through December 25, we're offering $20 off gift card annual memberships to

• 2:48Rich Roll?

  the digital platform, which provides access to thousands of customized and delicious plant-based recipes, access to nutrition coaches for all the handholding you need, and full integration with automatic grocery delivery. So everything you require to prep and cook the selected recipes magically shows up on your loved one's doorstep. So fret not to learn more and grab your discounted gift card today. Click Meal Planner on the homepage menu on my website at richroll.com or go directly to meals.richroll.com. No promo code required. Okay. So those of you who've been with me for the long haul know that I like to end the year

• 3:33Rich Roll?

  and begin the next year on a high note with some solid inspiration, some bankable life advice, and just the right amount of kicking the pants to reboot the operating system and get your body, mind, and soul correct, aligned, so you can actualize the best of what you've got. Finally, convert those aspirations into reality. And this year is no different because today's guest is undeniably

• 4:08Rich Roll?

  One of the toughest humans, one of the most accomplished endurance athletes, and one of the most successful entrepreneurs that I have the good fortune of calling friend. His name is Joe DeSena, and if that name sounds familiar, it's likely because he is the mastermind behind the global Spartan Race phenomenon. Some might also know that he is the evil genius behind the death race. I'll let him describe that one. But what not enough people appreciate, I think, is just what an utter machine this guy is,

• 4:47Rich Roll?

  an absolute endurance freak who, in the period of just one week, completed the Vermont 100 Mile Run, the Lake Placid Ironman, and the Badwater 135 Ultra in one week. Think about that. He also completed 50 ultras and 14 Ironman events in a single year, which is a certain kind of insanity and has to be some kind of record. And he once ran from New York City to Vermont on basically a whim. But this hustle, his relentless pursuit

• 5:27Rich Roll?

  to push the envelope of possibility, isn't limited to athletics. It shows up in all areas of Joe's life: in business, beginning in high school, cleaning mafia-drawn swimming pools in Queens. It shows up in academics. It took this guy four times to get into Cornell. And it shows up in service by way of this kind of beautiful open-door policy that he maintains at his Vermont farm, where he puts all comers, any who dare, through what can only be described as a layman's buds program. It's got like a brutal routine that we talk

• 6:07Rich Roll?

  about today, as well as this commitment that he has to leveraging his Race Series platform to help millions of people live healthier lives. Joe is truly an amazing human. Again, he's a friend, and his extraordinary story is coming up. But first...

• 6:33Rich Roll?

  Okay, Joe, Joe DeSena, the man, the myth, the legend, the questionable masochist. Today's conversation is of course about Joe's journey. It's about his insane athletic accomplishments, his passion for endurance, his unique relationship with suffering, and it's also about Joe's colorful life path, his Goodfellas-esque upbringing in Queens, New York, his natural born entrepreneurial inclinations, the car wreck that redirected his life, and his impenetrable focus when it comes to accomplishing his dreams.

• 7:15Rich Roll?

  But more than anything, this conversation, which I think is super relevant as we enter into the new year, is about turning quitters into people who commit. It's about why doing hard things makes you better, happier, and healthier, and it's about catalyzing radical transformation. This, my friends, is a no BS zone. Joe's message is 100% experience-based and paired with the many practical tools I think you'll find fundamental in helping you shatter stagnation and beat analysis paralysis. My hope is that his words propel you to craft your own challenge for this impending new year, something extraordinary perhaps, and more than anything, I hope you dive headfirst

• 8:00Rich Roll?

  into it, or as Joe says, fire, aim, ready. So it is with that that I give you the one, the only Joe DeSena. Right on, man. So good to see you. We've been trying to make this happen for so long.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Been a long time.

• 8:18Rich Roll?

  It's taken forever, man.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  I don't know, it's gotta be three or four years.

• 8:20Rich Roll?

  Couple of years. I think the last time I saw you, I did your show when you guys were hosting an event at Dodger Stadium.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I like a last minute, "Hey, Rich, can you come over to the stadium?" And we caught you, we did some filming, and we knocked out a podcast.

• 8:34Rich Roll?

  Right, we did a podcast, and then I did a little shooting with you for that documentary with Cal Fussman. What happened to that documentary?

• 8:41Speaker 01

  It's done, and off the editing room floor, however you'd say it, and getting ready to be pushed out.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. What's it called?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  What the fuck is your exit strategy?

• 8:51Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  And, and the idea is, um, and it probably pisses, I know it pisses you off. What are people thinking when they don't eat healthy, when they don't act healthy?

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  And so like what you, like, we talk about exit strategy in business. What's your exit strategy from the planet? Like, do you plan on living in a hospital for the last 20 years? Like, and, and that title came about because Cal, a mutual friend of ours, Cal Fussman, famous writer, uh, invited me to breakfast with Larry King one day. And so I'm sitting there and I'm eating a-

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  At Nate and Al's?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm, I'm having a salad and Larry's pouring, I mean pouring sugar all over this bowl of cereal and he's like, ah, kid, what are you doing with the salad? And he goes, I eat like this, I got a colonic every day. And, and I just thought, fuck, like, what's the exit strategy?

• 9:38Rich Roll?

  This guy, so. And it came from there. So is Cal like the protagonist?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 9:43Rich Roll?

  Is he the, he's who we're like taking this adventure with?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, we took the adventure with him and he was impossible to deal with.

• 9:49Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  And unbeknownst to me, you know, 20 years earlier, he did it, or maybe 30 years earlier, he did it with, um, Jack LaLanne.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  And I think Cal's really good for an article or for film, but then go, like most people, falls off the wagon when-

• 10:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  When there's no reason to be taking care of yourself.

• 10:07Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. I just remember him being sort of obstinate in the interview.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:11Rich Roll?

  Like pushing back and it's like, come on, man. What do you, what do you, you know, get on board here.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I, listen, I fought my in-laws when I met my wife. I, my mother, by the way, my mother in the seventies was into yoga, meditation, all the stuff we were into. And she fought the whole world. And so there were no Whole Foods or yoga journals back then. So I watched, uh, the pushback and, and it's, I mean, it's pretty, maybe not in California, but the pushback is massive everywhere to this idea of just take care of yourself.

• 10:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  I mean, look, look at, look at COVID in the US versus everywhere else.

• 10:43Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, I mean, it's gotta be brutal right now for you-

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Fucking disaster.

• 10:49Rich Roll?

  With Spartan.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Disaster.

• 10:50Rich Roll?

  Like, how are you keeping this thing from capsizing?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Hmm. You know, when it first happened, I became friends last, uh, two years ago skiing with the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue. He owns uh, Hudson Bay Company, which is the equivalent of Saks in Canada, uh, Saks Fifth Avenue, incredibly successful guy. And when it was all going down, I was with Gerard Butler, check this out, I was with Gerard Butler, I was in Sparta, Greece for the 2,500 year anniversary of Thermopylae. The movie was based on the battle at Thermopylae. And Trump closes the border. And at that moment, it became very real. Because up till then, we had closed a few races in China, I closed a few races in Japan, but it was like, no big deal, this thing would be over in a, in a jiffy. And I'm in Sparta, and the country gets shut down, and I call my friend from

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Saks, and I'm like, what the fuck? And he says, um, he goes, you gotta preserve cash. He goes, you gotta preserve cash, you gotta protect, you know, the employees that you, you can, and you gotta stay in touch with your customers. And thank God, I had that phone call on March 13th, 14th, because um, because I would have just, like, I mean, we had 501 people working for us. I had 325 events shut down overnight around the world, and you, you can't keep paying people and bills and all these things, and, and lawyers, and you know better than anybody, lawyers, and, and um, and not have revenue coming in. So um, you know, I'm ashamed to say, I thought, I didn't listen to the advice of him, I didn't listen to the advice of my friends that run hedge funds, I thought,

• 12:21Speaker 01

  come July 1, we're back.

• 12:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  The world is back.

• 12:24Rich Roll?

  Well, we've never seen anything like this in our lifetimes. There's no reason to think that we wouldn't be able to get over the hump and get back to some level of normal.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  And I'm an optimist. I mean, our whole business is based on optimism, right? And, and I just thought, yeah, well, here we are.

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  So did you have to lay off a bunch of people?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  350 people followed, um, and, and I think we just did a few more. Um, silver lining in all this is we became a lot more efficient as an organization. There were a lot of deficits in our company that we never tended to, technology, CRM, uh, uh, e-comm, go down the lit, things that we just didn't have time for, put on 325 events. And so we're becoming much better in those areas, but it's really a race against the clock. It's um, you know, if we're back on next year and we're allowed to put on events... It's gonna be great.

• 13:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Um, but, but I just don't know. I mean, China, we just, we, uh, two weeks ago, had 10,000 kids at a Chinese event in China. China's back in business. They got vaccines. They cost $30 USD. You and I could go up to the corner store and get a shot in our arm.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  But outside of that.

• 13:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you can ramp up in China.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  I could ramp up in China, but, but the US was 50% of our business. Europe was 25% of our business, right? Go, so China does not offset.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  But it gives us hope that if China's back and they were three or four months before us and shutting down, maybe three or four months from now, we'll be back.

• 13:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We'll see.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  We'll see.

• 13:57Rich Roll?

  Who knows? Who fucking knows, man?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  It's craziness.

• 13:59Rich Roll?

  I know. It's so crazy. Well, what I've noticed in you, just from a distance, is this kind of pivot into really a media company, like a content platform. Like suddenly you're vlogging all the time and all, you know, your video, suddenly there's videos from you like every single day.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I know. I've gone, I've gone a little nuts. I apologize for that. We locked down on the farm in Vermont.

• 14:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  That's where this whole thing was started. My wife and I, uh, had our four children. I don't know how to say that politically correct. We, she birthed four kids on the farm.

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  I think you're allowed to say that.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. In, in Vermont, along, we had cows and chickens and goats. And, um, that's where Spartan was started. As soon as I got back from the Thermopylae thing I just described in Sparta, Greece, landed on the farm, holed up with an Olympic wrestler. That's another whole story. Um, a video team, a bunch of people on, on the Spartan team, trainers and so forth, 12, 13 of us. And we just started filming every day because there was nothing else to do.

• 15:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  I, like, preserve your cash, protect your employees and stay in touch with your customers. So just film, film, film, film, film, because I like to work and we couldn't put on events. And so that's what we did.

• 15:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You keep the brand strong and you keep people excited about what Spartan is and they hear it from you directly.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so just lots of filming, but as you know, it drains your energy levels because you like right before we just started this podcast, anybody listening or watching, Rich and I were talking regularly. As soon as the filming started, you perked up, your chest came out. Yeah.

• 15:38Rich Roll?

  No, I'm trying to be normal, man. I want this to be as relaxed as possible.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  No, but we both did it. And you don't even notice you're doing it, right?

• 15:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  So it just sucks energy out of you.

• 15:48Rich Roll?

  Well, I just noticed like this is, I think this is the fifth podcast I've done in the last seven days. We're on a bit of a tear and it's draining, man. Like, you know, I don't know like how Rogan does, you know, four or five of these things a week. Maybe it's because he doesn't prepare, but like I prepare, like I put a lot of energy into it. I want it to be this amazing experience. And when it's done, it's kind of like an athletic event. Then I go home and I crash.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  No doubt, no doubt.

• 16:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like it is its own kind of endurance thing. And it does take, even though it's not physical, there's an emotional like energy toll that it takes.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  It'd be easier. I think you'd agree with this. It would be easier to go for a run.

• 16:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, for sure.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Right?

• 16:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  And your mind is working, but your body, you're breathing, you're sweating and this is-

• 16:29Rich Roll?

  Also, I can control that, you know, with this, it's sort of like there's an aspect of trying to, you know, have guardrails up and direct it in a certain way. But at the same time, you have to like let go and allow it to be what it wants to be. So there's a vulnerability with that. That's different from going out and pushing yourself where it's just you and you.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 16:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  And so, and so I just went through, you know, let's call it 120 days straight of filming on the farm every day. And something cool happened this weekend you might not know about is, once we realized, hey, this is going to go on longer than we thought, this is going to be much more painful than we thought, we got to lay off more people. I said, you know, we need an event. We need, we need one event, something to show our community, 7 million people that like, we're still here and shit's still happening. So this past weekend, we brought 12 women, 12 men from CrossFit, from triathlon, from the NFL, Spartan, and we brought them all together to find out who's the fittest of them all. And we held a, and my team came up with the whole thing. I can't even tell you all

• 17:32Speaker 01

  the names of the athletes that were there because they really, my team organized, I just wanted to have a Spartan event and they came up with this whole thing.

• 17:38Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  And they actually, they actually wouldn't allow me back on my own farm because I needed another COVID test. So here I was outside my own farm while this was going down. But We had a Highland Games type event. We had an ultra run. We had a triathlon swim. We had a mountain bike. We had a DECA event, which is our almost gym product, if you would, a combination of the aerodynamic bike and the rowing machine and all that. We had a race to the top of the mountain and we had a Spartan race. And I don't want to give anything away, but you would think, you would think that the specialists in each one of

• 18:20Speaker 01

  those areas would win their area. And I'll just leave you with this, they didn't.

• 18:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's interesting. That's fascinating. I would suspect that the person that comes out on top has a lot more to do with their mental fortitude than their physical prowess or their athletic gifts.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  It's so funny you say that because I was, I was thinking, and you correct me if I don't have this right, but I thought, all right, let's, let's measure, let's, let's set some, what are the items we're going to measure? Strength, speed, endurance, athleticism? And then I said, wait, but you got to also measure resiliency and grit.

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Right? Because, because some of this is going to require resiliency and grit. And when you look at, without me giving it away, who the winners were, who the, they were the ones with the resiliency and grit.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Right?

• 19:08Rich Roll?

  Because I don't know how long this thing.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Five days.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, okay, so that's gonna separate the wheat from the chaff, right? That's like a reality show.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  It was so frigging.

• 19:18Rich Roll?

  Like Battle of the Network Stars or something.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  It was so frigging unbelievable. I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll get you some, nobody's seen any of this stuff. I'll get you some clips for this.

• 19:27Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Podcast.

• 19:28Rich Roll?

  We weave it in, that would be great.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  You can weave it in that no one's seen before because, well, it's just so unbelievable, you can't even imagine what went down. It's, it's a show.

• 19:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. Well, I want to take it back. Your, your backstory is so epic. I mean, it's cinematic. It's like its own movie. It's just a crazy fucking story.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  It's a crazy story.

• 19:46Rich Roll?

  And you're quietly like such a beast in terms of like the endurance stuff that you've done. Like, it's insane. I feel like that gets overlooked, but let's go back to the beginning, back to Queens.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  So if anybody's have seen the movie Goodfellas, out there, raise your hand. Most people have seen it, right? Ground zero for that movie was the block I grew up on. I'm trying to remember the exact address, but 84th Street, 149th Avenue in Lindenwood, Queens, or Howard Beach, Queens, Jamaica. And for whatever reason, a bunch of wise guys located on this particular block, and their game, their profession, was stealing from Kennedy Airport. And that's what's portrayed. That's exactly what's in the movie. That's exactly what's in the movie. And so, there wasn't a morning that went by where I didn't wake up with my sister, and we'd go down into the garage, and there was a new big box on a pallet of things there.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Like, it could be leather ski gloves, 500 pairs. It could be Adidas superstar sneakers. Just heisting the cargo trucks that are coming in and out. Yeah. And so, it was very common to go shopping. We were young, my sister and I at this point, my friends. But you'd go shopping in someone's house. It wasn't like, you didn't have to go to the store. You went to someone's house, and there was all kinds of... But you don't know as a kid what this means. Anyway, we grew up in this crazy neighborhood. My parents are getting along, everything's fine. Your dad part of that, or just the neighbors? So, the way I'll answer it is, my dad had a trucking business in the airport. Eventually, a fairly large warehouse and airfreight business.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  And it was hard, it was hard to be in that business. You couldn't be in that business unless you have some relationship to the mom. But I will say, my dad, no BS, my dad was amazing in that his thing was, if you go in that direction, you waste so much energy and so much time, and you can't spend the money because it's not legal. Like, you'd be better off putting all that time and energy into a legitimate way, a legitimate life. But I'll say that, like, if you grew up there, and you come from that place, and you're in that, it's pretty hard to not be in it. There was nobody not in it, in that neighborhood. And I can't go deeper than that, but...

• 22:11Speaker 01

  I got it. You got it. So...

• 22:15Speaker 01

  And there's very few people left. So anyway, my parents are getting along. My dad starts making some real money. And we move 15 blocks

• 22:25Speaker 01

  south of where we were. Which is a better area. And our neighbor is the head of a banana organized crime family 15 blocks up. And around the corner is the big boss of the Gambinos. And there's four of the five family heads are living just around us in this area, 15 blocks south of where I first grew up.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  And my mom goes into, her mom dies of cancer. My mom goes into a health food store to just explore like, is there another way to live? Rather than, you know, cannolis and raviolis and pizza and she just didn't feel healthy. She watched her mom just die. She walks into a health food store, which is probably the only health food store on the entire east coast at this point. And there's a yogi, like an 85 year old yogi that just landed at Kennedy Airport, probably from India, in the store. And she starts talking to him and somehow he convinces her that she's got it all wrong and she's got to become vegan. And she's got to start meditating and she's got to take up yoga and how to breathe and cold showers, all the stuff we talk about now. And she comes home and she throws out the sausage and peppers and like literally transforms the house.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Which ultimately leads to divorce. Your dad's losing his shit with this. Everybody, we were as kids because if you're listening to this, this sounds somewhat, it was not. No, not at all. She might as well have just landed from Mars, right? That's how crazy the stuff was that she was preaching. And so they get divorced. And she moves us back north to that 15 blocks, right? So my sister and I are down there for about a year. My dad's at the other house. And then she's just not fitting in. Nobody's getting this thing that she's preaching. And she moves to Ithaca, New York because that was like where hippies were and they're educated.

• 24:15Rich Roll?

  She's going Moosewood.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  She's going Moosewood, exactly. That was, that was a big part of our life.

• 24:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  And, and I'm kicking and screaming. My sister's kicking and screaming. We don't want to leave our friends in the neighborhood. And any, any kid would feel this way. And I'm attracted as a young boy, I'm attracted, just like all the other boys in town are, to the, the guys with Cadillacs, the guys with suits on, the guys that rolls a hundred dollar bills in their pocket. Like, we kind of know what they're doing. And who doesn't want to be that?

• 24:40Rich Roll?

  Right. And what is the difference between the wise guys you see in the movies, whether it's Goodfellas or The Sopranos, versus like your real life experience with these guys?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  There's really, there's really no difference. I mean, from my perspective at that age, no one's ever asked me that.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  They were a lot more quiet in the, in the, in real life.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  But a film has to give you the behind the scenes. And so I didn't, I didn't, you know what I mean? I wasn't, they were a lot more quiet. They didn't have to say much. They earned respect. You kind of, you just didn't mess around. Right? Like you would imagine. But very much the same, and they, in The Godfather and Goodfellas and A Bronx Tale, you go down, like, they did a really good job. If you're like from there, like they really captured the, the mannerisms. Sopranos, not as much. I didn't, I didn't feel it in The Sopranos, but, but in those other movies.

• 25:36Rich Roll?

  And the thing that you get is this idea that, that even though they're outlaws, they still have, you know, these rules and this code that they live by. And, you know, there's certain aspects of that ethic that are laudable. Right? It's not all bad. Right? And so as a young kid who's impressionable, you see the bling, but you also see, there's a value system there that you can kind of hang your hat on.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Definitely hang your hat on it. Things got taken, like, everybody runs into a problem in life. Everybody runs into a problem. And so here, if you're sitting in-

• 26:09Rich Roll?

  The community's taking care of its, each other.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Like, I remember running to, to the boss next door as I got older. And I'll, let me go backwards. Mom moves to Ithaca. My name, my, my dad falls on, on hard times. The 87 market crash hits. All the things he's working on are starting to fall apart a bit. And the neighbor sees this and he says, you know, and I'm probably 12 years old. And he says, "Come over and clean my pool Saturday." So, um, that's a big deal, you know, getting tapped on the shoulder and the boss wants me to come over and clean the pool. So I go over and clean the pool and, and he says, sits me down and he gives me three lessons that day and he says, um, "Look, if you're gonna be here 8 a.m., you show up 7:45. On time is late."

• 26:49Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  You think I'm at Stanford, right?

• 26:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  He says, um...

• 26:53Rich Roll?

  You're getting an MBA.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. "If, if, if you're gonna clean the pool, I want you to clean, uh, the lawn furniture, the shed, the windows, whatever it takes. Make yourself invaluable." All right, that seems fair. "And three, never ask for money. You'll get paid if you do a good job. Don't have your hand out." And unbeknownst to me, at that moment in time, he's grooming, he's seeing, here's a hard-working young kid, right?

• 27:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  And then he gives me another customer, you know, two houses over, who happens to be connected to him. And then I got another boss's house and before you know it, I've got, uh, 700 customers.

• 27:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Um, I pay for my own college.

• 27:29Rich Roll?

  How, how old are you at this point?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Well, I started at 12. Uh, by the time I graduated college, I'm 20. 700 customers. It's a, it's a multimillion-dollar business at that point and it's all these guys.

• 27:39Rich Roll?

  That's crazy.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  It's all, I could walk in anybody's house and so I'm feeling, "This is great."

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Like, everybody trusts me.

• 27:45Rich Roll?

  And you're taken care of.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  I'm taken care of.

• 27:46Rich Roll?

  Do you get in trouble?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  So that was my point. So, so my dad is telling me, and he's right, "Stay away from that life." Um, but you find yourself, even if you, even if you, um, push back on that life, make fun of that life, say, "That's ridiculous. Those guys are terrible," you find yourself in a situation where like, somebody owes you money, or you did, whatever it may be.

• 28:10Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  And then all of a sudden, it comes okay to ring their bell.

• 28:13Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Right? And say, "Hey, I, I, I need a favor."

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  And then you're in it.

• 28:17Rich Roll?

  Once, once they do that favor for you, though, that's...

• 28:20Speaker 01

  And, and technically, because he got me in the business, like, I mean, I couldn't say no to anything.

• 28:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Right?

• 28:28Rich Roll?

  But once you, did you call upon those guys to do some favors for you? And then did you find it difficult to then extricate yourself from the whole thing?

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Well, so yes, I, I ask for favors often because people owed me money.

• 28:39Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  And, um, I remember saying to Joe once, "A guy owed me $60,000," and he said, um, "Bring this bottle of champagne over to his house and just let him know it came from me." And so I go over to the house. I don't ask for the money. I just say, hey, Joe asked me to drop this off for you. And he literally goes over to the wall, takes a painting down, opens a safe like in a movie, grabbed 60,000 in cash and hands it to me. There wasn't even, we didn't even, I didn't even add, it was, it was, and, and there were a few incidences like that. Now, now to the second part of the question, did you find yourself beholden? I guess I got lucky in the sense that Giuliani came to be. And then one by one, all these guys, bad for my business, they all started to go to jail.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  And, and so I, I didn't, I didn't have a long talent that was good.

• 29:30Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  I didn't know it at the time.

• 29:44Rich Roll?

  So where does Cornell come into the whole thing? So. Kind of in the middle of the pool business, right?

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm running this business. I'm feeling great. It's growing. I buy a backhoe and a bobcat and I got a building and, and like, like it's a real business.

• 29:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Right? And my mom's living in Ithaca, so I have to spend a lot of time in Ithaca. That's where I live. And I'm going back and forth, running the business by my dad's house, going back to mom. And I'm leaving high school in Ithaca, going back to run my business, no intention of going to college. I didn't have, like most families where they bring you on a college tour. It was no, even though I lived in Ithaca where Cornell is low, no one told me anything about school. And my grades weren't that good. And my friend says to me, hey, why don't we go to Cornell? And I'm, I'm two months from graduating high school.

• 30:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  And I said, well, how, how would we go to Cornell? And he said, my dad's a professor. He'll get us in. And that made perfect sense to me because I grew up in the neighborhood where you'd have a guy and he would get you into a restaurant or whatever. So this is like, yeah, we got us in college. So we both get dressed up. We do our interviews. We do everything we're supposed to do. It's going to be a shoo-in. And neither of us get accepted. And now, now I was intrigued, like, oh, we have a guy and we can't get in and I, you know, now I'm intrigued in this thing.

• 31:04Rich Roll?

  Tell me I can't. Now I gotta do it. Now, where does that come from? Cause that's, that's just born and bred into you.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Probably a neighborhood thing, like, like when we, let's go back to your conversation about resiliency and grit and those athletes.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  In this neighborhood, these guys went to jail, they got killed. And that was just part of the job, right? And then if you were running a somewhat legal business, you owned a local pizza place, or a trucking company, whatever, you hustled. You were up at 5:00 a.m., the diesel trucks were running, the pizza place was second generation, third generation, they were making pizza, you know what I mean? Like, everybody just hustled. So, probably comes from that. It probably comes from just seeing this like, you know, fuck that, I'm gonna get this done. Kinda, like, there's no, there's no no, right? Right, so you get the no. We get the no, and I'm debating, now I wanna go, and I'm debating going back to run

• 32:03Speaker 01

  my business, and my friend says, listen, my dad just said, we can go extramural, we could take three classes each. When everybody else gets matriculated into Cornell, we could take three classes each. They'll do five, we're not official, but if we do well, they have to let us in. Logical. So I said, okay, you know what we'll do then? I said, when I go back to Queens to run my business this summer, I'll go to St. John's. It's in my route, anyway, and all the pools I clean and the work I do, I'll stop in St. John's, I'll take a couple of classes, I'll learn how to study. And then, and then when I'm going to Cornell, if we get in, I'll have gotten my five classes done, I won't be behind the other kids. My friend says to me, that's ridiculous.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  If we're gonna, if we're gonna hustle in September at Cornell, why don't we go to Vegas all summer and party? Right. Right? And that was a divergence right there, and that was a real big lesson for me, on like, delaying gratification. So he heads to Vegas, I head to St. John's, I run my business, we both meet up in September, we do our three classes, we do very, very well, I get two As and a B, and for me, in an Ivy League school, two As, I never got two As and a B, ever. And reapply. Definitely getting in now. They don't accept us. Right. And, and now I'm even more invested. I did my classes at St. John's, I just studied my ass off, and they didn't accept me. And the woman, the admissions woman says to me, listen, we'd have everybody and their

• 33:29Speaker 01

  brother, you know, trying to get in here, if this was allowed, you're gonna have to go to another school, and then after three years at like, Ithaca College or somewhere else, then apply. And I was like, maybe you didn't hear me, I'm, you know, I wanna go here. So I'm gonna do it again. And then she's gotta let me in. And so he diverts, my friend taps out.

• 33:48Rich Roll?

  You go back to Vegas?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  He goes back to Vegas, he goes to UNLV. And I, I go back, um, do another semester. Do well, reapply, they don't accept me. Do another semester, I do well. Don't accept me. My fourth semester, um, I'm broken. I finally hit my limit.

• 34:05Rich Roll?

  This is, this is, this is your own death race.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's my own death race. And, and, and, um, I'm just feeling like my business is doing well. I got all these, like, I don't need this.

• 34:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  I don't need the headache. And I tell my mom, you know, I'm gonna pack it in. And she was probably bragging for four semesters. Her son was going to Cornell, even though I technically was not a Cornell student. And she says, go meet my yoga. She teaches yoga, my mom, at this point, in, in the living room. And she says, go meet my yoga student, Professor Anita Racine. She might be able to help you, I don't know. And my mom was the last person I would have asked, like, for a connection, because she was crunchy and bohemian. And my dad would have had the contacts. So anyway, out of respect to my mom, I go meet Professor Anita Racine. She sits me down, looks at my grades, asks me a bunch of questions. She says, you know, I run a department within one of the schools at Cornell.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Textiles, we study textiles. And there's 92 women in the department, there's no men. Do you like textiles? I was like, I love textiles. I didn't even know, I didn't even know what a textile was, right? Like, I'm in. And so, uh, she finally accepts me in. And I end up spending the rest of my time at Cornell studying, um, textiles. Which, if I had to do it again, I would do. Because I, I could watch any movie from any era and tell you, based on hemlines, what, what, uh, what time, you know, when that was.

• 35:29Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, when that happened.

• 35:30Rich Roll?

  What years were, were you at Cornell, then?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  I, uh, entered in 86, graduated in 90.

• 35:36Rich Roll?

  So you left right before I got there, because I went to law school at Cornell.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  The law school is beautiful.

• 35:41Rich Roll?

  So I was there 92 to 94.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 35:43Rich Roll?

  So you were out there.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  And you got in legitimately. You didn't need the postings?

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  I was, no, well, legitimately, sort of. I was the last person admitted to the law school class off the waitlist.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:54Rich Roll?

  So I showed up, like, I didn't think I was going to law school. I got in at the last minute. I was living in New York City and packed a bag and tried to figure out where Ithaca was and showed up. And everybody had been studying all summer. And I was like, what am I even doing here? Because I'd already decided I wasn't going to go. And it was like a very spontaneous decision, but.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  And you liked it when you arrived?

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  I mean, I liked being, I was getting out of control in New York. So I liked being in a structured environment. And I liked school. And the law school, it's kind of like The Shining there, though, because it's so fucking cold.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:25Rich Roll?

  And you're all in this one building. And a lot of the one L's live in a dorm that's attached to the law school. So they never go outside.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:32Rich Roll?

  So it gets a little weird and incestuous. But I basically just spent most of my time at Rule Off's.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  I, um, I, uh, bar backed at Rule Off's.

• 36:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:44Rich Roll?

  I mean, I was there like four nights a week.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  I was gone by the time you got there. But I, but I think I made $16 a week.

• 36:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  And.

• 36:50Rich Roll?

  That's tough when you're making, you know, like, mid-six figures or whatever you're making in the pool business.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. But it was, it was good for me to, it was a way for me to mingle and meet other people while I was, I like to work. Obviously, you're hearing that in my, in my story. And rather than wasting time just drinking, I, uh, which is the way I looked at it.

• 37:10Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  I was, I was around it while I was working and getting paid. So.

• 37:14Rich Roll?

  I could have used you in my orbit back then, man. I needed a little discipline at the time. Um, cool. So then you get, you get out of Cornell, but then it's back to the pool business?

• 37:24Speaker 01

  So, um, first of all, anybody listening that doesn't know Cornell, and correct me if I'm wrong, Rich, but the law school to me feels most like Cambridge or Harry Potter.

• 37:34Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  At least from the outside, it has that look.

• 37:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Right? So, I'm about to graduate on time, which was unbelievable because I was so far behind from those four semesters. And I take Professor Ben Daniels' class at the Graduate Management School, MBA program.

• 37:54Rich Roll?

  Right, you did a combined, yeah, like you get.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  I didn't do the combined, they didn't accept me for the combined, it was just, I clearly was not smart enough for this whole thing, but, but I was allowed to take a class there. A lot of people took the entrepreneurship class at that school. And as part of it, we all came up with a business plan, and we presented that business plan to a panel of judges, and I won. I won the $5,000 award that came from the owners of Riunidi Wines. They were awarding every semester $5,000 to the best idea, best presentation. And the judge, one of the judges was an Italian guy. And being from the neighborhood I'm from, I clicked with him, and I bought him a bottle of Sambuca, I brought it over to his house, and we got to know each other.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  I didn't buy the winning slot, by the way, I just got to know him. I got to know him. And, and he said, "What are you doing when you graduate?"

• 38:49Rich Roll?

  Well, first of all, what was the idea that allowed you to win?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  So, do you remember at Cornell and many colleges, they had Champion branded sweatshirts with the silk letters sewn on the front, Cornell, or, and they were $50 or $40. And I just thought, the way those sweatshirts were made, where people would buy the Champion sweatshirts, the stores at Cornell or any would buy the sweatshirts, and then they'd have a couple of seamstresses, because I was studying textiles, would sew those letters on, and I just thought, I could make them in Asia. I could make them for each school. I would change the wristbands, I'd add a little bit of Lycra, so they didn't blow out, because everybody would roll up their sleeves.

• 39:32Rich Roll?

  You'd wear those things a couple times, and they were done.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, they would blow out, and, and so I had this idea for a better cut sweatshirt that was cut and sewn in Asia, labeled in Asia, and they liked the idea, and so they gave me $5,000 to do it.

• 39:45Rich Roll?

  It's amazing you didn't go into becoming some huge garmento.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  I should've.

• 39:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  I should've, in retrospect. But, but, um, so, he says to me, "What are you doing when you graduate?" I say, "I'm going back to the neighborhood, I got this business." He says, "You're an idiot." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You have a work ethic, I can see it, you can talk, you should go to Wall Street." And I didn't really know much about Wall Street. I just knew the eighty-seven crash. And I just decided that, you know, I want to run my business. God, he was becoming a really big name back then, and I was plugged into that whole thing. Yeah. And he stayed in touch with me. So I went back to the neighborhood. I run my business, kept building it up. And he stayed in touch with me. He called me. This guy called me every month on the month. Have you sold your business yet? Have you gone to Wall Street? No, Al, stop calling me.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Every month for like thirty-five months. Wow. Okay? And finally, he convinces me. He calls me one day and he says, hey, I'm gonna give you a stock tip. If you're not gonna listen to me, I'm gonna give you a stock tip. And I had never bought a stock before. I was busy running my business. And he says, I want you to buy this stock, Syntax. So it's probably like nineteen ninety-three, ninety-four. I want you to buy this stock, Syntax. Again, I don't have an account. I don't know anything about it. That day, I'm going to pick up money from a pharmacist. One of my customers is a pharmacist. He owns a pharmacy. And he must know about this pharmaceutical syntax. Ring his bell. I'm going to pick up my check. And I said, hey, my buddy just told me to buy this stock,

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Syntax. He goes, I can't believe you're bringing that up. I said, what do you mean? He says, I was just taking a shower. I was thinking I'm gonna buy some today. And he brings me in the house and he hands me my check. He owes me a lot of money. And we had done more than- Yeah, it was like a hundred and forty grand or something like that, right? Yeah. Because then we were not just doing swimming pools. We were rebuilding houses, doing patio work, etc. And he sits me down. He calls up his broker and he says, hey, you should buy ten thousand shares of this thing. Fourteen-dollar share, a hundred and forty grand.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I'm a pretty- he goes, you're single. If you don't, you know, you're making a lot of money right now. If you lose it, it's no big deal. When you're married and you've got children. So anyway, he talks me into it. I buy ten thousand shares. Next day, the company gets taken over. I made a hundred thousand dollars and I was like, I'm going to Wall Street.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  This is a hell of a lot better than cleaning swimming pools and having to change my money and bring bottles of champagne to get the safe to open. So anyway, that was it. I sold my business to my employees. They still run it today. They're multimillionaires. They're great guys and went to Wall Street. Wow. And had to take a serious pay cut initially, right? Big pay cut. I went down to thirty-five grand a year. And then thought I was a genius and started trading stocks and options and lost most of the money I had accumulated up until then. But then dug myself out and figured it out and ended up building a business and started my own firm where we executed orders, believe it or not, for the JP Morgans, Morgan Stanleys,

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Goldman Sachs, Bank Americas, they were our customers. Everybody says, why? Why would the big banks give business to a pool guy? And I just learned in the neighborhood how to service customers, how to do a good job, a better job than whoever they were using.

• 43:04Rich Roll?

  People skills.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  I had good people skills. We hustled if we had to take a loss on a trade, kind of like clean the windows and clean the shed even though you're only getting paid to clean the pool.

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Don't ask for money. If we had to lose money, we lost money. Just... And then there was one secret weapon I had, which nobody had. My neighbor who ended up going to jail had a table at a restaurant in Harlem called Rayo's, R-A-O-S. You see the sauce in a lot of stores.

• 43:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've seen that. It's from that restaurant.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  It's from that restaurant. And that restaurant only has 10 tables. It's been around since like the 20s. You can't get a table at Rayo's. Denzel Washington's in there, the head of New York Stock Exchange's in there, a couple of wise guys. You cannot get a table at Rayo's. I had a table because my neighbor went to jail. And so that definitely helped my Wall Street business because I was able to bring potential clients to Rayo's. And that's, yeah, that's how we did it.

• 44:01Rich Roll?

  And so where does the endurance impulse start to enter? You got this like guy in your building, right? Who's running stairs and shit? Like, are you just gaining weight and feeling lazy? Or where does it begin?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, go way back. My mom introduces me to, like, she's running marathons. She introduced me to this Transcendence Run in Queens. I don't know if you know it.

• 44:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had Sanjay Rauw on the podcast who made a movie about it.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. We invested in that movie.

• 44:27Rich Roll?

  3100.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we gave money to that movie simply because of that connection to my mom.

• 44:32Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  So anyway, she introduces me to that race. If you're listening, it's 3100.

• 44:37Rich Roll?

  So was she a devotee of the guy?

• 44:39Speaker 01

  That was one of her gurus.

• 44:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sai Baba was another guru. And so for those listening, there's a race in Queens, New York called the Transcendence Run. It's one mile loop, 3100 times, takes 50 to 60 days to complete it. And about eight people every year attempt it. Right, right. And, and so anyway, she introduced me to that. Probably Iron Man, I'm seeing on TV, marathons. But you weren't an athlete in high school. Not an athlete, I bicycled, I BMXed. That is not considered an athlete by any means, but I was a crazy person on a BMX bike. Like, I would, I would bike tens of miles on this bike, and it's hard to do that with one gear on a little bike. So, that was the only, that was the only skill I had, if you could even call that a

• 45:26Speaker 01

  skill. So, fast forward, when I was running the business, I'm mixing cement, I'm laying brick, we are working physically every day, so I've got that kind of endurance and it feels good. Now, I'm on Wall Street, and I'm sitting at a desk, and we're doing two or three dinners a night, and I'm getting heavy, and I'm feeling terrible, and I still don't want any part of yoga or any of that crunchy stuff my mom talked about, but, one day, the elevator's broken in the building, and I gotta go up to the thirty-something floor, and so I'm taking the stairs, and I'm huffing and puffing, and there's a guy as fit as Rich Roll sitting here, right? Not nearly as fit as you, my friend.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Get out of here, Rich is ripped, and, and, and he's carrying two dumbbells, and he's going up the stairs, and his name's Mike, if I remember correctly, and we're talking in the stairwell, and I'm intrigued. This guy, like, he's literally a cover of Men's Health type guy, right? And, and he's got his shirt off, and, and we got time to talk, because we're going up all these stairs, and he's carrying the dumbbells, and I'm, I'm more out of breath than he is, and he says, "Meet me in the stairs. Every day, we'll start training." And so, that was the beginning. I started training in the stairs. He introduced me to an adventure race. I'd never heard of an adventure race. Which was a three-hour race where we kayaked, we biked, kayaked, biked, and ran. Loved it, felt like I was mixing cement again, and laying bricks, and doing construction

• 46:52Speaker 01

  work, and I was just, like, went nuts. Right. Went nuts, like, where's the next one? Where's the harder one? Give me the hardest race in the world. And I just chased races for, and it was my way of eliminating some of the stress I had on the trading desk and all that insanity. And so, I don't, I don't know, from like ninety-eight... 97, 98 till like 2005, I just went nuts.

• 47:16Rich Roll?

  I mean, you were on this ridiculous tear where you were flying somewhere every weekend to do something bananas. There couldn't have been that much training during the week in between with the work schedule that you're holding down. So the training and the racing become one thing, but I mean, in that period of time, I mean, it's, I don't know if there's anybody else on the planet who participated in more insane races than you did.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  I went absolutely nuts and, and, and I call it the Spartan paradox and maybe you've found this as well. That the training, like you've got to embrace the training, right? It's the journey that matters, but like, training sucks. Like the actual race is kind of cool, right? And, and I found that as long as I had a date on the calendar, I always had, I never fell out of shape.

• 48:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Kind of like, you know, a boxer gets a date on the calendar, he knows he's got to fight and starts training. Yeah. And so I just selfishly, I was like, if I just keep racing, I'll just always be in shape. And I just never, I never have to train.

• 48:16Rich Roll?

  But you took it to such an insane level. I mean, there's that one, there was like a one, like four day, five day period. You did the Vermont 100, 100 mile run. Then you get on a plane and you fly to Vegas and drive to Badwater and you do Badwater for, and Badwater is a race we talk about all the time on the podcast. Then you go to a wedding and then you go to Lake Placid and do the Ironman in what, like four days?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  You did your research, yeah.

• 48:42Rich Roll?

  Five days or something like that?

• 48:43Speaker 01

  The hardest part of that whole week was the wedding. My feet did not fit in the shoes.

• 48:48Rich Roll?

  How do you go from running the Vermont 100 to running Badwater? I mean, the hardest, I mean, I, I paced Dean Karnaz's at that race and it just, it almost killed me just trying to support that guy.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was hot. It was 137 degrees the day we did it. It was hot. My shoes melted, my shirt melted. And, um, I don't know. I, I, you know, there's something amazing about the human body. The body gets more efficient. You would think like, everybody talks to me about, well, you got to recover or whatever. And I don't know if, if this was the 1700s, 1800s, you and I would not like, we wouldn't stop on a mountain with our horse and carriage and say, it's recovery day today. Like, you know, you just keep going. And, and the human body just gets stronger or it dies. And so I just found for me. Just get stronger. Like, like my, my fastest time, that 100 mile run in Vermont,

• 49:38Speaker 01

  fly to Vegas, go to Badwater, my fastest time in that 235 miles was the last 13 miles of, up to Mount Whitney. Like that, I was flying. So, so.

• 49:49Rich Roll?

  That climb is brutal.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  I ran that whole thing like a lunatic. I probably passed eight people. And just because, your body gets more efficient. I'm no, I'm no special athlete. All I did was BMX as a kid. I didn't, what the hell am I, you know? So, so.

• 50:04Rich Roll?

  The best part is how you finished the marathon at Lake Placid, though.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, what happened was, um, I'm feeling great in the swim. We got, you know, get there, I sit in an ice tub.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  How are you feeling great?

• 50:16Speaker 01

  I'm feeling great in the swim, right? Cold water, and I'm crushing it. I get on the bike. I'm feeling pretty damn good on the bike. And I'm like, you know what? This is gonna be great. And within three or four miles on the run, I was dead. I was smoked. And, and I asked a couple of kids, I said, hey, on the side, do you have any aspirin, Advil? They said, no, we got beer. And I don't drink. Give me a beer. And I drank one beer, two beer. So I, I basically got drunk. I was eating hamburgers. I, I couldn't consume enough during that, during that marathon.

• 50:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But you got that done, man. That is so impressive. And then you've gone on, you did Furnace Creek, you did this crazy, like 350 mile thing in Quebec in the winter time.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  I biked, I biked from Vermont to the Furnace Creek start line.

• 51:03Rich Roll?

  Get out.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. That was a 14 day bike ride.

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  Oh my God. That was your training?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  That was my training for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I went nuts. I went nuts. I, whatever, whatever.

• 51:15Rich Roll?

  It was a year where you did 50 ultras and 14 Ironmans? That's gotta be a record.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  I was in a, what happened, the reason that happened is I was in a bad car accident. And, um, I was thrown out the window at 85 miles an hour. My leg was ripped out of my hip. So, um, I'm laying in bed and the doctor's saying, you're not gonna be able to walk again. You're, you know, crutches, wheelchair. And I just kept going to different doctors till I got a doctor that said you'd be fine. And, um, Lisa Smith, I don't know if you know her, she had gotten me into some of this stuff. So she called to say, how, you know, how are you? I heard you got in a car accident. I said, look, it doesn't look like I'll be doing these adventure races anymore, whatever. She said, why don't we do Ironmans? And I, maybe I had done one Ironman at that point, and, or maybe two, and, and she said, "Well, just do every Ironman there is." I was like, "All right, let's do it."

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Because I was, I was, you know, just out of the hospital.

• 52:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  My leg had been ripped out of my hip, and a lot of times when you're hurt, you, you see those athletes come back stronger, right? And so that, it just gave me something to look forward to, and I just, I went nuts that year. It ended, that year ended because my wife was eight and a half months pregnant with our first child. I was at an Ironman. I had just, like, barely came in walking on the marathon. I was just exhausted, as you can imagine, from doing all those things. And she said, "Are we gonna have a family, or are you just gonna keep doing races?"

• 52:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, at some point, you know, it's like, what are you running from? You know? A lot of this is so nourishing, because it's, it's connecting you with yourself and your potential, and there's so much to be learned about, you know, you know, what we're capable of, right? But you can also hide behind it, like, you can run from your life by just being in too many events all the time.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  I, I was, um, I had never been married before, so I didn't, you know, and I'm, I was learning, navigating that. But for me, although you, you might have better insight into me, listening to me, for me, it was more about, like, I was so stressed out in business, that whenever I got to a place where I was, like, just wanting water, food, and shelter, it was so nice. And I just liked getting there. Just like, as long as I fall asleep in my soup at dinner, I'm happy. Does that make sense?

• 53:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. Like, that's what it's all about. I mean, what do you think, like, what is it that, that, what does that experience for somebody who's never been in that position before teach you?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  I guess for me, I, I needed to meet myself, right? I needed to find out who I am. Am I tough enough?

• 53:50Speaker 01

  And I liken it to if I had a Ferrari in the garage and I just looked at it and I polished it and showed photos of it versus I took it out on the track and I raced it up against the, however you race a race car. You get to see how it handles and so I was just, I guess, learning to see how do I handle?

• 54:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  How do I do?

• 54:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  And you get humble. I don't know about you, but I gained integrity during all those crazy adventures because I liken that to like a structural engineer that checks the integrity of the parts and pieces before he puts the building together. Like I was testing the integrity of my parts and pieces and I think when you've suffered like that, like you've suffered, like I've suffered, it knocks the edges off.

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  And it's like, you know, when I meet a really tough wrestler or a Navy SEAL or Delta Force operator and they've got a somewhat soft handshake, they're that wave for that reason. They've been through some tough shit. They don't need to squeeze you. Does that make sense?

• 54:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I get that. I mean, I think, when I think of you to like extend the car analogy, like your RPMs are running so hot all the time because when you get back from that race, you're in Wall Street. So you're burning it in a different way. So there's no like recuperation. Like it's amazing you didn't just completely flame out.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had zero recovery. But the other thing, the other thing is, I mean, I remember flying to like, you'd be able to look this up if my memory is off, but I remember flying once to like South Africa to knock out an Ironman. Literally land on a Friday afternoon, put my bike together, wake up in the morning, do the Ironman. At the finish line, take my bike apart, put it in a box and leave.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  And then get back to New York, work however many days I had in New York, three days, and then fly back to like Western Australia.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  It's like crazy.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  What are people in the office thinking?

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Well, it cost me. It cost me a lot, right? Because then the boss, if the boss is always-

• 56:04Rich Roll?

  You can't be fully present.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  I wasn't present. But, but that's the negative. The negative was I was showing my people that I wasn't really interested, right? So that was bad for business. But, but what was good for business was that became my brand. Everybody else's brand on Wall Street was like drinking and partying. My brand, which didn't exist, you know, at this time, in the, in the early 2000s, late 90s, was I'm the adventure guy that takes his customers to do yoga.

• 56:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  And, and on run. Nobody was doing that.

• 56:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  We climbed stairs for fun. We don't, we don't go drinking.

• 56:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:50Rich Roll?

  What's so unique about you, and I'm sure looking back, you know, hindsight's 2020, but you're this weird amalgam of street hustler with this kind of blue collar, you know, aesthetic, and also like the Wall Street pedigree, but you also have the yoga hippie thing going on at the same time. And all of these things fuse to create this unique individual. Like, nobody else could be you or do what you do without all of those elements, like, kind of congealing.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what I think about a lot is, um, because we have four children now, uh, from 14 down to eight years old. How do you make your, there was a great saying in ancient Sparta, like, they need to be better than us. Our children need to be better than us. And so, how do you make, how do I make my kids better than me? And they don't have the yoga crunchy mom and the neighborhood and the wise guy next door. And, you know, they have a house where it's so organized for them that it's almost like-

• 57:49Speaker 01

  It's a negative.

• 57:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 57:52Rich Roll?

  That's the problem with, you know, becoming successful.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like not good for the kids in some ways.

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you're running this crazy boot camp up in Vermont with all these people.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I mean, the kids could carry rocks, right? And the kids, the kids could climb ropes and they, but, but they don't have a wise guy next door that's.

• 58:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  You know.

• 58:11Rich Roll?

  A little street wisdom.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I need, I need to figure that out. They're learning Latin.

• 58:19Rich Roll?

  How old are they now?

• 58:20Speaker 01

  I've got a eight-year-old girl, a 12-year-old girl, a 13-year-old boy, 14-year-old boy.

• 58:27Rich Roll?

  Hmm, yeah, I've got two daughters, 16 and 13, two older boys. None of them are interested in any of this stuff.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 58:37Rich Roll?

  And I can't get them interested. And it's, and that's fine, like, they don't, I don't need them to be. But I find myself thinking, like, they'd probably be better off, but I, I don't want to be the guy who's forcing them to do something that they really just are not wired to do.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Well, so I forced it.

• 58:54Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  And I continue to force it every single day. And my theory, and we will find out if I completely fuck this up, but my theory is, um,

• 59:05Speaker 01

  they gain, they hate it, they hate it, they hate it. And then all of a sudden, they score a goal at a soccer game and they see they're more fit than their peer. And then they hear from, hey, you're in pretty good shape, the coach said, right? Like, and then maybe it starts to stick.

• 59:21Rich Roll?

  It clicks.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  And, and I think I'm seeing that happen, but I might be seeing what I want to see.

• 59:26Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  So, but I force it. I force it every day and I've been forcing it since my oldest was four years old.

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well, let's, let's take it to you. So, basically, at some point, you, you know, ripped the parachute ripcord and you're out in New York and you decide to move to Vermont and it's going to be retirement.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I've got a picture of a red barn on the trading desk. Probably because in Ithaca, when I was a kid, I saw some red barn in a field. I mean, Ithaca's pretty, Idyllic's pretty nice. And that's what I'm visualizing the country to be. And, um, I meet my wife and I'm like, I want to find a place like that. I want to, I don't want to be around the craziness I grew up in. I want to get away from all these crazy people on Wall Street and we're going to find a farm. And so we find this farm in Vermont. Vermont was not in our plan. And the mistake I made was I associated, and this is like a JV mistake, I associated country, like

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Ithaca was country, with like, but there's academics in Ithaca, right? There's a university there. You run into professors, like it's a little more developed, that like anywhere in the country would be like that, but it's not. Yeah. And so we found a farm in Pittsfield, Vermont, a tiny little town, 400 residents, eight miles from Killington, Vermont, the East Coast's largest ski resort. And, you know, there's not a university there. And so there's a lot of negatives, there's some positives to not a big crap, you know, but it's very hard to make a living there. And so we bought this farm. My wife was willing to move up. We got cows and chickens and goats and I started putting on races. I put trails on the side of them. I mean, we did unbelievable stuff. But it's hard to convince people, even though it's only a gas tank

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  away from New York, it's hard to convince people Yeah. to come up to Vermont. But it ultimately led to me putting on a race we call the death race. Right. Right. So let's talk about this, because this is crazy. And it still exists, right? Still exists. And what happened was, I was in Lake Placid Ironman one year, I don't know when it was, it was pouring rain like you read about. I mean, crazy rain. And for whatever reason, I think I had just gotten done with the Eco Challenge in Fiji where it rained like nonstop. I was at some race where it rained nonstop for 10 days. Nonstop. And this is not going to make sense, I'm going to sound like I'm bullshitting,

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  but like, I did that Ironman, it rained, I didn't even feel, I did not even notice it was raining. I had just left, you know, 12 days straight, whatever it was, of rain. And I saw a bunch of top athletes, men and women, quit that race, in the middle of it. Was that like 2008 or 2009? I remember there was one year where it rained like crazy. It was craziness. It had to be before that, because death race started before that. So I, I said, this is ridiculous. The name of the race is Ironman. Doesn't say like, Ironman except if it's raining. Right. Race, right? And I grew up with a mom who meditated straight for 30 days. Like, this is ridiculous, you'd quit because of the rain. So I'm looking for ways to bring people to Pittsfield, Vermont, anyway, to our new farm.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  And I'm like, you know what, we're gonna have this race called the death race and it's gonna emulate life and it's gonna, there's gonna be no rules and, and it'd be like, if you get out of the swim in this race, and you get to your bike and the bike seat is missing, so what? You gotta, you gotta do it without bike seat.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  That, that's gonna be what this race is, right? Cause that's what a CEO would do, that's what a startup would do, right?

• 1:02:57Rich Roll?

  But there, there, the mindfuck goes way further with this one.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  The mindfuck goes way further. So, first year, we, um, Doug Lewis, Olympics downhill skier shows up. The Ashley brothers, two guys from Vermont, I don't know any of these guys. Two guys from Vermont who eat barbed wire for breakfast, grew up on a badass farm where their dad made them chop wood for heat. Their whole, like, just tough guys. A teacher, a female teacher, and a kid I convinced from Wall Street to show up. There's about eight people, just like the Transcendence run. And, they don't know when it's gonna start, they don't know what it includes, but it's like, handsawing through a log, right? 12 chunks. So they're there for like, three hours, handsawing through this log.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Splitting that wood, crawling through a culvert, a culvert is, is a hole under the ground. This was 120 feet long, that water rushes through, um, that they could barely fit in. Putting together a wheelbarrow with Japanese directions and no tools.

• 1:03:59Rich Roll?

  But the thing is, you don't tell them when it starts, how long it's gonna go for, when it's gonna end, or even what they're gonna be doing.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  And no idea, they, no idea what they were getting into. And, and the two rugged Vermonters, and the Olympic downhill skier are battling for first. And the teacher is, everybody else quit. The T, the female teacher who's in dead last by like, five hours. And we're trying to get her to quit because I can't manage the front of the pack 15 miles away from this woman in the back. And she says, "You'd have to kill me." Like, she literally just would not quit. So, ultimately the skier wins. And, uh, the, the brothers come in second, and then the female comes in, uh, third, after the two brothers. And it just, the race just became this thing. The New York Times picked up a story.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  And, and they came and filmed it and, and the world got excited and then all of a sudden 300 competitors every year would descend upon Pittsfield, Vermont. And the race got tougher and longer and crazier with every year. So every year, you're throwing something new at them, right? Like, it's never the same? Well- You have like a, didn't you have like a bus where you would stand there and say, "You can get on the bus and quit"? Oh, you have no idea what I, so, so what happened was- Just toying with them. What happened was, the two brothers, who I've since become great friends with, the two brothers from that first race, they had done lots of big races throughout their life, they had, these are tough guys. Uh huh. Crazy races in, in the tundra, like, they would have done really well in the 1700s.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  And they took on the persona of the death race after doing it that first year. They started to make little skull, um, necklaces, they got tattoos, like, they were just into this. And I started to see some of the videos they were creating, and they were training specifically for what we had just done that first year. And I said, "I'm not gonna, they're not gonna do the same stuff the next year, I'm gonna change everything." Right. And it broke them. It drove them crazy because they had just trained for eight or nine months, whatever it was, to do exactly what I, they can put a wheelbarrow together now and- You're trying to figure out what their weaknesses are, so you can throw something at them that's just gonna derail their whole plan. Exactly. Yeah. And so every year became, what are they expecting? What are the competitors expecting versus what are we gonna throw at them?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  It's, it's diabolical. It was diabolical. And so, you know, they would roll into town, let's say on a Thursday night, getting ready for a Friday afternoon start, and they'd check into the general store and they'd have khakis on and shoes and they'd be with their family, and I'd say, "Race starts right now." They haven't even signed the waiver yet. "We're going right now, grab an axe and we're going." And, um, and so it just became this, this mystical, um, thing that still goes on today. Right. And there was a TV deal on the table at one point, right? That didn't end up panning out? Yeah, we had, uh, many, many TV deals. We've had so many TV people, uh, come up from the Discovery Channels, the NBCs, and

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  invariably, uh, everybody gets really nervous with that word, you know, "death race." Uh huh. Um, and it is, it's a crazy race. Yeah. People have come really close to dying, and so it, um- How ironclad is that? Is that waiver? We, we make them, in the waiver it says, "We will bury you on the property," so-

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  We might not even tell anyone.

• 1:07:21Rich Roll?

  How is it, you know, it doesn't get like a lot of media, though. You know, you don't hear that much about it.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  It did get a ton of media, like 2007, 2008. But then from there, Spartan was born.

• 1:07:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  And Spartan took over and then Tough Mudder and Spartan took over.

• 1:07:38Rich Roll?

  Became the thing. I mean, Spartan's really born out of this idea. How do we take what's great about the death race and make it accessible for, for the average weekend warrior and then scale it up?

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  And formalize it and standardize it. Like, like you're not going to find wood chopping at one, right? It was more military based, like standardized for Spartan. But, but that race is my baby and I love torturing people and.

• 1:08:03Rich Roll?

  How many people show up these days?

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Still about 300 people.

• 1:08:06Rich Roll?

  And how many people finish?

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Depends on the year, what kind of mood I'm, I'm in.

• 1:08:12Rich Roll?

  I like how it's up to you.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  It's really up to me because, because we could go till Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and we could say, all right, we only want three people finishing. So, so imagine you're four days into this, just hypothetically, Rich Roll is at four days in, you can't see straight, and there's still 12 competitors. And I say to all 12 of you, I say, guys, I'm here, we'll go as long as you want.

• 1:08:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  But until we're down to three, it doesn't end. And people start dropping right there.

• 1:08:39Rich Roll?

  Right. It's like Hunger Games. Like you're, you're overlooking the whole thing going, how can I fuck with these people? And improvising as you go.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  It's so easy to break people once, once.

• 1:08:49Rich Roll?

  And what have you learned about the people that break last? Like what, does it go back to that grit and the mental fortitude that is more important than their physical conditioning?

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  No doubt about it. You could tell right away, the big muscular guys, they're out first. They're out first. And it's, it's, it's a CEO, it's a mom that just waits everybody out.

• 1:09:10Rich Roll?

  You must get Navy SEALs and guys like that coming in.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  I lost a Green Beret out there once. Literally lost them. We had search dogs, the whole thing. We found them in the attic of one of my barns, sleeping. We had shut the whole race down looking for a green beret. We've had them all. We've had every form of military, MMA, all of them have come out to try to test themselves. But, you know, a lot of them quit in the first three, four hours.

• 1:09:36Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Just like, this is insane. This guy's nuts.

• 1:09:39Rich Roll?

  Right. So Spartan Race begins. I mean, you're up in Vermont, kind of trying to be semi-retired, and instead you build this empire.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm done. We're having children, and this was gonna be like my time to recover. We talked about recovery. And Death Race leads to this idea of Spartan Race, and 700 people show up to that first event in Vermont. And I happen to have Discovery Channel. There's a guy from Discovery Channel at that first event, and he's seeing people cross this. It's just a three-mile race.

• 1:10:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  And they're crossing the finish line. He's like, oh, my God, are you seeing these transformations that take place? And I'm not really paying attention to that because I've got logistical problems. Any race organizer, you're dealing with other stuff, toilet paper. And he's like, this is unbelievable, what's happening here. And that gives me the impetus, all right, we're gonna put on a second race, and a third race, and a fourth race. And then 1,500 people showed up, and then 3,000. And then Tough Mudder came onto the scene. And so then, I'm a pretty competitive guy. Then it was like...

• 1:10:40Rich Roll?

  Right. That's like not getting into Cornell, right?

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  That's like, yeah.

• 1:10:42Rich Roll?

  I gotta bury these guys and be the best.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  I'm gonna win this thing. And so if they were in the US and Australia, we're going to Slovakia. We're gonna be, I'm gonna go to, you know, I'm gonna go anywhere they're not, and we're gonna, we're just gonna win this war. And really, that battle between Tough Mudder and Spartan, I think, drove both of us, the founders, me and the founders of Mudder, to really build an industry, build a sport out of this thing.

• 1:11:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The difference from my perspective is that with Spartan, there's this, you know, elite aspect to it, where, you know, you're able to tap into a different caliber of athlete. And that allows the weekend warriors to compete alongside, like, these people that are like, you know, who become the Amelia Boones and the like, who became really celebrated for this stuff.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that was the difference. The difference was, they, Tough Mudder went out and branded it, "It's not a race."

• 1:11:36Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Right? "This is an experience." And we're actually gonna, we're actually gonna laugh in the face of people wanting a medal at the finish line. We're gonna give them an orange headband. Like, that was their shtick. And our thing was, if I'm gonna do this, I wanna make it a real sport. And honestly, it was a business mistake on my part because it was harder to build what I was building. It was easier to build. They were much more inclusive. Like, right? A bunch of guys high-fiving, they could skip obstacles and they could just earn a headband and drink a bunch of beer. I was asking people to like, train and work hard. And if you didn't do an obstacle, you had to do 30 burpees. Who the hell wants to do that? So, so I was losing the battle for a long time, but because I'm such, um, I just don't quit. We ultimately won. Yeah, we ultimately won.

• 1:12:21Rich Roll?

  That is your superpower. Just you're the ever-ready battery that's just never gonna run out of energy.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  My team, my Spartan team says I'm very much like, um, a battery on your phone that's like, just out of juice but doesn't die somehow.

• 1:12:36Rich Roll?

  Like you're, you're always at 6%.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And it just, just doesn't die.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  That's funny. The other thing that's cool about what you do is, I mean, it would be normal for somebody like you, who's so focused on building Spartan and all the things that you're involved in, to just be focused on that. But you really, you really opened up your farm and you have all these people that come through. It's like this open-door policy. Like, hey, you wanna come here, we got a bunkhouse. Stay as long as you like, but you're gonna have to do what I tell you to. So you're still doing this kind of one-on-one coaching and mentoring. And there's been some pretty extraordinary success stories that have come out of that.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do it. You know, my wife hates it, right? Because I'm invited, one, I think I invited 3 million people to the farm once. But people don't really, you know, it's a little Tom Sawyer-ish, right? It's a little Karate Kid, right? What was his name? Mr. Biagi?

• 1:13:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Right? Like, you come here, you paint the fence and do this and that. And people don't really wanna do it. They might not be happy with their life. They wanna lose weight, whatever it is. They're trying to clean up things. And they think they wanna come, but in most cases, when they get there, they tap out.

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  There's a few unbelievable success stories.

• 1:13:50Rich Roll?

  The Apples guy, right?

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  The Apples guy was an amazing success story. Truck driver, 300 pounds. He probably should've been 160 pounds. I got him down to 200 pounds in 30 days. He shows up with a little wheelie suitcase. He's like, alright, you know, where's, you know, where am I staying or whatever? I'm like, up there. Up where? Top of the mountain. The rafters. Top of the mountain. He takes the wheelie suitcase and literally climbing up the mountain with his thing. Took like four or five hours. Gets up there, I got him in a stone cabin. He's like, you know, where's the shower? The kitchen? There are none. And a big bushel of apples. All you're getting is apples. We're hiking every day, lost 100 pounds in 30 days. Obviously extreme, obviously easy to bounce back from that, but like, that's the deal.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Like, like you can't, they can't do it on their own. And, and so I provide that ability to do it. A structured environment and strip everything else away. Take the phone away, take the, take the, the food away. And yeah, if they give me their keys and they give me their wallet, we can get them to succeed at anything they want to succeed at. But as soon as they have a plan B or a way to escape, I can't help them. Uh huh. Right, so the recidivism rate, you can't control. I can't control. I mean, I had two guys show up, uh, two months ago. Big, jacked guys during COVID. I had a bunch of kids come, fam- family friends. They sent all the kids, they put them through hell. And, uh, two guys wanted to come. I said, you can come, all the kids are here, I'm putting on a 14 day. Yeah, no problem.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  And they spoke with like military lingo. They were not military guys and they were going to crush it. Three hours. Kids stayed 14 days. These guys made it three hours. Wow. So what do you, what's the differentiator there? They could leave. Yeah. They could leave. I mean, when you, when you can leave, you, you take that option. And, and I learned that, you know, in this town, we didn't talk about, I rebuilt a general store that had been around from the 1800s. I rebuilt a farm that had been around from the 1800s. And I envisioned finding some entrepreneurs like I was back in the neighborhood to come run these things. It'd be cool to come run a general store, right? And, and you're not going to have to get a mortgage and all that. It's all paid for, it's all ready for you, turn key, just walk in. And this farm has a tractor and cows.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  All you gotta do is walk, you just gotta do the work. You're going to crush it because you don't have the strains that any other entrepreneur has, where you gotta borrow and you gotta figure out ways to make this work. I even have a place for you to live. They'll quit. And they quit because. They're not invested personally in it. Yeah. Like when you write a check. And you sell your kids and do whatever you have to do to make it. You have no choice. And so that's, that's the big difference. You know, with the death race, they were all quitting. And then one year I said, here's what we're gonna do. If you want to do the death race, you have to get an article written in a local newspaper that says you are doing this race and you're gonna finish.

• 1:16:43Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  And all of a, all of a sudden, finishing rates went up. It's that easy.

• 1:16:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. All these people that have come through the farm, all the people that you've seen compete in these Spartan races, all the athletes that you've, you know, run shoulder to shoulder with over the course of these races, like what, what are the, what are the lessons that you take away from all of these experiences that can inform the person who's at the, you know, at the, at the starting gate of a journey like this?

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Well, so I'm a big subscriber in this idea of fire, ready, aim, right? Just get started, just take that first step, just go outside, you know this. I think we all get stuck sitting around. Our brains are wired to avoid discomfort. And so I find, I find myself, I know every day I gotta take my cold shower. And I find myself looking at my phone. And I'm like, why the fuck am I looking at my, oh, I'm looking at my phone because I don't want to get in the cold shower. Subconsciously, you know, my, my, my brain is telling me to avoid that pain I'm about to go deal with. So just take that first step. And that first step leads to another step, and before you know it, you get it done. And that might be signing up for something, that might be telling a friend you're gonna go do something, or maybe just having a friend ring your bell in the morning, or having

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  your, your shoes out next to your bed, whatever that is, just take that first step. Number two, and I'm doing this a long time, so I, I think you have to have a frame of reference that you could, you could fall back on when the going gets tough. So what do I mean by that? Like, I always go to a place when, and I say, well, it could be worse. Like, I could be in Siberia, I could be missing an arm, uh, God forbid, one of my kids could be like, I, I go through this place where it's like, it's not so bad when I refer to some other thing that could. Be my reality. And, and, and I think when you do that, you have gratitude for where you are versus resentment. And that's, that's important to, to understand, right?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  There's a lot of people that resent, like, oh, I should have what he has, or she has, or this or that. I never think that. I think like, thank God I have what I have because I don't have what they have, which is worse. Now, you know what I mean?

• 1:18:54Rich Roll?

  And is it the result of all these experiences that you've like, you know, basically brought upon yourself that allows you to tap into gratitude in that way?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  No doubt about it. If I didn't feel the pain and suffering, I wouldn't know how bad, like, as bad as it's been for me or you, and we've done these, these, these races, which are really just manufactured adversity, we're still not in like, in the Lewis and Clark expedition. You know what I mean?

• 1:19:18Rich Roll?

  It's not done or past.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  It's not that bad, right?

• 1:19:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  So, but you wouldn't know that if you grew up on Park Avenue, you pampered your whole life.

• 1:19:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  You, you wouldn't, so, so that's probably why the MMA fighter and the Navy SEAL, that's probably why their handshake is a little softer and they're more humble. Cause they've seen hell.

• 1:19:37Rich Roll?

  But with success, now you're flying around, you're managing this huge business, you're, you're trying to direct all of these races. I know for myself, you know, I'm, I'm sitting at a table, having conversations with people more than I am getting out after it. You're like, as a result of, of the things that we're interested in, we create a certain large S in our lives that actually makes it more difficult. Like I found myself having to exercise, you know, stronger boundaries and, and challenge myself more to get out of this comfort zone that I've created for myself. Do you feel, I mean,

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  No doubt about it.

• 1:20:14Rich Roll?

  You've got kids and you can't go do 14 Ironmans in a year and all of that. Like, do you miss it? And how do you, you know, stay connected with that impulse to be in discomfort?

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  I feel like it would be selfish of me, certainly for my family. If I, if I did my, you know, go back to the old days and, and Saturdays were my 12 hour day. If I did that on a Saturday and I stayed away from my, my kids, um, that would be selfish. And then the other thing is, I'm so fortunate, I get these emails all day, every day, that you wouldn't even believe. That I'm back with my husband, I'm back with my wife, I lost 200 pounds, I left my job and started a business because of sport. You can't even believe the emails I get all day, every day. And so, yes, it'd be cool to go hike a mountain or do something, but like, and I get asked by all my old friends, right? We're going to climb this, or we're going to do that. You want, no, I can't.

• 1:21:06Rich Roll?

  You can't do it.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  I got a family and I got a business and we're doing great work here. So, I wake up early, I wake up super early, I get my workout in, I sweat every single day. Um, I take the cold showers, um, and, and I run.

• 1:21:21Rich Roll?

  And you told Rogan that you bring a, you have like a 44 pound kettlebell that you travel with? Did you bring it here? Is it here?

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  I did not bring my kettlebell because it's get, the last three flights, I don't know if it's because of COVID, maybe, maybe there's less people working at the airlines, they're losing it. So I end up landing somewhere where the, where some, like you are expecting to see it and I gotta run and go buy one locally quickly to, so I just didn't, I didn't bring it. But, and that stems from, that kettlebell stems from one of the people that came to the farm. Chris Davis was 696 pounds and he wanted to get down to, uh, in the 200s. And I told him, as you lose weight, I'll carry weight. And so, uh, he, he got down the first 100 pounds, I, I was carrying 100 pounds in a sandbag.

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  And it was, as you could imagine, difficult. And it's another whole story, but I'm, we moved to Asia as a family, right after that. And so I had this 100 pound sandbag that I was carrying because I made that commitment to him. And they confiscated it at the airport. So when I landed in Japan or Singapore, I said to my wife, can you order on Amazon? Can you get a kettlebell? I don't need a 100 pounder, I'll carry, just to keep it going, I'll carry like a 20 pounder. It came 20 kilograms, which was, you know, 44 pounds or whatever. So, so that became my thing. And, and for the last four or five years, I pretty much carried it everywhere outside of COVID.

• 1:22:48Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Yeah, that's gotta be a trip, though, when it comes through on the baggage claim or trying to carry that thing on an airplane.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  It almost took out, yeah, it almost took out a, um, one of those security officers once, you know, coming down the ramp. Um, in India, uh, they stuck it in somebody else's suitcase. Once I checked it in, I had to go open somebody else's suitcase to get it out. In, in, uh, the Middle East, they use a, a term to mean it's up to God whether or not it'll be there when I land. So it's been a, it's been a trip carrying this thing around and it's become a shtick.

• 1:23:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So how many people do Spartan pre-COVID? How many people?

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Pre-COVID, so I don't know if you know this, right before COVID, uh, we purchased Tough Mudder. We bought Tough Mudder.

• 1:23:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so pre-COVID, if you look at Spartan and Tough Mudder, we're probably 1.6, 1.7 million people around the world. Um, during COVID, we're like 20,000.

• 1:23:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Fucking disaster. But, but, um, but it's a, it's a big number. 45 countries, 325 events, the two, two companies combined. Um, and yeah.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  Right. And you have this mission statement, though, that you're going to impact 100 million people.

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Our goal is to change 100 million lives, gets us a free pass to heaven, and, um, I'm excited about that.

• 1:24:10Rich Roll?

  So how do we scale this thing up? I mean, you've got your books, you've got the podcast, you've got the documentary, you've got the races. I don't know what else you can do to impact people at scale other than what you're already doing. Like, at the same time, when you canvass what's going on in America and across the developed world, we're dealing with a health crisis of untold proportion, you know, obesity rates are through the roof, childhood obesity rates are through the roof, diabetes, heart disease, all of these lifestyle illnesses that are just failing millions of people unnecessarily. There's still so many people that are suffering and challenged to find their way, you know, to a healthier way of, of being.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm in the wrong business for sure. All the data.

• 1:24:57Rich Roll?

  I don't think you're in the wrong business.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Well, I'm in the right business because it's something you and I are passionate about, right? Getting people off the couch and doing these things. I'm in the wrong business in that the data is going in the wrong direction. More and more people are eating unhealthy. More and more people are sitting and watching Netflix, especially post-COVID. It's gonna be, it's gonna be even harder to get people pried off the couch. So I would say, if we could snap our fingers, sitting here and do anything, we would have to get to the White House and convince them, or the Pentagon, and convince them that they have to work with us to mandate this kind of physical activity. Like, it's the only way it's gonna work, if, if you wanna get to 100 million people. Because most people look at me, and I'm sure they look at you, and say like, "Why, why would I do that? Why would I do that?"

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  I'm like, Netflix, I could lay naked in bed like Gary Vee talks about, right? And do nothing. So, so it's a tough, it's a very tough sell outside of the, um, let's call you and I the hunter-gatherers. Outside of the remaining hunter-gatherer genes that still exist, it's a tough sell.

• 1:26:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Remember when we were kids and there was the presidential physical fitness thing?

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yes, we need that.

• 1:26:06Rich Roll?

  Does that even exist anymore?

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think so.

• 1:26:08Rich Roll?

  Or does that just go by the way of the dodo? And it wasn't that big of a deal, but at least it was something.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  You need that.

• 1:26:13Rich Roll?

  And now we have, like, lip service to, like, corporate wellness programs, which, you know, I question how effective they are. It's like getting people excited about going out and walking around or standing up every 10 minutes or something like that. Like, how do you have a soft enough touch that you can get that person who's never experienced anything hard to at least get interested in it, but not come at them so hard, like, with your, you know, kind of super hardcore sensibility, that they're intimidated and scared and never do anything?

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  It's tough when you, that's why you need, you need programs that, that it becomes part of, uh, it's, it's normal, right? When my mom got into all this stuff, it wasn't normal, so she, it didn't get accepted. And so we just need to make it normal. When I, I've lived on the farm, we moved to Asia, we moved to Japan, Singapore.

• 1:27:02Rich Roll?

  When did you do that and why'd you do that?

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  We did that because the business was growing fast. I needed to beat Tough Mudder. They weren't in Asia yet, and the kids were still young enough to move. So I said to my wife, let's, why don't we move? We'll go Asia light, we'll live in Singapore first, easy to do. Uh, we'll, we'll land there, we'll put, start putting on Spartan. And then we'll expand from Singapore. And, and what an amazing experience as a family. So, but the reason I bring it up is because when I lived in those places, the neighbors right around us started sending their kids to me early in the morning to work out with my kids. So I can do it if I have close proximity to people. I could rope them in, give them the olive branch, light them a little bit of, you know, and get them to do more than they would willingly do otherwise.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  But, um, you know, when they're five degrees separated, as you know, it's hard to get them to do stuff. Um, look at the size of people. Uh, look at the data, it's not going, you know, they'd prefer Twinkies over this.

• 1:28:03Rich Roll?

  Right, so a, uh, a cabinet position in the White House for physical fitness.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  We just, uh, you can't say, whether you like Trump or Biden, it doesn't really matter. You can't have a tagline that says, let's make America great again without making America fit again. You have, you, you are like-

• 1:28:23Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  It's logical, anybody listening to this, we have to make America fit. And it only, it has to be a policy-driven thing. My friend ran New York City Schools Food Program, 1.1 billion dollar budget. He's just like you and I. He did it because he wanted, he left Goldman Sachs. He did it because he really wanted to make an impact. He left. He says, I got the potato lobby, I gotta have the french fries. I got the soda lobby, I gotta have the soda. He goes, I finally, finally I convinced, I, I was able to get wheat bread on the hamburgers, right? He goes, so I put wheat bread on the hamburgers, the bun, none of the kids will eat it. So then I put, I had to put a wheat bottom with a white top to hide the wheat.

• 1:29:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  So he just couldn't take it anymore.

• 1:29:05Rich Roll?

  Well, you have to change the entire political system to get, you know, the lobbying, you know, efforts out of there that keep, you know, everything entrenched with the shitty food. Because there's too much money involved right now. So it's impossible for a guy like that to come in and make any changes. I mean, look at how Michelle Obama just got shellacked.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:29:24Rich Roll?

  For just saying, maybe we should eat a little bit healthier.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  I know. It's, and so it's gotta, somehow, you gotta have a politician or a group of politicians that, that get it. You and I have to run for office, I mean, that's the only way this is gonna work.

• 1:29:37Rich Roll?

  How is your mom rubbing off on you in terms of like the yoga and the spirituality and the diet? Like, what's that look like for you these days?

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  I went crazy with the yoga, but it had to be hot yoga, as you can imagine. I had to be sweating. I couldn't be like sitting still and like chanting. So I went nuts with the hot yoga, probably did a thousand classes or something. Love it. Haven't done enough of it lately. And on a spirituality front, I don't know. My mom used to say, look, no matter what religion, you've just gotta be a good person. So my thing is just be a good person.

• 1:30:14Rich Roll?

  Is she around still?

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Gone. Didn't make it. And she died very young. Her mom had cancer, as I said. She got cancer. Her sister got cancer. Her cousin got cancer. We lived in that neighborhood I described. Within a 15 mile radius, there was a big garbage dump and massive incidents of cancer around that garbage dump.

• 1:30:34Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  So diet, she preached more plant-based. She introduced me to a guy named Fred Bishy. I don't know if that name-

• 1:30:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. He's John Joseph's boy.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:30:45Rich Roll?

  My buddy, John Joseph, New York City hardcore, Iron Man, vegan, punk rocker dude. But he's all about Bishy. Talks about Bishy all the time. Guy's like, is he still alive?

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's still alive. He was at my wedding.

• 1:30:58Rich Roll?

  Like 92, 94, something like that?

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  93, probably. He's a good friend. He was texting me today. And so I subscribe more to plant-based, but that doesn't mean a little bit of animal protein doesn't slip in to my diet. It shouldn't, but it does. But I'm mostly, I'm probably 75, 80% plant-based. And I should be more. And I fight with everybody over it, including my own kids.

• 1:31:23Rich Roll?

  Right. It's interesting because Spartan, which is sort of, you know, kind of a cousin of like the CrossFit movement. There's a cross pollination of those people.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  It feels like raw meat.

• 1:31:35Rich Roll?

  It's very like, yeah, it's very kind of intertwined with the paleo community. That's now pivoting towards this weird carnivore diet thing that is confusing. But that's kind of the sensibility of a lot of the people that are participating in your races. And it's interesting that you're coming from a different place.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Bishy, first of all, I tested it on myself. I did very long distance races, like crazy races. I did a rod by foot, right? And I would carry like carrots and olive oil with me and all kinds of stuff that like doesn't, they don't make any sense, but I perform best on that. And so, um, I'm just not a believer. That said, maybe based on where you come from on the planet, maybe some people need, need a little more meat than others. I don't, I don't know. But, but Bishi's thing is you want to outlive your competition. And if, and if, and if you subscribe to that, I promise you plant base is the way to go.

• 1:32:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Bishi was like, was he like a weightlifter or something?

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  He was a weightlifter. He was a weightlifter. And he, and he said, um, he said he was going to try a different way. He's 55 years in right now on raw fruits and veggies.

• 1:32:45Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  55 years, raw, raw fruits and veggies.

• 1:32:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What are the, the big obstacles that you face for yourself now? Like, what are the things that you struggle with, dealing with and overcoming?

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Well, my biggest obstacle is I got 20 years of my life invested in, in this thing. I levered up right before COVID and bought my competitor Tough Mudder. And my whole life is upside down right now financially.

• 1:33:09Rich Roll?

  So how are you, how are you maintaining your sanity? Because there's so much you can't, you can't control, right?

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Netflix and Twinkies, man.

• 1:33:16Rich Roll?

  Right. What are you doing in LA?

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  I came out to LA. I have a thing tonight. This is a funny story, actually. Anne Rann and Atlas Shrugged, you know, the book Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead. I get asked on podcasts like this, like, which one of your favorite books? And I'm like Atlas Shrugged. So I guess there's an Anne Rann society that reached out to me and said, oh, I know that your favorite book is Atlas Shrugged. So can you come to this thing? So Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reese, maybe Peter Thiel, some people will be there tonight. And they said, I promised pre-COVID I would be at it. So I gotta go to this thing.

• 1:33:51Rich Roll?

  That'll be an interesting crowd of people.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  It's gonna be interesting.

• 1:33:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How does, you know, how you look at the world and, you know, think about people and potential affect the kind of people that you hire for your business? Like when you're looking to bring somebody on into your organization, like what are the qualities that stand out to you?

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  You know, in the early days, because I just didn't have enough funding to do what we were trying to do, size and scale, it would be if they had a heartbeat, they were good enough to work for us, right? Because we were, I was paying like $2,000 a month for the first 100 people to make this thing work. We, the expenses were just insane. I would say now, if we really narrowed it down, a much more professional approach, it's you gotta be a really enthusiastic person, you gotta be relentless. I don't even care if you have domain expertise or not, because you can learn that. But if you're just relentless, and 24/7, and just like, not gonna accept no, and you're honest, you got integrity, that's good enough for me.

• 1:34:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The specific skills can be trained.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  I don't care about that.

• 1:34:58Rich Roll?

  But it's more about the disposition.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I just, I want, you know that, what is it, Pareto's Principle, right? 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I just want more of those. I just want more of those 20s.

• 1:35:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we'll wrap this up with some thoughts for the person that feels stuck, who's inspired by what you just shared, and is looking for, you know, that little dose of inspiration to just start, to get out of that cycle of analysis paralysis that, you know, keeps you on the couch, scrolling for the best pair of running shoes.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  You gotta sign up for something. It could be learning a new language.

• 1:35:41Rich Roll?

  What about when we can't, we can't sign up for anything right now?

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Signing up for something could be as simple as saying to your friend, and then screaming it from the rooftop, so you're committed, you're on the hook, "We are gonna walk six miles on Saturday." I mean, that could be the thing you sign up. It's just gotta be, it could be, "We're gonna learn a new language by this date," right? It's gotta be, "This is what we're gonna do, and by this date, we're gonna be held accountable." And then I would say, you know, we have a prayer at Spartan. Our brand has a prayer. And we stole it from a WWII French paratrooper, who they found in the field dead, they pulled the prayer out of his pocket, and basically, he was saying, "Look, God, everybody is asking you for the good stuff," right? They wanna get back with their spouse, they wanna get

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  home, a warm shower, a meal. You probably don't have any of that left. So, I'll just ask you for the tough stuff, like the turmoil, the toil, the suffering, and just promise me you'll keep it coming, and you give me the strength to deal with it. So like, if you can turn your thinking around to more like that, like... Like I might, you and I, I might text you and say, hey, Rich, I hope you have a shitty day. And that's like, it's a worthwhile day. I gotta fight through today, right? We don't want, we don't want a complacent, easy day. And so if you can change your mindset to like embracing tough stuff and committing to it, you just have a better life.

• 1:37:06Rich Roll?

  And what do you think is the main obstacle that gets in people's way?

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think subconsciously, our legacy hardware and software is avoiding discomfort. Like it kept us from falling off cliffs and freezing out in the snow and drowning. And, and the sooner you recognize that that's just like old hardware that you don't need because you're not going to get attacked by a lion when you go outside or drown in the rain, you gotta do this stuff. Look, I have a friend who runs the largest hedge fund in the world. He doesn't need to do anything. Okay? He's fine. And he, his theory was no pain, no pain. Instead of no pain, no gain, no pain, no, why would I want any pain? And lately he's come around to my way of thinking, which is, and your way of thinking, which is, you know what?

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Look, he came to Japan when I was living in Japan and they had all these five-star hotels, everything all lined up to do. And you know what I did? I took him and his family to the waterfall monks. And, and it was freezing, it was winter time and there was ice on the mountain. The waterfall is coming down and we gotta go down to nothing, take all our clothes off, get down to basically nothing and get under that waterfall and hold these metal chains while the Japanese in their language are pulling the demons out of us. And he said that was the best part of the whole trip.

• 1:38:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:38:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's not gonna forget that.

• 1:38:25Speaker 01

  That was the best part of the whole trip. It wasn't the fancy hotels, the fancy, like that suffering was awesome. So just do it.

• 1:38:31Rich Roll?

  Way to stick the landing. Powerful Joe DeSena, thank you, my friend. It's great to see you.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  You're awesome.

• 1:38:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was very cool. Appreciate it if you're digging on Joe, pick up his books, Spartan Up, Spartan Fit, The Spartan Way. Got the Spartan Up podcast. We didn't even talk about the Spartan X leadership stuff that you're doing.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  Leadership stuff, we got all kinds of stuff. Shoot me an email, [email protected]. And, and if you come to the farm, just don't quit. It would suck. I mean, it would really ruin Rich's reputation if you came to the farm based on this talk with Rich and you were one of those ones that quit right away.

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that might be me. I might show up. You're just gonna push me too hard and I'm gonna be out of here and my whole ship's gonna sink. Hopefully not. All right. Thanks, man. Peace.

• 1:39:21Rich Roll?

  I dig it. Chances are you do too. If that doesn't leave you motivated to get after it, I don't know what to tell you, man. Share the love with Joe himself, @RealJoeDeSena on Instagram and Twitter. Check out his podcast, Spartan Up, crack his book of the same name, and dive deeper into his world by perusing the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Finally, a reminder that we video all of our podcasts, which you can watch on youtube.com/richroll. And we recently launched a second channel just for short clips. It would mean a ton if you would subscribe to both. Links in the show notes. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the program, the single most impactful thing you can do is subscribe.

• 1:40:06Rich Roll?

  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. I love it when you share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition was created by Blake Curtis. Graphics by Jessica Miranda. Portraits by Ali Rogers. Sponsor relationships are managed by DK David Kahn. And theme music by my boys Tyler Trapper and Harry. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for the love. See you back here next week. Until then, fire, aim, ready. Peace, plants, namaste.