Ep. 16 - Joe De Sena on Grit, Endurance, and Building Empires

Joe De Sena is the co-founder of The Death Race, Spartan Race (1M+ competitors), and more. Among other things, he has personally completed the famously grueling Iditarod dogsledding race...by FOOT. What about the Badwater Ultramarathon, Vermont 100, and Lake Placid Ironman? He did all of those in ONE WEEK. The man is a maniac, but he's also strategic and tactical. This episode covers his story, as well as his approaches to grit, endurance, and building empires.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Guten Tag, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Let's start off with a little munch munch, a little snack for your brain. And these are proverbs. So the first is from Japanese and it is, "Sarumon ki kara ochiru." All right, "sarumon," that means monkey also, "ki kara," tree from, "ochiru," falls. "Sarumon ki kara ochiru." That means, don't fall into hubris, don't get arrogant, because no matter how good you are, you might still fall out of the tree, even if you're a monkey. All right. The second is from German and we'll see if the Japanesey messes it up, because when I speak Japanese, it tends to actually lead me to mix up my Rs and my Ls.

• 0:43Tim Ferriss?

  And that's not being racist, don't hit the big red racist button, chill out. It's because they have, "da di du de do." They have this sound that doesn't differentiate between the "la" and the "ra." It's actually more of a combination of "r," "l," and "d." "Da di du de do." Right? Those are the syllables in their syllabary. So, moving to the German. This one means in English, I'll give that first, "During hardship, the devil eats flies." So the English equivalent might be, "Beggars can't be choosers," or "Desperate times call for desperate measures," which is very appropriate to this episode. And this one is, "In der Nacht frisst der Teufel fliegen." All right? "In der Nacht," which is during hardship, "frisst," eat, which is actually, it's "frissen"

• 1:26Tim Ferriss?

  instead of "essen," which is kind of interesting, but "frisst der Teufel," that's the devil, "fliegen," flies. All right? So during hardship, the devil eat flies. "The devil eat flies," he say. No, speak of the English. Okay, moving on. Sorry, I've had a lot of caffeine, I'm feeling frisky. This episode is featuring guest Joe Decena. Joe Decena is a maniac. He is a crazy man. He's also the CEO and co-founder of Spartan Race. But prior to that... Because Spartan Race, perhaps as you know, has been attempted, perhaps completed, by a million-plus people in dozen-plus countries around the world. It's a huge business, a massive success, a phenomenon. Prior to that, he did things like run the Iditarod, which is

• 2:09Tim Ferriss?

  the world's most famous dog sledding race, by foot. Why? Because perhaps he's a masochist, I don't know what drives someone to do such a thing. But we explore why he might do that. He's done things like the Vermont 100, the Badwater Ultra Marathon. He's completed many other races that would kill most mortal men, like the Lake Placid Ironman, and he did all three of those in one week, by the way. The predecessor to Spartan Race was called the Death Race, because in effect, it was designed to kill people. And in his spare time, prior to, I think, that epoch in his life, he was a derivatives and equities trader on Wall Street. But he came from very humble beginnings. And I find that Joe is very tactical.

• 2:53Tim Ferriss?

  He's very astute. He has very pragmatic philosophies of life that you can apply. And I found his stories fascinating. We really tried to dig deep, or I tried to dig deep. I hope you enjoy it. Two last things. Number one, for all the show notes, links, including to his book, which is a new book, Spartan Up, I encourage you to check it out. Go to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. All right, fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. You can find links to all sorts of episodes with other folks as well, and all the show notes. Last, please check out the Tim Ferriss Book Club. This podcast is something I love. It's a project of passion, but it needs to

• 3:35Tim Ferriss?

  be self-sustaining. Every month, I highlight a book that is underappreciated and is underexposed, really, that has had a huge impact on my life. So there are four or five of them up at the moment. If you go to fourhourworkweek.com/books, all right, I'll give you a second to write those down, fourhourworkweek.com/books, you can check these things out. They are my teachers. Hopefully, they can be your teachers. You can click through, and they'll take you to Amazon and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, without further ado, Joe DeSena, here he is. Thank you for listening.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:29Tim Ferriss?

  Joe, thank you for making the time to jump off the phone. I appreciate it.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 4:34Tim Ferriss?

  And quite the story that you have. Now, you were introduced to me by Josh, I believe it was, over at Summit Series. And of course, you seem to be in all places at once. And what would be great as a starting point is to just give a little bit of background on who you are for those people who may not be immediately familiar with you.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So just background on me and where I came from?

• 4:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  So I grew up in Queens, New York. If you've ever seen the movie Goodfellas, I literally grew up right in the center of that. We lived right near Kennedy Airport. And it was a crazy life. My dad was a super aggressive entrepreneur. You had to be back in those days. He had a greenhouse. He had a trucking business. He was in air freight. He had a disco. I mean, you name it, he had it. And around the mid 80s, started to have some real trouble just because he was overextended. And parents got divorced. Mom moved to Ithaca, New York to get us out of that insanity of, you know, it was basically just a big organized crime area where we were.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  It was probably organized crime capital of the world. And thank God she did. But I had my dad's DNA regarding work ethic. My mother completely made a left turn and got into health and wellness in a big way, traveling to India, becoming a yogi, vegan, into teaching meditation, and complete opposite of where we had come from, you know, the first 10, 12 years of my life. And really influenced my sister and I to focus on that stuff. Although, back then, it was not mainstream. It was not normal to be into that. Maybe if you were in California, but certainly not where we were from. So she was shunned and battling a pretty big tide of nonbelievers that were...

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Focus on, uh, certainly where my, you know, in Queens, focused on sausages and, and, and hot dogs and, uh, you know, and not, everything except, uh, what she was into. Mm-hmm. And so I had this, these two different lives. If I went to go visit my dad back in Queens, we were out all night at Chinese restaurants or Italian restaurants and getting to stay up late as kids. And if I went back with, with my mom, it was a very strict focus on health and wellness. Mm-hmm. And then he lost everything and I, it was like the best thing that ever happened to me because I, I, I had all those creature comforts and amenities being around a successful entrepreneur that, that, that all of a sudden vanished. Mm-hmm. She couldn't pay the mortgage, she couldn't, uh, pay the heat bills, we, we were losing the house up in Ithaca and

• 7:12Speaker 02

  it just, a switch went off that, uh, hey, if I want those things again, I gotta work. And so I, I started a, a business. The neighbor of my dad was unbeknownst to me at that time was the head of the banana organized crime family and he said, hey, you know, I know you're going through some trouble, why don't you clean my pool? And so I started cleaning his swimming pool and, and before you know it, I had every organized crime figures, uh, as a customer in, in, in the, uh, not in the tri-state area, but certainly, uh, Brooklyn, Queens, uh, Long Island, even Staten Island, and, uh, it became a, a pretty big business. Now, my mom was in Ithaca, so she was pushing to get away from that and get into education. And so I ended up, um, applying to Cornell, which, which I had no business going to. I wasn't, I wasn't smart enough. I didn't have, uh,

• 7:57Speaker 02

  good enough grades. I, I, I didn't do that well on SAT scores because I had this pool business that I wanted to build. And I applied and they denied my, my application and that only made me more interested in getting in. (laughing). I found out that, uh, you can go to, uh, many, uh, colleges extramur- murally, which means you could take up to three classes or nine credits and be non-matriculated. So you're not getting credit for it or anything until you get accepted somewhere. Right. Most kids were taking fifteen credits. So I figured, well, I'll do nine credits and I'll just prove myself and then they'll have to let me in. So I I did my nine credits. I I started my butt off and uh did really well and reapplied and and they didn't want to set a precedent and show that there's a back doorway into

• 8:41Speaker 02

  an Ivy League school. So they denied me again, which only made me more furious. And so I did it again. And um I was on my fourth try, four semesters in, they almost broke me. This is like Rudy. It's like the movie Rudy. It's just like the movie Rudy. And um and I had this pool business was growing and growing. And so now I'm I'm starting to make some really good money. It had turned into a construction company. And so for the summers, I was going down to New York. And I'm thinking at that point, four semesters in, they're not accepting me. There's no way to win here. I'm just gonna go to New York and run my business. And uh who needs college? And my mom says to me, you know, I know some people at Cornell. She hadn't said a word. I would

• 9:24Speaker 02

  have never expected her to have a connection. You know, the kind of people that had connections were the people back in New York, like my dad. Right. And turns out she's teaching um a woman yoga that is head of admissions at one of the schools at Cornell. She sets up a meeting and the woman sits down with me and says, all right, well, I'm in the school of human ecology. Cornell has many, many schools, many, many focuses. And and one of the schools within Cornell was was human ecology. And they had a textiles department, which which studied the business of textiles, clothing. And so she says to me, you know, I know your mother. She told me you've been trying your four semesters in here, haven't been accepted. I've got this department. It's like ninety

• 10:03Speaker 02

  women and one man. Would you be very interested in that? That would be perfect for me. Do you have any interest in clothing? I love clothing. And um and they accepted me. And so that that professor Anita Racine had changed my life. And she accepted me into this program. If I had to do it again, I would study again because I could watch any movie, anywhere, and tell you when that movie takes place based on women's hemlines. I'm an expert in clothing now. And so, uh, so it was awesome. It was a awesome experience. I broke out of, um, multi-generation of, of people not going to school, uh, got into an Ivy League school, and, um, it literally, uh, changed my life.

• 10:47Tim Ferriss?

  That's, uh, I, I did not know the college story at all. Now, you, you've done so many different things. You ended up on Wall Street at one point. Am I right? Did that happen right after school?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:57Tim Ferriss?

  Or how did that come?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  What happened was I was, I was so excited that I got into, uh, Cornell, that I found out, and again, I was kind of figuring this out on the fly. I really didn't have, uh, parents that were guiding me on, on this because they had no experience with college.

• 11:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  And so, um, I found out that there was an MBA program at Cornell that you could do in one year. So you could finish undergrad and grad in a five-year program. So I figured, let's just press my bets and go for it. And I took, um, a class to, uh, get familiar with the MBA program, an entrepreneurship class, and I won, I won the entrepreneurship award. So during that class, I met, uh, a bunch of judges who were very successful people that had graduated Cornell, gone on their own. And, and one of those judges took a real liking to me. I didn't make the MBA program. They didn't accept me. And I went back to Queens to run that swimming pool and construction business, which was doing very, very well at that point because I was able to apply all the things I was learning at Cornell to my business. So,

• 11:56Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  So, uh, so I go back and I'm running the business and that, that judge stays in touch with me and he calls me literally first of the month, every month and says, "When are you gonna get out of the pool business? You gotta go to New York City." And I was in Queens. And I said, "I'm doing really well. I met this great girl. You know, I'm twenty-two years old. I don't need to go to Manhattan." And, uh, he, every month, he drove me crazy. And, and one day, he says, um, "All right, if you're not gonna listen to me..." And now, now I'm probably two years out of Cornell, and he sees that he's losing the battle. And he says, "If you're not gonna listen to me, I want you to buy this stock." And I had never bought a stock before. And, um, he tells me, "Buy this stock, Syntex", which was a, a drug company. Now, this is an older guy that, that's been trading and managing money for years. And he'd been watching this stock for twenty-five years. And he

• 12:42Speaker 02

  says, "I want you to buy this stock. It's fourteen dollars a share. It's, it's a drug company." Um, and he's an old-time Cape reader. And I'm thinking, "I don't wanna, I've been working so hard. I'm not gonna invest in a stock." I mean, I remember the eighty-seven crash. I'm not, this guy's crazy. And I go to one of my customers' house that day that owed me quite a bit of money for finishing a big construction job. He owed me um, one hundred and forty thousand dollars, give or take. And um, he's towel drying his hair as I ring the bell to pick up my check. And I said, hey, you know, you're, he was a pharmacist. And I said, listen, um, what do you mind telling me to buy this stock? It's in your industry, uh, it's called Synthex. And he, I have these towels around his hair, so I can't believe you're asking me. He goes, I was just in the shower and I'm thinking of buying some today. And so.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  You're like, first pay your damn bills and then we can talk about what you're buying, but yes. So he sits me down, this customer of mine, and he says, here's the deal. He goes, you're single, you're making quite a bit of money now, you know, running this business. If you're ever gonna take chances in life, now's the time to do it, cause you don't have a family. And he convinces me, he calls his broker, cause I don't have a broker, I don't know how to do this. And, and he convinces me to take the entire check, the hundred and forty thousand dollars, and buy this stock, right? And I go from not wanting to invest, and everybody's crazy, to within an hour later, I'm investing the entire check in this stock. And um, the next day, the company gets taken over. And it was no funny business, it was just, these were old timers. Yeah. That I guess read the tape well. And I made a hundred thousand dollars and I said, I'm going to Wall Street.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  This is like, this is crazy. So um, so I spend the next two years trying to get a job on Wall Street, because really, I'm a pool and construction guy from Queens. I, I have a textile degree. I have no business getting a job on Wall Street. I'm already making at that point, you know, really good money. And so any job I'm even lucky to get would maybe pay me thirty grand a year. And um, I'm so lucky that I was guided by, by this guy out of Cornell, because he guides me to the institutional side of the business. And I end up getting this job where they trained me in the whole industry. I, I worked in research, I worked in investment banking, I worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And literally, I spent two years just bouncing from department to department, learning the entire business.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  And as I was there, the company got sold to ING for six hundred million dollars. And so I thought to myself, again, because I'm, I, I lack intelligence sometimes, I said, you know what, I could start my own investment bank firm. I know everything about swimming pools, why don't I start an investment bank? So, um, so everybody told me at the firm, you're crazy. No, what institution is possibly going to do business with a pool guy? And so I started a little business and they were right. Nobody when we first started would do business with us. And then one day, just as we were about to go out of business, a guy from Cornell that has since become one of my great friends and, and life-changing inspirations in my life, he, he calls me up and asks me to purchase a bunch of, uh, equities and derivatives,

• 15:40Speaker 02

  which he pays me a nice commission on. And, uh, just like the head of the Manano Organized Crime Family that changed my life in the pool business, and just like Professor Anita, Anita Resina changed my life getting into Cornell, he changes my life with Disorder. And, um, and we ended up building this giant business right before we were, you know, just when it was darkest and we were going out of business. Cause I couldn't get anybody to deal with this brand new firm that had no business.

• 16:05Tim Ferriss?

  Like the phoenix from the ashes. That's, I, so I have a, a couple of really quick questions, just because the, the story, I mean, there's so much more to the story, obviously, but what did that judge see in you that led him to contact you on the first of the month? And continually ask you to get out of the pool business? What, what do you think the characteristics were, the conversations that you had? What are the things that led to him pursuing you like that?

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I, I'm sure you see the same things as you make investments or you're hiring people or partnering with people and that there's very few people at a percentage basis that have that fire in their belly. It's not necessarily specific knowledge, cause I certainly, I'm not that smart of a guy, but I have an enormous fire in my belly from the time my eyes open to the time I, I collapse on a bed every day to just get stuff done. It's not always the smartest way I attack things, but I'm just relentless. And I think that's rare.

• 17:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  I think it's rare and I, I, I think he saw that and it would have, cause I, I look for that and I'm sure you look for that. And I think he thought, wow, here, this would be a waste to have this guy stuck in Queens. Now, now you don't know it, me, I don't know it at the time that that would be a waste. I'm feeling like I'm killing it. And, uh, he sees much bigger opportunity for me. And, um, you know, my dad, my dad later thanked him because, uh, Again, all these people just changed my life, but I don't, I don't think it's by accident and by chance those things happened. I think, um, I think I just put myself out there like you probably do, or anybody that's had some luck in life. You kind of make your own luck. You don't say no to anything, right? You take every meeting, you listen to every phone

• 17:45Speaker 02

  call and, and stuff just happens for you.

• 17:47Tim Ferriss?

  The Entrepreneurship Award that you won, what did you do to win that award? Was it a project? Was it based on a track record with the pool business? What caught the attention of these judges who then gave you that award?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  So, um, it's funny, it wasn't, when I remember when asking the professor, Professor Ben Daniel, I'll never forget his name because it was, it was pretty big for a guy that couldn't even get accepted to the school to win the award. It was really the fire in my belly that they saw when I stood in front of the class and made my pitch. It wasn't the idea.

• 18:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, just out of curiosity, what was the idea? Do you remember?

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so back then, um, and probably still in existence today, Champion sweatshirts were the rage. They would take, um, silk lettering and put, you know, Cornell University on the Champion sweatshirt. And I believe back then they were selling them for about fifty dollars. And, and I thought to myself, it, it's kind of ridiculous that they're taking a Champion sweatshirt made in the US, shipping it to some old women to sew the letters on, they're selling them for fifty dollars. First of all, I think I can make a better sweatshirt. I think I could, I could import them because remember I was studying textiles at this point. And there were problems with the sweatshirt. They used to blow out around the waist and they used to blow out around the sleeves. And if I could incorporate some Lycra into the waist and the sleeves, sew the letters on myself, I could probably produce a better

• 19:06Speaker 02

  product for less money. So it wasn't like some earth shattering technology or anything. It was just a very basic business, but the pitch, I think, was, um, they saw that here was a guy that was relentless and inspired because there were better ideas. It's just, uh, that's what got them.

• 19:24Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. So, speaking of relentless, I want to come back to the investment world, obviously. And, uh, we'll get there, I'm sure, but just, what, what time is this? What year? Uh, when your, the company was, was saved by this particular order for derivatives and equities and whatnot? Where was that relative to the birth of the Death Race, which I'm sure we'll get to, but, uh, sort of how many years prior was?

• 19:48Speaker 02

  So Death Race, let's say, was 2004. Uh, the day I got that order, when we were on the brink of literally closing the doors. I would say was nineteen ninety eight.

• 20:00Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, got it. And so what was the path from the doors are reopened, Wall Street's looking a little more attractive. From there to to death race and obviously Spartan race, but how did how did you end up making that transition or that discovery?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what happened was the pool and construction business got me in incredible physical shape because I worked twenty hour days physically.

• 20:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  And when I went to Wall Street, that changed. I had weekends free. I didn't know how to do it myself. You sat on a desk all day. I'd never done that before. And I started to gain some weight and I just didn't feel as healthy as I had always felt. And so I was looking for some exercise or something and I stumbled upon a guy in the stairwell of my building that I lived in in Manhattan. Who was on a government health and just was the epitome of, I mean, this guy was ripped. And I met him in the stairwell and I would, you know, I just was inquiring and I wanted to work out and he said, jump in the stairs with me every day and we started doing stairs together. The first day I could do like, you know, five flights and then ten flights and he started to um

• 21:03Speaker 02

  get me motivated by telling me about these things called adventure races. And so he hooked me. He got me to go do a small three hour adventure race in Texas and I was hooked. You know, it was outside. I felt alive again. And I said, man, what's what's the next level? I gotta do something bigger. And he said, well, you know, you could do a twenty four hour race, but you gotta really have, like, sign me up. I gotta do it. And and whatever I did, I had to find the next level, whatever the, you know. Give me the craziest race in the world. And he said, well, you know, you could die. There's this one, you know, the Iditarod in Alaska. They do it in the middle of the winter and it's by foot and it's dirty below, but you gotta have a, sign me up. I gotta do it. And um, so the crazier it was.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  I had to get back to this place where you just want water, food and shelter.

• 21:50Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  And all the craziness of my life, this Wall Street life I had taken on would go away, would melt away. That stress all day long of um. I mean, you make them lose thirty, forty thousand dollars in minutes, uh, screwing up an order or having customers tell you that, uh, they're no longer gonna deal with you. It was very stressful.

• 22:09Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Business. So to get back to the core of life, just water, food and shelter was, was very liberating. And, um, and so I kept seeking that and, and it kinda, it connected with me because since I was very young, building that, that first business, I was having a tough time finding people with fire in their belly.

• 22:31Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  And, um, and here in these races, I was seeing people with fire in their belly, right? Anybody that was out there doing this crazy stuff had that thing. I was, I was seeking my whole life. And so when I got to Vermont, which, so fast forward, I, I sold that Wall Street business, met my wife at a race, got married, moved to Vermont to have a family and to remove myself from New York City because I was afraid if I was around the possibility of doing business while I was trying to grow a family, the business would always win.

• 23:03Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I'm addicted to business. So I had to, I had to literally put myself in a padded room. That room would be Vermont, mountains with a, you know, a four hundred person town and just dedicate some time to a fam- to growing a family.

• 23:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  And, and while I was there, that lasted like two days. And, um, I said, um, I wanna create a race that helps me find those people with fire in their belly. That like Russell Crowe and Gladiator or Mel Gibson and Braveheart or just these amazing people that just get it done under, when their backs against the wall. And what if I created with, with a buddy of mine, this race that purposely broke people? Uh, not the way, not the way the races I had done or Marathon does, but actually, actually where I would actually drive the participants crazy. Not tell them when it's starting, not tell them when it's ending, not giving them water, giving them buses during the middle of the race and saying, hey, you could quit here, just get in the bus.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  This is not for you. You're too weak. And, um, it worse than military. Like just really just break people. And that is, that was the beginning of, of, uh, my race business.

• 24:08Tim Ferriss?

  So that was, that was the death race, right?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  That was, that was the death race. That was two thousand four, five.

• 24:15Tim Ferriss?

  Literally called the death race.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Literally called the death race.

• 24:19Tim Ferriss?

  And that, that from just some of the reading I was doing, I mean, excavating tree stumps, heavy rocks. Sleep deprivation, were those some of the crazier elements or were there other aspects to it? Did you have any like real catastrophes or did you self-select for the most part the most successful or grittiest folks who tended to make it through to the end? Like what percentage of people who started the death race finished the death race?

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Well, we knew, I'll answer those in this order. So we knew in the beginning we had something. We had eight participants show up and immediately five quit. Like within the first three hours.

• 24:57Tim Ferriss?

  What broke the, I mean, was there any moment that was really like the straw that broke the camel's back that led these five to quit?

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Well, I don't, I don't think they knew what they were getting into because we'd never done it before. And one guy, I remember specifically, one guy started crying and he was like, I'm a really good runner. I just don't know how to chop wood. Broken. Because no one knew, you know, we didn't tell them what, what, um, and, and so, um, Doug Lewis, who's Olympic level skier, downhill skier, is about, you know, whatever, 15, 18 hours into this thing and he is cracking. I mean, he is broken. And he turns to me and says, uh, I made the Olympics, you know, like I, I trained my whole life. I'm a pretty tough guy. He goes, this is fucking crazy. Sorry for my language.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  I don't know what we're allowed to curse.

• 25:49Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no, you're, you're allowed to curse. It's totally fine.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  So, um, so at that moment, we knew, we knew we had a winner here. And, um, and Doug finishes. And so, yeah, and then, then it just took on a life of its own. Doug and two Vermont guys that eat like shredded steel for breakfast. These guys have been chopping wood their whole life. They were just hardy. The Ashley brothers, between Doug and those two guys, we knew we had something. And then they started training other people for the next year. And then the New York Times picks it up, all of a sudden lights out. My home phone starts ringing from every TV producer in the U.S., whether it was, you know, Discovery Channel, um, Nat Geo, uh, BBC.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  My wife's fielding calls for a reality TV show screaming at me, we're not doing a reality TV show. Well, let's just listen and see what people have to say. And, um, and then, and then ultimately, uh, the top guy in reality, uh, outside of Mark Burnett, this guy Craig Peligian from Pilgrim Films. Called and flew in on his private jet to Vermont and we met and shook hands and we sold the show to Discovery in six minutes. They bought thirteen shows. This was gonna be unbelievable. Started a casting call and that's when I started to learn everything about television because the new CEO came into Discovery, the CEO that bought the show from us got fired and he, the new guy comes in and says, "I'm not taking any of the old shows because I have no upside. You know, if it's bad, I'm gonna get yelled at and if

• 27:19Speaker 02

  it's good, I'm not gonna get any credit." Right. So, he drops it and then we spend the next whatever years trying to get a TV deal. In that timeframe, I started up something called Spartan Race and while we thought we had a TV deal and Spartan Race was an attempt to tone the death race down a bit and, and make it for the masses to, to maybe find that fire in people's belly and um, get people off the couch and, and get them healthy and um, maybe fifty thousand people would compete in a Spartan Race. I, I thought, you know, I'll invest, I'm not gonna invest more than fifty thousand dollars in this. I'm kinda retired in Vermont, having fun

• 28:00Speaker 02

  with the death race. And I begged everybody I knew to run it or invest in it and everybody said, "Who's gonna crawl under barbed wire and jump over a fire and it sounds ridiculous? Like, no one's gonna do that." And uh, that first race, you could see the look on people's faces, like there was something there. They, they, they went primal. And all the things I felt when I did those adventure races, they were feeling. And now there was a social network where they could share that feeling that coincided with this Spartan Race and it just exploded. And, and so now, you know, this year we'll, we'll have a million participants in Spartan. We'll be in a hundred and thirty-one events around the globe in seventeen countries.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  And uh, I went from trying to grow a family, being retired in a small town in Vermont, to uh, never being home and living on a computer.

• 28:52Tim Ferriss?

  The full circle hero's journey. So the the death race at its peak, how many participants were participating in the death race on an annual basis?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  So e- e- even today, even with, you know, the death race now has a lot of visibility thanks to Spartan Race.

• 29:07Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Even today, the most you'll get on an annual basis will be 400 participants in death race. Fifteen percent of them each year will finish. That's our goal. So in other words, if 400 people started today, the race is over in our mind when we get down to fifteen percent. So when 60 people are fanning, and if that takes two weeks, it takes two weeks. And that that creates an interesting element because it drives people crazy. Like, we try to pick all the things that are going to drive people crazy. From when I did races or my partner did races in death race, we know what almost broke us or did break us. And those are the elements we add to death race to drive people crazy.

• 29:45Tim Ferriss?

  So, so two things. If you could give just a couple of examples of some of the feats that you're well known for, endurance wise, I think that would be interesting to folks. I've of course read some of the stats, but I'd love to hear that. And then second part to that is, what are the things that drive you crazy when you're doing that kind of thing?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. So back to that stairwell with that men's health cover guy. When I started doing those races, I, again, I think what helped me, which has really helped me through life is a lack of knowledge. I think, I think sometimes people have so much knowledge in a particular area, study it so much that actually they talk themselves out of doing something. And because I didn't have any knowledge in this endurance area, I just signed up for things. And so I signed up for that, you know, the Iditarod, they call it the Idita Sport, where you do it by sport. And that was 350 miles, 30 blow temps, and you know, three feet of fresh snow every distance. It was terrible.

• 30:41Tim Ferriss?

  No dogs, just just feet?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I was the dog. I was the dog. There's a race called the Yucatac. Well, an easier way to explain it is if anybody knows the Eco Challenge, there were, Eco Challenge had a bunch of competitor races that all had different names, whether it was the Discovery World Championship, or the Raid, um, and they were all over the globe. And so I, I ran around the world for a bunch of years, just doing every race possible. I would, um, I would just leave my office on Wall Street and go disappear in the woods or the snow somewhere and, and just kill myself. I, there were such intense races that, that when the race was over, I would sleep twenty-four to thirty hours straight. Just literally collapse, and you wake up and you don't even know what day it is. And so, and you get addicted to it. Like, like it's such a, you get such a proud,

• 31:28Speaker 02

  exhilarating feeling from pushing yourself that hard that, uh, then you wanna do it again.

• 31:33Tim Ferriss?

  You did the Badwater Ultra along with two other races in the same week, didn't you? Is that, am I making that up?

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Well, that was, yeah, that was a mistake. What had happened was, um, I got into this thing where I was doing all these races, and so anybody would come out of the woodwork and say, "Hey Joe, let's do this," or "Hey Joe, let's do that." And I, my standard response was, "Yeah, let's do it," because that was an easy way for me to, to commit, just to, to, you know, I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna turn down a challenge. And so one friend had said, "Hey, let's do the, uh, the Badwater," and, "Yeah, whatever, let's do it." And so signed me up. Another guy said, "Hey, let's do the Lake Placid Ironman." I said, "Yeah, no problem, let's do it." And then somebody else said, "Hey, let's do Vermont One Hundred," and that was like six or eight months before these events.

• 32:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Well, about, just because of the way I am, I'm kind of a scatterbrain, about three or four weeks before these things, my assistant says, "Hey, you realize these are all in the same week?" And I said, "Um, no, I did not realize that." And so I said, "Oh, you know what? Let's try to do it, and maybe we'll get some press." And so I, I figured, "All right, I'll train hard for it," I didn't have much time, and, um, did a ton of Bikram yoga, a ton of running in the three, four weeks leading up to it. I mean, a lot. And again, I'm, I'm not a, uh, you're very, the stuff I read about you and your thoughts, you're very methodical in your training. I was, I was more of a throw everything against the wall. The more training there is, it has to be better.

• 32:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  And, um, and I put, I definitely pushed the limits and went and did the Vermont One Hundred. And then a few days after the finish, uh, made my way out to Badwater, which is the

• 33:01Tim Ferriss?

  Now, one hundred is one hundred kilometers, one hundred miles?

• 33:04Speaker 02

  A hundred miles. A hundred miles through the hills in Vermont. Finished in under twenty-four hours, which is your goal when you're running a hundred. Finished that, flew out to Vegas, drove however far the distances I remember, I forget to uh, the lowest elevation in the US is Badwater.

• 33:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Uh, ran to the top of Mount, well not to the top, but to the finish line of Mount Whitney, and then jumped on a private plane. My wife said the only way she was gonna let me do it was if I hit a wedding that week, so I had to get to a wedding, which was the worst part. You can't tell her of the whole damn week because my feet wouldn't fit in the shoes. She wanted to dance, and then from the wedding, made it to Lake Placid, and uh, did great in the swim in Lake Placid, did great in the bike. And when I got on the run, I thought, you know, I'm gonna kill it. I already ran 235 miles this week, and uh, and my legs just gave out about mile five. I was in so much pain, and I never drank, and I never take any aspirin or anything, and I'm in so much pain, I'm looking around for like an aspirin or an Advil. I'm asking spectators, and I, I got somebody to give

• 34:05Speaker 02

  me a few aspirin, and I ran a few more miles, and the pain wasn't going away, and I saw a couple of kids with backpacks full of beer.

• 34:10Tim Ferriss?

  (laughing)

• 34:12Speaker 02

  And I never drank, and so I was like, you know, can I have a few beers? And I, I literally got drunk, and uh, finished that, and they filmed it, uh, the Ironman folks filmed that. But that's how I got through the run, and I stopped at mile 20 for two burgers. I ate two, I was so hungry. And uh, so I was drunk and full when I came across the uh, finish line of the Ironman.

• 34:34Tim Ferriss?

  So just to put this in perspec- I mean, obviously that's insane on so many levels, but to put this in perspective for people listening, the Badwater Ultramarathon describes itself as the world's toughest footrace. I know a number of guys who have run this. It's 135 miles. It starts, like you said, below sea level, and then goes up to more than 8,000 feet of elevation, and it usually, I guess it takes place in July, um, but it, in, in the shade, very commonly 120 degrees. Um, so there, there-

• 35:07Speaker 02

  It was 100, it was 131 degrees. My shirt melted and my sneakers melted. It was terrible.

• 35:12Tim Ferriss?

  So there are people who will have, you know, support vans following them with basically coffins full of ice to revive them in case they collapse. So we don't have too much time, we'll probably have to do around two with this at some point, but let me ask a couple of sort of rapid fire questions and then I'd love to hear what you're up to and obviously tell people about the book. What do people consider you world-class at? And ideally, things that are coachable or learnable skills. I'd be curious to know what other people consider you world-class at.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  I'm definitely not a world-class athlete. I'm not fast, I was never a good athlete. I would say I'm just relentless. I just don't give up. I'm persistent as hell. When I get on something, it's like a pit bull. I just don't let up. And it's definitely a sickness because, you know, I'm so focused on that thing, it's like I have blinders on like a horse would in a race, I just don't see anything else. I just gotta get this done. And so if the race was like forever, I would do really well. If it just kept going until the last person was standing, I would do well. But if it's, you know, if it's speed or athleticism, I'm not your guy.

• 36:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right. When you're hiring people, how many employees do you have for Sparta?

• 36:31Speaker 02

  So we've got about forty, forty-five-ish in Boston and then about the same number overseas in a bunch of different countries. And then with every race we have, we bring in 500 volunteers, which kind of act like employees for the weekend. So it's not a giant operation on a daily basis, but every week we have almost two and a half events and so then a thousand people come in for those events.

• 36:55Tim Ferriss?

  For the full-time hires, what do you or your people look for? What are the criteria, at least for the first, like the early hires, the first, say, five to 10 people? What were you looking for in those people?

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Well, I don't, I mean, I'm definitely no expert in there. Again, they're much smarter MBAs on how to approach this in a methodical fashion, but for me, since, again, since I'm 10, 11 years old, it's really the passion, the fire in the belly that I'm looking for. It was always... And it's gonna sound terrible to Americans, but, but it was always the Eastern Europeans or like a third world country person, guy or girl, that just outworked anybody else, including myself.

• 37:34Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  And um, so I'm always looking, and that's what intrigued me so much, and that's really what the book is about, is um, how do I, first of all, why do they outdo us?

• 37:44Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  And how do you not lose that edge?

• 37:46Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  If you've got, if you're that kind of person. And then how do I find more of them? And then, is that more important than, than exact skillsets for the job? And, and I believe it is. I believe you can teach that really aggressive, fire in their belly, persistent person, the task at hand, as opposed to finding an expert in the area, and then trying to teach them passion and fire. I don't, I think it's hard to teach the other thing, which is that aggressiveness.

• 38:13Tim Ferriss?

  No, definitely. Do, do, have you found any other commonalities? For instance, I know that some companies like EMC, for instance, which is uh, mass data storage, often recruits former football players. Are there any other commonalities or uh, patterns that you've seen in the people who?

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, this is, it's funny you ask. This is a really interesting one for me, because I, I would have never guessed this. I don't think anybody listening would guess this, but um, downhill skiers.

• 38:39Tim Ferriss?

  Huh.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  I see a high correlation, and then, because I'm a skier, and because I have children that I take skiing now, I get it. And if you think about skiing, if you're a downhill skier, the moment you make the decision that day to go skiing, it's a fifty percent miserable experience, right? The boots don't fit, you forgot your poles, the, the goggles, it's snowing, it's sleeting. And, and if you're a racer, and, and that's, that's really what I meant to say, they're downhill ski racer.

• 39:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  You're a racer, and, and you've raced a, a large part of your life, you probably stood on top of the mountain for hours, freezing, waiting for your slot to go.

• 39:13Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  And that builds grit.

• 39:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  And so um, right? Because it's one thing, you and I, if we were hiking up the mountain, you take your jacket off, no matter how bad the weather is, you can deal with that, but standing still in the cold, getting pounded, takes a certain skillset.

• 39:28Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  In uncomfortable boots, right? In uncomfortable weather and gear, so that's what I found.

• 39:35Tim Ferriss?

  Excellent. Yeah, that's, that's very interesting you should say that because I've only recently gotten to know a couple of really highly competitive downhill skiers. And it makes perfect sense, you know, now that I know them a bit, that that does make perfect sense. Are there any books, for instance, besides your own, which I want people to check out, that you've returned to again and again, or suggested to other people that's had a large influence on your life or how you look at life?

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say, um, loved Atlas Shrugged. Read it often. I love Shogun.

• 40:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, great, great stuff.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Shogun is like, puts everything in a proper frame of reference for me. I mean, what that guy's going through. It's like, puts your day in perspective. And then, uh, funny enough, I love The One Minute Manager. That little book really helped me in business. And I'm not a giant reader, but those are big books for me.

• 40:26Tim Ferriss?

  And of all the things you could do, obviously financially you're doing very well. And it have done well at many different things, which has always been very interesting to me. Why write a book? I mean, Spartan Up, of course, chronicles your journey. And I mean, we didn't even get into half of the stuff that you do. Maybe we'll get a chance another time. I mean, including a lot of your investments, some of which have panned out extremely well since you started Spartan. But why write a book? And what do you, what do you hope that Spartan Up will, will achieve?

• 40:55Speaker 02

  So for me, I've been writing this book for, literally since I was able to drive that pool truck. And I would look over to my right and figure out who, who my employer partner was that day. And were they going to make it the whole day? Because we were working until 11 o'clock at night. And it just intrigued me. And it's going to sound silly, but like Rocky Balboa, right? Rocky was a big movie back then. And it really intrigued me that, that in the movie, and granted, this wasn't real life, that he was broken and, and fought to get ahead. And, and he wins the fight and all of a sudden he's got money and then he gets soft. And I'd look over to the right in that pool truck and I'd think, what makes this guy soft or hard? Why is it that when I finally found the Eastern Europeans, they were tough?

• 41:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  And I just, I re, just like the question you asked, like what correlations are you seeing? It's just, it's literally intrigued me for 30 years and I've been writing this book in my head. And, um, why at a young age did I, I want to take cold showers and like, anything I didn't want to do, force myself to do? How do I pass that on to my kids? And so I've been, I've been writing this thing for a long time and, um, And I, I, I mean, I retired in two thousand five. I was done. I was in Vermont. I'm building my family. Awesome wife, awesome kids. And then we do this Spartan thing. I've got people saying we changed their life and it got them off the couch and they're losing weight and their relationship is better and they're off drinking and they're not doing drugs anymore.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  And I'm thinking, I'm doing, we're doing something really good here. But even if I reach a million, if, if we reach a million people this year, there's still eight billion. There's a lot of people to reach.

• 42:31Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  So, and, and a lot of them are just not going to come do the race. They're not going to get mo- moving. And so if maybe the book is a way to reach a bunch of people and just get them to do something.

• 42:45Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Because, uh, life is such a waste. If, it's like, that guy at Cornell that got me to move to New York, he changed my life. That one, that professor changed my life. So if I could change just a few lives with the book, that people that wouldn't go to the race, I win.

• 43:01Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  I'm happy. Right?

• 43:03Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  What else you been doing in life? You can't just make money and, and, uh, worry about, you gotta do some good things while you're here. And life is fast. It's gonna be over soon. And so that was really, that was the impetus for this thing.

• 43:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, uh, I mean, I love your story and I think the, every time I, you know, I, we talk or I text you or anything else, you're always off doing something interesting. And I think that it's, like you said, it's not enough to just collect Monopoly chips and make money. Yes, money is useful. It makes a very helpful tool and a terrible master, but you, you should build things. You should make something interesting with your time that you have on this planet and really create something compelling that excites you. And I think that, that your story is really inspiring. And so I hope people check out the book. It's Spartan Up, A Take No Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life. Uh, we will have to have a part two to this, I think, at some

• 43:54Tim Ferriss?

  point, but where's the best place for people to learn more about what you're up to and perhaps Spartan itself?

• 44:00Speaker 02

  We have a, a website. It's, uh, SpartanUpTheBook.com or, uh, or just Spartan.com. I'll tell you about the races, but SpartanUpTheBook.com will, will get them to the book. And, uh, yeah, I'm excited. I'm, today, actually got launched today, the book. So, uh, Love to get feedback from people and see what they think.

• 44:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'd love to hear what people think as well. So I'll have them check it out. I'll put that in the show notes. And Joe, I'll let you get back to the life and times. And I know you're at another person's office at the moment. So I'll let you get back to all the various adventures and we will talk very soon. But thank you for taking the time.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. A huge honor being interviewed by you.

• 44:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my pleasure, obviously. A lot of respect for what you've done and I'm sure what you will continue to do. So to be continued. And until next time. Thanks very much.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 44:55Speaker 03

  If you want more of the Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to fourhourblog.com.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter at twitter.com/TFerriss.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Or on Facebook at facebook.com/TimFerriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.