Joe De Sena On True Resilience, Choosing Your Hard & Why Discomfort Is Oxygen

We all have big dreams. But are you willing to pay the price required to make them manifest? There’s a big difference between those who quit and those who commit. At the core of that difference is one’s ability to tolerate discomfort. Discomfort is the price we pay for resilience. And resilience is the foundation of growth. Few grasp and practice this truth better than Spartan Race founder and CEO Joe De Sena, returning to the podcast to usher us into the new year correct and jumpstart our new year’s ambitions into action. Joe last graced the studio in December of 2020 (RRP #567), a conversation that probed his absolutely fascinating backstory and left us with powerful insights on the limits we impose on personal possibility. Continuing in the spirited annual tradition we have here to launch the new year with an uncomfortable kick in the pants, I thought it fit (literally) to invite Joe back for a more focused elaboration on the truths, mindset tools and motivation to translate ambition into positive results. For those new to Joe, he’s the entrepreneurial mastermind behind Spartan—the obstacle course racing series that became a global phenomenon, and the evil genius behind Death Race—perhaps the most absurd sufferfest ever conceived. He’s also an absolute endurance freak. Example A: in a mere week, Joe completed the Vermont 100 mile run, Ironman Lake Placid, and the Badwater 135. In addition, he crushed 50 ultramarathons and 14 Ironman events in a single year (a certain kind of insanity that must be some kind of record). And he’s the kind of guy who, on a whim, once ran from New York City to Vermont. Joe’s most striking talent is his facility for motivating the best out of people—a skill committed to print in his new book, 10 Rules For Resilience, which is a guide to developing mental toughness. Today we deconstruct resilience in all its forms—why it’s crucial to growth and how to cultivate it. We also go deep on discipline, courage, and discomfort. The importance of personal values in adhering to your goals. How to navigate failure. And why your reaction to challenging situations defines you. And finally, we explore the importance of imbuing these principles into our parenting. Joe is a force of nature—a bullshit-free and 100% authentic lunatic. But his heart is huge. His experience-based message is powerful. And paired with practical tools fundamental to shattering stagnation. To read more click here. You can also watch it all go down 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 2022 headfirst. Or, as Joe is fond of saying, 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?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually gonna make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then, it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  I believe that the number-one motivator for a human being is the avoidance of discomfort. You wake up in the morning with the greatest intentions to exercise or work on that book you're writing, and before you know it, you're instead making coffee and reading the news and checking Instagram. That's your brain avoiding the uncomfortable work. You've gotta recognize the resistance you're gonna face consciously and subconsciously, and then you gotta commit to just bite-size action. And it's gotta be consistent. If it's bite-size, and you broadcast to everybody that this is who you are, and this is your new plan, and you say it over and over and over, you have a chance.

• 1:56Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast and welcome to 2022. To usher in the new year correct, today I'm joined by my buddy Joe DeSena, the founder and CEO of Spartan Race. We're turning to the show for a bit of a boot in the rear to shake the cobwebs loose and jumpstart those resolutions. Joe last graced the studio a little over a year ago in December of 2020. That episode, RRP 567, which went deep into his absolutely fascinating backstory, was a hit, so check it out if you missed it. And so, in the spirited annual tradition that we have here,

• 2:41Rich Roll?

  to launch the new year with the mindset tools and motivation to embrace your new year ambitions properly, I thought it fit, literally, to have him drop by for a more focused discourse on just that. A few more items to add before we dig in, but first.

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  Okay, so Joe DeSena, so the thing about Joe is, above everything else, this is a guy who really walks his talk. In addition to founding Spartan, Joe is also an incredibly tough ultra endurance athlete in his own right, with a litany of impressive accomplishments to his name. He's a New York Times bestselling author. And relevant to today's conversation, just a rare talent when it comes to motivating the best out of people. He's got a new book out. It's called 10 Rules for Resilience, which is essentially a guide for not just you, but also your young ones, for your family, to develop what he calls true resilience. What is true resilience?

• 3:46Rich Roll?

  Well, we talk about that. We also talk about how and why cultivating resilience, as well as its siblings, things like discipline and courage, can and should be built into parenting. We discussed the importance of personal values in adhering to your goals, how to navigate failure, and many other topics. Joe is a character, that's for sure. He's a force of nature, maybe even a bit of a lunatic, but I love him and I hope you guys dig this one. So let's welcome 2022 with Mr. Joe DeSena.

• 4:23Rich Roll?

  Well, good to see you, man. I think it's been a little over a year since I saw you last. Lots has happened. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, on the way in the pandemic, right? And the way out.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  I come through LA. Thanks for having me. I love your new space.

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I appreciate that. And you've been all over the place. You were just in Abu Dhabi, right? For the world championships?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I don't know if I told you this, but, and I don't remember exactly when I was here last, but I never stopped traveling, even with all the bans and everything that we were told not to go anywhere. I went everywhere. And I don't know if people listening will say, oh, that guy's so irresponsible. But like, it was awesome because, and I'm so pissed that I didn't film it, because airports were completely empty like our beginning. I was in Rome at the Colosseum. I was the only person, the only person there. It was unbelievable traveling around the world. And I just capped it off with a trip to Abu Dhabi. We're right in the middle of what they call the empty quarter, which is this massive desert,

• 5:24Speaker 01

  the kind that you would envision if you and I were in Lawrence of Arabia, right? That old movie. Camels, falcons, like in the middle of nowhere. And we, we put on a race. It was unbelievable. I was out in the desert. I took my shoes off because I couldn't walk in my shoes. And it was like, I had to pinch myself. I can't believe I'm out in the middle of desert. Like, remember in the cartoons where you'd say, gee, I wonder if I could make it without water? Is that an oasis? Is my mind tricking me? And is that really water? It was like that.

• 5:54Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  It was unbelievable.

• 5:56Rich Roll?

  And symbolically, just, you know, the message is Spartan is back. I mean, it's been rough for you guys, having all your races canceled, 500 employees, having to weather all of that.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  You couldn't make it up. I mean, we were on top of the world. We bought out our competitor right before the pandemic. Finally, after 15 years of hell, profitable, had some cash in the bank, and then this hit, and had a shutdown of 45 countries, had a furlough of 400 people, and I'm still feeling the pain. I'm reeling from the pain still today. There's nothing. The government's done a lot for us, but they can't do enough.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm just looking at it thinking, how did you even keep it together without going bankrupt?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  It's pretty hard. It's been, I almost broke down and started crying here for a second.

• 6:47Rich Roll?

  But it's like, all, everything, you know, I mean, we're here, the occasion for the podcast is this new book that you wrote, 10 Rules for Resilience. Like, your lifetime of building up this reservoir of resilience and, you know, all of these tools that are lifted from your many experiences and adventures are now being tested at the ultimate level.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I was pressure tested, for sure. The team was pressure tested. We lost some good people, just because I'm sure people are like, are these guys gonna make it or not make it? And I've probably been, there's probably been five moments in the last 18 months where it was like touch and go. It was like, a couple more days, we're gonna have to just pull the ripcord. And then miraculously, there's a PPP loan, or there's another government loan, or, you're gonna love this, I became friends, he's gonna kill me for telling you, I became friends with the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue. And the reason I became friends with him is we randomly met through a third party, as you meet most friends, and we were

• 7:47Speaker 01

  in Colorado skiing, and he goes, I wake up really, I go, I wake up really early, right? I'm sure you wake up really early. I work out. What do you do? Whatever. He gets business done.

• 7:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, like your gaydar for the other guy that, like, lives your lifestyle.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I go, um, I go, you know, I got this rusty chain, this 83 pound chain that I usually drag around in the mornings, which I brought with me to Colorado. I go, um, I'll swing by your house early in the morning. I'll drag the chain over. It looks like on the map, you're, it looks like you're only a half mile away. Turns out he was five miles away, right? I dragged this frigging chain because I wanted to be on time. I'm hustling and we became good buddies. Well, believe it or not, Saks 50th Avenue has done incredibly well through the pandemic. Lots of people that have been getting government checks, which should not be shopping at Saks, have been using those checks to go buy things they shouldn't be. And then he spun off the dot com. There's a lot of good things happening to him.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  And one day, my wife's like, have you read the FedEx on the, on the kitchen table? And this is when it was really touch and go with our business. And I'm like, no, I'm like, oh, great. Now the IRS is suing us or who knows what I'm dealing with now. And I opened it up and I'm like, oh, a customer sent me a $10 check or something to say, you know, we support you. It was a million dollar check from him.

• 9:06Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And it was like, and it was a little handwritten note. And he said, hey, I just had a really good week. I just want you to know, I love what you're doing. Use it, don't use it, stick it in a drawer for rain a day. I hope I didn't embarrass you. And so I've had a bunch of friends and the government and the customers and vendors. This will blow you away because you were a lawyer. Wilkie Farr, right? Big, am I saying it correctly?

• 9:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Big law firm.

• 9:30Rich Roll?

  Wilkie Farr and Gallagher. I don't know what it's called now. Maybe it's just Wilkie Farr.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Giant law firm. They helped us get the Tough Mudder deal done. And it was a big, we have a bill with them. And I called them like all the other vendors and they were like, pay us whatever you want, whenever you want. We're behind you.

• 9:48Rich Roll?

  That's very un-law firm like.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  How often does that happen? It's like, this is unbelievable.

• 9:54Rich Roll?

  Well, it has to be a testament to the goodwill that you've sown over many years. You know, it's like if you're someone of character who's conducting themselves in a certain kind of aspirational way, and you've treated people well throughout the course of your life, like karmically, it's not surprising, you know, me knowing the kind of person that you are, but also very affirming of the goodness of humanity, that people would do that.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  It makes you feel good. And look, I can't say I've done everything perfectly in my life. You can't, right? We've made lots of mistakes, but I do the best I can. And again, when we talk about the book and kids, like, I guess you gotta be humble, right? You gotta have, come with your hands down, not with your hands out, right? Don't always be asking. And the universe somehow has kept us from failing. And now races are coming back, just in time for the Omnicron.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, we're in another wave. So we'll see what happens. It feels like everything is very tentative right now, across the board. So much to get into with you. But before we go any further, there's this exercise bike here that, like, a couple of weeks ago, there was an email, I can't remember if it was from somebody on your team, like, oh, Joe wants to send you this bike. Look out for an email. And then there was another email, like, we're gonna install the bike on this day. And a bunch of guys came in and installed this stationary bike machine here. And I was like, I don't know what this is about. Is this Joe's bike? Does he want to, does he want to ride it during the podcast? Like, there was no, like, background on what's happening here. But there is a bike over here. Like, you care to explain?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Well, first off, I make a lot of mistakes. And the big mistakes I make is, I'm really quick with email. And I'll just send an email, and there's no context, and you can't figure out what's going on. I apologize for that. But what happened was, again, it ties into this book. This guy I got to know, Gordon Kaplan, was tied up in that whole varsity blues scandal. He was a big lawyer.

• 11:48Rich Roll?

  College tuition thing.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Yep. He was a big lawyer, chairman of a law firm, attempted to get his daughter into a school, got caught, and lost his license, and got kicked out of his law firm, and basically hit the depths of despair. Being from the neighborhood I'm from, where I know lots of people that went to jail and got out and survived, I befriended him, and I said, I could help you out. I'll introduce you to some guys. They'll let you know what you're in for. And he came out and he was very appreciative that, you know, when a lot of people wanted to distance themselves from him, I was actually saying, no, wait, I'm your friend. Like, don't worry, whatever you need. Wasn't like he killed somebody. He made a mistake, like many parents make. You could easily see, by the way, how it's a slippery slope.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Like, I want to help my kid out. I want to get them to a good college.

• 12:36Rich Roll?

  Before you know it.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Right?

• 12:40Rich Roll?

  You're, you know, making up stories about him or her being on the sailing team and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Rich Roll?

  Test scores.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  So he comes out.

• 12:49Rich Roll?

  That whole thing was unbelievable.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Unbelievable. And let's get into that. But he comes out and he got involved with this bike company called Carroll. And I said, look, Gordon, I'm not into, like, I'm the last guy to send a bike to that's supposed to get you in shape with 10 minutes a day. Like, if you told me it's a bike that you carry, it would make sense, right? You don't even ride it. You carry it up a mountain. And they sent it to me and I rode it. And for anybody listening, I'm, like, I don't want to sound like a commercial, because it's just a bike, but it's pretty cool. And it's a good way for me to warm up before I do my big workout. And if they were guiding you and I on how to advertise for it, I would not be the guy to say that, because their pitch is you can get in a great workout in

• 13:33Speaker 01

  10 minutes. My pitch on it would be that 10 minutes is my warm up and then I go do other stuff.

• 13:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  But they've been bugging me that, like, we want to get to Rich Roll or whatever. And I was like, I know him, but I'm busy. And I just kept putting it off. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to see Rich Roll. Why don't you send them a bike? And when I get there, I'll show it to them. But then I forgot about it. I did not expect to see it.

• 13:53Rich Roll?

  And then you walked in, it was here.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  It was here.

• 13:55Rich Roll?

  And I was like, please explain why there's a bike here. Yeah, because there wasn't a lot of, you know, kind of background or explanation, right? But I appreciate it. It's cool. I haven't given it a spin yet, but...

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Give it a spin, see if you like it. And if you don't, carry it around the neighborhood.

• 14:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, the whole subject of parents getting caught up in the greater welfare of their children and then sliding down a slippery slope of making some, you know, ethically dubious decisions that get them in trouble is sort of apropos to the themes of the book, The 10 Rules for Resilience, which is really all about, I mean... You've characterized it as a parenting book and I want to hear the backstory behind that. But it's sort of a Trojan horse in terms of being a parenting book because, as you know, you can't teach your children any of the principles that you articulate in the book if you're not living them yourself, right? So each chapter, you have these 10 principles and each chapter is really about like how

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  to cultivate this in your own way, followed by sections around, okay, here's how you now transition that into how you parent or imbue your family with, you know, these, these ideas.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the thinking is, kids watch you. You know, forget about listening, they're watching and you're modeling whether you know it or not. And so you have to live the life you expect them to live. My father worked really hard, my mother worked hard around health and wellness, and you're just picking it up through osmosis, right? And so, don't expect, if you're disappointed in your child and they're not honest, or whatever the things are, well, it's a reflection on-

• 15:33Rich Roll?

  Need to look in the mirror.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta look in the mirror, it's a reflection on you. The book came about because when we had children, my wife and I, we have four kids, we started skiing in Vermont, that was our first sport. And I remember my two little boys skiing with me and we sat down for lunch and I sought out the healthiest meal I could in a ski resort. And we sat down and we're gonna get right back out there, and the guy next to us put like two cookies on my tray and said, hey, give it to the kids. And I was like, can I curse here?

• 16:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Why the fuck are you putting two cookies? Like, you know how hard it is for me to keep cookies away from these kids?

• 16:12Rich Roll?

  Away from them.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  And you just did that? And then it happened in a bank where I was trying to teach them how to deposit $10 and how deposits work and how banks work. The teller was giving them lollipops and- And then, in challenging them to run around the neighborhood, or one day we were carrying kettlebells for a mile, people would stop. And I remember this one instance where a lady stopped, she screeched her car, and she said to the kids, not to me, directed right at the kids, "Are you okay? I saw you carrying these kettlebells, you know, these heavy weights for the last half a-- is he harming you? What are you talking about?"

• 16:49Rich Roll?

  She's gonna call child services.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what it came to. And then I thought, hang on a second, it's really not her fault. She hasn't seen a child on a sidewalk in like a decade, right? She certainly hasn't seen one carrying a kettlebell around the neighborhood, right? They might as well have been wild animals. So I started messing around with this idea, we need a book that like breaks some eggs, and is a little bold, and is gonna piss people off, but is a little more hardcore parenting, and it's not, you know, use all the terms we hear, like, we're not snowblowing, right? We're not helicopter parenting. We're like, we're flamethrower, like I'm putting obstacles in their way.

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Yeah, and you've really done that. And it's impossible to read the book without reflecting, you know, I have four kids too, and thinking, yeah, I didn't do that so well. You know? I think, on some level, we parent either to, you know, honor the traditions of our parents, and it seems like you've taken the best of how you were parented, and tried to, you know, imbue your parenting with that. Or we try to parent in opposition to the way we were parented, because we were traumatized, or we feel like, you know, we were led down some dark alleys, or whatever. And I just know in my own case, my parents were great, and they provided for me, and they weren't--

• 18:14Rich Roll?

  Overly rough, but there was high expectations set. And I strive very hard to meet those expectations, but I always felt like I couldn't quite get there. And I think consciously or unconsciously, when I had kids, I thought, I don't want to do that to them. And so I've probably been, on the spectrum of things, softer than my parents were, for better or worse. And my kids aren't athletes, they're all artists. And luckily, they've all pretty much found things that excite them. And so we challenge them in that regard, and push them, and hold them accountable. But they're all pursuing things that they enjoy. But I'm not the kettlebell guy, or the guy who's getting them up at 5:00 in the morning

• 18:56Rich Roll?

  and making them take cold showers and stuff like that.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  And I've seen what you just described. I remember the neighborhood I grew up in was all organized crime. And the next generation, I always scratched my head as a kid and said, why is the next generation softer when their dad does that for a living? And it was because the parents had tough upbringings, and they wanted to make it easier for the kid.

• 19:20Rich Roll?

  Sure. That's the dilemma of like every successful person who pulled themselves up and built a big life for themselves. And then they have kids. And suddenly, they're living in a huge house. Like Kevin Hart talks about this all the time. Like, my kids are, I can't get them to do anything, they're hopeless.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I got a little sense of that. And I always reflect back on the movie Rocky. I don't know if it was Rocky III, where he had the kids, and he had the money, and all of a sudden, he became complacent. And so that really stuck in my brain, especially with the backdrop of the neighborhood, kids being softer, a lot softer than the hardcore parents. And I said, and my wife went along with it, let's try to make the kids tougher, because life's tough. Like, when my kids complain to me, they, like all kids do, the other day, whatever, Charlie was saying something about like, oh, my arm hurts, or whatever, your arm hurts? I gotta make payroll this week. You know what I mean? Like, suck it up.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  And my wife will say, like, oh, you're too hard on them. Like, I just lost my best employee. You know what I mean? So... I don't know. I feel like we're raising adults. And wouldn't we want them to practice with us? On how hard that's going to be rather than when we're not around.

• 20:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  You know, and if I fail anywhere, as I listen to you. I push the workout stuff too much.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  They should be working in a hardware store a couple of days a week. They should be doing some other, you know, learning some other things, doing some artwork. Like you said, I'm constantly drilling the exercise. And to the point where I'm afraid someday they'll be like, oh, thank God, he's gone. We don't have to exercise.

• 21:04Rich Roll?

  We can finally, you know, take a break, right?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:07Rich Roll?

  But wait, how old are they now? They're like 16 and down?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, 16, 14, 12, eight.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my older two are a little bit older, but then we have 18 and 14. So, you know, in the zone.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  In the zone.

• 21:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they're seeing the benefits of the hard work. You know, they go out and do a physical fitness test at school and they perform really well. And hopefully they make that connection. Okay, that's because dad was driving us nuts.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  And you got to have a partner that goes along with it. If my wife didn't go along, it would be really a disaster.

• 21:39Rich Roll?

  Right. But she didn't think you writing this book was such a good idea.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  She did not want me to write the book. We actually, we actually fought over it because, um. You know, there's a history in America of folks writing parenting books and being completely wrong. Like, what the hell do we know? We're all just trying to figure it out.

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And then we have, we have, I'm friendly with a psychologist. Who was willing to put her name on the cover as well. And that gave me enough credibility that my wife said, all right. You know, if there's a psychologist involved, then maybe.

• 22:10Rich Roll?

  You go fishing for the one.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 22:13Rich Roll?

  Who would approve of your methods.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's what I did.

• 22:16Rich Roll?

  The dark arts.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  We called 983 psychologists. And then finally, Dr. L answered the phone and was like, all right, well, I need some extra money. I'll do it.

• 22:24Rich Roll?

  Uh huh, there you go. Well, we have a bit of an annual tradition here on the show where we try to kick people off into the new year with our heads straight. We've had a bunch of Navy SEALs, et cetera, that serve that purpose. And I just thought like you, you're sort of the perfect person to do this. This year, you know, this moment when we find ourselves plotting our goals and our ambitions for what's to come, you know, pledging that this year is going to be different, that you're not going to give up this time. But at the same time, I think it's important to kind of recognize or reconcile with the fact that like this year is kind of different because we're coming out of two years of this pandemic and we've all had our ebbs and flows and setbacks professionally and personally.

• 23:06Rich Roll?

  We've had those battles with, you know, our mindset and our habits and our discipline and our schedules and our, you know, ability to kind of, you know, deal with the Zoom culture that we're in right now. But I sense that a lot of people have kind of played that out. Like they're like, okay, I did the Netflix thing and I, you know, walked around my house in my pajamas for seven days straight without taking a shower. I know what that reaps and I'm not happy and I'm depressed. And, you know, with that, I think some people feel stuck, but also fed up enough. And the symbolic nature of like January 1st is kind of like, okay, how am I going to move forward? How am I going to shift this? I don't want to continue to live this way.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  A proverbial New Year's resolution.

• 23:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Right?

• 23:51Rich Roll?

  Which is, you know, problematic in many ways, but also, you know, at least it creates a conversation around the idea of personal change. And I think, you know, we're both big believers in the fact that people can transform and we see it all the time. And our work shares that sensibility of trying to help people understand that we all have it within ourselves to change those things that we don't like about ourselves.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, just because you've been one way for half your life doesn't mean you have to be that way for the rest of your life. Just because you have a thought in your mind doesn't mean it's true. Right? And so you need to start changing that narrative. I am obviously a big, I mean, this is all I preach.

• 24:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Is, is it doesn't matter if it's January 1st or July 2nd, or it doesn't matter, just start. So here's what I believe. I believe that the number one motivator for a human being is the avoidance of discomfort. And it's not just me. I've done a lot of podcasts too. I talk to some smart people like yourself. And we will avoid discomfort at all costs. It kept us from freezing for thousands of years on the planet or falling off cliffs. And we don't even know we're doing it. You wake up in the morning with the greatest intentions to exercise or work on that book you're writing. And before you know it, you're instead making coffee and reading the news and checking Instagram. That's your brain avoiding the uncomfortable work. And so the quicker you could recognize that that, it's me. I didn't get my 300 burpees done this morning.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  I got 180. I've somehow found 22 phone calls to make that I could have lived without because I just didn't want to get the 300 done, right? And so you've got to recognize that that's what's driving you consciously and subconsciously. And then you've got to commit to just bite-sized action. And it's got to be consistent. A lot of people, "I'm gonna go in the gym. I'm gonna do all these things." And then, you know, life does get in the way and you don't get that three-hour workout or whatever that thing is you're committed to. And then all of a sudden you fall off completely and you don't do it. But if you commit to, "I'm just gonna walk a mile a day." Or, "I'm just gonna take stairs instead," whatever the thing is. "I'm just gonna have a salad with every meal." Still gonna eat cake. I'm still gonna eat meat, whatever. But I'm gonna have a salad.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Like, if it's bite-sized and you broadcast to everybody that this is who you are and this is your new plan and you say it over and over and over, and you recognize the resistance you're gonna face consciously and subconsciously, you have a chance. And then the last thing I would add is you've got to have a date on the calendar. You've got to have something pending that's coming up, right? That's a little scary. It's a little scary, but you've got to have a date on the calendar. We have a wedding business in Vermont, my wife and I. And we've been doing it for 22 years. And I get to meet the couples a year before they get married. And they're one size in shape when they show up to book the place and they're a different size in shape when they show up to get married.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  And so they have a date on the calendar, right? And I started toying with them, "Oh, wait a minute. When I have these races on my own personal calendar, I wake up earlier. I go to bed earlier. I don't eat as many cookies." So, very few of us do it without a date on the calendar.

• 27:05Rich Roll?

  Right. So, it's this tension between the date on the calendar, which is the big scary thing, and the daily bite-sized things that are very digestible. And I think people lose enthusiasm around the bite-sized thing because it's not sexy. But that truly is the way that you move everything, right? It's just adherence to that small thing that you can do every single day. And when you do it, even after a few times, you become much more emotionally engaged and connected to that thing. Because there's something ephemeral, but also powerful about momentum that doesn't make sense. But, once you've created a little bit of momentum, a lot of that resistance starts to fade.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, momentum, the fact that it's a ritual, that you get to break a streak, that you get, you know, "Hey, 60 days in a row, I've walked..." And I have lots of people telling me they've done it. And so, yeah, you just have to start. You just have to start. And consistency is more important than, I would say, quality, really, or quantity. It's just consistency.

• 28:09Rich Roll?

  Why do you think most people, the vast majority of people, fall off their New Year's resolutions?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think they bite off more than they can chew. "I'm gonna go to the gym every single day and work out for an hour and a half," or "I'm gonna..." Whatever the thing is, it's just too big, right? And it's too big of a change from where they were. Look, I've talked to lots of Olympians, as I'm sure you have, and lots of successful businessmen. And there's one thing in common that I find, and it's something I employ, which is, "I don't feel like doing this," right? "I know I said I walk... I just don't feel like doing it. I don't feel like doing my 300 burpees." I'll tell you what, Joe. We're just gonna do 10 today. We can live with 10. And then you do 10, you're like, "I got 20 done," right? "20, I can get 30 done. I'm embarrassed I don't get 40 done." And cyclists that have five hours to ride every single day tell me they're just gonna

• 29:00Speaker 01

  do 30 minutes because they don't feel like doing an hour. I was with two world champion rowers in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago. Same thing. They gotta go out there seven hours a day. "All right, today we're just doing an hour."

• 29:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  An hour turns into two and turns it, right?

• 29:13Rich Roll?

  That first bit is always the hardest part.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Just get going.

• 29:17Rich Roll?

  Getting out the door.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  So don't bite off too much. Tell yourself, lie to yourself and say, "We're just gonna do a little bit today, because a little bit's better than nothing." And stop with the BS of, "I don't have the time." Are you kidding me? Just track how much time you spend doing nothing. We all do so much nothing, right?

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  Well, we also dilute ourselves around that, too. We think we don't have time and we think we're busy and we're productive throughout the day. But I've engaged in this exercise where if you get, like, carry a journal around with you and write down what you're doing every 15 minutes, it will blow your mind.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  It blows your mind. How much time you just waste doing things that don't move the needle, right?

• 30:02Rich Roll?

  It's not a time thing, it's a priority thing.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  It's a priority thing. So, um, exercise has to be first and foremost, because if you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else, right? Uh, what's the point of doing all this work and trying to accumulate all this money or do it if you're not healthy? So it's gotta be first and foremost. First thing in the morning, no matter what's going on, I have to do my workout. I'm sure you're the same way. I have to do something.

• 30:27Rich Roll?

  I also think there's a problem with our instant gratification culture, right? So, yeah, you're enthusiastic about your goal, but when you're, you're not seeing immediate results or the results that you want in a dramatic fashion in a pretty short period of time, people lose enthusiasm for it.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  You mean, 100 pounds overweight, I don't have a six-pack in two weeks?

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, that thing. And I think we overestimate what we can accomplish in short periods of time. And we're not wired to think more long-term about these things. But I think one thing that you've done very well is you need all of those things to create that level of engagement, but at some point... You develop the habit and the practice to be doing them just because this is who I am and this is what I do. It's not necessarily tied to a date on the calendar. It just becomes your value set and who you are.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Well, there's no doubt about it that you have to put on a board, put on a bunch of Post-its around the house. If they still even sell Post-its, I don't know. And what are your values? What are the things you stand for? What do you want to stand for? And then make sure that your actions every day align with that. Two days ago, I was in Florida. I went into, and Lake Nona is attempting to be this health and wellness, I have to get you down there, this health and wellness capital of the country.

• 31:50Rich Roll?

  What part of Florida?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Orlando, funny enough, right by the airport. Seventeen thousand acres that they got Deepak Chopra there. They brought in a bunch of companies all around health and wellness. So I'm down there and they want to test me in their performance center. And I'm not like, it's three in the afternoon. I just had lunch. I already did a two-hour workout in the morning. I don't feel like doing this thing. And it's the first time ever that I've like pushed back and I could see everybody's face like, this is Joe, the Spartan guy. He doesn't want, it's like, fuck it, all right, I'm doing it. And I did it because, because of exactly what you said, like, that's who I am. I'm supposed to do the hard things when I don't want to.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  I ask the whole world to do the hard things when they don't want to. So I got on the bike and I did the 40-minute test. They checked, you know, lactate threshold or whatever, and I felt better. There's no, the only bad workout is the one you don't do. I've never not felt better at the end of it. Never. I've never not felt better at the end of a cold shower. It sucks getting in, but getting out, you feel alive.

• 32:58Rich Roll?

  You do that every day still?

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Every day. And it sucks.

• 33:02Rich Roll?

  It doesn't get easier.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  It never gets better.

• 33:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Sucks.

• 33:05Rich Roll?

  Do you do the ice baths and all of that, the plunging?

• 33:08Speaker 01

  When there's a place for me to plunge into, yeah.

• 33:11Rich Roll?

  One of the things that you talk about in the book is this different, I mean, it's all about resilience. So we should define resilience, but you define resilience in contrast to this idea of like true resilience. So maybe define resilience and why true resilience is something a little bit different.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, a lot of people talk about, and I've evolved actually since I've written the book with this concept, which a lot of people just think it's just that ability to, you know, stand there and take the beating, right? And be able to bounce back. But I also think it's the ability to pivot, right? And move because we could get so stuck in our ways. I've had many failures in my life because of that. Like you're just so obstinate that I'm not, I'm not gonna move, that you've got to be open-minded enough to make a left or make a right or do something slightly different because whatever you were doing is not working. However, it's really important that you keep in mind your

• 34:06Speaker 01

  mind will play tricks on you. You know this as good as anybody else. I've had, call it 10,000 conversations with individuals doing our races, one-on-one, and they pivot, quit at times when they didn't need to because their mind was playing a trick on them. And I like to say, if you and I were climbing Mount Everest, let's say, and my value system was to be the greatest climber that ever lived, and this was my window, and you and I were 100 feet from the summit, this was my window to set the world record, you, your value system was to be the greatest family man that ever lived, have the greatest podcast

• 34:46Speaker 01

  ever, and we're both about to go and the weather gets bad, I probably should go for it, no matter how I'm feeling because I got a different value system. You probably should turn around and go down. You want to be the best, right? So you gotta have enough resilience. You gotta be able to really reflect and dive into what's going on in your head and say, am I quitting because it's just hard?

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Or am I quitting because it aligns or pivoting because it aligns with my value system? So it's being open-minded and true to yourself enough to be able to answer that question correctly.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's a really important point to make because in the context of fitness, you have fitness fanatics who set a goal and they become very narrowly focused on that. But maybe they have kids or their value set is broader than just performance in that one specific realm, but they kind of push all their chips into that for a short period of time. And resilience in that context means being flexible or less rigid when, hey, listen, you've got to go to the recital today. You're not going to be able to do that workout that's in your training program and not losing your mind over that. I see a lot of that. So we think of resilience as like you've got to be tough and you've got to be able

• 36:06Rich Roll?

  to go out when it's pouring rain and freezing, but it works the other way same time because most people are not professional athletes.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  No, you used the better word than I did, which was be less rigid. I see it a lot in business, right? I want to hire a lot of people at the company that really believe in the brand. But there are some that really believe in the brand that don't really want to work. And that's a tough one to understand because if they're crawling on the barbed wire and they're running every day and they clearly want to work, but that's fun in some ways. You know what I mean? The hard work is going to the recital maybe or sitting down and doing the emails. And so you do have to be non-rigid enough to be able to do it all.

• 36:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Right?

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  How do you think about rest and recovery and kind of periodizing all of this, given that the fact that we all live like busy lives and we have multiple things competing for our attention? I think on the surface level, you could strike somebody as being the guy who's like the hustle porn guy. You never stop. You just keep going until your body just completely breaks and you've got nothing left to give.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, again, my ideas around this, my intelligence around this have evolved.

• 37:31Rich Roll?

  From the guy who like did 50 ultras in a year and almost like blew up his marriage.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, um, my wife is amazing that she's still with me, but my statement to that, had you asked that question five years ago, is I'll rest when I die.

• 37:45Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Right? My exit strategy is death.

• 37:48Rich Roll?

  Right. And what are you, are you like, what are you like 52 now?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  52, yeah. And I'm, um, I'm tired.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  But I've, I've lived three lives in one, you know? My assistant thinks I'm a lunatic, right? Cause if I'm coming to LA to see Rich Roll, we could squeeze three other meetings in, right? And then I could get on a red eye and go home. And so, rest has never been a priority. I sleep when I can, not when I have to. So if I'm on a plane, pass out, wherever I am, I'm just falling asleep to catch up and then just get recharged. People refer to me as the guy like on a phone battery that always is really close to running out of juice, but never, but never quite dies.

• 38:32Rich Roll?

  He's just at like 8% all the time.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  And then I had a Navy SEAL who's a sleep expert on, on the podcast recently. And he's, he was the same way and the Navy SEALs were the same way. And he tried to talk to the folks that are in charge of the Navy SEALs and they all laughed at him. He's like, you know, I think we should, we should have them sleep a little more. They should take naps. And they laughed him out of the room.

• 38:52Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Which you would get. I would have laughed him out of the room, right? You need eight hours. I think, here's what I came to the conclusion. Ready for this? Your, your audience is gonna love this. You and I should go on this mantra. We, and this is from my buddy Nick Morris, two days ago. We need to set our alarm clocks for when to go to bed, not to wake up.

• 39:13Rich Roll?

  That's a super interesting idea.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  We have it backwards.

• 39:17Rich Roll?

  If you set your alarm for that time to go to bed, you should never, you need to set the alarm to wake up.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, I think, our problem. In the last week, since I was on with the Navy SEAL, I've been in bed by no later than 9:00 PM. On my own, I was up at 4:00 and change this morning, like, no problem. You know, so if it starts to bleed into 10:00, 10:30, 11:00 for some people, who knows what time for others. It's too late.

• 39:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and the thing, you know, for the younger people listening, when you get older, I'm waking up at 4:00, 4:30, no matter what. So I better go to bed at 9:00 because I can't sleep in, no matter what. So it's super important to me to be in bed at 9:00.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  So we should, we should start this narrative that everybody's got it wrong. You gotta set your alarm clock at night.

• 40:06Rich Roll?

  I like that.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  To go to bed, and, and I don't know if you believe this, but I believe this, there's really nothing good that happens after 10:00 PM anyway. Like, what, what are you possibly doing after 10:00 PM?

• 40:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Now they have the, you could meet a girl or a guy online. You don't even need to, like, go to a bar or any of that.

• 40:23Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Well put. So let's get into these principles for resilience. You have 10 of them, right? And the first one is, you can't until you can't, I mean, they're all like,

• 40:35Speaker 01

  It's obvious, it's obvious.

• 40:36Rich Roll?

  I read this book, and I'm like, yeah, I mean, I live this, and I understand all of these things. You know, clearly, many people don't and need it, so it's a service that you're doing this. But they're all pretty self-evident.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, listen, we talked about it before. My kids say it, I'm sure your kids said it when they were growing up, "I can't do that." And I just say, "You can't yet." Right? We all can't do something yet. Isn't it amazing, I'm sure you've studied this, where there's a world record broken in running or cycling or whatever, and then all of a sudden, there's 13 more people around the world that break the same record that couldn't be broken for 15 years. So it's really our minds that limit us, and the sooner we could teach children, "They can't yet," the better children we're gonna have. So we shouldn't be limiting ourselves on what's possible. We should not put limits on the, anything is possible.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  My, my oldest son will say, "Well, does that mean I could fly, Dad?" Well, I mean, the Wright brothers figured it out.

• 41:40Rich Roll?

  Get on that problem. Maybe, you know, just because no one's done it yet.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:45Rich Roll?

  Who knows? The idea of living your values is one of them as well, and you touched on that a minute ago. I think it's an important exercise to be, you know, journaling or connecting with what your values are on a regular basis because our values are shifting depending upon what's happening. But I think a lot of people, just we're not in a culture that is really encouraging us to think about that, right? So I think there's a lot of people who are like, I don't know what my values are. Like, I want to provide for my family and like, you know, I don't know, watch football on the weekend. Like, it doesn't go much further than that. So how does one who's never really wrestled with this even begin to unpack what that might mean for them?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  You know, I just had somebody that read the book. I didn't know he had bought the book for his family, his young children. He said, "I really love this idea of values." My family and I sat down and we made a list and we were shocked at our oldest son, who was like nine, and what his values were. And so it's really as simple and as hard as sitting down with a piece of paper, giving it out to your wife or your husband and the kids, and just taking a stab at it. Like, what are the things that are important to you? What are the things that you value? Do you and the family want to be incredibly healthy? Do you want to be known as the hardest working family on the block? What are the things that are going to move the needle? If this was a thousand years ago and you had a family crest,

• 43:11Speaker 01

  what would the saying be on that crest, you know? And so for us, for me, one of the big things is like, I don't care win or lose, guys, but we got to be known as the hardest working family on the planet. Like, I can't have this business out there where I'm telling people, like, we don't quit.

• 43:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but what if your kids have a completely different set of values? And they're like, "That's good for you, but that ain't what the life I'm living."

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Well, I don't care who you are, you should be a hard worker, right? I remember my son...

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Was skiing. We were in the ski program at Killington because they grew up on a farm in Vermont. And I go in, it's nice. The parents get to go in and have lunch with their children. So they go ski all morning with the ski instructors, come in, have lunch, and then they go out again for the second half of the day. And the lady says to me, "Oh, your son, he's already in." I said, "But it's only 11:30. I thought it was..." "Oh, well, he was cold. He came in early." And I was so furious, right? But I had to temper myself.

• 44:08Rich Roll?

  It's tough to be your kid, man.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  All right.

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  I have compassion for your kids.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And I go over.

• 44:13Rich Roll?

  If they want to come and like, live with me for a while.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna expand on that for a second. So, I'm like, "Jack, um..." And he's like, he knows, right? Something's coming. He's probably six years old at the time. I go, "What happened? I was really cold." I said, "Oh, you know what? This team might not be the right team for you. You're on my ski team now. Let's go, let's go, let's go outside. Let's put our skis on. We've got a half hour before lunch. Come on." And he puts his skis on, and I proceed to penguin walk up the mountain with him. And we're walking up. "What are we doing?" I said, "Oh, well, my ski team, we don't take chairlifts. You'll never be cold again." And we, I go up the whole mountain. And I, "Isn't this great? You never have to go on that ski team again? We work so hard."

• 45:01Speaker 01

  He never wanted to be on my team, my ski team, again, but, but...

• 45:04Rich Roll?

  He's gonna tell that story to his therapist.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  For sure. My wife says that all the time, but, but I, I want us to be hard workers. Obviously, the parents have an influence on what the family values are. I don't think you could take a six-year-old and expect, like, you know what I mean? You've got to guide that a little bit, right? They don't have a prefrontal cortex yet, so it's not like they're gonna spit out perfect values at that point.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  You gotta guide it a bit.

• 45:35Rich Roll?

  I think there's a practicality challenge here, too. It's one thing if you've been doing this all along since your kids were really little and they're like, "Okay, this is what we do and this is dad's deal." But you come in hot when your kids are like 14, 15, they ain't having it.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  That's a fair point. There's a book everybody should read called "The One Minute Manager." It was written by a guy named Ken Blanchard. And one of his concepts is when you manage people, which is like managing children, you have to set really tight expectations in the beginning, at the moment that person joins the organization. You can't let them run free and then clamp down the vise grip seven months later. Does not work, right? They're gonna lose their mind. Same with your point. You can't at 14 years old say, "All right, now here's what we're gonna do." You've gotta start laying the tracks early on. And I definitely laid tracks early on that we work hard as a family.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  We chopped wood. We hiked up the mountain. When Charlie was four years old, I might have told you this, when Charlie was four years old, he was not the most ideal before Christmas. So everybody got presents that year, but his presents I put on top of the mountain. And so in his little feety pajamas with snowshoes on him, we had to go.

• 46:57Rich Roll?

  God, are you kidding me?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  There was a note from Santa that said, "Look, Charlie, I'm sorry, but because you didn't give a thousand percent, I couldn't get the presents to the house. They're on top of the mountain."

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  Get out of here. Oh, my God.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  So this is not new. They know what they're getting into with us. My wife is definitely the softer side. Now, I will tell you, well, you know, we put on this death camp on the farm, right? And there were many kids at the death camp that would say to me, "Oh, my God, this is so hard." I said, "Can you imagine what it's like being my kid? When you guys leave and you get to go home, my kids, this is their home."

• 47:39Rich Roll?

  I wanna read their book when they're 28.

• 47:45Rich Roll?

  But uh.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  You gotta get values straight.

• 47:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, values are, you know, look, I completely a hundred, a thousand percent I'm on board with that. I mean, I think the tricky thing that I've experienced as a parent is the, the balance between like setting the hard boundary and what happens when, you know, that expectation isn't met. How hard do you come down on that kid? Because especially when they're in those teenage years, like the communication is so critical and I don't want to do anything that's going to shut that down. And if I come in really hot, I risk them just clamping down and then they're not telling me what's going on in their life anymore.

• 48:29Rich Roll?

  And keeping that communication open, I think is critical when they're trying to figure out how to navigate, you know, their social circles and drugs and alcohol and the temptations that teenagers face. Like I want them to feel like they can come and talk to me about that stuff. But if I'm too disciplinarian, then they're, then they're gonna, I'm not going to be the guy that they're gonna come to when they need to like clear that stuff.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Well, in our family, and I didn't go in with this plan, it just happened. So it's a good model to use. My wife is the pressure relief valve. So they'll go to my wife and they'll open up and talk to her about anything. There's no doubt about it that based on my communication in our family, they know that I'm hardcore and I have high expectations. I've tried really hard to explain that my expectations aren't, I don't care if you get A pluses. I really, they, by the way, they're all striving for A, like I, I didn't get As.

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  Right, they all like speak Mandarin and stuff?

• 49:28Speaker 01

  They all speak Mandarin, they do extra math, but, but it's not, I know some people are rolling their eyes that might be listening. It's like. Again, we don't take tests in Mandarin where my expectation, you've got to do this or that. No, you just gotta, it's kind of like you gotta exercise a little bit each day. You gotta speak another language with a teacher every day.

• 49:48Rich Roll?

  Well, the Mandarin thing started because your daughter came to you and said, I want to learn Mandarin, right?

• 49:54Speaker 01

  It was a little, it was a little bit of that. It was, um, we had a Kung Fu master living in the house, which was, which was, it was another story.

• 50:03Rich Roll?

  How old were they then?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  They were very young. Um, I saw the movie Kill Bill when they were young. And Uma Thurman had a Kung Fu master. And I turned to my wife and I said, wouldn't it be unbelievable if we had a Kung Fu master living on the farm? So I called a friend of a friend of a friend and I convinced a guy to come from China, who didn't speak any English. And, and we'd train them every day in Kung Fu. And then my daughter said, hey, I'd love to learn Mandarin. So then we, then it started.

• 50:33Rich Roll?

  Did you take the Kung Fu also?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  I didn't.

• 50:36Rich Roll?

  You didn't?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  I didn't. I'm, I'm a, I'm a wimp. I, um...

• 50:39Rich Roll?

  What did they learn from that?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Discipline, tremendous discipline. And it's really, the Kung Fu is, is kind of like almost gymnastics, if you will. So they had gymnastics class with a Mandarin speaking master for three or four years before we switched to traditional sports.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I, I think from all of this, if you could drill down on the message, it's really like get in the habit of doing hard things. Learn how to face your fears and walk through them. Don't be afraid when you fall down, like failing is part of this whole thing. Get used to it, acclimate to it. And, and just develop that skill set where you're used to facing obstacles and weathering through them because life is hard and you're gonna have to deal with that at some point. And so if you're doing your pushups, figuratively and literally, you're just in a better position to be able to roll with whatever life throws at you.

• 51:39Rich Roll?

  And basically zig, zig when everyone's zagging and try the hard things that no one else is, you know, wanting to tackle.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  So two responses to that. One, you're dead on. You just triggered a thought. So as the Kung-Fu master was teaching my kids in the barn every single day for four years, my cousin lives next door to the farm. And they have their first child. And so I said, well, I'm paying for this Kung-Fu master. Bring as many kids as possible. Right? It's good. It's good for me too, because my kids wouldn't be alone. She happened to walk in the barn one day and the kids were crying because like it's hard. And she extracted her son from the program, never to come back to the Kung-Fu master. Last night, I got a text from her.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  He's now a high school wrestler. He wrestled up a weight. He pinned his kid. They're like, so it's hard. It's hard to put the kids in those situations that are tough. But now, now she's recognizing the value of doing, you know, any chance I get, I've taken him into our program. And now she recognizes that her husband was more like you. Her husband had a really tough upbringing. I don't want, the kids should make their own decisions. I don't want to disrupt the possible two-way communication between us. If they don't want to do Kung-Fu, let's not have them do the, if they don't want to do wrestling.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  That doesn't really develop the muscle, to your point, the muscle they're gonna need to fight through life. When 45 countries get shut down, you furlough 400 people, you're about to go bankrupt five times in a row during COVID. Like, thank God I had that muscle. Yeah. Right? Pay now, love it later. There's a better one. I picked up a hitchhiker one day. He said to me, save the fun for later.

• 53:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  That's a great line. My wife and everybody, my kids, they want to have fun. I say, save the fun for later.

• 53:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's one of the principles in the book, right? Basically, you know, fun comes after the work. Do the work first, then you get the fun. And I think maybe that piece is getting missed here. You're all about the fun. You're not like, you know, you're not the great Santini, I guess is what I'm saying.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  I'm not the great Santini, and I, you know, if you watch the movie 300, and it's not unique to me, this is 2,500 years ago, they're joking in the face of adversity. And if you go to any Spartan race around the world, the racers are dying out there, but they're joking and they're having fun with it in the middle of the desert. You know what I mean? So, you can have, I have fun with it. I have fun with it.

• 54:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, that's another thing that I think gets missed. This idea that hard things means that you're gonna have to be this martyr and you're just gonna be punishing yourself. But we experience joy in doing hard things. That's what we're wired to do. But our society is set up to give us a completely different message that obviously we're realizing is moving away from that joyous state that we seek, that we can feel and express, even though it's hard, we all know what it's like in the aftermath of doing something hard and that feeling of satisfaction and the conviviality that you have with the people that you've done it. And that's what we're missing. I mean, that's what Spartan really, you know, does. It serves people in such a meaningful way for that.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Here's a question for you, anybody listening. You think your children, at the end of their life, would say, "Man, I wish my dad had let me sit on the couch more, eat more cotton candy, and watch more Netflix." There's no fucking way. What the kid's gonna be talking about, the grandparent at that point, is those amazing stories where, you know, my daughter didn't have boots and we hiked the mountain and got stuck in a snowstorm.

• 55:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you tell that story in the book. I'm like, that seems a little extreme.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  That wasn't planned, but it happened. So, like those, but those are the stories, right? That you tell, you probably tell about yourself, those amazing stories where you fought through.

• 55:55Rich Roll?

  Sure, for myself, but I can't say that I've like, you know, kind of recruited my kids into that world. Like, they're not interested in what I'm doing. And I've struggled to get them, you know, interested in some aspect of the things that like get me out of bed in the morning, but... It's tough, man.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  You probably started too late, to your point.

• 56:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  And you were probably overly sensitive because of the way you grew up.

• 56:21Rich Roll?

  And my kids are great and they're all doing really well. It's just they don't share this interest in this kind of stuff that I do. And I don't need them to. And it's sort of wired that way. Like, your kids become your teachers because you think like, oh, I'm gonna, they're gonna be little mini me's and they're gonna wanna do all this shit. It doesn't work that way.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 56:39Rich Roll?

  And it shouldn't work that way.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  And the jury's out, right? Like, if you still have me once a year on your podcast, in 10 years, we might find out that my kids are all artists and they, right?

• 56:49Rich Roll?

  Right. Or you just, you come over to my house for Christmas and you're the Christmas gift for the kids and you live with me. See what happens.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 56:58Rich Roll?

  I can't get them to your Vermont farm, but I can bring you to my house.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  I could do that. I could come over. No problem.

• 57:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about failure a little bit more and we touched on it. We're so afraid of failing. We're afraid of looking bad amongst our peers and it prevents us from trying these hard things. Like, we're so caught up in our, you know, self-image that it hamstrings us from just getting out there and letting go of all of that stuff and understanding that developing a healthy relationship for failure is really the only true path to success in anything.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's just part of the process. You gotta fail. My son, during COVID, I pushed my two boys really hard, like, beyond what we're talking about here in wrestling, because we had the time. Like, crazy training, trying to catch up, because of all those years doing Kung Fu, we got behind on wrestling. And my son didn't do well at a tournament and he was like a little depressed about it. And I said, "Well, you only have to lose like another 700 matches before you get good." Like, that's just part of the deal. And, and once you recognize that, like...

• 58:10Speaker 01

  You know, think about Edison with the light bulb. What a famous saying, right? No, I didn't learn how to make a light bulb once. I learned how not to make it 900 times.

• 58:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  And so that's why I go back to what I said earlier, which is if we could instill a value of hard work, like it's a given we're gonna fail. You and I have to agree with that, right? That's just the reality of life. It's a given that we're gonna face hard times, that stuff's gonna be challenging. So if those are givens, then we have to accept that failure is part of the process. Welcome it. Talk about it to other people. Don't be embarrassed by it. And use it as fuel. Use it as stepping stones to success. I've probably failed, God, I've probably failed, you know, 40 times in building this business. 40 times.

• 59:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Check this stat out. I didn't know, you know, I told you, I have this TV show we're working on. I didn't know 95% of businesses fail in the first 15 years of existence. 95%.

• 59:14Rich Roll?

  Is that right?

• 59:15Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 59:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  The longer you play the game, the more likely you die. So, right, like you better get used to failure.

• 59:23Rich Roll?

  But getting used to it is an interesting discussion. Your co-author, Dr. L., I think she's the one who talks about this in the book. It's really about the story that we tell ourselves about what that failure means. And that story often depends upon or is dictated by, you know, kind of your blueprint or your past experiences or your kind of presets, like are you an optimistic person? Are you a pessimistic person? And people that are very defeatist about their failures are, you know, people who are caught up in that kind of negative self-image narrative. So to reframe your relationship with failure almost involves like some reprogramming around your neuroplasticity

• 1:00:08Rich Roll?

  so that you can frame it as just this is good. I failed because everybody who succeeds fails. So maybe I'm on my way to succeeding, right?

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  No, and that's what I tried to explain to Jack, my son, right? Like, so what? You have to fail so many times to succeed. So let's look at all the winners in life across any discipline. Doesn't matter, sports, business, relationships. Like, you gotta fail a lot in order to succeed. And once the world accepts that, I think we'll be a better place. It won't be a dirty word.

• 1:00:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  On the subject of wrestling, you have two kids that wrestle or one?

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Two, two boys.

• 1:00:52Rich Roll?

  Two that wrestle? One of the rules in your book is earned not given. So if I could be so bold, I suspect that you're not a big fan of participation trophies, right?

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  No, not at all. And I don't think the kids are. I don't believe the kids are big fans of participation.

• 1:01:09Rich Roll?

  I wanted to throw this one at you for your reaction, because I think it's super interesting. Jordan Burrows, you know, the wrestler?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  I know Jordan very well.

• 1:01:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so I met him recently. I did a speaking engagement in Illinois and got to spend some time with him. Like, what a wonderful guy. Like, I'm just an amazing champion. But he posted on Instagram or Twitter recently, this counterargument. I mean, Jordan, he's a five-time world champion, Olympic gold medalist. And he tells this story about getting a participation trophy in like, one of his very first wrestling matches. And basically said that even though he was like, last place or whatever, it gave him a level of enthusiasm that like, kept him in it. So it's rare that you see somebody who's so accomplished that would offer a counter perspective on that.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  I had a very similar, the same counter perspective from Rod Dixon, Olympian out of Australia, who said something that I didn't expect, which is what you heard from Jordan, which was, "Look, at a certain age, Joe, we gotta keep the kids in the game." And then beyond that age, the kids know it, and they know they shouldn't be earning the trophy at that point. And I would say for wrestling... Oh my god, it is a tough sport. I mean, you get beat up all day in practice, you practice to death and then you go and lose. That's just the deal, for a long time.

• 1:02:34Rich Roll?

  Anything that could just make them feel like, oh, cool.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, alright, I'm in the game.

• 1:02:40Rich Roll?

  I needed that little nudge.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  And one of the things, um, look, it doesn't have to be a participation trophy. It could be not giving the kid that's new a matchup against the kid that's been wrestling for three years. Right, that's, that's what you're doing is you're actually decreasing the amount of kids that would want to wrestle, or whatever the thing is we're talking about.

• 1:03:01Rich Roll?

  You have to toggle or calibrate the level of pressure, right? And if it's too much, you're just gonna burn these kids out.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  You're gonna burn the kid out. Why would the kid ever come back if he goes in and wrestles? Like, I always joke with, um, with my kids when they're about to go into a tournament, like, "Oh man, I saw your competition, they just let them out of a cage outside, they were feeding them raw meat, beating them. I hope you guys do well today, good luck."

• 1:03:24Rich Roll?

  Oh my god. Similarly, I can't imagine that you're a fan of the four-day work week proposal that's going around. You made like a little video about this recently.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Oh my god, I got killed for that.

• 1:03:36Rich Roll?

  You're born out of time, my friend.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  I, um, here's the thing, I was in China, right? And, um, I'm talking as a collective here, not individually, but as a collective. We compete with the rest of the world, whether we like it or not. And you can't compete with a four-day work, like, there's just no way. I'm in China, and I'm in this office that has a thousand employees. And the guy, the owner of the company's walking me around, and I see a bunch of folks sleeping at their desk. And I'm like, "What's up with them? You let them sleep?" I'm shocked. And he goes, "No, those are the, they do 20-hour days, so every, at lunch, we let them nap for 15 minutes, right?" And then, and then I see tents in the corner, actual, like, North Face-type tents in the corner.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  What, "Oh, those are the folks that work three days in a row, we let them sleep a little bit in their tents." And so... I know, again, I know folks are rolling their eyes, they're saying, "Oh, Joe, you're like out of touch, baby boom or whatever." And, and all I'm saying is be careful what you wish for because if you're going up against, as a country, as a, as a city, whatever, you're going up against a group that's fighting for milk, you're not gonna win. I had a, a 13-year-old Chinese boy and his mom show up in my office last week. I was leaving the office and I see this boy outside. And I open the door, "Mr. DeSena?" "Yes?" "I'm one of the Spartans from China."

• 1:05:05Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  It's a true story. "I'm one of the Spartans from China, I came with my mom, he's got the book."

• 1:05:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  "I read the book, I've done 10 of the races in China, I wanted to come meet you, you've changed my life." There's not many American kids and their moms jumping on planes and going to Chi- like, you know, you can't compete.

• 1:05:24Rich Roll?

  He came to America.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Came to America.

• 1:05:26Rich Roll?

  Mainly to meet you.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, unbelievable.

• 1:05:28Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  So, so, I'm not, I'm not saying I'm, I'm just saying, like, that attitude, we are...

• 1:05:36Rich Roll?

  The hunger.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Look, you're gonna get pissed at me, we're fat, lazy, and sick. And, and, um, four-day work week, go to a two-day work week. Why four days?

• 1:05:48Rich Roll?

  The way I look at it, though, just because of the way I'm wired, if I was working in, you know, a regular job situation, I would look at that and say, "Well, that's just more time for me to work out."

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  No, of course, I, I like the workout time, um, but, but, as a collective, there's very few rich roles, right? Most people don't work out, most people can't get past January with the New Year's resolution.

• 1:06:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  So what are they gonna do? They're gonna sit on the couch more, they're gonna eat more chips, they're gonna watch more TV. That's what we're gonna do.

• 1:06:23Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  And if you don't believe me, look at the stock prices of Facebook, Netflix, go down the list. They're doing pretty well because that's all people consume.

• 1:06:33Rich Roll?

  What are we gonna do about this, Joe?

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  I think this is an easy solve. You and I go to the White House, doesn't matter who's in office. I thought about this a lot, I think about it every day. We put a couple of things in place. You ready? Number one, we have to do a mandatory draft. There's gotta be like an 18-month, just like Israel, military rite of passage. They don't actually have to see war. We don't have to send them to some battlefield. But they gotta go through hell. They gotta go through a boot camp for 18 months and we rewire them. We show them what they're capable of. Number two, we gotta give credit for people that take care of themselves with insurance providers. So if you take care of yourself, you get like really discounted insurance. Let's motivate people to get after it.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Number three, all you have to do is tax the hell out of junk food. Tax the hell out of it. Everybody that's out there that's a freedom seeker, I get, "Oh, Joe, this is ridiculous. Government can't be overreaching. Somehow it's okay to wear masks and get vaccinated, but it's not okay to take away Twinkies." No problem.

• 1:07:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, we have to untie the subsidies that artificially keep those products cheap.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Let's reverse it. Let's use the money from the Twinkie tax and give to carrot growers. So now carrots are less expensive.

• 1:07:51Rich Roll?

  It's definitely upside down.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  It's upside down.

• 1:07:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  And then the fourth thing is so obvious that I know you'd agree with is let's just shut the hot water off across the country. Everybody takes cold showers.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  So easy.

• 1:08:04Rich Roll?

  You need to start your own authoritarian regime and, you know, somewhere near China. Make that happen.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, North Korea.

• 1:08:12Rich Roll?

  Well, the kind of compulsory service thing, I mean, that's, you know, we live in a culture, in a society that's premised on individualism. And there's something beautiful about that. But I think in the pursuit of that, we lose this respect and appreciation for, you know, the common good. And what does it mean to be a member of the community? And I think some level of compulsory, you know, service would solve that because we don't have those rites of passage that we used to have. We have to artificially create them in the form of Spartan races because we lack that in our heritage as something that young people do in this transition between being children and adults.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  There is, in Israel, if you meet Israelis, there's a tremendous bond created because they all... Go through that. And I'm not saying Americans aren't bonded together, although we are attacking each other every chance we get, right, on social media and everything else. It would be amazing, and it's so simple to execute these things.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Anyway, I'm really furious about the whole thing.

• 1:09:20Rich Roll?

  Tell me about this TV show.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  So, a couple of years ago, right before the pandemic, I got a call from CNBC. I'm not supposed to talk about it, so don't tell anybody. And they love this message that you and I are bought into and said, could you apply it to business? So I said, yeah. So just like we talk about 10 Rules of Resilience for families, we do it for business. So I go in, I meet a business, I ascertain where they are, what the issues are, bring them back to the farm in Vermont, beat the shit out of them, hopefully to focus on those three issues, highlight them, and send them back and then check in with them in three months.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  So it's like a shark tank with a little bit of Survivor and a little bit of Spartan in it.

• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  So how, it hasn't come out yet, though, has it? You're shooting it right now?

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  It'll launch in February. Yeah, we're filming right now. It's been, outside of nearly going bankrupt five times with Spartan through the pandemic, it's been one of the hardest things to do. I filmed, we filmed now for like 55 days.

• 1:10:30Rich Roll?

  And they all come out to the farm?

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  And they all come out to the farm.

• 1:10:32Rich Roll?

  You make them run up the mountain, too?

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Well, so we design tasks specifically designed, you know, to highlight that particular issue that companies have. And every company has issues. So, so companies are nervous about exposing their dirty laundry, but like, I have issues, you have issues, like, we all have issues. And, and we tend to avoid dealing with those issues because of what we said earlier. We don't want to be uncomfortable.

• 1:10:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Right? So we keep doing the things that are comfortable and, and not paying attention to the things that aren't, and then you end up like Kodak.

• 1:11:05Rich Roll?

  Right, doubling down on, on your strengths and not paying attention to your weaknesses that ultimately become the undoing.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:11:12Rich Roll?

  Of the whole thing. What's it called?

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  It's called No Retreat. Because a company would normally go on a retreat and they go to spa, whatever. This is the furthest thing from a retreat.

• 1:11:25Rich Roll?

  I'm sure there's some good stories coming out of that.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 1:11:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  It's been, it's been very, very hard, very challenging, but, but incredible.

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  What happened with the, we talked about this last time, the documentary that you were doing with Cal Fussman?

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  So that came out.

• 1:11:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, it did?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, we put that out.

• 1:11:42Rich Roll?

  I didn't even see it.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, you're out. You're in, you're in there. I gotta, I'll send you a link.

• 1:11:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I want to see that. I'll link it up in the show notes.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so anybody that knows Cal, Cal was one of my tougher patients. He, amazing writer, right, from Esquire magazine, been, been around forever, knows everybody. Wanted to lose weight, but he and I were like the odd couple. I had him with me for about 18 months. And I would just torture him and try to get him away from ice cream and make him work out. And he would say, "Why, Joe, you need to relax more and smell the roses." And so it was that constant tension.

• 1:12:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  During, during the whole thing.

• 1:12:15Rich Roll?

  And he's sort of comic relief to.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Rich Roll?

  He does it with tongue in cheek.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  He does it tongue in cheek, but, but, and seems to be okay being in the middle.

• 1:12:25Rich Roll?

  The foil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you still having people come out to the farm to train and stuff like that?

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  People, people come out to the farm.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  I would say once a week, we get a call or an email. And then, let's say, there's 50 people a year that reach out. Of the 55 actually show up, there was a kid that showed up this summer on a used bicycle. He, he was at Babson, needed a change, bicycled from, from Boston to Vermont, 300 plus miles. Lived on the farm all summer.

• 1:13:01Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Ended up winning the death race.

• 1:13:03Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Completely transformed. He couldn't finish the kids' death race we did. We put him in the kids' death race, couldn't finish it, came back for the adult one. Licked his wounds and ended up winning it.

• 1:13:15Rich Roll?

  Wow. Is he the kid that's in the book? You tell the story about him where the, I think the like the mom wanted to pull him out or something like that?

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  That's a different kid, yeah. Well, we had a big problem with with parents with kids texting their parents and saying, "This guy Joe is nuts. This farm is a prison camp. You gotta get us out of here." And there were some parents that pulled the ripcord that came out and parachuted their children out and ultimately regret it because it wasn't that bad.

• 1:13:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but your perspective on that is not normal.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  No. Look, I could think of an instance, right? One night where we had the kids on the farm. And for those that don't know, because Rich and I just dove into it. It was many weeks. We had a one-week course, a two-week course. It was many weeks where I would invite friends and family. Rich's kids, let's say, would come. Billionaires' kids, inner-city kids, whoever I could convince to come to the farm. And mountain warfare school drill instructor wakes them up at 5:00 in the morning. It's just like you would envision boot camp. They're in cold water in the pond. They're getting screamed at. They're getting organized. They're learning, you know, some basic things that everybody should know.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  And then they're getting breakfast. They're hiking up and down the mountain most of the day. At some point, we give them an hour in the river where they get to play and frolic around in the river. And then back to hard work. And they go to bed at like 8:00 PM every night. Well, I would give them their phones back at night. And I didn't realize that they were texting their parents like, "This guy's nuts. You gotta get me out of here. Prison camp." And some parents that were friends of mine wouldn't engage with the kids. Like, it's hilarious to read this one set of parents that said, "Oh, it sounds like a Peloton class."

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  The kid is like, "F you. You don't even know how hard this is. You and dad would die if you were here." "Oh, but you'll get a six-pack." "Get me out of here." "Or do you want us to talk to Joe?" "Do not talk to Joe. You clearly don't know him. He's a crazy person. If he knows that I texted you..." Those texts would be taking place at a time at night where I might be giving them ice cream because they had a great job, they did a great job that night. So juxtapose, you know, I'm seeing a visual of them having a good time and they're texting like the sky is falling.

• 1:15:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  And so you gotta beware, right? Because kids know how to push buttons. And, and if we constantly rescue them from, I didn't sign them, they didn't join the Chinese military.

• 1:16:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Right? This is like, come on, I'm a normal person.

• 1:16:06Rich Roll?

  Kinda. One of the things that you do with these kids, or just any of these people that have come, you know, come through the farm, and I'm sure you do this out on the Spartan racecourses, is when they, when they reach that point of saying, I'm gonna quit, you're like, okay, just go 10 more meters, then you can quit, it's totally fine. And just get them to like, it's back to that like little digestible, you know, step that you can take to shake free of whatever that like mindset is that is telling you that you're done.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  I learned that from a woman named Lisa Smith, years, 25 years ago, 27 years ago. I, I was learning how to run, these long distance runs. And I said, I just wanna quit. She was running with me and she said, well, why don't we just run to that telephone pole? And then you run to the next telephone pole, and before you know it, you've run to 870 telephone poles and you got the job done. And so it is, it has to be bite sized chunks because it's just too big for the brain, especially a kid's brain. Yeah, you could quit, but not until later today. Later today, we have the quitting bus coming. Oh, it didn't come tonight. Tomorrow, you can quit. I'm sure the bus will be here.

• 1:17:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. With all the people that have come through the farm and all the, you know, people that you've touched through Spartan, what do you think, like when you, if you have to extrapolate from that like data set of human beings, you know, what are the themes or the kind of commonalities or sort of things that you see time and time again where people are, you know, like losing the plot or like failing to see what's right in front of them that could free them?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  I'm in Abu Dhabi.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Two weeks ago, and a guy comes up, very common. Guy comes up and he, Joe, oh my God, I read your book. I don't say anymore. Come with me. And I go get a camera because I've seen this play 10,000 times. We get a little camera rolling or a phone, somebody's holding a phone. And I said, all right, tell me the story. He said, I'm from Idaho and I never left. I'm a farmer, farmer's son, married my wife, high school sweetheart. And I look down as he's telling me and he's missing his leg. I didn't even notice. And so I said, what happened to your leg? He said, I got run over by a tractor. Married my, my high school sweetheart. We're both about 100 pounds overweight. Because of that, we kept trying.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  She couldn't have children, but her body wasn't working. Somebody gave us the book. Never left Idaho in my life. Read the book, started doing Spartan races. We both lost 100 pounds. We had three children. Right? He goes, um, my third child is three and a half years old. And he starts tearing up. He said, uh, she died. She fell in a pool, she drowned. He said, but I have no regrets. Of course, I miss her. I have no regrets. I did all these Spartan things. I hiked with her, I carried her, we rode bicycles together. And he's all teared up as he's telling the story. And he says, now I'm in Abu Dhabi. He goes, I never left Idaho. And so that's typically, you hear stuff like that.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Like the person developed the muscle we spoke about earlier. They faced something hard because we all face, doesn't matter. We're all gonna face something hard. They felt like they, they had a little more strength to get through it. There's usually a great health and wellness story. I gave up drinking, I gave up drugs. There's usually a love story. I'm back with my husband, I'm back with my wife. And I, I scratch my head sometimes and like, it's only an obstacle race. But, but it's not. It's, it's those obstacles, they emulate life's challenges. And, and they force people to do stuff and travel to places that they otherwise never would have. And it's, Rich, it's different than a triathlon and it's different than a marathon.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Because in a triathlon, in most cases, and you could disagree with me. We would get so caught up in that, that you start saving four ounces on your bike seat. And you buy that special wet suit that's gonna take a minute off your swim time. But that really was never what it was about. It was about pushing yourself past perceived limits. And, um, and that doesn't exist out there in Spartan. There's no bike seat. That's gonna, there's, you know what I mean? It's just like-

• 1:20:28Rich Roll?

  Just you and you.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Just you and you, and you gotta grind through and somehow get this done.

• 1:20:34Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  So-

• 1:20:36Rich Roll?

  So for the person who's, you know, listening to this, sitting on the couch, saying, "God damn it." Like, "I just can't live this way anymore. Like, I've gotta make this change." But I don't really know where to start. Like, how do you get people? Like, what's that first step to like, cattle prod them out of that mindset and that, you know, paralysis?

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  Well, first thing is, we, we all have to agree that our brains, our reptile brains, are gonna help, are gonna force us to avoid discomfort, anything uncomfortable. So we're gonna fight, face resistance every day. Number two, you gotta have a date on the calendar. And I'm not selling you a race ticket. You could email me, [email protected]. I'll give you the race ticket. I don't care. Like, you just gotta have a date on the calendar. It could be a 5K, it could be, could be learning a new language. You gotta have something hard. Where there's, there's that payday. And then you just gotta do it in bite-sized chunks. You gotta do it every single day. You gotta scream from the rooftops to your friends and family. Every year I put on the death race. Death race is the hardest race we have.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  And I've been doing it, call it 20 years. And every year, like, 300 people sign up. 90 grandmothers would die the night before the race somehow. You know, everybody's grandmother died. They couldn't, they couldn't show up. And, um, and then when they get there, of, of, of the remaining, you know, call it 210 people, 105 of them quit, you know, gear check, right? The first few hours. And I got so frustrated with it. I said, look, you're not allowed to do this race unless you get an article written in a local paper. If you get an article written in a local paper, I know you're serious. And then you're on the hook.

• 1:22:20Rich Roll?

  Right. Your whole town knows that you're doing it.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  The whole town knows you're doing it and you're gonna finish. It has to say, you're doing the death race and you're gonna finish. And now you're gonna be held accountable by all your friends and family. And all of a sudden, Rich, grandmother stopped dying. People started finishing the race. So you gotta, you gotta scream it from the rooftops. You gotta ask friends and family to hold you accountable. And, um, and you'll get it done. And I, how do I, I, 10 million people have done one of these events.

• 1:22:48Rich Roll?

  That many?

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  10 million people. It's, it's a fraction when you look at 7 billion people on earth. But, but, um, but it's a big enough sample set that it works.

• 1:22:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So death race, I mean, we talked about this last time, but correct me if I'm wrong. Do you change the course every time? And you don't tell people like when you're starting or, you know, they don't know what they're getting involved in? They don't know when it's gonna end or how far it is or any of that?

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  They don't know anything. And, and the reason is-

• 1:23:14Rich Roll?

  So it's a total mindfuck?

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Well, and the reason is, this is really important, is because, um, here I am. I launched my races again. We're out of the pandemic and Omnicom shows up.

• 1:23:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  Whatever the hell it's called, right? So, so you don't know in life like what's gonna, what's gonna happen.

• 1:23:36Rich Roll?

  Right. And so why would- Life is the death race.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Life is a death race. So, um, I purposely did that because people will train and they'll be like getting the four ounce lighter weight seat.

• 1:23:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  Or the better wet suit. They can't with death race.

• 1:23:52Rich Roll?

  It's a control thing. You want to be able to control all the variables and the whole purpose of death race is to say you can't control this.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  What does it feel like to be totally out of control?

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would see videos of how the whole group, the whole class that's coming in that year is training. And I would say, oh, great, we're not doing any of that then. Right?

• 1:24:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if you're training for the death race, don't show, don't share it on social media.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:24:16Rich Roll?

  That's a surefire way of making sure that you're training improperly.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:24:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:24:22Rich Roll?

  How many people sign up for that?

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  About 300.

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Rich Roll?

  What is your sense of like what COVID is doing to young people? Like it's been obviously very difficult for young people. They're, you know, having to navigate through those formative years, like these sorts of setbacks and challenges. And you can look at it from one perspective, which is how terrible and how awful. But on some level, the flip side of that is they're being sort of compelled to develop resilience around certain things that like we didn't have to when we were that age. And everything was just kind of like normal.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, a couple, a couple of thoughts I have on it. One is I tried like how for our family to just make it business as usual. Continue to, to, to study every day, you know, take off your pajamas in the morning, do all the stuff we used to do. We never stopped doing. Number two, I think, yeah, it was a challenge, but I mean, I, I don't know. I think, I think we, we as parents, we as adults need more than ever to get these kids moving and get them challenged and sign them up for some sport, something. Make them learn a new language, make them read more. Doesn't have to be this book. Make them read Rich's stuff, whatever.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  But I think the kids need to know that, um, yeah, school was closed and you had to do, you know, stuff on Zoom. But like, I don't know. I think it's our job as parents, as adults to show them. I always show my kids how much worse it could be. I got a buddy Marco, fastest runner in the country on prosthetics. He had both his legs chopped off, it's another story, it would take us 20 minutes, but he, whenever the kids are complaining about anything, let's get Marco on the phone. How's he doing with his two prosthetics?

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  You gotta do Zoom class?

• 1:26:13Rich Roll?

  That's a ninja move.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:26:16Rich Roll?

  I mean, I think sort of more broadly, this swath, this, you know, age group of young people, they're being told that the world is a scary place and when they go to certain places, like their health is at risk and like, what does that do to their like mentality over time when they're being impulsored or messaged with that constantly?

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Eat more salad. That's what I tell them, like, you know what I mean? Like, I try to show them that news is a business. Food companies are a business. Dad used to work on Wall Street. If we had, if Rich and I owned a food company or a news company and we had, when we were the most altruistic people on the planet, but we had to make our quarterly numbers, we'd figure out a way to sell more news. We'd figure out a way to sell more product at a cheaper price. So, any chance I get, I try to teach them, it's a business. I'm not a conspiracy guy, I'm just a reality guy. Right?

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  Take care of yourself.

• 1:27:12Rich Roll?

  I get it. What do you think is, like, what's your big struggle right now? Like, what is the thing that you're trying to like develop more resilience around?

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Personally?

• 1:27:22Rich Roll?

  Or that you're overcoming? I mean, is it just getting over the hump with the business of Spartan? Or, you know, what is the challenge that you want to take on for yourself this year?

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  My biggest challenge right now for the business, which is now, I've dropped a bomb on my family, is I can't get anybody to the office. You know? And...

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Everybody's moved to like, they wanna be on the coast in Maine, or they wanna live in Vermont, or they wanna live here and there. Everybody's reimagined their priorities, their values. And so, maybe I'm old fashioned, but I want everybody in an office. Not seven days a week, right? But like, we should be able to get in the office four days a week. We should be able to build a culture. We should be able to collaborate, work together, share ideas. We do put on 400-plus events when things are humming. It is a complicated business. "Oh, but Joe, I waste so much time driving. I could just do it on Zoom," or whatever. I get it, but then why are we pushing kids to get back in school? Why don't they just all do it from their computer? Like, there is value to being together.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  So, I'm opening an office in Florida. It's not for tax reasons. I'm hoping that I could get folks together in an office in a state where folks do still get together. And my family's moving to Florida.

• 1:28:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  And so, my wife is in Florida at this moment decorating an apartment. We broke the news to our kids two weeks ago. They're moving to Florida.

• 1:28:53Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  And so, it's gonna be a personal challenge and a business challenge. Now, the Boston office will stay. The 20 people that are coming to do it, you know, that will just be a smaller office.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  Any new hires will take place in Florida. And so, I'm gonna completely disrupt my life. I'm gonna make it really hard on myself for the business, and that's what we're gonna do.

• 1:29:16Rich Roll?

  You're not the first. I was just talking to some friends yesterday who are lifelong New Yorkers, and they're getting ready to move to Florida, too.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:24Rich Roll?

  A lot of people.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and by the way, I would never move to Florida.

• 1:29:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it doesn't seem like the place for you.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Not a place for me. I would never do it. But I was talking to a guy, you're gonna love this, and he's got 80,000 square feet in New York. And we were on the phone three months ago, and I was like, "Ryan, I'm losing my mind. I can't get anybody to come to the office." And he showed me around his office. There was no one there. 80,000 square feet. He said, "But my office..."

• 1:29:51Rich Roll?

  Midtown office or something?

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Downtown.

• 1:29:53Rich Roll?

  Downtown.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  But he goes, "My big office in Indianapolis is booming. Everybody shows up to work with their lunch pails. They've been getting the... They never skip work." And so, I flew to Indianapolis, 'cause I wanted to see this. It was like unbelievable. And so, I started to explore opening an office in Indianapolis.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  My friend from Saxby David said, "You're an idiot. Wherever you open this office, you have to move to to get it going. Are you gonna live in Indianapolis?" And so Florida became the better alternative.

• 1:30:24Rich Roll?

  Wow, man, that's a big shift.

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Rich Roll?

  Do you ever get the itch to race and dip your toe back into that? Or is that too dangerous?

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  I mean, I, no, it's not dangerous. I would love, I would love to race. Maybe it's an excuse when I say this, but like, once I started having kids and I have the business, and you and I talked about resilience before and the definition of that, how could I do all three? Because racing, I was pretty on. Like, I'll see you guys later, right? I gotta go to Switzerland.

• 1:30:57Rich Roll?

  That's what I meant, like, dangerous, like, because you'll check out.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  I'll check out. And, um, look, I got a little, I got a little fix of my addiction in Abu Dhabi. I got to run around the desert, right? I get little, little quick hits going to our races. I was in the Atacama Desert last, I get, I get, I get to go to cool,

• 1:31:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  cool spots and, um, and without the requirement to put in those, you know, crazy weeks of training away from everybody.

• 1:31:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Let's wrap this up with some parting thoughts on resilience, the importance of discipline, all of these skills, this toolbox that I think we all, you know, need a little bit more of in our lives if, as we're, you know, contemplating, manifesting finally the shit in our lives that we want to see happen.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  And correct me if I'm wrong, and I'll, we'll leave it with this, like, characters in books and in movies, or even if you're listening to a podcast, characters that have tremendous discipline and grit and like, you know, virtue and just stand in the way of everybody and just get the job done. Those are people like we like to read about.

• 1:32:08Rich Roll?

  Those are the heroes.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  Those are the heroes. And so why wouldn't you want to be a hero? And, um, it all starts with you, whoever you are listening to this, watch, like, be the hero. And you could do that by walking a mile a day and eating a salad and taking a cold shower. Like, it's so easy to be a hero today, you know?

• 1:32:24Rich Roll?

  In the four-day work week world. It's never been easier to stand out.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  It's so easy to stand out. So I, the parting words would be, just be the hero of your story. Think about that kid I just described from Idaho. This is so easy. It's so easy. It would be much harder if this was the Great Depression, World War I, World War II. There were a lot of, there's a lot of competition.

• 1:32:45Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Right? Now the competition's the 13-year-old Chinese boy that showed up

• 1:32:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  at my office.

• 1:32:51Rich Roll?

  Words to live by.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  You're awesome.

• 1:32:53Rich Roll?

  Happy New Year.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Happy New Year, people.

• 1:32:55Rich Roll?

  Thanks, buddy. I appreciate you. The book, Whether You Have Kids or Not, I think is an instructive roadmap for all the things that we were talking about today. It's really well-rendered. So, congrats on the book. 10 Rules for Resilience. Joe's pretty easy to find online. Sign up for Spartan Race. Get involved. Get active. And don't wait and sit around until you have everything figured out and all the answers to your questions resolved. You have to just begin. So, the best pair of running shoes is the one that's already in your closet. The best bike is the one collecting dust in the corner. And just get out there and start and go on and adventure with it.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Now, I want to leave one more thought on that. I was in Florida, I told you, when they did that test, that lactate threshold test two days ago.

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  I had these jeans on. I'm sorry if I smell a little bit. I had these boots on. I was not prepared. But I, that's the way I operate.

• 1:33:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Right? Like, why, if I don't have the gear, it doesn't matter. So, no excuses. Get out there and do it and be the hero.

• 1:34:01Rich Roll?

  Right on.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  See you, guys.

• 1:34:02Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Come back and talk to me again.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Every year.

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Plants.

• 1:34:18Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

• 1:34:49Rich Roll?

  If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering

• 1:35:32Rich Roll?

  by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpojete. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.