Unlocking Mental Resilience: How Spartan Race Builds Unstoppable Minds | CEO Joe De Sena

Joe De Sena is the founder and CEO of Spartan Race, Inc. In this conversation, we discuss Joe’s 20+ years of Spartan Race, surviving covid, acquiring competition and investing in fitness companies. We also get into fitness tips, what to avoid, and how you can train for a Spartan Race. Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/ Molly on X: https://x.com/MollySOShea Joe on X: https://x.com/realJoeDeSena TIMESTAPS: 0:00 - Welcome Joe De Sena To Sourcery! 0:30 - Mental Resilience 3:30 - Creating A Resilience Flywheel 5:20 - Building Spartan Race For 20 Years - Surviving Covid 8:15 - The Spartan Cult 12:15 - How Tech Will Improve Spartan Race 14:00 - Biggest Lesson Of The Last 24 Years 16:30 - Chasing Money vs. Purpose 18:30 - Acquiring Competition & Scaling 21:00 - Thoughts On Investing In The Fitness Industry 23:15 - Worst Fitness Trend That Joe Fell Into 26:25 - How To Approach Fitness In The New Year 31:40 - Training For Spartan Race 33:25 - What Joe Is Most Excited About For 2025 #podcast #investing #venturecapital #business #saas

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

• 0:00Molly O'Shea?

  Joe Disena, I couldn't think of anyone better to kick off the start of the year with. How are you doing?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thanks for having me. I always love the New Year's New You podcast. You know, everybody, everybody wants to get excited. They, they join the gym. They're going to change their life. It's the new year. And then they quit.

• 0:23Molly O'Shea?

  And then February happens.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 0:26Molly O'Shea?

  One of your biggest things that you talk about is mental resilience. And I want to get right into this. So you also wrote a book on mental resilience. The 10 Rules for Resilience: Mental Toughness for Families. So you've looked at this from all ends of the spectrum, not only within like family psychology, but through physical endurance and racing. I would love to know, can you share specific strategies or practices you believe are essential for developing mental resilience?

• 0:54Speaker 01

  It's pretty simple. It's hard, but it's simple. You have to do the uncomfortable things. You have to practice it. Like, like if I asked you, if you were an amazing chef, like, how do you become an amazing chef? You'd say, well, I worked with some great chefs for 10 years and I learned. Or how did you become so great at mathematics? Well, I studied like crazy. So if you want to build mental resiliency, it requires you doing the work, stretching the rubber band, being incredibly uncomfortable for long periods of time. There's no other, there's no pill. There's not, like, you're not going to take a warm shower, put on some PJs and go watch movies on Netflix and build mental resilience. It's not happening. You could listen to a podcast. You could read a book.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  You go to a conference. Doesn't do it. I'm sorry. I have a podcast too. You have to go out in the cold. You have to go out in the rain. You have to take the cold showers. Turn your hot water heater off. You, last night I took all the junk food out of the house, all the breads that my family has, the chips or whatever. Let's just not have it in the house anymore. Let's get our, my dream would be that we run out of food.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  There's a great, there's a Spartan prayer. It's a great story that came out of World War II. It's a sad story, but great story in that World War II paratrooper, French paratrooper is found dead in a field. And in his pocket, he has a prayer. And he's asking God, just like everybody was asking God back then, like for stuff. And what he said in the prayer, he said, God, everybody's probably asking for the warm shower. They want to get back with their husband or wife. They, they want, you know, a warm meal. You probably don't have any of that left. So instead, give me the worst stuff you got.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  The leftovers, the toil, the, you know, the torment, the torture. And, and just promise me you'll keep it coming. And so that's our Spartan prayer. Like, if you want to build mental resiliency, you're going to have to do the very things you don't want to do over and over and over. And, and not, not to a point where you're just a little uncomfortable. I'm going to go out and run in the rain, but you know, I'll come back home after 30 minutes. No, no. You've got to stretch yourself so far. It's got to be so damn uncomfortable that you'll do anything to get back in the house. I'm sorry, like if you're listening or watching,

• 3:29Speaker 01

  like that's the only way to build mental resilience. It's the hard way.

• 3:35Molly O'Shea?

  How do you create a flywheel with that? So then you will then attribute the challenge to endorphins or feeling good or a positive outcome?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It's pretty easy, actually. What starts to happen is if you do it for long enough, probably 90 to 100 days. You start to open up all these dopamine pathways in your brain. You start to feel really good when you finally allow yourself to go back in the house. I had my wife drop me off once 40 miles from my house, no money and a bottle of water. Right? And, and it's terrible and it's frustrating and you're hungry and you have no money and all you have is this bottle of water. You got a ration your water. And, but when you get home, you feel so damn good, so accomplished.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  That the next day or the next week, you start to feel worse that you're not doing it. And so, once you get through that point where it feels worse that you're not doing something hard, then you've won. Then, then this becomes easy. Now, now the bad news, the bad news for all of you out there is that it's something that has to have a continual practice. If you, if you don't use it, you lose it. If you, if you spend a month or two on the couch, even though you've pushed through, even though you've got the flywheel. You spend a month on the couch eating popcorn, you start to lose it and you gotta start all over again.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Which is why for most of my life, I just always signed up for hard things because I just never want to lose it. I love it.

• 5:17Molly O'Shea?

  Right, and you're creating a culture of people signing up for really hard things. And this is something I want to talk about and go deeper into and in the business of Spartan. Exactly. So you've built this out over 20 plus years. It was a slower build. It reached a peak, COVID hit, you kind of went back to square one and then you redeemed yourself and the business is even bigger. And you were able to acquire some of your competitors too. So what does that arc look like and what scale are you at now?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Hmm, what does that arc look like? Well, I definitely became complacent in 2019. We, we started to acquire some things. We got excited about buying back some equity. We were going to build ourselves into being the Louis Vuitton of hard things. That was our plan, right? Just have this, this collab of all these brands, um, enjoying some synergies and, and, and across customer promotions between all the hard things.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Pandemic hits knocks us, you know, off our feet. We lose an insane amount of money, more than we had, to the point where we had to borrow, beg, steal, do anything we could to survive. But in that process, a lot of our competitors were going through the same thing. So we grabbed whatever we could. And our mantra and our strategy was simply, don't quit. Just don't quit. Yes, we owe everybody money. Yes, we can't bring in any revenue. Yes, it's a disaster. But just don't quit. And I know it sounds simplistic and there's no, you know, Harvard Business Review on this,

• 7:03Speaker 01

  but, but that was, that was the plan. That was the strategy. And, you know, here we are in 2025, we're about to start 2025.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And it's unbelievable. We're, we're stronger, we're healthier, we're better than we were before the pandemic. Sure, we still have some blemishes and some things we have to burn off that carry over from, but like, it's unbelievable that Winston Churchill saying, just never, ever, ever quit, actually works.

• 7:36Molly O'Shea?

  How many races have you done to date? And how, how expansive has this been? I know that you've traveled worldwide. So how did you get to the point?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Forty-five countries we operate in. We've, we've had 11 million people cross the finish line. We will put on 1,100 events this year. It's, it's, it's a phenomenon. It's a, it's a cult following. It's a religion. It, it, you know, ends up in hundreds of thousands of tattoos on people's body. I had a guy send me a tattoo once. He got our logo tattooed on his face. So there's not a lot of brands, not a lot of brands or religions, by the way. Where you see that?

• 8:16Molly O'Shea?

  Have you noticed over the years, the community become one of the largest factors of, of carrying it forward? Like, how has the community impacted the business and the brand?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  It's all community. The whole business is community. This business would not work if one plus one wasn't five. In other words, you sign up, you get the tattoo, you're all bought in. It changed your life. You bring three friends, they each get five friends. That, that's, that's what this is, that, that powerful.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Velocity, you know, that's attributed to people talking to other people. I'm trying to think of the word, the viral coefficient would be, would be the term I'm looking for. Right? Like, what is your viral coefficient? If you've got a company, because if it's one to one marketing, if you go out and spend a dollar and bring in, you know, $2 of revenue and that's it. Doesn't really work, but the founders of Zanga, that game taught me that you have to have a viral coefficient where, you know, you're getting three, four, five times the return because people are so into the community.

• 9:27Molly O'Shea?

  Do you think that's an essential part of an events-driven business or any kind of business?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Well, if it's not, if you don't build a community, if you don't stand for something, if it's not a lifestyle, then it's just an event and events are tough. Like, like if there, if there was a torrential storm with tornadoes and hurricanes, our customers show up. You know, if it was just an event, they probably wouldn't.

• 9:56Molly O'Shea?

  Right, right. And because of that, the community, the events, this has changed people's lives. A lot of people might, you know, not think that or realize that, but putting your body through something so physical and mental at the same time does unlock new reward pathways and ways to view the world. So bringing friends and embarking in it, I'm, I'm sure you've changed many lives.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Oh my God, 11 million lives. I mean, every day I get emails that will blow your mind. I got emails yesterday from Ukraine. We put on an event there, you know, not too long ago. And the photos that are coming out of that event with the adaptive athletes and just, it's very powerful emotionally when you see stuff like that. So all day, every day I get an email, I get a message, I get somebody whispering in my ear at an event. Back with my husband, back with my wife, I gave up drinking, I gave up drugs. I lost 200 pounds, I didn't kill myself. So like, again, not a lot of brands, you know.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Thank you Hermes for selling me that handbag. You've saved my life. There's just not a lot of brands that.

• 11:10Molly O'Shea?

  And why do you think that is?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Because, and by the way, before I answer that, this wouldn't be the case if it was a thousand years ago. Right? A thousand years ago, if you and I were selling couches, penicillin, and Netflix, people would be saying, you changed my life. Because we got them out of the mud, away from the disease, into the house with indoor plumbing. Today, everybody's staring at a phone 15 hours a day. Right? They're eating garbage processed food. I don't care who's selling it to you, the biohacker, doesn't matter if it's in a bag. It's garbage and and they don't feel good. They're under fluorescent light and on device. They don't feel good.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  So you take people outside and you make them breathe and they sweat and they meet other cool people and they suffer and they carry sandbags and they're crawling under barbed wire and they're bleeding. And they feel alive and then they gotta take a cold shower at the end. Hopefully their car is stuck and they gotta push it out. Like, it's life changing.

• 12:16Molly O'Shea?

  It's interesting to think like that and understand how comfortable our society has gotten that just an act of going outside and putting your body through physical endurance will actually make you feel alive again. Because we're so desensitized to reality.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 12:35Molly O'Shea?

  And so if we think about this and how trends in the fitness world have evolved over time. What do you think has worked out to your benefit? And what do you think will shape the future?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  I think AI is going to help us tremendously because it's going to help our office staff operate at a much more efficient level. We'll be able to do more with less. We've got a mode around our business because we put on physical events. So AI is not going to affect that in a negative fashion at all. So we should see compressed expenses, increased efficiency. Event business continue to grow because, because we've got, you know, folks disconnected, working from home, staring at devices and looking for ways to get together with a community. They're going to church less.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  They're just not part of something bigger than themselves as, as they were, you know, 50 years ago, 20 years ago. So we definitely got a tailwind and, and now we've just got to execute. I mean, we, we made it through the storm. I told somebody the other day, I said, well, two years ago, I was underwater with no oxygen and, and I had about 50 feet to go to get, to get up to breathe. Now at least I'm swimming. I'm not on shore yet, but at least I'm swimming.

• 14:05Molly O'Shea?

  What would you say your biggest lessons were in the last 24 years of, of even thinking through these different cycles? Cause it's a roller coaster and it's always hard.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  I, I think what I learned is just get a job so much easier. Get a job, get a paycheck, get a dog, stay on the, like it is so much easier than trying to do, not only trying to be in business, business is a nightmare, but to be in a business where you've got to convince people to do something they don't want to do. No one really wants to do the hard stuff. You know, we're, our brains are wired to avoid hard stuff. Our brains are wired to protect us, to keep us alive. So barbed wire, mud, walls, ropes. I don't, why would I, why would I do any of that? Doesn't make any sense.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  So when I think about what I've learned, if it's just about money, this is not a business, an industry you should be in. But if it's about purpose, I was thinking today.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  I was thinking about like, I watched, I watched a show on Sackler, who contributed to the opioid crisis and OxyContin. And I thought, could somebody, could a human being be that evil that they would put money before individuals' health and wellness? And the answer is yes, there's, there's a lot of people throughout history that knew they were doing bad. I mean, whatever that is, red dye number two, someone told me today, was banned in the United States for, for women's cosmetics.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  But some genius at the FDA said, but it's still okay to consume.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  So somebody put money before people's health and wellness in that example, in the cigarette example, and, and, you know, hundreds of examples in our life. So for me, what I learned over the last 25 years, for me, when it's not about money, when it's about just doing the right thing and having a purpose, it helps you get through 24 years of hell. If it was just about money, so many easier ways to make money.

• 16:34Molly O'Shea?

  Do you think chasing money versus purpose leaves you empty?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  I think so. I was, I was there. I was on Wall Street for, for a bit and I got burnt out on that. I mean, money's nice. It puts food on the table, helps you pay the bills, takes that pressure off. But, but when it's all about money to a point where it's disgusting, yeah, I, listen, I get paid, I get paid in people telling me that their life changed. So that, that's the currency I, I trade.

• 17:05Molly O'Shea?

  This has become a platform of multiple different kinds of races too. As you started to build out, you know, the overlying Spartan brand, what other kinds of races did you get into and why did you add them?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so one of the disciplines we started with is obstacle racing, right? So you're, you're tackling obstacles and running. But then we got into trail running and we got into functional fitness. We got into hiking. We got into mountain biking, paddle boarding. Why? Well, imagine you and I owned an aquatic center, a giant swimming pool with a roof on it and a beautiful place to hold events and have people train in the water. It would be silly if the only events we put on were backstroke events. And then we got this pool, we got this giant investment, right? We should probably have some other types of swimming events going on. I don't know if we'd get into synchronized swimming or not, but certainly,

• 18:06Speaker 01

  certainly there'd be a whole bunch of other swimming events that we would host at our facility. And that's the way we think about it. We don't know what's going to tickle that person into getting off the couch. Might be mountain biking, might be hiking, might be running, et cetera. But we do know there's tremendous synergies between those disciplines.

• 18:29Molly O'Shea?

  Was a reason to also acquire them to build out the size of the company. You mentioned earlier, the business model is hard, so are the margins hard? And building in and acquiring the scale is the way to go? Like, how did you also consider that?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  It's a little bit of both. It's great to grow organically. It's great. We've proven to acquire. There is, it's a very low margin, very, very tough business. And we've got to be very creative on how to make sure, you know, there's enough of a margin to grow because of our purpose. Our purpose is to change 100 million lives. So if you want to change 100 million lives, you've got to figure out how to generate enough capital to continue to grow and continue to go out, throw your nets out there and and reach out to people.

• 19:20Molly O'Shea?

  We're entering, maybe, hopefully, who knows what's gonna happen, but an environment where M&A might kick back up. I'm curious from your thoughts on this. Having acquired a couple of companies, what would your outlook be or advice for companies looking to acquire different revenue streams or strategies, synergies?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I would say just, you know, stick to your knitting. Know, know and understand what your business is. Make sure it's accretive. Make sure you've got, you know, you're getting, you're getting a good deal. And then I'm a big believer in trying to keep the team you acquire in place, especially if they're founders, because they're aggressive, they're hungry. And, and when you become a little bigger as an organization, you become bureaucratic, whether you like it or not, and complacent, whether you like it or not. I mean, great examples throughout business history, whether it's the Kodaks or the Enrons or the WorldComms, or go down the list of companies that were killing it, literally killing it and then just vanished.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  And, and that's why they become, they become complacent. So, so just make sure that you keep some of that excitement that those companies you could acquire have, right? Because, because those entrepreneurs, that the way they operate is the way Google tries to, you know? When you go to Google's campus, there's a big dinosaur and they keep the dinosaur there because they want to remember that they don't, they shouldn't go extinct, right? They need to be constantly iterating and be innovative, et cetera, et cetera.

• 20:58Molly O'Shea?

  Hopefully they don't go extinct.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 21:02Molly O'Shea?

  I'm curious, from your personal perspective, how have you thought about the fitness industry from an investment standpoint? So you've, you've been a part of it. You've been a part of cycles. You've been a part of, I'm sure, investments too. Maybe you have like an angel investment track record. But how would you view the fitness industry as an investment space? Or is it more interesting to think of it as a consumer and all the fun things that you can try and challenge your body with?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think consumers are pretty fickle. I think we get excited about, you know, 10 minute abs and then we want five minute abs and we want to do CrossFit and then we want to do F45 and then we want to do Orange Theory. And again, we really don't want to do any of it. And so the new shiny object hopefully gets us excited to, to get to the gym and sweat. And then we're going to track ourselves with, you know, heart rate monitors and wristbands and rings.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  I think it's great that there's all these, you know, tremendous innovations and companies out there and investors that are supporting these advancements and ways for us to, to get healthier and get fitter, but. But it is a finicky industry. And so you got, you gotta be careful. When, when Peloton was through the roof, I said to my team, most of those Pelotons are going to become clothes hangers. Why did I say that? Because I remembered in the 1980s, my dad buying a Solaflex, which you wouldn't know. And it was, it was badass. It was all, the commercials were great. The, the imagery, the media they created was fantastic. And all, all you had to do was buy this $600 thing. And you brought it home and you, you were going to look like that.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  And very quickly I saw, I saw clothes hanging from it. Wasn't being used. And so, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a very finicky, very finicky industry. We, we've been able to stay relevant. I believe because we're a 2,500 year old brand. You know, we're, we're a mindset, we're a philosophy, we're, we're a, a way a human being should operate. They don't like to, they don't want to, but you know, we stand for something.

• 23:19Molly O'Shea?

  Have you ever felt guilty or fell into one of these trends? These fitness fads, maybe diets, maybe five minute abs, six minute abs, power plates?

• 23:34Speaker 01

  No, it's funny because I, I get asked to speak at the biohacking conferences and you know, all these different things and I, um, I don't fall for a lot of that. I'm trying to think what, what, you know, for a minute, I, I really liked the Aura ring. I liked it because it's not invasive. It's a tiny little ring. You're putting it on your finger, it, you know. But what I found the problem was for me was I would wake up and it would tell me I had a shitty night's sleep. And once I learned why I was having bad night's sleeps, because my phone was left on, I ate too close to bed. I, I didn't get enough sleep the night before. Whatever. And I, and I modified my behavior. I didn't want to wear the ring anymore because I don't want to know. Right?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  I, I'm gonna, I want to muscle through like I did for most of my life. So, I, look, I think the ring is great for so many reasons. And a lot of these devices are great. But let's not forget that the healthiest, you want to see the healthiest people you've ever seen. They're the ones outside carrying rocks, drinking a lot of water, eating a lot of salad, sweating, like they don't need fancy clothes. They don't need fancy, like.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  What about recovery? I say, well, what are we recovering from? Are we recovering from recovery? Like, what are we talking about? You just want to sell me more stuff.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  I do love cold plunges, but I've always loved cold showers. Love cold plunges, love saunas. Always loved it. Love yoga. Love salad. Love water.

• 25:08Molly O'Shea?

  Just a healthy guy. How often do you cold plunge?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 25:13Molly O'Shea?

  Every day?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 25:15Molly O'Shea?

  Do you, do you listen to Huberman or like follow any of the guides that anybody says like you should do this amount per week? You should like maximize it, not do it after cardio, any of that, or you just think like, trust your body, put it through.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Well, I am, I am taking some advice. I did see, I did see, I don't know if it was Huberman, who it was that said, the science shows, which is contrary to what I've known my whole life, the science shows that doing cold plunge before a workout actually is better. Doing a sauna after workout is actually better. I, I didn't know that. And so I'm taking that science at its word and, and that's what I do is, which I used to do anyway. First thing in the morning, I would, I would do cold, but I used to also do it after a workout, thinking I was helping myself, but the, the science says don't, don't do it after, do it before. So assuming that science is right, but I like it. I like it before and I like sauna after.

• 26:18Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. I drink a smoothie beforehand, so I think that's my little cold plunge.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  That's funny.

• 26:26Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. I don't know. I, I mean, I think about all of this stuff really interestingly because every year around this time, we think, oh, let's just redo our entire fitness routine. Let's just like buy the most expensive thing possible. We probably got some things for the holidays as gifts, like, or maybe you got like a 10 pack to orange theory or something. And that's going to be the key to your success and your health, but maybe actually it's just having a routine and doing it every day or pushing yourself. Um, if you were to restart your routine for this year, like what, what would that plan be for you?

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Same plan I've always had. I do the same thing over and over. I usually go for about a thousand days in a row. So. My prior thousand days was I was on that air dining bike pretty much every day, 300 calories a day.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Thousand days before that,

• 27:20Speaker 01

  I was on the farm because that was during the pandemic, but most of that time I was carrying a kettlebell everywhere I went. That was, that was part of my workout in addition to, but.

• 27:29Molly O'Shea?

  Everywhere?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Everywhere, yeah, everywhere. If I was in Vegas, I had to go give a speech or something to Vegas and I walk through a casino, I have my kettlebell. I was in a meeting, I had my kettlebell. If I had to go to a, some sort of a anniversary thing in India, I had my kettle, everywhere.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Dinner parties, everywhere. Now my latest is I do like a mini Murph every, every day. So this morning was four mile run, almost a four mile run every day.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  200 pushups, although I just switched it to burpees, 100 pullups, a bunch of lunges, 100 lunges. And, and then some other little workout I do at night in the house.

• 28:12Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so we should all just start with that.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, um, what I did, I just created this you may die challenge, you may die before 2025 challenge. So feel free, if you email me, I'll get it sent to you. You could push it out to everybody. It's, um, it's a point system. So I'm giving X amount of points for every block of 100 burpees you do each day. We just started yesterday. And, um, I'm giving X amount of points for every mile run or walk. X amount of points for every block of 100 pullups. And then, and then there's points for sprints. And there's, there's bonus points, which I haven't told anybody what they are yet for a one mile farmer's carry with 30 pound dumbbells for male, 20 pound dumbbells for female.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  So it seems, it's stuff like that. You gamify it. It seems to get people excited. I've got a few thousand people in the group.

• 29:08Molly O'Shea?

  What do you win?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  I don't know yet. I haven't come up with what I'm gonna give people. Last year, last year I gave some cool things where I invited a bunch of people to come to our farm during the summer. We have a, anybody that wants to come, by the way, anybody in your audience wants to come to the farm end of June, or during the winter death race, end of January, but end of June, we have the death race and we got, I got a lot of crazy stuff going on, so you're welcome to come.

• 29:37Molly O'Shea?

  I love that. That's great.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:39Molly O'Shea?

  Do you have any favorite races that you guys throw? Is it the death race?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  I mean, I love the death race. I love M2O in Hawaii. I love the world champs in Abu Dhabi, Croatia. I love, I love them all. I was just, I was just in Florida at one of our events. I was at DECA World Championship this weekend. I love them all.

• 29:59Molly O'Shea?

  Selfishly, if, not if, I am planning on doing one this year with my friend Matty. We're both like fitness junkies. And we live in LA and you have a couple in LA. So how do we prep for this?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  What's? So I would challenge you, I would challenge you, you and your buddy Matty, have to bring 298 more people on me, no charge. So you're gonna build a group of 300 people. You've got from now till that first race in LA. And again, it's no charge, but if you wanna see how hard my business is, how hard it is to convince people to, no charge. You're not asking anybody for any money. I wanna see you round up 298 people.

• 30:45Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, I'll do that. I will actually accomplish that. But in order to do that, how do we all prep? Do we go to Barry's? How do, do we carry around sandbags?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  You could do, you could do anything you want, but at a, at a bare minimum, at a bare minimum every day, you should get into like a slow jog. I'm just giving you the minimum.

• 31:05Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  One mile, 30 of the best pull-ups you could muster up, 30 of the best burpees you could muster up. That's it, bare minimum. You're not gonna win anything. You're gonna still get hurt during the event. It's gonna, you're gonna suffer, but.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  But and then if you want to win, we can get into like serious training. But that's your, that's your bare minimum and you could do Barry's, you could do CrossFit, you could anything, anything you want. Learn how to climb rope, get comfortable crawling under barbed wire. Turn your hot water heater off, get used to cold water.

• 31:38Molly O'Shea?

  We'll do that. Um, yeah, I, I've been trying to figure out, okay, like if I'm in the gym, what, what would that actually look like? Like, am I going? I don't, I'm a competitive person, so I would want to win, um, even though I know I'm not going to. And so it would probably be pushing myself too far and not knowing what I'm doing right or doing wrong, but how do I actually get in there to compete? Cause I don't want to look like a loser. I want to actually like accomplish something and get to the end. Um, and I know Maddie's the same way. She's running marathons all the time and she's doing all these different things. And so we're like, okay, so if we team together, should we just, should we hit the beach? Should we go to the beach and just do some sprints?

• 32:20Molly O'Shea?

  Should we climb some walls? Like, I don't know. How does this work?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  All of it. Climb ropes. I mean, you just Google Spartan and you see people training all over, you know, we've got an app, you could download the app if you want, but just get a rock, carry it around.

• 32:39Molly O'Shea?

  How big, how big is this rock we should get?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  I would say if you carried around a 30 pound rock, you'd be, you'd be rock solid by the time the event show, you know, comes around.

• 32:49Molly O'Shea?

  What is that going to do?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Well, you're going to build tremendous strength in your own body because you're carrying this rock everywhere. All right. You go to the grocery store, you got the rock. You go to movies, you got the rock. Carry the rock everywhere.

• 33:02Molly O'Shea?

  From your experience with the kettlebell, how do you get through security?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Not easy. And after the pandemic, that's the reason I don't carry it any longer. After the pandemic was very difficult. So, but the good news is what a rock, if you travel, you just pick up a new rock wherever you land.

• 33:17Molly O'Shea?

  Yes, potentially.

• 33:21Molly O'Shea?

  Hopefully, it's not some landscaping art.

• 33:25Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, cool. This has been a really fun conversation and I'm really interested in your take. Like, what are you most excited for for 2025?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Just changing more lives, just just hearing more stories, just, you know, talking to more people like you. Coming out to see your 300 people that you're rounding up. I'm excited about that.

• 33:44Molly O'Shea?

  Why 300?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you might not know the movie. You might be too young. There's a movie called 300 that

• 33:52Speaker 01

  articulates really well the story of Thermopylae, which is a battle between the Spartans and the Persians. So you and Matt, you and Matt, I need, you know, your 300.

• 34:02Molly O'Shea?

  We're gonna come to battle for sure.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 34:05Molly O'Shea?

  All right, Joel, this was great. Thank you so much for taking the time.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  You're amazing. Thanks for having me.