Joe De Sena Spartan Race Founder & CEO - Exclusive: Near Death Wipeouts in Life & Business
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Joe De Sena is the founder and CEO of Spartan and creator of the Spartan Race and the infamous Death Race. After he created a hugely successful Wall Street trading firm, Joe left finance behind in 2001 to build a new life and a new business from a farm in rural Vermont. His goal was to change 100 million lives through experiences like those he had competing in Ironmans, 300-mile runs and adventure races around the world.
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Joe has created a lot of success, a lot of wealth and a lot of transformation. And there’s more to the story. In this interview, for the first time he shares about the financial catastrophe the Spartan Race faced during the pandemic, the brushes with death he has had in his sporting endeavors, why he continually seeks new challenges and how he deals with one of the most difficult challenges in the human experience--getting someone to use the off button on a phone.
Thank you to my friend Randy Hetrick, the founder and chairman of the human performance company TRX and now founder and CEO of OutFit for connecting me to Joe to make this interview happen.
Choose the Hard Way is a podcast about how doing hard things is fun. Please help more people find this podcast. To do that, just hit subscribe and rate the show five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share this episode with someone you care about.
Go to choosethehardway.com to sign up for the newsletter and if there’s someone you think would make a great guest, DM @hardwaypod.
Choose The Hard Way is a Big Truck Production. Anthony Palmer at Palm Tree Pod Co is the producer and editor and Emily Miles is head of digital and marketing. Jeffrey Nebolini is the world-renowned designer behind our brand identity and the Choose the Hard Way logo. The content for this show is created by @vontz.
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Andrew Vontz 0:00
But this is gonna be totally different. So I hope you buckle up and get ready. unbuckled. Um, so where are you right now?
Joe De Sena 0:09
I'm in Orlando right now.
Andrew Vontz 0:11
You're in Orlando. Okay.
Joe De Sena 0:15
Embarrassingly, I moved to a farm in 2001, Fremont pretty rugged environment, pretty rugged place. Whether it was tough, that my wife had some kids got some goats, chickens, Scottish Highlander cows, we had a chopping wood contest every night to heat the house. I mean, awesome, awesome. 15 year run on that farm. Coming out of the pandemic, I couldn't get anybody to come back into the office. I shouldn't say that I couldn't get 90% of the people come back into the office who had moved to Maine who was working from a boat, who doesn't want to deal with traffic anymore. And I was losing my mind because we have a least at least in my own mind, we have a very complicated business, we had just this weekend alone, we had 47 events taking place at the same time. So there is huge benefit to the organization to just walking over and seeing somebody and talking to them and say, Hey, what about this, to try to find people on Zoom? While they're going to take care of their laundry, or dentists or dogs or that like, it becomes very hard. We're not in the software business where we're a bunch of programmers can work anytime. So I was talking to a friend of mine, in New York City with a very large company one day, I was losing my mind. And he said, I get it. He goes, I have 85,000 square feet in the new Trade Center. I have nobody in the office. He said, what's funny is I have another business and in the Indianapolis, and those people never stopped coming into the office and bring their lunchbox every day. They never stopped coming during COVID The whole thing. And so I jumped on a plane the next day I went to I went to Indianapolis, and I fell in love with it. I was like, Oh, this is unbelievable. So I said we're moving to Indianapolis. I'm going to open up an office next week. And literally that's and and we're going to Indianapolis and I told my wife start looking for schools. There's an old Coke Cola Bottling plant, they're revitalizing Angie's List is there. salesforce.com. We're going to Indianapolis, and my buddy owns Saks Fifth Avenue. And I was telling him, he goes, you're an idiot. I go to me, he goes, your wife's not going to Indianapolis, like it's just not going to work. You have to find another place. And I remembered downtown Orlando, which I would never in my life. You said to me, you know, chance. I'm moving to Florida, let alone Orlando. But I remember there was this wrestling program down here that was like number two in the country and my boys wrestle our girls play soccer. And then I knew this guy that on 20,000 acres of land right next to the Orlando airport where I'm sitting right now talking to you. And I came down. And the wrestling coach, let me go into the wrestling room at 5am and work out by myself and I looked at this 10,000 square foot room and all these banners were hanging all these champions state champ. And I thought wow, we are way out of our league here. And my boys are not at this level. And I sat there on the Aerodyne bike and I started sweating and I was alone. I was thinking and I was nervous. And I was like I'm gonna move to Orlando. And I said we gotta go to Orlando because I I'm nervous because it's too hard because it's too disruptive. It's too crazy. So we're doing it. So we made the decision that day and I've been down here now two years.
Andrew Vontz 3:36
Wow. In here I was I mean I felt like I was current on the job to Senator story, but clearly I'm not because I actually I am one of those people who moved to Maine during the pandemic because my wife grew up here, Assam and Midcoast. Maine, I'm in hope near Camden. And I was you know, kind of the main thing I was hoping to get out of this conversation Joe, was some advice on undercoating my car do I do it? Do I not do it? Is it a scam? Like what do you think?
Joe De Sena 4:04
We did it everyone we still have the farm by the way we go up there a lot and anybody listening is welcome to go use the farm anytime they want. We love the farm. We always got our cars on Dakota and no it was awesome about Fremont and this car dealership was I would call my friend with this car dealership and Rutland Vermont and I would say hey I need a new vehicle but I don't want I don't have time to go and look and fill out for I just found that one of those guys and he would literally just say come get one we'll figure out the paperwork later. Just give me a call and he would undercoat it and and you have to do is a lot of salt up up by you and by in Vermont, so you got to do it.
Andrew Vontz 4:47
Okay. All right. I guess it's time to get started. So since you've been down in Orlando has it been smooth sailing?
Joe De Sena 4:55
I'll tell you what a lot of people don't know this. I'll give you some some under under The good news. So we owed a ton of money to the US government to help help us get through the pandemic, we borrowed something called the Main Street lending program was a program that ran for 2500 businesses across the country. It was a big number it was it came out to like $28 million we borrowed to to help us get through the pandemic. And last year around July, we were up against the wall, the pandemic was tough, we got shut down, we couldn't put on events. But actually the reentry was worse. Because when we when we had to sign all those deals for all those venues around the world, and we had to get insurance for all those events around the world. And we had to bring all those employees back and all those trucks, all those things, all those checks had to be written before any money was coming back in. So it was enormous pressure on us financially. And we found ourselves in a situation last July while I was here in Orlando, where we couldn't continue like we just we had no money, I couldn't pay my bills, races were filling up that was that was fine. But the pressure, the amount of finances required to lift this thing from the grave. back to its original luster was was incredibly expensive. And the government loan we had taken would not allow us to, to go borrow any more to go raise any more capital. So we were there, my back was against the wall. On top of it, Wall Street Journal calls and they're going to write a cover story in their bankruptcy section. How Joe's a deadbeat and can't pay his bills. And, and, and that's a tough moment, right? Like, here you are pounding your chest, you change all these lives. This is a greatest business ever. And, you know, behind the scenes, nobody knows you're having a tough time we got to deal with this loan. But then out front cover the pain like this is going to be tough, nobody's going to want to buy a ticket, this is our death nail, I should probably raise the white flag. No one's gonna think any worse than me. Because every event company in the world went out of business during the pit, like, I could dust off. And I thought to myself, you know, that's what a regular person would do. A regular person would pack it in, right? A regular person would be able to justify it, a regular person would have excuses. And I thought, well, I just got to fight through somehow we have to fight through. And so I went online, nobody knows this. I went online, and I looked up the Federal Reserve. And there was a phone number. I called the Federal Reserve. And they answered the phone. And I went into a 211 day back and forth discussion. And I got to a place where they would work with us 211 days every day not knowing when I woke up if we were going to exist anymore. 200 and let think about that, right. And thank God, I had made the decision to come to Orlando, and come to this place called Lake Nona. Because the family that owns Lake Nona, I became friendly with during those 211 days, they're extremely wealthy, they are great people. And they go we got you. You work this out with the Federal Reserve, we got it, we'll write the check whatever you need. And they took care of it on a handshake. And if I wasn't here, I that wouldn't have happened. So you know, you make these rash quick decisions in the wrestling room and move to Orlando, but maybe maybe there is some universal law. I don't know how. Yeah, it worked.
Andrew Vontz 8:48
When you were in the middle of actually not when you were in the middle of that when you were at the beginning of that. And you were trying to figure out what is our next move? Do we go forward? Do we wrap it up? But how did you feel? And what was that like for your family?
Joe De Sena 9:07
I don't think my family felt it as much as I felt that I don't bring that home.
Andrew Vontz 9:12
How do you how do you not bring it home?
Joe De Sena 9:15
I should I should restate that I bring it home and that I'm definitely not the happy go lucky guy that the world sees right when I come home. I don't want to talk about it. Leave me alone. I rather talk about wrestling or anything other than what I'm dealing with it at World Day. And I don't I you know, I do I do try to leak certain things out to the kids because I want them to know that, you know, life's not easy business isn't easy. Somebody's not there with a safety net at all times. So I but but I don't think they understand the true impact in those moments. Nor do I think my wife understands it because we've been together 23 years and it always works out every day. So Oh, when it's always working out every day for 23 years, I don't think you could really understand how close we are to the edge at times. Does that make sense?
Andrew Vontz 10:11
Yeah, it completely makes sense. Did you have the feeling that you were gonna find some way for it to work out? And did you embrace the difficulty that you were facing? Or? Did it feel intensely stressful? And did you feel confused about how you might get to the end of it?
Joe De Sena 10:31
I remember, we had to do a call with our board of directors. And, and a few of the board members have close friends. One of them is is a very large company, Hearst media, which is around 100 plus years. And they own a piece of ESPN. And really, when you get that close to the edge, I mean, was literally like Sylvester Stallone hanging with one hand from from the cliff, you know, the board, usually your board has an obligation to make a decision that says, hey, you're going to have to go into chapter 11. Because you got to protect us, the board members, you've got to protect your employees, etc. And it was within days, maybe maybe 48 hours. And I said, Hang on, I've got one more call to make I think, you know, we could i don't know i I remember that day, I remember where I was, I remember walking around. But I'm a pretty optimistic person, even though it was bleak. Even though I had a knot in my stomach for 211 days. I don't think I think the worst day was the day the Wall Street Journal call, because then your egos involved right, then you're getting punched in the nose publicly. But and by the way, it's not to say that during those 211 days, I didn't have a pit in my stomach was hard to sleep all that was going on. But I don't think I ever thought we wouldn't figure it out.
Andrew Vontz 12:00
Does that make sense? Yeah, completely. You just didn't know how.
Joe De Sena 12:03
I just didn't know how. And and it became really hard. When those two things I just described happen. It became really hard when your board who again, members of the board or my friends are suggesting you just throw in the towel. And then it became really hard when the Wall Street Journal, wrote that article, because then the public is basically saying, Not only should you throw in the towel, you're dead. You're dead. You just don't know it.
Andrew Vontz 12:30
Right? Yeah. And job. You've been around. You've been in business for a very long time. And I'm, I'm sure that you understood why the board needed to have that position. Did that impact your relationships with your friends who are on the board? Or was that just business?
Joe De Sena 12:48
It's just business and I understood it. And I knew I knew if there was a different possibility, they would have said it. But But I just said give me just give me a few more days, I've got a couple of conversations going on. And when this when this family who I don't know, my whole life, I only know since I moved here when this family basically shook my hand and said, Don't worry about it. We got Yeah. That, again, was a testament that the work we do the lives we change, like, it has to be somebody that's seen what we do. If you if you've seen I was I was at a race in Killington, Vermont, of ours two weeks ago, and I was at the finish line, I built this thing called the extra mile. Everybody in my team said it was stupid, nobody, nobody wants to come across the finish line and then do an extra mile. And I said, but that's the that's what we're teaching the world is to go the extra mile in life. So why would why wouldn't we express that in an actual extra mile. And by the way, maybe sometimes we make it four miles because you just don't know in life, right? Maybe sometimes make it a half mile, you get a little bonus. And so I had this extra mile, which was straight up the mountain, you just came across this race that might have taken you six hours, I did it. I came across her I did not want to do the extra mile, but I had to do it. And I stood there and I coerce people into doing this extra mile and this woman just breaks down and starts crying. And I said What's up, she said, um, I went through breast cancer. And I just want you to know, Spartan gave me the strength to get through breast cancer. I may not be as fast as I used to be, but I'm still here. And I'm still fighting through and I got teary eyed. And so anybody out there that that leans in and helps us. They understand the impact that this business has on people and it's It sounds crazy, but it's a different impact than a marathon or a 5k or an Ironman. There's something about the dirt, the mud, the craziness of it, the obstacles that really strengthens your character.
Andrew Vontz 14:55
There's something to what you just described to this idea of being No, in certain athletic contexts, particularly whether it's wrestling, mixed martial arts, the round is going to end. And in most competitions, there are other formats where it doesn't, right and it just goes on a marathon is going to be 26.2 miles. an Ironman is going to be an Ironman distance, but when it starts to be that variable stimulus, that's when interesting things really start to happen. It seems like
Joe De Sena 15:28
and isn't that funny? That's that's business. Right? That's life, right? I did an Ironman. years ago, in Lake Placid, it was pouring rain, and half the field quit the rain was so ridiculous. And I was so upset with that, because I said, it doesn't say Iron Man, unless it's raining. This is Iron Man. Like, I don't understand what like. And that's really when I started thinking about putting on these events all over the world that were, you know, would turn your life upside down. Like imagine coming out of the swim and an Ironman and you had no bike seat? You got a bike it anyway, got no bike seat. That's the deal. And that's really the the stimulus for who we are and what we stand for. Thus, the extra this new idea of the extra mile?
Andrew Vontz 16:19
How do you bring that concept into your daily practice or your training?
Joe De Sena 16:25
Well, it's funny, I shouldn't do what I'm about to describe, but I'll tell you how I actually live my life with training as I get my kicks, shrieks, let's call them and I just do the same thing. Every day for long periods of time, probably three years, you know, 1000 days, I don't I don't check it off in a calendar that way. But when I think back to these, the streaks I've had, it usually lasts about three years. So whether it's carrying a kettlebell everywhere I went, or doing 300 burpees, every single day, my latest kick, because of the facilities I have right next to the house, his I'll do a run two miles, three and a half miles, I'll get in into the gym, the rest of the gym, I'll do 10 rounds of push ups, pull ups, and then I'll knock out 300 calories on the Airdyne bike. And I just do it every day, it takes me an hour, a little less than an hour, a little more than an hour. And then what I do is something I believe in is and this is to your question to answer to Question is on the sixth day, Saturday or Sunday, unless six day that's the crazy day, that's the day where you turn your life upside down. And that's, that's less about repetition, it's just time on legs. Like, alright, we're just gonna go out and do something that's just crazy uncomfortable, could be six hours, eight hours, 10 out, whatever. But we're gonna get up at four in the morning, three in the morning. And, and just sweat until we can't see straight.
Andrew Vontz 17:56
That's phenomenal. And, you know, at this point, you've been doing this for a long time, these physical practices, what makes you the most uncomfortable?
Joe De Sena 18:10
You know, I, I remember, for those 15 years, when I lived every day on the farm, terrible weather I go out and go out into t shirt, no problem. So it wasn't the coal that bothered me if I had to choose I choose cold over hot. I think the thing that drives me nuts, the same thing that drives everybody nuts is not knowing the finish line. When you know, you know, alright, I just have to do this. If I just get there, it's done. I got my map that's easy to deal with. But when you don't know, when you wake up every morning, and the Federal Reserve is not giving you an answer, and you don't know if you're going to be able to secure this financing or not. And you're in limbo. That's a that's a hard place to live. So I think just like everybody else that drives me nuts, but I've learned to deal with it better than most I deal with the uncertainty better than most.
Andrew Vontz 19:02
How do you think you've done that?
Joe De Sena 19:05
Maybe I fooled myself, I trick myself into landing on my feet so many times in business over the last 40 years. That that I just I'm convinced it's going to be okay. And if you say that enough, you're probably influencing the outcome. That if that makes sense, you know, it could also be to your detriment because just because I successfully climbed Mount Everest, doesn't mean I can go climb K two.
Andrew Vontz 19:37
Yeah, definitely not. Right? Yeah.
Joe De Sena 19:42
So So you gotta you gotta you gotta also keep it real but but I think I've landed on my feet so much. The other huge advantage I have over most people's I have a DD and so something's upsetting me. My brain He forgets it pretty quickly, and I'm on to something else. I don't dwell on things.
Andrew Vontz 20:06
That's interesting. I was thinking about this when I was, you know, I've been following your career for a long time, most people are familiar with your origin story. And something that I've observed with ultra endurance athletes in particular, and I'm sure you've seen this too, there's often this high correlation between, not for everyone, but there's often people have some kind of addictive behavior in one area of their life, that's not benefiting them. And then there's a transfer over into endurance sports, which also can completely become an addiction, which also can become relationally, destructive to your friends and family if you take it too far, and you're not nourishing the people around you. But it also can become a very healthy expression of something that kind of destroys, or can destroy people. And, you know, you've been around the best in the game, what have what have you observed in relation to that?
Joe De Sena 21:06
In relation to those that are that are doing crazy things in endurance?
Andrew Vontz 21:11
Yeah. Like, what, what's driving that bike, usually, there's something going on, that's enabling people to redirect a force that might be really destructive into the direction of very high achievement. And it's not just ultra endurance, it's everything right?
Joe De Sena 21:27
Yeah. First off, I would say, ultra endurance is easy. And I'm sure there's gonna be a bunch of people out there that get pissed off when I say this. But I, I used to equate somebody that could do really unbelievable things in endurance with being great human beings, across every part of their life. And what I found was, that's not true. A lot of them, most of them, want to go and play and have fun out there. It is fun. I prefer every day to be on that mountain at Killington running up and down. And it's like being an endurance hippie. But when you have to, when you have to come back to the office and sit and type emails and manage people, that's not as much fun. It's really fun to date a woman or a guy, but then when you're married, you have children, you have responsibility, and you got to take out that like, that's not as much fun as dating so. So I don't, I don't know what drives the person to do these these crazy things. But like, They're fun. They're fun, they're a way to escape whatever it is you're dealing with, when you get to a place where you just want water, food and shelter, you're running across Death Valley or biking across the United States, whatever the thing is, like to pretty relaxed, like nothing to worry about anything, you don't have to worry about your mortgage don't have to worry about anything. Just put one foot in front of the other and go on. And we've shown that these that our species is these people, us, we can do anything. We put our mind to physically climb mountains, deal with the frost, run across a desert, we could do all that. And you don't really have to get doesn't you don't get in your head, bam. I mean, I love Goggins. I love these guys. They're inspiring a lot of people but like, it's not that hard. It's not that hard. Just start rowing before, you know, you get to the other side of the Atlantic. But if you don't have to deal with anything else, but when you got to deal with everything else. It's a shit show. Does that make sense? Or no?
Andrew Vontz 23:47
Oh, yeah, completely. It completely makes sense. And, you know, I've, I've been involved in endurance sports at this point for, I don't know, 35 plus years. And, you know, it brings me a lot of joy. Like you said, there's an escapist aspect to it. And it's a way of processing other things. And also, at a certain point, you know, there's a saying, when you get the message, hang up the phone, like you, you get what you're gonna get out of it. And it's good to kind of recharge the battery. There's relational health aspects to it. But yeah, I agree with you, society. And culture kind of put this suffering and endurance sports up on a pedestal. And I think about a, you know, a lot of other aspects of life that you just described are people who aren't choosing what kind of adversity they're going to face in their day and maybe don't have access to food, shelter, water, all the things that most people will take completely for granted. And that's, that's truly hard, right? Yeah, me going on a bike ride is the easiest part of my day. So the most fun part of my day, typically,
Joe De Sena 24:52
I'm with you. And and sometimes I think about those soldiers, you know, on the Ukrainian frontline or the Russian frontline are either on either side that is tough work. Think about Vietnam. Ridiculous, right? Like, World War Two D like, it's pretty damn easy to get on your bike.
Andrew Vontz 25:16
Yeah, it definitely is. I haven't talked about it a lot on this podcast. But you know, my dad was in Vietnam, he was drafted. And I've said something that I do every time I see my parents or I try to do every time I see them, I get the podcasting equipment out, I sit down record with them. I just asked him some of the questions. And now that I'm an adult, I've kind of always wanted to ask them. And, you know, that's one of the things I've talked to my dad about which I'm gonna keep private, but it definitely is put some things into perspective, for me about the relative difficulty of what I'm doing in life and the autonomy and freedom that I have, when I wake up in the morning and kind of get to choose what am I going to make happen today? Right.
Joe De Sena 26:00
Yeah, we have big problems when we're deciding which bike to get on.
Andrew Vontz 26:07
That's definitely the case. Yeah, you know, Joe, again, people are so much your story is out there in the public domain. One aspect of it, I was not familiar with was, you know, I was reading about this time that you were stranded in the Quebec wilderness. And how that helps you kind of discovered this distinction between difficult and desperate. And when I read that, I knew I needed to talk to you about it. So what was going on when that happened? And how do you define that distinction?
Joe De Sena 26:37
I trained so well, for that race. I I checked myself into a hotel in Vail, Colorado for 10 days. And every morning, I got up around three or 334 in the morning, carry 60 or 70 pounds on my back, snow shoot up to the top of Vail twice a day, and did three to four hours of cross country skiing every day for 10 days, I ate super clean. I had salad with tuna fish, I was like a monk for those 10 days. 10 days after the completion, that training, I ended up in Quebec. And we were gonna go to this event called the Yucatec. It was gonna be a quick one, me and a team of three others. So we're a team of four, three male, Three Men and a female. Maybe it was two men and a female, three of us and a female. And we were gonna go knock it off. We're gonna win it super easy. I was told I was the least sophisticated in the group. Like the other three members of team have been doing this for 20 years. They know what they were doing. My skis still had stickers on them price tags. And we we go out the first part of this challenge was to cross the St. Lawrence River. It's January, there are chunks of ice going across the river the size of Volkswagens buses. They tell us we've got to put crampons on. And we've got to be able to push we got to have outriggers on our boat on our canoe, because we're going to get smashed into by these giant chunks of ice. And we're going to have to sled across them and use our spikes in our shoes. So we're going to be falling in the water out of the water and get across this raging St. Lawrence River. We get across that. It's ice cold, obviously, outside, we get on our bikes, we bike, I don't know 8090 miles on our bikes, and now we're on foot and we're snowshoeing for a couple of days. I'm completely hallucinating. I'm seeing my grandparents in snow figures. And I keep thinking to myself, Why are they here? You know, I'm loosening that ritually. We work our way to the top of a mountain. And the next section is to repel off this mountain call it 1800 feet of this rock face. The team in front of us were in second place the team in front of us very sophisticated team lots of knowledge. They felt the ropes were loose on their way down two or 300 feet down into this descent. They were able to break and they were now stuck on the face of this mountain. So we were we were held up on the top with no coverage completely exposed to in the morning freezing because you know we'd been sweating for all these hours and we don't have gear because in these kinds of races you can't carry too much. Our tent that was mandatory to carry we cut in half to save weight. Not supposed to do that. So we have no real coverage and we're waiting and what Waiting and waiting. And finally we get the bright idea. While they're stuck on the side of the mountain and the organiser, trying to figure out how to get them to safety, we're going to take off and try to beat them to the bottom by foot. Rather than go down the same way we came up, we hang a left turn, unbroken, no trail, we're just going to go as fast as we can down these 1800 feet and you know, 1012 foot deep piles of snow, what we don't realize is that just a little bit to the left, and just a little bit to the right, or the sheer rock faces death on either side. So anyway, we are rolling down this, this mountain, banging into things hanging from cliffs, and we found ourselves in a pretty precarious situation where, you know, it didn't, it didn't look good, it didn't look like we get down, we finally we finally got down but, but that day was was, we were gonna, we were gonna bypass and get for that day, we sat on the side of the mountain, which was 15 hours more than than we plan was, I got to meet myself, I got I got to find out, you know, who I was, what scared me what I wanted to do with my life. And, and that was the impetus really for, for starting this business. When you're when you're cold, tired, hungry, and it doesn't look like there's any way out. That's where transformation takes place doesn't take place on the couch watching Netflix.
Andrew Vontz 31:46
Once you had that, that realization, what changed for you.
Joe De Sena 31:54
I just I my whole life up to that point, I was chasing money. I wanted to make money, I wanted to find out. If I was tough enough, I had all these things that society had taught me and my upbringing had taught me were important. But, but at that moment, when you get to the edge, you just start thinking differently. And, and I just thought I want to make an impact. I want to the good things that I just experienced the good stuff I want to share with the world, there's so many people that will never feel this, that'll never do this. And and it's it's probably too much for most what I'm in the middle of here. But there's some there's some appetite appetizer that we could give them that's like this, that might that might spark a change in people's lives and and then you get that woman and hundreds of 1000s of them that say hey, you got me through breast cancer. Or I had this firefighter veteran come up to me one day and say I just want you to know, hug me start crying. I said What's up, so I was gonna kill myself. Because I had the gun. I had it loaded. But I remembered I had a Spartan Race next week, and I said, I'll wait till after the Spartan Race, you saved my life. And so I said, Well, just so you know, you now have a Spartan Race the rest of your life every every weekend, like you are on my schedule. So you're not going down on our watch. But we get that all day long. And that and that really came from that moment in, in northern Quebec, where it was really cold. Really cold.
Andrew Vontz 33:33
When you when you were in the middle of that did Were there moments when it felt truly life and death? Or were you confident you're gonna get off the mountain?
Joe De Sena 33:41
No, it was actually a different moment that felt life and death. We put on our we put on our cross country skis. And we started to ski. And we had no experience with wax. And the skis just kept sliding. And it's going to sound silly, nobody's really going to understand this. But we couldn't make any progress forward. We couldn't make any progress back. So naturally, what you would suggest is you take your skis off. And so you take your skis off and all of a sudden you fall into waist deep snow. And you're not making any progress in this waist deep snow. You can't even move. So there were hours where we were there. And my teammate had just gotten back from Everest just summited Everest, Adrian, and he turns to us and he says, this is a very serious situation. And I thought if he's saying
Andrew Vontz 34:32
we and we
Joe De Sena 34:36
and we were not laughing about it, it was not like that we were stuck. We couldn't move forward. We couldn't move backward. Yeah, imagine like a turtle on its back.
Andrew Vontz 34:48
How'd you get out of that situation?
Joe De Sena 34:50
When the when the as 456 hours passed, the temperature changed, and when the temperature changed, the ski started to stick. We didn't know that. So, we got lucky.
Andrew Vontz 35:03
So now, you know, I mean, you're this guy, you're bringing these experiences to hundreds of 1000s of people around the world. You've got all of these events going on the businesses is kicking. What does it for you? What brings these challenges for you and to your life now? And is there someone else or some other force that's capable of putting you in these situations at this point where you're not in control?
Joe De Sena 35:27
You know, the funny thing is, I my life is turned upside down every single day anybody running a business knows that. It's a nightmare. Somebody said to me recently, who does the best at your Death Race. And I said, it's not the military, it's really business people, any any entrepreneur that keeps themselves fit. They're hard to compete with, because the business is that hard. So I'm getting my my, my thrill every day in business, especially still coming out a COVID. That I say to people all the time. If you're going out to run 10 miles, the first 80% is easy. If you're gonna run 100 miles, the first 80% of these you're gonna 1000 miles the first 800. It's an 80% rule. And so I can get myself to the brink. I mean, doing Killington last weekend was tough. It was tough. If it was an if it was five times that 80% of it would have been easy in the last 20% would have been tough. So there's something in your mind, that gets you to 80 and then and then the wheels fall off. That makes sense. Yeah.
Andrew Vontz 36:38
What is it about that? 20% Do you think?
Joe De Sena 36:41
When I did my first marathon many, many years ago, I got to the finish line, and I collapsed 26.2 miles. And I remember thinking, why did I collapse here? Why did I collapse at 25 or 32? Like why? I ran 300 miles straight once I ran from New York City to Vermont. Same thing applied 80% of the way, breeze like easy. That last 20% was a nightmare. But when my brain saw my house in Vermont, at mile 300, my brain saw the house, my legs exploded, I couldn't take another step. So subconsciously, the brain is looking for that finish. Right? The brain is like, try it has been trying to shut down for 300 miles, please stop doing this. You're expending too much energy. This is too dangerous. But it allows you to go like 80%. And then it's begging you it's putting brakes on it's trying to stop you. And then when it sees the finish line. It's not even a conscious decision. Your brain is doing that. By the way, the brain in the morning when you go to work out or you go to do anything like the brain is trying to get you to not do it. Don't do it be so much easier to stay in bed. Why are you doing this?
Andrew Vontz 38:05
Every day for everybody? Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, Joe listening to you talk about running 300 miles from New York to Vermont and the other things that you've described. What do you think it's like to work for you? When you know your boss can, can push himself that hard? And how do you think about managing people knowing that about yourself?
Joe De Sena 38:31
Look, I don't like to manage people. I never have liked to manage people. The people that I've done best with in my life are self motivated. They just get it done. I'm really good at creating a vision. I'm really good at motivating, but I don't want to check up on you. I like I've got bigger things to do that'll I leave that to other people. I when I was building my first business as a kid, I burned through 5060 potential employees. They lasted a day two days, including my own family. And then I stumbled upon two kids from Poland. The 80s Right, they came over before the wall was down. I didn't have to manage these kids. They showed up for work an hour before we were supposed to start work. They stayed an extra hour. There was nothing I could say that would break these guys nothing. They wanted eight days a week, not seven. They were so happy to have jobs. They were so easy to manage. I'd have to manage them. When I went to Wall Street I built a firm on Wall Street. Most of those kids I didn't have to manage. They wanted to make money. They showed up early they did the work they had to do they hustled so you know it's a weakness of mine. I'm that that is not my, my area of I'm not interested in it. I don't want to sit around and check on you and see that you're doing The work you're supposed to do now we're lucky. You know, we're 20 something years into this, we've assembled a team that can do it on their own. They don't have to be babysat. So, I don't know if I answered the question well, but But yeah, there are much better people than me that probably have MBAs and know how to manage people. And they, but I'm more of a vision guy and mission guy won't change 100 million lives, I want to get out there, I want to add things like the extra mile. That's what I want to do.
Andrew Vontz 40:35
Did you always know that about yourself in business?
Joe De Sena 40:42
You know, I have a recurring dream, I've had a recurring dream for 50 years. And the dream is basically I can't move fast enough. Something is like strapping my arms down, I want to do more, but I can't get more done. And, and so I think very early on in business, I realized I just want to do more. And for me to be able to do more, I just need people around me that could manage themselves, buy into the vision, this is what we're doing. Be accountable to yourself, like, don't have me watch over, you just get the job done. Wall Street had a lot of negatives to it. But but one of the big positives was that people that survived there people that get hired there, you're either good at it or you're not. And if you're not, you're out. So there's you don't really have to manage folks. That makes sense.
Andrew Vontz 41:38
Yeah, completely. So I mean, it must be slightly different now though.
Joe De Sena 41:43
It's much more complex. I have a great team that survives all kinds of crap. I mean, we wake up in the morning, we don't know what's coming at us, oh, my God. 300 people in California had some kind of mud on their legs, and they got to deal with something every single day. And so we got we got a team that can deal with it, take the punches, keep getting back up, and manage and manage folks. We have 500 people now around the globe. The other interesting thing about our business business. Now keep that keep that question, what interesting thing about our business is it's a religion. It's a cult. You know, it's a healthy cult, there's, there's no negative to the brand, there's nothing we're promoting or doing. It's not, it's not healthy. But it's definitely a cult. If you look at if you look at the data, in the right people or religions are falling off a bit certain certain religions and, and people are still looking for that community. And they want to get together. And this is, this is one of those healthy places to gather. So so when they, you know, they get very passionate in either direction about our church.
Andrew Vontz 43:06
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's something really fundamental about that, about people coming together in groups to move. There's a really interesting book by Barbara Ehrenreich called dancing in the streets. And it's history of human movement. And something I read in that book has fascinated me for a long time. And actually, I would love to get her on the podcast and talk to her about it. But she, she talks about, why don't like why do humans dance? Right? That's kind of an interesting question. Why do we, you know, like, there's artistic expression, but her hypothesis is that maybe the evolutionary function of dance is that humans used to gather around fires, which anybody who spent time in the wilderness, you know, that you want to be around a fire when it's when if you're not around the fires, you're you might not survive, right? So if anybody hasn't had that experience, it's a very primitive experience. And once you have it, you never forget it. But her hypothesis was that humans would dance around a fire because they could cast shadows that were larger than themselves into the wilderness. So they actually would look like a monster, to any predators that might be hunting them. And, you know, there's something about people coming together in groups to do physical activities, that's just fundamental to our human nature. And if if people don't get out and do that, they're not getting to experience that. And there is something very transformative about their crucible of effort and facing something challenging together, which is, you know, what you're facilitating. So that definitely makes a ton of sense.
Joe De Sena 44:50
There's nothing I tell everybody around the world and by the way, I give away free entry so I'm not it's not a sales pitch like you if you're if you're Got a regular person, like you said that has not experienced a fire in the wilderness or not done something so hard where the wheels are falling off and you're questioning who you are. You come out and do one of our events, you are changed. book doesn't do it a podcast doesn't do it, a movie doesn't do it. You got to come out, you got to suffer. And it will change you. It'll change you. Change doesn't happen, unless it's under pressure. Put yourself under pressure.
Andrew Vontz 45:31
And when you Joe, when you think about when you think about where the you know where you've taken the business, to the point it is now haven't gotten through the pandemic, having survived that crucible. Is there some more maximum version of this that you want to do? Is there an even bigger vision that you have for what you would like to have happen with your business empire?
Joe De Sena 45:54
There is a there is a big vision that I have that people just don't understand. Why? Why are you getting into paddleboarding? Why mountain biking? I I don't know what's going to tickle that person, what discipline and the goal, the vision is to change 100 million lives. So every decision we make has to drive the change of 100 million lives. And maybe we could do it with obstacle racing. But maybe somebody gets off the couch because they want to go mountain biking, maybe somebody gets off the couch because they want to go to Hawaii and do the toughest paddleboard race nor like so we have to have we have to be multidisciplinary in my mind to attract humans to take a chance and suffer a bit and hopefully spark that interest and the things you and I found. And so the you know, how do I how do I continue? How do we continue to expand those offerings. Like, you know, think about LVMH Louis Vuitton is a house of brands, we want to be the house of heart. If it's hard, it's challenging. If it's legit, we want it to be in our house. And that imagine someday Imagine being able to buy a season pass that allows you to do all this stuff. The same way Vail sells a pass and you can go ski any one of their resorts. That's division.
Andrew Vontz 47:24
During the time that you've had, the business technology has changed so much. And it's enabled so much for people around the world, to connect with each other to develop to access more information. It's also obviously it's totally divided people. And people spend more time with screens now than human beings typically. Has that changed anything about who shows up or how you get people into the funnel and out to the start line.
Joe De Sena 47:56
We were putting on events before social media existed. And it was very, very hard to convince people. Once you can showcase somebody dirty crawling through barbed wire doing these crazy things, it actually became easier to attract the masses. So social media has done wonders in that regard. The downside is when you when I when you and I go to a park, or we check out a sidewalk as we're driving, because nobody on all neighborhoods or kids aren't outside because I have four children. And my kids have grown up in, in this in Spartan and insanity, right? I'm a crazy person. And last night, I had to tell Charlie, my second son put the phone down as I'm looking at my phone. Right, right. So so it's it's, look, the largest, most well capitalized companies in the world are connected to that device. That is the most addictive thing on the planet. We had our kids we do a death camp every summer on our farm in Vermont. A couple of weeks long we just absolutely torture kids. It's like gonna budge training. And I was feeling like, you know, the kids worked really hard. I think they might have done 1000 burpees that day carried rocks up the mountain. They were up at 5am and ice cold water. I said let's give the kids ice cream. It's against my religion, but we'll give them ice cream. And I and I put their phones out. And I was not attempting to create an experiment by any means. I put their phones out. You and I thought we had the noise turned off. Did you hear that? No. There was a there was a thing that came across and it made a notification sorry. Anyway, it was not an experiment. And the kids went for their phones. They did not go for the ice cream the ice cream melted and And I realized that that moment, these devices are more probably the most addictive thing on the planet. So, so on the one hand, the device is allowing us to grow our business and get people outside. But on the other hand, it's keeping people off the sidewalks and not going outside, right? So and it's doing more damage than it's helping for sure. Because you and I, when we grew up, when I grew up anyway, you didn't really need Spartan Race was a Spartan Race every day, my parents had to scream to get me back inside that defined us. Because we didn't have this, we didn't have these devices that we could look at and get all these dopamine and all these chemicals, just by doing nothing. We had to go find things to do. We had to find girls, we had to find, we had to read a map, find the cord or go to a payphone not to do anything anymore.
Andrew Vontz 51:01
Yeah, do I often think about the experience of just calling someone on the phone and you're calling a family and like the mom or dad's not? I mean, just imagining a human today, going through that experience of calling a landline were, whatever some indeterminate number of people might pick up the phone, they might be listening to you. It's it's a very different world that we live in today, obviously. And as you noted, it's enabled a lot of great things. And then it's also brought with a a lot of challenges. You know, Joe, when you think about, we've talked a lot about the different physical activities and races that you've been involved in, is there anything left that you want to go do that you haven't tried yet?
Joe De Sena 51:49
The one thing I have on my mind that I there's two things I'd love to do before I leave this planet. I would like to row across the Atlantic. And I would like to walk the entire Great Wall. Like to get those two things done.
Andrew Vontz 52:04
When's it gonna happen?
Joe De Sena 52:07
You know, I'm making excuses with this answer. But I'd like all the kids to go off to college. I'd like to have somebody else's CEO of this company, and I'll be chairman. And then like you and I said earlier than I could go have fun. Right? You know, I can go have fun. Because those things would be fun, right? Somebody listening is saying, Oh my God, that sounds crazy. I'd be fun.
Andrew Vontz 52:35
Coming soon. Awesome. Well, Joe, thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you making the time. And thanks for sharing your story. It's been awesome.
Joe De Sena 52:43
Thanks for having me. We got to have you on my podcast next.
Andrew Vontz 52:46
I'd love to. That'd be great.
Joe De Sena 52:48
Yeah, shoot on email at Joe at Spartan comm. Oh, also, anybody that follows you listen to you or whatever. They're racing on me no charge. So just collect a bunch of names. Maybe you come out to one of our events or whatever. And, oh, you're in Maine. Why don't you plan on coming to Fenway? Okay, how far how far is? How far is Fenway from your house?
Andrew Vontz 53:14
I have no idea. All right, well, look
Joe De Sena 53:15
it up Fenway Boston. I'm gonna be there. You're gonna be there. We're gonna we're gonna round up a crew of your listeners. And three miles we'll just have we'll have some fun.
Andrew Vontz 53:27
Okay, that sounds awesome. Joe, I'd love it.