Joe De Sena: Resilience, The Quitters Office, and Life Lessons from a Crime Boss

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Joe De Sena
Resilience, The Quitters Office, and Life Lessons from a Crime Boss

Joe De Sena is the founder and CEO of Spartan, the world’s leading endurance sports brand. He has built Spartan into a global fitness and wellness brand, with a 10 million+ community of athletes across the globe. Under his leadership, Spartan’s portfolio of brands has grown to include Spartan Trail, DEKA, La Ruta, Tough Mudder, and HIGHLANDER. Joe is also a New York Times bestselling author of a number of books.

We get into the origin of Spartan, Joe’s love of suffering (and torturing others?), and the amazing ability Joe has of inviting people in to discover their own greatness.

For more info about Joe, go to his website, check out Spartan, and follow him on Instagram.

Races, Billionaires, and Bosses mentioned in the episode: 

05:00  Juliet and Joe are secretly best friends
05:30  Life lessons from a crime boss
07:07  Grant Cardone had Joe out to speak at an event in Las Vegas – turns out it was 20k people and Joe was followed by Mark Wahlberg and Tom Brady
11:55  Kelly’s friend Southnarc once said, “I can’t guarantee this is a fight, but I can guarantee you an honest experience”
12:45  Joe told Georgia she should sell (3k) cookies at Spartan SF and left her to figure out the logistics
13:45  “Fire, Ready, Aim”
14:20  The Death Race explained
16:50  Death Race + bulls = Mexico Death Race
20:40  You learn a lot about a person’s resilience when you flip them in a class 5 rapid
23:30  Lessons in not being precious: the Starrett’s did a Spartan in SF with Joe and his son – who roll up and go straight into the race in jeans and kids Crocs
25:55  Lessons in resilience: at the Eco Challenge someone stole Joe’s shoes before the race so he did the whole race in bike shoes, and at another 100 miler Joe forgot his shoes and did the whole race in cheap sneakers he bought at Walmart
27:18  Joe wrote a book on parenting: 10 Rules for Resilience: Mental Toughness for Families
31:20  Contrasting global parenting styles
36:20  Death Camp for kids
41:40  The Quitters Office; Zach Even-Esh
45:40  A neurosurgeon told Joe that they can see tracks that are laid in the brain when people complete hard tasks, and gaps when they don’t finish the hard thing
46:19  Environment matters for you and your kids
48:00  The origin of Spartan – from cleaning pools, to Wall Street, to endurance races
50:10  In 2010, the races shifted to military style obstacle training
52:00  Spartan is truly accessible to any athletic abiity
53:20  The Spartan tagline is “You’ll know at the finish line”
53:30  Joe has offered a free race to anyone that isn’t sure about doing a Spartan – contact us!
54:30  Physical: 100

Full Transcript

Sponsor

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