The Art of Manliness - #63： Spartan Up With Joe DeSena

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00:00:38.420 Hey everyone, Brett McKay here.

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00:02:10.000 Let's do this.

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00:02:16.540 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:02:30.580 Now, if you haven't been living under a rock,

00:02:32.780 you've probably heard of these mud runs that are sweeping the country.

00:02:36.040 It's basically where people get together and they do a race, 0.70

00:02:40.400 but there's obstacles in mud.

00:02:41.880 They jump over fire.

00:02:43.440 They crawl under barbed wire.

00:02:44.820 They climb over giant walls.

00:02:47.080 They're a lot of fun.

00:02:48.480 And one of the more popular mud races is the Spartan race.

00:02:53.280 I mean, it just has a passionate following,

00:02:55.320 people who will travel around the world just to do a race. 0.71

00:02:58.980 And our guest today is the founder of the Spartan race.

00:03:03.120 His name is Joe DeSena.

00:03:05.160 And he lives in lovely Vermont, one of my dream places to go, hopefully live one day.

00:03:11.240 Anyways, he's come out with a new book called Spartan Up,

00:03:13.540 A Take No Prisoner's Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life.

00:03:18.160 And it's basically the story of obstacles that he's overcome personally

00:03:22.580 and obstacles he's overcome to start the Spartan race.

00:03:26.780 And then he sort of lays out a philosophy, a Spartan Up philosophy that others can follow

00:03:32.920 to overcome obstacles and turn those obstacles into victories.

00:03:36.340 Really good book.

00:03:36.920 We're going to talk about what it means to Spartan Up.

00:03:38.900 We're going to talk about mud races, the future of mud racing.

00:03:41.060 And we're going to talk about how to overcome challenges.

00:03:44.960 So stay tuned.

00:03:46.800 Joe DeSena, welcome to the show.

00:03:48.820 Thanks for having me.

00:03:49.720 All right.

00:03:49.960 So you started the Spartan race, this thing that's kind of taken the country by storm.

00:03:55.600 But before we get talking about that, the world, yeah.

00:03:59.320 Let's talk a bit about, you know, before the Spartan race, because that's really interesting.

00:04:04.540 You did a lot of adventure races and endurance events.

00:04:07.240 In fact, you started your book, Spartan Up, about this grueling endurance event you were

00:04:12.960 doing in the snow.

00:04:15.420 And it was just like, it was horrible.

00:04:16.540 I was just like, I can't believe you did this.

00:04:18.460 But what drew you to those types of activities?

00:04:21.220 Were you like, when you were a kid, were you like super active and like adventurous?

00:04:25.140 Or was there something that compelled you to start doing that sort of thing?

00:04:28.740 It's funny because I spent a lot of time thinking about that.

00:04:32.060 Obviously, we're writing the book.

00:04:33.020 And now that we have four children, what made me, what drove me or what drives me?

00:04:38.300 And I would say you're a product of your environment.

00:04:42.320 And so my mom was the ultimate Spartan, meditating, yoga, fasting for 30 days at a clip, which is 0.99

00:04:52.280 insane in and of itself.

00:04:54.540 Teaching my sister and I at a young age about long distance running.

00:04:58.160 There was a race in, not really a race, more of a run, in Flushing, Queens.

00:05:05.400 That's a 3,000 mile run around a one mile loop.

00:05:08.780 So you can imagine, I think it's called the Transcendence Run.

00:05:11.400 You can imagine how you've got to get your mind focused to do 3,000 loops in a one mile loop.

00:05:18.660 So growing up around her and then growing up around my dad, who was the ultimate entrepreneur,

00:05:24.580 was just a maniac 24-7, cared less about his health and wellness and just more about printing

00:05:31.720 money and running businesses.

00:05:34.180 You grow up around that.

00:05:35.960 You throw in a couple of masons, like guys that actually build rock walls and brick walls 0.98

00:05:41.740 and welders, and those are the people I grew up around, and you start to build this character

00:05:47.440 as a person that just get it done.

00:05:51.540 And so that's been my DNA from the start.

00:05:56.060 And so you took that and you saw these adventure races and endurance events, and you're like,

00:06:02.020 I can, that's something I can take my, this sort of DNA that I have and, I don't know,

00:06:07.880 express it, right?

00:06:09.080 Well, not to take anything away from how tough those endurance races were, especially the

00:06:13.460 one that we talk about in the beginning of the book, because that was miserable.

00:06:16.160 If you own your own business, and that business happens to include physical labor, everything

00:06:22.200 that can go wrong will go wrong.

00:06:24.580 And it is an endurance race on steroids running a business like that.

00:06:29.500 So we did construction.

00:06:30.800 We had 700 customers.

00:06:32.400 I was a young guy.

00:06:33.240 We had a bunch of trucks.

00:06:34.780 Who doesn't show up for work?

00:06:35.800 What truck breaks down?

00:06:37.960 Customers screaming.

00:06:39.320 You name it, we had our share of problems on a daily basis.

00:06:42.520 So as crazy as this sounds, going and spending eight or 10 days in 30 below weather, from

00:06:48.280 that is a vacation.

00:06:51.000 I mean, it's terrible, and it hurts, but it's a vacation.

00:06:54.240 Yeah, that's, I've kind of, I mean, I've noticed that stuff in my own life, like the

00:06:57.920 sort of, it's the grind, right?

00:07:00.360 Every day, it's not really that hard, but it just grinds you down.

00:07:04.000 But like, getting out into the woods and doing a hike, or doing an obstacle race, for some

00:07:09.440 reason, that just energizes me.

00:07:11.040 It's sort of counterintuitive.

00:07:12.700 It clears your mind, right?

00:07:13.780 Because what I like to describe to people is all the things that are unimportant, right?

00:07:20.300 The things you're asking about that make you upset and stress you out, they all go away.

00:07:24.560 And when you get to the place, it might be on day one, day two, day three, at some point,

00:07:29.700 I would get to a place where I just want water, food, and shelter.

00:07:33.660 And when you get there, that's very refreshing, because it's like, nothing else matters.

00:07:39.700 Okay, so you did all these endurance events, and you were just in your DNAs to be gritty

00:07:45.660 and look for challenges.

00:07:48.640 So how did the idea for the Spartan race come up?

00:07:53.640 Was it something you wanted to do for yourself, or was it like, I want to share this with other

00:07:57.880 people?

00:07:58.460 I think it was more of a share.

00:07:59.840 I think we were really interested in, can we toughen other people up?

00:08:04.060 Again, going back to owning your own business, and a lot of this philosophy in the book comes

00:08:08.680 from owning my own business.

00:08:10.060 You get frustrated when you hire people, right?

00:08:12.020 And you hire those people, and they don't show up for work.

00:08:14.020 They don't work as hard as you'd like.

00:08:15.860 But then you find some great ones.

00:08:17.400 And for me, especially when we were running businesses that required physical labor, those

00:08:22.180 were people typically from another country, and typically from a country where they had

00:08:26.100 a tough upbringing.

00:08:27.580 And so you see those people versus us, Americans, and I can't even keep up with these guys, or

00:08:33.180 women. 0.81

00:08:33.880 They outwork me any day of the week.

00:08:36.000 And so that's embarrassing if you're an American, right?

00:08:39.740 How do we toughen up our society, our culture?

00:08:43.740 And so that's what was deep-rooted in the decision to start Spartan Race.

00:08:47.980 Yeah.

00:08:48.220 So I mean, is that what you hope people get out of this part?

00:08:51.960 Like, you know, they're going to go, and they're going to have a good experience.

00:08:54.900 It's fun, right?

00:08:55.720 You get to roll around in the mud and do obstacles and things like that.

00:08:59.100 But what is it you really, I mean, is it just you want people to toughen up?

00:09:02.420 Or is there something else you want people to get out of your races?

00:09:05.360 Yeah.

00:09:05.660 I mean, toughen up is one part of it.

00:09:07.080 And the thing that I'm most interested in, we're most interested in, is changing people's

00:09:12.920 frame of reference.

00:09:14.280 So going back to the example I just gave of let's get back to water, food, and shelter

00:09:19.520 as the only things we desire, right, when you're out on that race.

00:09:22.680 If you can get to that place, well, when the kid's screaming, or the coffee's too cold,

00:09:26.880 or the car doesn't start, or any of the things we deal with on a daily basis that in the

00:09:31.160 proper frame of reference are no big deal.

00:09:33.280 But in the wrong frame of reference, our disaster that set us off when we start fights in our

00:09:37.840 relationships over them, the world becomes, your life becomes better, the world becomes

00:09:42.540 a better place if we can get everybody in the right frame of reference.

00:09:46.120 And I think in our current world, which is awesome, right, to have all the abundance

00:09:52.320 we have, I just look at my dog, right?

00:09:54.760 We're animals just like my dog.

00:09:56.700 My dog got lost.

00:09:58.900 We were 24 hours into it.

00:10:00.600 We live within, you know, 30,000 acres of land here.

00:10:04.620 So finding a dog is like finding the plane that we still haven't found, right?

00:10:11.740 Yeah, my wife and I, we call Vermont like dog heaven.

00:10:14.900 It's like where every dog probably wants to be.

00:10:17.380 Yeah.

00:10:17.820 So my dog's gone.

00:10:19.260 Can't find her.

00:10:20.280 She's got a leash on. 0.98

00:10:21.400 And I call up an expert that's got tracking bloodhounds.

00:10:26.120 And I said, look, I'm concerned the dog is probably going to get stuck with the leash

00:10:29.460 on a log or something.

00:10:30.760 I'll be out there hiking a year from now and I'll find a bag of bones tied to a leash and

00:10:35.000 I'm going to lose my stuff.

00:10:36.960 So this is most interesting to me.

00:10:39.300 The woman on the other end of the phone says, don't worry.

00:10:42.540 Two days into it, that dog will go back to being an animal and will chew through the leash.

00:10:47.260 And that's really interesting to me because she's forgotten.

00:10:51.000 She's behind me right now.

00:10:52.060 You can't see her.

00:10:52.700 This dog, she's forgotten how to be an animal, right?

00:10:55.900 We've forgotten how to be animals.

00:10:58.220 And certainly being an animal has some negatives, but it's got some massive positives too.

00:11:03.500 You just become more gritty, the term you've used.

00:11:06.720 You've got proper frames of reference.

00:11:08.820 You really understand what's important and what's not.

00:11:12.220 And so I think we need more of that.

00:11:13.400 I think the whole world has gone through this evolution of faster, easier, better.

00:11:22.340 And Spartan Race really is an attempt that maybe that's not better.

00:11:26.600 Maybe faster and easier is not better.

00:11:28.240 Maybe delaying gratification is better.

00:11:30.820 Maybe making it a little harder on ourselves is better.

00:11:33.520 So that's what this is about.

00:11:35.420 Yeah.

00:11:35.840 I mean, I guess maybe that's one of the questions I had was, why do you think there's like this

00:11:40.400 sudden uptick in interest in like the Spartan Race and like sort of this philosophy that

00:11:44.040 you're espousing in your book?

00:11:45.420 I mean, there's other obstacle races and sort of these tough challenges.

00:11:48.640 And like people are paying money to like be physically miserable, right, for a couple

00:11:54.160 hours.

00:11:54.820 We're really authentic.

00:11:56.060 I think in our DNA, like it comes through.

00:11:58.900 This is not just a business for us.

00:12:00.720 But on the whole, why people are participating is because it feels really good.

00:12:04.840 Yeah.

00:12:05.080 Um, and it's addictive and I know because I got addicted to it, you clearly got addicted

00:12:10.120 to it.

00:12:10.580 And so you get out there and you do it and, uh, you can't recreate the feeling of being

00:12:16.600 in the woods and sweating and getting your heart pounding and you can't recreate that

00:12:19.860 in a gym.

00:12:20.640 So one, it feels really good too.

00:12:22.520 I think we're very authentic and three, let's not forget social media.

00:12:26.260 Uh, social media has really changed the playing field for something to go viral.

00:12:31.220 The old days, the horse and carriage had to move that message from town.

00:12:34.620 Now it, now it moves at the speed of light.

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00:13:36.520 And now back to the show.

00:13:38.620 Yeah.

00:13:39.020 Okay.

00:13:40.240 So I guess I think we might get a little ahead of ourselves.

00:13:42.640 There might be some people, for some reason, who've been living under a rock, who don't

00:13:46.940 know what a Spartan race is or what a mud run is.

00:13:49.400 Can you kind of walk us through what you put people through in your obstacle courses?

00:13:56.380 Yeah.

00:13:56.640 So it's a military-inspired event.

00:14:00.140 You're going to crawl under barbed wire, preferably for a long time.

00:14:03.700 That's my signature obstacle.

00:14:05.880 You're going to climb over walls because most of us have stronger lower bodies than we do

00:14:10.760 upper bodies.

00:14:11.420 So that's going to be miserable getting up and over walls over and over.

00:14:15.440 You're going to climb rope.

00:14:16.480 Again, another nightmare for many people, climbing a 15, 20-foot rope.

00:14:21.600 You're going to go over cargo nets and deal with your fear of heights.

00:14:25.140 You're going to jump over fire.

00:14:26.880 Sounds silly, but lots of people have issues with getting too close to fire.

00:14:31.840 You're certainly going to deal with the elements of earth, mud, water, and have to get dirty,

00:14:37.700 which it's been instilled in us since we were kids, not to get dirty, not to soil our

00:14:44.180 clothes.

00:14:45.900 But those obstacles in succession and you competing with 9,900 other people to your

00:14:54.480 your left and right, transforms you.

00:14:57.920 I remember we took in investors, I think, three or four years into this business.

00:15:03.560 And I remember sitting down with the investors and we're talking about the brand.

00:15:07.420 What is the brand?

00:15:08.240 What is the message?

00:15:09.560 And I said, we transform lives.

00:15:11.740 And the investors said, well, I don't know if that's really a message you want to go out

00:15:15.260 with because I don't think people want their lives transformed.

00:15:17.220 I don't know about that because I get an email every single day, if not 20 of them, that

00:15:24.000 say, hey, you changed my life.

00:15:25.260 I lost 145 pounds or I'm eating healthy or I have new friends or I'm going to bed early.

00:15:30.040 I'm waking up early.

00:15:30.960 So, so this, this idea, this, this platform we've created, uh, changes lives.

00:15:39.040 Yeah.

00:15:39.520 That was one of the things I loved about, you know, reading these stories in your, in your

00:15:42.540 book about people who have started doing Spartan races and yeah, the Spartan race is not just

00:15:47.560 the race.

00:15:47.940 There's sort of like a, it's a, it's a lifestyle, right?

00:15:50.560 Um, and you just mentioned a few examples of people who lost weight, but was there a

00:15:54.820 story in particular of someone who's life just completely transformed for the better

00:16:00.940 because of Spartan?

00:16:03.540 I'll give you two.

00:16:04.700 I'll give you one, one of my craziest ones and well, they're both crazy, but this first

00:16:10.020 one, I'm at our race in New York, uh, Tuxedo Ridge.

00:16:13.400 It's a ski resort and a guy missing his teeth looking very scruffy and beaten up comes up to

00:16:20.440 me and says, I want you to know you changed my life.

00:16:22.400 Not that part's not weird.

00:16:24.140 Cause I get that all the time.

00:16:25.340 This is where it gets weird.

00:16:27.080 He says, I'm driving my pickup truck and I hear an advertisement on the radio for Spartan

00:16:31.400 race.

00:16:31.640 And for whatever reason, it strikes a chord at this moment in time.

00:16:35.160 He says, I'm addicted to drugs and alcohol.

00:16:37.580 And I've been to, I've been addicted to them for a long time.

00:16:40.640 I stopped the truck.

00:16:42.460 I go into the woods and I don't come out of the woods for 30 days.

00:16:46.340 He says, I live, I live in the woods.

00:16:48.580 He got, now who knows if this was, if he was just like drunk or, or a high, but, um, he's

00:16:54.220 in the woods for 30 days.

00:16:55.400 According to him, he catches his own fish, cleans himself up and, and he had just gotten

00:17:02.160 out of the woods and was doing the race.

00:17:04.300 So there's an extreme example of a crazy transformation.

00:17:09.640 Chris Davis got roped into doing a, um, a Spartan sprint.

00:17:14.040 I believe in Georgia, someone roped him into it saying it was just a 5k.

00:17:18.860 He had no idea it included obstacles.

00:17:20.480 It took him seven hours, seven hours to complete, you know, three and a half miles.

00:17:26.100 He was 696 pounds.

00:17:29.200 Whoa.

00:17:30.400 He had been eating two, two liters, drinking two, two liters sprites, eating eight egg

00:17:34.680 McMuffins every day, just for breakfast.

00:17:36.940 Uh, I got ahold of him.

00:17:38.640 I, we talked to his company that he worked for Comcast.

00:17:41.480 They allowed him to take a leave of absence.

00:17:44.300 He moved to Vermont and when he left Vermont, he weighed 268 pounds or something.

00:17:51.740 So there's another extreme example of a transformation.

00:17:55.320 That's amazing.

00:17:55.960 I was, I'm impressed that he was able to finish that, uh, the 5k.

00:17:59.660 Yeah, unbelievable.

00:18:00.640 I mean, that's that talk about he's, he had the mental resilience, the mental fortitude.

00:18:04.200 It just needed to, uh, I think he was afraid he was going to die on the course and he just

00:18:07.820 had to get home.

00:18:08.400 All right.

00:18:10.560 And so your book, it's called Spartan Up.

00:18:12.440 What do you mean when you tell people like you need a Spartan Up?

00:18:15.640 Because I've heard, you know, you hear man up and like cowboy up.

00:18:18.820 I mean, what do you, what does Spartan Up mean?

00:18:20.880 So, um, you've been, you've been to the airport where somebody is completely losing their cool

00:18:25.980 on like the, the, uh, check-in woman at the air for the airline over an extra $20 fee. 0.97

00:18:32.440 I mean, going nuts right in front of their family or for me, I like to road cycle where

00:18:38.860 a pickup truck drives by and honks and throws something at you because you're, you're three

00:18:44.020 inches in the road further than you should be on your bike.

00:18:46.500 And that caused this person a massive inconvenience.

00:18:49.200 That's unacceptable behavior in, in our society.

00:18:53.120 And that stems from, uh, this bubble wrap life we all live in.

00:18:58.360 And, and, uh, and so Spartan Up to me, to us means, um, get over the BS, stop complaining

00:19:06.800 about the small stuff and, and focus on what really matters, right?

00:19:10.220 Stop, uh, get, add a little grit to your life.

00:19:13.960 Um, it's not so bad.

00:19:15.540 One of the things I like to do for myself and I tell people is when things are bad, because

00:19:20.620 things are going to be bad every day, you're going to have some problem.

00:19:23.500 Uh, you just got to say, well, it could be right.

00:19:26.540 Like it could be snowing.

00:19:28.980 I, you know, I could have got struck by lightning.

00:19:30.980 I could be, God forbid, missing a leg.

00:19:33.180 The other day I ran out of it could be, and I just said, well, I could be dead because I

00:19:36.980 had already, I had already reached the level of it could be.

00:19:40.880 Was there something from your, like, uh, your past that drew you to the Spartans?

00:19:46.140 Like, you know, cause we're really on the art of manliness.

00:19:48.060 We write about a lot about Roman and Greek history.

00:19:51.280 So I'm interested, like what, what drew you to Sparta?

00:19:54.240 You know, I, I, um, this is not the, this is not my favorite, uh, reason behind some

00:20:00.600 of it, but I grew up in Queens and the neighborhood I grew up in was organized crime capital of

00:20:05.400 the world.

00:20:05.940 So as a kid, the people we aspired to be as kids were the guys with all the money and

00:20:12.600 the guys that had all the money were these organized crime figures.

00:20:15.560 And the conversations about those people were, could you do the time?

00:20:19.780 You know, you can't be a rat and it had all this discipline associated with it.

00:20:24.520 And then obviously you, you, you grew up a little more, you learn a little more and

00:20:27.400 you look to the military.

00:20:28.240 They have enormous amount of, uh, discipline associated with them.

00:20:31.380 But, but when you really look at history, there's nobody like the Spartans when, when

00:20:36.640 it comes to just discipline, making a commitment and sticking to it.

00:20:40.140 So yeah, I mean, whether, whether it's a movie that inspires us or, or a book or, you know,

00:20:46.720 just some fictitious character or an organized crime figure, it's usually around that unwavering

00:20:52.300 discipline that, that individual, that character has.

00:20:55.480 And, uh, there's nothing like Spartans when it comes to that.

00:20:58.380 Definitely.

00:20:59.320 I'm curious, what is, what do you think is the future of like the Spartan race and obstacle

00:21:04.100 races in general?

00:21:04.820 Cause I've been reading that, you know, insurance companies are kind of getting leery of them.

00:21:09.560 States are talking about regulating them.

00:21:11.520 I mean, is that something you guys are worried about or is just the future bright?

00:21:15.820 We take the sport pretty seriously.

00:21:17.500 Unlike, uh, many of our competitors, we, we don't add obstacles that don't have an athletic

00:21:23.040 or mental, they have to be athletic in nature to, you know, we test them over and over.

00:21:28.220 We've got judges on the course.

00:21:30.160 We started our own federation.

00:21:32.180 We'll be launching it probably in the next two, two plus months that will regulate all

00:21:37.400 our races around the globe.

00:21:39.040 So I think States insurance companies have a very little issue with the way we run our

00:21:45.440 events.

00:21:45.880 Will people get hurt?

00:21:46.680 Of course they will, but they get hurt running marathons, five Ks walking across the street.

00:21:50.500 As long as we take the measures we're taking and, and treat it as seriously, again, for

00:21:55.660 us, it's not a mud party.

00:21:56.700 We're not looking to get everybody drunk.

00:21:58.460 Yeah.

00:21:59.060 Uh, that's just not our, it's not our scene.

00:22:01.400 There are very good economics associated with throwing a lot of mud and beer at people.

00:22:06.460 That's just not us.

00:22:08.540 Oh, well, good.

00:22:09.280 I think I read somewhere this could possibly be an Olympic event.

00:22:13.200 Are you, is that something that you guys are shooting for?

00:22:15.560 That's our plan.

00:22:16.560 We, uh, we've already had some preliminary talks with the IOC and getting process in place.

00:22:21.840 Who knows how long it'll take, but, um, if, uh, curling and ping pong are in there, we

00:22:28.220 can get in there.

00:22:28.880 That's awesome.

00:22:30.100 Well, I'd love to see that.

00:22:31.360 That'd be a lot of, a lot of fun to, to watch, uh, the mud races or a Spartan race on, on

00:22:36.540 the Olympics.

00:22:37.380 I mean, one thing I like to do in these podcasts is, you know, ask the person who I'm interviewing

00:22:41.840 sort of like a, just like a practical takeaway that, you know, people who are listening to

00:22:45.840 this right now can do to apply the principle that they're preaching or advocating in their

00:22:51.380 book or whatever.

00:22:52.060 Or so, I mean, who men who are listening right now, what can they do today to start like

00:22:55.700 spartening up their own life?

00:22:57.760 Well, so you've heard of the cookie test, right?

00:23:00.680 In the 1960s.

00:23:01.780 Um, so that's, that's delaying gratification, not taking the cookie now and waiting for two

00:23:08.520 cookies later.

00:23:09.220 And so I would say the first thing, uh, you could do, whoever's listening out there is

00:23:15.460 start by waking up early in the morning and not taking the cookie, not hitting the snooze

00:23:18.860 button.

00:23:19.400 Step one is commit.

00:23:21.180 I'm going to work out and sweat, you know, working out can mean a lot of things.

00:23:25.420 You're going to sweat every morning for at least 30 minutes for different people.

00:23:30.000 That means different things.

00:23:30.900 That could be a walk up a hill that could be a taking the garbage out, whatever it is.

00:23:35.320 You're going to commit to 30 minutes every morning before work.

00:23:38.160 That one little thing will start to change your life because what it'll do is it'll put

00:23:43.120 you to bed earlier because you know, you got to wake up early.

00:23:45.820 Um, you'll probably drink a little less.

00:23:47.640 Everybody that sips a little wine has a little beer, whatever.

00:23:49.620 You know what?

00:23:49.900 I got to wake up early and do my workout.

00:23:51.320 I'm not going to, I'm not going to do that.

00:23:53.100 You'll start watching what you eat.

00:23:54.720 You might even start hanging out with new friends that are waking up early.

00:23:57.660 So one little thing that has a massive domino effect, I would, I would say is wake up early

00:24:01.900 and work out.

00:24:03.080 Awesome.

00:24:03.240 Well, Joe, where can people find more about your book?

00:24:06.400 So spartanupthebook.com.

00:24:08.940 Awesome.

00:24:09.560 So everyone go check that out.

00:24:10.640 It's a, it's a great read.

00:24:11.720 Very inspirational.

00:24:12.400 I got a lot out of it.

00:24:13.580 Well, Joe DeSinna, thank you so much for your time.

00:24:15.980 It's been a pleasure.

00:24:17.300 Thanks for having me.

00:24:18.180 Our guest today was Joe DeSinna.

00:24:19.840 Joe is the founder of the Spartan Race and author of the book Spartan Up.

00:24:23.700 You can find Joe's book on amazon.com for pre-order.

00:24:27.240 He's also created a special discount for AOM podcast listeners.

00:24:30.800 If you go to bit.ly slash AOM Spartan, go through the order process and enter in the discount

00:24:39.360 code manliness, M-A-N-L-I-N-E-S-S.

00:24:43.280 You'll get a 10% discount off of your pre-order.

00:24:46.680 So go ahead and pick it up.

00:24:48.080 Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - April 12, 2014

#63： Spartan Up With Joe DeSena

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