Joe is a bestselling author and the founder of Spartan Race. His new book called 10 Rules of Resilience: Mental Toughness for Families is out now. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about growing up in Queens, New York and working for some of the biggest mob bosses, how fitness changed his life, why it’s important to do hard things, why people are scared to get uncomfortable, how he founded Spartan Race and bought their competitor Tough Mudder and much more!

On having a difficult childhood:

“It is a crazy story. I grew up in Queens, New York, ground zero for the movie Goodfellas. A lot of organized crime took place and I wanted to be a tough guy. You grew up in that neighbourhood and everyone around you that has money and nice cars are tough guys. Also, they probably went to jail, because if you went to jail it was like earning your stripes or going to college. At a young age, like 8 or 9 years old, you start thinking could I do it? I got to go to jail. If you grew up in a neighbourhood where everyone goes to Harvard, you start to think ‘Am I smart enough?’ Here it’s the same thing. But my mother goes into a health food store in the 1970’s, and she meets a Yogi from India. He convinces her to stop eating raviolis and maybe become a vegan. So she leaves the health store and that’s it. She’s a vegan, she is going to meditate and teach yoga.”

On going to college and his first business:

“Not long thereafter, my parents get divorced. My mother is bohemian at this point, no one understands what she is talking about, including my sister and I. She moves us to Ithaca, New York. It is much more forgiving and much more open minded, it’s very hippy-ish. I go back and forth between living with my mom, but I really want to be a tough guy. Somehow I end up going to college, which was never part of my plan. Somehow I weaselled my way into Cornell University, and when I graduated, my friend convinced me to go to Wall St. At the time I had a business in Queens, I was cleaning pools. My customers were all the bosses or families of bosses of the mobs, I had 700 customers. My friend was pushing me, but I was making $250,000 a year with my pool business. I feel like a tough guy, I own my trucks and bulldozers, feeling good.”

From Wall St. to racing:

“Fast forward and I end up selling the business and go onto Wall St. I build up a pretty sizeable business trading equity and bonds. I wasn’t feeling very healthy on Wall St, I was very stressed out, so I went back to what my mother said. So I started doing some yoga and eating some plants. One day, I just start running up and down the stairs at my apartment block, and I stumbled upon this thing called Adventure Racing. There were these crazy races that went around the world, and the crazier the race was, the more interested I was. I can’t tell you how many ironman’s and marathons I did. If there was a race and it was challenging, I was interested. I had so much fun that by the early 2000’s, I was thinking it would be great to get out of Wall St and to do this as a business. It would be great to get people out of their comfort zone and get them to do something healthy.”

On early mistakes:

“I started it, but I couldn’t get anybody to come. Who would want to run a 350 mile race? That’s insane. My marketing was wrong, my product was wrong, and I would lie to people. I would say ‘Hey, come up to our farm in Vermont. We are going to have a BBQ weekend.’ I would wake you up at 5am and they would ask me why? I would respond ‘Well we have to carry the BBQ up the mountain.’ I would crush people by lying to them. Afterwards, they would say it was crazy but they loved it. But I turned it into a business and eventually that business became Spartan. Now we are in 45 countries with 1.5 million people a year taking part [pre-COVID]. We bought out our formidable competitor, Tough Mudder. I was fighting with them every day. Now, I am working on a TV show where I go around the world for the last 25 days. I go to business and beat the sh*t out of people [laughs].”

On what people say when they think about signing up:

“The people on the fence [about doing a Spartan race] will say ‘I got to get in shape first.’ Actually you have it all wrong. If you were going to get in shape first, you would already be in shape. Most people don’t do it, look at obesity rates and diabetes rates. At our core, we are motivated by the avoidance of discomfort. The thing is, when you sign up for this hard thing, then you do the work. Then it is more uncomfortable to not do the work.”

On the importance of being a Spartan racer:

“Some people go to church, some people identify with the place they work for. This is a really healthy community, 10 million strong that will do anything for you. In the middle of a race, they will stop and lend a hand. To be able to define yourself as a Spartan vs. a Hell’s Angel, it’s pretty good.”

On the new book: 10 Rules For Resilience:

“People need more resilience. It’s really a family book, I got the wakeup call 3 years ago, my kids were being asked by me to carry kettlebells through the neighbourhood. I used to make them carry rocks and all kinds of stuff just for exercise, sometimes in their pyjamas. Some lady pulls up and screams ‘Do you know him? Are you ok? Why are you carrying that?’ I said ‘Ma’am, they are my kids.’ I didn’t want to get in a fight, but it occurred to me that she hasn’t seen kids walking outside in like 15 years. Kids don’t go outside anymore, you can’t blame her. So I thought I really have to write a book on how to get kids outside of their comfort zone. They have to fail more and we have to stop over-parenting and overprotecting. Otherwise, you end up with kids that are obese and depressed.”

On what he is grateful for:

“My family, that I get to do this and I am alive.”

Featured image: Forbes