The High Value Of Doing Hard Things with Joe De Sena

What's more rewarding than making a living in the work that you were born to do? How about getting some free money? Right now, you could win one of our $500 weekly prizes or the $3,000 grand prize in the Ramsey Cash giveaway. Just go to ramsysolutions.com and enter daily. No purchase necessary, but you must be 18 or older to win. I tell everybody, like if you want to do anything big in your life, really worthwhile, you have to figure out your why. Why are you doing it? Your purpose, your north star, your true north. I am so inspired by a young person asking because 99.999% of them don't ask. They don't have energy. They don't. And the ones that ask, you want to help. There's no good alternative to a tough moment in your life other than going to do something really hard. There's some great stuff for our audience to learn here. You take one more shot. Was it the format change? You change something. What made this one work when all the others did? What did you learn? Folks, you're going to love this conversation with, I think, one of the ultimate tough guys, Joe DeSenna, founder of the Spartan race. He's a media rock star as well. He's just a common sense tough guy. Tough guy in that he understands grit. We go deep on grit. How do we develop it? Why it's lacking in our world today? And so much more. It's so much fun. Here's Joe DeSenna. All right, Joe. So I, here's what I want to know. I want to know, are you the kid who is always super active or a winded fitness become a thing for you? Was it a function of how you're wired versus environment? I'm just curious. You know, I was actually a chubby kid. Really? Yeah, my wife and I, we have four children. And I look at my four children and think about who I was and them. And my youngest is just always on. It's not that she wakes up and runs 10 miles. She just always switched on. And I was always switched on, but I was chubby. I couldn't do any pullups. I was fighting like hell to be one of the guys. But my friends were faster on, we played football in the street. They were faster. They were stronger. They had perfect V shapes. They just look great. And I just didn't have that look. And I didn't have that speed. And maybe the fact that I didn't is what drove me to just constantly be working at it. So anyway, I discovered probably every teenager I discovered lifting and working out at some point. And it just became like a religion for me. Wow. Would you say it was therapeutic? Well, I definitely felt better. At the end of a workout, I felt better. I felt better just just defining myself as somebody who stayed fit. I had seen the godfather at a young age. I grew up in a very Italian, very organized crime riddled neighborhood. And I had seen the godfather. And when Marlon Brando discusses with his kids that we don't do drugs, we don't touch drugs, that scene really hit me as here was the boss. And I lived in a neighborhood full of bosses. Here was the boss laying down the rules. And that seemed to me like a pretty powerful stance in life to take. And so I really just stayed away from that stuff. And rather than wanting to fit in with people that did it, I felt like I almost felt like I sat above people because I didn't do it. How early in your adolescence or childhood do you start thinking about your long term future? And I'm curious if any of those early musings or wonderings are tied to what you're doing today? Well, it's a crazy story. So here I was, I grew up, if you saw the movie Goodfellas, I grew up literally where that was filmed. The folks that are the narrative around the people in that movie lived across the street from us. So while it was very infused in our daily life, my mother, her mother, my grandmother, I'd gotten sick, she'd cancer. It was the 70s. And my mom and her sister, my aunt, were trying to figure out a solution to this cancer. And they walked into probably the only health food store in the entire East Coast that had incense burning way before Lulu lemon or Whole Foods or yoga journal. This is early 70s. And there happens to be an Indian guru in the health food store who had just landed at JFK airport. 70 something years old and somehow bends my mother's ear about, if you want your mom to be healthy, if you want to be healthy, you've got to follow this path rather than raviolis, and cigarettes and all the things that were cool and hit back then. It's yoga, meditation, become a vegan. And this particular yogi wanted to show the world how strong the mind is. You'll see yogis do incredible things. They'll fast for many days. They'll meditate for many days. But this gentleman formed a foot running race in Queens, New York. It still exists today called the Transcendence Run. And it's 3,100 miles around a one mile loop. And it takes 50 to 60 days for the best runners. They'll run 50 to 60 miles every day. They'll sleep in their car. About eight people a year sign up for this thing. Anyway, my mom was influenced by all of this. And as a young kid, my sister, we obviously, even though I thought it was all crazy, I wanted rolls, $100 bills and catalax. I did not want beads around my neck in an orange robe. And I'm certainly not running 3,100 miles. But just through osmosis, it starts to leak in. And then on the other side, with my dad and all the guys in the neighborhood, they were just a stoic. They were just as tough in their own way. And they would get 25 year bids in jail that you had to think about as a young kid. If you want to go down that road, you're probably going to jail. Are you tough enough to kill somebody? Are you tough enough to run 3,100 miles? Are you tough enough to meditate for 30 days? So this tough thing was coming at me from every angle. And so I started taking cold showers and carrying rocks around the neighborhood and started to express tough in any way I could. Because I certainly didn't look tough. I was chubby. I had red hair. And my friends, like I said, they all had V shapes and had dark skin and slick back hair. Wow. So what do you say? Here's what I want people to hear. Because I think there are a lot of people that have no idea how tough kids actually can be. I really believe that. I really believe we've got a set of parents now that are so worried about their kids feeling good that they don't teach them how to do good. And hard things, hard work, we know, produces all kinds of physical, mental, spiritual, emotional benefits. But I'm just curious, if you take yourself back there where you start to develop this toughness, what were the real benefits that you remember as a team going, ah, there's a reward here. Well, a couple of things. I mean, I know a lot more now than I did then. And like, this is a fact, what I'm about to say. So if you're listening to this, you're watching this, the only way is the hard way. The only way. That's right. If God forbid you or a loved one gets sick, you get some really bad news, somebody around you dies. If God forbid that happens to you today, tomorrow or a year from now, it's going to happen. I mean, it just, that's just the way life rolls. The best thing you can do is go do something hard. That is the way out of a really hard moment. And the reason that is, and then I'll get back to my thoughts as a kid, but the reason that is, is throughout our history on the planet, our species would respond to challenging moments, typically by like running from a lion, like escaping a hailstorm, where you had a physical response to a mental obstacle. And we don't have that anymore, right? If we're stuck in traffic and we're losing our mind, we're screaming, you know, we're pissed off, but we don't have a physical response, we're not running, we got a bad email, and we're just absorbing all this tension and stress with no physical response. And so like, if you want to feel good, go do 30 burpees, take a culture, you will feel good immediately. You're alternative to that. Think about the alternative. The alternative to doing what I'm saying is you could drink, you could do drugs, you could sleep in late and be depressed. Like there's no good alternative to a tough moment in your life, other than going to do something really hard. It's right. It's absolutely not. Yeah. It's absolutely right. So you could eat a bunch of cheesecake, like, no other alternative is a good alternative. So, and I don't know at a young age. You figured this out though. I mean, through all of the stuff you're talking about carrying rocks around the yard, you start to realize there's some benefits here without truly being able to probably process it the way you do now. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think I'm somehow I'm a thinker. And if I go back 40 years, carrying the rock around the neighborhood, going for a run, whatever that thing I was doing that was making me sweat and breathe heavy, I probably started to get a clear mind. Matter of fact, I can remember a moment right now running over the bridge on Cross Bay Bullock, like you start to get a clear mind. It's almost like meditating, right? And then you feel really good. And then if you're an eater, like I am, because I grew up in an Italian neighborhood where all we talked about was food, literally food and jail and money. That was it. So if you're an eater, not only do you get a clear mind, not only do you feel good, but then you can eat a little more. Right. So, right? Yeah. So so I don't know, I started to, I think the problem a lot of people have, I think you're hitting on something. They don't know what it feels like, right, to be to be clean, to be out of like. And so until you tasted that, why would you chase it? You probably wouldn't. Exactly. Well, you know, I want you to speak to this, because I think you have a very unique framework to be able to process this question. You just touched on it. The very fact that it's hard, hard things the hard way. Well, that implies a whole lot of scary things that our society now, I think it's very different than when you and I grew up. I mean, marketing now and marketing then was all about fear. And when you talk about decades and decades and decades of fearful messages, you can't sell safety, Joe, without selling fear. It feels like in today's world. And so we've got, I think that the most scared society that we've ever seen, everybody's so freaking scared. And you talk about one of the fears of doing hard things is the unknown. They don't know what's on the other side of hard things, because we've not taught people that that's what you got to do to experience great things. When did it shift? Do you feel like there's a shift? Do you have a different take? I don't mind if you disagree with that take. I want to know your thoughts on that. No, I think you're absolutely, look, I think as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about it. I think the internet and having access to information all day, every day at a rapid pace is different than the 1970s live in, let's say, in the country. And it's just natural to let your kid go play outside because they don't have a phone on their board and they might fall from a tree. And you might not see a post about all the kids that fall from trees and how dangerous, like, you know what I mean? So, but if you see it, I didn't even know what a bike helmet was. Let's be honest. Yeah, like, there's certainly some good that came out of it. Like a bike helmet is good. A ski helmet is good at 60 miles an hour, right? Like it's good. But like all the other negativity that comes with it is not so good. But let's be honest for a second. If I show up in your neighborhood, all right, with a bike helmet on when you were 15 or 16, what do you do to me? 15, six year old Ken Coleman, what happens to me? Be honest. Ken would have been knocked out. Who is this guy? Absolutely. You would have been knocked out. So, no, I, you know, it's got to become cool for it to make its way into society. And, and now here's a great story. To your point, my boys and my girls, I've had them do crazy things. My, my eight year old ran the Boston Marathon, my seven year old boy ran the New York Marathon, my daughter ran a Spartan beast in Indonesia. And these are not like unbelievable feats by any stretch of the imagination. If you go into parts of Africa, there's women, young women carrying buckets of water, 40 pounds for 10 miles every day to drink water. So like, why? There's nothing, there's nothing special about what I just said. It's rare. It's not special. It's rare. Because we're so afraid to your point. Oh my, like, I had the boys carrying kettlebells a couple of miles to their friend's house one day. We had to go to a friend's house. Anyway, it's two miles away. We might as well turn it into a workout. We're going to carry these kettlebells. And this woman unbeknownst to me drives by, it's about 70 degrees out. And she stops short and she slams her door, gets out of the car, comes over and asks my kids, the kids, not even me, bypasses me and goes right to the kids. Are you okay? Is he a coach? Do you need water? And I said, hi, ma'am, no need to be disrespectful. These are my kids. Absolutely fine. I've seen you out here for at least 15 minutes. They're carrying these heavy things. Are they okay? Ma'am, we're completely fine. I didn't want to be disrespectful. You handle it way better than I would have. I'll just be honest. She got in the car. She left. She came back and brought water for the kids again, bypassing, which is fine. I didn't want to get in a fight. As I walked the remaining mile, I thought about it and I said, you know what, I can't blame her. She hasn't seen a child outside on a sidewalk in 10 years. That's right. They look like wild animals. Right. Right. So that's the problem. But the real problem, you got to always go to the root cause. I don't know if it's fear. I think the root cause, matter of fact, I know the root cause is the device. And the reason I say that is when I take the devices from my kids on a random weekend, like, you're not, you know, why? Because I don't feel like you're not going to have a phone this weekend. I don't know. I'll take it. I'm all powerful. That's why. Yeah, that's why. All of a sudden they become bored. Yes. As soon as they become bored, they're outside. They're doing something. They're, you know, like, so the device is the root cause because if the kid was bored, no matter what the mom said, the kid would be outside falling from trees carrying the, you know, they'd be doing something because they would drive the mom so crazy. The mom would say, get the hell out of the house. That's what our mom said. So, so the device is taking up all their attention. It's giving them a ton of dopamine hits. They don't need kids today. They're not even chasing getting driver's licenses anymore or chasing girls because they got everything they need from the phone. That's right. They're getting all the dopamine that we went out looking for. And they've got it. And, but I do want to say this and Joe, I got to tell you, first time we've ever talked, I have more respect for you now than I did because I would have handled Karen very differently. But, and I think it needs to be addressed because I think this is also part of the problem. Karen hasn't been to Africa like you and I have. And I've seen five-year-olds with my own eyes carry three-year-olds on their hips. Walking around a village where there's no electricity or running water, I've seen five-year-olds care for expertly three-year-olds on their hip. First time I saw it, I said to the, the elder of the village, I was there and I was about ready to speak and I was just watching all this. And I said, how old is that kid? He said five. I said, holds the baby. Three. Now, where in America would we allow that to happen? So I'm trying to bring this up because one of the things you reached out to me, you said to me, you said to me, I got a DM from you. And you said, you said, Ken, you said, I'm so concerned about the lack of resilience and toughness in this country. And I, I'm just trying to wake parents up because it's that lady is a product, to your point, she hadn't seen it in 10 years, but we have allowed the wascification of our country to take place and it's going to catch up with us. It's already caught up, but, but I don't even blame Karen because Karen, let's just say, this is not the case in my situation, but let's just say Karen is 30 years old. Like Karen grew up in it. She doesn't even know. Right. I could, by the way, I can give you 20 stories. Like it somehow I attract Karen's, but I've been hit because your kids were doing hard things in public that you're an outrage. I'm an outrage. And so because of that, I created something called death camp for kids. And I'm sorry. Hold on. I was like, this is too beautiful. This is a thing called death camp. It's called death camp. It's, I purposely did it for Karen and it's on the farm in Vermont. And, and I don't really market it a ton. It's certainly not the right branding to attract a lot of people. But you're going to be a 2020 if you keep it up. But I wanted to have our children, our four kids needed something really tough, like a tough camp. And I couldn't trust that any camp would be tough enough. So we created it on our farm in Vermont. And it's basically like if they're going through hell week, you know, to become Navy seals. It's, it's, it is torture. I mean, these kids will hike over 50 miles. They'll do 300 rope climbs, thousands of burpees, ice cold water every morning at five a.m. They're getting screamed out. I've got mountain warfare instructors. They're treated like adults that are about to graduate to become Navy seals. And the reason I bring it up is not, I don't want anybody else to sign up for it. Because again, I'm just doing it for, for my kids and like 50 other kids. Right. Because if I got to deal with the parents, like they asked me a million questions. I don't just butter off not sending the kid. I don't need this. I just, this is for me. Yeah. So, so, but the reason I bring it up is the kid, because it's the goes back to the first question you ask. The kids are so resilient. And so tough. Yeah. The thing that gets in the way, are you and I are the parents. That's right. Like even though I talk a big game, you talk a big game, like I'm still, I'm still not a good enough, like the kids should still do more than they do. Right. I agree. You know, so, so, um, what I see at this camp is unbelievable. Like any adult that I've had come out and when I say an adult, like let's say, let's say a 20 year old shows up, because some parents says, we're going to send my 20. Yeah. Fine. Send your 20 year old. 21. They quit right away, like within six hours because they can because they have a car, they have a way out. Right. The young kids can't leave. Right. They have no way out. Right. And, and, and so they are the volume of work that these kids do. And, and, and they won't cry. They won't complain until they get to talk to their parent. Right. And you, you could watch it. Like, this young girl last year, friend of a friend, Matilda, tough as nails, she's making it through. Right. I have no issue. And then somebody gives her an iPad to have a conversation with her mom. Yeah. As soon as she sees her mom, she starts crying uncontrollably. Right. And thank God, I know the mom, I grabbed the device. I take it away from Matilda and I say, listen, I said, um, I got to tell you, you got to trust me. She was fine 12 seconds ago. Sooner, you, you just have to disconnect. I had one dad who's a friend of mine who's more like, with your mindset, Brian, Brian says to me, listen, tell my daughters that my wife and I died and not to call us anymore. Because I was letting them use the phone at night and they were just constantly trying to get leave the camp, you know, they weren't showing me that. They were fine with all the other kids. But as soon as they had access to a phone, they were calling mom and dad, get us out of here. This guy's crazy. I don't want to be here. Tell my daughters we died. I went in. Yeah, I went in. I said, Hey girls, bad news, parents died. No way out. Buckle up. And they'll be a memorial service once you get back. Don't worry. Once you get back. Wow. I was dead. I was dead serious, by the way. I know anybody listening says I'm like a crackpot, but the girls transformed. One of those girls has gone on to become national champion wrestler. She was soft as pie. But when she got there, the other one is tough as now she was crying. Like they've completely transformed. Wow. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Folks, I can't tell you how many people I've coached who are afraid to move forward to do the work that they love to make that contribution in this world that they care about because they don't have enough money. They don't have enough margin. And so that safe job is actually holding them back. That's why I decided to lead a financial piece university class. This is Ramsey Solutions number one money class that's going to teach you how to handle your money and beat debt so that you have the freedom and options to chase the life that you want to live. That's living and working free. And I'm going to guide you through it. That's right. I'm going to be leading this virtual class. You can join from anywhere and it starts on June the second. But you need to sign up now because it is limited and it will fill up fast. Go to fpu.com to sign up and I'll see you in the financial piece class. It's going to be great. All right. So I want to stay on your path. So when do you get a clear path or an idea that puts you on the path that you're on today? What did it look like? Was it fairly straight for you? Is there some meandering? What'd that look like to get into the profession you're in now? So I tell everybody, like if you want to do anything big in your life really worthwhile, you have to figure out your why. Why are you doing it? Your purpose, your North Star, your true North. And that can change through life. So when I think about those first 14 years of my life, it was was I tough enough? Could I hang with all these guys? Right? So that was my why. And I was just trying to be tougher and tougher and tougher. The next 10 years of my life became I want to make money. How do I make money? That'll make me happy. While I was making money and I was stressed out on Wall Street and fighting night fighting every day and not feeling great, I stumbled upon adventure racing. And I went out because it sounded exciting, kind of like carrying rocks around the neighborhood or sweat, whatever. I went out and competed in one of these three hour races and I was like, Oh my God, this is unbelievable. I feel fantastic. And I started roping everybody I knew into doing that. I mean, I'm one of those connectors. And before you know I had a hundred people doing these things, I was putting on races and the crazier the race was that was being held anywhere in the world. I had to go do it. And the more I did, the more alive I felt, the better I felt. And many of those races were two weeks long, self supported out in the middle of nowhere freezing. And you have a lot of time to think, and I'm an entrepreneur at heart. So I started thinking, gee, wouldn't it be awesome to have a business where I get to do this? And so in 2020, three years ago, as I was still on Wall Street, I started to play around and dabble and put on races. And you know, 23 years ago, my first race I put on was 350 miles long in the British Virgin Islands. And so very few people showed up. It was it was some of the worst storms to British Virgin Islands had experienced ever. I ended up losing a guy, literally losing a guy. I found out at the end of the race, they hadn't seen this guy that worked for us. It wasn't even a participant. And I said, what do you mean? You haven't seen him. And they said, well, he had cut his leg, and we were setting ropes on this coastal section of rock. And we told him to go back to Tortola to go get stitches. And we last saw him on a dinghy on a little little robo, a little little motor in the back. Anyway, that was eight days earlier from the moment I'm hearing about this for the first time. Oh, no. And all these terrible storms had rolled in. So my dad is down there. My dad is seeing me put on my first race, British Virgin Islands. He hears about this guy we lost. And he's like, Hey, you got to be careful because in the British Virgin Islands, the law may accuse you of a criminal act because you were negligent. So we got to handle this really carefully, not only we have to find the guy, but we got to make sure you don't end up in jail. So I call the Coast Guard. I call, believe it or not, I get Richard Branson's helicopter and pilot. And we start searching for this guy. And the Coast Guard lays out their maps and they triangulate and they look at the way the ocean had moved and they find them 150 miles away on a deserted eye, little tobacco. Oh my God. And he's alive. Oh. And we bring him back and he's just like, Hey, can we go eat? I'm sorry. I need a cheeseburger. Don't judge me, Joe. I need a double cheeseburger. No, but thank God it was one of our crew because anybody who anybody who works for one of these crazy events is typically that kind of a person that could survive on an island. Yeah. But but but the point is that I had no business after that doing a second race. It was written up in sports illustrated as like true survival. I couldn't get that many people to compete. The format that I was promoting 300 like was just too much for anybody to swallow. I'm guessing you lost money on it too. Oh my God. I lost money on that. And then for the next nine, nine or 10 years, I kept putting on these crazy events and I kept losing money. And by 2010, after the financial crisis towards the tail end of the 2009 financial crisis, I said, that's it. I'm done. It's irresponsible. I'm losing too much money. This is stupid. I'll take one more stab at it. We'll call it Spartan. I'm going to change it to three miles, eight miles, 13 miles. And we'll just see what happens. But if I lose another 50 grand, I'm out. Right. And 700 people showed up, which was more people than I had in the entire 10 years preceding. Okay. So I want to stop there because I what there's some great stuff for our audience to learn here. You take one more shot. What you look back on it now. Was it the format change? And then what led to that? If your last shot, you changed something. What made this one work when all the others didn't? What'd you learn? Well, a couple of things. One is the this is really important for everybody to listen to the human brain, our brains. I'm very lucky. I get to do a lot of podcasts like yourself and I get to talk to a lot of smart people. I did not know what I'm about to say. I did not know that our brains avoid discomfort, avoid change, avoid anything hard at all costs because throughout our history on the planet, the brain views those things as threats. The brain doesn't want us to freeze to death or or melt in the desert. So anything that's going to require a lot of energy or is is hard. We shy away from subconsciously. We don't even know our brains are doing it. In the morning, when you're committed to working out, notice that your brain subconsciously will have you check the news will have you check social media will have you go get a cup of coffee. All things you don't need to do, all in an effort to get you not to go to the gym, which is going to expend a lot of energy and be dangerous for the brain. So anyway, I didn't know all that. And so it was very hard for me to make the change throughout those 10 years. My brain kept telling me, Hey, Joe, this is what you know, 300 miles hardcore crazy stuff. This is what we do. This is what the world needs. In 2010, maybe after the financial crisis, it had hurt me a lot. I was a little more open minded to, okay, we'll try a different path. 10 years of stubbornness, we'll try a different path. We're going to do something that's a little more inclusive, or set the bar a little lower. And it'll be military inspired. Maybe that'll be intriguing because think about all those years are military had been fighting on in the Middle East. And there's lots of folks coming back, lots of veterans. Anyway, the other thing social media was becoming popular at that point in time social media was not popular for the 10 years preceding. So right time, right format, the ability to market on social media and boom, 700 people show up. And then it was a bit serendipitous. I was at that first event with the 700 people. And I happen to have a guy with me that worked for Discovery Channel. And he was much more thoughtful than I was. He was he was looking at it as if this was a TV show with this work on TV. And so he was studying what was going on differently than I was I was studying everything like, all right, did that obstacle fail? Did we collect enough registration money? You know what I mean? He was looking at the like the spirit of the event. And he said, do you see what's happening here? I said, no, what's he goes, these people are changing in front of you see, look at them on the start line and look at them in the finish. And so his discussion with me led to, oh my God, there's something here. And then that led to a second race and a third race. And here we are at 13 years after that and now television shows and multiple things and books by selling books. I'm curious because you said something earlier in our conversation about how you're a connector. And I love that. And I'm just curious in that journey, we're getting the highlights here. Was that intentional? Was that an intentional connection to have that guy involved with you? Was he a friend? Was he how did that relationship or connection developed where he sees that and he plants that idea and not only that, he's got the connections himself to be able to make that all move forward? With me, I bring people around me that don't work for us necessarily, that might have a completely different perspective, that at first glance might have no relevance at all to what we're working on. And it annoys those 600 people that work for me because like, why is this person here? That's not an employee that like that. How are they going to help? Why don't we go to a person whose job it is? And I don't know, very early on in my life, I found value in bringing outside perspectives to the table. And I don't know, maybe they're going to say something like I just described in that moment that's going to give me, it's going to help me. I'm not a complete idiot. Give me the benefit of the doubt. I like people around me that just give me a different look. Like when I went to Wall Street, maybe this is the reason actually, maybe this is the reason I like outside perspective. When I went to Wall Street, I had only clean swimming pools. My whole, I never calculated difficult math problems. I never sat on a trading desk. I didn't know anything about the New York Stock. I didn't know anything at all. I cleaned swimming pools. But that outside perspective that I had of cleaning swimming pools and running that swimming pool business helped me innovate on a trading desk on Wall Street and see something that none of the veterans on Wall Street could see. I saw something completely different. I had a whole different perspective. And I ended up building a big business on Wall Street because of that. And so I just, I value outside thinking. Yeah, absolutely. And then just, I mean, you didn't get to where you sit today on your own. I'm just curious who are some of the people that have really been instrumental in helping you along the way, whether that be opening a door to another relationship or, you know, saying, hey, think about it this way or people that you've hired and they've really made the difference. Just curious about the folks that have helped you along the way. And there's maybe a different way to go with this is I think Joe that I, when I coach people and I've coached over 5,000 people live on the air. All right. I find that one of the most underutilized questions in the world is, will you help me? Because I think there's a certain amount of pride we have. We don't want to look helpless. We don't want to bother somebody. And I'm just curious your take on that. And who's helped you? How you ask for help? It's funny. Our oldest child is 17. And this week, he's in the UK. You should do an interview with him. All right. I don't know if he would be it. I think he might be too young to be charismatic. And you know, he might be a little shy on the screen. But the reason I say he's doing an interview with him is we just sent him to Dan Pina. There's a guy online you could look up called Dan Pina Pina. He's about 80 years old. He's got a castle in Scotland. He's an absolute mad man. He makes me look normal. And what he does every year is take a bunch of 25 to 40 year olds and teach them for a week in his castle. And what does he just told it? He teaches business and just a completely different perspective. You know, basically had to turn into a wolf and what you're going to need to succeed in business. It's like the death race, like my death camp of business in his castle with a suit on from 9am to 9pm every day and and how to eat properly and use your for all these things. It's just. And so I had the opportunity to send my son. So I sent them this week and I bring it up because I said Jack, your instinct is when you land in Heathrow, you've never flown by yourself anywhere. You land in Heathrow. You're not going to know how to get to the next part of the airport and the trains and the buses and get to this castle. Your instinct is going to be not to ask people because that's embarrassing. Right. Let me tell you about your dad, me. I never had that problem. For some reason, I like asking people for help. Right. And I think it's because I'm trying to get somewhere fast. Yes. I don't have time to waste. So I could care less about ego, how I look. My goal is to get to that. Wherever how I'm going. Right. And and maybe and maybe he took that advice. I don't know, but he did he did finally get to the castle. He called me two days after he got there. I don't even know if he made it there. He finally called me because that's what kids do. At least my kid. That's right. That's right. I love that. But I bring it up. I always understood the value of asking for help at a very, very young age. I was shocked at how the big bosses in the neighborhood would if I just asked would help me. I was shocked how anybody would help me if I just asked. I think at now that I'm an older person, I am so inspired by a young person asking because 99.999% of them don't ask. They don't they don't have energy. They don't and the ones that ask you want to help. Yep. That's right. And and and by the way, it's probably something I knew instinctually. I didn't even know I happened to be on the phone with one of my best friends today. It's very, very well. They're very successful. And we were talking about this exact topic, how when you're building a relationship, one way to get really close with people is to ask them for a favor. Yeah. And and and it's probably the same thing around asking it like asking for help asking for like when you do that, it brings you closer with someone. There's no question. I probably instinctually figured that out because I've always been in like a service business where I've needed to build relationships. So yeah, I want to ask you this. I want to get your take on something. We've talked about it in some ways, but we I'm focusing on the world of work because I just believe we were created to work and there's just good things come from work. And there's a piece of data that troubles me roughly one in nine men ages 25 to 54 are not working. They're self-selecting to not work. They're able to work. So this is not stay at home. Dads is not disability stuff. This is able-bodied men. And the data says that they've walked away from work, Joe, because their status isn't where they want it to be. In other words, they're not making the money that they want to make. They aren't in a profession that maybe they're proud of. And so this is the reason and it it hearkens back to when you and I were kids when we actually played outside. And and one of our buddies got mad about the game we were playing and literally says, I'm going home and ruined the game. We're like, man, you're one of the robbers, right? And we got to have three robbers for two guys. Whatever it was. We remember he just like took his stick and he went home. He was upset. Maybe we did it. That's what's happening in America today and it's affecting the actual labor market. It's affecting our economy. I just want to know free free flow. What do you think of? What comes to mind? What's the societal answer here? Couple of things. I feel like I could solve you and I could solve a lot of these problems in about 11 seconds. This is so easy. But it's not unique. It's not new. Back in the 80s, I was running my swimming pool business. I was hiring neighborhood kids. 75% of the neighborhood's kids quit after a day because we worked really, really hard and they did not want to work hard. And it was only until I found some Eastern Europeans that had immigrated from Poland, did my business become successful because now I had able-bodied people that actually wanted to work. So in the neighborhood I was in, unless I had a scheme to go steal a bunch of stuff, they were not interested. But but but the Polish, the immigrants were interested. Immigrants from anywhere were interested now. So this is not new. It may be a bigger issue than it was in the 80s. But it all stems from not needing to work. I mean, the reason where there's so many people depressed in the US, outside of those that actually have some sort of a chemical imbalance, like if you're a person that's depressed, I bet a large, large percentage of those folks, they're just idle, right? They just don't have anything to do. They're not working. So when I think about the third world, when I think about those five-year-olds carrying those three rows on their hip and they're just fighting for milk and they're trying to get water from 10 miles away, they're not depressed. They don't have any- they don't they don't self-select out or work because if they don't work, they don't eat. And if they don't eat, they die. And so like, it's pretty hard. Look, here's- you and I are animals, okay? At the end of the day, we're animals. We may think we're different because we put on suits and ties and we get on podcasts or whatever. But at the end of the day, we're animals. And imagine, as an animal, if you had a zoo and I had a wild, giant piece of land where the animals roamed free, I can't get the animals that you are a zoo, to act like wild animals at my place because you've been feeding them on demand. They don't even do anything. You show up every day and you feed them and you give them water and you pet them. Why the hell would they go wild? So that's the problem. And so unless we instill a rite of passage in this country, unless we get rid of most of the free lunches, why would people- why would they have to go wild and work? That's right. Well, you're exactly right. Their primal instincts have been dulled. But I will tell you, you could put that wild animal back out there and it might take them a couple of days, but they'll figure it out. And that- Or they'll be like, oh, they die. Or they die. Right. Which again, oh boy, we'll get all kinds of trouble if we talk about that. But the thing is, the thing is, they're not closing the zoo. So those animals are not going out into the wild. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I got to watch my time with you. And one of the things I do want to bring up because you're an expert on this is there's all this talk in the world of work about burnout and that's real and all that stuff is real. But it's shocking to me, Joe, how few successful adults in their world of work don't take care of their bodies. They don't eat right, they don't exercise, and I think they don't sleep well. And then yet they wonder why maybe they're burning out. And I just wonder what your thoughts are on that issue. How much our physical health through diet and exercise and sleep plays into truly being the best you can be professionally. That's funny. I was thinking about I was at the NCAA's for wrestling this weekend. And I was with some of my friends and I just- I don't drink. I don't stay up late. I work out every day, wherever I am. I just have a program. I try to treat myself like an Olympian. And when I think about some of my friends that I was with, they can't perform at their best. You know, when I think back to my pool, I had 700 customers when I was clean and swimming pools. And I got to look at a very young age at 700 families, the husband, the wife, the kids, how they acted, how they succeeded or failed. And I think I just saw over and over and over, over that 14 year period, whatever it was when I was running that business, that if you go out and you drink, if you don't eat properly, if you don't take care of yourself every day, like you fall behind the next day and maybe you get to work late and then you got to deal with something with your boss. Maybe then you're irritable and then you fight with your wife. And then maybe that leads to you hanging out with your friends and drinking some more the next night. And then before you know it, you flirt with a girl and then your marriage falls apart. Like it sets off some dominoes that cause a lot of the stress that you don't need when you're trying to be successful in your life. It's absolutely right and spot on. Wow, really good. Well, I want to honor your time, Joe. I got to tell you, this has been really good. And I think you've really made some people think. I know your time is valuable. But I know we're better for this. So thanks again for being with us. Thanks for having me. I could talk to you forever. Well, if you enjoyed that conversation, I'd love for you to like it. Subscribe to our channel and share it. It helps us grow more coming to you very soon. .