Today’s episode welcomes Joe De Sena, Founder of Spartan Race - the world’s largest obstacle race and endurance brand, with more than 200 global events annually.

He’s also the author of “Spartan Up!” - a NY Times bestseller and the host of “The Hard Way w/ Joe De Sena” - a top 0.5% podcast that gives you the ultimate blueprint and action steps to assimilating their powerful conversations into your own life. He’s also a sought-after podcast guest, with his most famous appearance being on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe’s introduction to fitness came when his grandmother got cancer. His mom was trying to find a way to bring her back to health and landed in a health store where a yogi introduced her to yoga, veganism and an overall healthy lifestyle.

Fast forward, Joe was working on Wall Street and feeling the wear and tear on his body from the lifestyle that is required to succeed in that space. He then remembered his moms journey which inspired him to pick up a healthy lifestyle. After feeling the effects of a hot yoga session, Joe was hooked and his fitness journey truly began.

When Joe was young, he had a small business cleaning pools for a few notorious crime families, which scaled to over 700 clients over time. This business was tough - he had to learn all the fundamentals from scratch under the threat of pissing off some seriously scary people. He ultimately sold this business and moved on to Wall Street.

Joe loves a good challenge - and building Spartan has been exactly that. Joe calls entrepreneurship the toughest sport in the world. Even though his career in Wall Street helped fund the early days of Spartan, it was still a very long and painful journey to get to stability and profitability. By 2019 they were on top of the world - they had just bought out their largest competitor, their brand became internationally recognized with events in over 50 countries and they were finally making money - and then, COVID happened.

Tune into the full episode to learn more about the epic journey of Joe De Sena!

KEY INSIGHTS:
00:45 How Joe got into fitness
04:32 Joe De Sena’s first business lessons
08:32 The reality of running a business
11:30 How Spartan is changing kids lives
18:17 The challenges of building Spartan
21:06 How COVID almost killed Spartan
25:06 Surviving COVID and getting back on track
27:45 What’s next for Spartan? Expansion? IPO?

Connect with Joe - https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/josephdesena
Connect with Collin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/collincmitchell/
Check out Collin's Newsletter - https://salestransformation.beehiiv.com/