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Joe De Sena: Life Lessons That A Mafia Boss Taught Him About Business | E101 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Joe De Sena: When you take on something hard starting a business, running a marathon, starting a family, and you face those challenges, which we're all going to face, but you continue on anyway, your brain lays tracks. When you quit, most people quit. It leaves a gap.
• 0:14
  Joe De Sena: Quitting that gap creates a likelihood of more quitting finishing creates more finishing. So just know that the the ability to hang in there and finish is changing your biology for the better or for the worse.
• 0:37
  Randall Kaplan: Welcome to a search of excellence where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in our lives.
• 0:58
  Randall Kaplan: My guest today is Joe de Sena.
• 0:58
  Randall Kaplan: Joe is a serial entrepreneur, ultra marathoner endurance athlete, motivational speaker and self described maniac. For the past 17 years Joe has been the CEO of the global fitness and wellness brand Spartan, which has a community of more than 10 million athletes around the world. He has the host of the CNBC primetime show, no retreat business boot camp and as a New York Times bestselling author of four books, Spartan up Spartan fit the Spartan way and his latest book 10 rules of resilience, mental toughness for families. Joe is a true pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence.
• 1:38
  Joe De Sena: Thanks for having me. This is you. I needed a little pump up today. So listening to you describe me I feel bigger than I actually am.
• 1:46
  Randall Kaplan: Well, we're gonna get into some of the amazing things that you've done.
• 1:47
  Randall Kaplan: I'm super psyched to have you on my fitness, not myself. So we have a tremendous show coming up. Let's start with your family. You grew up in the working class neighborhood, Howard Beach and queens and their Kennedy Airport, in an area that was known at the time as the organized crime capital of the world. Your mom Jean Marie was a long distance runner who became a vegan yogi and traveled to India, where she learned to teach meditation.
• 2:12
  Randall Kaplan: Your dad Ralph was an aggressive workaholic entrepreneur who on taxi cabs, a trucking company, real estate properties among other businesses, starting with your mom, what were your parents like? And what kind of influence that they have when you're growing up? And as part of that?
• 2:25
  Randall Kaplan: You tell us about the day you surprise your dad as trucking company and the lesson you learned that day?
• 2:34
  Joe De Sena: Yeah, you you you have so much information. I've been on a bunch of podcasts, bunch of newspapers, but you have somehow probably with the CIA figured out the right questions to ask that no one ever asked me. This is awesome.
• 2:49
  Joe De Sena: First of all, let's talk about Howard Beach and tie it to your business. Sandy. I guarantee you Howard Beach is the one beach not in your database. You're wrong.
• 2:59
  Randall Kaplan: You're wrong, because Howard Beach is in our database. Not only is it in the database, so we have I think four pictures of Howard Beach in the database. When we're done. I want you to go on our website and try to stump me and send me an email. There's a beach you know about that we don't have
• 3:14
  Joe De Sena: that's unbelievable, because I don't think anybody goes to that beach ever. We used to ride dirt bikes. In the weeds. We called it and there was a beach over there that that had a lot of oil spillage on it. But anyway, mom and dad lived in and Howard Beach, it was organized crime capital world if you saw the movie Goodfellas, it was ground zero for that whole underworld.
• 3:36
  Joe De Sena: For whatever reason it probably because it was so close to Kennedy Airport, that it made it easy for these guys that were stealing trucks and, and doing bad things. They had access just a few miles away. My mom walked into a health food store in Queens, probably the only health food store on the east coast and in the 70s. And she met a yogi and that Yogi turned her life around and ultimately impacted my life and really was the impetus for sport and she she got into doing yoga she got into meditation, she started eating a more vegan diet and she started long distance running this particular Yogi believed in in really long distance running. My dad as you described was was a workaholic maniac he did not optimize for health and wellness he optimized for for for business for revenue and profitability was his focus all day long every day. And and if that meant lots of donuts for energy or large, you know, coca cola drinks or real junk food.
• 4:49
  Joe De Sena: That's what he did. And he paid the price. But, but I did surprise him once at the at the at the warehouse. And I think the story you're asking about, although there's a bunch of them, I'm glad you bring it up.
• 5:01
  Joe De Sena: Because it's been a long time since I thought about it was I was very young, I was in the warehouse, and none of the guys could find the package each package in the warehouse. My dad had for a moment in time, my dad had the contract for IBM, all the freight, believe it or not, that was going through Kennedy airport would stop for a moment, my dad's warehouse, those boxes would get labeled, they'd have numbers with letters on them, they'd get put away on different shelves, and you had to find them with the forklift, etc. And invariably, every day, there were boxes that went missing.
• 5:38
  Joe De Sena: They went missing for the right reasons or for the wrong reasons. And, and my dad said, just to just to get me out of his hair, get me out of the office, he said, Go find this box, they can't find this box.
• 5:47
  Joe De Sena: And I found it. And he pulled all all the employees around and, and I remember him yelling at everybody that you know, here was this eight year old kid that found something that none of the employees could find. And it wasn't, it wasn't exciting that he embarrassed the guys, but it definitely, it definitely pumped up my confidence, let well wait a minute, I could do something that adults couldn't do. So I try to pay attention. We have four children. Now I try to pay attention because it's those little moments like this question you asked me that really change somebody's personality, for better or for worse.
• 6:28
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about another incident. Or lesson you learned when it was a Sunday morning, your teenager. And
• 6:38
  Joe De Sena: I know I know the one. I know the one so. So dad.
• 6:45
  Joe De Sena: We were doing some landscaping work. And Dad said I need you to move this rock. I think this is the one you're
• 6:51
  Randall Kaplan: the one where he asked you to unload a bunch of material from one of his
• 6:54
  Joe De Sena: trucks. Oh, the bricks like that how
• 6:58
  Randall Kaplan: long that story.
• 7:00
  Joe De Sena: So he had a truck full of bricks and we had to bring them into the backyard. I was exhausted. I was already working seven days a week for him. I was told we were off on Sunday, these bricks had to be moved. So I said to my cousin.
• 7:13
  Joe De Sena: It's Saturday night. Let's move the bricks tonight. We'll get them done tonight. So we could sleep in tomorrow. I I had this instinct at a very young age to do stuff in advance. get stuff done early, so that I'd have clear sailing later. I wasn't a person that would wait till the last minute on things I always wanted to get ahead. And so I said to my cousin, let's, let's get ahead. Let's move all these bricks will sleep in tomorrow to be awesome. So we stayed up all night moving these bricks. And at the end of the night, I went into his kitchen. And my cousin I fell asleep in the kitchen I fell asleep on the tile floor.
• 7:55
  Joe De Sena: And I remember at 6am My dad like nudging me with his foot in the kitchen and saying hey, I see you got the Brixton. That's great, because now we could do the next job. So he was he was just relentless, annoyingly relentless. And I see, by the way, there's good and bad with that. Because I think if you had my children on the podcast, certainly my oldest boys, they would say they would describe me that way. Or I just don't. Like I remember my one of my boys saying that it doesn't matter.
• 8:29
  Joe De Sena: You're just going to ask us to do more anyway. So I picked up for better or worse. I picked up my dad's traits
• 8:36
  Randall Kaplan: is one of the lessons there. Even when you're early, you're never really done.
• 8:41
  Joe De Sena: I don't think it I mean, listen to what my son said, Right? My son, my son said, Dad, it doesn't matter.
• 8:46
  Joe De Sena: You're gonna have more for us.
• 8:46
  Joe De Sena: Like, it never ends. It just doesn't end i i went into the gym at a young age, I lifted weights, I got a little pump, I felt strong. And I thought I'll do this for a week or two, and I'll get muscles. And then somebody in the gym that was older and smarter than me said, Hey, kid, you got to do this forever. It doesn't. You don't do it once or for a week or two, like it's the rest of your life.
• 9:13
  Joe De Sena: And so the sooner I think the sooner we accept that as you like, the easier it becomes. If we think if we think we're going to do something, and then it's like it never ends, never ends.
• 9:25
  Joe De Sena: And later in life. I just spoke to a friend of mine the other day later in life in your 70s 80s 90s if you're lucky enough to get there. Thank God, there's still stuff to do because it's what keeps you alive.
• 9:38
  Randall Kaplan: We're going to talk about your early entrepreneur. We're going to talk about your early entrepreneurial endeavors when you were younger in a minute, but before we do you tell us what you're like as a kid and part of that. Can you tell us about the day your mom's friend found you sleeping on the side of the road when you were 15 years old?
• 9:55
  Joe De Sena: Huh? Was that was that when I was BMX thing?
• 10:00
  Joe De Sena: Maxine, I was BMX thing so so my mom wouldn't drive us to a race.
• 10:07
  Joe De Sena: We were in Ithaca, New York and the race was in green, New York was about 75 miles in each direction. And I convinced my friends through a lack of knowledge on my own part, that we were going to bicycle from ephah to green and race, the race that day in the bike home.
• 10:20
  Joe De Sena: It was 75 mile Imagine, imagine a single speed, one gear. BMX bike, with your helmet. No water bottles, no money. 75 miles.
• 10:36
  Randall Kaplan: Oh, we raised no sidewalk either, by the way, because I've made the drive. No, no. So you've done the drive. My daughter goes to Cornell. We're going to talk about Cornell in a few minutes. We're going to talk
• 10:46
  Joe De Sena: about Cornell. So you know the drive dry, bicycle bicycle up and down those little hills, painful hills to green raced, I ended up winning the race, and then biked home, on the way collapsed. And my mom's friend found us on the side of the road, sleeping on our bicycles.
• 11:03
  Randall Kaplan: What did your mom say to you? When she heard what happened? No.
• 11:08
  Joe De Sena: You know, my mom, looking back, I didn't get yelled at about stuff like that there was I would be so much different with our children.
• 11:15
  Joe De Sena: Now, on the one hand, proud. I was written up in the newspaper about it funny enough. Somebody recently sent me the newspaper clip. But on the other hand, yeah, I'd say that was pretty stupid. It's pretty dangerous.
• 11:33
  Randall Kaplan: You were born with the entrepreneur gene, you sold fireworks when you were eight years old, that black market business was shut down by elementary school administrators, and you sold T shirts, as did I in college. And your parents got divorced, and your mom really struggled. And at 12 years old, you started a very successful business that lasted for many years. Tell us about your mom Chevrolet, the head of the Banano crime family who lives next door and who befriended you? And how you got to know nearly every mafia guy in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and Staten Island.
• 13:00
  Joe De Sena: It's good question.
• 13:00
  Joe De Sena: My mom. My mom didn't have a lot of money. My parents were divorced. And we were in Africa.
• 13:08
  Joe De Sena: And she was shopping for a new car. And it was, it was a Chevrolet, but next door was a BMW dealership. And I was staring out the window looking at the BMWs. And my mom said to me, you can get one of those, you just gotta get a job, you got to work, you got to make money. And it really, it really was one of those sentences, you know, parents can give you 500 sentences, but one of them sinks in and that was one that sunk in. So next thing I know, I'm with my dad, in Queens and Howard Beach. And my neighbor who's edited banana organized crime family at the time, tells me to come over Saturday morning, he's gonna teach me how to run a business, I'm gonna clean his pool, he's gonna pay me $35 a week. And so I went over there, and he sat me down.
• 13:51
  Joe De Sena: And he said, Alright, here's the deal. He said, on time is late.
• 13:53
  Joe De Sena: If if you got to be here at 8am, you got to be here at 745. He said to you're going to go above and beyond, you're not just going to clean the pool, even though you're only getting paid to clean the pool, you're going to clean the windows, straighten up the lawn furniture, straighten out the shed. And then number three, you're never going to ask for money. If you do a good job, you get paid. And that was bizarre because I thought well, I'm I'm working I should, I should get paid. But I stuck with that philosophy from from my life, you know, the rest of my life. And he was right, if you know on time is like, you should go above and beyond. And when you do, you get paid. And if you don't get paid, it's really no big deal. Those are far and few between instances where you have a bad customer or a bad it's irrelevant in the scheme of things. So that was that was an amazing, amazing set of lessons I got from him. And then ultimately, because I followed that protocol, he introduced me to hundreds and hundreds of customers, many of them in organized crime. And I became this trusted kid that they could depend on to do brick work to do cement work to who knows put a body under a swimming pool, whatever they needed done.
• 15:16
  Randall Kaplan: I want to go back to something you said and I want to go back and I really want to spend more time. There's really three lessons he taught you. And then and then one thing so I definitely want to come back to that. I think it's really important for people to hear it one by one. But did you know that Joe Banano was the head of the biggest crime family in New York City and did you even think about the danger you had getting involved with something like that and your parents must have known who he was as well? Did they say hey man, Joe, don't don't do that.
• 15:43
  Randall Kaplan: We don't even want any association with Joe.
• 15:50
  Joe De Sena: It was prevalent in the neighborhood. And it was not frowned upon. Like we would be frowning upon it now, if everybody in the neighborhood was were marathon runners, you and I would probably get sucked up in that we'd start running every day. If everybody in the neighborhood did yoga, we would get sucked up in that. Well, it turns out most people in the neighborhood were part of that life. So it was it permeated the whole neighborhood. And it was not it was, it was something that was, that was exciting.
• 16:17
  Joe De Sena: Wasn't it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. And there were there were people, including my mom that purposely left the neighborhood and brought my sister and I to Ithaca, New York to get away from that. But it was to attract I wanted to be back there was it was too attractive. When you're young, you don't know that. I mean, they had Cadillacs, they had money they had. They had respect, they had things that looked appealing. So, so no, it wasn't, you know, I had the balance. And I think even my father was instilling it, which was, you know, Joe, Joseph, he'd say to me, these guys make a lot of money, but they can't spend it. Right. Like, it's not, it's not legal, like, you're better off with all the energy and all the time and all the things they're doing, he would try to instill in me, you'd be better off making it the right way. You could still get after it, you could still hustle, you could still, you know, do your thing.
• 17:24
  Joe De Sena: But if you make it the right way, you can spend it. And he said that to me hundreds and hundreds of times and 99% of the time it went in in one ear and out the other. But it obviously stuck because because I ended up doing it the right way.
• 17:41
  Randall Kaplan: Let's go back to Joe Banano. This, I think is going to sound weird. And I think it sounded weird to me as I was doing my research on you.
• 17:49
  Randall Kaplan: This guy, as I said, is the head of New York's biggest mafia family. He became your friend and a mentor to you and taught you a lot of things, not how to kill people chop up their bodies and bury them. But as you've already mentioned, important, credibly important lessons that possibly change your life forever. I think these lessons and it's why I really want to come back to it apply to every person listening and watching the show. And I want to take these one at a time. What was the first thing he told you? And then we'll go through the the free lessons one by one. And the first one was about helping?
• 18:33
  Joe De Sena: Yeah, you know, you said surprisingly, coming from a person like this, he said, the best thing we could do in life is help people. So So these these people, even though they killed folks, for a living, they had a sense of themselves that they were doing the right thing that they were living this life within a certain set of rules.
• 18:56
  Joe De Sena: And it was it was good. I got lucky and that I got the good lessons. I didn't get the bad ones.
• 19:08
  Randall Kaplan: So we talked about on time is like I do a tremendous amount of coaching have 36 interns every summer we have this amazing intern 12 week program, it's very structured, eight to six, don't show up. One minute later, we're going to have a gnarly meeting. And you're only going to get one more chance or you're gonna leave the program. But so many people show up a minute before two minutes before they're out of breath or heroism in place.
• 19:36
  Randall Kaplan: And a lot of people come two or three minutes like we live in LA Joe and everyone knows the traffic is there. And this there's so many people make excuses. There's Oh, there's traffic. Yeah, we know. And you show up 801 for job interview or 1001. It's over what why don't people arrive early an hour before? What's the what's the difference for that insurance policy? What do you think's going on with all these people?
• 20:06
  Joe De Sena: Well, I think I think human beings are naturally lazy. We are wired, for comfort.
• 20:09
  Joe De Sena: We're not wired for discomfort.
• 20:14
  Joe De Sena: So it's a little more uncomfortable to wake up early to get the workout and to take that shower early to start the car and get on the road early.
• 20:22
  Joe De Sena: That's that's uncomfortable and the brain is not wired for that the brain is two more minutes.
• 20:31
  Joe De Sena: Let's let's let's scan our phone and check social media. Just two more minutes. Let's get a piece of toast out of the toaster before we get going. Let's stay in bed for three more minutes.
• 20:42
  Joe De Sena: So so our brain our brain is having us hold back and do the comfortable but but our minds know that Do we need to get on the road, I have this battle in my house with my wife every single day, my wife is wired for five minutes late. I am wired for five minutes early.
• 21:04
  Randall Kaplan: My wife and I have that same issue, by the way, is one of the things that causes tension relationship. But we do have two young kids. And when we leave the house, sometimes they'll cry and, and they'll want mom. But let's talk about the second lesson, which I think is probably the most important thing you can do in a job, which is making yourself you're replaceable. And I'm gonna give one example of someone who worked with me and enter a name shame Bay years ago, I collect art, we have a vacation home in Cordyline, Idaho, and we had moved in or a house and I have a bunch of art in storage. So we had to move, we had to rent a truck and bring it there. You can have art movers, there's special companies and you buy Art in New York and a lot of the art fairs or the galleries there, they put on a truck, and they move it to Los Angeles and moving one painting could cost $1,500. And it takes a while. And so we had a bunch of art to move. And you can't hire a truck from Los Angeles to Cordyline. Because there's no route up there that would have cost 30 $40,000, which obviously we weren't going to do. So I looked at renting a U haul. And we rented it and we looked into it and we figured okay, this is not going to happen. I I was on the phone.
• 22:26
  Randall Kaplan: And Shane works right out the door there. And he was there.
• 22:30
  Randall Kaplan: And I come back from lunch. He said I figured it out for you.
• 22:33
  Randall Kaplan: And I said what he said if we rent the U haul, outside of a 75 mile radius from LA, on limited mileage. And you know, I I thought that's amazing. That's incredible, that he had done that. And that's exactly what we did, we had to go and it's hard to I mean, the art is packed in a crate. And some of these are very thick wood crates, and but you still need to strap them down to to the U haul so they don't move. And so we we went to the U haul place, we went to the art storage facility where a lot of people keep their art and by the way that places like Fort Knox, and we had to put metal and wood strips down and fix them to the side of the truck.
• 23:24
  Randall Kaplan: And at that point, I love interns and as well one of the things I know we share this and we'll talk about it is mentoring people helping people and change lives and similar to you. My goal is to positively influence the lives of 100 million people before I die. And Shane was looking for a job didn't know what he wanted to do. And I set him up with one of our portfolio companies. And this I said, This is amazing. I told the story.
• 23:49
  Randall Kaplan: And that company hire chain that he pulls this. I said hey, like, that's not happening anymore. I need you to call the CEO or I'm going to call him and I would say hey, sorry about that. But Shane's working here and and of working with me for four years.
• 24:07
  Randall Kaplan: Why don't people I mean, you can't teach that stuff, right?
• 24:12
  Randall Kaplan: So it's one of these things where I don't understand why every employee doesn't have this mentality. They'll have job security forever, they'll get promoted faster, they'll make more money, and they'll be loved and appreciated wherever they go, what's going on with this one.
• 24:29
  Joe De Sena: By the way, it's not just as an employee, it's as a player on some sports team.
• 24:32
  Joe De Sena: It's as a teammate. It's as a husband, wife, kid and a fan.
• 24:39
  Joe De Sena: Like, just go above and beyond.
• 24:45
  Joe De Sena: Don't have your hand out expecting a payout before you make yourself so damn invaluable that people can't live without you. It's that it's so simple, simple, right? It's simple. Like we're not you and I are not sitting here saying, Okay, I need you to read this 15,000 page book. And then I need you to stand on your head for 14 days. And then I need you to not eat like no, just make yourself invaluable. I what you just described Shane doing. I did my first job after I sold that that business I described. I was on Wall Street. I had a new boss and I overheard him talking to his wife. And they were looking for a Porsche certain type of Porsche that they couldn't find.
• 25:33
  Joe De Sena: And I really wasn't working yet because I hadn't I hadn't learned the business. And I sat there for the day on my own trying to find this vehicle I called 100 dealerships I found them the car in Boston changed my whole life because the boss saw that I was the kind of guy that would stay late, I'd get in early, I go above and beyond, I listened to the nuances, I would just, it's so easy. It's so easy. Like, that's really a class they should teach. And every college, every high school, I
• 26:05
  Randall Kaplan: speak about it all the time. That's something I tell my interns, I love the people who inherently do it and have the DNA. But in terms of my coaching, I do a ton of coaching, I do a lot of paid one on one coaching as well. And people are amazed at the advice, which is so simple, we have one thing that we talked about a time counting principals, and I have a new one, which is first and last out. And I told my kids this is they're studying at a private school, studying too much too much pressure, did like about I go into the room and 1130 Joe and they're studying and yeah, they want to get good grades, and they're self motivated. I never put pressure on my kids with the grades, if they tried their best, they try their best. And I said to them, it's you know, several times, you know, go to bed, this isn't healthy for you. And if you do this in the real world, you're going to be CEO, whatever company you're working at before the age of 30. But it's one of these things like you said, it's so simple. People don't do it.
• 27:12
  Randall Kaplan: And they they take orders. And they're not proactive creating value when people don't ask them to do it. And I think that's so critical to our success in life.
• 27:20
  Randall Kaplan: 1,000% less than number three, which is gonna make absolutely no sense to 99% of the people listening to my show. I sort of get it. And I sort of don't get it, most of me doesn't really get it. Lesson number three, never asked for money. How can that be?
• 27:45
  Joe De Sena: Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. And it didn't make sense to me at the time. But now that I've been running businesses and building businesses for 40 plus years, I see what he meant. There are so many people, and you've probably run into these folks that have their hand out first that that asked you to sign the contract first. As opposed to the person, I'll give you a great example. I had never dealt with a car dealership in Vermont, I had just moved to Vermont. I needed a new vehicle. I went in, I met this incredible salesperson. But I didn't want to do I didn't want to deal with all the friction and paperwork and sitting down with somebody that tries to sell me extra stuff.
• 28:26
  Joe De Sena: This guy read the room quickly understood the kind of person I was handed me the keys I kid you not handed me the keys to the car in the showroom, and said just take it, I'll come visit you over the weekend, we'll fill out the paperwork, we'll deal with it, then. That's what I mean by not, he didn't ask for the money. He didn't ask for the money. And he probably sold me eight cars since because of that. Right? So like, remove all the friction for a potential customer. And just say I got it.
• 29:03
  Joe De Sena: I'll figure it out later.
• 29:09
  Joe De Sena: Because you just want to make the sale and like I said earlier on in the instance, in the instance where you get that one bad customer. For me it was a guy named Lenny Spode AK, I don't know why that name just popped into my head. Where, because you don't have an agreement because they didn't give you a deposit. They take advantage of you that they don't pay. Okay, so what I had 700 customers that guy didn't pay. I ultimately got my money. It required a chainsaw. But my point is everybody Joe says your buddy
• 29:39
  Randall Kaplan: Joe gave you his chainsaw, which richiede clean very well with a bunch of bleach.
• 29:46
  Joe De Sena: My point is, it's a great tactic. Get your foot in the door. What what's a worse outcome? anybody listening that's still confused over it.
• 29:54
  Joe De Sena: What's a worse outcome? Is is a worse outcome. You get a bunch of customers and a few of them don't pay or is a worse outcome.
• 30:02
  Joe De Sena: You get very few customers.
• 30:08
  Joe De Sena: Right? Just get your foot in the door. Get going start providing value, and then then ask.
• 30:16
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about Cornell. We'll talk about college and high school. You didn't have good grades or board scores, SCA. T scores weren't very good. And you weren't even thinking about college until your senior year. Tell us about what your dad's friend said to you that senior year your mom's Yogi client and the lessons you learned from failing before the fourth time became the charm.
• 30:36
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah,
• 30:38
  Joe De Sena: so I was I was in Ithaca high school. I had my business in Queens. I was not planning on going to college. No one guided me that way. And a friend of mine said, why don't we go to Cornell? And I said How the hell would we go to Cornell we haven't applied were seniors.
• 30:53
  Joe De Sena: Well, and my grades aren't that good. He said, Well, my dad's a professor, he'll get us in. I said, Okay, you got a guy that makes sense. Because the neighborhood I was from we, you know, you had a guy, the guy got things done. So, we both got interviews at Cornell. My dad, my mom was so proud. Got a suit on, did my interview. Neither of us got accepted. And so that was the end of that. I was gonna go back to the airport and run my business. And my friend said, Hang on, not so fast. My dad said his father was a professor at Cornell, one of the professors at Cornell, his dad said, Listen, you could take extramural classes, you could take three classes. At Cornell, they don't count towards anything. But if we can prove that we can handle the workload, if we can get three A's, we can go back reapply in January 2 semester and get accepted. So I digested that for a second, I said, Okay, I don't want to fall behind all the regular. Although all the kids that are admitted regularly, they're going to do five classes, we're only going to do three. This summer. While I'm running my business in Queens, I'm gonna go to St.
• 32:05
  Joe De Sena: John's University. I'll take two summer classes. I'll learn how to study. I'll get ahead. And then in January when we get accepted based on what you just told me, I'll be I'll be on par with the regular kids. Again, because my brain I always want to be ahead. I don't want to be behind, right. I don't want to be late. My friends had that's ridiculous. Why would you do that? It goes this summer. I'm gonna go party all summer in Vegas, because in September, we're going to settle down. Why would I? Why would I buckled down during the summer? So I said, Okay, whatever. I went to Queens. I took my classes at St.
• 32:39
  Joe De Sena: John's. I learned how to study was awesome. I learned some amazing things. And then my friend, and I met back at Cornell in September, we hustled I got two A's and a B, he got two A's and a B, was the best I'd ever performed in school ever. We reapplied and neither of us got accepted. And so here I was, I did all that work. I spent all that money. Well, that time I told everybody I was going to Cornell. I was embarrassed. And I didn't get in. And I said, Well, I'm gonna do it again. I just do it again.
• 33:17
  Joe De Sena: And he said, he said, now I'm gonna go out to Vegas. I had a lot of fun this summer, I'm gonna go to UNLV I'm gonna clear the Cornell's not for me. So we pivoted, he went to Vegas. I I continued on and I did it the second semester reapplied didn't get accepted a third semester reapplied didn't get accepted.
• 33:38
  Joe De Sena: And finally, everybody's got a breaking point. I said, Well, maybe it's maybe it's not for me. Maybe I'm wasting my time.
• 33:45
  Joe De Sena: And maybe they'll never accept me. And my mom not wanting to lose her son. No mom would want to lose their son right when they finally leave the house and they're gone. So hang on. I have this this woman I teach yoga to I'd love for you to meet her for lunch. And I thought to myself, well, my mom's got no real connections. She teaches yoga.
• 34:07
  Joe De Sena: She eats branch sandwiches, what the hell does she know, you know? And I sat down with this professor a neat array seen. I remember her name because she was significant change in my life. And we sat down and she looked at my grades. And she said, wow, she said, I see. You know, you've been here four semesters, you've done this and that. She said, Do you like textiles? And I didn't really know what a textile was. She said, Because I got 92 Women in my department and no man and we're looking for some diversity. And I said, Oh, I love textiles. And so boom, I was I was in the textile Department of Human Ecology at Cornell. Under Professor Ray scene. I was the only man until my now buddy John Fung showed up from China, who also wanted to study textiles with 92 women.
• 34:55
  Joe De Sena: And, and I graduated Cornell on time that last semester, my fourth year, my last semester, I made dean's list. And I thought, Man, how a human being can change. I went into this thing.
• 35:12
  Joe De Sena: I wasn't a good student. I had a lot of CS and here I was I nailed it.
• 35:17
  Randall Kaplan: What was your reaction when you got rejected all those times and why was failure such a pivotal moment in your life?
• 35:28
  Joe De Sena: I think it was fuel for me when when I got rejected.
• 35:35
  Joe De Sena: It somehow fueled me. I don't know. I maybe I learned it in a neighborhood. Probably with the pool but like, at some point. I learned that if you just keep doing it, you eventually break through A lot of people don't learn that until later in life, I learned that at an early age, probably with the business. So
• 35:58
  Randall Kaplan: many people, this is a really important point as well that I really want to focus on, hone in on. So many people treat an initial failure as the end of the road and not a temporary roadblock, and not as a beginning of a new road.
• 36:13
  Randall Kaplan: What's that mindset about?
• 36:13
  Randall Kaplan: What's your advice to people on how to change that mindset, because without changing that mindset, we all experienced failures, we're just not going to get ahead in our lives.
• 36:25
  Joe De Sena: Well, you just need to watch. There's a great Netflix story about the building of a railroad in America. And you see what that was like to go out west, and be attacked by snakes and animals and Indians, and you name it, and somehow continue to push through, and lay tracks and not get paid. And have your friends die from diseases that like, if it's not fatal, if that wall, you bump up against it, that obstacle you face is not fatal. It really is just the lesson takes a while and life for you to understand that you got to you got to get through a few of them and realize that it's just part of the deal. We get to do this. You know, I watch people die at a young age, I watch people, I watch people, I was very close to go away for 25 years in jail.
• 37:19
  Joe De Sena: Like, those were bad outcomes.
• 37:26
  Joe De Sena: Not getting into Cornell that semester didn't seem nearly as bad as some of the stuff I saw happening around me.
• 37:35
  Randall Kaplan: But can we get people just to keep going? I mean, I know so many entrepreneurs, people who start companies and they fail their first 234 times. And they they keep going and it's again, something that I teach, and this is something that I coach, and I tell them and I think you said as well, that failure can be our greatest asset, if we use it right to make forward progress.
• 38:02
  Joe De Sena: Yeah, there, you know, there's biology here. I didn't know this. But when you take on something hard, starting a business, running a marathon, starting a family and you face those challenges, which we're all going to face, but you continue on anyway, your brain lays tracks that the neuro surgeon the neurosciences, can see physically in the brain, they can see the line that track the person took on something hard finish something hard. When you quit, most people quit. It leaves a gap. These indentations these signals are more prevalent in young kids that take on hard things, finish hard things or, or quit. Quitting that gap creates a likelihood of more quitting finishing creates more finishing. So when you're going through the hard thing, whatever that thing is, just know that the you know, the ability to hang in there and finish is changing your biology for the better or for the worse. And, you know, we're not talking about climbing Mount Everest and being 100 meters from the summit and a bad storm rolls in and you're thinking about turning around. We're talking about stuff that doesn't have potentially fatal outcomes. It just requires a little more elbow grease. And so if it's not going to kill you, nobody fucking cares, work harder and get it done.
• 39:31
  Randall Kaplan: You're listening to part one of my awesome conversation with Joe de Sena, the CEO of the global fitness and wellness brand Spartan, which has a community of more than 10,000 athletes around the world.