summer vacation ideas vermont

jim young: well,welcome everybody. thank you for coming today. i'm jim young. i work on the googlefor work team. and i want to welcomeeverybody to today's session. i think it's going to be avery thought-provoking and interesting session, somethingcompletely different than what you've experienced previously. so in introducing ourguest today, at google,

we have something called10x and a healthy disregard for the seemingly impossible. but our guest todayhas done some things in the physical, mental,and emotional realm that definitelyqualifies for that. he basically did the iditarodon foot, not on a sled. he then went on to do thebadwater ultramarathon, which is 140 miles, 168roughly, give or take? joe de sena: 135.

jim young: 135 in140-degree heat. joe de sena: 137. [laughter] jim young: 137. not that he remembers. down to 49 degrees roughly? joe de sena: yeah. jim young:temperature variation. and then did the vermont100 ultra marathon,

and then did the lake placidironman all in one week. joe de sena: it wasmuch cheaper flights. jim young: so i wanted towelcome joe de sena to google. we met recently up at his farmfor a little, unique off-site that we're going to getinto a little bit later. so welcome to talks at google. to start things off, ithought it was fascinating that when you doultra-endurance events, often you experience unique things.

you hallucinated abouthamburgers one time. and i'm sort of curious. how does one-- how didthat condition come about, and where were you, andwhat were you doing? sort of walk usthrough, how do you hallucinate about hamburgers? joe de sena: i'vehallucinated a lot, as has anybody that's gonebeyond 24 hours no sleep and really pushing themselves.

but what's interesting isyou can actually smell. so you're not onlyseeing what is not there, but you're smelling it. all the sensations exist. and you're absolutelyconvinced that there's a mcdonald's around the corner. we were in canada at the time. it was 30 below. we had already gonefour days without sleep.

i was starving, obviously. our philosophy used to be,as a team, if you're hungry, you're eating too much. so we were always hungry. and i swear there wasa mcdonald's there. and it wasn't. but a more interestinghallucination story was we were nine daysinto a race, four of us, and in the sky were thesewonderful cumulus clouds.

and we all saw thesame disney figures. because 12 hours later,we were talking about it, and we all saw the same thing. and so that's interesting. one more hallucination story. we were in alaska,day eight, day nine, and we all saw abear coming at us. and so we got in position. we got our hiking poles out.

we were ready todefend ourselves. it was a tree. it hadn't moved. but this bear was coming at us. jim young: i once hadsomething similar. i played 36 hours ofcontinuous tennis. and i was playing singles. and i actually thought i hada doubles partner on my side. i'd started hallucinating.

so per his point,beyond 24 hours, it's interesting what thehuman mind goes through. so many people may not knowthat you actually started off as an entrepreneurat a very young age. and i'm sort of curious, yourupbringing and the influence of where you grewup, your parents. and how did youstart off becoming an entrepreneur atsuch a young-- i think it was in your teenageyears or even before that?

joe de sena: evenbefore that, yeah. so my dad was very successful. he was an entrepreneur acrossmany different industries. and he went brokein the mid-'80s. and my neighbor,unbeknownst to me, was the head of the organizedcrime family, the bonanno crime family. and he had no-- jim young: wait a second.

joe de sena: he had no son. he had daughters. and he took a liking to me. and i was lookingfor work, just a way to make a few extra dollars. and he said, clean my pool. and that led to anotherpool and another pool. and before you knowit, i had 750 customers that were mostly organized crimepeople, which had its benefits.

and so that was myentrepreneur story at a young age,which ultimately led me to get a job on wall street. and-- --i just kept building. jim young: we've talkedabout this before. folks seemingly have it. and you were instilled withcertain values and certain work ethic by your parents,but in different respects.

each one had things thatthey came at you with. can you sort of walkus through that? i mean, how does thatstart off in early life and then manifest itself in someof your later accomplishments? joe de sena: so mydad was a workaholic even when he was goingthrough tough times. everybody in theneighborhood we grew up in, even if they were doing badthings, were pretty committed. people owned pizza places.

people owned cement companies. they just worked very hard. my mother, for whatever reason,got into yoga, meditation, health food, andultra-endurance running. and the reason she got intoultra-endurance running is in queens, notfar from our house, was a run called thetranscendence run. it was a 3,000-mile runaround a one-mile loop. and just as a youngperson hearing that,

my limits then wereset at a different bar. well, if somebodycould run 3,000 miles around one-mile loops,what else could you do? and so those two influencesreally shaped me. jim young: you end upselling your business and deciding togo to wall street. can you sort of walk usthrough the transition there? so you're very successful. you're doing these differentcompanies, the pool products

industry, if youwill, and the pools. but you also launched severalother companies in the process. but then you said, i wantto go to wall street. joe de sena: well, ididn't say-- the last thing i wanted to do wasgo to wall street. i said i wouldnever-- and this is going to upseteverybody here-- i never was going to sit in frontof a computer all day. i wanted to work physically.

i just enjoyed being physical. and in college, ihad met a gentleman who was a verysuccessful investor. and he had begged me to makean investment in a stock. and i had no interest. i was doing very wellwith the pool business. we now had aconstruction company. and he would justcall me relentlessly, month after month, that hewanted me to cross the river,

go to manhattan, andwork on wall street. he saw somethingwith my work ethic that he thought i couldreally capitalize on. and i kept saying no. and then one day, he said, iwant you to buy this stock. and he gave me thename of the stock. and i thought, he's nuts. i'm not going to do it. and i went to go collectmoney, in accounts receivable,

from one of myconstruction customers, who was a pharmacist. and i asked him,i said eli, what do you think of this stockmy friend just recommended? and he said i can't believeyou're mentioning that, because i was justin the shower, and that's the stocki'm going to buy today. and he sat me down. and he said, you'reyoung, you're not married.

you should make an investment. and so he convinced me to takethe money he owed me, which was substantial, and put it withhis broker and buy this stock. and the next day, thecompany got taken over. and i made $100,000 in a day. and i said, i'mgoing to wall street. that's a lot betterthan cleaning pools. jim young: do youhave any more tips? just kidding.

so you're very successfulon wall street. you did have a fewbumps in the beginning. i'm sort of curious of that. joe de sena: lots of bumps. jim young: why didyou leave that world? you were very successful. you built up this company, ithink it was 10 years or so. but what was theaha moment where you said, this isn't whati want to ultimately do,

i want to dosomething different? and making that changeis a very big change at that point in your life. for me, i don'tthink it was ever planned to be there tobegin with, as i described. and i certainly wasn'tgoing to stay there. i was there for aspecific reason. i wanted to make some moneybefore i had a family. and i always had a pictureof a little red barn

next to my desk,and that's where i was going, wherever that was. and we found aplace up in vermont. the opportunity cameup to sell the company. we went to vermont. and that was that. and i always had this influenceon people, the same influence my mother had, which wasi would just rope people into exercise andsweat and yoga.

and before you knowit, it changed lives. and i really justwanted to do that. jim young: you wantedto change lives. and you start off with whatwould be called typically elite athletes runningthese incredible races. but then, i'm sort of curious,you wanted to reach the masses. and you started spartan races. and could you sortof give us the notion behind those and involving somepeople that normally may never

have exercised or gotteninvolved to that level? it's fascinating that manyevents and sports are geared for the upperlevel, but you want to reach out to all communitiesand all types of people, regardless of their previousathletic prowess or lack thereof. joe de sena:originally, i said, i want to reach--maybe 50,000 people in the world would do this.

and then we said, wow, wecan get it to a million. we got to hit a million. and we hit a million. and so now we want to hit10 million people a year and really affect change. because when they comeinto our ecosystem, they start eating better,they get better friends, they start going to bed early,they drink less, they work out. and so we nailed it.

we found something thatreally appeals to people. it sounds funnysaying it here, right, but that's nottechnologically advanced. it's actually goingbackwards, right? we're getting people dirty. we're getting them to sweatand crawl under barbed wire. and so who knows what thatnumber eventually goes to. but we see allwalks, sizes, shapes. 696-pound men comeout and do it.

little kids come out and do it. one day, i was sittingat the barbed wire. i like to really messwith people sometimes. and i had a fire hose. and i was justblasting people as they were trying to gothrough the barbed wire. and i thought, wow, that womanhas an incredible costume on. she looks like flofrom "the brady bunch." there's no way she'sreally 75 years old,

but she looked like 75. and so i wanted to blastthe costume off her, and it wasn't coming off. she was really 75. i felt terrible afterwards. broke her teeth. no, i'm kidding. jim young: so whoin the room has done a spartan race or trifecta?

i think we've got quite a goodsampling here, a vast majority. so how big has it grown? i mean, it's gone international. so you give us asemblance-- you mentioned almost a total numberof one million now. but how many countries? i mean, this is almosta worldwide phenomenon. joe de sena: we have toget to 42 countries, which is our goal, because we wantto get this in the olympics.

we want to makean olympic sport. and we're in 17 countries now. we'll reach just shy of amillion participants this year. and it's just, yeah,logistically challenging. i look at google, as youwalk me around the campus, and think, how didyou grow this fast? because on our little, tinyscale, it's challenging. but we've got a lot more to go. jim young: many folksoften talk about starting

with the end in mind. or you took steps, andsome folks do in between. did you engineer a spot that's10 years out and sort of reverse-engineer from there? or did you take itfrom a point forward, where you sort of havethese incrementals in between for milestones? i'm always curioushow folks-- you know, when you reacha million people

and you're taking10 million, how did you come about doing that? was it one step at a time? so i have a really sophisticatedsystem for starting businesses. i fire. and then i get ready. and then i aim. i didn't know whatwas going to happen. i really didn'tknow whether people

were going to wantto do this or not. maybe, like i said,50,000 people would do it. but if you stay in touchwith the consumer-- and i do, personally. i take hundreds and hundredsof emails and phone calls, and shake hands,and talk to people. and i went through it myself. it's very authentic, right? i do this.

i live this lifestyle. so i know what's goingto aggravate people, in a good way. i know what's goingto get them healthier, from my own experience. and if we keep doing that,it just seems to work. jim young: so what makessuccessful people tick? and so you wrote avery interesting book called "spartan up!"

and some of youmay have read it. and i highly recommend it. it's a "new yorktimes" bestseller. but you took someof these concepts-- and it's not just about theathletic part and fitness. it's about the emotional state. it's about the mental state. can you sort of walk us throughthe book, what it's about, and what folks would gleanfrom it by reading it?

joe de sena: what happened was,early on, when i was building these businesses, i wouldbring in lots of employees, just like google or any company. and it intrigued me, as itprobably does anybody running a business, why some people wereamazing and others weren't, why some people could commit, whysome people had motivation, why some peopleshowed up, and didn't. and invariably, i foundeastern europeans or foreigners in general were justamazing employees for me

in the businessesi was building. they didn't askabout vacation time. they didn't ask aboutgetting paid more money. they really justwanted more hours. they wanted to work more. that was a privilege for them. and i wanted to get tothe core of why that was. and was there a secretsauce that we can then share with the rest of theworld so that everybody

could be that motivated? and i think there is. will people actuallyfollow it step by step? i don't know. some will. i mean, we've gotten anamazing response from the book. it was a "new york times"number two bestseller. at the core of it is changingyour frame of reference. so how do you fightfor milk every day

when you've got anabundance of milk? and for me, what i do is i do300 burpees in the morning. they're terrible. it brings me back toa third-world country. i want to escape, right? i want to get back tojust not doing burpees. and i take a cold shower. and then the restof the day is easy. no matter what bad news youget, you're not doing burpees.

it's not so bad. jim young: and youwrote the book, but you're lookingat different ways of getting the message out. and i heard earlierthat you're looking at doing a podcastfor the people to experience thiscontent more often and to have these conversations. could you sort of get intothe "spartan up" podcast

that's going to belaunched next month? joe de sena: so we startedspartanuppodcast.com, i believe, is our url. and we've interviewed, in thelast three months, 115 people, people like richardbranson, the guy who shot bin laden, theceo of kodak, twitter, hopefully somebody at google. and we just tried toget to the core of what made that person successful.

as an example, intervieweda person from lebanon the other day. and he's a multi-billionaire,lives out in la. his story is amazing. he was in lebanon at a youngage in the mid-'70s doing really well. and they kidnap him. some people from syria,they hang him upside down, they beat him for 96 hours.

he was definitely hallucinating. he escapes. they throw him out of lebanon. he loses his employees. he loses his business. he lands in geneva,meets somebody related to the shah of iran. they bring him into iran. he rebuilds hisbusiness and his life

over the next three, four years. and then they kill abunch of his friends. they throw him out of iran. he lands in la, $17 in hispocket, rebuilds his life. and now he's amulti-billionaire here. just went back to lebanonfor the first time. how does that happen? how does that personkeep taking one step and putting it infront of the other

and then have such a greatdemeanor and personality? and maybe we can copy that. jim young: so inyour course, you're interviewing someamazing people. but you also encounterall walks of life. and do you ever get frustratedin dealing with people that you know can do more but aren't? how do you dealwith that situation? joe de sena: every day.

every day. yeah, it's aninternal frustration. and i don't know. i have the abilityto motivate people. i just need themto show up, which is why i think a lot offriends don't visit me. because i have a tendencyto rope them into things. i had one friendshow up once, who had only ever biked 20 miles.

and i said, come on,let's go on a bike ride. we went 270 miles. he never visited again. he never came back. but i do have theability to get them out on that first bike ride. jim young: so i went to visitjoe up in his place in vermont. we got up at 0430. i think we were toyour place by 0530.

and we do ourmorning 300 burpees. in the back, he's got avery unique, little mountain that he's put in place1,500 granite steps that you then doafter the 300 burpees. and so there's alittle shack on top. i got stuck halfway up. so down comes somebody who'sa friend of joe and mine. i met him at this event. it's a guy namedtony the fridge.

he carries a refrigerator on hisback and does ultra marathons. but anyway, tony doesn'tlift or carry me. what he tells me is, you'regoing to get up the mountain. here's the technique you use. and he got me up, in tinysteps, with my head up. and i was in severe pain. they were waiting onthe top of mountain. they don't stop untilthe last person's up. and i'll never forget that.

between the morningworkout and that, he's basically gotme back on that path. because i'd become a googler whosits in front of a computer way too often. and so this hassort of re-energized me to get back in it, sortof like your wall street experience. so i thank you for that. now, you're involvedin a lot of stuff.

and i know you're focusingon the spartan race and building out. but you also havesome new endeavors, like the 431 project. and i'm wearingthat t-shirt here. can you tell us a little bitabout it, what it's about, what problems you'retrying to address, and how maybe googlers andpeople across the world-- joe de sena: could help?

jim young: --could help. exactly. so back in 431 bc, westumbled upon this concept of the four elements--earth, air, water, fire. and so it got me thinking,today's four elements are like computers,cellphone, doughnut, couch. and can we get kids,who are expected to live five years less thanthe current generation, healthy? can we get them back immersedin those four elements?

and to do that, ithought, we have to get a bunch ofinfluential people around. and you showed up. tony the fridge showed up. 148 other people showed up. and we sat around,like a think tank, and said, how do we do this? and so we've already come upwith some really cool and neat ideas.

and the idea is toget kids moving. to give you abackground on my kids-- and don't call socialservices-- but my kids will do kung fu everyday for an hour. they'll do wrestling practicefor an hour-- daughters, too. and my seven-year-old ranthe new york marathon, when he was eight years old,ran the boston marathon. so kids can do a lotmore than we ask of them. jim young: and one of thespeakers at this event

was winter-- joe de sena: yeah, vinecki. jim young: --vinecki, who'srun a marathon on all seven continents. she's 15. absolutely amazing. i highly encourage you togo on to their website that has all the youtubevideos of these speakers. it's fascinating to covereverybody from winter

to some of the healthand nutrition folks that are folks doing studies. and i know mckinseyjust put out a report saying that worldwide obesityis now a $2 trillion problem. so obesity is goingto surpass starvation as a worldwide problem. and joe is tryingto help address that through this project 431 andgetting kids moving again. so when we're up there,we started a new tradition

on the last day. and you may or may notrecall what it was. so in the military, youget a challenge coin, in which case, youhave to present each other witha challenge coin. and if the persondoesn't have it, they have to dosomething for you. so to this day, joe gavethese up at the project 431 the last day.

i carry this withme at all times. if i present it to somebodywho was also there, joe, and he doesn't have hischallenge rock in return-- joe de sena: i don't have it. jim young: whatdo we have to do? joe de sena: you got to tell me. jim young: we haveto do 20 burpees. joe de sena: allright, let's do them. jim young: so we'regoing to 20 burpees.

and we're going to get energizedfor our question and answer period. joe de sena: you guys in? jim young: you guys in? who's in? joe de sena: we got to do it. let's do it. jim young: let'sdo it as a group. joe de sena: let's do it.

exercise one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. nine.

and 20. [panting] [applause] jim young: [grunts] well done. ok. let's go ahead-- bringthose chairs back in, and we'll do a littlequestion and answer. audience: so i can maybestart with one from the dory. and the firstquestion is, what's

the one thing that makes yougo after you've hit a wall? how can we apply thisto our daily lives? joe de sena: one foot infront of the other basically is the trick. everybody's going to hit a wall. and so what i like to do--this morning, i went for a run. i did my workout, andthen i went for a run. and i ran to a point wherei kind of hit a wall. i didn't feel likegoing anymore.

then i had to turnaround and get back. so i purposely makesure i hit walls a lot. and you'd be surprised howyou can move that wall. i think we live in alittle, small boxes. and we don't reallytest ourselves. and so it's importantthat we go out and do some of these thingsthat might sound crazy. but i think theyonly sound crazy, because normal getsworse each year.

we all like comfort. and because we like comfort andthere's all these advancements in technology, normal is movingthose walls closer to us. and a lot of people don'twant to hit the wall, if that makes sense. jim young: this is real water. it's not a hallucination. thank you. joe de sena: thanks.

audience: hi, joe. joe de sena: hi. audience: it's apleasure to meet you. joe de sena: my pleasure. audience: spartanchanged my life. joe de sena: how? audience: how? joe de sena: how didit change your life? audience: i did my first spartanbeast in 2013, sacramento.

i didn't do any kindof training for it. i just jumped in there. it was like jumpingwith the wolves. i was, like, in pain formaybe, like, two weeks. yeah. it was the worst. joe de sena: but it woke you up? audience: it showed me whati needed to do to train. and then i tried mytrifecta this year.

joe de sena: nice. audience: and then this pastweek, i just ran in malibu. audience: and i got the battlewounds to prove it, you know. joe de sena: but you're hooked? you're hooked? audience: yeah,i'm hooked, hooked. i just keep comingback for more. the question i wanted toask you is, i did the rope. i usually finish that obstacle.

but this weekend, the top ofthat rope was like butter. the majority of uswere just like-- joe de sena: sliding? audience: --slidingright through it. i don't know why. i was all the way at the top. and i had my lace wrapped onthe top of one of the knots. all i had to do wasjust pull myself up one more time, slap that bell.

and just couldn't getthat grip, none of us. joe de sena: couldn't do it? audience: we wereall just like, ah. and we'd be up there wipingour hands and nothing. tried it again,slipped right through. try it again, slippedright through. so i just said, screw it, putmy hand up and just leap up for it. and then rightwhen i did that, i

was just going to befalling all the down now. and then battle scars all over. joe de sena: did you go back up? audience: i tried it again. joe de sena: didn't do it? audience: no. no difference. joe de sena: what timedid you go out there? what day was it?

audience: it was a-- joe de sena: saturday? audience: --saturday. we ran the 12:15 wave. joe de sena: i had justbeen at the rope climb putting vaselineall over the rope. audience: i waslike, wait a minute. because, like, why isit so slippery up top? jim young: be thankful hedidn't have the water hose.

joe de sena: i sawon the registration you were from google. i did that. audience: it was like nice anddry all the way at the bottom. it was just at the top. joe de sena: everyother rope was dry. i couldn't believeyou picked that one. you wanted to knowwhy, now you know. audience: just, i'mhonored to meet you.

audience: so there's one morequestion on our dory page. so from scaling the participantsfrom 40,000 to over a million, what's been the biggest growingpains for the organization, and any lessonslearned from that? joe de sena: technology. and that would be aquestion for google. i mean, we're stressed intrying to quickly develop all the technology requiredin social, and registration, back end, crm, just likeany company our size.

that's been-- thank god wehave a lot of adventure, racing types andsuper athletes working for us that will work 24 hoursa day, hallucination or not. and so that part-- ican't say it's easy. that's the lesser ofthe challenge for us. the larger challengehas been technology. jim young: google might justhave a few cloud platforms that can help out with scaling this. audience: for me, theobstacles in the spartans

were always kindof the fun part. the running always sucks. uphill always sucks. and the obstacles werejust that little nugget that kind of keep you goingafter the running parts, right? curious. out of all the obstaclesyou've seen, dealt with, thought of, what is one you'dlike to have that you can't? joe de sena: i lovethe gladiators.

i don't know if you rememberthe gladiators at the end. i love the gladiators. but if we want to be a sport,we've got to be consistent. and you can't take a chancethat a gladiator, one gladiator is going to take aguy out or a woman out right at the end whenthey're about to finish. we used to have gladiatorsstanding at the finish line. so now you've spent two hoursgetting through this thing. you've gone up anddown the rope 12 times.

you finally got it. and then you get taken outby a gladiator at the end. i loved it. but i don't think itworks for us being sport. audience: my formeroffice mate got hit by a gladiator goingacross the finish line and broke his wrist. joe de sena: there you go. audience: and then,as a programmer,

told our boss that he was superexcited to do it next year. and our boss was furious. so my question is,how do you choose the balance betweenfitness-based obstacles-- like, anybody can--well, not anybody, but you don't need alot of specific training to pull a tire uphill. how do you balance that withreally skill-based things, like throwing a javelin, thatseems to be just a burpee fest?

joe de sena: the operativeword there is "balance." i get lots of emailsfrom the fast runners that say, why doyou have to have so many obstacles andwhy so many heavy things? i get lots of emailsfrom the strong people that say, why do we haveto have so much running? people that aretalented at spear throw want us to havenine spear throws. so it's this balance ofkind of-- without sounding

terrible-- breaking everyone,of getting everybody uncomfortableacross the spectrum. and if we do that, then we'vereally achieved our goal. like, if i slowed a runner down,speed up the heavier, fast guy, or woman, and even trip upthe person that's really talented at some of thosemore technical obstacles, then we've won. so that's the balance. audience: how doyou best prepare

and how do you bestrecover for the events? do you have any advice? joe de sena: it justdepends how committed you are as far aspreparation goes. when i was really trainingfor my events-- and some of the elites thattrain for spartan race will train no less than threeand a half, four hours a day. so that's committed, right? and then if somebody says, look,i don't have a lot of time.

i can't spend thatmuch time doing this. and i'm not that fit. you can get out there justby walking a mile a day and doing 30 burpeesand 30 pull-ups. by the way, pull-ups scareeverybody, because they say, i can't even do one pull-up. do jump-ups. literally, if you did 30jump-ups a day every day, and 30 burpees,and walked a mile,

you'd get through anyone of these events. you're not going to win them,but you'll get through it. and you're still probablygoing to be a little sore. that's a bonus. recovery is iceplunge, ice water. not hot water, ice water. jim young: well, great. well, we want to thank all thegooglers that showed up today. we want to thank, especially,some googlers that

helped out in the background--jonas and sasha, cliff, helping out. and we've got somethingspecial in store for you. so we're going to headover to the garfield area. and we've got our own littlespartan googler course set up. but first andforemost, obviously, we want to thank joe andhis team for coming today and for sharingwith us his vision. highly recommend his book.

and then, ofcourse, the podcasts that are coming up in january. i highly recommendthose as well. so joe, on behalf of google,we want to thank you. joe de sena: thanksfor having me. jim young: and lookforward to everyone over at the obstacle course.