 Today we're excited to welcome someone who literally goes the distance. Elvie Guzman joins us to talk about founding the fastest growing urban obstacle race in the country and raising over one million dollars for charity. This is School of Hustle, the show of refined advice and inspiration from people who are making their own way. I'm Shannon, the VP of social here at Go Daddy and I live and breathe at the Hustle of Business. Today we're filming from the hustle of it all at the Weedwork Times Square in New York City. Everybody, let's give Elvie the biggest warmest welcome. Thank you for being here. My pleasure. You are going the distance 23 times now at three and a half miles each. What is the city challenge? It's an urban obstacle course that allows our participants to conquer their challenges over 25 obstacles, over three miles including walls, cargo nets and fun obstacles that people get to experience over and over. Now I've heard of like a 5k or a Spartan race, but you're different. Significantly, yes. How so? Well, when you compare us to a 5k, a 5k is running 3.1 miles on our course. You have 3.1 miles plus 25 obstacles, so it's a lot more challenging, a lot more intense, a lot more fun, I think. When you compare us to a Spartan race, there's mud, there's different types of terrain and at a Spartan race, at our race it's more urban, so you get to run on asphalt, you get to jump over cow cars and taxi cabs, which is unique to our events. You really get to feel like a superman or a superwoman when you do our obstacles. And probably less blood than those barbed wires and things that I've seen in other photos from Spartan races and things like that. Yeah, so we don't have barbed wire or electrocution like some racists do. You don't torture people. We don't torture them to that degree, but we definitely put them through a test of both will and fitness. It's got to be as much mental as it is physical. I would say that the mental component is probably 90% of it. Really? Yeah. That high? Yeah. Okay, why is that? That surprises me. When you come through obstacles and different challenges, you have an opportunity to either go above and beyond and conquer those obstacles or you can turn around and quit, right? So at our races, when you get tired, when you get to a wall that's eight foot tall and you're five foot nothing, you have the opportunity to turn around and go home or you have the opportunity to actually face your fears and jump over it, climb over it, get on someone's back and just make sure that you get it done, right? And in the spirit of getting it done, you have some medals here that you brought today. Yeah, so this is our first medal in 2013 was a bot opener. We thought it would be a great marketing idea to give people a bot opener so that when they're entertaining guests, they can use it over and over again and people will ask, hey, what's that? It's the challenge race, you know, and it worked out well for the first year. And what goes into the artwork? So this medal is from 2015 and this medal has a really cool saying in the back, champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them, a desire, a dream, a vision. There's a quote from Muhammad Ali, something that people can take home with them after the race and show off to their friends and family. Philanthropy is just as important to you as fitness and you have found a way to merge philanthropy and fitness into the city challenge. How have you done that? What does your charitable component really look like in all of this? So one of our main goals when we created a city challenge race in 2013, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer at the time. So I wanted to create an event that raised funds and awareness for breast cancer. So that year we partnered with Susan G Coleman and we raised money for that cause. Ever since then, we've partnered with different charities, including the Warrior Project for veterans and kids with cancer, big brothers and big sisters and different groups, including the Hoboken Shotters. So I think it's important that when you're successful, that you give back to the community that has embraced you and that has allowed you to grow and be a successful company. And you've given back over $1 million through our races, through our events, either through fundraising or just checks that we've written to these groups. It's an amazing accomplishment and all of those groups are fabulous organizations. How do you identify the charities that you'll support? Well, I use charities somewhere local that we see in our hometown, which is Hoboken and Hudson County. So a lot of those are local groups that I see that have a need for funds and for awareness. Some of the groups are groups that search us and we review and we interview and we look at if they're a good fit for us. One of the warriors also operationally during the warrior is our groups that are great for our veterans. And our veterans are a group that I think are not being taken care of as much as they should. So any kind of awareness or funds that we can raise towards those groups is I think is a great thing. Well, I've heard you say that the only way to succeed is to run your own company. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that? I believe that when you work for yourself and you're doing things that you're passionate about, you're going to be happy, you're going to do great at it because it's what you believe in and what you're passionate about, right? I also believe that when you work for yourself, you have a more significant goal to strive for versus working for someone else, right? In corporate America and in different groups, people are fired and they're let go every day and they're working for companies that don't appreciate them as much as they should. When is your next course and how can people get involved? We have New York City Challenge Race on August 17th. I have to ask you, what goes into closing streets in New York City and Stanford? I mean, how do you pull off taking over a city? Well, it's interesting, right? Staff can actually reach out to us and wanted us to come there and to bring this event and promotion of health and fitness and to get more people involved in that community to be part of this event. Our event in New York City has been going on for six years. So it's kind of the turnkey now, but first year is definitely difficult trying to get permits and getting people on board to be able to close streets off. Thank you for sharing all of that. We're going to now spice things up and play a game that we call Hustle Time. What we are going to do is set a timer for 60 seconds and see how many cards you can get through in that time. In 60 seconds? In 60 seconds. We've messed up, we're going to probably one. I'm going to try to read as fast as I can. Vacation, lounge on the beach or an active hike? Beach. Dogs or cats? Dogs. Favorite movie theater treat? Popcorn. Sashimi or rolls? Both. Would you rather never get angry or never be envious? Both. Go to karaoke song? Wouldn't use anything. Yes or no, socks with sandals? No. Most irrational fear? Brownie. Wine, white or red? Neither. No cheese ever again or no sugar ever again? No cheese. Describe yourself in three words? Rockstar superstar? Elvie? Surf's Up or Cocktails Poolside? Surf's Up. Least favorite candy? None, I like more. Saturday morning cartoons or a late night TV? Late night TV. Drive yourself or call a car service? Drive myself. Summer or winter? Summer. Favorite breakfast cereal? None. Favorite Jennifer Lopez movie? All of them. How would your mother describe you? Nice. Who is someone that defines success to you? My dad. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Nicely done. That's really good. Nice job. A lot of people get between 13 and 16. All right, I beat that. Yeah, that's great. Favorite part of your day? Mornings. Best piece of advice you've ever gotten? Always do the right thing. Worst piece of advice? Take breaks. How do you use your career to inspire others? Just by leading by example and just doing what I'm supposed to do. Ever felt like walking away? Yes, all the time. One thing you still need to learn? A lot of things. What do you want people to learn from you? That hard work pays off. What's next for you? Working hard and just trying to achieve as many goals as I can. Who inspires you? My mom and dad. Who challenges you? Myself. Well, this last piece of advice is not only for our favorite resident pug today, but for two new cute friends. Who did you bring with you today? So these are my kids, Amigo and Cooper. They're 10 weeks old. Well, thank you for bringing them on. Now we have three pups here to get this advice today. Now here's the question. Noodle is always up for a physical challenge. He's a fairly strong runner, but he lacks upper body strength on the monkey bars. What advice do you have for Noodle as he considers participating in a city challenge race? So one of the important things is endurance. So I think that endurance is a key, making sure that you have enough energy and stamina. And for grip strength, I suggest pull-ups or dumbbells. Also, if you have a team, like we hope Go Daddy will bring a team, you can help yourself over the obstacles. That promotes team building and commodity, of course. So you hear that Noodle, running is not enough. You gotta work on the upper body exercises and find a team. Maybe the three of you can all join together. I'm sure they can. Well, as we close, I always like to leave everybody with a final quote, and I'm gonna read three quotes and ask you, Elvie, to pick your favorite one and tell me why. Number one, leaders are never satisfied. They continually strive to be better. Number two, you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Three, limit your always and your never's. Number two, because you don't have to be great to start. I'm not great, I'm just a hard-working guy, average guy, and I feel like we're on the way to doing some great things. We've been able to raise funds for a lot of charities. We've had over 20,000 athletes run through our courses and had I waited to be great, it probably would have never happened. Thank you for that. I really had fun talking to you today. I did too. Thank you for bringing your babies. I would like for you to tell everybody watching how they can follow City Challenge Race on social. Sure, so we're on Instagram, City Challenge Race. We're on Facebook, and we're also, of course, our website is citychallengerace.com. Great. So for you guys that have access to the World Wide Web, go to www.citychallengerace.com. And please also follow GoDaddy across social, because we are bringing fabulous entrepreneurs like Elvie every week, so there's a lot of inspiration and advice to be had. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you soon. Woo!