Brian Gubernick breaks down Andy Frisella's 75 Hard program as the blueprint for mental toughness: two 45-minute workouts daily, one gallon of water, strict diet, ten pages of nonfiction, and a progress photo. Each task is a rep of discipline that rewires how you see yourself. Skip the hard stuff and you reinforce weakness.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I want to talk about one of the most valuable traits that I think that you can develop if in fact you are an entrepreneur, but, but I think all of us need to, to develop this. It's not intelligence. It is not charisma. It's not how much money or capital you've raised or how big your following happens to be or how well you could pitch. It's actually mental toughness. I recently heard Andy Frisella, who's the founder of 75 Hard, you may have heard of him, heard him in a conversation with Ed Mylett on Ed's podcast. And I heard Ed, I'm sorry, Andy, say something pretty profound. He said something to the effect of, "Mental toughness is built by overcoming hard every single day." Mental toughness is built by overcoming hard every single day. Not once a month, not when you're in the mood, but, but every single day. I really, really loved that thought because the truth of the matter is, like every other muscle, We have to train and develop mental toughness every day. We've got to push it. We've got to work it if we want to in fact have more mental toughness, if we want to be grittier. Let's talk real quick about 75 Hard, Andy's program that he became so well known for. Some of you have probably heard of it, but maybe many of you don't fully understand what it is and its origination. It's not a fitness challenge. It's not a weight loss program. It's not about aesthetics or abs. It's a mental toughness program. And Andy created it to rewire the way you show up for yourself and show up for the world. Here's what it is, right? Here's what it is. And if you want to do this, by all means, go ahead. Uh, today's episode isn't necessarily to encourage you to do this, but there's a point in why I'm sharing it. Every day for 75 straight days, you have to do 2 45-minute workouts per day. And one of those workouts has to be outdoors no matter the weather. Rain, snow, wind, doesn't matter. So you have to do two 45-minute workouts per day, one must be outdoors. You have to drink one gallon of water. You have to follow a strict diet. You get to choose the diet, but you can't have cheat meals and you can't have alcohol. You've got to read 10 pages of a nonfiction self-development book. And then lastly, you've got to take a daily progress photo. If you miss even one day, you've got to start over and go all the way back to day one. It's a pretty intense program. Now, why is it so intense? Because every single task is a rep. It's a rep of self-discipline. It's a rep of discomfort. It's a rep of decision-making. As I mentioned, the 75 Hard program is not necessarily about building a better body. It's about building a better brain. Now let's bring this back to the subject of mental toughness. This matters for entrepreneurs because as entrepreneurs, many of our members of the No Days Off Nation here, we live in chaos. We live in a world that has uncertainty as our daily companion. We're responsible for people and capital and decisions and direction. And the world doesn't give us any sort of hand— like handrails. We have to actually build them as we go. And if we fold under pressure, if we can't handle the adversity, the boredom, the rejection, all of the setbacks, then, then we're probably done. And I think that's why mental toughness isn't optional. I think it's actually oxygen. And again, the best way to develop it is to overcome hard on purpose every single day. Now let's, let's kind of bring this down to earth. Overcoming hard, it does not have to be like climbing Mount Everest or running 100 miles. It could be a hard workout that you don't want to do because your body's sore. It could be the cold plunge that's super cold in the morning and you just don't want to do it. But you have to do it anyhow. It could be the uncomfortable call with a team member you really don't want to make. It could be turning down the junk food when no one's watching. It could be following through on whatever plan you have when you're tired or distracted or stressed. These are small reps that create pretty massive identity shifts. It's doing what you said that you do, especially when it's inconvenient. And the result that comes from this, you stop seeing yourself as someone who needs motivation. You stop seeing yourself as someone who needs motivation and you start to begin to see yourself as someone who follows through, someone who follows through no matter what you're facing. Now, if you don't do this, what happens? Well, you skip hard stuff. You negotiate with your goals. You blame things like the timing's not right, right, or, or life's getting in the way. And you end up kind of training a different part of yourself, the part that, that justifies shortcuts and the part that lets yourself off the hook and the part that never becomes who you, who you could have been. You might think that you're resting, but you're actually just reinforcing some element or some degree of weakness. Mental toughness is truly built like a muscle, just like lifting weights. It's, it's the resistance that creates the growth. Every day that you do a hard thing, you get stronger, you get more mentally tough. Every day you avoid it, you get a little softer. Andy Frisella didn't create that 75 Hard program to be fun, to be cute. He didn't do any of that. He created it because he lived through softness. He saw what happens when people lose their edge, and he built the system for himself and for others to take it back. I think it's, I think it's a pretty important thing to understand. Again, whether or not you do 75 Hard, entirely up to you, but the concept of doing hard things every single damn day is what develops that mental toughness that we all need to flourish in our respective careers. So, I want to challenge you today to pick one thing that's hard and then do it. And then do it. And then maybe tomorrow, do it again. And the next day, do it again. Start your own mental toughness streak. If you're ready for it, maybe look into 75 Hard, but if you don't go into that full program, Don't skip the principle. Do something uncomfortable, intentional, and difficult on the regular, every single day. That's how you build the mental edge that I think really separates the amateurs from, from the pros. I think that's how you build an identity that does not fold under pressure. I think that's, I think it's how we all win. That's all I have for you today in the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
