What We Sacrifice When We Go All-In (And How to Maximize the Payoff!)
25 Feb 2025 · 18 min
Lori and Chris Harder discuss why total commitment to a goal causes less suffering than half-hearted effort. Lori sacrificed her twenties competing in fitness to build a foundation for later business success. They share how to identify when you're ready to go all-in and scale up gradually, starting with three priorities.
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The hard part is the realization that you're probably already doing the work. And if you did just go all in for like five to seven years, your life would be dramatically changed forever. And the thing is, you're already doing that work. You might as well just do a little more and be even more committed to get the result that you want. Because halfway doesn't get you the result, but it still gets you the stress.
And we're back with another episode of.
He Said, she Said.
And you and I are literally back. I just got back from LA moments ago. I just got back from Nashville. So we are literally back. What's your glossy tip, babe?
My glossy tip is drink your glossy while you travel. Definitely always. Because I feel so much better and I sleep and I'm not bloated this funny.
So, okay. Last night I had a couple cocktails. Yeah. So with my good friend Bill. We're out till almost midnight and I crawled into bed and I was like, oh, I'm not gonna feel that good in the morning. Not like horribly hungover. Not that level. Yeah, it's more like I just know I'm gonna feel not great. I'm like, if I pound a giant glossy water right now, I know I'll feel better. So I got out of bed and I was staying at one of these hotels where they're trying to be so eco friendly that there's no bottles of water in the place. And you know me in faucet water. I'm like, that's a non starter for this. Gross. I was like, okay, I'm either going to wake up not feeling good or I can have glossy water out of faucet hotel faucet water. So sure enough, I found their little weird. Here's your complimentary water bottle thing. Filled it up with glossy and plant that poppy. And I swear it's the reason why I feel better today.
It is. It works. I mean, there are so many amazing ingredients in there. We have Aquaman magnesium, which is super bioavailable magnesium, which especially for your sleep is incredible. And then obviously we have the coconut water. We have the sea salt. We have the probiotic DE111 in there. It's just all the things that if you did not eat the best. I'm not saying it fixes it because it's not like a band aid to cover everything up, but you are going to most likely feel a little better than you would if you didn't have it.
All right, guys, well, listen, drink your glossy if you want to feel better, whether you're having cocktails, not having cocktails. If you're getting hydrated with those things, you're going to feel better. And Lori gives you a special hookup for being a podcast listener. Get 25% off.
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When you're checking out at GetGlo. That's get G L O C I.com getglo.com use coupon code happy to get 25% off. All right, so we wanted to talk about going all in and not one of these canned bullshit like go all in if you want to meet your dreams, but talking about the reality of going all in. Because there's both rewards for sure, and there's sacrifices. There's things you sacrifice by going all in. And I think it's the sacrifices that make people go halfway all in. And the pain is not in. The sacrifices to go all in. The pain is in. Just going kind of that half. One foot in, one foot out. Right. And I was with my buddy Bill Glaser last night, shout out to Bill, founder about sending foods and so many other things. And he is the quintessential all in guy. And his life reflects it. I hadn't seen him in quite a while, and when he got the car, said, holy crap, you look so freaking good. Like you, you've added so much muscle to your frame. What'd you change? He said, I just decided to go all in on my workouts. Now. He already had a trainer and he already worked out every single day. And he always looked good, but this was like, noticeably different. A lot of new muscle on his body. I said, what do you mean you decided to go all in? You always work out. He said, well, I always work out and I've always had a trainer. But this time I decided to go all in on my nutrition and on my supplementation and on everything else. Because if I'm already going to be doing the work, I wanted a better payoff. And I was like, going all in isn't going through the motions and showing up every day with your trainer. Going all in is also the supplementation when no one's looking. It's also the food choices when no one's looking. And so it not only reflected his body. You know, we talked about business last night for hours. We're out to dinner for, like five hours, and he's got an incredible company, but like any company, it's had ups and it's had downs. And he said, chris, what got me through the down moments is that I was so all in that I don't care if the company was down to its last dollar or had no dollars. I, as the founder, by being all in, is what keeps the company alive, you know, and now it's thriving. It's back on a rocket ship again. And that's the nature of anything. Whether you're trying to get healthier, whether you want a good relationship, whether you're. It's your business. The true payoff comes from going all in. Not one foot in, one foot out. And not even. I hate to say this, not even fooling yourself by consistently showing up, like, being at the gym every day, but not going all in on the other parts. You're either all freaking in or you're not. Now, I said, this is not gonna be some rah rah episode where I'm like, go all in. And here's the pass. There's a cost to going all in. There's a sacrifice to going all in. And I think that's what makes it kind of painful sometimes. This reminds me of when you won all the fitness competitions. You went all in. And I'll let you describe what that looks like. And sacrificed a lot of things at an age where all of our friends were all doing really cool things. Give me what it looked like to go all in, to win all those. You know, get all those magazine covers and win all those championships.
Oh, gosh. I mean, look, looking back, I even remember, you know, it felt challenging even in our marriage sometimes, because you were in a. You were obviously not committed to what I was doing. And, you know, we had your own level of Right. Like, you weren't competing. And I even remember conversations where you're like, well, I want to go out to eat, or I want to go to this thing, or I want to go to that skin together. I want to have friends. And for me, I didn't know how to do both at the time. And so for me, I had to fully just say where I was at.
And I think they know what you mean, though. Like, so you have to prepare all your own food. You can't really. Yeah.
Okay. So, you know, when you are doing fitness competitions or you're constantly needing to be ready for a magazine shooter, whatever, Whatever that looks like, you need to be fairly ready within, like, a few weeks of prep, because that's about all they give you if you get called or whatever that looks like. So I wanted to be 100% all in on fitness. Like, this was going to be my ticket out of kind of the pain and the careers and the different things that I didn't like anymore. Like, I wanted to be in fitness. I wanted to be a fitness celebrity. I wanted to be on fitness magazines. And the only way to do that was to literally sacrifice pretty much your weekends, your social life, a lot of hard conversations with our family around, you know, making sure we had other food around and not going absolutely ham or giving me a really hard time around food, which was pretty normal to do.
Yep. Because we are a family, celebrated with food, certain holidays and all that.
Totally.
And so, you know, not having normal friendships because you can't go out necessarily meant. Especially at an age when we were in go out mode. Right? Yeah, we're talking like 20s here.
20S. I was like 26, 27, and I didn't have a lot of girlfriends. In fact, I really don't think I had many girlfriends. I had people that I worked with at my job. Like, I ran fitness classes and, you know, trained people, and that felt like my friendships. But it. It didn't really get to go much beyond that because I was so committed to eating healthy and working out and just trying to move my career ahead. So it was constantly either filming workouts or doing things like that to, like, build my online presence or practicing your routines.
Remember, every night you'd be like, all right, Chris, you got to watch me and, like, tell me where we got to improve. And then on weekends, it was like, really all in at an age where that wasn't normal.
Yeah. And looking back, you know, I think there were times where I was like, wow, I really sacrificed my friendships and fun and doing different things. But here's. Here's the thing I can 100% tell you now is that it was so worth the all in period because it has set me up. Now I'm onto other things, but it set me up so incredibly well, career wise. And to have this amazing foundation to build other things off of. And if you're feeling like you're plateaued or you're stuck or you just, you know, you feel like your. Your life's not moving. The hard part is the realization that you're probably already doing the work. And if you did just go all in for, like, five to seven years, your life would be dramatically changed forever. And the thing is, you're already doing that work. You might as well just do a little more and be even more committed to get the result that you want. Because halfway doesn't get you the result, but it still gets you the stress.
As with a one on one coaching class. I'm having a moment right now. When you said it sets you up for life. Right. The foundation of going all in, doing one thing really, really well is the springboard that then led to your list projects and led to your bestselling book and led to us knowing how to do other events because we learned how to do the bliss project. And that all led to you having enough of a following to be able to first do your alcohol. Whole company, now glossy is popping off and all that. Like it all builds on each other. Well, here's a full circle example. I was with one of my one on one clients yesterday. You know, I take a few clients at a time, one on one to, you know, guide, guide and grow their business. She started. What do you want? I don't say following us. She got to know us.
Yeah.
From back in your fitness competing business. And when we got to the meeting, she's like, look what I have. And she had glossy sticks. Right. Buys glossy and is one of my one on one business clients. And we're talking. Lori, what is this is 15 years later?
Totally.
So someone from our life 15 years ago now buys your product and now gets my business coaching.
Incredible client.
Yes. Because you went all in to be successful enough to get noticed by the world in fitness. And those clients and their friends and their circle of influences, they come along for the ride from then on out. So what was the sacrifice? We lost half of our 20s while you were doing that. Not doing normal things that other 20 year olds would do.
No, normal things.
And we had a lot of stress, a lot of everything.
No weekends either. Yeah, we worked every week.
We were in your gym on the weekends.
And we were also building our network marketing company at the same time.
Oh, that's right. Doing the events and all that.
Doing events every weekend. We did not have weekends.
So we didn't have normal 20s. No, that was the sacrifice and the painful part of going all in. But it set us up for life where when we have these ideas now or we want to serve in different ways now, that that foundation of going all in is what continues to pay massive dividends today. So it was worth a little bit of pain. And I'll tell you, when it comes to pain, the pain is not in the painful things that you have to give up by going all in. Yeah, they sting. They hurt. You'd rather be doing something else. The real exponential pain comes from being halfway in. Like I was saying. So you tell yourself you're one thing, but you're really not. And the pain of feeling like, oh, I'm inauthentic, that's more painful. Or the pain of wanting a certain life and knowing it's within reach but not being able to actually get it, that's real pain. Or the pain of. Right, like that one foot in, one foot out will cause you more pain than the alternative pain of going all in.
This one's tough for me because I see a lot online from different people talking about, you know, it's your. Maybe it's your soft girl era. Or it's like saying no to everything and, you know, just saying yes to things that you love. And I agree with all of that. After you've gone all in on something.
I'm so glad you're clarifying that. I see all these posts. I just. My business grew when I was in my flow. No, it didn't. Your business grew because you were fucking working your ass off for three years building a customer base and an audience.
Totally.
And then when you decided to go in the flow, you already had done the hard part. So the fact that the money shows up later, because it always does after doing the hard part, you're tricking yourself when you're telling the whole world, well, my business doubled when I was in flow. No, it didn't. It doubled when you did all the hard stuff early and it just happened to pay off later when you were catching your breath.
Now, I do think there is that. That point where, like, you can take that break and you need to. And we needed to. You have to. Absolutely. But without that foundation, like, we've been in business for quite a while now. We've talked to, you know, thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs in the, you know what now, 17, 18 years that we've been at this, and I don't know anyone who hasn't had, you know, seasons where they've had to say yes to things. Seasons where they're all in on things. Seasons where they've had to sacrifice things.
It's all in season.
All in season.
That's what it is.
And I think there's multiple all in seasons. Like, you and I kind of are like, we need to be in another all in season right now. And we're figuring out exactly what that needs to look like.
We're definitely in all in season. Me with my company, you with your company. We're all in. Here's Another example of being all in.
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In June, when I woke up and learned that the CFPB Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had sued the only other company doing what we were just a few weeks away from launching. Right. Peer to peer lending for small personal loans and sued them into the stone ages, saying, hey, we know you're not a bank, we know you're not a lender, but you kind of act like a lender, you kind of smell like a lender, you kind of dance like a lender. And at the end, there's some loans being made, you know, by people. So we're just going to classify you as one. And therefore you have 1.5 million violations of truth and lending, this, that. But we're like, oh my God, we can't get pulled into that. So it was an interpretation of a non existent law that they just made up on the spot. And had I not been all in, I would have given up at that point. I would've said, oh, well, I tried. You know, we spent $3 million and two years building this thing. Gave it a hell of an effort. The circumstances changed. Not my fault, not what could I do if I wasn't all in? Yeah, then we wouldn't be making this pivot that we're making right now and really excited about what's coming up. Totally. The point of that is it's not as simple as saying, oh, I'm all in. So I don't care that we lost our business overnight or meaning like, you know, lost our direction overnight and have to find a pivot. That's not the point. The point is staying all in came with consequences. Like, I had my stroke to my optic nerve and it's been painful and lost night's sleep and like, you name it, there's been real prices to be paid for being all in. So just saying, oh, well, we tried really hard. Wasn't our time. But those sacrifices when what's about to happen will finally happen in the long run, they are so minuscule compared to the pain points of not following that all the way through and being totally in.
Totally.
All right, so what does this all add up to for the person listening right now? What is our point? Lori?
The whole point is that if you are working hard right now, but you're not getting a result, and you actually know there's always a little place in your head and your heart where, you know you're not all in. You're kind of one foot in, you're kind of one foot out. You're not totally committed. You're. You're kind of wasting your weekends. Maybe you're drinking too much right now. Maybe you're eating bad. Maybe you're like, you're just noticing that you're not really doing all the things that you could do that by the time Friday hits, you know, you didn't do some really big needle moving things. And it's just that decision to say, what does all in look like for you? And you guys, this, this might ramp up for you. It's not like in a day you're going to go all in this next week and be like, here I am. You know, sometimes it ramps up. Sometimes it's like, okay, I'm going to do this, this, and this next week. Like, you write your three main things and the next week you feel like you could do a little bit more. And maybe then you start, you know, working on a Saturday and you notice how much more you can get done and that your company is starting to gain momentum. Like, you know, you're all in when the moment bumps.
I think that's the point. Sometimes we fool ourselves because people around us, they're not trying half as hard as us, right? So I don't mean you and me, us. I mean us. Everyone listening right now. Okay, so this is the point. If you're working hard and you're showing up every day and you're doing a lot of things towards your goal and you're not moving the needle. Still, it's time to examine if you're really just working hard, but not technically all in, because there's a difference. And nobody ever stops to tell you, hey, Lori, there's a difference between working hard and showing up every day and going through the motions so that you can say that you're trying hard versus truly being all in. And that self audit of are you truly all in or are you just working hard so nobody can poke a hole in what you're doing? The difference between those two things is the difference between you being a massive success in achieving your dreams or continuing to always tread water in a really painful, tiring, hard working way. All right, guys, hopefully that offers a little clarity, maybe a little inspiration to you guys. We always love getting your feedback, so feel free to swing by on Instagram at Lori Harder Hriswarder. Let us know what you think of this episode. And as always, thanks for listening. Love and appreciate you, and we'll see you next week.
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