Transcript of How Sobriety, Faith, and Doing Hard Things Changed Brady McDonald’s Life

I haven't not drank for a week since I was 14, probably. I was scared. I didn't know how I was going to solve my own problems. It was so bad. I started realizing that I was using the alcohol to make the fear go away. I remember the moment that God spoke to me for the first time, Tomorrow is your last day that you're going to drink. I saw my future self, my daughter's in their future, and he was saying that if you don't stop, they're going to have this problem. I have to put in the work now so they don't have to.

I have goosebumps, dude. Wow. Oh, Brother, that impresses me more than any amount of mileage you've ran. Yeah, 100%. Because that is the hard part. What are some of the things that you saw in your parenting style and being a husband that astronomically changed?

Yeah, I realized they don't do what we say, they do what we do. Once I realized that, I just took that to the extreme, put in the work and take them to the Moab 240 and let them see what it looks like to be in such a hard position but never quit.

What up, my people? We're back today. I got Bradley McDonald here with me, a good friend of mine doing some amazing things here locally and all across the United States through none other than running and bringing that mission. He's going to be doing something really cool that we'll talk about in this episode, 50K in 50 States, all done through the Make A Wish Foundation to fundraise for that organization. But dude, you have You have done so much since I've known you in the last few years. But before we go any further, man, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Sean. Happy to be here. It's been a long time coming.

It has been, man.

God has this way. I was just saying this that we're so thankful it didn't happen a year ago, and that is happening today.

Absolutely. I think a year ago, we talked about it. We were at that event, and then we both went and did our own thing. And then now, but we're back here, and there's so much more substance to what you're doing. I want to start from the beginning, man, because The audience loves to listen to where were you? And what did you start to implement to gain some progress? And now you're all the way over here on this other end of the spectrum, running races right next to David Goggins, where me, I would probably need a go-cart to run next to that guy. But I want them to see the progression. Where was that for you, man? I know there was a point where you decided to stop drinking some alcohol.

Yeah, this was back in 2021. Before that, I was an entrepreneur. We had We're real estate investors in Canada, and still having lots of success, just pure hustle and grit and grind. Nobody gave us the bunch of money. It was all our own money. We ended up building a pretty successful business there. But with that comes... I was drinking since I was 14 years old.

Are you from Canada? Yeah. I didn't know that. Canadian.

Canadian.

Interesting.

I did not know that. Yeah. We grew up in small town, started drinking when I was 14. That's just what we did. Then as you grow up as adults... I remember looking as a kid, actually, just seeing my parents, how they acted and what they were doing. I'm like, I can't wait to do that. When I was 14, it was fine. We did it. That's crazy. Yeah. Then as I worked for the big power company for 14 years, transitioned into being a full-time real estate investor and doing my own thing. My main goal was to buy 12 rental properties. We thought that would be freedom. Then it was like, Okay, let's go hit 100. Then we just kept on getting bigger and bigger. But with that, in more time and more freedom and more money, we had a big boat. We had a 53-foot boat. That was our life. It was live hard, work hard. That was actually the big thing. I'm big on vision boards. So very first vision board, it was like, live hard, work hard, work hard, work hard, live hard. But it became tiring. It was like having the same conversations with the people.

Every weekend, you were two steps forward during the week, two steps back on the weekend. It was just like still having success, but I didn't love myself. I lived with regret every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, start feeling better.

Real quick, sorry, for the context, you're referring to Monday through Friday, great weekend, go out and party a little bit, take a step backwards, heading to that Monday and taking all the way to Wednesday to recover.

Yeah. Just to get It's like, get back out of the fogginess.

Been there, yeah.

Yeah, and it's a trap, and it's a socially accepted trap. It was almost like you're celebrated by doing that and not by staying healthy. I had nobody in my life that was leading me to the healthy path. But I remember it was 2021, I told my wife, I saw somebody on social media, one of my friends, and he was doing this thing called 75 Hard. I tell him off the store, all of the rules to my wife, that you got to work out twice a day once has to be outside. One outside workout in Canada sucks a heck of a lot better than down here in Florida. No, I'm not bad, dude.

I bet.

We get to the point where in not drinking, she's literally laughing at me. She's like, There is no way you can do that. I haven't not drank for a week since I was 14, probably. I mean, maybe two weeks at the most, but it's not going to be 75 days. I'm like, I know. I was scared. But that's why I knew at that moment, that's why I knew it was worth trying. I think because it was a goal that I didn't know that I could succeed at. It was going to be hard. Yeah. At this point, Kylie, our daughter was five years old, and we were pregnant with another one. She And so I started this journey and went 75 days. And Christie was giving birth, and I was in the hospital on the floor doing push-ups and sit-ups and going through the challenge. Twenty-five minutes, baby. Yeah, I got to get that thing done. Christie had the best care because of that, probably. But I did it. And so what had happened was it changed. Obviously, my body, I lost some weight, I gained a lot of muscle, but it changed this, and it gave me courage.

It was the first time in my life that I ever had clarity. I started to love the person that I became. I became a better father. I became a better communicator. I became a better husband. The deals got bigger. This was a time when COVID was infiltrating everywhere, but really bad in Canada. They were locking I just said, You know what? We're not standing for this. I had the courage to take the family with a brand new baby, two-month-old baby. We actually had to wait around to give the baby the two-month shots or whatever. We took them to Costa Rica. Because we're like, and that's the courage, and that's the type of... That's what happens when you get clarity. I saw the proof of what sober and focused on fitness and health can do for me. We We went to Costa Rica. It was amazing. But when we came back to Canada, who do you think I hang around? I hang around the same people. Then all the same old habits came slipping right back in. A few months later, we're back on the big boat. We're doing the same things on the weekend. That summer, when flying by, and again, I looked back and I'm like, How did I end up in this place?

It's so easy to lose track of, dude.

The devil's sneaky.

Dude, whenever you're not looking. Yeah. The best always say that he's always He's always. Just so you stay vigilant, man. It's just crazy to me. But real quick, I want to touch on 75 Hard. It's amazing to me. People can say whatever they want about Annie Frisella. He's too intense or he curses too much or he's gotten too political, which the latter I do agree with. I really enjoyed the MF CEO project. I'm glad he's finally bringing it back. I know Von personally, and they were... Vawn was telling me years ago that they were bringing it back, and it just got getting delayed. Well, now Andy announced it on his socials. He has changed more lives, people that he's never even seen.

There's no doubt.

That I truly feel Andy would be overwhelmed if he opened that up because I did 75 Hard, Phase 1, Phase 2. I didn't do the full Live Hard program. But that was the moment when I started doing that. That's when I started getting this This idea. This idea.

That's the type of growth.

Dude, the guy helped mold and bring out of me what my gifts were, and he doesn't even know me. It's amazing to me how many lives this man has touched through a freaking program.

Well, think about this. To your point, you have to read 10 pages of a personal development book, right? Well, one of the very first books was David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me.

I read that one, too.

Then the The next one was never finished about the Moab 240. Look what I just finished.

Yeah, I know.

Again, if we never were pointed in the direction to do that thing-It's wild to me. Would we even be here?

I had a conversation with Bejrez Kuhlian a few years ago in his studio. It's like a rich dad, poor dad, right? His dad was the poor dad, and then his mentor was the rich dad. But he says, now everybody can have a rich dad because of the internet, because of YouTube. You can literally go on and get so much free education from all these dudes. That's what you and I did with Andy Fusela. We dove into his message and what he was doing and said, Okay, well, maybe there's something to this. This guy's very successful. He's built the number one online supplement company in America, probably the world. Well, let me try this out. Then you start to understand when you start sacrificing certain things that aren't helping you and diving into the things that are going to help you, how much in your world just completely opens up.

Yeah, it's powerful. The really interesting thing about it is that it's really hard, but it's really simple. I think that's the thing that's why it works is because, listen, you got five things to do today.

What was the hardest one for you every day?

It probably was. I ended up getting the second workout in because of the cold. I I didn't have a problem with the water. The book, actually, trying not to fall asleep while you're reading was a legit thing. There was a couple of times you wake up at midnight, you're like, oh, crap. So I got three pages to do.

Exactly. For me, it was a picture. It was a progress picture every day.

Yeah. It was because you didn't want to take it?

I was so sloppy. I didn't want to look at it. It was just a constant reminder. But as you go through the progression, you look at day one, then you get to day 75, you're like, Oh, my gosh. Just by showing up.

God, took those pictures. Right.

It's just crazy to me. Okay, so you did 75 hard. I interrupted you. You're going through all this thing. You fell back into that summer of being on the boat, already in a little bit.

Yeah. Then what I learned from... Sometimes you have to fail to move forward. I can connect the dots looking back and I could see, okay, well, the thing that got me stopped drinking was to do something hard. I said, okay, what is the next hard thing? I signed up for a half Ironman. Never swam like that, never trained, never rode a bike like that. Then, of course, I've done a little bit of running. I've done a half marathon before at the time. I hired a coach. I did all the things. I did four months of training. I didn't drink during the four months. This is actually at this point, When we came back from Costa Rica, we were in a limo, and this was in the spring of 2022. I told my wife, because they locked us down over the radio, I said, Next in the fall of 2022, we're going to the US, we're going to scale business and life. We built this big, beautiful $4 million house, a brand new dream home. We lived in it for six months. Then fall came when I was training for this Half Iron Man, and we literally came down to Southwest Florida.

We didn't know a soul. But again, it was hard, but I was sober, courage, confidence. I was working out like a madman to get through this Half Iron Man. We moved down to Cape Girl and started business up, brand new life from scratch. Anyway, Did the high fire man, realized, Hey, I can drink and do training for high fire mans, and it snuck back in. But eventually, there wasn't very long when the Hurricane Ian hit here. Then shortly after that, which we had six properties that crushed us. Then we had 76 or about 80 properties in Canada that were on variable interest rates. We ended up in big developments. We were bleeding, my friend, like 300 to 800,000 a month. I started realizing that I I was using the alcohol to make the fear go away. I didn't know how to... I didn't know how I was going to solve my own problems. It was so bad. We were probably months away from not being able to make payments. But we were sitting in the Bahamas, and I remember the moment that God spoke to me for the first time. I can see this looking back.

I wasn't a believer then. I didn't even know. But I had something He told me, tomorrow is your last day that you're going to drink. I remember just seeing Kylie, and I saw my future self, and I saw my daughters in their future. He was saying that if you don't stop, they're going to have this problem. I said to myself, Okay, well, I have to put in the work now so they don't have to.

I have goosebumps, dude. Hey, guys, we're going to take a quick break and we're going to slide into our recovery segment brought to you by TheraBody. What What an amazing technology that Therabody has. It was founded on a really cool story by Dr. Jason Worshland. It was founded on pain. He got into an accident and had this extreme pain in his arm and found that percussive therapy really helped. So he created the very first version of the TheraGun with a makita drill, just a pilot and test to see if his pain could be relieved by percussive therapy overall. And surely it was. So now, birth to the TheraGun, and now Therabody, who has a multitude of products to help you recover emotionally and physically. And some of the products even help with stress, meditation, and better sleep, and just overall, better wellness. And when I had Dr. J on the show earlier in 2025, it really spoke to me because his platform was founded out of physical pain, and the Determined Society was founded out of emotional pain, and so it felt natural for us to partner up. Here we are, an official partnership with Therabody.

I want to talk to you about some of the products today that I've been enjoying that I think you need to understand and know more about so you could potentially implement them into your life. I'm not going to get into a big deep dive of the actual science and everything like that. I'm just going to give you some anecdotal information based on the products that I'm using and that my wife is actually using, too, that is helping us out a great deal at home. Because the great thing about these products, guys, is you can use them anywhere. You can use them in the gym, you can use them at home, in your bed, in your living room. Hell, you can even drive with the Thera Gun Pro Plus in your car and use it on your quads, use it on your arms, whatever that is. The first thing I want to talk about is the Thera Gun Pro Plus. I bring that in my gym bag every day to the gym, and when I'm warming up, I use it to I put it on my arms. Whatever body part I'm using that day, I activate those muscles.

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Let's face it, that's the most important thing when we're trying to move our bodies or we're trying to succeed in life is we want quick recovery, emotionally and physically. These products help me do that, and they can help you do that as well. One of the other things that I really want to go into because it's helping my wife out a ton with headaches and being able to distract from the noise in her mind. Honestly, it helps me with that, too, is a smart goggles. Whenever we feel a slight headache coming on or things are getting really heavy, just in our minds, just thinking about all the stressors, all the things out there that we can't control, we throw the goggles on, get in a quiet place, and there's There's different cycles on there and different intensities of vibrations and massaging that you can either turn it up or turn it down. And what I really enjoy is it allows me to focus on what's going on with just me and I think about things. The massaging with the smart goggles relieves either headaches and it relaxes me and relaxes my wife to a point where we can fall asleep better.

We are preparing to downshift and shut down and slow down for the evening. I heavily recommend them. The other thing it's really good for is just creating a peaceful time in your day. What I found since using the smart goggles and then the other products is it works for me, it works for my family, and I know it can work for you too. I want you guys to think about things that you are struggling with. If it's lower back pain or you wake up in the morning, your neck is tight, I'm going to tell you, the Theragun Pro Plus will help that out. They have cold therapy on it, hot therapy. I mean, think about that. When I open that box and realize that I could have heat therapy and cold therapy in a Theragun, changed everything for me. Also, really made the thing that I hate doing the most is warm up. Made that very easy for me just by applying it to the muscle group that I'm going to use before I do it and in between between sets, which promotes quicker recovery between sets. If you're looking to go high volume or to lift heavy weights, I strongly consider that.

All these products are there to help you move along in your day with less pain and recover quicker. Go check it out because now, like I said, the official partnership has begun. From now until the end of March, in your first order, you get 15% off your first order, not every order. If you're going to buy stuff, load up there in that car for that first time, and you get 15% off. Go to therabody. Com, and at checkout, the code is determined. Let me know how you guys like it. Until then, stay determined. Wow. I feel the most important thing about being a parent is being able to identify what cycle you're in and cutting it off so it doesn't get passed down to the younger generation. We get to make the choice. That is a beautiful thing that you did for your kids, dude. Brother, that impresses me more. That part of the story impresses me more than any amount of mileage you've ran. Yeah, 100%. Because that is the hard part.

That was the hardest part. It was the one thing that was for sure holding me back from becoming the best version of myself. Yeah.

Wow, dude. What other thing that strikes me is pretty impressive is You've been here maybe five years, four years?

Four years, yeah.

I would have never have guessed it. You have built such an amazing network, I mean, in a lot of mutual friends that I thought you've been here for much, much longer. It just goes to show when you're present, you have the confidence, and you lead with empathy, which I know you do. People gravitate to you. I can't believe you've only been here for four or five years.

Yeah, it feels like home. I mean, with some of our friends, like you said, the mutual friends, like they're family to me. Yeah. These are connections that I would have never had if I was the old version of me. I would have not been vulnerable enough. I wouldn't have been thinking the right things, saying the right things, loving the right way. I wouldn't have put myself in the right rooms.

Well, I mean, I can see a big difference, and I'm sure you can, too, because we've been following each other for a long time. I see a big difference in your energy and how you come across from social media then to even if you post something now. You can see the growth, right? And that's important. That stuff shows people where you're at, and that's what gravitates people to your platform. Is And again, you do... One of the things that I love most, and we'll get to 50Ks in 50 states soon, but I truly believe in life, we're meant to the people that we once were. Amen. And that's the only way that we'll ever have any type of result. That's what this show is built on. But you have this program, 0 to 100. And I know a lot of people that do that. I know their amount of movement they had prior, too. Walk the audience through zero to 100. Maybe they would want to join this, too, be a part of your running community and your exercise community. I think this is an important thing to touch on.

Yeah. When I started, after I quit drinking, I did a 50-miler. I ended up winning that, and then I signed up for 100-miler. It was this message that I got of going zero to 100 and just going all in on the thing that you're doing, your goals, your commitment, your family, all your priorities. That's where the term came from. It's just that's how I've always been. Then we said, Okay, well, let's raise $100,000 for the charity. It's zero to 100. We did that. Then I wanted to help people get into their body, get into their fitness, eat healthy, stop drinking in a way that I did, which was gamifying it through the 75 Hard, but make it in a way that it's more realistic, that it's more of a life Style versus a challenge that you can only get through with it. Because 5% of the people actually finish 75 Hard. It's not over. It's very hard. It's very hard. So we created the zero to 100 day challenge, and we also have a 30 day version of it. So you could sign up. It's completely free at zero to 100. Com. And it's basically 45 minutes of exercise a day.

Eat healthy, eat clean, don't drink alcohol, and simply prepare for the next day. And you do this for 30 days, you'll likely lose a pile of weight. You do it for 100 days, you'll lose probably 25 to 30 pounds. I mean, It's consistent, but it changes lives in both weight loss, confidence, courage, alcohol. Hundreds of people, hundreds of people have quit alcohol because of this. It's a free thing. I show up every Wednesday, we have an accountability huddle, and that's That's really what that's about. It's just a way to get back. It's like, if I didn't have that opportunity placed in front of me, I'd never be here today.

It's funny because a lot of people talk about free, but I can honestly say for the audience listening and watching that I did join that community, and I already work out 45 minutes a day. I need to do a better job of running because I do enjoy it. I do sleep better and I stop snoring, and my wife really enjoys when I don't But I've been in that, I think, probably for three, four months. Usually by month three or four, free communities, you're being pitched something. Zero. Zero pitch. Zero pitch. I haven't even seen anything come across to promote the 50K.

No, we haven't even said anything about it.

I just think that's special about you, man. I think that's why you've been able to build so many strong, rooted relationships early on. But it's also a reason why you've been so successful in what you're doing. I wanted to give you those flowers. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah. I think the more you give, the more you get. I think a lot of us meet at God's doorstep and thank God we don't die. But then you change. You're like, Hey, I need to give more back. I have to do more to fulfill these other buckets. I've always been a giver, and I don't know where that really came from because it wasn't necessarily like my parents weren't like that. But from a very young age, I was sponsoring children and stuff like that since I was 11 years old. There's always got to be a component of that in my life. The fitness thing is just such an easy thing that any one of us can do, and it'll change our life. It literally saves lives. It changes generations. Our friend Derek and his children and just watching this, this literally goes through from the dad to the kids that are literally changing generations. It's just simple. I mean, that's There's lots of ways to help, and that was just one of the ways that- One thing I want to ask you because you did state that you looked at your children like, If I don't stop, then they're going to be past this problem along.

But after you've rectified it and were years later and you've helped over 100 people to stop drinking or in focus on their health and wellness, how has that changed you as a father and a husband, specifically? Because Because I think there's a big difference between... I mean, I'm not saying people that drink aren't good parents. People can socially drink and be good parents. But there's also different things that happen in the mind once you stop that to help you see things more clearly, to communicate more effectively to your children. What are some of the things that you saw in your parenting style and being a husband that astronomically changed?

Yeah, the The biggest one, and this was one of the things that moved me to decide to drink, was I just realized when the girls got, especially the older one, got to her age, which was at that point, seven or eight, I realized they don't do what we say, they do what we do. They just start copying. They catch lessons, man. Everything. That's all they do. They don't listen to us. They do what we do. I'm just like, that was the thing that really moved the needle. Then once I realized that, I just took that to the extreme. In Now I might not be the best communicator to them where I give them these gold nuggets and stuff verbally, but it'd be challenging to beat me by showing them. That's really what I've been focusing on is showing them what it looks like to go to church and to have hard conversations with people sometimes, but loving conversations and to try to put in the work, to set big goals and put in the work and take them to like the Moab 240 and let them see what it looks like to be in such a hard position but never quit.

A lot of people just talk, and they have these intentions, and what they say and do don't realistically align with... Or sorry, what they say and think don't realistically align with what they do. I think that's where we really need to How do our actions align with what I'm actually thinking? Because that's really what it comes down to. What we do is actually defines us.

It's a pretty simple formula. It's difficult to execute. I will say.

It's very hard to execute.

For years, I had a show based on determination and discipline, but I was 31% body fat. What part of determination and discipline am I actually displaying? The moment I changed that and started displaying it caught fire. It was good before, but there was incongruence.

People can see it.

Yeah, they can feel it, dude.

They can feel it. I think that's probably the best way is the vibes. How you walk in the room People can feel it. They can sense it. I think it is a very simple formula, but it seems complicated. But I think just get rid of stop talking, stop saying, unless you're going to use it as strategy to do something. Like publicly saying on social media, I think is a great strategy to say, Hey, I'm going to do the 75 hard and use it as social accountability. But you got to do the work.

I used to post the story of a completion every day because if I... One night, I took, or a couple of nights, it was later, around 10: 00, because people catch on. They're used to seeing the completion around 8: 00 PM. I'll get a message around, Hey, dude, are you good? I'm like, Yeah, bro, I'm fine. But it's like, you haven't posted it yet. It was really cool. It's like, Oh, man, people are really following along with this. This is brand building as well at its best because they're watching what you do.

That's all people. I love that. It's so good.

The public accountability portion is very important. I think that that's why if I say something on the show or I say something in a clip, I have to do it. I have to do it now because if one person heard it and I don't do it, then they think I'm full of shit. Forever. Forever.

I think That's just like, we're big kids. This is what I learned through this process. It's like, we are just big children. We need to be tricked. We need to trick ourselves into all of the good habits and then out of the bad habits. Because it's not easy. None of this is easy. It's not complicated, but it's not easy. It's really like the Atomic Habits book. That's a good book. All the basic stuff on how to make the easy habits easy, the hard habits hard. All this stuff matters. It seems like, it seems like it's just personal development. No, it's not. You get this stuff mastered, and it will change everything about your results.

But you have to commit to it. You have to read it. You have to take notes on it. You have to execute it. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time staring at pages. There was something interesting, and we always talk about adversity and how we come back from that. I don't know how long ago it was. I feel like it was six months ago. There was a race that you did, and you had a very hard time. Was it breathing?

Yeah.

Walk us through that. Walk us through that. Yeah. Okay.

This was 100 miles in Zion National Park. There was 14,000 or 15,000 feet of climbing up mountains and down mountains and through desert. I was crushing it. I was probably a mile 70. I was in 23rd place instead of 300 or something like that or 260. Mile 70? Yeah. That's where it was. By then, I'd The breathing became laborious, but we were cruising. I was still running 10-minute miles through the mountains at 70 miles in. I'd never felt so good. That's insane. Then it got cold, and we started going up this mountain. It was dark. It was in the middle of the night, and I just started coughing up all this green stuff. It was probably maybe about 2: 00 in the morning at this point. It's freezing cold. I started coughing and just spitting out all this green I just like, something doesn't feel good about this. This is scary. I've had lung issues before. I did some of the world's longest Ironman races, three-day Ultraman races and some other stuff. I was getting exercise-induced pulmonary edema, where my lungs would fill up with fluid. That'll kill you, too.

Oh, 1,000%.

I went and talked to this doctor, and he's like, Man, we're going to be running in the middle of nowhere. If anything goes bad, we can't know. They're not getting you out in time, bro. Yeah, you're done. I'm like, This is a tough decision because, again, I'm in 23rd place, and I only have 20 miles to go. This is a mile 80, and I decided to pull the pin. I said, You know what? This is it. It's fine. But I got in the vehicle. I and my crew there picked me up, and I got in the vehicle, and the very first thing, I was reminded that I said this was, I need to get back, see a specialist, and get this thing solved. Immediately switched to not... Because these can destroy destroy your mindsets. You just feel bad about yourself. You're a failure. You gave up too early. Should I have given up? You second guess everything. But I immediately went to fix it. But then those doubts and those thoughts did creep in for a few days. I got home two days later, and I went to the pulmonologist here, and they diagnosed me with exercise-induced asthma.

Wow. I've been running this whole time for the last few years. Within 10 minutes, I get I got an inhaler. I'm like, All right, well, I've signed up for Moab 240, which is in April. This was in October. I'm like, Well, I can't wait till see if this fixes the problem until Moab. I need to get back on the horse, too. Plus, I didn't want the failure, the DNF, to define me. That's what I think a lot of us need to just keep in mind. Failure is needed to grow.

Real quick. Yeah. Sorry. Dnf did not finish, right? Dnf did not finish. I just wanted the context for the audience. Okay, sorry. Continue, because I want them to start correlating to this to a perceived failure that they've had and how to come out of it.

Yeah, that's exactly it. Failure is just part of growth. The fact is, and I've realized this, the sooner you can fail and the more often you can fail forward and you can fix the problem, you take action, you continue. That's how we create a lot of momentum. But we also create that durability, that mindset to be able to endure the failure or to the hurdle. At this moment, I'm defined by this if I don't do something about it. I was like, I need to sign up for another 100-miler as fast as possible. This was 10 days after the race, and the only 100-miler that I could find was actually a 125-miler, and it was 10 days after that.

It was about 20-20 days from the onset of that DNF.

It was about three weeks. Then I went and ran. I signed up to do 125 miles in Sedona. This is 25% further, but it wasn't 25% harder. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life by far. I was 70 miles into that and just how slow it was and how hot. I was like, There's no way I'm going to be able to finish this thing. I'm like, how is it even possible? I've only ever gone 31 hours. I'm starting to doubt my way out of into DNFing.

Again. Again.

Yeah. I get to Mile 100 and thank God that I was starting to pay attention to my faith and starting to lean into it a little bit. I was just curious about it. I had some really good people around me. Derek called me, and John Huffman called me, my friend Seema called me. I called me. But I'm in this aid station, my wife and my daughter are there, and they're giving me all the things, and I'm like, I don't think I can do it. I don't think I've got it in me. I've got 25 miles left to go. I'm basically trying to convince myself. But this is the biggest lesson was you have to, when you're doing something hard or when life gets hard, you need to make sure that you have the people in your corner that will tell you the advice that you need to get you to your goal, not the advice that you need to make yourself comfortable.

I love that. I think of that moment when you're sitting there with the A, all the A's in your family and your thing, I don't have what it takes to finish. That's where 99% of the people quit. Amen. Everybody talks about only 1% of people are this successful. They can only attain this. That's because they didn't stop. What did you learn about yourself in that moment?

Well, I'm just thankful that I have surrounded myself with the right people. This is not a me thing. This is how important it is to be surrounded by the right people. If I wasn't careful on who I brought around me and gave John and Derek and Seema the permission to be part of my virtual crew, then I would have never got the advice that I needed to keep going forward. If you let toxic people or people that just don't cheer you on in your corner and they give you the wrong advice, could you imagine how that derails your life?

Oh, man. Yeah, we've all experienced that, We have to be so careful on who we're around. Dude, energy is important, bro.

So important.

I mean, no matter what you're doing, running 100 miles, doing a show, being a teacher, a doctor, you have a job to do. Other people are counting on you. 100%. If you aren't in a good space and you don't have a good support system, you're probably going to be torched.

100%.

You're going to live exhausted.

Yeah. I left that aid station and I prayed for the very first time in my life No way. For the very first time. I left that and it was the most wild thing, but it was also the best I had felt since Mile 30. Wow. I was over 100 miles, and I've never gone this far before. I ended up finishing that. Seriously, I was just like, Is this even possible?

20 days after?

Yeah. That's pretty impressive. It was 41 hours straight. What the hell? Yeah.

Why?

Yeah, why is it a really good question? Why? But this does the reason why. To be honest, I don't think you can say it any better than David Goggins did it. We interviewed him. I didn't interview him because I was still running on Well, I will get to that if you want. But he said the growth that occurs in those two or four days or five days, however long the run is, it takes 10 years to do that in life. It's true. The The amount of ups and downs where you have to convince yourself to keep going, the mental battles, all the things that go through your head that changes you.

Well, it's hard at that point because you also have the mental battles, but you have the physical battles, too. Because that's hard on your body. It's rough, dude. But I get that, man, because if you can simulate a ton of growth in one event, you're pushing your mind and your body to places that you've never gone before. You complete that Everything else in your day to day looks like a cakewalk.

100%. That's really like... That was the pattern with what I saw when I did the 75 hard. It's like, Oh, I can do hard things. You just create this belief system. To believe certain things often it's way easier to see them. That's why faith is hard because you can't see it all. But when you create this, do something hard, you see yourself, push yourself through it, you believe it, and you do something harder, and then you do something harder and you do something harder, and it's like, Hey, I can do anything, baby. That translates perfectly into business, into relationships and having hard conversations. It's practice. I don't know a better way to practice doing hard things in regular life, when life gets hard and unintentionally, than to do hard things through fitness.

So true, man. The other thing that happens is you show your two girls that they can do hard things.

Yeah.

As a father of two girls myself, I have a son, too. I I don't know if you know this, but my wife told me, and I don't know what study she saw, but I'm going to believe her because she doesn't tell me anything that she hasn't already vetted out, that daughters get their confidence from their fathers.

Cool. I didn't know that.

It's heavy, isn't it? Yeah, that's It's on you, bro.

It's a responsibility.

It is. What a beautiful one, though, right? I'll take it. It's like when we're doing hard things and our daughters see at. I had a conversation with my daughters this morning. I want to share this with you. Please. I told my wife about it. Mondays are usually very hard. Very hard car rides. Girls are bickering. My son's triggering them in the back seat. I'm like, damn it. Can you guys just...

Get along.

Just don't speak for the rest of the car. It's quiet. But Today, my wife calls me and she goes, How did it go this morning? I was like, It was a great morning. She goes, Really? I go, Yeah. She goes, They were tired. I'm like, I know. The conversations in the vehicle were this. My oldest daughter, she's nine, and my youngest daughter is six. They were planning their futures. This is wild. My oldest daughter goes, How old will Mia be when I'm in this grade? I'm like, Well, look, you're three grades above her, so just work that. I go, Why? She goes, Well, because we're going to live in Paris and we're going to be fashion designers, and so I need to know when I need to go over there to set everything up, then come back and get her so she can come over and run this business with me. The whole time, I was like, Well, what college do I go to? Do I go to college in Paris or do I go to college here? I was like, Well, I think you have to go to a fashion design college here. Well, what's the best one?

Is NYU good? I'm like, Elina, we'll dive into this. But the thing that really, what I'm trying to convey to you in the audience is it was so special to see them thinking big and envisioning their life and how they wanted it. To a point where like, Oh, hey, that bank right there by Chick-fil-A, we're going to buy that. We're in high school. I'm like, What are you going to do that for? You can't buy a bank. Why do you want to buy a bank? Well, because then we have all the money. I'm like, Well, that's not how it works. But it's great because... I don't think that's possible without those two girls seeing their dad do hard things.

100%, yeah. Taking chances. Doing things that he I never thought that he could do.

It was a beautiful moment.

That's amazing.

I said to him, I was like, You know what, guys? I told him, I was like, I'm really proud of you guys.

Like, what?

I'm like, You guys are talking about your future. You're talking about how to get there, what it's going to look like. To a point where my oldest daughter, Lena, she's like, Oh, man, it's got to be by the Eiffel Tower. It's got to be facing it because at night, then we can look out our window and see that beautiful Eiffel Tower. I'm like, These kids understand They understand. They understand how to achieve what they want. Now, hopefully throughout life, they don't become jaded and stop visualizing or creating their own movie screen of their mind. But it was just a beautiful moment, man.

Yeah, I love that. It's just that that's the proof. You don't get those signs all the time. No. But you just got to keep being patient. But that's the proof it's working.

It's beautiful, man.

Talking about big goals, and this is be completely... Those are dreams with the kids. I I asked Kylie, What's your biggest dream? What do you want to do? And she's like, Well, last dream I had was the boogie man under my bed. I'm like, Really? Come on, kid. I'm like, Seriously? That's what a 10-year-old told it. It goes both ways. But I'm hoping that she'll get to-I mean, she's a swimmer.

She's an avid swimmer. Yeah, she is. She kicks butt in swimming. She does. She loves the relays, right? Yeah. We had a little conversation.

She's a hustler. That's great. Yeah, they do hard things. Because we've normalized it.

You have to. You have to. We always teach this lesson in the house. Go the hard road. If it seems really hard, go there. Because if you take the easy route, you're going to create a really tough life. That's a cliché everybody talks about. You want to have an easy life, do the hard things. But I think it's important to parent like that. Even when it comes down to homework, well, I want to do English first because it's easier than I'm like, No, we're going to do the math. We're going to use all our brainpower for this. We'll do the hard thing first, and we're going to get that out of the way so you feel good, and then we'll execute what's easier for you. I just think that that is a main component of parenting, but also living a very productive adult life. You got to go the hard thing, man.

Yeah, you got to seek it almost. I find if you... You got to try not to avoid it, but I think even one step further is just actually seek the hard thing and expect it and almost call it on. Because when it does come, it's not nearly as hard when you've got that mindset. When you expect it to eventually get harder, we've all been in life where Things are just like, okay, it's too good to be true, which is fine, but expect it to... Something just to rock your world next. When you expect it, it's here, you're like, you're here.

Then I knew it was coming. Let's go. Now I'm ready for it. You can't That's the other thing, too. I think a lot of people live in this. I believe in positivity, but not toxic positivity. If I sit there and say, This is going to be hard, I'm not going to over positive those feelings away. I'm going to be like, This is going to suck. I'm going to suffer here. I think there's a healthy, we just talked about it a little bit ago on a different episode. It was like, suffering is mandatory. You suffer in your run.

Yeah, 100%. You choose to suffer.

You have to have some type of suffering when we're doing something because that builds the resilience and the whole thought of the failure. I always laugh at failure. I used to be so afraid of it. But then I realized it's like, wait a second. If you're going to build any type of muscle in the gym, you have to tear that muscle apart. You have to go to failure. Then it has to come back together and it comes back stronger. Everything, you should be seeking that failure aspect. If you're reaching points where you failed, don't Don't look it as a defining moment for you. Look it as, what can I learn from this? How did I approach it? What was my mindset? How did I practice for this? Did I get it of everything? Then if it was, okay, maybe I just wasn't good enough on that day. But if you work it backwards and go, I missed a step here. That's an important tool.

A really good book that I read on this was called Mindset, and it talks about a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. That is honestly a very easy read, but it's Exactly what you're talking about. Because we can be caught in both. A fixed mindset is somebody's like, if they're going to put everything they can into a test and if they get 90%, well, that was the best I could do. That's it. Where the growth mindset is like, Oh, I got 78% perfect. Let me know where I went wrong so I can get 90 next time. When we're talking about just even our own mindset, but our children, how can we make failure okay? It's fine. It's part of this. It's part of the process. But again, what you said, what can we do to fix this and make it better?

That is probably one of the best lessons you can teach your kids. You fail at something, congratulations. What did you learn? It is not a bad thing. People make that specific F-word worse than the other F-word. Because it's all about ego. If I fail, people are going to laugh at me. Well, yeah, the ones that aren't doing something themselves, they're finding the enjoyment out of your failure because it makes them feel better for not doing anything. Right, 100%. Big difference, right? Big difference, yeah. Dude, let's talk about the 50K in 50 states. Yeah. Because that's a big thing You got to go on with the Make It West Foundation. Walk the audience through that and how they can support you and follow along.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yes. It actually started before the Moab. It got to the point where, okay, Moab is just a stepping stone. Because before the Moab, God told me, Use your legs to help people. Running 240 miles in one shot is great. It serves the ego. It's a big distance. It sounds great. But who does that help? Nobody. I started this idea about four months ago, and I'm going to run 50K in all 50 states to give at least 50 wishes to 50 brave children that have critical illnesses. Like you said, it's done through all make a wish. The goal is to raise a million dollars. We're going to be literally hitting a big city in every single state in the United States in 2026. Most of it's going to be done from August till December. I'll be posting the route and the dates on the website in the next probably a few weeks or the dates at least. People could come out and we're going to post the route. You could come out and you could run, walk, stroll any distance. Then we're going to be finishing. This is the best part.

So people can come along with you in a minute? Yes.

We're going to make this. The thing is this could be huge. It's completely free. It's going to be huge. We're going to be gifting the children their wishes live at every single location. The people that come out and they're shooting their Facebook stories or Instagram stories, and they're sharing it and they're donating. You could donate money if you want directly to me or to somebody else, but you could also fundraise your own amount, and then collect your own money. We're going to actually teach people how to do this and feel good about it. Yeah, of course. Because they'rea strategy around this. Then they can come out and join it and share it. The goal here is to create a lot of momentum and a lot of awareness so that way we can raise a million, probably 2 million, 3 million dollars. We're going to create a social movement and really want to give. The goal is so big that we want other people to find purpose within it. I want to show how giving can be easy. It can be fun. It can change its purpose. We get so caught up in achieving our own personal goals of making more money or buying the bigger house or the cars or the promotion, and thinking that that's going to give us peace and satisfaction.

What I've learned is it does. I mean, I've had all the things. It never is fulfilling. But helping somebody else is very fulfilling, and I'll remember that forever.

It's so funny you say that because I remember when I bought my TRX. It was my dream car. It was a bad truck, bro. I was fulfilled for a week. Then after that, I was like, Okay. But when I get messages from somebody that I don't know that thinks I'm never going to read that message, and they always start off with, You probably will never read this, but I have to tell you this, on how a certain episode helped them, that's worth more to me than anything I could ever buy.

Yeah, so good. People just don't know how that sometimes because maybe they don't know how to give or what charity to sponsor, what charity to donate to, how much to donate. A lot of people don't know all these things.

They're also scared because a lot of, some of them, the actual cause doesn't get most of the money. It's hard to vet that out. Yeah.

We're working very closely with Make A Wish Florida. They've been amazing. This is a true sponsorship. I know how much money is going to be going to be going to it because we'll be raising it. That's amazing. Yeah. We're building a machine. We're running this like a company. We're having L10 meetings like you would in... I've got 28 staff. I'm running this project like I run that company. That's amazing. We're going to be looking for sponsors across the entire country. If you have a business, you want to sponsor the location in the run at that location and the live giftings, we'd love to hear from you. We're looking for influencers in all the cities to come out and share it and promote it and to get people out there. We want this to create, just to be an amazing experience, both for the families that are going to benefit, but for the rest of us that can create the change. Because that's where the trickle effect happens. We're going to do some great. We're going to help at least 100 kids. I know that. But the big impact is if we can teach and show people how they can do this in their own little world, in their own world, in their own communities.

We're going to move the world a little bit.

What I'm super What we're excited to see is where you start with how many people are following you and running to state 20. Bro, you're going to have a massive movement. I hope so. That's going to be really freaking cool, dude. We'll have to do this again after you're done with that. I want to talk about your experience and how it filled you up. But this is starting when now? You're going to start doing this?

We're doing a Florida tour in March. March 14th in Fort Myers, 15th in Tampa. Then two weeks later, We're doing Orlando and Miami. I'll be running 50K in each one of those cities. We'll be gifting, we'll be giving live wishes to these children at each one of these locations. You want to come and see it, experience it, feel it?

I'm going to come to the Fort Myers one. You know that? You got to be there. I have no excuse. That'd be bad if I didn't. Yeah. Right here locally. Maybe we'll do something there. Yeah, we should. We should definitely do something there. That's really exciting, man. It's really nice to see everything that you're doing. You're using your It's a gift. You're utilizing your legs to help people. But I think that what I want the audience to realize, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this and give them some thoughts is, I truly believe that every human wants to help to me, but we just don't know how. We talked about that, but every one of you has a gift, and you may not see it as something that you can help people with, but it's just because you haven't dove in enough. You got to really dive in to what your gift is. For me, it was my voice. My ability to communicate. I'm like, Well, what the heck can I do with that? Well, eventually you find a way. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think discovering how you can help. I think when we were in church the other day, there's some that are really good at administration, for an example. I mean, that could be your gift or counseling people. That could be your gift. There's a way to help somebody with that. For me, of course, I'm going to be using my running to do it, but my gift also is just the ability to never quit. I have a business mind, so I'm turning this thing that I could just make it a nonchalant 50K and do this half willy, or I could run it like a business and raise millions of millions of dollars. It doesn't both take effort. One uses my gift, one... I think it's important, I think. It doesn't have to be... Your gift is not my gift. I couldn't do what you're doing, Sean. And likewise, you're probably not going to do what I'm going to do. But together, we can create a lot of massive impact. And just as an example, as I've been talking about, I've been recruiting a lot of support from other CEOs. Hey, when you come here, I can help you with this little part or this little part.

Hey, I'll sit on the meetings and sit on the board with you or just other people on social media. Hey, DM me when you're coming to this city. I know these three people. It could be seemingly small to the giver, but create massive amounts of impact for the people that it actually hits.

One introduction from you, from someone to another person could change their whole complexion of what they have going on. It's something small for you. It's like, Hey, guys, connect.

That's it.

I think that when people try to dissect their gifts, they judge them not impactful enough, not big enough. They go and they look at other people like, Well, I want to do it like that person. What would you tell those individuals that are thinking like that?

Well, all you need to do is just help. That's it. It doesn't have to be... It takes a bazillion grains of sand to make a beach. I think just if you do it out of love, and it can be small, it can be big, just do it. Just help. Don't judge it.

Just try. I love the sand analogy or the beach analogy. I never thought of that, though. It's a collective effort. Yeah, it's a collective effort. Of effort.

It's compound. I mean, no one person is going to go and raise all this money and help all these kids. It's not the braided show. There's going to be probably a thousand people that make this possible.

Dude, that's going to be so cool to watch, bro. What are you doing from now to prepare for this? What are you doing from now until March? Actually, March 14th, where you're running in Fort Myers?

I'm in strength mode right now, so I'll be doing strength up until the end of December, and then I'll start running. I'll start a running block. I'll probably ramp up to 32 miles at a session, maybe 70-mile weeks. Kind of treated like a 100-miler training block. By the time I'm at my peak for that, I'll probably end up training for maybe 18 hours a week. Then once I start, then I probably will just be doing the runs and then recover, runs and recover.

Runs and recover. What do you do to recover?

Nutrition, sleep is really important. Peptides, hydration. It just depends. If the body is... If I have tight IT bands or pulls, they all do electrical pulse therapy and some electrical pulse padding and stuff like that or rolling. But other than that, It's just rest. From these big efforts, a couple of weeks.

Yeah.

Exosomes really helps. You want to speed it up a lot. Oh, how are you? So good. So good. So good, bro.

Oh, my God. The amount of growth factors in exosomes is tremendous, dude. It fixes you right up.

Well, after the 2: 40, it was like two weeks. Two weeks, and I had a tord quad, and I talked to Jeff, and I'm like, Should I go see the doctor? He's like, Let's just see what happens. Just give it a couple of weeks, and then we'll talk about it. I was back to squatting in two weeks. That's insane. Yeah, and I could barely walk finishing that race. So they work.

That's some witchcraft, It's just crazy. Well, look, dude, I appreciate you, man. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. Sharing your story and giving the audience a good feel of who you are as an individual, what you've overcome, and how you're helping the community right now, which I think is the most important part. Who can forget the kids, man? The mission you're on with the Make A Wish Foundation, that's massive. I have someone very close to me. He's very young. He's going through brain cancer right now. I coach them in Little League, and it's been very, very heavy. They found another mass, and the original mass started to bleed last week. They went, and he was airlifted to Miami. They actually I think two days ago, they took the second mass out. They got it all out. But this first one is just... The fact that you're doing that... Yeah, it hits home. Yeah, it does.

It does, man. It's hard. You just got to think, unfortunately, you I have that experience to lean on. Most of us, you might know a child that's gone through some critically ill issues, but just think about if your kid was like that. It's heart-wrenching. It's terrifying.

In the parents, Megan and Eric, they're just... I don't know where they're from. I don't know what planet they're from, but the amount of faith and positivity that they have. I called dad the other day, I'm like, he's like, Mr. French, what's up? I'm like, Well, hold on a second here. What's up with you? How are you? I look at that and I'm like, I can't even imagine. I don't even like when my kids have a cold because I feel bad for them. They're sick. I want to help. I can't imagine that on the flip side. I can't fathom what the parents are going through. No. I don't ever want to know I'm here for them. I don't want that experience. But it's just amazing to me how they've stayed steadfast in their faith and positive. They're heroes, bro, because they're in the fight of their lives right now.

Yeah, no doubt.

It's just sad to see, dude.

I'll pray for them. That's wild. Yeah, please do.

You're going to make it.

Yeah.

He's going to make it. He better. Isaac, you better. I can't think of any other outcome than that. But dude, how can the audience find you, man?

Yeah, I mean, Instagram, Facebook, all the places, brady. Mcdonald, 84, and then wishmaker50. Com is that.

Wishmaker50.

Com. Wishmaker50. We'll be coming into a city near you, and we'll be gifting live gifts to these children. Live gifts, baby. The impact that we're talking about, you can actually do it.

That's awesome, dude. Look, man, I appreciate you. It's been fun and a long time coming. Absolutely.

Thanks for coming to me, Sean.

Absolutely, brother. All right. All right, guys. I need you guys to share this show with someone you know, love and trust, makeawish50. Com. See how you can get involved. Also, check out zero to 100. Com and see if that's something you're interested in. Start moving your bodies a little bit. Start giving people gifts based on what your gift is. Any way you can help, utilize your gift, and don't judge it, because any amount of assistance you can give is enough. Until next time, guys. Stay determined.