Ep. 33 The Genius of 75 Hard

The Genius of 75 Hard

If you haven’t heard of 75 Hard, it’s the 75-day program that includes 2 daily 45-minute workouts (one outdoors), a gallon of water, and other strict daily rules.

Not touted as a diet program those that complete it not only notice changes to their body but to their mind as well. It’s really about mental toughness.

Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean talk about Torie’s journey completing 75 Hard and why the program is pure marketing genius.

We’ll cover:
75 Hard Rules
Torie’s 75 Hard experience (and why she rocked it)
75 Hard suite of products
Why Andy Frisella is a marking genius

Mentioned on the show:
http://75hard.com

Before we get to the episode, here is some information about the 75 Hard Challenge.

What is 75 Hard Challenge?

The 75 Hard Challenge is a 75-day challenge created by 1st Phorm founder and entrepreneur Andy Frisella. The challenge is aimed at building mental toughness by completing 5 tasks every day based on the rules of the 75 Hard Challenge.

If you miss any item you have to start over. Seems easy, right? Well it’s the easy things that are hard to do continually. You have to be disciplined, even with the so called easy stuff. It’s funny that the one thing so many people fail on is the easiest one: taking the dang photo.

What are the 75 Hard Rules?

1. Follow a diet – no junk, no alcohol, no cheats
   2. Workout twice a day for at least 45 minutes with one workout outside
   3. Drink 4 liters of water per day
   4. Read 10 pages of nonfiction each day
   5. Take a progress picture each day

What are the benefits of the 75 Hard Challenge?

Discipline and mental toughness are two huge benefits of the 75 hard program as you are forced to be inconvenienced for things that seem trivial but actually help you make incremental changes to yourself over the 75 days.

IT’S NOT A DIET PROGRAM OR WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM, though you may lose weight. I didn’t, but I toned up quite a bit. (I will say it again it is NOT the 75 Day Weight Loss Challenge!!!)

Another benefit is you find a “diet” and workout that works for you. If you want to walk every day or do yoga for one of the workouts that’s fine – it’s all your choice for your body. I got hung up on the “diet” part, thinking I had to do Paleo or Keto…no you just pick something and do it for 75 days, so don’t pick something stupid or dangerous, and talk to your doctor on what may be a good option for you to try for 2.5 months.

My favorite benefit is it makes you get out of your comfort zone, and we could all use that. 2 workouts outside sone outside seem easy enough until you see a rainstorm on its way. You have to plan, be creative, and make things work.

It reminded me of when I was in the Army – we worked out in the rain, we did operations in the snow, we came in early or stayed late to get the job done. It’s so easy to say, “oh it’s raining, I can’t work out today.” How many other things in your life are you doing this for? It stops you from making excuses and finding sneaky ways out of the things you said you would do.

It’s your daughter’s birthday and you can’t eat cake, who cares. Just don’t eat cake and have a great time. The cake doesn’t MAKE a great birthday, it’s you showing up.

Moving us to another benefit, it stops you from making excuses and breaking promises to yourself. It can be hard to stay disciplined and not get thrown off track. Keeping these 5 promises shows you that you can do it.

Is the 75 Hard Challenge Dangerous?

Good grief. If you have major health issues, obviously anything like this is a bad idea. So talk to your doctor and let them know, it’s not to lose a bunch of weight or restrict your calories for 75 days, it’s to set some good habits for 75 days so that you can generally have better habits. See what your doc suggestions as a good 75 day eating program. Maybe you cut out red meat and all junk for 75 days, doesn’t sound so dangerous.

Now, what about the water? Is drinking a gallon of water dangerous? Yes, it can be for some people (so talk to your doc), but if you’re exercising twice a day and drinking through the day you should be fine. If you slam a gallon of water at 11:30 at night because you forgot to ration yourself throughout the day then yeah, that can be dangerous – you could technically die. But let’s use some smarts here. If you get to 11:30 at night, and you didn’t drink any water, you may want to take a look at what happened that you missed it, make corrections to your discipline and start back at day 1.

What is the 75 Hard Challenge Like?

Pop in and listen or watch the entire episode where I talk with Sean about my experience with 75 Hard, how it help me as a business owner and why I think everyone (healthy) should give it a try.

BTW I bought the 75 Hard app for $5 to help me track all items everyday, I recommend it.

You can see more about the 75 hard steps at 75hard.com

Listen or watch the full episode below:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 33

[00:00:00] Torie: No excuses in the program. Like there can’t be, otherwise you fail. Like you have to do it the 75 days in a row in order to complete it.

Hey, Hey, welcome to Smart AF I’m your host Torie Mathis. We have got a great show for you today, so let’s get started. So I’ve recently completed the 75 Hard Program.

That’s not true. Sean was sending me desserts that I can make for what did you call it when I’m back on three 20 easy? No, it wouldn’t be 2290 easy when you’re back on two 90. Can you make this cheesecake?

So I I got invited to do this from a client friend of mine and he had. He, I actually tried it and then bailed, and then it was getting ready to restart it and told me about it. And I was like, for sure, like I’m down to do it. I like those types of gamifying type things. And so I went through the whole thing, 75 days of awesome walking in the rain, working out at odd times of the day. Oh, well then it fun Sean?

Other than the walking. So if you haven’t heard of 75 hard, it is a program that is free and it is 75 days. In a row without breaking any of it, where you work out twice a day, one of those times has to be outside. Each time has to be for a full uninterrupted, 45 minutes. You also have to drink a gallon of water per day. You have to read at least 10 pages in a business or self-development book. You have to take a progress picture every single day and you have to follow some type of eating plan. I don’t want to call it a diet, cause it’s not a diet thing and it’s not to lose weight. You just have to follow some type of plan and you get to pick what plan it is.

It’s not like you have to pick, you know the whole 30 and then do that for like, you get to pick you, just whatever you pick, you have to stick with. And it can be whatever you want. So I think that’s all the things that were part of it. So yes, you can lose weight or build muscle or whatever, but it’s more of like a creating habits, good habits.

And following promises that you set for yourself and moving through to do things even when things are uncomfortable. Like that was one of the big things I think for me, like we were both in the military, so we, you know, that embrace the suck. You know, you’re going to have stuff that you don’t like, you’re going to have to do things that you don’t like.

And we both have gone through those things. But I liked that this program kind of did make something uncomfortable. Like the second workout was brutal sometimes.

[00:03:25] Sean: Especially if it was a, it had to be outside and it was miserable.

[00:03:31] Torie: Okay. So Sean did a lot of the workouts with me and like, not really all, any of the other stuff. But that second workout, like there were times that we had to plan everything else around that second workout, whether it was like what we had planned or what the weather was going to be like, like the weather was a really big one, but you made it work. And so I think this whole thing that people just make excuses and let things go. Like there was no excuses in the program. Like there can’t be, otherwise you fail. Like you have to do it the 75 days in a row in order to complete it. And it’s not like you don’t win anything when you complete it. But I do want to talk about some things that have been added.

If you do complete it. The program isn’t for that, it’s just that, you know, you go through the program and you have that kind of, I guess, bragging rights type thing, but it was cool. Like, I definitely, it goes on and there’s like all these other things that go with it. Like, I am cool. I did my 75 days. I was proud of myself.

Like the people I work out at the gym, they were like, what day are you on? And I’m like, you guys should do it until I got to like 60 days. And I was like, don’t do it guys. This sucks. I walked in the rain at night, last night, nine o’clock at night. Like, no, it really wasn’t that bad. It was challenging and now I have like all these stupid pictures of myself on my phone that like, if anybody ever found my phone like, what the hell are you doing?

But on top of the program and on top of learning these things and going through it, I uncovered that he’s like a market. Because he has this program, seventy-five hard. That is free. You just sign up for it. And because we do marketing, like, I am always interested in like, what is the background? Like, how’s he working this into everything else because what’s the deal with the free program and why would you do it?

And the fact that he’s not. It doesn’t seem like he’s putting money behind advertising it yet. It has really gone viral. There is a Facebook group for it. And so I’ve seen some of the things that people have posted. There’s actually a lot of negative articles and people posting about it, I guess it was on Tik TOK or something.

And so I guess it was kind of took off on Tik TOK and people were talking about it there. And so I saw that some people are like, you shouldn’t be doing this super strict program is trying to make you do things that aren’t healthy. And I don’t know, I there’s always going to be people that dislike what, like.

[00:06:02] Sean: If it’s something unhealthy or you’re trying too hard, right?

[00:06:06] Torie: Like it, it’s only as hard as you make it. He’s not saying like, go and do like this crazy, you know, overly extreme workout. Like literally the second workout was walking in our neighborhood for 45 minutes. You know, if, if that’s what you can do, then that’s what you can do. However, Like what happens marketing wise I think a lot of businesses could really learn from this because it’s super smart when you sign up for the program, which is totally free and you would just go to like, seventy-five hard.com and sign up, you get on the email list for 75 hard, which doesn’t have a lot of emails for the program himself, but you get on his email list and we always talk about how important it is to build his email list.

Not only do you get on his email list? Like for his podcasts, he sends out updates for that which is pretty cool and really worth checking out. You also get on his first four email list, which he sells the guy that made the program. So supplements and things like that. So you automatically get on that email list as well.

I’ve opened a couple of emails, like I’m not interested in that, but pretty smart that you like get on both of the email lists so that he is like marketing to you. I’ve never seen him himself in the Facebook group. But people do talk about the program and supplements a little bit like in there. But what people do talk about is that he has a book, and it looks like he has not put his book on Amazon, but you have to buy it directly from him. So he’s kind of controlling that market part of it, which also has made it, that it’s run out. So it’s something that like people want because there are so many people have been involved in it and there’s only so many copies of the book.

I have seen people like, oh, I will buy your book for, you know, so much more than what it’s worth. So there there’s that that want for it because. A limited amount. He also has an app involved in it that you don’t have to get. It’s a very simple app, but it does help the program be a little bit easier to follow.

And the apps like 4 99, and it’s really easy, like who wouldn’t make like a $5 purchase. It makes it super easy. But when you have thousands of people doing it, I think he’s making a few bucks on the app. It does all add up. And so what else he has is so you have the book and the app, which are like go alongside of this free program.

He also has which has recently come out that I’ve seen certificate or like a coin or something like that. If you prove, you have to say like, yes, I actually did finish up the program and then he’s selling those types of things, which is not something that I’m interested in, but I could see people be interested in that kind of thing.

So he’s done a really good job of monetizing this program, which makes me wonder, like how much planning do you think came into it or do you think he was like, let’s add this on the back. Let’s add. What do you think?

[00:08:52] Sean: If it was me, I would have just started adding stuff on the back. I don’t know. I don’t know much about him on what he would do, but based on our personal experiences, it would be just creating something and doing something and then figuring out later how to monetize it.

[00:09:09] Torie: Because I guess you never know if something like that’s going to take off or not, like, is this going to be a big thing? I don’t know how much he actually pushed it. It seems like it’s so word of mouth. And so many people try to start things like this that you never really know if that’s going to be the thing, but it’s been really interesting to go through the entire program.

How it is. I think it’s helped a lot of people.

[00:09:31] Sean: I think there’s so many sells supplements and all that kind of stuff. And that’s something he’s already done. My guess would be he created it specifically to attract more people, to then be able to sell the stuff that he already had.

[00:09:45] Torie: Well, in his podcasts. He talks about that. It was like a program that he created for himself and then it worked for him. And then he like got other people to do it, but to put it out there, like, I, I think it’s, it’s kinda marketing. And definitely something that you could look at and like see a way to monetize something that is free or just to get people’s interest and get their email address and build that list with something that’s free.

It’s just a really just prime example of like marketing genius.

[00:10:13] Sean: Hmm. Thinking outside the box. I mean, it’s, it’s an indirect way to get additional claims. For sure.

[00:10:23] Torie: And I think the fact that there are negative reviews and stuff like that, and negative articles just kind of feels it even a little bit more, even add some controversy in there. People say you shouldn’t do it.

[00:10:36] Sean: You told me that crap that is getting asked in that Facebook group for all this, like I only drank three quarters of a gallon of water. Do I have to start over? Why would you, why would you say that?

Continue on, like, it didn’t happen or start over. I mean, it was, it was just, I dunno, I, I think people, people in, he created something that people are wanting either somebody else’s opinion or, or they’re, they’re wanting that that ability to gloat.

[00:11:16] Torie: Yeah. You know, it there’s a lot of discussion. It is one of them. Active groups I have ever been in. And yes, a lot of it is, Hey, look at me a lot in positive and negatives. It’s kind of amazing. Like when you see things on like products and they’re like don’t eat this. And you’re like, who the hell would eat this? Like, those people are in the group, like be able to follow directions, like, like the lowest common denominator of these things.

Like, like like the whole thing is like, you have to drink a gallon of water and they’re like you said, I drank a gallon of Kool-Aid. Does that count? No. It’s water. Like people are. Yeah, it’s a little bit interesting on like the fact that you could probably do a whole sociology experiment on like how people react and not follow directions or read it.

Eat the non-edible things. So I don’t know if you guys have checked out 75 hard, but 75 dot hard, 75 hard.com. You could go and sign up for at least check it out, see what this guy’s got going on. He’s got a really great podcast to give some great advice and it’s kind of like one of those like tough love guys.

So I always appreciate that.

[00:12:30] Sean: Look at it from a marketing standpoint and just see what he’s doing and. And take that and see if any of those aspects.

[00:12:38] Torie: It’s always neat to find businesses or, or people that are doing things that are outside of the box and see, like, how can you model that? How can you use that kind of program.

[00:12:48] Sean: Get people talking about something you offer.

[00:12:52] Torie: Even if it’s negative, even if it’s like, yeah. Sometimes that, that just getting people talking is what you need, getting more people to know about whatever it is. You’re doing more people to know your name. Yeah, this guy’s got it. He’s got it. Dialed in.

It’s pretty awesome.