75 Hard + (well over) "66 Days of Hell"... Pt. 1

So late last year.... I agreed to starting a "fitness challenge" over Facebook with one of my friends.

It's called "75 Hard" and it was made popular by Andy Frisella, a famous entrepreneur, author and podcaster. Basically, it requires you to commit to: 

• Two 45 minute workouts per day - With one outdoors. 
• 10 pages of reading per day. 
• A progress photo daily.
• A gallon of water per day. 
• No alcohol!

It's meant to challenge you in a broader sense, and build your discipline and mindset. It's not a "weight loss" program or as much of a "fitness challenge" as it is a mental challenge. 

This is a recollection of the phases that I went through during this journey... It will help give you some insight, on the challenges, the benefits and if this type of challenge is right for you. 

If after reading this series, this is something you think you want to try...

and it is anything like my journey, it will be an experience you will never forget! 

So how did it start? 

The challenge started off by a friend coming down for a consulting project with our company. One of his friends, a fellow entrepreneur, challenged him to join the challenge. 

Adam, my buddy, tagged me and asked if I wanted in. Typically when he comes down from Canada, and we work on our projects together, we hit the gym on our off time. I thought... "No problem!".

It was the end of 2021, and I was looking for a change. I knew that what I was doing needed to change, and the balance in my life was unhealthy.

I was working 16 hours most days per week, and was basically too tired to do anything on the weekends besides sleep, and work on my laptop. 

In 2021, I lost a ton of weight, due to an inadequate diet (something I've always struggled with), and was near an all time low on body weight, and energy. 

I willingly obliged to this challenge, and with a simple "I'm down", this sealed my fate to something that I had severely underestimated.

Nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen next.... 

75 Hard + 66 Days of Hell + More 

The real purpose for Adam coming down from Canada was to work on our biggest evolution of our company's sales and marketing system to date.

It included a brand new website, new CRM (Client Relationship Management) software, new CPQ (Configured Price Quote) software, new FSM (Field Service Management) software, 3 months of on-site training and basically rebuilding all of our internal processes from the ground up. We jokingly referred to it as trying to be a helicopter while falling out of the sky.

We spent nearly a year of planning, and there were a number of stakeholders in this project that worked from all over the world under Adam's management to get this put together. The size and magnitude of this project was something that we had never took on in a single instance in the past.  

Going into this, we felt as though we had planned the project well. We did weekly zoom calls, and kept each other tied in as to what was happening on both ends. 

Whenever we roll out a new project, Adam calls it "66 Days of Hell".

It's a long of short term pain, for an eventual long term gain. 

Ironically, our project plan was longer than 66 days this time, and with this 75 day challenge, we were in for way more than either of us had initially planned for. 

The Kona Low, The Initial Roll Out, and Day 1 of 75 Hard

Two weeks before the whole project started, in Early December of 2021, we were hit with one of the biggest storms in recent past. The Kona Low. 

Little did I know, this was the start of nearly a month of consistent rain, and with this rain brought lots of additional work for our company. 

I, along with our Customer Success Team, worked around the clock from 6am to 6, 7 or 8pm every day to try and accommodate the clients that needed our help. 

This threw me for the first big loop. I knew that our team needed to be in a place where we could be receptive to the changes that were on the horizon, but we also needed to take care of our customers... because they are the reason we do what we do! 

We started 75 Hard in the Midst of a storm. In our industry, a storm means that you will get an influx of customers that are all needing your help.

We wanted to stay on track for this, so we started day one on 12/20/21.

It really wasn't as bad as I had thought. It was actually nice to be able to take a break to do work outs to break up the monotony of grinding out project estimates. 

Meanwhile, we were still working to process as much of the backlog of work with our team to give us a "clean" starting point to move over all of the data. 

Our initial goal was to get everything wrapped up, and for us to start our roll-out on 12/27/21. This included porting over 1.7 million data points over night, and hoping it all came over correctly, and for the most part... in the right places.

Adam and his team had drilled this multiple times, and we looked through the data that was ported over, but still there was always the chance that there was something that we had missed. 

We delayed the crossover, and were in limbo... on one end, we saw no end to the backlog... and on the other end, we knew every day that we delayed left us with left time of actual "training" on the new systems and processes.

It felt like we were trying to hit a moving target. 

With the rain still coming down non-stop, that week we decided that we could not foresee an end to the rain and the backlog... so decided to instead move everything over on 1/6/22. 

On 1/3/22 the week that we were going to move everything over... we had a massive down-pour, which lead to the largest influx we seen through the storm to date. By this point, the stress levels were high, the energy low and I knew come time for the move over that there was going to be problems.

Little did I know... this was just the start of a series of events that made me question everything I did up until that point. 

First Three Weeks + COVID + Employee Resignations + Real Estate Gone Bad...  

75 Hard started off pretty easy. We did weight training once a day, and did early morning 4:30am Yoga for the first week to get our bodies mobile and in shape for what was to come. 

It felt great to get some variety into my routine after grinding through a storm for nearly a month! There was the excitement and motivation of doing something new... when something is new its usually exciting, and its easy to be motivated, and that was the high that I was experiencing at this point. 

Physically, there was some fatigue building up, but the motivation got me through it. 

COVID...

Meanwhile, one of our key employees in our company project came down with Covid. His symptoms were mild, but he needed to stay home during a key point in our project. This made it an uphill battle to keep him informed as to what was going on, while rolling out a completely new software into our company's tech stack. 

Resignations...

Not too long after... one of our other long time employees, caught COVID and needed to quarantine as well. After coming back to work, he unexpectedly resigned within the same week. 

He shared that his vision, no longer fit with the vision of the company. Out of respect for the rest of the team, he resigned as he felt he could no longer give it his best. 

I respected the decision, but it definitely threw us for a loop.

The Initial Rollout... 

By this point, there was just one of our employees and myself trying to take care of over 700 clients that had requested our help, since the start of the storm. 

In my head, there was no way that we could possibly do it all ourselves, and I felt the guilt of letting our people and our customers down. 

This was the first time that I thought of quitting 75 Hard.

It felt selfish, that I was committing time and energy to doing workouts twice a day, when there were people that needed our help.

I was still doing 14+ hours of work per day, and working through the weekends to get our team caught up.... 

But the guilt was there, and in my mind it made sense to quit. I tried talking myself out of following through on this challenge... I didn't let myself, because I recognized that this was me trying to justify quitting. 

This was where I experienced the first tests of discipline.... 

Although we had drilled excessively, the data that moved over required tons of cleaning up. This was likely a result of the storm backlog, the fatigue and confusion experienced by our team in December. 

We had to scrub through a number of data points to ensure the accuracy moving forward. 

Meanwhile, I had completely underestimated the difficulty of rolling out our CPQ software. There were over four hundred price line items that I needed to calculate, and put together for the build out... in the middle of all of this chaos. 

We chipped away at it, and got it built, but so far... there was chaos, with no end in sight. 

Real Estate Gone Bad... 

While all of this was going on, I had a pending real estate transaction that I was set to close on at the end of December. It was a tight timeline from the start, but the team I was working with assured me that we could get everything completed by the due date. 

Well... the due date came, and we were still nowhere close. I needed to request an extension from the seller, and they had obliged. 

I thought we had dodged a bullet, and this was our time to get it right. The new due date came up, and we were still a few days from completing our leg of the race. 

By this point, I could imagine... and rightfully so, the sellers were upset and had some doubts. Through their grace, they granted me another extension, and eventually we were able to close. 

I was at risk for losing money, and I felt bad for not being able to uphold my end of this transaction. It was an added stressor that made this whole thing that much harder than it already was cut out to be. 

How I felt at this point.... 

At this point, I felt slight feelings of doubt and frustration, along with a bit of fatigue.. but it wasn't anything I wasn't yet to at this point. 

I've been through a number of stressful situations over the years, and it wasn't anything more than "one of those". Storm season brings lots of stresses for a roofing company, and it wasn't my first storm. 

Little did I know... this was just the start of a much larger "storm" I was about to go through....