EP32: “How Doing One Hard Thing Changed Everything”

In October 2006, I decided to do something I had never done before — run a marathon. That single decision became the catalyst for every major change that followed in my life.

From that first finish line came a series of challenges — sprint triathlons, Ironmans, swimming across Alcatraz, running 100 miles, completing Navy SEAL training, and eventually creating Adventure Summit. But what I learned along the way is that doing hard things isn’t just about the physical.

It’s about mindset, belief, and the discipline to confront what’s uncomfortable — whether it’s giving up alcohol, having tough conversations, or stepping fully into leadership.

This episode is about how one hard thing can change everything — and how every challenge, physical or not, becomes training for the life you’re meant to live.

🎧 If you’ve ever felt stuck or afraid to take the next step, this episode might be the nudge you need to start your own hard thing.

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Transcript

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This is the Austin Cohen Podcast where we talk real strategies for chiropractors ready to grow beyond the adjustment. If you're building a business, developing your leadership, and trying to build wealth without burning out, you are in the right place. Let's get to work what's up everybody? Oh man. Episode 32. We've got some really good content we're gonna be talking about today, but before we go into that, listen, growth Summit is getting close. And if you are coming, if the first three hours, you'll have more value than your entire investment of this trip than, and you still get Saturday. This is gonna be insane. I actually just finished my opening two keynotes for Friday afternoon. Basically what I'm gonna be doing is hammering the six growth engine framework for success in chiropractic. It obviously applies to every business, but yeah, this is gonna be gold and it's gonna give you a strong framework as you go into 2026. So I've also put together five numbers. That's it. Five numbers. If you just track these five numbers, that's it. You can double your practice. And this isn't some, like chiropractic guru who's, telling you, oh, if you just track this, then you can drastically change. No, this is legit numbers. When track can have a significant impact. So man, that's gonna be awesome. And so now that he actually got me even more excited about it, we have a new sponsor, KBS apparel. So the people who actually make all of our swag are now gonna be sponsoring the Swag for Growth Summit. They're somebody who we use for literally every single product we make in our office. We utilize their services, but also for office supplies too as well. They do a really good job with that. So they'll be on site all weekend hanging out with us and just putting together some pretty cool swag for all of us. So it's gonna be a fun experience. I'm about 24 hours, by the way, guys away from leaving for my company retreat to head to Chattanooga. We have that this weekend. And whew, man. It's gonna be, it's gonna be kick butt. I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna be pretty awesome. I've got just a, we've got such a great team. Man, I love my chiropractors, I love my office staff. We have such a good team, such a good team. And, one of our core values in our company is better together, and this is a testament to better together. But it's better together and it's like stronger together too as well. The core value is better together. But man, we've got such a great team. I always recommend, I just believe it's such aval opportunity for everybody to run an annual company retreat. And like ours is only two hours away and Chattanooga, and we've hired a really good speaker to come out on Thursday, I'm gonna be doing a state of the company tomorrow evening, we give out awards. For the highest growth clinic for the MVP, for the rookie of the year, the most resilient team player. They're gonna get different awards and we also had a challenge for all of our office managers how they can get awards too as well. So yeah, it's gonna be a fun fun, fun weekend. Looking forward to that. And I just got back from Chicago. I was at close for Cairo this past weekend. Man. Dan and Jen are awesome. I love them. They're the best man. They're such a, one of the best investments I ever made in my practice was going to close for Cairo back in like 2013, I think was when it was called Everest. But it is just, yeah it was awesome. Got to see Tristan's always there. Got to see one of my good friends, Justin Brown was there. One of my friends, uhto was there. One of my interns, Connor was there studying, which was great. My buddy John Chung was there. It was just, I can go on and on, like just so cool. There was 50 people there and half the people there were friends of mine. I love it. Great profession guys. So yeah, that's some of the updates there, but it's time to get started. Y'all. And by the way. I don't know why some of you guys are fenced dwelling like crazy on Growth Summit. It's I don't even know. Do I want somebody there who's been fe dwelling for so long, for only like 600 bucks? I don't know. But either way, there's still a few amount of tickets left. Gosh, like I just wanna sell these last few tickets'cause there's not that many left. But the code is podcast, it's$50 off. Just buy your darn tickets. I'm not doing a Black Friday spit sale on a ti. These tickets, by the way, there are 75 available and there's five left or something like that now, or six left, I don't know. So I'm not doing a Black Friday special on that. And I know somebody asked me that I'm not doing Black Friday special. We are gonna just get your darn ticket and come to this thing. It's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be really cool. So today, what are we talking about? I wanna talk about how hard things will change your life. And you gotta stick with me on this one because I know it's some of you're gonna be thinking before I even go forward. I'm not gonna hike the Grand Canyon. I'm not doing an Ironman. Now listen, you're already setting limiting beliefs on yourself, which is, that's you, but it doesn't have to be physical. Okay? If I look back at my 43 years of life, I can trace almost everything that's happened in my life. Every business breakthroughs, the mindset shifts. One decision that happened in 2006, I decided to run the Chicago LaSalle Marathon. I grew up running I was a mile runner, two mile runner, four by 800 runner in high school. Definitely chose the fraternity party route for college. But I always had a love for running. I just, for me, it's such a mental reset and such a clarity for my mind. I truly need it. For those that know me, I. I'm a grinder man when it comes to work which is great. And and it's really sweet. Some of you reached out to me personally and were like, Hey, you shouldn't be working so hard or you really need some support here. And it's no I know and I appreciate you reaching out. I will tell you the good news is guys. I still coach my kids' teams. I'm still at all my kids' events. We're still having plenty of time with each other the times I do it are specific when they're not here. So that was really nice, everybody to reach out. They had a lot of concern. I talked about this a couple weeks ago. So the month I signed up for my, that first marathon though, and I, and when I signed up, it was early 2006. I literally had no idea, by the way, what I was doing for a marathon.'cause the most I've ever run in my entire life. Was six miles,'cause I was due the 10 K, which was the Peachtree Road race. Never done more than that, but the decision changed everything. The marathon became the catalyst for everything that followed, and literally it was the startup for of me realizing that the best version of myself is always found on something that is hard. And that was almost 20 years ago. I'm literally celebrating my 20 year anniversary next year by that experience of heading to Chicago for the Los Island Marathon. Like during the time of the training, it's, you got long training runs, your legs are sore, you gotta do early mornings, right? Like I was in chiropractic school, it was my second year chiropractic school. But more than anything about that, listen, I remember the doubt, the fear 26 miles. The most I've ever run is six, which means I had to train and train. And during it, it's like a marathon. Doesn't happen at the actual marathon. When you sign up is the beginning of your marathon. And for anyone who's ever done endurance race, you know exactly what I'm talking about because the habits, the training, everything you do has gotta lead you up to this one point. You're just hoping you don't get hurt leading up to that point. And I know for me, there was plenty of times where I wanted to quit. Listen, there was times I had take boards, we had different exams. I was grinding hard through school. A lot of a lot of times I wanted to quit, but I made a commitment to finish no matter what happened. And when I crossed that finish line in October, 2006, something shifted for me. And for me, it wasn't about, medals or the miles, it was just the realization that I can do hard things and. Most of my life, whenever I would do something hard or get to a certain point that I felt was difficult, it was, I would just quit. And that was always the easy option. But this created a whole new chapter in my life. And in 2007, the year after, I wanted to keep it going then.'cause I learned what was possible for my life. And in 2007 I did a sprint tri. Then the year after that, in oh eight, I did an Olympic distance triathlon. And then the year after that I completed my first half Ironman one month before I opened up my first chiropractic office. September, 2009 I did a half Ironman and that was not a coincidence. A coincidence that Half Ironman taught me that when you push your limits new doors open in every area of your life. Because three weeks after that half Ironman, I signed up about 26 prepaid appointments for to get my practice started, and it just kept going from there. Guy 20 14, 20 15 I did iron. I did full Ironmans in 2016. I swam in San Francisco Bay in Alcatraz 2020. I ran a hundred miles in Tennessee, Kentucky Mountains 2022. I did the Navy Seal training through, mark Divine called seal fit, one of the hardest mental tests I've done in my entire life. 24 hours of pure just grind. And then this year I did, I led Adventure Summit where I took others through their own version of heart. And guess what? Those people's lives are gonna be different because of that. For those that are new to that experience, their lives are gonna be completely different. Adventure Summit was transformational. Yes, it costs money to come. There was a transactional experience in there. However, it's a transformational experience that will happen from that whole thing. And each of those experiences that I did taught me something new about who I was becoming. Every single challenge I've done in this time over the last 10 years has CH has upgraded my mindset. My belief systems. My discipline, but here's where it gets really interesting. In 2022, I realized I had something missing for years. For me, I always thought that doing hard things meant it had to be physical, and this is now what some of you guys are gonna love. In December of 2022, I made a very quiet decision and I told myself that I'm gonna give up alcohol for a whole year, no 30 day challenge. Nothing further likes on social media. A commitment to myself and to this day, I have not had a sip of alcohol. And obviously I don't do drugs. Maybe that's not an obvious thing, I, I don't do drugs. And but since Janu, since December of 20 22, 0 alcohol in my body and I made that commitment for a year. And lemme tell you something. I'm not even a big drinker. I would drink at that point in my life I was probably down to two drinks a week. But what's interesting is the first 30 days was hard. Many of you guys know I go to Aruba every year for the last week of the year and, I was with my family. I remember being on a sailboat and all I could think about was just drinking an amps still bright out of a glass bottle. It sounded so good. And then, going to dinners with friends on the weekends, just like thinking in your brain. Eh, it just, it's just one. And I thought about, I thought giving up alcohol would be just about health, but for me, it ended up being about clarity, about peace. And what it did is it created, discipline in a new form. That was what's possible. Now, I've always been somebody who's been in really pretty good shape. I can always run good distance. I can always be in the top of my class in a gym. But this was a new form and I loved it. And you start to realize that hard things actually come in many shapes. Sometimes it's 26 miles on the road, but hey, otherwise it is just saying no to what's easy or comfortable. And that decision was one of the hardest, but also one of the best things I've ever done. And then, something even deeper hit me. I realized. The hardest challenge in life were not physical. It wasn't the drinking, but there were leadership challenges too as well. And I'll be honest, for years I struggled with confrontation. If people ask me, for me, what was some of my weak leadership points early in my career would be confrontational tolerance. Why? I didn't wanna hurt people's feelings. I didn't wanna make someone feel uncomfortable. So I tolerated things. I tolerated behaviors. Attitudes performance, and I shouldn't have. I felt like I was walking on an eggshell sometimes in my practice, and every time I tolerated something, I look, I started to look from this lens of I'm robbing this person of their chance to grow. Because leadership is not about making people feel good all the time. It's about helping them become who they're capable of being. And avoiding the hard conversation does not serve anyone. So what I started to do is the hard work, and I started to go inward and do the inner work because speaking truth was what I needed to do. Started having uncomfortable conversations. I started setting standards and I'll say like when it's a hundred mile run or seal training, or an Ironman or endurance race, like it's you versus you. That's it. Like you're only talking to yourself. But having these hard conversations was harder than those things. It forces you to confront yourself, and that was something that I really needed in my life. If I look back, I can just, I can see so much and like the doing hard things in leadership. Doing the hard things on the chemical side of life and the personal side of life, which was the alcohol doing the hard things and the physical side of the endurance races. So it all starts to compound. And, listen, whether, listen, whether it's a marathon, giving up alcohol, tough leadership moments, there is a formula that is always the same. And I wanna share some of those strategies because those four strategies right there and those patterns. Behind everything are what create who you can become. Number one is commit before you're ready. Listen, every hard, this thing I've ever talked about just earlier right now starts with the decision. You don't wait for confidence by the way you build it along the way. So for those that are starting to plan next year's endurance races, like you sign up now, you, yeah, you're not, I wasn't ready for an Ironman before I signed up for it. Not even close. I always told myself I would never do it, and that's why I signed up for it. But when I signed up the year before and I made that commitment to sign to do it then there was no other option for me. But to do it like that was the only option. So everything starts with a decision you commit before you're ready if you're taking notes, two, consistency beats, intensity. It has nothing to do with the massive bursts or the effort. It's the small consistent actions day after day that will move the needle forward for you. If I would've shown up to my training for any of these endurance races and any of these things, and I go full send in the beginning, during my training, I would get destroyed. What I needed to do was just stay consistent in my training. That was it. Figure a way to be consistent. If I got tired, then I would run. Yeah, waking up early in the morning, like I don't love waking up at 4 30, 5 in the morning every day. But I want to do it for the consistency and the habits of who is created for me. I do look forward to gonna the gym, like I love being at the gym, but I also understand the things, what consistency does, and I also understand that I have to go in the morning. If I don't go in the morning, then I go on my lunch break, I don't wanna go on my lunch break. To me, that's considered work time. I don't wanna go after work. That's family time. The only time I can truly go is in the morning that would align with my life values. Number three is belief will grow through the evidence. Every time you cross the finish line, every promise you keep to yourself, every challenge you complete, what they'll do is build proof that you can do more. David Goggins talks about the cookie jar. When you do something hard, you know you can do harder things. So I, when I was at adventure Summit, I was telling these guys you now know you can do 41 miles into the canyon. That is a belief system. Now you have that will grow, and it has evidence from it too, as well. I tell my kids that all the time. My kids and I, we do a 5K every Thanksgiving. They have a belief system that they can run three miles. What I want to keep doing with them is just doing hard things to build those more cookies in the cookie jar and higher belief systems. And then what I love to talk about too in the fourth one is just discipline equals freedom. Like every time you choose the harder path, you gain more control, you gain more peace, and you're gonna get more clarity in your life. Most people like shortcuts and they like the easy route. You gain nothing from that. And it's sad. It's like I, I unfortunately think so many people are gonna look back and at the end of my life, I just don't wanna have regrets at all. And what I wanna do is build all these things I've talked about. It's weird feeling for somebody like me who's just a, who's a type three Enneagram, who's a grinder. And for people like me, it's like you always feel like you're behind. And you have to learn to be present and be grateful for the things that you have in your life. Because it's very easy to think, oh I should be here by now, or I should be there. And I'm like, I've had, I've been in practice for 16 years and I've only got 13 clinics. It's very easy to get in your brain. But, and that's where gratitude comes in. And listen, I'm not looking for empathy or sympathy from anybody, just so y'all know. I'm not looking for that. I'm just sharing what goes through my brain. On a regular basis, not in a negative way. It's not good thinking, that's for sure. But I know that, I know I'm on the right track and the track I was supposed to be on, and sometimes it's harder. But all those hard challenges build up for, to allow for those experience. So listen, when I look back on that day in October of 2006, crossing that finish line in Chicago, the LaSalle Marathon. I now see the ripple effect it created and that one decision built the whole foundation for everything that's come since. So doing hard things is not about proving, you're not proving anything to anyone else. It's for you about unlocking who you are meant to be. I don't know if I would be who I am without all those things I've done, or if I did that and quit, or let's say I sprained ankle and didn't fight back again, like the pain will fade. Yes, there have been some things that are more than 20 hours I've done, and that finish line does get blurry, but the growth sticks forever. And I always remember when I was running my first marathon, some of it was for my grandfather who was a endurance guy as well. And I remember running on mile eight and I almost sprained my ankle and it really hurt my foot, actually pretty bad. And the sign that I saw 10 feet in front of me to the left said, pain is temporary. Pride lasts forever. That sign. I don't know. Hey, maybe you're a chiropractor now and you're holding up that sign in 2006, which was 20 years ago. But if you were, let me know because that transformed my life. Here's the question to think about. What's the hard thing you've been avoiding? What is the hard thing you've been avoiding in your life? Is it confrontational tolerance? Is it giving up alcohol? Is it getting off of drugs? Is it eating more clean? Is it waking up early? Is it doing. An endurance race, like what's gonna be uncomfortable, because that is the thing that changes your life. Hope you guys enjoy listening to the Austin Cohen podcast. I love talking to y'all and I love all the feedback that you guys all share. So thank you so much. And dude, like I said, let's lock and load a growth summit. We got five or six slots left. Can we just shut that down? Use code podcasts. I can't open up any more spots. Like most chiropractic conferences, when they say they can't open up anymore, but they find more seats, literally I can't do it. It's impossible.'cause we're not staying at a hotel. It's a conference room for max 75 people. So let's do that. We're gonna have a great time, everyone enjoy their week. And I'll give you guys the updates on corrective con 2025 this week. Thanks for listening to the Austin Cohen podcast. If this episode helped you grow, share it with another chiropractor who's ready to go beyond the adjustment, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. To learn more about building your business, leadership, and life on purpose, visit chiro one eighty.com or follow Austin on Instagram at Dr. Austin Cohen.