The Lie of “Easy Business,” Ultra Marathon Lessons, and Why Hard Work Still Matters

In this episode of Do The Work, we’re getting brutally honest about something we believe is hurting a lot of entrepreneurs right now:

The idea that you can build a meaningful business without working hard. 

After completing a 50-kilometer ultra marathon with over 7,000 feet of elevation gain, Ruben reflects on the mindset, discipline, and resilience required to push through hard things and why business growth works the exact same way. 

We talk about:

• why “soft life” and passive-income messaging can become dangerous
• the difference between burnout vs. progressive overload
• why exceptional results require exceptional effort
• how many entrepreneurs sabotage themselves by chasing easy instead of meaningful 

Terri also shares why health professionals are especially vulnerable to “work less, make more” messaging and why so many coaches end up disappointed after following strategies that remove all real effort from the equation. 

We also dive into one of the most important mindset lessons in entrepreneurship:

Just because your brain is telling you something negative doesn’t mean it’s true. 

Ruben shares a powerful moment from the ultra marathon where self-doubt hit hard and how intentionally shifting his thoughts changed the outcome of the race. We connect this directly back to entrepreneurship, fear, perseverance, and learning how to lead yourself through difficult seasons.

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About Us
Coaches Creating Impact helps health professionals scale to $10K–$20K+ months using proven systems for content, lead generation, and sales.

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Reuben IG: https://www.instagram.com/reubendriedger/
Terri IG: https://www.instagram.com/terridriedger/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There's also a do the work podcast where helpers learn to stop linking it and start scaling.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Where your host and Terry use the ideas guide, use the system brain. And together we help you get clients, grow your audience, and actually run a business that works.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Expect real talk, tactical strategy, and the kind of perspective you can only get when you're building two things at once a company and a marriage. Let's jump in. Hello, folks. Hello. Welcome to another episode of The Work. Oh wow. We almost did that nicely.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yeah, almost. It was close.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Um, yes, my brain is a little bit fried today, folks. Why? Why? Because I ran a long time on Sunday. How long? I ran for six and a half hours.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

And how far did you run in that time?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

50 kilometers. Woo!

SPEAKER_01 0:50

For my with how much elevation?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

2,000 meters of gain. For those in the states who still use the Imperial system because a lot of our clients and listeners are from the States. That's I think 31 or 32 miles with it's like 7,000 feet of gain. It sounds way more impressive. Their gain. Oh, yeah, that does sound way more impressive. Like it's it sounds less impressive on miles. Like it's only 30 miles instead of 50 kilometers, but like 7,000 feet of gain sounds like sounds like wow, you summit at Everest.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah, that sounds pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Anyways, so I'm a little bit zapped. Um don't tell anyone, I might have a nap this afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Do it. I told you to have one yesterday and you were fused.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

That's not true. I was actually planning to. Did you have one? No, but therefore you refused. I made a big mistake. What happened is I was leading a group call for our clients at one o'clock, and I was like, hey, I need a coffee to get through this. Because I was like, and then I had such a great time with our clients. Like we were riffing, and I was like, it was like I was like my juices were flowing, and I think the caffeine was in there. Then afterwards, I was like, I just don't think I'm gonna be able to sleep this. So today I'm gonna do the exact same thing on camera, but I might actually have a coffee at one. So, anyways, talk about self-sabotage. Self-sabotage. But we wanted to switch things up on the podcast a little bit today. Um, and I'm gonna be super self-absorbed and talk about my race and how it relates to business, both from a strategic and like work ethic side of things, but also from a mindset side of things. Just because I don't know, Terry, are you noticing that there's more and more people who are like, you don't have to work to grow a business? It pisses me off.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Like, and we're gonna talk about it is such a lie, it is such a disservice to people.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Like, I wish those people didn't have Instagram accounts. Seriously. Because, like, let's just start by saying this, okay? Because we're talking about like running ultra marathons and stuff like that. Imagine that you wanted to run an ultra marathon, which maybe some of you would never want to do that, but I'm just saying, let's say you did, and there was a coach on Instagram who was like, Hey, I can teach you how to run an ultra marathon, but guess what? You're not gonna have to work hard, it's gonna be super soft, it's gonna be like you're gonna have to manifest your way. Like you can like run once a week for like one mile and you're gonna be good to go. Like your BS reading rating, like rating would be like, holy shit, no, I would never hire that person. Like, all the best coaches, let's say in the ultra-running space, none of them will teach you that. All of them will teach you that it has to be hard. It is a necessity. But in business, why do we sometimes believe this? What do you think, Terry?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

I think it's like it's human nature. I we would all love for life to be easy. Who wouldn't, right? I would love to be able to hardly work and pull in six figures, seven figures. Like, who would who wouldn't like that? Who wouldn't like to be able to wake up on a Sunday morning and do an ultra marathon with no training? That sounds freaking awesome. And so I think humans in general, we all have a weakness of buying into that.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

We and especially like not to be that person, but our generation, like we we are part of the microwave society. Like, we want things fast, we want them easy, we don't want to work hard, we don't want to have to push through hard, and and if I can like call out my own people, health practitioners are especially um susceptible to this kind of messaging because we want to push against frying our nervous systems, and we want to, and then we forget that there's a balance there, and we just we just fully buy into these passive income work on the beach type claims. Yeah. Um, and we forget that that more than likely is actually not reality.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

I feel like, and I think about this in in life in general, whether it comes to business or uh pushing yourself in in physical space, like all progress requires you pushing yourself into that resistance place, right? Like a lot of people know that if you lift weights but they aren't heavy enough or you don't do enough of it, it doesn't really build muscles. Yeah, like your muscles get activated, but it doesn't actually tear them down to get stronger. And it's the same thing in running. If you run, I don't know, one mile a week, you're you're not even gonna like you're you're you're just maintaining. You're you're like you're not actually gonna be getting stronger or fitter or faster. And in business, it's the same thing. If you don't hit that threshold, that limit of like pushing. And I always think about like in the fitness space, they call it progressive overload. I always think of progressive overload in business.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

If you're not hitting that, there's no growth. Yeah. And yes, if you go way too far past it, you do burnout. Absolutely. Like in the same way that if I You burned out, I burned out. And in the physical space, you can definitely get injured if you push yourself too far too fast, right? So, yes, there is such a thing as pushing it too far, but then what people do is they jump into the other ditch. Yes. Right? They so they're they're they want to avoid burnout, they want to avoid that. Yeah. So they jump into the other ditch. And that other ditch never gets them to where they really want to go.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Yep. And it just breaks my heart when like our clients become susceptible to this. Because, guys, just a heads up if you join our program, we will get you to work hard. Yeah, there is hard work involved, it is not easy. You have to put the reps in, you have to learn new skills, you have to push yourself, you just show up when you don't want to. And then there becomes this oh my goodness, I'm getting results, but it's so hard. So then they they become susceptible to the messaging of passive income. And and it honestly just pisses me off because I have yet to know a single client who has left our program, joined a program about around passive income or working while you're on the beach. And then we follow up with them in a year and they don't even have a business. And it just like it honestly, it breaks my heart for them and it pisses me off when I see these business coaches who are doing such a disservice to the space by acting like, and guys, now you've got me. I'm head of recruiting for CCI. You guys don't know how many of these business coaches are applying for consultant positions.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah, they need jobs because their businesses aren't doing that.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yes, and then they're posting, and you guys are looking at those postings and being like, oh my gosh, I want to join this girl's program because she talks about how she doesn't have DM conversations. And I'm like, that girl is making so little money that she needs a side hustle with us as a consultant.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

And it, yeah, it just pets.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

It's pretty crazy. It's pretty crazy. Because like, here's it, here's the truth, folks. Terry and I could change our marketing today, and we could be like, it's never been easier to get to 20k months. We have clients getting there with five hours of work. We all they do is they do X, Y, and Z every single day. They don't have to do sales calls, they don't have to do DMs, they don't even have to post daily, and they're getting clients coming in. They're able to live this soft da-da-da life. And we could market that. And guess what would happen? Our sales would go up. Yeah. And guess what also would happen? Our clients would come to the program, they would not be getting great results, they would be not happy, and they might go to business.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think just like, let's make this podcast like a dose of reality. Like, if you work hard, if you're willing to put in the reps, you will get results. And then guess what? You have to keep putting in the reps. Yeah. Like me and Ruben still work so hard.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Well, let's talk about like you do trathlons. If you you're building up to a race, right? So you're building up to a race right now, end of May. And you, if you after the race, would be like, I made it, I no longer have to train. In, I don't know what the exact, I think it's in three to four months, if you were doing zero training.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Oh, I think it's like six weeks.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Something like that. Yeah. You would be back to basically baseline. Back to not trained anymore. And this is what happens in business. And I think, I think I want to I want to give people the um the balance that we try to strike here at CI, which is there are some programs out there, business coaching programs, that will make you work incredibly hard, but don't have great strategies, therefore you won't get great results. Yeah. There's also ones that basically will tell you not to work at all and also not get you great results. We try to find that middle balance of where like, hey, we will make you work hard, we will give you great strategies, but you will also get great results. Yeah. Like we have clients that are they're hustlers and they hit 20k a month or 40k a month and 50k a month. Like, and for them, like that's a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Like I wrote a post.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

And every single one of them would tell you that it was hard and it took hard work and there was stress involved. Yeah. Like that is being an entrepreneur. If you don't want that, do not be an entrepreneur. Period. Because anybody who's not lying to you in any space, like I'm not even talking the coaching space in any industry. Like me and you've made it a habit the last year to actually go to business conventions that aren't specifically just for online. And like, no matter what space you're in, being an entrepreneur is hard. It takes a lot of work and there's a lot of stress.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, there absolutely is. And that's where, like, again, it's the same thing as running a 50-kilometer Ultra in the marathon. Most people won't do it. Yeah. And exceptional results require exceptional effort.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

And you gotta like, in my mind, this is this is how I view things. Life is freaking short. It could end at any point. There's no guarantee that tomorrow's coming around. Personally, me, I want to live a life that is includes incredible memories, helps a ton of people, like allows me to live the life I want every single day and pushing myself incredibly hard.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Because as much as yeah, I got another maybe 40 years, if I'm lucky, 50 years, like that's not very much time.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

No.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

And if like I I'm driven by the fact of life is short and like I just want to make the most out of it. And so why would I choose this mentality of I want to get the most out of life, but do hardly anything? Yeah. It feels selfish.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, choosing an easy life, yeah. And and it's just like, it's just not the the other thought process I always have is like if I would have finished chemo and um I would have never gone to physiotherapy, I would have never gone to cognitive rehabilitation classes, I would have just been like, no, I choose easy. Like I would have never gotten my life back. Like exactly. Yeah. And I I uh those of you who follow Angie Lee, I feel like she's done such a good job about talking about this lately, about how like she chose her soft girl era, and then she was like, wait a second, I'm not fulfilled at all. Exactly. Like you can choose your soft girl era, but for so many of us out there, we're gonna find ourselves not fulfilled. And so what it what is the balance? For me, that balance is going for a 10-minute walk for my dog. It's in my calendar. My assistant will tell you every morning, every afternoon, I go for a 10-minute walk, no slack, no laptop, like just me outside. And I every morning I get up early and I train for triathlons. And in the evening, we go paddleboarding with our friends, we have firesides with our friends, like like to me, and and then in between that time, I am working my ass off. I am walking into stress, I am choosing what is going to build the business of our dreams, and like for me, that is fucking fulfilling.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Exactly. Yeah, I love it. I wanted to briefly talk about some mindset stuff as well.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

So when I was on my race, I was like 37 or 40 kilometers in of 50. I hit this really dark spot of where I was just like, whoa, this is hard. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do this. And I had all these doubts come up. Yeah. And it reminded me of times in business when we've had doubts come up. Yeah. And uh it was kind of like this very like micro moment of like, obviously, we've been doing business for a decade, so that's a lot longer. But I had this micro moment of like, you know what? These thoughts that are coming to me aren't necessarily true. Yes. And uh my brain is saying these things because yeah, it's it's hurting right now, it's it's in pain, it's tired, it's maybe it needs more food or whatever it was. It's it's hot, it was really hot at the race. And all these thoughts kind of kept popping up, which I know for clients of ours and even people in our audience, these thoughts will come up of doubts and fears, and like, can I do this and all these different things. And um, so often in the past, I would let those thoughts just like entrap me. And in the race, I just decided what I was going to do is I was going to control my thoughts. And I think this is something that entrepreneurs need to learn as well. I put a smile on my face in those moments and I started to talk to myself and saying, like, Ruben, I'm proud of you. Ruben, you're doing great. Ruben, you you can totally finish. There's like one foot in front of the other. Like, if you just keep going, you can do this. And when I decided to like take responsibility and create that shift, it didn't make things necessarily easier, but I had a more positive attitude. Yeah, and I wasn't in like the dumps at that point. And it made me think a lot about entrepreneurs where it's like, hey, like, and this is I I made a post about this for our clients yesterday. I have this tattoo on my wrist where it says creator, which is you get to like understand that life comes from you, not at you. Okay. So there's always life is always all around us doing all these different things, but you get to decide the thoughts that you think and then how you feel about that, and then the the activities you do, right? Absolutely. So I was just thinking, like, I wanted to share that on the podcast today of just like if you have doubts or fears or whatever today, yeah, sit with that for a second, understand that that doesn't necessarily mean that those things are true. Choose the thoughts that are gonna lead to the intentions and tasks and activities that will create your dream life. Basically, you create the life that you want.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

And I I just wanted to kind of share that message with people today because I thought that I don't know, it was helpful for me.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, I love that. That's such a powerful message.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Anyways, folks, so I know this podcast has been a little bit different than normal. I think Terry and I are are really getting like we've been in the space for almost over a decade at this point. When we started, or when I started business coaching, there was there was another like 10 other bigger business coaches in the space. Um, I think eight or nine of them are no longer in the space.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

And it's just a testament of like a lot of people don't last in this space.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

And uh, when you're looking to get advice, look from people who've been at this for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Every single time I hire a mentor, I ask myself, how long have they been doing this?

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Because yeah, there are some great new mentors in the space, no doubt. There's some people who've like blown up in the last two, three years. Yeah. They're crushing it. But a lot of them don't have this longevity mindset of like what's gonna actually build things for the long term. Yeah. That's why you follow big people, like, I don't know, maybe some of the classics, like a Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah, um, I mean, I mean I'm not even thinking of like like a like a Dan Martel, um Alex Harmonzi. Alex Harmonzi, Leila, like people who've been doing this a long time. Yeah. Because people who are new to the space um sometimes get it wrong. Yeah, absolutely. So anyways, folks, Teresa, anything else you wanted to talk about today? That was awesome. That was a great podcast. I know that was short, folks, but hope you enjoyed it. Um, as always, if you've got any questions or if you if you've been going through maybe that season of being in the dumps or having negative thoughts or like being like this is hard, know that you're not alone. Yeah. And know also that it's easier when you're in communities of other people who are pushing hard. Oh my gosh, yes. Right? So um I know for us, this is a I could riff on this for a long time. Yeah. I know for us, starting to get into spaces and communities and environments where there's other people who are pushing hard who knew that it was hard work, who were okay with that, and who are still going after it, was game changing for us to keep on going and realize that this is normal. Yeah. And if it's normal and other people are doing it, we can do it as well. Yes. So anyways, folks, we're gonna uh log off for the day, but have a great rest of your whatever day it is for you, and we'll see you folks soon. Bye guys! Bye bye.