How to Build a Life That Doesn't Quit: Shawn French Explains

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0:30Hey, I'm so excited for you all to listen to this episode. Today's conversation is for anyone who has ever felt the weight of life pressing down and still knew that there was more in them. My good friend, like personal friend, Sean French breaks down the truth about discipline, the cost of growth, and what happens when you finally stop negotiating with your potential. He opens up about the moment that everything shifted for him. So we cover everything from determination to discipline, the how to season tri-tip. Ladies and gentlemen, I present my good friend, Mr. Sean French. you're listening to mick unplugged hosted by the one and only mick hunt this is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning helping you discover your because and becoming unstoppable i'm rudy rush and trust me you're in the right place let's get unplugged

1:30Sean, how you doing today, brother? Oh, man, what an intro, dude. You gave me goosebumps, man. And it's a pleasure to be on the show with you and get some more one-on-one time with you, man. And just I'm going to love this conversation. I've been looking forward to it, dude. Dude, I'm the one that's looking forward to it. I think we should just go ahead and let the audience, the viewers and listeners know, like, we talk all the time, man. But like this conversation, I've been holding things that we don't do in text or that we don't do in voice messages to each other, because to me, this is really important.

2:02I mean, you know how my podcast is set up and I ask people about their because. But this one's a little bit different because I know you. I know your story. I know your grit. I know your resilience. So, Sean, man, like let the let the world know your purpose, your because. cause? Why do you give as much as you give and do the things that you do? I mean, first thing, I mean, first things first is my children. I want them to see what's possible in life. And I want to be able to live in such a way that they can look up to me and know that they can do whatever it is that they set their mind to if they work at it.

2:36Right. But the other side of it, man, is really because I'm healing. You know, we all have childhood trauma. We all go through things. For me specifically, I grew up without a whole lot of self-confidence. And so it just pained me. I was always uncomfortable in groups. And that's the one thing that people don't know about me. Even to this day, if you put me in a room full of people, the first 30 minutes is a show. I'm literally fighting to get comfortable. But there's this part of me that needed to heal. And I needed to understand why I struggled with certain things and where my breakdowns were.

3:14And when I created my show and created this life, I was like, wait a second, if I can heal through this, it could be cathartic for me. But at the end of the day, there's two ears and two eyes either watching or listening to these episodes and me going through with my guests. And if I can just give a little bit back to them so they can get some strategies to get out of their own darn way. Cause that's really what holds us back, Mick. It's not the media. It's not the government. It's not, you know, your boss, for those of you that are listening, it's us. And if we can tap into why we operate in a certain way and then find the problem and then find the solution through activity and purpose and intention, well then, Hey, we can move the needle a little bit every single day.

4:06And so for me, I focus on the ears and the eyes on the other end of this. Yeah. Yeah. I love that, dude. And for those that don't know, one, make sure you're following not just Sean's podcast, but follow him on social. Go visit his website. Anytime he has something going on, make sure that you're there because you're going to get something that you need every time. And I'm I'm actually witness to that. So, Sean, man, you know, your brand is built on determination, right? And we're going to go forward into all the different things that you do. And I always like to say that determination usually has a spark, right?

4:46Was there a moment for you? I mean, you talked about what the first 30 minutes for you were like even today. Was there a moment for you? Was there a spark that ignited in you that said, okay, I've got to do something about it? And what was that moment? I think the biggest things that are ever built are built on some type of pain. And for me, it was that emotional pain of not understanding myself, not understanding why there was a certain, I guess, governor on the amount of success I could have. And it hurt me because I always felt I was capable of so much more. So I just really dug into that, man.

5:23And like in the moment, I mean, there's so many different moments in this journey, Mick, and you know that you built a top show. One day it's this moment. The next day it's this other moment. I go back to last November where I was chronically depressed, dude. I couldn't get off the couch unless I was shooting a show. And I noticed that I was cursing a lot. There was a lot of F words. There was a lot of energy because I was still so angry and I couldn't figure out where it came from. But then I started to dissect how I felt minute by minute. And for those that are listening, that's an exhausting process.

6:01But I think a lot of times that we have to go into that if we're in some type of emotional pain or even physical pain, like, why am I feeling this way? And it all came down to little micro moments, Mick, where I can't wear that because that doesn't fit right. or I don't look good in that. And then I'm walking around all day wondering how I look, how am I presenting to people? Am I lean? Am I fat? Like all these weird thoughts were going through my mind and it started creating this massive amount of anxiety and temporary depression for me. And so I said, okay, well, maybe you should fix that. Like maybe you should dive into that.

6:42Maybe there's something there, Sean. It has nothing to do with, you know, the success of your show, the listeners, the monetization route, the, all the financials, but what if it does, what if it does? And so for me, that moment was fix that one thing. And I'm still on that journey. I'm fighting like crazy to be the best me physically that I can, because for me, Mick, the physical part of it is the by-product, how I feel mentally is everything is everything to me. So that was my moment. And I just took action and I got support. My good friend, Jeff Delaney at T clinics and NuViva Weight Loss Center, they've been managing me for over a year.

7:27And that man and his staff is single handedly changed the way I feel about myself.

8:01That's it, brother. That's a great question, man. A lot of people say, I don't know what that thing is. And that's a lie. It's a lie. That's a defense mechanism, man. And I say this with the utmost empathy for the, for the people listening that may think that they have something to fix, but they don't know what it is. It's the thing you think about all the time. It is the thing that consumes your mind from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. And it's this, like the bill murray movie groundhog day it's the same thing over and over again the same thoughts the same self-deprecating feelings that you have the the same roadblocks that is your thing and so once you identify that thing or sit there and say okay this really is my deal that i need to fix that i need to dive into then it's one step at a time it's it's fixing one thing like if it's a nutrition thing, well, when I wake up in the morning, no matter what happened last night, I'm going to forget about that.

9:03I'm going to wake up and I'm going to have that good meal. I'm going to make that decision right now, or I'm going to get up and I'm going to move my body. And that's a check mark. That's a win. And then the meal is a win. And then you take everything step by step and you don't look at that big elephant and you, and it's a cliche, but you eat it one bite at a time, but you're never going to get there. You're never going to come out of be a rut. If you think you need to go all in that moment, a thousand percent, 120 miles an hour, I'm going to fix it today. It's not going to work like that. You're going to burn out.

9:35So what I did is I just went moment by moment. I put guardrails in. These are my standards. These are not my goals. These are my standards. Here's what I will do no matter what, come hell or high water, no matter how I'm feeling emotionally, because there's times where I'll get into the gym. I'm like, I'm miserable. I don't want to be here. But it's funny how two hours later, after I go through that and put myself through that and do something that I didn't want to do emotionally, how much better I feel. And I think that right there is what everybody needs to give themselves an opportunity to do.

10:10Yeah, I love that, dude. And, you know, you and I have this in common. I'm a person that believes in standards, right? Goals are personal. Standards are literally your minimum expectation, your minimum delivery on whatever that thing is. Talk to us about why standards are so important. Because it becomes who you are, right? It is the framework of who you are as a human being. You are somebody who keeps your word to yourself. And that right there, if you can do that alone, keep your word to yourself. Whatever it is that you say you're going to do, you actually go do. That becomes a standard. And that's something that you don't come off of, right?

10:51Because too many people set these really high goals. And, and, and you know me very well, like we told the audience and I really want them to really key in on the fact that we're friends. This is not just a, we're doing a show, right? Like we pour into each other, right? You know, my struggles, right? But when you build these goals, they can get lost in noise because you start, you got this comparison syndrome all over the place, man. Well, I'm not there. I'm not where mix at. I'm not where Sean's at. now I'm a failure. No, no, no. You're just getting it wrong, man. You're getting it wrong. You're, you're worried about the wrong thing, but the standard is not the goal.

11:35The standard is who you become in the journey, in the pursuit of the goal. And a lot of people say, I'll be happy when I get here. I'm not the happiest when I hit a benchmark or when I hit that goal. I'm happy at all the crap I went through to get there and I didn't fall off of my standard. Standard is overused and not enough people really dive into what the standard actually is. Wholeheartedly. You know, Sean, one of the things that I, I mean, I appreciate a ton about you. One of the things that first drew me to you from a friendship perspective was just the fact that you don't make excuses, right?

12:16And I actually learned through you and from you on just that principle of everything's a lesson, right? And sometimes the way to get through it is determination, is the fight, is the grit, but don't make an excuse. Because at the end of the day, we wake up and we can make excuses from the moment our eyes open and our feet hit the ground if we're fortunate enough to do that. Preach. But you don't, man. And that's that's again, one of the things that drew me to you was just that. Talk to us about that mindset of, hey, there's no excuse. You've got to be determined to get through it. And you're going to figure out a lot of times who you are through that determination, through that fight.

13:01You know, man, I think it's a decision that you make. And for me, it might be a little bit easier because I have that athletic background, right? I played Division I baseball. I've been to the College World Series. So for me, I can look at a result and then I can look at my effort and I can either make excuses which take the power away from me. Like if I make an excuse of why I'm not the number one podcaster in the world, people don't like me. or, you know, it just, the algorithms rigged, whatever stupid excuse you could make, you take the power and you strip it from yourself. But if you say like, Hey, listen, maybe there's things that I need to get better at and I'm going to learn these things.

13:49Maybe there's a distribution problem that I don't know about that I need to figure out. Cause then I can take self-responsibility for that. I can take responsibility for those actions and then implement execution based on that. And that's a very empowering moment when you can sit there and say, this is on me. Like everything in my life right now, whether I'm arguing with my wife or I'm at odds with my kids, I have a part in that. And if I make an excuse because of how they're acting or how they're operating, it'll never get fixed. But if I take that extreme accountability that that responsibility and say, this is on me.

14:28I own this part. And for me, that's part of it. The second part of it is humility. You have to be able to drop the walls and take that ego because ego does serve you in some ways, but in a lot of ways it destroys you. Right. So I have to sit there and like, take that and throw it out the window and go, I have to be vulnerable in this moment and admit that I didn't perform because of me. And people respect that to your point. They respect that. When you can say that people go, that's somebody I can roll with. I can ride with that dude. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's why I freaking love you, dude.

15:11That's why I freaking love you too, man. Sean, I also know you, you work with a lot of individuals and leaders and you coach them through like through that determination. Right. And you've built this amazing society. I want you to talk to us about the determined society. Like talk to us about the framework. Why did you decide to go that route with everything? And just tell us a little bit about it in general. Well, the determined society is something that nobody understood at the beginning. And I don't think I did either, Mick, to be quite honest with you. I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know what it was.

15:46What I did know is I started, I started a Facebook group called the determined society. And I was just trying to get a gauge on what everyone was struggling with. If I can create something that people can go to every day to pour into each other and to learn from each other, then we can all get better. If someone's struggling with a gym, if someone's struggling with their marriage, if someone's struggling with mental health, like let's talk about it. Let's find ways that we can help you get better. And then I would say probably about a month or two into that Facebook group, I'm driving up 75, heading to work, going to another hospital, another surgery.

16:23And it was like this moment where my brain exploded. And it's that beautiful mind moment where everything is just you can just see everything. And I was like, wait a second. This isn't just a Facebook group. This is a podcast. And if I can bring people on the show to talk about their success and their recipe, the ingredients of everybody can see a nice cookie. It tastes great. You love cookies, but there's probably about 10 or 12 ingredients in there. And there's a strategy to put that cookie together to bake it and then people consume it and love it. And I use that analogy because I love food, first and foremost.

17:03Secondly, is everyone's success story has different ingredients. And I thought, you know what, if I could just bring this to people worldwide, maybe it'll help them, you know? And for the first few years, it was, it was so quiet. It was painful. It was like, you put something out, you think it's going to do well and it doesn't, and you just stick with it. But that was really the premise of the Determined Society on how it was built. And then what I started noticing even more recently, because we've done a lot of press runs. We've done a lot of different things. And I go, you know what I miss? I miss the stories, man.

17:41I miss the stories of, of the people of, you know, maybe they were abused as a child and they can talk about it on my show and help the listener, help the viewer. And so the society is built on the backbone of pushing through hard moments by making those decisions and determination to me is not the grit. I think that early on, I thought determination was the hustle culture, you know, whatever Andy Fursella is doing, like I need to do that because he's got the audience and no excuses. You work out seven days a week, twice a day, and that's just what it is. To me, it's not that. Determination in the determined society is how we work through those moments.

18:29And sometimes it could be just putting on your tennis shoes. It could be just a moment where I, you know, in November, last November, a year ago, I was so depressed. Maybe it's not laying on the couch that day. Maybe it's, you know, going to do my show, then taking myself for coffee and thinking about it. Like people need to realize determination shows up in so many ways. and it's just the decision to move forward just a little bit day by day. And there's moments, there's days and moments where you can go in overdrive and you can run the whole football field in one play, but there's days that you can only run one or two yards and that's okay too.

19:09Yep. And I have that same thing, man. Like I, I tell people that I coach, I tell my team, all I want is the best that you have at that moment, right? Like every time we can't be 100 percent. Right. It's humanly impossible all day, every day to be 100 percent of who you are. But you can give me the best that you have. So if the best that you have is 75 percent, I want the best 75 percent of you that I could possibly get. Right. And I know that you believe that, too. And I'm going to give you a shout out because you said something and I saw it on a social clip, actually, before we even became buddies.

19:49You said something that literally if I could flip this camera around, which I can't, but it's on my wall right here. You said discipline is freedom. And I was like, holy crap. You have it on your wall? I do. I'll take a photo and send it to you, man. Discipline is freedom. And I purposely haven't told you this because I wanted that reaction right there when I told you live. A lot of things clicked for me when I heard that. But I want you to talk to us about that statement of discipline is freedom. Because as you say this, and I need everybody, if you're driving, slow down. If you're at work, stop what you're doing.

20:31And if you're doing nothing, just keep doing nothing. Because this is about to be a pivotal moment in your life or in your career, in your destination. Sean, discipline is freedom, bro. Break that down. I'm still processing, man. I mean, wow. Thank you for that. That's a humbling moment for me. Discipline is freedom. Look, we all evaluate ourselves every day and we all have metrics that we need to hit. Whether you're a salesperson and whether you're in the insurance industry, we all have metrics. Wow. And we can all look at our results again and go back to excuses or we can look at what we did.

21:11And I think the theme around determination is freedom is when you stay disciplined and you're determined to chase your dreams, no matter how you feel emotionally at that moment. If one day you're 100 % is actually 50 % and you still push and you do something to move the needle forward. If you do that every single day, you can lay your head on the pillow at night and have zero regrets. So that right there is why determination is freedom or discipline is freedom. Because when you act on that, there's nothing you can say to yourself when you fall short in a moment. Like I didn't do enough. Like, think about that.

21:51How many people every day go through? I could have done more. I could have I could have made one more sales call. But I wanted to call my friend and complain about our direct line manager. That's a missed opportunity. There's no freedom in that. That's being a slave to someone else. So the freedom aspect is there's nothing anyone can say. There's nothing you can say about yourself in a bad light. You have earned that moment no matter what. And to me, that's it, man. Bro, just hearing you say that, I have goosebumps literally right now. because bro like it's something i'm i'm working on a gift for youtube and i'll send you a snapshot of that man but like when i when i tell you it clicked for me it you know sometimes you can't find the right phrase or the right word to describe what you're feeling or what you're going through and when i heard you say that like i said it clicked like yeah it's freedom because you know I coach salespeople.

23:00I coach CEOs. And I want to articulate to them that it's in the mundane. Right? Like, you go on social media, you see a lot of flash. You go to people's websites, you see a lot of success stories. But it was the mundane that got them to that point. If they really did the things that they say that they did. And to me, that's what clicked. Like, the mundane is just discipline. It sucks making, you know, 100 calls a day if you still make phone calls. It sucks going to a networking event and knowing that, yeah, I got to introduce myself to probably 20, 25 people, right? It sucks, but it's mundane and it has to be done.

23:43It sucks sometimes to balance your balance statement, right? But it's got to be done. It sucks when we have to write up an employee or terminate an employee or write a review, but that's the mundane and the consistency in the mundane is actually what yields success. I don't care what anyone tells you, Sean, you know, a lot of great successful people. I know a lot of great successful people when they sit down with Sean and I, and we hear the real story. I promise you, most of them talk to us about the mundane stuff that they did. And when, and when it's truthful, they're talking on stage or when they're doing TV or whatever.

24:23If you listen, they're talking about the mundane stuff. They got this. This part of the conversation brings up this weird point, man. If you don't do the mundane things for yourself, you're not going to do the mundane things for your family and your children. And I think that needs to be a bigger focal point in entrepreneurs lives. We want to build something so special, but a lot of times the kids and the wife can, or the husband, if you're, you know, you have a husband can, can take a little bit of a backseat. It's funny because I tell my, my kids, how you do one thing is how you do everything.

25:01And, you know, everybody slips a little bit. I recently got back on track and a lot of different daily activities that I need to do for my health, my mental, my mental health, my physical health, all that stuff. And I found myself in turmoil driving home from my son's middle school soccer game. And here's what I mean. And I think the audience is really going to resonate with this. It was 6.30 PM. I knew my kids had to go to bed. I knew I had taken meat out, but I had to make a stop and drop something off. I'm like, well, I'll just pick something up quick. I didn't though. I went home and up until that whole thing, I'm, I'm like seeing all these different stops and I'm like, okay, I can go here and get something quick.

25:47And then I can make something for me and my wife when the kids go to bed, but why should they suffer? Why, why should they have something less than optimal for their health? So what I did in that mundane moment, I went home, I made the, the healthy meal and we ate it. But if I wasn't taking care of myself in multiple ways and doing the mundane things in my life, I would have done what's the easiest and went for convenience. Amen. Amen. It all ties in together. It is the craziest thing ever. But we don't get quiet with ourselves enough to understand that because we're too busy moving. But I think do the mundane, dude.

26:29Oh, that's everything. That's it. That's it. That's every successful person I know lives in mundane. Believe it or not. They live it. It becomes consistent. It becomes everyday and it becomes who they are. And so that's my tip for everybody that's listening or watching. Like the key to success is make things mundane, make things boring, but consistently do them. and to showing and something he talks about a lot is stay disciplined. Try to stay as, as distraction free as you can. We're all human. We're all going to get distracted. We're all going to do things, but if you can stay as distracted free as you can, I promise you, Sean promises you success is on the other side.

27:17So Sean closing moment before I give you the, your, your rapid fire five, like for the people that are listening that are watching, what's your closing tip for anyone, whether it's podcasters, whether it's business leaders, whether it's the solopreneur, like everyone that's trying to get to that next step. What's Sean French's tip for them? You have to stay in your process. And that can mean many different things for everybody. It can mean different for an insurance sales agent. It can mean something different for a payroll agent, you know, a payroll salesperson or a medical device or a podcaster.