Michael Brandt is a runner, a competitive marathon runner with a 2:35 PR working toward sub-2:30. He's an entrepreneur who started Ketone-IQ. He's a father of two. And in general, he's a builder who likes making things.

His philosophy: take the things you like in the world, the things you think are beautiful or wonderful, amplify those and let them flow through you into your craft.

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From Fire Walkers to Boston Qualifier

Running found Michael early. His mom would take him to the track as a kid and watch him run laps. But team sports called louder through college.

After college, running clicked. He started meeting people running 60, 70, 100 miles a week. It felt like fire walkers. A six-mile run was big for him. The idea that some people could float through it seemed like breathing different air.

He wanted to qualify for Boston. Now his PR is 2:35, working on sub-2:30.

Going Deep vs Dabbling

His philosophy: don't be a dabbler across a million different things. There's richness to going really deep. Great founders pick a lane or couple of lanes and go really hard.

Getting 80% up a mountain then doing a different mountain is easier than reaching 99.9 percentile. But going deep builds character, resilience, relatability.

The Energy Systems Curiosity and Day Zero

As Michael got into marathon running, he got curious about energy systems. Why can some people run 20 miles while others can't run one?

He was inspired by the Gatorade story. He didn't want another flavor of something existing. He wanted something inventive. He did biohacking. A seven-day fast. Ketones kept popping up.

What even is a ketone? A super efficient fuel source your body makes when pushed to limits. Your brain uses tons of it. When we get fatigued, it's usually because our brain runs out of energy to tell our legs to shut up and keep going.

What if you could buy a shot and get brain clarity from that magic molecule in a bottle?

Day zero was emailing science labs. True minimum viable product. The first time they did it at scale, it was $30 a shot and tasted completely crazy. But it was good enough to get a contract with Department of Defense Special Operations Command.

No one had figured out how to make a ketone drink at scale. Everything that was hard made him twice as excited. It's a fundamental breakthrough like inventing electrolytes. It aligned with his runner mindset: it's not easy to run a 2:30 marathon, but it's doable if you keep showing up.

Ship Before You're Ready

Michael's advice: you have to have go-to-market motion. Sell it even when it's imperfect. If you can sell a version that's very early with lots of friction, it bodes well for when you continue improving.

He's not a fan of staying in the ivory tower refining endlessly. Find a customer. Fail faster. Get it out in front of people.

Early Netflix mailed DVDs around, so far from the final form. The first iPhone didn't have an app store. See product development as a dance with customers.

Get something directionally good with that one killer feature. For Ketone-IQ, it was Navy SEALs, Ironman athletes, pro cyclists. Early days you find your freaks and geeks willing to put up with friction because of that molten core of uniqueness.

Then you dance. Why are people reordering? Who's buying $10,000 at a time? Call that person. Business is a dynamic living organism.

Revenue Funds the Dream

Yvon Chouinard didn't set out to start a business. He was a massive ecologist. But he saw that to actually make an impact, you need revenue streams, actual business. Otherwise you're just angrily shaking a picket sign.

Start generating revenues and you can hire people. It becomes a movement. Figure out a business model. Start getting revenue on an imperfect product because that lets you hire your first engineer, designer, marketer.

You're not selling out on the vision by selling an early prototype. That's in service of the vision. You sell version one to make version two to make version three. Product improvements funded by business growth.

Molting Into the Next Version

You become a different person as you scale. Founding a two-person team is different from 10 people is different from 30 people.

It's similar with running. You have to become a type of runner that can do sub-three-hour. The old you couldn't have done it. You have to become the new you.

The growth of the business is endemic to personal growth. Everyone on the team needs to grow for the business to grow. Growth mindset is fundamentally baked in or you hit a wall.

The danger zone is the messy middle where you're not crushing it but not failing either. Like zone three running: not getting fit, not working on your top end, just fatiguing yourself.

In business, it's important to have empty space to think about where you're going. Jeff Bezos talked about how important it was to putter around every morning despite running a trillion dollar business.

Michael carves out 2pm onwards. He doesn't book meetings after 2pm. He has time to wander, work on projects, think. That ability to think up and out of the next version of yourself is critical.

Surrounding Yourself With Excellence and Finding Your Spark

Michael listens to tons of podcasts: Acquired, How I Built This, Founders. If you surround yourself with enough of that, it becomes your peer group.

You are the average of your five best friends, plus access to an insane library of your sixth best friend.

What you realize is a lot of the greats just go and do things. They have high agency. When they want to get something done, they punch through it.

The idea of having embarrassment or fear of failure doesn't compute to these people. I will fail until I win. There is no fail if you just keep getting back up.

It's not even fail versus not fail. It's data. You learn something. Not ready yet? Sharpen it. Brush yourself off. Try again.

People who pursue excellence are very in touch with themselves. They're sensitive to the spark of the world. They listen to what's blowing wind on their fire inside.

The only test of how intelligent you are is getting what you want out of life. If you want to get really rich, go get rich. If you want to live in the mountains and run around every day, go do that.

Many people are stuck on step zero: knowing what that spark is. It might be weird. Something from childhood. Something friends make fun of.

When you find that thing, excellence is a byproduct. You just keep going towards it. You keep showing up every day. Before you know it, you happen to be excellent at that thing.

It doesn't come from deciding to be excellent. It comes from being drawn towards a spark that means something to you.

Jon is a runner, cyclist, and podcast host from Boston, MA, who now lives in Boulder, CO. For The Long Run is aimed at exploring the why behind what keeps runners running long, strong, and motivated.

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