Are you searching for the motivation to push through life’s toughest challenges? If so, this episode is your lighthouse in the storm. In this episode, you’ll hear the remarkable story of Bishoy Tadros, an Egyptian immigrant who, as a child, faced a life-threatening battle with leukemia. But as you will soon discover, that was only the beginning of Bishoy's extraordinary journey.

Here for the Links?

• Visit Bishoy's Website: www.BishoyTadros.com
• Buy Bishoy's Book: Break Barriers
• Buy Bishoy's Book: Audacious
• Mile 40 Podcast: Listen wherever you get your podcasts
• Follow Bishoy on Instagram
• Listen to Kevin's Interview on Mile 40 Podcast via Spotify
• Have something to say? Leave Kevin a Voice Message

Why Bishoy's Story Matters to You:

If you’re striving to overcome a major setback, achieve a daunting goal, or simply find the motivation to keep moving forward, this episode speaks directly to you. Bishoy Tadros’ story is not just about survival; it’s about thriving against all odds. His journey offers actionable insights and inspiration that you can apply to your own life, helping you turn challenges into catalysts for growth and success.

A Motivational Journey: Bishoy Tadros' Inspirational Story:

In this powerful and heartfelt episode, Kevin Lowe sits down with Bishoy Tadros, an Egyptian immigrant who defied the odds from a young age. At just 3 years old, Bishoy was diagnosed with leukemia, prompting his parents to leave their home in Egypt and move to America in search of the best healthcare for their son. Despite enduring challenges that would break most people, Bishoy refused to be defined by his circumstances. By the age of 13, he had undergone brain surgery, but instead of surrendering to his fate, he made a commitment to break through every barrier life placed in his path.

Today, Bishoy is a successful author, speaker, and endurance athlete who embodies the true meaning of resilience. His journey is a testament to the power of perseverance, the importance of embracing life's toughest challenges, and the quiet, yet profound, power of inspiration that can arise from even the darkest moments. Get ready to be inspired by a story that proves the human spirit is capable of extraordinary things!

Life Lessons to Be Learned:

• Transform Setbacks into Motivation: Discover how shifting your mindset can turn life’s obstacles into opportunities for growth.
• The Power of Persistence: Learn why unwavering determination is the key to achieving unimaginable success.
• Creating a Ripple of Inspiration: Understand how sharing your story can inspire and empower others on their own journeys.

It's Time You Ignite Your Inner Fire!

Don’t miss out on this life-changing conversation! Click play now to uncover how you can ignite your inner fire and turn your toughest challenges into your greatest strengths!

TODAY'S AWESOME GUEST

BISHOY TADROS

Bishoy Tadros is an inspiring author, podcast host, and endurance athlete who has turned his life’s challenges into a powerful narrative of hope and resilience. Overcoming childhood leukemia and brain surgery, Bishoy has gone on to achieve incredible success in both his personal and professional life. Both of his books, Break Barriers and Audacious, plus his own podcast called Mile 40 serve to be a source of motivation and inspiration to help others face their own challenges with courage and determination. You will never meet a more amazing person than Bishoy Tadros!

Hey, it's Kevin!

I hope you enjoyed today's episode! If there is ever anything I can do for you please don't hesitate to reach out. Below, you will find ALL the places and ALL the ways to connect!

• Start Receiving my Weekly Midweek Pick-Me-Up! Every Wednesday get a boost of positivity in your email's inbox
• I would LOVE to hear from you! Send me a Voice Message
• Sign-Up to Receive My LinkedIn Newsletter
• Plus Hangout with Me on LinkedIn
• Let's Schedule a Virtual Coffee Date
• Come Checkout the Website

Stay Awesome! Live Inspired!

© 2024 Grit, Grace, & Inspiration

0:00:32 - (Kevin Lowe): But the powerful thing is that instead of allowing all of these obstacles to define him, he instead chose to allow them to transform him. And today, because of the journey that Bashoi has been on, because the man he has become, he is here today to hopefully inspire you in your own journey. So from an egyptian immigrant battling cancer to a man who has found a way to turn every setback into a powerful comeback, Bashois journey is one of hope, love, determination, and inspiration.

0:01:38 - (Bishoy Tadros): Cause those bad days, they're just doors to better days.

0:01:52 - (Bishoy Tadros): Into straight up inspiration, motivation, and encouragement just for you. So kick back, relax, and let me.

0:02:35 - (Kevin Lowe): With that said, I hope you enjoy today's inspiration brought to us by Bashoi Tadros.

0:03:21 - (Bishoy Tadros): You know, I have a little bit of memory with. I do know that it was a highly chaotic time for my parents. And, you know, the reason being was that it was all they knew. You know, they grew up there. They had spent their entire lives there. All their family and friends were there. They didn't really know much about life outside. My father had troutwalled a good amount. But still, you know, when you think about settling down somewhere completely foreign, regardless if, you know, there's the idea of opportunity there, it's still a very, very difficult decision to make, to leave everything that, you know.

0:04:34 - (Bishoy Tadros): And across the entire Middle east, the Coptic Orthodox church is the biggest christian church. And that's important context because a lot has happened, obviously, over the last 35 years in terms of how the country has evolved. But historically speaking, when you think about the priest's role in the community, especially in Egypt, it's a very figurehead type of position, meaning that he had served a community of thousand, if not thousands of families and essentially kind of had an open door policy for people in a country like that to call him whenever they needed on a 24/7 policy of sorts.

0:05:53 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. Now, after you guys moved, did you ever get to see family, whether on traveling there or them coming to America, even just on vacation?

0:06:55 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so family did come to visit every now and then, and that definitely provided them some sort of comfort. And my parents went back almost annually, but because I was in the midst of treatment, I didn't go back that frequently. I did, you know, eventually go back. I recall one time in high school and then, or maybe when I was in my upper elementary school years, and then I went again maybe a couple years after that.

0:07:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. You mentioned how old your mom was. I started to say, I guess it just speaks so much to the power of love, the power of being a parent, and just, even just who your mom and dad were. The fact that they're willing to give up basically everything, the family that they had, the position that your father had to move to this foreign country, all in pursuit of better medical care, I mean, you can't help but just admire them for the courage that they had.

0:08:32 - (Bishoy Tadros): Now, as a parent, it's become abundantly clear to me that when it comes to the overall well being of my childhood, there are no limits to how far I should go as a parent.

0:08:48 - (Bishoy Tadros): So when we first moved, we moved to the city of Hope in California, and that's where I did about a year of treatment. And, you know, I have vivid memories of that as well, because now I'm four years old and my memory is starting to take form. In my first book, I talk about how my parents were also trying to figure out the schooling system over there. And so now here I am, an immigrant child battling cancer.

0:09:34 - (Bishoy Tadros): You can't explain chemotherapy. You can't explain what a spinal tap is or what radiation is. So you have to do your best to make sure that your child is living the most normal of lives as they can. And they had put me in a Montessori preschool outside of where we were living. And I recalled that I was the only non asian student in that school. And so here I was as a four year old trying to learn English, and I ended up in a hodgepodge of, you know, Mandarin and, you know, other dialects, essentially, as a four year old.

0:10:33 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't help but think, my goodness, it was a kindergarten. It was, like, thrown into the Tower of Babel from the Bible. Everybody speaking a different language. Yeah. Now, would you guys stay in California, like, your whole childhood?

0:11:02 - (Kevin Lowe): Okay. Okay. Talk to me a little bit before kind of like moving on through. Through this journey. Correct me if I'm wrong. You said that you basically battled leukemia until you were 13.

0:11:44 - (Bishoy Tadros): But I didn't mention this. Prior to my dad becoming a priest, he actually had a medical degree. He was a practicing doctor. He was a urologist. And in his mind, it wasn't adding up. And, you know, he took note of the fact that, especially at my age, the impact of radiation, it could be very comprehensive, and some things even might not show up until later years. So after a couple doctors visits, he insisted on scheduling a CT scan.

0:12:50 - (Bishoy Tadros): And they took out the mass. It was a golf ball sized mass, and it was called a venous hemangioma. And ultimately, what that is, is it was a benign blood clot. So thankfully, it was benign. And it was after that surgery that I finally got a clean bill of health. And, you know, in my book, I talk about my experience in the recovery room because you have to, you know, take a step back here when you think about my childhood.

0:13:49 - (Bishoy Tadros): No one else had that. I didn't understand why I couldn't go swimming in a pool because of that feeding tube when all the other kids could. I didn't understand why, when I wanted to play sports, even though I was the first one at practice or the last one out, I was always the slowest kid on the court. And that was because of the chemotherapy. You know, you can't explain that to a child. Kids just aren't built to rationalize things like that, because as a child, you believe anything is possible.

0:14:42 - (Bishoy Tadros): I get out of this treacherous surgery. It was somewhere in the six to eight hour range. And I try to explain to people the amount of pain you're in when you come out of brain surgery, because your tape from head to toe, essentially, right. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to move in any capacity, and it's a pain that, quite frankly, I don't even think I can articulate or describe because your body is so swollen.

0:15:45 - (Bishoy Tadros): And it was around that time or that night where I had a moment with myself, and I realized I was old enough to process that it's going to be over soon. And I made a promise to myself that from that point forward in my life, anything put in front of me, any sort of obstacle, I was going to figure out a way to break through. And the idea, or the slogan, if you will, of breaking barriers was one I couldn't get over my head. It was something that just kind of stuck in me, and it became a mantra right after that surgery because I was able to reflect on my childhood up until that date, and nothing was working out.

0:17:01 - (Bishoy Tadros): So I was an outcast of sorts, and I looked like a cancer patient, you know, so, like, there was really no getting around it. And so I made this promise to myself, and I. I was able to lean into the perspective that my parents gave me. And that perspective was founded on three main tenors, and those tenors were patience, perspective, and purpose. And patience was the idea that as a child, I had to learn over and over again that you won't always get the results you want when you want them.

0:18:08 - (Bishoy Tadros): And then lastly, the idea of purpose and exiting your comfort zone in order to unleash potential. And so for them, it was this idea of, you know, you look at your circumstances and, yes, they are difficult, and, you know, there's no denying that they are difficult. But if you embrace the mindset of difficult circumstances form, you create, you build resilience in you and show you what you're truly capable of. As difficult as it is, it's those circumstances that will ultimately shape your future, drive future outcomes, and build a refined product.

0:18:58 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. You know, earlier you spoke about your, your mom when she moved from Egypt. I believe you said she was 26.

0:19:06 - (Kevin Lowe): And you spoke with such, like, admiration for the courage at such a young age. I look at you and the story that you just shared, and you are 13 years old, and to have that type of mindset lying in the hospital that I'm not going to let anything stop me from here on out, I'm going to start living. You have to sit back and think, wow, how profound for a 13 year old kid to have that type of thought process.

0:19:53 - (Bishoy Tadros): Yeah. I mean, look, a lot of that was because of my parents. My parents did just such an incredible job in terms of shaping my mind. Look, I talk about the fact that, right, they moved to this new country. There's a lot that they don't know. Right. Figuring out health care, figuring out where to live, figuring out a lot of the logistics, figuring out how to raise myself and my sister, who, you know, was, you know, just basically brand new to this world. And how do you prioritize even taking care of a second child when one child is dealing with, you know, a cancer diagnosis?

0:20:58 - (Bishoy Tadros): So I owe them all the credit for shaping that mindset, even headed into that surgery. And prior to that recovery room, you know, I actually didn't know what the diagnosis was going into surgery, to be honest. So at that age, they didn't even really tell me what was going on. They didn't want me to worry. So I didn't know the diagnosis was a brain tumor. I only knew that after the fact and several years after, to be honest.

0:22:13 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, wow, wow, wow. After surgery, after that profound kind of moment in the hospital, obviously you were 13 years old. You still had a lot of childhood kind of left to go, probably finishing middle school, high school. How did I kind of the rest of that time period go for you?

0:23:09 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so, for instance, now here I am. I talk about the fact that I really struggled with friends leading up to that point in life. I really felt misunderstood by a lot of my peers. I felt outcasted. But I also knew that in order to find the right group of friends in high school, I was going to have to deal with a good amount of rejection. And so I cast a wide net when I went to high school expecting the fact that I was going to have to eventually whittle down to the people who I felt I should most closely surround myself with.

0:24:17 - (Bishoy Tadros): I went to St. Anthony's high school out in south Huntington on long island. And for anyone from the area, St. Anthony's is a very prominent school when it comes to athletics in particular, they had a very big football program. It was a Friday night light type of high school. And I talk about how I tried out and got cut from the football team twice before I made it the third time. And the reason why that's important to call out is because this is a team that doesn't really cut people.

0:25:20 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. I mean, and just talk about the level of perseverance, the level of determination is pretty powerful. What about academically? I mean, were you through, especially all those early years? Did you get set back in school, as far as academics go?

0:26:15 - (Bishoy Tadros): And it helped me build some confidence. Right. Being good at school at that age isn't necessarily cool. Right? Like, when you're, when you're young, like, and I'm talking more elementary school than I am talking about high school, especially back then, it's not really cool. But it was something that I could say that I did, and that helped me build a little bit of confidence while I was working on figuring out all the other pieces to the puzzle.

0:26:54 - (Bishoy Tadros): Yeah. I mean, toward the tail end of high school, I talk about what I had to go through to find a group of friends during that period and how I wanted. I wanted to fit in so bad that when I was 15, I threw a wild party at my house, not knowing. Not knowing that it was going to get out of hand. And the crazy part about that story was that I thought I could get away with it while my parents were actually home. Like, my parents were home and, you know, and they had encouraged me to invite people over because, of course, my parents wanted to see me making friends.

0:27:49 - (Kevin Lowe): Right.

0:28:25 - (Bishoy Tadros): I thought, oh, okay, like, this is how I'm going to make a name for myself. And I joke around in my book about how some of the guys went from calling me Beshoi to Brochoy. Yeah. And that was the birth of Brochoy. And so, similarly to trying out for the football team twice and finally making it the third time, I was throwing everything at the wall and seeing what hit socially and so I would say it wasn't until my junior or senior year in high school where I finally found a group of friends that at that point, I had felt comfortable surrounding myself with.

0:29:14 - (Bishoy Tadros): I did. And so, like I said, schooling for me came pretty naturally. I had applied to 15 colleges. I got into the majority of them. I had decided ultimately to go to SUNY Geneseo, which is a school in upstate New York, about 6 hours outside of New York City, not far from Rochester and Buffalo. And the interesting thing about it was, a lot of people don't know this, but New York is obviously a huge state, and there's a huge difference between the New York City metro area and pretty much any other part of New York.

0:30:14 - (Bishoy Tadros): It was just a program that I got into. And because I didn't have the firmest grasp on what I was going to do, and my parents saw the stability in medicine, they encouraged me to go down that route. But in my heart of hearts, I knew I didn't want to be a doctor. I didn't have an interest in the sciences or biology or any of that. I did a year of that, and my grades were horrible. And then I took matters into my own hands, and I decided to switch my major.

0:31:13 - (Bishoy Tadros): And she looked on me and she said, you know, we don't do that here. And I was like, excuse me. And she's like, yeah, like, you know, this school is known for accountants. It's known for teachers. It's known for, you know, other specialties and professions, but we don't really have any outlets to Wall street. And I, you know, to me, it all goes back to anytime I'm told I can't or I won't. It all goes back to that boy in the recovery room around, like, okay, you're saying there are none, but I'm telling you, I'm going to find a way, because I made a promise to myself when I was 13 that whatever obstacles in front of me, I'm going to figure out a way to navigate.

0:32:21 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so I remembered my very first accounting class. The way that they positioned accounting was they positioned accounting as, quote, unquote, the language of business. And that really stuck with me because I said to myself, if I can speak the language of business, then I have just enough of a foundation to navigate the business world and get to where I want to go. And so I graduated in May of 2009, and the job market was bleak. I was unemployed.

0:33:29 - (Bishoy Tadros): And I said to them, well, I know somebody, and that person was me. And so I gave them my resume, and that person put in a good word for me, and I took that job. Now, mind you, I didn't lose sight of my goal, Kevin. I didn't want to be an accountant. I just wanted to be able to tell a good story. So that way, when I finally got a job interview at a bank on Wall Street, I had a good story to tell. So the day I got that job offer for that accounting firm, I also signed up and started my MBA.

0:34:26 - (Bishoy Tadros): I was taking five classes at a time. I wasn't really sleeping much. I probably could have eaten and taken care of my body a little bit better, but I was a man on a mission. And what happened was about a year after I got that job, and I joke around about this story in the book, I was out with a couple friends to celebrate an acquaintance's birthday, and I had one too many drinks that night. And a friend of a friend was starting to ask me about my job, and I just kind of went all out and I was like, listen, man, this sucks.

0:35:34 - (Bishoy Tadros): And that person, he said to me that night, he said, send me your resume. And mind you, Kevin, I was 25 years old. This guy was about 25, 26 years old. I wasn't stupid. In the back of my mind, I was like, what the heck is this 25, 26 year old going to do for me? And the next morning, I woke up, I was pretty hungover. And he sent me a text message and it said, hey, I never got your resume. And I was like, what is going on?

0:36:12 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, wow.

0:36:40 - (Bishoy Tadros): I got that job simply because, you know, someone fought for me, or not even fought. Someone just simply said, you know, this person's going to work his tail off. He's worth taking a shot on. And that's ultimately how I ended up working on Wall street. So I got that job offer, I believe was it in July of 2012. So I was 25 years old when I got that job offer.

0:37:29 - (Bishoy Tadros): Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. That was definitely, you know, one of many moments of my life that was very movie esque. And, you know, I don't want to go on a sidebar, but the truth is that I'm working on turning my first book into a movie. And that's because a lot of the ways that things worked for me that I'm sure we're going to continue diving into. They weren't just, you know, kind of pinch me, New York City moments, which some of them were.

0:38:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. So I'm excited to ask you this next question, because we've heard, as you talked, your childhood, as far as athletics, you wanted to be involved, and it didn't come easy. You know, you said, didn't make the football team twice. Third year, you finally got on. You did excel at, you know, academics, and here you are, you got this amazing job. Finally your dream job on Wall street. How, though, does then fitness come back into your story?

0:39:15 - (Bishoy Tadros): Whereas a lot of those other guys in the locker room, they had been lifting for years. They had a foundation, right? I didn't have that. I was figuring it out as I, as I went. And so then I move into college, I didn't lose sight of needing to stay in shape, but again, I didn't really know how to cultivate it. I talk about how I put on the quote unquote freshman 15, if you will, when I was a freshman in college, because I drank a good amount of beer, I ate whatever I wanted to eat.

0:40:12 - (Bishoy Tadros): And I knew at that point I was never going to go back to that period where I didn't like who I looked like in the mirror. And so now we fast forward. I'm at JP Morgan. I'm really leaned into my career. And one of the other things I want to call out, especially in a city like New York, a lot of people define themselves by their career in a city like New York. Right? That's your, that's your signature, that's your stamp. Like, what do you do? That's the number one question our people are asking.

0:41:11 - (Bishoy Tadros): All it does is, you know, it offers you the opportunity to, you know, pay for shelter and food and basic needs and some luxuries even, but none of those luxuries even give you fulfillment. They're fleeting, right? And so it takes a while to get to that understanding. For me. I got there when I was in my mid twenties and a friend of mine opened up a spin studio. It was the era of boutique fitness in a lot of major cities.

0:42:12 - (Bishoy Tadros): And what I started to realize was, there I was in this studio, and for years, I was, you know, fighting to be an athlete, constantly being told, you can't, you won't, you don't belong here. So on and so forth. And in that studio, I was surrounded by college athletes, even pro athletes, or just people who I always kind of would have thought are in much better shape than me. And Kevin. I was competing with them, and I was competing with them on a pretty high level.

0:43:07 - (Bishoy Tadros): I am going to be fully committed to separating myself in a way where the only part of me that's existing is my ears, my eyes, and my heart. But my mouth is going to take a backseat here, because this is not a time for me to speak. This is a time for me to just soak in and learn. And one of the things that I learned throughout that experience, Kevin, is when you surround yourself with people who have accomplished the things that you want to accomplish or who are, in certain respects, a little bit ahead of you on certain trajectories.

0:44:13 - (Bishoy Tadros): All that your body is going through through a fitness experience, if people could take a step back and realize that those communities are actually more likely to empower you than to break you down. It's a whole different game and a whole different mindset. So now, all of a sudden, I'm surrounding myself with these people. Those people took their fitness activities well beyond just the spin classes.

0:45:06 - (Bishoy Tadros): And as the weeks and months went bye, that group that was doing the triathlons with me, they ultimately said, hey, bashoi, we want to sign up for a half ironman. And they said, we want you to do it with us. And I couldn't say no, kevin, but I gotta be honest with you, I was scared shitless because I had never done anything like that. I had never done anything like that in my entire life. It was one thing to challenge my body to run 13 miles and in brake barriers. I talk about that race explicitly. I talk about how from mile ten to mile 13, it was pure will that had to get me to the finish line because I had never experienced that before.

0:46:11 - (Bishoy Tadros): But internally, somewhere, there was something telling me that I had to sign up, and I couldn't really articulate it. So here I am. I decide to pay. Like, I literally, willingly paid to put my body through this experience that I couldn't, in my wildest dreams, imagine. And I paid the money. And for six months, I completely shut it down. I wasn't going out. I was training twice a day. On certain days.

0:47:03 - (Bishoy Tadros): But in my heart of hearts, I knew I had to do this race, and I didn't know why. People kept asking me, Bashoy, why are you doing this? And I, quite frankly, didn't have an answer. Kevin. So fast forward June of 2017. It's race day. It's in Maryland, kind of the middle of nowhere. It's 90 degrees outside that day. And like I said, there is no amount of preparation that could really get you ready for the unknown.

0:47:58 - (Bishoy Tadros): I made it through the swim in about an hour and eight minutes, which isn't a horrible time. It's definitely nothing to write home about, but it's not horrible. And then I move over to the biking portion, and this is where things got interesting. And so I had to rent the bike that I was going to use for the race that day. And it just so happened. The race was the same weekend as the New York City bike tour, and the company that I rented my bike from sent me a hybrid instead of a road bike.

0:48:58 - (Bishoy Tadros): I'm questioning myself. You know, my mind is going to dark places. I joke around about how some guy's tire popped, and I pulled over next to him, and he thought I was going to help him, but I didn't even know how to change a tire. Kevin. I just, I just needed to. I just needed to stop pedaling. And I just stopped because I just saw him stop. And I could tell he was frustrated that I stopped next to him because he clearly was trying to go for a time.

0:49:58 - (Bishoy Tadros): I said, bashoy, why are you doing this? And it was the very first time in my adult life that adult Bashoy took a second, transcended time and thought about that 13 year old boy. And he thought even further back. He thought to that four year old boy and that five year old boy, that six year old boy, and he thought to himself, if that kid with that feeding tube, if that kid in that recovery room, if that kid who was constantly told, you can't, you won't, you shouldn't, if he made it through everything that he went through, then this man can finish the last 30 miles of this race.

0:51:19 - (Bishoy Tadros): And I applied that in that moment. And I said to myself, I have 30 miles left to go on this race. But instead of looking at it as 30 miles, what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at it as 1 mile, 30 times. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to celebrate every individual mile. And so I broke it down into 1 mile increments, Kevin, and I said, it doesn't matter how fast you go. All that matters is that you focus on 1 mile at a time.

0:52:29 - (Bishoy Tadros): And that's exactly what happened. This guy, who for six months, quite frankly, couldn't understand why he had signed up for this race in those last 30 miles, unleashed a whole new level, not just of what I was capable of, but what I was put on this earth to do. And that was to show others that barriers can be broken. And that was to show people that no matter how big the obstacle, there's a way out.

0:53:27 - (Bishoy Tadros): So I decided to run the New York City marathon. And in order to get in, I had to raise money for charity to get my bib. So I had decided, I'm going to raise money for the leukemia Lymphoma society because I was a leukemia survivor. And I wrote down my story on a piece of paper, Kevin, and I called it, the comeback is always greater than the setback. And I didn't focus on the biographical aspects of my story.

0:54:19 - (Bishoy Tadros): And I said, tim, I just need to raise $3,000 to get into the race. And he looked at me and he said, you need to make your goal $100,000. And I said, excuse me? He said, you need to aim high and make your goal $100,000. And that was my first. That was the first time in my life, Kevin, where outside of my parents or close family, somebody saw something in me and believed in me. And, you know, I had accomplished a lot of small things to that point, even, you know, getting through that half Ironman.

0:55:27 - (Bishoy Tadros): And that's exactly what he did. So because of him, I should mention, he told me to raise my goal. And then he donated $1,000 and he said, go and 1000, turned into five, turned into 1020, 30. And then I got a call from Nasdaq as we were approaching the marathon, and they said, hey, we got a whole dear story. We want to invite you to come ring the closing bell in four months. I went from almost never sharing this story, thinking I was going to donate all this money myself to now raising over $30,000 and being put on a national stage.

0:56:51 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so I was getting notes from not only cancer patients, but I was getting notes from caretakers, I was getting notes from all sorts of people who were saying, hey, because you shared your story, you know, we're finding strength in our current situations. And for me, that meant the world. It wasn't about any of the publicity. The publicity was something that, quite frankly, at that time, I didn't even know how to handle.

0:57:37 - (Bishoy Tadros): And a couple months after marathon, I started to get contacts from people saying, hey, we got to hold your story. We want you to come speak at our company. So now I was invited to come do speaking engagements. And December of 2018, I was sitting at my desk and I said, screw it, Kevin. I have known this the whole time that I have a story to tell, and I'm finally going to tell it. I'm sitting at my desk, and I googled how to write a book.

0:58:32 - (Bishoy Tadros): And he did. And that person looked at my word document. He's like, hey, this is pretty good. Can I give you my editor? And the rest was history. Nine months later, we published Break Barriers, my very first book. And break Barriers was my life on paper. And that's the book that I'm working to now turn into a screenplay. But the objective of that book, as was the objective of my mission overall, was to help people channel the mindset, to overcome obstacles.

0:59:25 - (Bishoy Tadros): And a lot has happened since then, and I feel very, very blessed. I've published a second book this last December. It's called uncaging your authentic self. And as far as my fitness journey, because I think that's where this conversation started. I've now run ten marathons, and I'm about to finish my 6th world major marathon in Tokyo this year. And the cool thing about that, Kevin, to bring it all home, is the fact that I was an egyptian immigrant battling cancer, whose parents had no idea what they were up against when they moved here.

1:00:31 - (Kevin Lowe): That was the most beautiful, most inspiring, most motivating story I think I've ever heard. The way that you spoke about the Iron Man, I don't think many people have a story like that. Most of them have a story of the adventure, the gruel, the. The hardship. You had a life changing moment on mile 40 that impacted your life from that day forward. And to hear you speak about life from that day to then, the marathon, to all this stuff, you can't help but feel like you're living right where you're supposed to be.

1:01:48 - (Kevin Lowe): The fact that you just shared all of this with us today is absolutely fricking awesome. And I, uh. Such a joy to hear it.

1:02:24 - (Bishoy Tadros): And the reason for that was because it was about three years of talking about myself. And like I said, I realized during my 40, the one thing that unites us all is that we have our obstacles, we have our rock bottom moments. And that was why I birthed Mile 40. It's because I wanted to give people a forum to come on and share those. And you, my friend, have been one of the most inspirational guests that I've had on Mile 40.

1:03:26 - (Kevin Lowe): You know, man, it goes back from the very beginning. We talked about the love of your parents, to leave it all, to move to America, to a foreign country for you. And then we talked about you, this story you've been on, and the overwhelming sense of just pure love of wanting to help people, of caring about people, what you've just shared today, it's just the most heartwarming love story I think we can hear, man.

1:04:16 - (Bishoy Tadros): Absolutely. Thank you, Kevin. So to follow me, I would say follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn at Tadros on, on Instagram. To purchase the books, they are available on Amazon. However, if you purchase them from my website, www.bishoitadros.com, i will sign them for you. Mile 40 is available on all major podcasting platforms. And so I strongly urge you to check it out. And if you don't mind, subscribe and drop a review.

1:05:03 - (Bishoy Tadros): I knew you were going to have a good last question. I want my children to just be kind, Kevin. I want them to know that love will always win. Right? I want them to take that example that my parents set for me and to know that ultimately, in the end, none of this stuff matters. The only thing that matters ultimately is the love that you show for those whom you encounter. It's the love that you show for the people who are not as fortunate as you, the people who are afflicted, the people who are perhaps dealing with certain adversity.

1:06:20 - (Bishoy Tadros): But the thing that does go to the grave with you is your soul. Right? And one of the things that I hope to show my children is that love has no limits. And it would be my goal as a parent to feel like I've done my best or done to the best of my ability to show them that. Because one of the things that, you know, you learn as a parent very quickly, is children don't do as you say. They do as you do.

1:07:14 - (Kevin Lowe): I love it, man. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for. For sharing your story. I'm so excited to see what comes. I'm so excited for the movie. I'm just so excited for you. You're an amazing guy, and it has been a true honor to have you on my podcast.