How To Improve Your Productivity & Some Optimum Routines as a Startup Founder | SaaS District

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akhil Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about priming your mindset, improving your productivity, and great routines that you can set up and help you be more optimal in your startup habits. Now, if you guys checked out my last episode, if you listened in and tuned in last week or last Friday where I released an episode called Top Startup Principles Every SaaS Founder Should Know, which was episode 113, you guys can check it out. We got overwhelming, really good feedback, really good response, and really good engagement on that podcast. So this podcast is for you guys. And if you guys enjoy this type of episode where I'll be giving you guys my tips, my strategies, what my story of to help you guys Rather than the typical, you know, where I interview other founders and experts. So if you guys tune in on our regular interviews where I talk to other founders, you'll notice that we talk a lot about tips, strategies, tactics, and, you know, different things to actually build your business. But before you get into actually execution of your business, you have to take a step back. And that's the reason why I wanted to create this episode where we step back and focus on what's important at the foundational level. Of you as a human being. And if you set up that foundation properly and you have that kind of system in place, the strategies will come and just make it that much easier. So, I always say systems before strategies. So, get the system in place, get the process in place of your own body, your own mind, and your own routines, and then everything else should fall in place. And then you can go in, listen to those other episodes where you get the strategies for helping you battle those little day-to-day challenges that you face on a daily basis. Now, before we get into kind of more nitty-gritty details of today's episode, I wanna share a quick story that many of you may not know already. Background on myself, I actually have a black belt in karate. You know, something I was thinking about the other day, how do you apply the systems I learned from karate into entrepreneurship? And the other day, I was having a conversation with a friend on a podcast. And he asked me that, how do you apply the systems or anything you learned from karate into the entrepreneurship world? And I think it was kind of an interesting conversation where the 2 best things that I get out of being in karate for almost 4 or 5 years, day in, day out, putting in the grind and hustle to kind of move up to get to that, you ultimate achievement, you know, when you start off at your white belt and move all the way to black belt, which is discipline and reps, you know. So those 2 things, before I go out and actually execute, I have to have that mindset that I'm gonna come in here 2 days a week, 3 days a week, 4 days a week, and I'm gonna train in and out. Every day you're repeating, rinse and repeat, and pushing yourself. And then over time, as long as you stick to that, that kind of, you know, mindset, you execute on a day-to-day basis with the instructor, with a coach, with somebody overseeing you, you should be able to hit that result of getting that black belt that you want in your own business. Now, there's also another interesting story, right? So, a lot of people think that you need more information. I need to get more information. By just finding out the right secret, I'll be able to achieve success, right? So, you see people listening into podcasts, talking to different people, listening to blog articles, checking their social media because they see all the success but they're not executing on what they know they need to do. There's a funny saying that if we all did what we knew what we had to do, we'd all be billionaires with 8-pack abs, right? So, it's not that we don't know how to make money. It's not that we don't know how to build a business. It's not that we don't know how to lose weight and get an 8-pack. All the information is out there. But the hardest part is actually going day in, day out, executing it at the highest level every single time you actually do it. And that's where the difference comes in. And why I wanted to create this episode. Let's get into the first part of today's episode, which is about the mindset. Now, let's start with the thinking of garbage in, garbage out, right? So, you know that with your own body, if you're putting in high-quality foods, high-quality proteins, vegetables, nutrients, vitamins, minerals, getting all the right stuff in your body, you'll have more energy, right? That's a given. You'll feel better, you'll produce better, you'll move better, and you'll have We feel better all across. It's the same thing with your mind, right? Every time you put in garbage in your mind, and I'm talking about news, social media, right? You're on your phone all day, which is fine, but you get to choose exactly what you decide to put in your mind and what you decide to read. So, starting off, what I'll say is before you go to bed, try at least an hour before you go to bed, shut off your phone. Turn off your phone. Don't even— turn off notifications. Put it on distraction-free airplane mode. So, you don't receive any kind of notifications and your mind is primed before you go to bed and you feel a sense of peace and your mind can slowly calm down before you go to bed. And same thing when you first wake up, keep your phone in airplane mode. Don't check your phone the first thing in the morning, right? A lot of people do that, check their emails, check their social media feed, check all their messages. Try not to do that. It's really, really hard. And if you have a hard time doing that, put your phone literally outside of your room or put it Across where you actually have to stand up and on a table or anywhere else where it's not right beside you when you wake up. And when you do decide to open up your phone, you can move, you can go different ways, right? You can either decide to open up your social media, your, your, all those apps, or you can decide to give your body or your mind, sorry, uh, some, some high-quality information. So that could be start listening to a podcast, start listening to some light music if you don't want to listen to anybody's voice, right? Listen to some nice Relaxing tone to kind of prime your brain. Or if it's good music, you want to get pumped up, put on some hip-hop, put on some electronic music, whatever helps you get excited for the day. But get your mind going in the right way. You can listen to an audiobook, watch a simple YouTube video, learn something, get your mind ready to absorb high-quality information such as a podcast like this so that you can go out and start your day feeling refreshed and in a better mood. state of mind. Adding to that, you know, your sleep is probably the next biggest thing. It's probably number one actually is making sure you get enough sleep. So, you know, as part of the startup, you know, habit is, you know, working extremely hard, you know, all day to build your startup, which is super important. But please don't forget to neglect sleep. Without, you know, proper sleep, you won't be able to function properly, your mind won't be as effective. And more importantly, you'll run into something called decision fatigue. So with your brain kind of being foggy and And you're not as clear, you don't have that clarity in your mind, you don't make the right decisions in your business. So when you sleep well and you have to make literally thousands, if not hundreds of decisions every single day, am I going to spend— how am I going to spend my time? How am I going to reply to this email? How am I going to talk to my team? How am I going to manage my team? What am I going to— where am I going to spend my money? All these decisions have to be made on a daily basis. And without the right mindset, you just won't be able to make the right decisions on a day-to-day basis. Without making mistakes. So sounds super simple, right? That's it I'm going to give you guys for today for mindset because there's a million little things you can focus on. But just like I said, in trying to lose weight or get in shape, it's about diet and exercise day in and day out. If you do those 2 things right, get that proper amount of sleep and you don't wake up or go to sleep with feeding your mind with different garbage, feed it with high quality information, you'll be set in the right state of mind. Before starting your day. So number 2 and the second part of this episode is all about productivity. So you guys probably already know this but if you're productive, I think that's a huge key to success. You can compare the productivity of a whole company to the productivity of the rate of you as an entrepreneur. So obviously if you improve, you fix and identify what are the most productive opportunities, that'll kind of drum light to what the potential success of a company is. And, you know, obviously the, the first one is, you know, avoiding distractions, right? So before you can think of what I need to do, you need to think about what's distracting you and what you don't need to be doing, right? Is it, um, social media? Is it your phone? Is it email? I'm assuming for a lot of people it's going to be email, right? Email takes probably most of your time. You know, it's a Slack. Is it, you know, different things that you work with that actually take you away from doing the most important tasks? So, silence all your non-essential notifications. So, please get on your phone right now, go to the notifications. Anything that's not essential, just turn it off. There's no need to it. If you need to check that feed, you can go in and check manually. Okay? Second thing you want to do is start with your most important task, right? Eat the elephant first. And what I suggest is first thing in the morning, plan your day before you do anything. Or you can do this— some people like to do it the night before. I've seen both. I prefer To do it. And the first thing in the morning is like, what am I going to focus? What do I need to get done today? And you can think about like, if I only did these 2 or 3 things today, would that be able to move the needle? Would that be enough for me to feel like I was productive today? So just those 2 or 3 things every single day. Can you write that down and plan that you actually— you can't stop working until that's done? I don't care if you have to work till 12:00 PM. You don't stop until those most important tasks, those 2 or 3 tasks are done. And I like to use something called an app on my computer. It's called Flow. So, if you have a MacBook, I think it's called Flow app which is part of the Pomodoro Technique. So, I like to set up these systems. So, this is part of different routines or productivity hacks you can do. Turn off the notifications and within this app, you can actually block time for work periods and then you have your rest period. So, make sure you get that rest. So, I like to set up 25 minutes of work, of flow. where I'm just focused on high-value, high-output tasks. And then I set a 10-minute timer where I can go in and check all the other stuff. And during that period, what it does is actually blocks my access to the things that I know distract me. So for me, it's my email, it's Slack for messages from my team. So if I try to even open those apps, it'll just literally just block me out and say, you know, get back to work. So I love that app. I would definitely check it out. And, you know, so avoid distractions. That's the first thing. The next thing is Your surroundings. So where are you working? Is your workplace set up so that you're working in a highly productive area? Do you have the right workspace? Do you have proper privacy? Do you have break time spaces? Are there good tools? Are you working efficiently? Is your chair set up properly? Do you have the right music on? You have the right water, coffee, snacks all around you so you're comfortable and you can just focus on work and not be continuously distracted by by things around you in your kind of working environment. So, set up your work environment to be as productive as possible with little distractions. Keep your workspace clean and find places that work with you. Some people love working in their bed. I don't find I work— I'm productive in bed. I have a nice office setup. Sometimes I actually need to go to an office and to do more productive work. Sometimes I go to a coffee shop. Sometimes just changing it up. Different people, different tasks works for different things. So, know what works for you but set up Where you know you're going to do the best type of work. All right. So moving to the part of, you know, how to— so you set up your day, you know what you need to do. Now it's how do you manage your time properly? Right? So you've got the right place, you've got the right apps in place. The next thing is how do you set up your time to be more productive? And what I personally like to do is I like to break my days into different themes. So what I mean by that is, for example, Tuesdays is my day for podcast recording. So you might be hearing this on a Friday or a Thursday. But I record this on Tuesdays and the reason why is it's just efficient, right? So I have my mic already set up, I have my camera, I'm in the right space that I need to be. I have all the right apps opened up, all the right systems and platforms. So whether I'm recording as a host or I'm recording as a guest with other people's podcasts, I always record on Tuesday. So that eliminates a lot of other decisions in my day. So I know that I can only do podcasts on Tuesdays. So that Wednesdays I can focus on meetings. All my meetings are booked for Wednesday. So team meetings, deal flow meetings, anything that has to do with doing those one-on-ones, I batch them all on Monday. So now I'm in the mindset of, okay, I'm going to be talking to people day to day. I'm in that mindset of how to do productive meetings. That's how I like to do it. Okay, everybody's different, but I find that to be super productive. And tying to that is forcing deadlines onto yourself and KPIs and actual goals. So I like to set quarterly goals every single quarter with my team. We like to sit down and talk about what do we want to achieve this quarter and have solid deadlines for per month down to per week, per day, what we're going to do to, you know, by those little tasks, those little reps that we talked about so that we can get that next belt as part of our black belt process. Right. So at the end of the, you know, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, that's your vision. You want to get that black belt. Right. So tying it all back. But in order to do that, you have to say, okay, first I need to get my yellow belt. What do I need to go from white to yellow? So maybe that's going to take me a year to get. So this quarter, what I need to do is focus on this, this, and this. And this is how I'm going to measure it. This is how I'm going to do it on a day-to-day basis. I'm going to focus on my kicks, on my punches. In your case, on your maybe social media content, you're developing different code. That's kind of what you have to look at and set actual deadlines because if you don't send it, then it ends up being kind Kind of meaningless. And then you have that motivation to follow through because if I don't set a deadline on myself, then I'll have an excuse to push it next week, next month, next quarter, right? But set hard deadlines and make decisions based on that. All right. So that's it on the productivity, guys. Some simple hacks there, but I guarantee it'll help you be more productive in your day. All right. And lastly, I would talk about routines. How to manage your time better is kind of a recurring question. But before you start building those hacks and strategies, you've got to build the routine, right? Routines will set you free. I guarantee it. And what I like to do, I'll share my routine, my morning routine that I have every single day, then you can kind of adopt it. I've taken this over the last, I would say, 6, 7 years I've started doing this and I found this to be kind of a game changer for me. But before I get into that, I want you to think about books because I think that's something— a question we ask in every episode is what is a book you always recommend? Or what is the top 3 books that you recommend to our founders to listen to? I'm going to recommend a different book because this book changed my life. And it's not the books that, you know, they mentioned The Hard Thing About the Hard Thing. They mentioned, you know, Jim Collins and Good to Great. Those are awesome books that are foundational to build a good business. But, you know, taking a step backwards of building that routine, a book that I really liked and set me up in a lot of healthy ways is, I think it's called The Morning Miracle by Hal Elrod. The Morning Miracle. So, you guys can check that out. It's the Miracle Morning or the Morning Miracle. Check that out. And what that does is it gives you kind of a framework. It was the first framework I ever read. It's a simple quick read of how to develop and why you need a strong morning routine. And I actually started this back when I was working in a corporate job. So, you don't actually need to be an entrepreneur to start implementing it. But I get up early, walk across, brush my teeth, get a cup of water, take all my vitamins and prep my coffee. Then I go and I like to journal. So I like to journal. For me, that's my form of meditation. I just like to write for about you know whole page what's on my mind, what I'm grateful for, what's bothering me. Just getting all that stuff out of my brain so it's not all caught up because you guys you know you sometimes have that where you have all those thoughts and those problems just gathering up and building up in your head. Just get it all on paper. I find it clears up your mind, and then I actually just sit down for a couple of minutes. And start meditating. You know, in that meditation, you know, people think you need certain apps, you need certain type of music, certain ambience. You can light a candle if you like. Just sit down in silence, close your eyes, and breathe. It's that simple. Breathe in with your nose and out with your mouth and try to pay attention to your breath. And that's it. You can put a timer if you like, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. It doesn't matter until you feel ready. Uh, just do a little bit of that, that breathing, and you'll find you'll be a little bit more refreshed. From there, I usually start my day. I used to do, you know, exercise. I used to do a reading. But I actually like to do a reading before I go to bed now. I thought instead of reading and taking all that information in, I might go for a quick walk with my dogs and I'll listen to a podcast. So, I prefer to listen to some podcasts, get my brain kind of going, get some information that I feel like learning today, put that healthy source of information into my brain. And that's what gets me started for the day. An important point which I talked about is during my journaling, that's where I actually write after I'm done getting all those thoughts out of my head. I say, okay, what do I need to focus on today? What's the most important thing that if that's all I did today, uh, you know, it'll make me feel productive. So I write down all my tasks that I have to do first, and then I start— when I get back from my walk, I start getting into work. So then I, you know, start focusing on my important tasks, start planning for that, and then I start talking to people, checking my emails, all of the above. And as an entrepreneur, you, you know, one thing I want you guys to think about is Focus on what you do best and anything else, if you're mediocre at it, hire someone else to do it. Find somebody who's an expert who loves doing it and delegate that to them. Outsource it, automate it. It doesn't matter if you think you have everything you need to build a successful business. You need to know how to delegate and find what other people are the best at doing and focus on what you do best. So for me, there's a couple of things that I like to focus, right? So me, it's Recording this podcast with high-level CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs, and building relationships. So relationships are key here with investors, founders. That's part of our investment strategy. And second to that is looking at business decisions that are million-dollar decisions. So do we like this company? We review companies on a weekly basis that we want to work with, whether that's helping them to grow, partnering with them, investing into them, and making those million-dollar— Decisions. writing those million-dollar checks to them and how to set up those strategies. And then on top of that, from there, it's just about hiring. So for me, it's finding the best talent out there and how can I add them and build that vision, share my vision to them on why they should join Horizon Capital. So those are my high-value tasks that I know by making one right decision, it'll make 1,000 right decisions down the line for me. Which I think is an important point. I actually learned that from listening to some Tim Ferriss podcasts where he says, You know, what is the one decision that'll make 1,000 decisions down the line? And you have to think about that when you're saying, what's the one decision of what am I going to focus on today that's going to make the impact for the next 1,000 days, right? If you make the one right strategic partnership, is that going to set up your business for the next 1,000 days? If you make the right hire today, is that going to make the right, you know, 1,000 right decisions down the line for the next, you know, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, right? So. Making the one right decision can have a huge level of impact. And that's why I said at the beginning of this podcast why it's so important to be able to make the right decisions because— and that's why you have to have good sleep, right? Because if you don't have the right amount of sleep, if you're not thinking clearly, you don't make good decisions and negative impact to your business or to your life or positive for the next couple of months or even years. So that's why it's super critical to have your mindset right ahead of everything else. So I'll leave it at that, guys. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Once again, let me know If you guys like this type of episode, send me a direct tweet on Twitter or LinkedIn @akeeljabbar. And if you guys like this episode, I'm going to keep recording more like this for you guys. If not, we'll just keep sticking to the interview styles, or we can mix and match it. Just let me know. I need to know, guys. But let me know either way. And thanks again for tuning in to SaaS District Show today, and see you guys on the next episode.