How to Optimize Your Morning Routine

You're listening to Freedom Fast Lane, presented by capitalism dot com. This is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms. And now, your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran.

In all this crazy noise, of all the things that you have to do, how do you craft a routine that actually makes you more productive, less stressed, and puts you on the path for success to owning the day?

Bulletproof coffee, meditating green juice. What the heck do you do to start your day? If you ask any entrepreneur, you ask any person what their morning routine is, you'll get a list of a bunch of things that they do and they claim it's the only way. Well, I'm gonna share my religious morning routine with you today, but I wanna talk about the opposite of having a morning routine, which is what most people do, which is waking up in reactivity to their day, which usually it looks like this. You wake up, you check your phone, you look at Facebook, so you're immediately depressed. You check sales. If you've got a business that's up and running just to make sure that nothing is wrong. And then you check email. So you are immediately in reactivity mode. You are immediately responding to the demands of other people. You're immediately in stress response. The whole day is killed at that point. You're in stress response for the rest of the day. No wonder we all got grumpy pants on now. I noticed this also when I became a dad because my daughter would wake up before me screaming or crying or if she woke up even in a good mood, but it woke me up. And now I immediately have to address something. Now I'm immediately in reactive mode and I don't have any production for the day. I have no momentum for the day. I'm responding to everyone else and all the other stress in the world. That's how most people are operating. No wonder we're mean to each other. So first things first. We need to cut out that reactivity and, and replace it with something. So keep your phone away from you and wake up earlier than your first stressor. If nothing else, that will create a better life. It will set a much better tone for the rest of the day. So if your morning routine is simply wake up before the stress begins and give yourself an hour before you check anything on this satanic device that causes stress in all of our lives. Just cut it out. Cut it out for an hour. That would be enough of a morning routine to set the tone for the day. Most of us Are trying to just capture our lives back and add in something. I'm stressed, so let's add in more.

We get peace in our lives by taking things out. So cut out that hour of stress and that's a better routine. Now I'm gonna share with you what I actually do, which when Esther was waking up super early in the morning, I decided I gotta have my hour. So I'm gonna wake up an hour before her, which meant sometimes 5, 35, 45, which some people isn't super early. But to me at the time, it was a huge adjustment. I have five areas that I focus on throughout the day, and I give myself a score for how I did throughout that day. And it's tribe T R I B E. And it stands for time, relationships, income, body and expansion. And I feel like if I get four to five of these habits on a daily basis, I've done a pretty good job of setting a nice foundation for success. If I'm managing my time, building my relationships, identifying how I can grow my income, manage my body and feed it what it needs, and constantly expand my mind, then good things naturally have to come out of that. Good things are going to show up if I'm consistently operating with positive habits in those areas of my life. Now, if I'm not getting those five areas or I'm getting one of those areas or zero of those areas, chances are I'm not gonna be open to opportunities. I'm not gonna be able to take advantage of things that show up. I'm not gonna meet people who stretch me or who are ahead of me or can help me grow. My life is gonna stay pretty stagnant. So I track these five areas and it's really easy to see if you're doing well or if you're about to crumble based on how you do in these areas. So I create a habit out of each one of these areas, Depending on what my goals are in life and. And I try to get as many of them as possible in the morning. So a traditional day would be getting my time back. Means I just wanna have control over my time and feel freedom around my time. So if I meditate, I know that I'm getting that back. Relationships are everything in success. So I constantly have a list of people that I'm either attempting to cultivate relationships with. And actually, for the last year and a half or so, that has just meant personal friends, Meaning I knew I had sacrificed a lot of personal friendships. And when I feel really enthused by the people I'm around I'm a better business person. So every day I try to take time to appreciate someone in my life and just let them know what they mean to me or at least spend intentional time with someone because I don't do well when I'm alone. Income for me means identifying the one thing, the one thing that is going to make everything else easier from this point forward in my business because I make all of my money in my businesses and then I invest the profits. Or if you work for someone else, that means identifying the one area in your job where you can improve today, or the one primary thing that you can get done that is going to grow yourself or grow the company. B is obvious. What are you doing for your body to make sure that you're healthy, that you're in shape, and that you're giving your body and your brain what it needs. Some people run better on a high fat diet, so that means having your bulletproof coffee in the morning. Some people don't get enough vegetables, so that means having a green juice in the morning or heaven forbid, a salad in the morning. And E is expansion. E is all about giving yourself the thoughts that help you expand. And that means listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts, reading something.

Hey guys, you know that my financial.

Strategy is to build businesses and to invest the profits.

And when it comes to investing the.

Profits, I look for cash flow. I look for it to be backed by something real and I look for tax efficiency. It's why when I recently sold a business, I called the good folks over at Four Peaks Capital Partners and today's episode is brought to you by them. You've heard them on the podcast before when I interviewed Mauricio Rauld on the topic of mailbox money and why investment funds could be a source of passive cash flow for some entrepreneurs. I use investment funds like Four Peaks as part of my long term strategy. And I'd encourage you to go listen to the episode called How Rich People Generate Mailbox Money and you might want to check them out if you're looking for opportunities right now with asset prices as high as they are, I am mostly looking at cash flow opportunities, which is why I had them on the podcast. So make sure you check out that episode on Mailbox Money with Mauricio Rauld.

So my morning routine looks something like this. I'll wake up, I'll take whatever supplements I'm taking, which is usually a probiotic creatine. I take an adrenal support, sometimes a vitamin D. Then I drink water and I meditate for 10 to 20 minutes. There's my T point. I usually then go to the gym. I get my sweat on. I have my green drink as a breakfast. So I got my B point. While I'm at the gym, I might listen to an audio book or a podcast. So I get my E point. And half an hour to an hour into the day, I have three of the five points that that I'm going for. As I'm getting ready for the day, I might send a text message to somebody that I appreciate or try and set up a meeting with someone that I wanna have coffee with or lunch with so that I get my R point. And before I leave for the day, sometimes I journal in the morning. Most mornings I'm either reading my journal or writing in my journal. And before I leave, in my journal, I circle the one thing that I'm gonna get done today that's gonna make my life and my business easier and allow me to grow in my career. That's my tribe 5. That's how I set the tone for the day. Cause by the time you leave, you've already worked out, you've given your body and brain what it needs, you're building relationships. You've gotten some time back because you've woken up before stress response, and maybe you've meditated or journaled and you've identified the one thing that you're going to do that is going to make progress and production happen that day. So that's my morning routine, tracking those five areas. I've done an entire podcast on this that goes into more detail about how you identify what you're gonna focus on. Because my habits change all the time. My habits based on my goals are going to change. So it is all about identifying exactly where I'm gonna put my focus. Usually for about the next 90 days or so, creating habits out of that and then practicing that first thing in the morning so that I feel like I have momentum. I could really screw up just about everything else in my day. But if I get my tribe five, I know that I'm on the path to success no matter what happens. So I'd encourage you to search for freedom. Fast Lane Tribe 5. Listen to the full podcast. Try this out for seven days. If after seven days you're not experiencing something different, you'll get all your money back from watching this video or you can go back to having a really sucky morning routine, whichever works better for you. One of our newest team members here@the capitalism.com office is named Tyler. And Tyler And I have known each other for a few years. And what impresses me about Tyler is Tyler is committed to growth and he's committed to success. Tyler didn't go to college. Tyler is learning to be an entrepreneur and he's working with us at the same time. And he's showing that you can have success as long as you're committed to that success. And Tyler has created his own morning routine that loosely follows some of the things that we teach inside of the tribe. 5 and as a result of him following that, he is just having incredible growth as a person in the gym, professionally. And I'm super proud of Tyler. So I wanted to take a second and share a clip in a video that he put on Facebook about his morning routine.

Basically, the very first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is make my bed. Because there's power in waking up and accomplishing a goal. Like right off the bat. It kind of sets the pace for the day. And from there I'll, I'll get up and I'll do 10 minutes of meditation. So after making my bed and doing 10 minutes of meditation, I go do at least like 10 push ups, something to kind of get my blood flowing. My least favorite part of the morning is I try to shock my body into working correctly. And so I go take a 30 minute pure cold or 30 minute, a 30 second pure cold shower, which is miserable for me. I hate it. But I feel so good afterwards because I just feel like I'm like a monster, like a beast. Like I just, just did like the hardest thing ever because I don't like cold water at all. And then I go make my morning protein shake. And.

Which you can make any kind of protein shake you want. Mine's. I'm not gonna get into what mine is because you're probably gonna be like, ew. And then after that I sit down and for like 10 to 15 minutes, I'll just, I'll spend like five minutes just writing whatever's on my mind, like whatever's been weighing on my mind. And then I'll spend like five to ten minutes writing down. I go through a couple, like different questions in my day, in my morning journal. Like one is, what are, what are? What's something that's good that can make today great? I think about that every morning. What is something that I could do today to make today great? And that's it. If I can. And I don't accomplish all of these things every single morning. But the way I see it is if I can Knock out like two to three of them, then I'm doing good. I'm off to a great start. So I definitely recommend getting yourself a morning routine. It's really helped me organize my thoughts and I actually look forward to it every day. It makes it easier for me to get out of bed and not sleep the day away.

If nothing else, I'd encourage you to carve out that hour before you have to go respond to something, to just take time for yourself, even if you don't fill it with anything. Read a book, play a video game if that's your thing. Sometimes that's my thing. Do whatever you enjoy for that hour. My mentor, Travis, wakes up, has a cup of coffee, reads a book. It's what he enjoys. He journals, and when he comes out, he's smiling. I've always just wanted to model my life after his because he is happy and successful, has a great relationship. And what I've noticed among all my really successful friends that are happy is that they start the day doing something that gives them the energy to actually be happy. I don't think any of us are happy when we wake up in stress response. So cut out the things that are stressing you out in that first hour of the day and it'll completely change the tone for the rest of your day and put you on the path to owning the day. Tim Ferriss once publicly said, quote, Benjamin Franklin once famously said, quote, early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. End quote. End quote. And that wasn't as funny as I thought it would be in my head. I'm embarrassed. Leave this in here. Just, I'm a dad. I have dad jokes. And there's of course the famous bare hands song called 2am in which the chorus says, nothing good happens past 2am I would modify by saying nothing good happens past 11am and all kinds of good things happen from 5am to 7am I find that I am happier the earlier that I wake up. I don't know why that is, except for the fact that I am less reactive to all that's going on in the world. I used to think it was awesome to sleep till 10am, but then immediately upon awaking I'm behind and now I'm just stressed. So I don't think that a morning routine necessarily is so magical because of the things that you do, but because of the things that you cut out and it gives you the space to be able to do that thing that actually gives you the momentum in the area that you want so if it's building a better body, wake up and go to the gym. If it's building a business, wake up and identify that one thing that you need to do. But give yourself the gift of that one hour before you have to do anything and make that where you focus on moving the biggest thing that is going to give you momentum forward. I believe that it's entrepreneurs like you who make this world a better place. And it's people who get up early and put in the work who actually make the world go round. The whole world should thank you. So since they won't, I will thank you for being an entrepreneur.

Sam.

Sa.