I Built a Seven Figure Coaching Business in Pajamas (This Is My Actual Morning Routine)

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Carly Hill. And today, this episode is a little bit different. It's personal, it's real. I think it's exactly what you might need to hear today. We're going to talk about morning routines and my million-dollar morning routine. And it's probably not what you're thinking. It is not about a long journaling session or Hot lemon water or a meditation sequence or an ice bath or a 5 a.m. wake-up call. It's a lot messier than that. It's a lot more real and a lot more honest. And I think by the end of this episode, my intention is for you to feel a lot better about where you are on your entrepreneurial journey and just give you permission to. Start. Let it be messy. Just get into it. All right, so people ask me all the time, and this is what inspired this episode, Carly, what does your morning routine look like? What does your day-to-day routine look like as a 7-figure CEO? And I almost don't know how to answer the question every time somebody asks me that, because the honest answer is not what anyone expects. Right now, in this very moment, my morning routine consists of the baby kicking in my womb, cold coffee. I made it hot, of course. I just never got back to it, or I'm chasing my toddler around the kitchen, making sure he doesn't open the wine fridge or hurt himself as I'm trying to make breakfast. Have not brushed my teeth yet. Still in my pajamas. That's it. That is my million-dollar morning routine. I am not cold plunging. I am not doing a journal. I am not Taking deep breaths and meditating. It is me. It is my bump. It is my toddler. It is my cup of coffee. It is me cleaning the kitchen for the third time. And sometimes in the middle of all of this chaos, oftentimes my phone buzzes. I get a Stripe notification. I get a sale that comes through. And oftentimes this is while I'm in the backyard too. I'm in my pajamas still with my cold coffee. My son is digging in the dirt. He is, uh, playing with the hose. I'm hosing the dirt off of him. This is messy. Again, this is my million-dollar morning routine, and this is what a real business looks like from the inside. And I just want to give you permission that this is what your business can look like too, because so many of you see this perfectly curated office space with the neon lights behind and the standing desk, and everything is so neat and tidy and People are going to the gym and then they're doing their cold plunge and the journaling and the meditation. And don't get me wrong, I love all of that stuff. I do all of that stuff. But the perfectly lit desk with the aesthetic coffee cup and the open laptop and the journal, when your brain sees all of that perfectly curated routine stuff, you think automatically, well, that's not me. I could never do that. I don't have time for that. My life doesn't look like that. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. This is meant for them. This is not meant for me. And I wanna look you in the eye right now, or like just tell you metaphorically through your earbuds that the internet is telling you a lie and they're selling you this lie that that is what your life has to look like. You have to have the perfect conditions to build this successful business, and you just don't. You never have to have the perfect conditions and you probably never will. You never did. I never had perfect conditions when I was building, even in the early stages of my company. I was a very burnt-out therapist. I had a full client load. I had no systems, no team, no roadmap. It was very messy, and I just figured it out anyways. And not because my conditions were ideal, but because I was committed to just figuring it out regardless of the conditions. And right now, again, pregnant, chasing a toddler. I'm only at my desk 2 days a week. I'm still running a 7-figure business despite the chaos, alongside the chaos, because my business is built in a way that doesn't require me to be present for every single thing that happens inside the company. I'm not waiting for the perfect morning. I'm not waiting until my kids are older. I'm not waiting until I have more time or more energy or a better sleep schedule or a better setup or a quieter house. That is not discernment. That is absolutely fear wearing the costume of logic. That is just an excuse, if I'm saying it bluntly. You know, calling you out with love and kindness on your bullshit. You don't have to have the perfect conditions. The conditions will never be perfect. The real question that you have to ask yourself is Am I willing to start anyway? Am I willing to start messy? Am I willing to give myself a permission slip and let it be on my own timeline? Again, I sit at my desk 2 days a week, Tuesday and Thursday. Those are my workdays. Sometimes I can squeeze in another, you know, hour or 2 if my son goes to swim lessons with my husband, or right now actually they're at the gym, he's at the kiddie center. I can record podcast episodes like this one. That's bonus time. That's not planned time. But every other day of the week besides Tuesday and Thursday, that is me being a mom. That is life. That is whatever the day brings us, which is such a beautiful thing. It's slow mornings, it's making breakfast, it's going on a walk, it's figuring out an activity, going to the splash pad, lunch on the water, car shopping. And I was talking to my sister-in-law about this recently because my brother-in-law has been out of work for quite some time. She was struggling to figure out a family routine. And she asked me, she's like, Carly, what does your day-to-day look like? And again, I almost didn't know how to answer because honestly, besides Tuesday and Thursday, we just do whatever we want to do. Yesterday I woke up, I cooked a really big breakfast, I straightened up the house a little bit, did some laundry. We played outside in the baby pool. It was unpacking from a weekend trip. I made banana bread. I FaceTimed a friend who just had a baby. Chad was golfing with his brother. He came home, he made steaks on the grill for dinner. That was a 5-figure day for me. And this happens often where I'm just being a mom, living my life, hanging out around the house or going and running errands or doing things. 2 weeks before that, we traveled to California, traveled across the country. Went to a 5-star resort for a friend's wedding. I didn't open my laptop once. I didn't host a single call, and I had a $26,000 day while I was just flying cross-country and staying at a 5-star resort. That is me being fully present, living my life. And this is not luck. This is not some passive income magic. This is what happens when you build a real business. that has systems, that has an irresistible offer, that has funnels, that has a team and a backbone to support you, that has automations running in the background, and you're actually trusting it to work. This isn't something that happens overnight, but this is what you can work your way towards, and it can happen fairly fast. And this is the whole point of everything that I teach. It's not just to make more money— more money is great— but it's really about options and getting your life back. That is the goal. And that is what I mean when I say I built freedom into the foundation of this business. It is not just money, it is real freedom. It is the freedom to design my days, the freedom to say yes to a slow morning, or go on a walk to the park, or go car shopping on a Wednesday, or go to the mall, or a splash pad, or lunch, Or whatever the case is, whatever the day honestly brings us. And here's what I need you to understand about how that became possible. It was not because I had the perfect conditions. This is the whole point of this episode. It is not because I had a perfect routine. It is not because all of my ducks were in a row. It happened because I built a system. And when I say system, I'm talking about an offer suite. I have email marketing, I have funnels, I have a team, I have automations running in the background so that revenue can happen 24/7 when I'm outside in my pajamas watching my toddler dig in the dirt. The freedom is the result of the system. I'm gonna say that again. The freedom is the result of the system, not the result of a perfect morning routine or the perfect conditions. I wanna break it down and slow down for a second to also paint the picture for you of what my days look like at the desk. Cuz I'm telling you what my days look like just every day outside of Tuesday and Thursday. But when I'm at the desk Tuesday and Thursday, these days are very sacred. I am so dialed in when I sit down. I'm not dabbling, I'm not puttering around, I'm not on my phone. Like I know exactly what those hours are for. I protect them like my business depends on it because honestly it does. Okay. And I'm doing one of 3 things in that time on Tuesday and Thursday. I am either coaching my clients, which I absolutely love to do, showing up with full presence and doing the actual work of transformation that my business is built on. And I actually asked my clients the other day, I was like, what surprised you the most about actually working with me now that you're on the other side? And majority of them said, The fact that I was so available and that I actually showed up and hung out with them and answered their questions, the proximity to me. And I was like, duh, guys, like, this is what I live for. This is exactly what I love to do. But I think it's because it became this trend, if you will, to be unavailable in the online space. I will never be unavailable for my clients. I love showing up fully and being present for them. The second thing I'm doing, if I'm not with my clients, is creating new trainings, new content, new frameworks, IP work that only I can do, and that is gonna fuel everything else downstream. Or I'm in CEO mode, meaning I'm delegating to my team. I'm preparing for the next launch or workshop. I'm reviewing what's coming. I'm making sure everybody has what they need to execute without me being in the weeds of every detail. And that's it. It's one of those 3 things: coaching, creating, or delegating. 3 categories. Nothing else makes it into those days if I can help it. And then throughout the rest of the week, the slow mornings, the breakfast, going out and doing activity. I'm not completely off the grid. I don't wanna paint that picture for you because I'm absolutely still checking in with Slack. I check in with my clients, I check in with my team, but it's a quick scan. It's a voice note here and there. Uh, sending a replay of something. It's not hours of my day. It's maybe 15 minutes or intentional presence when baby goes down for a nap and I'm checking in with the team just to keep a pulse on everything, just to keep everything moving without pulling me fully out of my life. That's the rhythm fully. I'm on Tuesday and Thursday. Most of the time I'm present as a mom. When I'm not, I'm on Slack here and there, and that is kind of bridging the two between being a seven-figure CEO and also being a fully present mom. Okay, so again, not glamorous, not perfect conditions, no two hours of uninterrupted deep work every morning, not some time blocking productivity system. Not that I'm poo pooing on that; I'm just saying. I don't have this beautifully curated morning routine. Okay, and I make millions of dollars. Just when I'm focused, I'm focused on my desk days. I'm not browsing Instagram. I am doing one of those three activities. Period. End of sentence. The highest leverage activities during my work time. This is the game. Okay, everything else can wait. Everything else can be delegated or possibly automated or just dropped entirely. And here's what I've learned about focus too, especially since being a mom. You can do more in 2 focused hours than most people do in 8 scattered hours. And I've seen it happen in my own business over and over again. A 2-hour recording session produces a month worth of content. A 1-hour strategy session produces a launch plan that can absolutely generate 6 figures. And focus is really the multiplier. It's not the time; it's the focus and intention that goes into it. So if you're sitting here thinking, well, I can never build a real business with my schedule, my kids, my life, the XYZ, I want you to reframe the question. The question is not how much time do you have because everybody is busy and everybody has the same amount of time. The question is when you do have time. Are you spending it on the things that actually move the needle forward in your business? If you are using your precious desk time to redesign Canva templates and move things around or reorganize your Google Drive or harp over your logo or your branding or how ugly your website is, that's a focus problem. That is not a time problem. And you have to go back and listen to the episode I recorded on Money-making activities, revenue-generating activities. That's what you need to do during your desk time, and that's a whole nother conversation that you can listen to. But I want you to be focused on the right activities that are going to make you money in your business instead of busy work. I also want to talk about comparison for a second because I think this is quietly stealing a lot of momentum for a lot of you because Everyone's best moments are always packaged in their stories and their highlight reels. And when you're in the thick of your everyday life, kids, social life, trying to be a wife or a husband, possibly pregnant like me, like full schedule, messy mornings, it is so easy to look at somebody else's life and it's filtered. Of course. Okay. And you're looking at their version of their business and you think, well, I'm behind. I'm not doing it right. They have something that I don't have. If only when XYZ, then I can have a successful business. But other people's success is not evidence that you can't have success. If they figured it out with their circumstances and their season and their limitations, then you can figure it out with yours. Just as you always do, you always figure it out. So I want you to see other people be successful and use it as an inspiration, not intimidation. You have two choices: you can be inspired or you can be intimidated. Most of what you see online is not the whole picture, and the whole picture for almost everyone building something real includes chaos. You are allowed to be the exception to whatever rule that you have been told applies to you. You are allowed to succeed without the perfect morning. It is safe for you to succeed. You do not have to have the perfect setup. You do not have to have the perfect season of life. The people who break through do not have the most ideal circumstances. They are the ones who say, "All right, I'm just gonna focus. I'm gonna dial in. I'm gonna do this messy. I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna do the damn thing." And they're going to trust themselves to figure out the rest, and they're going to do the action anyways, and they're going to figure it out as you go. And I want that to be you, and I want you to trust that you will find your way because you will. You always have, and you will. So again, this is your permission slip to just freaking go. Millions of dollars is waiting for you. You are probably sitting on a gold mine. Okay, so what is the million-dollar mindset? Behind the million-dollar routine, it's not visualization. It's not affirmations you say in the mirror. It's the deep knowing. It is the unshakable conviction that you will figure it the fuck out. That's it. You will figure it out. You just have to start. The path doesn't have to be perfectly clear. Help is available to you. Okay? Just know whatever comes up, you will handle it. You will learn, you will find a way. And this is what I had when I was building my business from nothing. I didn't know anything and I had to learn everything. I didn't have a perfect plan. I didn't have perfect conditions. I just had an absolute refusal to accept that this wasn't possible for me. And that same energy, that same I will figure it out no matter what energy. This is exactly what I see in every single client who breaks through. Who actually makes it in this space, not the ones with the perfect conditions or the most time. It's actually usually the opposite. Okay, so I need you to know that success is inevitable for you. It is waiting for you. It is absolutely written in the stars. Your desires are your roadmap, and your morning doesn't have to look like everybody else's. I want it to be messy. We love a messy, a little bit chaotic life, okay, where It can be messy and you can make millions. The only requirement is that you just start, and once you start, you keep going and you have the consistency. It is absolutely a commitment that you have to make to yourself, to your business, to your family, to your vision, to your mission. A commitment to showing up in whatever window of time that you have, focused, intentional, doing the money-making activities. Trusting that imperfect action is going to take you to the promised land, and you will build something real. So let that be your North Star. Focus, conviction, messy. Start before you're ready. Be the exception that you've been waiting for, and just give yourself permission. Money will follow. Money's a magnifier. Stripe notifications will follow, and just. Take a deep breath. It's all gonna be okay. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend. Ping me on Instagram. Let me know what your messy morning looks like. I would love to hear. And if you need help, I'm here. This is exactly what I do all day, every day with my clients, helping them build a scalable and most importantly sustainable 6 to 7 figure business. Link is in the show notes for all the ways that you can get involved in mentorship. My love is with you and I'll see you in the next episode.