Why I Work All Night

Quite often I get asked how many hours I sleep every night, what my morning routine is and all things like that. What are the habits of success? I don't usually answer these because I actually believe that most of what I say today you should not do. But the reason I'm going to say them is because I want to give different perspective in the entrepreneurial community. I hate when it becomes a certain tradition that is like required to be a good business person. Like you have to wake up at 4am and you've got to go to bed early and you've got to do a certain type of motivational speech every single morning to yourself in the mirror like this is crazy. You need to figure out what works for you and stop beating yourself up because you're not like everybody else. Because guess what, there's only one version of you and what makes you tick. And work really efficiently is not going to be the same compared to any other individual. Just because I don't sleep a lot or I stay up all night does not mean you should. In fact, 99.9% of people should not. They should figure out what works for them to be the most productive in their business. When I do look at my day, my schedule and kind of my habits, one of the most glaringly obvious and predictable things is that I don't sleep a whole lot. And I shouldn't really say that as much as my sleep pattern is extremely all over the place. Sometimes I sleep one or two hours a night, other times I will sleep eight, nine, ten hours. So the ideology you have to have this certain schedule, you need to go to bed, like that might work for some people, but it's not going to necessarily work for everybody. So why in the world do I spend most of my night up working and doing the things that I love to do? First and foremost, distractions. Throughout my entire waking day, there is a lot of communication coming through my cell phone. We have over 80 locations and every single one of the owners has my personal cell phone number. I have quite a few employees and there's problems that always are arising. Now they have middle management that usually take care of things on a day to day level. However, there's still lots of stuff that comes to me and that's fine. I enjoy it. I love being an operator. However, it prevents me from actually getting creative. It prevents me from working on strategy, it prevents me from working on some of the key things I need to get done in a day that were actually require some really diligent thinking. I find that from 10pm till 2am that four hour window is when literally no one, either locally on the Pacific coast or on the east coast is awake and therefore I have no distractions whatsoever. I can make videos like this, I can have prayer, I can work on strategy, I can focus on planning and figuring out solutions for other entrepreneurs and business owners. The second reason why I really enjoy staying up at night and working is because I really hate leaving things undone on my to do task. Paraphrasing the Bible, it says to not leave anything undone that can be done today. In other words, don't put it off for tomorrow, don't wait. And and I truly believe that, like if it's on my to do list and I can get it done today, I really do try my very best to get it done in this day. The third reason why I stay up late and most of the night and work is because I feel best when I'm most productive. When I feel like I'm less productive, I actually get more sluggish, require more sleep, and I'm generally more dissatisfied and grumpy and moody and that is when I am least productive. So when I'm up at night being able to be like ultra productive during the evening and the nighttime and get things done, that's when I feel the best. That's when I have the most energy. And it's actually completely the opposite. When I have too much time on my hands is I feel unproductive, very tired, very lethargic. Now the fourth reason ties into the fact that for most people they should not stay up late at night because those are their most unproductive hours. And they spend that time watching movies, TV, scrolling through TikTok or whatever it is. And I don't do any of those things. I don't consume a lot of media, I don't watch any movies. I'm way like out of left field when it comes to pop culture. I have no idea the latest hits of music or TV shows. I'm completely out of the loop. So therefore the time at night is spent very productively and I'm very intentional with the hours between 10pm and 3am the fifth reason why I stay up late at night is because I do feel like it's when I am the most creative. Because when things are off my plate, things are done. And I've worked from till 10, 11 o', clock, 12 o' clock Getting things done off my to do list. I usually do feel most creative between 12 midnight and 3am Because I've gotten everything off of My to do list. And now I can focus on actually creating content. Now a lot of people will say that, well, that just means that you're built into a certain way where you don't need more sleep. And I actually kind of disagree with this. Cause I am tired. I am quite frequently, really tired. And a lot of people comment quite frequently in my videos that I look tired. I. I am tired. The thing is, when I wake up in the morning, I want to get out of bed, which means if I wake up at 3am or 4am, after just an hour or two of sleep, I will wake up and I will get started working because I really enjoy what I do. And 99.9% of the time, I do want to get started on my day. But it also means that just because I look tired does not mean that if I went and fell asleep, I would sleep a long time. I might literally sleep two or three hours, wake up and be like, all right, time to go. Let's get stuff done. I really enjoy that. So for people that are gonna say, like, you gotta take it easier and enjoy yourself, if I went on vacation, I would just work more. I really do enjoy it. And it's not about the money. I'm not spending it. I'm not trying to change my lifestyle in any way, shape or form. I just enjoy progress. And I love building things. It's somewhat of a virtuous cycle. And that is, as I get more done and I'm staying up at night, it gives me more energy because I love improvement. I love getting things done, I love accomplishing things. And therefore I actually get more energy. I very rarely go to sleep because I'm tired, because as I work more and I get more done, it actually gives me even more energy and I feel more alive. I liken it to driving a car down a hill. Like, with all the momentum, all the speed behind you, it's hard to slow down the car. And there's nothing worse than going to bed and, and laying in bed awake for an hour or two hours. Like, I can't fathom that. I would just. If I don't fall asleep in five or ten minutes, I'm back out of bed and going to keep working. Because there's nothing worse than just lying there looking up at the ceiling. All of that to say, you should absolutely not follow any of this logic and you should not adapt my sleep schedule. The reason I'm making this video is because you should not follow my schedule. Any person's schedule. You need to figure out what works for you. And then don't allow people to poke holes and tell you you should do doing this different. Figure out what works for you, figure out what makes you tick, and then try to be as efficient as possible within the 24 hours that you're given every single day. Now, there are some big tasks and there are some big projects that we're working on that do keep me up at night and I have to work on. Here's one of them. Watch this video here. About a $3.3 million headquarters we're building, and it's a little bit stressful, so check it out.