Episode #25 - Why I DON'T Wake Up Early!

Welcome to the E Commerce Freedom Podcast with your host, Oliver Denier. Learn the practical steps you need to take to build a business you can run on your own terms. Escape the 9 to 5 and work from anywhere in the world. Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here, so very warm. Welcome to another episode of the E Commerce Freedom Podcast. Now, I haven't done these an episode for this podcast in a little while and I wanted to pick up the pace a little bit again because I've got tons and tons of stuff to share with you. And if you've listened to the previous episodes of the podcast, then it's awesome that you've got another edition to listen to. And I'm grateful that you've picked up this episode and you're going to continue to listen. If you haven't done so, then please go ahead and listen to the previous episodes as well, because there's a wealth of information in all of the previous episodes I think you'll find really, really helpful. So whether you have or haven't listened to previous episodes of the podcast, you'll probably know right now, just from the podcast name, that this podcast is kind of about two things. Number one is about freedom, right? It's about building a business, building a lifestyle that you love and that makes you happy, makes you feel free. And it's about giving you the freedom of choice, right? If you have a really successful business, you can structure it in such a way that you have, you can make choices on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, you can decide which days to work, which days not to work. But also you can, you know, make choices on where you want to be, right? You can travel, you can make choices on how often you work. You can make choices on how much you earn as well, which is really, really exciting, having that power to be able to ramp up your income at will. So it's about freedom, but also it's about success, right? In order to have that freedom that you want, you need to build a business that's successful because if you don't get off the ground, then you're probably not going to get very far. So today's episode is about the topic of waking up early. And it's quite funny. I was speaking to a client last week and she actually said to me, I think we were having a call at maybe was it 11 o' clock in the morning or something? And it was quite funny. I was, I'd literally just woken up and I was just, I said to her, I was having some coffee so I've just woken up and my brain's still a little bit fuzzy. And she was shocked by this, right? She. She said to me, like, ollie, you know, I've been reading all these autobiographies. Loads of these successful people, entrepreneurs and other people say that one of their secrets to getting massive amounts of success is waking up early. And so she said, that's something that I've never been able to do myself. Never really been able to wake up early. I'm a bit of a night owl. I like to stay up late at night and then wake up towards the end of the morning. And she said, well, I always thought that in order for me to be successful and, you know, create the millions in wealth I want, I have to fix this problem and wake up early. So because of that, this kind of prompted me to make this episode talk a little bit about why I don't wake up early and just address the topic in general. Now, I'm not really going to be telling you that you should wake up early or you shouldn't. It's more an episode just about building that success, building that freedom, what you need to do in order to get there, and then what happens and what freedoms can you unlock through doing that? And how does this all tie in to waking up early? So, first of all, I want to address the hype around waking up super early, right? Why is it, like a thing, like, I've noticed on YouTube, like, loads of YouTubers at the moment are saying they're trying this thing where they wake up really early, like 4:30am or 5:30am why is it everywhere? And why does it feel like that's something that we have to do in order to be successful? Well, I think there's three types of people who wake up super early, right? And I think, yeah, once I break this down, you'll agree with me. Number one, the first type of person who wakes up early is quite often also someone who talks about it all the time is someone who wants to seem like they're successful, right? Like, it feels good to be waking up super, super early. And if you can tell everybody around you that you wake up really, really early, then it can seem like you're the type of person who's going to be successful. Now, not to place judgment on people who want to seem like they're successful, that's actually okay. Like, part of the journey of becoming successful is acting as if, right? Acting as if you're already successful, setting up certain things in your life in such a way structuring things in such a way so you feel like you already have the success before you attain it. And I think that's quite important. So it can be a stepping stone. So for some people, they'll wake up early almost as a prerequisite to their success. That's person number one, person number two. I think a few people, they wake up early and talk about it a lot because it's a very macho thing, right? It almost feels like you're more significant if you wake up early than everyone else. You know, I get up at the crack, dawn, I'm ready to go, I'm awake while everybody else is asleep. It kind of makes people feel really good, right? It can make you feel really macho. It can feed your ego. If you're the one waking up way earlier than everybody else and they're all supposedly lazy and you're supposedly not, right? So I think quite a lot of people who wake up early, talk about it all the time, are doing it for that reason. And if you look at most of the actions that people take in their daily lives, that you can usually tie them to a human need, right? So there's tons of human needs, right? The need for love, right? The need for certainty, the need for uncertainty. And one of the human needs is significance. So I think a lot of people wake up super early to get that need of significance. Again, no judgment on these people. We all have our vices, we all have, you know, weaknesses, strengths, etc. No judgment. I just think that's a fact. And then the third reason people wake up super early is certain type of people just genuinely like waking up early and it genuinely helps them. Like if you wake up super early at 5:30am, it's quiet, right? Everybody else is asleep. The city you live in is asleep, right? You get a bit of peace and quiet. You also, it's like nice and fresh and you get to experience the morning. Could be a great time to actually get some work done before everybody wakes up. And if you have a job right now, if you wake up super early, you can actually build your business in the time it takes between you waking up and going to work in the morning. So there's some people who just do it because they genuinely like waking up early. It gives them that edge and they feel that this really helps them. So now we've outlined the three types of people who wake up super early or the three reasons I think people wake up super early. Let's skip forward a little bit and address why I don't do it. Right. Why don't I wake up early? Why do I tend to wake up at 11am, 10am and why? Or even though, you know, I've generated a few million online in sales, why don't I kind of step in line with a lot of these successful people who do it? Well, here's the thing. Number one for me, freedom is having the ability to wake up whenever I want. Right? I actually love knowing that everybody else around me, like I live in a block of apartments right now, everybody else in the apartments almost has to wake up really early, commute to work, has to be in an office at a certain time, has to leave that office at a certain time and then come back home in the evening. If they're not up at a certain time, they're going to get aggravation from their boss, right? They're going to get moaned at, they're going to get in trouble and they're going to feel stressed. So they have to have this alarm set at like 6 or 7am in the morning and, and that has to be in place. They have to wake up, otherwise there's going to be trouble. So for me, it just feels incredible knowing that I don't have to have that and I can wake up whenever I'm ready. And if it's nice and early, sometimes I wake up at like 9am that's kind of really early for me. Sometimes it's 10, 11, right? Sometimes I even have a line and wake up at 12 midday. For me, that just gives me a sense of freedom knowing that I can do that and I'm not trapped having to wake up super early in the morning. I like waking up kind of naturally. It just feels good. And I don't have a boss to answer to. So why would I set myself a restriction to wake up really early? That's reason number one. Reason number two, who wants to go to bed at 9pm, right? If you wake up at 5am in the morning and you want to be super, super effective, then you can't realistically only get four or five hours of sleep for extended period of time. You could probably do it for maybe a week or two, or maybe some people can do it for even longer than that. But if you want to be super effective, you need to be getting enough sleep, right? I mean, there's been so many studies done on this and a lot of people try all of these hacks to be more productive, more efficient and all these new things that they're trying and. But if you're getting four or five hours Sleep in the morning or in the night, should I say? No matter how many productivity hacks you try, your body's just going to be underserved. You're going to not have enough energy, you're not going to be able to focus, and you're going to underperform. Therefore, if you want to wake up at 5am, right, you have to go to bed at about 9pm Now, I don't know about you, but for me, I really like my nighttime. I really like being up late. I get stuff done right, play games, I chill. Sometimes I come up with great ideas at night time and I just want to be awake at the night. So it wouldn't make sense for me to wake up at 5:30am because then I'd have to go to bed really early. And it kind of makes me feel like, you know, I'm like an old person, right? Old people tend to go to sleep really early. So that's reason number two. Reason number three is because I'm not really required to wake up super early in order to get the results I want and to hit the goals I want to hit for my business. So in order to answer this third reason a bit more clearly, let me just break it down for you. So what is success? Well, success number one is pretty subjective, right? It's completing the stuff you want to complete in order to feel successful in your own terms, right? We all have a different picture of what success looks like. So I have a set of goals that I want to achieve in order for me to feel successful. And in order for me to hit those goals, I have to put in a certain amount of actions throughout a decade, throughout every year, throughout the month, throughout the day, right? So it's about doing the actions that need to be done in order for me to be able to hit my goals within the time frame. So it's about getting the actions done. It's not necessarily about when I get the actions done. If I need to put in eight hours of work a day to hit my goals, for example, then if I start my work day at 6 in the morning, or if I start it at 12 midday, as long as I complete those eight hours of work, I'm gonna hit my goals, right? So therefore it really doesn't matter whether I wake up at 5:30am in the morning or whether I wake up at 12 noon, as long as I get the actions done in order to hit the goals, I'm still gonna be successful. So this is the thing. I don't need to wake up earlier it's not something that I have to do. It's not something you have to do in order to get success, right? So this is why I don't wake up early at the moment. Now, look, at some point, this could be very, very, very likely to change. Now, right now, for example, I don't have children, right? So I know when you have kids, you're obviously probably more likely to wake up early because they wake up early, they need to do things, you know, and therefore that will get me up and out of bed and ready to look after them. But I feel that waking up at a time that suits me, it just gives me that freedom, that sense of freedom, whilst I still can wake up whatever time I like. So at this point, I hope that you've realized that, number one, you can wake up whenever you want and that will still result in you getting your success as long as you complete the actions you need to complete to hit your goals, right? But also, number two, right? This episode isn't just about waking up early. I'm almost kind of using that as a metaphor for all the other pieces of advice people dish out on things like social media, YouTube, books and everything else. When it comes to how you should plan out your lifestyle, plan out your day, plan out your life. People often give you pieces of advice or say things are strict rules based off of what works for them. And a lot of the time they're telling the truth and this is something they actually do, right? So a lot of people who say they wake up early, that they do wake up early, and it does work for them. That doesn't always mean it's going to work for you. Also, sometimes people just lie and they say things that, you know, they feel like they should be doing and they advise you to be doing these things, but actually they're not really even doing them. I bet a lot of people who say they wake up super, super early probably don't actually do it, right? I mean, that's just the fact of life. They probably say it to keep up appearances because it sounds cool. It sounds like the thing that they should be doing when really they're just preaching, right? So the takeaway from all this really isn't to judge people or try and catch people out or anything like that, because that's just kind of a bit of a waste of time. What it is really is just to realize that you can build a life and build a business that fits around the lifestyle you want to have. And if that means you want to wake up at a certain Time. If that means you want to work from a certain place, you want to work a certain number of hours a week, or whatever it is, earn a certain amount of money, whatever it is, you can build that, right? As long as you learn the skills and everything that I've been talking about on these podcast episodes, my emails and my trainings, then you can get there and you can structure your life in a way that suits you. So should you wake up early, right after all this, should you do it or should you not? Well, remember, success and building a business that makes you happy and takes your life to the next level is all about freedom of choice. So you need to make the choice whether to do or not. Does it feel like it would really help you? Does it feel like it's something you wanted to do for a long time? Maybe you should give it a go, maybe not. It's totally up to you. But the point is you certainly don't have to do it in order to get success. So one final point, just to wrap up this episode then, in order to get you on the right path of being able to build this business that generates you income and enables you to have the freedom to structure your life how you want. Wake up early if you want. Wake up late, right? Kick that 9 to 5 job if that's something you want to get rid of. How do you get moving? What's the first step in order to be able to build a business that gives you this kind of freedom to build a lifestyle that suits you? What's the first thing you need to do in order to be able to wake up at 11:00pm, 12:00pm still, or 11:00am sorry, 12:00pm and still have a six figure income? Well, it all starts with getting the foundation of your business set up, right? It all starts with getting from zero to a consistent income. And I always recommend within the first 90 days of building your business is in going from zero from scratch to the first milestone in the first 90 days. So set a goal for yourself to get to £1,000 per month in profit, right? This is my goal. This was my first goal in the beginning when I started off my Amazon business. I wanted to go from zero to a thousand pounds per month profit within 90 days. So here's £1,000amonth profit going to be the be all and end all. Is it going to change your life? Is it going to enable you to quit your job? Probably not, right? It's probably not enough for you to be able to do all the things you want to do. However, it is proof and validation that the thing you're working on is actually making progress. It's a foundation for you to build a business on. Once you've got from zero to a thousand pounds a month, or a thousand dollars a month, whatever it is, getting from £1,000amonth to £2,000amonth, twice as easy, right? It's much harder to go from zero to a thousand pounds a month once you've got there. You've got so many new skills, so much of a foundation that growing the business from that point onwards way easier because you just do more of the same stuff you did to grow from zero to a thousand a month. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to be giving you tons of help to get you from zero to a thousand pounds a month to get you past that first milestone. And I really can't wait to help you with that part of the journey. So keep an eye on your inbox. If you haven't already signed up to my email list, go to ecommercefreedom.com and grab my Fast Start guide. You'll see it there on the homepage. It should be a little pop up or something. You'll start to get emails from me and you'll start to get these trainings I'm going to be handing out over the next few weeks. I really want to help you get to a grand month because then you can start to build a business that gives you the freedom we've been talking about in this episode. So thanks so much for listening to the Ecommerce Freedom Podcast. I will catch you very, very soon. If you want the show notes and other stuff to help you with this episode, go to ecommercefreedom.com and you'll find everything there. All right, take care, keep believing and I'll talk to you soon.