MBA2096 5 Ways to Use The Gym to Improve Your Business
2 Feb 2026 · 9 min
This is a The $100 MBA podcast episode (MBA2096) hosted by Omar Zenhom that teaches five practical ways entrepreneurs can use gym time to improve their business. The five strategies are: 1) professional development via audiobooks/podcasts/shortcasts, 2) dictating content (courses, blog posts, books) using voice recordings, 3) recording a laundry list of to-dos for an executive assistant to convert into tasks, 4) coaching via voice memos (e.g., Voxer) to efficiently answer group/student questions, and 5) reviewing and approving content (videos, podcast episodes, social posts) while exercising. The episode is interspersed with sponsor messages from Dell and ADP and emphasizes habit-building and mixing these activities to make workouts more productive and enjoyable.
Chapters
ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people ready to.
Save on new tech. It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster. And with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey. Oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show where we know time is money. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson you will learn five ways to use the gym to improve your business. I have a confession to make. The gym is my happy place. It's where I go to relax, really is where I get to step away from the office, let out some steam and really just feel good. Not only working on your health and being healthy will make you a better entrepreneur because you'll have a sound body, sound mind, you'll be able to perform at your best. But working out at a gym actually gives you an opportunity to get a lot of little naggy things you need to get done in your business that really a waste of time of doing it in front of your desk. And it makes doing this type of work enjoyable because you're not at your desk. What are those things? Well I'm going to show you in today's episode. Five of them actually all five of these. I've tried myself, I've done them and I'm here to report the results. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.
ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next Anything adp Always designing for people.
All right, five ways to improve your business just by going to the gym now, the idea here is that you're going to be working out, whether you're lifting weights, you're going to be on the treadmill, maybe you're going to be on the bike, maybe the rowing machine, you're going to be working on your health, you're going to be feeling good, you're going to be grateful for the fact that you're able to exercise. And when you leave that gym, you're going to feel that you've done a good thing for yourself. Not only that, you're going to feel like, hey, I got some things done as well. Many of us don't go to the gym. We don't exercise because we feel guilty. We feel like we should be doing more work. We feel like we should be doing more at the office. We need to get more done. Well, today that excuse is not going to exist anymore because you're actually going to get things done by going to the gym. So here's the first way, and this is probably the most common way, of utilizing the gym to improve your business, and that is to improve yourself. Professional development. Whether you're listening to an audiobook, listening to a podcast like this one, or book summaries or shortcasts like on Blinkist, this is a great way for you to just make sure you have time to improve. You make sure you have ways to get through books, listen to them, get new insights, get new strategies, get a new perspective on how to do things. I can't tell you how much I love this hack because I actually look forward to the gym because I get to consume some great knowledge. I feel like I'm improving my body, improving my mind, I'm improving my business. I apply the things that I learn. It's an absolute joy. In fact, some of the things I listen to are so good. Some of the biographies and books and podcasts, I have to extend my workout. I have to make up exercises so I can keep listening to what I'm listening to. So utilize this common but very powerful hack by just lining up the things that you've been wanting to get into. If you have a list of books or you're like, hey, I got to get through these books. I heard Omar recommend them on must reads. Get them on Audible Right now. Audible has an annual plan that gives you 12 credits. Just load them up right now. It's cheaper to do annual, and that way you have the food you need for your brain at the gym. Alright, let's go to the second way to improve your business at the gym. And in fact, the next two ways deal with you doing voice recordings. The first one is just opening up your voice recorder on your phone and recording your content, your thoughts, your ideas. I created a whole audio course doing this. That's my start your first online course at Himalaya where I basically recorded all my thoughts on each lesson. Each recording is about 30 or 40 minutes and it's basically me rambling about an idea that I want to convey. I might repeat myself. It's not clean, it's not great, I'm working out, I'm huffing and puffing. But it's all good because then that recording gets sent to our copywriter. They listen to the recording, they get the general understanding of what I'm saying and they write a great script. And then I get in front of the mic in my recording booth and I just do the script, right? I just recite the script. And the script is so natural because it's my own words, it's how I speak. Not only can you create audio courses or even video courses with this, you can also have full fledged books written. I know entrepreneurs that do this all the time where they create ebooks and guides and blog posts by just dictating their thoughts, getting their copywriter to clean it up and they post it. Not enough time to create content. You say you don't have time to blog. Here is your hack. Dictate your content. The next one is actually really, really smart and I highly recommend this. If you are starting your day by going to the gym. When you start the day you go to the gym, you probably have a whole bunch of things you want your team to do that day or even that week. You have ideas, you have tasks, you have things you want them to work on, you want things them to fix. Record a long voice memo of all the things you want your team to do. It's just a laundry list of to do's you want people to do. Sometimes my recordings about 15 minutes, sometimes it's 20 minutes. I might repeat myself, I might make mistakes, it doesn't matter. The next step is that you send it to your executive assistant. Your executive assistant then takes this recording, outlines all these to do's, writes them down, knows who is going to do what, and assigns them to the teammates you need. So you don't even actually have to assign the to dos or tell your team what to do. Your assistant can do it for you. You've already said it in the recording. I need this person to work on these things. I this person working on these things. Oh by the way, the first person I said they need to do this too. It's okay. They'll organize it all and they'll write it all up and they're going to assign those to dos those tasks in your, you know, your project management software and make sure that everybody's on task. Get your team to do the admin for you. Get an assistant to do the admin for you. You need to be able to dictate on a voice. You need to just to focus on figuring out what your team needs to do, recording it on a voice memo and sending it to your ea. Alright. Fourth way to improve your business and this is coaching. I've seen this done so many times in so many different ways. If you have a Slack group, you have a private forum, you have a Facebook group, your group is going to have questions and instead of you sitting there typing questions, you can just record a voice memo or voice recording in the app and give your answer. It's more personal. It's easier for them to consume in terms of being able to review and understand the nuances of what you're saying. And you can get through a lot more of questions if you could just record a quick answer with audio. SAS coach Dan Martell actually uses an app called Voxer, which is like WhatsApp with voice. And he one on one coaches people with Voxer, where you record an audio message as the coach to help them out, guide them. This is a fast, easy way for you to give great value to your audience. To give great value to your customers or your coaching clients or your students. That's personalized and easy. And it's easy for you to produce. In a one gym session, you can easily help 20 to 30 people in your group.
ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people all right, let's recap.
So far. 5 Ways to Improve your business at the gym. Professional development Audiobooks, podcasts using Blinkist summaries and shortcasts. Really, really amazing stuff. Number two Dictating content for your blogs, for your books, for your courses. Number three Recording your to DOS for your team, organizing the week, making sure everybody knows what to do. Get your EA to organize those thoughts and those to dos and assign them to your teammate. And number four, coaching voice memo coaching using Voxer or you just use your own phone and send the voice memo right inside whatever app you're using to group coach, whether it's Facebook groups or messenger or Slack or whatever it is. And number five, and this one's actually my favorite because I hate doing this on what I call office time or company time, where I'm in front of my desk. This is where I should be optimally creative in making decisions, not wasting time, too much time doing something I can do at the gym. And this is reviewing and approving if you are creating great content for, let's say social media, Instagram, Facebook, if you're creating videos, if you're creating podcast episodes like this, your team will put it all together, but you might need to review it, you may need to listen back to it. You need to watch the video, need to look at the content, look at the files, look at the little graphics, right? And this is where the treadmill, this is where the bike comes in handy, where you can just put your phone right there and you can watch those videos and approve them or, you know, quickly dictate a message and say, hey, change this, do this. It's an absolute waste of time for you to do this at the office, at your desk. This is a very kind of. You could do something else. You can burn some calories, you can work on those thighs. You can really pedal your heart out while you're listening and approving your podcast episodes. Now that we have gone through all five ways, here's the real special thing about these strategies is that it makes working out easy. You're distracted, you're busy, you're doing things. The work actually goes by fast if you're just getting back into the gym. If you're just trying to build this habit, this is a good way to distract you from the actual exercise because your mind is focused on whether it's dictating your next book or signing to do's or approving podcast episodes or whatever it is. And your body just goes through the motions. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe, hit follow on your favorite podcast app. We're on every app. Whatever app you're listening to right now, just go ahead and hit follow. So you get access to over 2,000 episodes in our archives and to get every episode automatically. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I like to mix it up. I like to maybe some days just listen to an audiobook. Some days I will start approving some content while I'm on the treadmill. Some days I will just dictate some content for the next blog post. I don't have to choose and just do that every day. By mixing it up, it keeps it fresh. It keeps it easy. It also allows me not to have any of these tasks pile up where I have to do them outside the gym. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Free ride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.
ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.
