MBA2197 3 New Habits That Changed My Business in 2022 + Free Ride Friday

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Hey, welcome to the $1 your daily business workout every single day with our 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 today is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away a free pass to our $100 MBA course. It's our live two day training over at 100mba.net. You can win it for free. All you got to do is leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Freeride Friday. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. We announce this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. Tune in for that in today's episode. You will learn three new habits that changed my business in 2022. Every year I try to pick up some new good habits to replace my not so good ones. Some of these habits really have a huge impact on my business and well being as an entrepreneur. Those are exactly the three I'll be sharing with you today. I was actually quite surprised how much of a difference these habits made because when I started doing them I really didn't feel like things were really that different, that they actually mattered or made a difference. But as the days rolled on, the months rolled on, I looked back and realized, wow, these habits work. And that's why I have to share them with you today in hopes that you can pick up these habits for 2023. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

You've made it on time for the McDonald's breakfast menu. You think to yourself, finally, I could start my day with my perfect breakfast. But what if breakfast could be even more perfect with the hot honey sausage egg biscuit? It finally is. This won't last forever, so go to McDonald's and get it while you can. Ba da ba ba ba.

Habits are a funny thing because they're actually really hard to pick up. New habits that change your behavior over time. But once you start doing them, they become actually quite easy to do, almost second nature. In my experience, it takes 40 days to build a new habit. Did I read that in a scientific journal? No, it's just my experience. I actually broke it down to the number of days, and it's just about 40 days where I feel like this is no longer an effort to do. I actually feel like I have to do it now. It's a little over a month, and it just seems like the right amount of momentum to make it a new habit. So mind you, the things I'm going to share with you today, they're going to be a bit of a struggle to start with. It might feel unnatural, it might feel like a real task or chore to get them done. But a little over a month, you're going to start feeling a whole lot better about yourself and what you've accomplished. Let's get started. One of the things I wanted to kick in the beginning of 2022 is I wanted to worry less. I felt like I was worrying a lot. And that has a lot to do with the fact that as an entrepreneur, you have a lot of responsibilities, you have a lot of stress. You're solving problems left and right, you're taking risks, and they're high stakes. So you'll often worry. You'll worry how your team is feeling, if you'll find the right hires, if you'll be able to make meet your goals, make enough money, keep the customers you have. It can go on and on and on. And the thing I notice is that if you don't keep worry in check, if you don't nip it in the bud, it can get really bad. And it can create a lot of anxiety and sleepless nights, and it can take a huge toll on your mental health. So I started to implement an exercise. Anytime I started to feel that sense of worry or I started to spiral into that worry way of thinking, I would ask myself, what's the worst that can happen? Now, the hard part about this habit is that you have to remember as soon as you start worrying, because there's no point in worrying for 30 minutes or all day and then asking yourself, what's the worst that can happen? You just wasted a day. You just wasted all this energy and all this time and thought and brain power off something that may or may not happen. So the point of this habit is to nip it in the bud and to ask this question immediately as soon as you start worrying. And one way to do this is to frequently be reminded of this. And if you want to, one technique you could do is to write this on top of an image you have on your phone. Like, just edit the image by putting some text over your phone and make that image your wallpaper on your phone. So every time you look at your phone, you see this text, you see this message. What's the worst that can happen? And if you forget to remind yourself while you're worrying, you'll see it at least maybe every 30 minutes, because that's usually how often we reach for our phone during the day. Now, what does this mean? Well, it's not some sort of macabre or depressing exercise. It actually allows you to check in with reality. What's the worst that can happen when whatever you're worrying about goes wrong. And when you play it out, you start to realize, okay, maybe it's bad, but it's not that bad. I have a friend of mine, Zach Mason, and he says, I often think about this, and I realize the worst that can happen in my life is I move back to my parents, I get free meals and laundry and a sense of security. Yeah, it's a step back, but it's not that bad. And it's true for most of us, the worst that can happen is actually not that bad. It's something that's just building in our head. And of course, we don't want that to happen. We don't want to disappoint ourselves and not meet our goals. But that fear and that worry is really draining you down, and it's really holding you back from reaching your goals. So it's best to always ask yourself, what's the worst I can happen in this Situation, okay, not the best situation, not the thing I want to happen, but it's not the end of the world. This allows you to have a clearer head, to stop worrying and start thinking about, okay, how can I come up with creative solutions and look at this objectively? So that was number one. What's the worst that can happen? Remembering this as soon as I start worrying. Second habit, totally different, and that's exercising first thing in the morning. I know that you might say, omar, what does this have to do with business? Well, the first one I just shared clears your mind and allows you to make better decisions as a leader when you're not constantly in anxiety mode. This one will impact you and your business in ways you can't even imagine. Let me explain. By waking up in the morning and making the time to hit the gym or do whatever exercise you do, first thing, you get it out of the way. So I literally get up, I go have breakfast, I get my gym clothes on, and I head to the gym. Well, I'm almost, like half asleep. My coffee hasn't kicked in yet, but I get my workout in. I'm in a relaxed state. It's my me time. I get to listen to my audiobooks or my podcasts, maybe a bit of music. I'll change it up. I get my workout in in the gym and I walk back home, I take a shower, and I start my day. Wow. It's an amazing start to the day. Why? Because you have already won. I feel like at the end of that workout and when I start my day of work, that whatever comes that day, I've kind of won the day already. Right? Because I've gotten the workout in. I have momentum now. I feel like I've taken charge of my day and I've empowered myself to prioritize my health. Because at the end of the day, if I don't have my health, I don't have anything. You can't do anything. You can't work, you can't think, you can't enjoy the fruits of your labor. This is an incredible habit that I actually picked up from Kevin Hart reading his book the Decision, which is on audible. It's an amazing habit because it makes you prioritize you. And when you prioritize you, you become better, you become healthier, you become more full of energy and equipped to make better decisions and serve your team. You're also starting the day on a win, and there's nothing like momentum. I'm a big believer that momentum is so powerful and you're starting off winning, winning the day. Now, you might be asking, Omar, how do I make time for this? Well, I literally just got up a little earlier. That means sleeping a little earlier. And you know what, I don't mind that so much. I'm in bed by 9, which allows me to get up at 5, 5:30 at the latest. By the time I have breakfast and head to the gym at 6 o', clock, I'm home by 7. I shower 7:30, even if I just take some time to journal and read. Eight o', clock, I'm starting my workday and I'm ahead of the game. Now the other reason why I love this habit is leaving exercise to the end of the day or during lunch sometimes never happens. We get caught up. We have meetings, schedules, things conflict, we get tired and basically it gets missed. And when you turn your back on your health one day, it turns its back on you for a few days. That's how momentum works. It's better for you to stay consistent and make that time in the morning to serve yourself. And boy, I have so much more energy in my meetings with my team. Ideas come easy and I'm just flat out in a better mood. And you better believe that impacts the bottom line. All right, habit number three, and this one's a little bit more tactical, and that is I started to delegate meetings. I looked at my calendar and realized that a lot of my days are filled with meetings. I was chairing meetings in every department. I was a part of a lot of meetings, dev meetings, product meetings, dev product meetings, customer service meetings, marketing meetings, administration and HR meetings. And it was gobbling up a lot of my time. But more importantly, it wasn't allowing me to have any kind of deep work blocks of time on my calendar where I was uninterrupted, where I can come up with creative solutions to the challenges that face our business, which is our job as leaders of our businesses. So I started to ask myself, do I actually need to be in all these meetings? Is there a way that I can know what happens in those meetings and comment and contribute without attending them? So I started to delegate more than half of the meetings that I attended to somebody that was in that meeting, usually a manager. I said, hey, I'm not going to be attending this meeting anymore, but please make sure you take detailed minutes, post them, I'll review them, and if I have any comments, I'll add to the comments in the meeting. This allowed me to know what happened in the meeting, what they achieved, what they talked about, but at the same time. I'm empowering somebody on my team to take responsibility, to build a new skill, to take ownership of something very important, their department. Even if they're not a manager, you're allowing somebody on that team to learn something new and see if they can do something new, to test their skills and build new ones. I looked at my calendar and I said what meetings do I absolutely necessarily need to be on? And I just stuck to those. And those are our regular marketing meetings because that's kind of my department and my regular product meetings. And of course I will meet with management so they can report back with me if they have any comments or questions. But instead of having eight meetings, I have three meetings. Then I took a page out of Basecamp's book where they don't believe that more meetings is good. In fact, I rather have smaller random meetings when needed so people can just get unblocked and move forward with their projects. So instead I would just jump on a call whenever needed for five or ten minutes, make some progress on a project, clarify a few things and move on. Delegating meetings what a great, great gift I gave myself this year. And you should give that gift to yourself for sure. This coming year, if you, your parent.

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Alright guys, the key of setting new habits is not to overwhelm yourself. I only chose three new habits, but maybe for you, you just want to start with one new habit. Make it a habit, get past the 40 day line and then pick up a new one. Don't overwhelm yourself with saying I'm going to change my whole life. I'm going to have 15 new habits. Choose an area of your life you feel like you can do better at, where changing things will actually make a big impact. Or go ahead and steal one of mine. I won't mind. Thanks so much for listening to the hundred dollar NBA show. Today's episode's not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is Hila's Joy 14 Ila says. Full of actionable takeaways. 5 stars. The length of the episodes are perfect for daily content. It's informative, yet still digestible. I've gotten a lot of ideas and insights from this show. Thanks ElizJoy14 for that amazing review. Your mission is to email me over at omar100mba.net so I can hook you up with access to the hundred dollar MBA Live program. You get your free ticket to our next cohort over@100mba.net live. If you want to win a free ride, just go ahead and leave us an Apple Podcast rating and a review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday, just like right now, to see if you won. It's that simple. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One thing that I have found helps with forming a new habit is to tie with something that you enjoy. So for example, if you want to get fit and start jogging, tie it with something that you actually love doing, like listening to your favorite podcast or even being on the phone with a friend catching up on all the gossip. It'll get you through those 40 days until it becomes a habit, with or without the thing that you've tied it with that brings you joy. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you on Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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