S1 Ep 29: Finding Your Morning Magic

Back on the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. I'm your host, Richard Toutounji, and today we're talking all about morning magic. You may have heard it before. called The Hour of Power by Tony Robbins. Many years ago I heard that. And today I want to talk about what my hack is when you just don't want to be super planned and super organized or thinking you have to do it a certain way, shape, or form to get the most perfect day of your life happening. Got Ev Chapman joining me.

Hello. Good morning.

Yeah. Good morning. Good morning. If you are listening this in the afternoon, well, Let's talk about morning and let's think it's a morning because there's a concept that goes around in the entrepreneur business space, being better space, morning ritual space that you've got to do it a certain way, the same way to get the same benefits and the same results. There's an author called Robin Sharma and he's recently brought this book out called The 5 AM Club. And I heard about Robin Sharma many years before that, probably a decade before that, where he had a video out talking about the 20-minute segments that you do in the hour to have your best day possible. I think you've watched that video too, Ev.

I have. I think you, I think you originally sent it to me and now I'm a huge Robin Sharma fan.

Robin Sharma, Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. That was his kind of famous book. And in that, he's very strict on what to do at certain times of the day. Now, I remember I tried to replicate this model when I was in Sydney and I replicated it down to the T and I got— I did it a few times and I got frustrated because I didn't make it other times and it didn't make sense to me. It was like— you get up and you, I think the first concept was that you have to move your body for 20 minutes. And then after 20 minutes, then you've got to, I think it was journal.

Yeah.

Was it drink?

Was it? I think, was there journaling in there and then reading or?

Reading and journaling. That's right. So it's 20 minutes of movement and then it's reading and then it's journaling. And so, you know, I was a bit confused because I didn't train just for 20 minutes. And then sometimes I wanted to journal more than 20 minutes and sometimes I wanted to read less or more than 20 minutes. And so I loved the author. I loved the practice.

Yeah.

Of the whole 5 AM Club and get up and journal or train or some of that. But I hated the confinements of the rules.

And maybe that's the problem.

You know, a lot of people have their own sort of flavor. And so it was easy for me. It was easy. It was easier when I didn't have kids and I found it like, you know, you could do what you wanted to do. But then what happens? Life changes, for example. And then it was really dark where I was in Sydney and then it was raining once and I was, I didn't have access to an inside area. Always things come up. And so what I've been compiling through, and then you listen to Tony Robbins, he talks about hour of power.

Yep.

Best hour of your life. And, you know, just a premise is that the morning for me personally, I think for you too, Ev, is probably the magic. It really is an amazing time to be alive in the morning.

Yeah. And I think, look, the morning isn't for everyone, but I do love the morning. And I think that it's a time where you're not distracted. It's like, I'm definitely like more alive in the morning than I am at night. And, um, and so, yeah, just— and I think like if you can like take control of the first hour of your day, I think you feel pretty accomplished for the rest of it.

Totally. And, and I've, you know, always grown up getting up and training for an hour, and then I recently adjusted that model where getting up and, and doing items, not training, to, to really get ahead and really feel accomplished, like, you know, writing, or it could be podcasting, or anything that's going to get me doing different stuff than I'd usually do in the day. So I classify the morning as a time where it's not work-related. So it's different. Now, obviously, if you're a trainer, you're probably up in the morning really early anyway.

Yeah.

And so you've got to work straight away. Now, you know, some people get up a bit earlier and, and have that space for them. And so it could be— this could be a concept you do after you train your clients. Yeah. If you're up super early or if you're not, something to put into the morning. Just depends on what your schedule is like. But most people will be up pretty early training their clients. So this is a schedule that you want to put somewhere in the day.

It

doesn't have to be in the morning, but somewhere to kind of kickstart the day off in the right way. So I took a concept from this whole, you know, morning and hour of power, and I struggled with it for a long, long time. Because I wasn't doing it the way I thought I had to do it. And I was doing for many years something called the 4:58 Club.

Yeah.

I've heard people do that too. They— it's you get up before 5 o'clock. So you know that if you sleep in, you know, 4:58 is 5 o'clock or 5:01 or 5:02. So it's like knowing that you're up. And I did the 4:58 Club for a long, long time, a couple of years.

You did. Yeah.

And I thoroughly enjoyed it. But then I was kind of like just blah blah blah after 4:58. Like, I did the 4:58 and then I was like, oh, what am I doing now? And I probably had no more structure around it. I had— yeah, it was up, I was training, but it— but I didn't feel like I really accomplished everything that I wanted to do. And so I struggled with the, the morning magic until recently where I kind of figured out the morning magic how it worked better for me. And I want to share this with you. Okay. So the concept is this, is in the morning time, there's some key activities that if you do something, you'll get a reaction from and you'll feel better doing. And so I compiled a list one day of the things that really helped for me where I felt something from it. I felt good after it. And that day, I had a good day from it and it made me feel better.

So it's like, like bringing you energy in the morning.

Yeah, bringing me in the morning, but also knowing what it was. And yeah, it's like the concept of like, you know, what to wear in the morning. I, I, I figured this out a few years ago where I either wear a black or a white t-shirt, and I, and I rechanged my entire cupboard where I don't have to overthink anything anymore.

Yeah.

And you know, you've seen Mark Zuckerberg do that and some Steve Jobs. It's simplifying the mind a little bit. And so in the morning, I struggled a lot of like what to do. Should I walk to the gym? Is that my exercise? Or then should I journal first? I was just like in the head.

Overthinker.

Overthinker. Who's the overthinkers here? And I thought, this is just crazy. Everybody's giving their piece of advice and I'm going to give another piece of advice and doesn't suit you, please don't do it. But The concept that I think is, you know, I'm sure I could write a 5:00 AM book around this concept I'm about to tell you. It's called the Morning Magic. And the goal is first, step number 1, by now I think it's your right to know what makes you feel good in the morning or what makes you feel good when you do an activity. Yep. So that's number 1. You need to write a list of all the things that make you feel something good, positivity, when you do something. And that's step number 1. And so I thought, okay, what am, what am I doing in the morning? Like some mornings I did this, some mornings I did other things, and I wrote a list. And so I'll share this with you in a second. Yeah. And so the other problem is that sometimes every morning's not the same. So some mornings I'll sleep in. Some mornings I want to sleep in and I can see my kids and not, not be here. Because I'd felt guilty if I wasn't there sometimes. Some mornings I wanted to get up before everybody else. I want to do my own thing, and that made me feel good. Some mornings I kind of was rushing around, but then I spoke to some friends, and every time I spoke to them in the morning, I felt really good.

Yeah.

And then sometimes I would have a tea like I'm having now, and I'd feel calm and nice. And that made me feel really good. Sometimes it was just as simple as being early for a meeting because if I had an important day on, it was like to try and do exercise before that and rush around to my perfect morning. All I had to do was be early my meeting and it was the best day ever. Other times I wanted to write like, and I write most mornings and I'll share that concept and that really worked well for me. But there was other items that I wanted to make sure every single morning I did. And so, there were things that you do every single morning that if you do them, you're going to feel better, like having a shower. I know some people don't have showers in the morning, they have showers at night. I have a shower every morning and I have a shower every night. Joey calls me like a clean freak all the time, but it freshens me up. Like, it wakes me up kind of thing, right?

I do think males have more showers than females.

Totally. Totally. This is why I'm running out of water, I'll

tell you.

So I want to share with you a concept where you want to— so my concept is this. I'm going to give you 8 items that I do and you can select 8. So what you want to do is you want to select at least 8 things that make you feel good in the morning. And then the goal here is then you just want to select 2 out of the 8 to complete every morning. So it's like a mix and match. Yeah.

And so you don't have to do every 8.

No, you don't have to do every 8. So the high achievers may want to, you don't have to because sometimes you just have no time. So you want to choose 2 out of the 8. And when I did this, and this just came from trial error, when I did 1, it didn't really feel that way. But when I did 2, it was like, yeah, that's good. Sometimes when I did 3, it was like, well, that was the whole morning and I didn't have time to do any work. And it was like, then I felt frustrated because I was just spending all my time in the morning not actually doing what I wanted to do.

Yeah.

So you've got to find the balance. It might be 3 for you, but for me it was 2. So I'll just share a couple of them so you can kind of understand the concepts of this. And if you go to my Instagram, there's actually a diagram on it, and I, I keep adding more and adding more as we go. But yeah, generally this would be— so number 1, I've got 20 minutes of movement, and I wrote movement, not like really hard training.

Yeah.

Now 20 minutes is a minimum But obviously I would do an hour or an hour and a half or 30 minutes hard. Like, I'm not saying you have to confine yourself 20 minutes, but the rule was at least 20 minutes because I've got an exercise bike here. And if I'm like really stressed for time, I'll go 20 minutes and that's the rule, right? Yeah. And so, because like 10 minutes, like, oh, that doesn't really make me feel anything, but 20 minutes I get a sweat up and it's good to go. And that's a minimum. Obviously you can go for a maximum and you can go really hardcore and whatever you want. So that was number one. And as soon as I did at least 20 minutes, I was like, yes, I've done that. I can do my thing. And that felt good. Number 2 was journal writing. I write in Evernote. I know it's pretty old. Ev, you use— I use Notion

now.

Notion and all the new tools, but I'm still an old school kind of digital marketer.

I love Evernote.

And Evernote is— I know Evernote's old. You may have not heard of Evernote, but it's I don't know why people use it. It's just basically a note-taking thing.

Nothing really special. Just take notes. Yeah.

But what I do with this concept here, I generally will do this pretty much most mornings as soon as I wake up. And what I do, it's journaling, but I've got a hack of journaling. So what I do, I go the day before. So I go to my— I go to Evernote and I've got my words of the year every single year. So I can see this word of my year this year. We'll talk about that later. Is smart. I've got 130 notes from this year, so I haven't had a note every— I haven't done it every year.

But what I do—

yep, last year I had 190, 183 the year before that. So I've got about 7 years worth here, and I just find a photo of my photo album the day before and I put it in my notes. And it could be a photo that I haven't posted on Instagram, it could be a photo just Anything. I take a lot of photos and I don't post. So I just put that photo there. Could be my kids. And then I sometimes write about it or sometimes don't, but I just have it there because that's my gratitude or my thought for the day. So that is a thought that I do. That's journal writing. So it's really journal writing or photo writing, I call it. Number 3 for me is tea or coffee. Sometimes I just can't get to a coffee shop, so I have a tea. They have different feelings about them, right?

They do, don't they?

Totally different. Totally different. Chalk and cheese. So tea or coffee. Empowering conversations is my 4th one. Now, this came from the fact that I had, you know, people I would speak to in the morning that would empower me. And I made a rule around it that I generally want to speak to someone in the morning that empowers me. not disempowers me and makes me feel good and energized. And you know those people in your life that do that. So it could be a work colleague, it could be a friend, it could be a husband, it could be a wife, but it's empowering conversation. So I've, you know, I've got a few people on that list that I have a conversation with and it could be all different people, but I won't do it every day, but I don't generally, I feel that and gets me going and gets me sharp. Number— and that could just be on the phone, doesn't have to be anything like official.

Yeah.

How you doing? Number 4, cold shower. I'm a big lover of the cold ice baths and that kind of stuff. And but I don't like to do it every— but I should do every morning, but sometimes I don't. But I'm, you know, it's a good one if you're— I use this one like I generally do it most mornings Even 30 seconds to a minute, warm shower, 30 seconds to a minute. But the good thing about this one is that if you're running out of time, like if you slept in or if you don't have enough time,

yeah,

you got your clients, you got your clients in the morning and you haven't spent enough time, this one's the good hack where get yourself 30 seconds. And another concept I heard from a friend, they turn around in the shower, like for them they turn around 6 or 10 times and they just go, I'm empowered and I'm strong. And they say affirmation words in the shower. And by the time they turn 10 times, they like, they said they're like a warrior and they feel like really strong. Yeah. So it's like 10 affirmations around or, you know, instead of counting a minute, they're having 10 affirmations and then by the end of it, they're just like superhuman, super powerful. Because the concept is that if I can, if I can do the hardest thing in the morning, And have that cold shower for, you know, 30 seconds minimum or 1 minute or 2 minutes or 3 minutes, you know, depending where you are in the, in the Wim Hof world. It really does level you up fast. And so this is what I go with. Like if I've, you know, really had a— there's no time, it's cold shower. And you know, you gotta man up or woman up, whatever way you want to do it, right?

Yeah. Well, I think I'm going to try that affirmation one rather than just counting down.

6 or 7 affirmations and I am awesome, I am powerful, I am strong, I'm a leader. And you say that, but you— or you say that, or you can just turn around like 10, like you turn around and you say 10 affirmations. That's kind of like 30 seconds to a minute to a degree.

Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of the cold shower.

So cold shower, that's the next one. The other one I have is be early for a meeting. So for anybody who sort of turn, you know, anybody who struggles to turn up on time, how good is it when you're actually early for something?

It does feel good.

It feels good. It feels so good. So sometimes it's like, oh my gosh, I don't have time for that. Maybe I've spent some time doing things I want to do and then, okay, I'm just going to be early for the meeting and that's going to make me feel good. I'm going to sit there.

Yeah.

And I'll be early for the meeting and I can probably have my tea and coffee as well until I hit 2 on the head. You know what I mean? In the car I can talk to a friend and I go boom. Yeah.

And I— do you get on the exercise bike and call people and combo them up?

Exercise bike, I generally listen to audios and I haven't— there's a couple more that I've got, haven't got there, but it could be audio. So I listen to an audio. That's number 7. Number 8 is Writing a book, writing a book at the moment. Number nine is like doing a podcast or preparing for that, and then obviously ten is like reading a book, reading a book and studying to a degree.

Yeah.

So all those things are my pick, and so now I have this. I and I think this is really important is that you need to learn to know what makes you feel good. If you don't know by now. What makes you feel good? That is a good thing to work out. Don't wait to think, oh, I don't know what it feels like. Just write what makes you feel good.

Yeah.

And then choose 2 of them, and then guess what? You're gonna feel good. That's it. Very simple.

Absolutely.

So we might write a book on it one day.

Maybe. Yeah, I love this topic. So, so fun.

Yeah. So pick a minimum of 2, and then Go out and make it happen. And it really is, it's really been a game changer for me. It means that every day I actually feel accomplished instead of like, oh my gosh, I didn't do my 20 minutes and 20 minutes and 20 minutes. I didn't do my thing. And I've kind of hacked it in a way a little bit, Ev, where I

said,

I'm going to have a shower anyway. So bare minimum, I can turn it on for another 30 seconds and have a cold shower.

Exactly right.

So yes, I'm winning there. And I'm, I'm generally going to do a journal run because I'm so used to it, right? There's 2 there.

Well, you're probably gonna have a tea or coffee.

Yeah.

Like, let's say you are going to, so that's really what—

So I'm really just, I'm really making sure that I win. And then obviously if I have more, like, and clearly I, I'm a big fan of the 4:58, so I've— so I'm, you know, loving the 4:58. I'll continue getting up there. But the mornings I don't, it's not like I'm— I don't have a rule around it.

Yeah.

As long as I do my numbers.

Yeah. I think this is really important because people who get into like these strict routines, like it really does start to set you up for failure because one morning you will sleep in and then it'll be like, damn it, like the whole day is gone. And so, I think by giving yourself a bit of kindness and knowing that life happens, And that, you know what, I'm going to at a bare minimum do 2 of these, tick them off, and I'm going to like, because the whole reason why we do routines is so that we're doing the right things, but also making us feel good. But if those routines are not serving, then they're just routines that we go through in life.

Yeah. And

yeah,

because it's like you've got to at this point in your career, in your life, Take the time and just write down the 10 things that make you feel good every day and do more of those.

Absolutely.

It's, it's, it comes down to this point is, is you, you have the option to feel good, but you've got to sometimes have a structure around that. And, and back to the t-shirts, it's like I, I wore all these t-shirts and I tried shirts and, and shoes that I wore, and it's like all of a sudden it's like I knew what made me feel good. It's almost like I've got red shoes on right now and I've got a whole bunch of different sneakers and different sneakers make you feel differently. And I started wearing sneakers to be more creative. And when I wanted to feel more like meeting style, I put some more boots on. And so depending on how I want to feel, I wear a different sneaker depending on the day and how I want to be creative. So I know that and it's kind of weird, but you've got to figure out what your trigger points are to move you where you want to get to. And then everything in the day that you want to achieve actually becomes possible, not impossible, purely because you won, you won the day, as they say. Yeah. And you gave yourself the hour of power, as Tony says, or you gave yourself the 20 minutes to thrive, what Robin Sharma says. Or what Richard Toutounji says, give yourself the morning magic and choose your 2 activities to infuse a little magic into your morning.

I love it. So good.

All right, team. If you were listening to this in the evening, try it out in the morning. Give it a whirl. If you're in the morning riding your bike, well done. You've done one of the 10 that I've given you there. And most importantly, don't use my 10, but use your ones, and then select the 2 that make you feel amazing. Hope that's helped to put morning magic into that. And again, when you've got morning magic, you can do better business, you can do better marketing. And that's the reason why I want to take you through this topic today. Because we've got to make sure that you, being leader of your fitness studio, you're always feeling on top and in charge. And in control and empowering your community to lead the way. Thanks so much. Until next time, this is the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show.