Jeff Sanders: The 5 A.M. Miracle

Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite makes the process of becoming a published bestselling author as simple as sipping your morning cup of coffee. You can learn more about Authors Unite at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Jeff Sanders with us. He's the host of the 5 AM Miracle podcast and author of The 5 AM Miracle. So welcome to the show, man.

Well, thanks, Tyler. I'm here today.

Of course, grateful, grateful to have you on, man. I'm doing well. How are you?

Doing well today. I'm excited to talk to you.

You too, man. I know we were talking a little bit before, and hopefully I'm not stealing anything you were gonna say, but you've been doing your podcast for like 6 years, you told me, so I'm just pumped to have you on. I think that's really awesome.

Yeah, podcast is a lot of fun. I definitely, you know, I've been doing it for a long time, and I want to keep doing it. It's a ton of fun.

Yeah, I was telling actually a few of my friends, and then we'll jump into the questions, but a few of my friends where it's like podcasting is like the one thing that I could see myself, and who knows with technology like how things are gonna change change, but podcasting is one thing I could see myself doing when I'm like 80 years old. I could definitely still see myself doing it. That's what I really love about it as well. So, yeah, man, we'll jump into the first one. The first question I have for you, Jeff, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

It's a tough question. I have a lot of stories in my life. There's one that came to mind. Which is that during college, I studied abroad for a semester in Prague, which is a great country, great place, the city of Prague is awesome. And I had a lot of fun there. And that was kind of the issue is that I came back very sick because I made a lot of poor decisions. I drank a lot of alcohol, made some very poor decisions overall. And so when I returned, I mean, I had gained a ton of weight. I was really sick, really just kind of gross overall. And I knew at that point, like, that's not the kind of guy that I want to be. It's not who I am. I decided to really just change overnight. Literally, the day I got back, I was like, "I'm going to be a different person now because I can't continue that lifestyle." I decided to start running, very slowly at first. It was maybe 5 minutes a day. I did that over the course of that summer. It was first around a half mile a day. Then it was about a mile a day, then a mile and a half. I very slowly began to just increase how much time I was spending working out. Ultimately, I ran marathons a few years later. That whole thing began because I decided on one day like, "I'm going to change my life today." I feel like that's something that over time has stuck with me is that whatever has happened so far or wherever I am, I can change today if I want to. I can literally just drop my old habits and start new ones immediately. I feel like that lesson and that mentality is one that has served me really well in a lot of ways, in business and in life. So I can really just say, like, if I'm not where I want to be, then let's just change today and make that happen.

Yeah, man, I think that's a huge lesson. And that's awesome. I'll tell you, when I studied abroad, it took me for a toll as well. And when I got back, I decided to make a change too. You kind of had to, right?

Yeah, definitely.

So the next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Well, mostly the work that I do revolves around productivity. And so I try to figure out ways to help myself and others, you know, get more work done more effectively. And the most important strategy that really comes to mind that I have used for years now is what I call FBOTs, which is focused blocks of time. And what I mean by that is a very specific block of time where you have it on your calendar, it's scheduled ahead of time, and you block out every single possible distraction and you work on one very specific and important task or project. And so for me, like in the past, let's say when I wrote my books, I would go to a library and I would hide in a cubby in the far corner where no one knew I was there. I would turn off the internet and I would just write for about 4 hours. And I have found that those kinds of blocks of time where I can cut distractions completely and just do one important thing, it is amazing to me every single time how much work I can get done, how more, like how the quality goes up with the work that I'm doing, how much better I feel afterwards. I mean, the whole thing. Is just so powerful because I have that extreme focus, which in today's world is just so rare because we're constantly distracted. There's so many things to do. And so, when I can have a time period where there is nothing to do except that one thing, I'm always amazed at how productive I am in those hours. And I just want to find ways to repeat that process because it is so effective.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I actually learned it from— I believe it was in The 4-Hour Workweek, but definitely from Tim Ferriss, the concept of batching. There's days where I do interviews and then there's days where I do not even accept any phone calls. My phone is on do not disturb the entire day and that's where I get all my focused sort of work done. I think it's good to have a balance of that but blocking it out. I think that's what messes a lot of people up is their phone will be available, their Facebook notifications, and then they're trying to write a book. Me and you both know that there's just no way it's going to happen that way.

Exactly.

You need that blocked out focus time. So, next one I have for you is, what is your best piece of overall business advice? So, not necessarily industry-specific.

Well, it's along the same lines, which is that focus is the most important thing. And recently, I've gone through these kind of phases of my business and my life where I will go through a big purge and I will see like, here's my goal list, here's all the things I'm working on, and I'll figure out which of these things is the absolute most important and how do I cut everything else. And I found that over time, the times in my business where I've grown the most and the times where I've done the best is when I have extreme focus on one project that I really believe can provide the best, you know, bang for my buck, the highest revenue or the most growth or the most whatever the metric is. But I really do lean into just one thing and figure out how do I minimize or eliminate everything else. And I found that business focus has really helped me to excel, especially because there are so many things you can do in business. There's so many different pieces to explore. There's so many different avenues to go down. And I can't do it all. And I don't even want to try to do it all. I really just want to do a couple of things really well. And as soon as I find what those things are for my next season, I really do my best to lean into those like one or two things and really minimize the rest of the stuff.

And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Exercise every single day. This is one thing that I have gone through phases in my life with, and the phases where I've done really well, I have seen tremendous growth, not just with my fitness and my health overall, but then how that fitness and health helps me in my business. And I definitely have seen that those time periods where I've not worked out, where I've not taken care of myself, I am not my best self at all. I am lethargic, I am grumpy, I am not me. Me I want to be anyway. I think if anything, if I could go back and tell my younger self to do anything, it would just be take care of yourself to the best of your ability. One thing I have found that has worked really well for that is just aggressive exercise as often as possible.

Yeah, man. It changes your mind state. 100% health and business success, I think, are directly correlated.

Yeah.

I can't even imagine— because I know what you're saying. Feeling sluggish and then scaling a business. It just doesn't even add up.

Exactly, yes.

Okay, so the next one I have for you is, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

This I have pulled from a famous guy that I love who's now— he's deceased now, but his name is Earl Nightingale. He's basically known as the father of personal development, and he has a definition of success that I think really has defined happiness for me over the years. Which is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. Basically meaning if you choose something you want to pursue and you're making consistent progress towards that thing, not only are you being successful, but that's also where I find happiness, is making progress. Like, I always feel like my day was worth it if I could look back at what happened that day and feel like I made a dent in something, like I really made a lot of progress. And that's where I find the most satisfaction in my work and in my personal life is if I feel like I'm going somewhere. And that's what I want to feel every day is a sense of momentum. And if I don't have that, you know, if I really don't have any goals, I'm just kind of going through the motions, that's when I get down. That's when I don't feel my best. And so, if anything, I'm always looking ahead to what is the next goal that I'm working towards, and then how can I make sure that every day I really am making significant progress?

[Speaker:TYLER WAGNER] And what is the best book that you've read, and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

In the last few years, my favorite book definitely was Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes, which is a book about running ultramarathons, which is very extreme. But really, the book for me is not about running as much as it is about exploring your potential. So to me, what I really took away was that we have so much we can do and offer to the world. And if we explore that potential, to really challenge ourselves to do more, we surprise ourselves and we actually do more. And I think that that's one thing that Dean really shows in that book is that if you want to do crazy things like run 200 miles, it's possible. As extreme as it sounds, it's a possible thing. And if it is, then what else is possible with your life? And I feel like that's what I want to pursue as often as I can is figuring out what is possible for me.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

Favorite quote is from Albert Einstein, which is, out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. And it's that last line there that I always lean on. In difficulty, find opportunity, because there's always something that can be learned or gleaned or gained from a challenge. When things don't go well, there's a reason for it, and there's something that you can actually improve upon and become a better person or a better business owner or a better individual because you really have discovered what it is that has not worked well, and then you've turned that around and found success anyway. And I lean on that every single day because there's always some challenge I'm facing, and I'm trying to figure out, hey, what's the opportunity here? What's the thing to learn and grow from? And once I find it, I always have that creative energy and enthusiasm to want to keep going.

It's huge, man. Uh, dude, thank you so much for coming on. Very insightful, uh, episode. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find you online?

That's my website, jeffsanders.com.

Perfect, brother. Thanks again for jumping on.

Yeah, thank you.

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