Winning Your Day Starts with a SOLID Morning Routine

Skip to full transcript

SUMMARY

• My biggest mistake building companies #5 is: NOT OWNING MY MORNING.
• All the components of our lives are interconnected.
• The life of an entrepreneur is packed. Overwhelming can be an understatement at times. 
• A morning routine will get you grounded, motivated, organized, and energized to go through your day. Being able to go out and attack your day begins with the way you start it. 
• START TODAY. Just ONE thing. Baby steps.
• A great day is just one decision away. YOU have the power. 
• It only takes 20 Minutes a Day!
• The Savage Sunrise Top 10
  • Only input G.C.P.P.P
  • Cold Plunge (if you dare 😅) 
  • Brush & Build
  • Meditation
  • Gratitude & Prayer
  • Visualization
  • Self-Talk
  • Plan Your Day
  • Exercise
  • HAVE FUN WITH IT!!!
• Celebrate your wins-- big & small!"
• "You can only grow a business as much as you can grow the founder." 
• "It is virtually impossible in the society that we live in to fly the plane of life solo. To fly the plane of entrepreneurship solo."
• Mentions:
  • Savage Sunrise: https://thesavagesecrets.com/sunrise
  • Calm, the app I use for meditation: https://www.calm.com/ 
• If you want to email me, please email me at [email protected] 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

"He calls it an opportunity clock. Opportunity clock! You have the opportunity to wake up, go attack today, go have fun, go enjoy this journey called life. Because guess what? We don't get to do it twice, right? Hello and welcome back to my 10 biggest mistakes building companies number five. This one is another one that... it's not a skill. It's more of a mindset thing."

My Biggest Mistake Building Companies #5

"The mistake that I've made so many times over the years-- it's not owning my morning.

When we start off, we wake up, we come out into the world, we have choices. We have choices as to when we set our alarm. We have choices as to what we do first thing. We have choices as to the things that we're going to do and plan throughout the day. But the one big mistake that I made is not having a game plan. Not having a plan of attack for the day."

My Morning Routine - A Decade in the Making

"I took the last decade designing this and crafting it, making sure that all the pieces fit together. I'm gonna go into the top level stuff of a course that I created. I am not going to go deep. I have a course it's called Savage Sunrise, and this is what I do. You don't have to do the same thing, but there is some really powerful stuff in here.

These are things that I've learned from some of the best of the best in the world of mindset, mental strength and conditioning and all that stuff. So I, for the most part, am pretty fired up and jacked up every single day. Now, that does not mean that things don't eat away at me, sh*t doesn't bother me. Yeah, it happens to all of us.

There is a reality to this world called life, there is tragedy that hits us all. But for the most part, being able to go out and attack your day begins with the way you start. So, Savage Sunrise to me is just an unbelievably powerful tool to use to go out to the world."

We are the CEO of Our Life

"Now we are multi-dimensional human beings, right? Especially as an entrepreneur. It's not all about business. You know, I call this the Savage Circle, and we are the CEO of our lives. I’m not just talking about business. We are the CEOs of our lives.

There are all of these different components from our friends and our family, our health, our companies, our businesses, the things that we want to do as it relates to personal development, our personal finances, our wealth, the things that we do in our lives to have fun, contribution, donations. Donating time, money, all of these components, all these areas in our lives are interconnected.

If you are having a disagreement or an argument with your spouse… is there a good chance that it may affect you at work? If there are things that are happening at work or running your business, and it's nasty stuff, do you think there are times when you may bring that home to your family? Yes."

The Life of the Entrepreneur

"So when you think about your day, does your day always start like this: with your feet up, relaxed, enjoying life, chill to the max, no worries, no challenges, nothing's bothering you… is this your reality?

Or is there a chance this may be your reality: maybe a little frustrated, you may be anxious, there may be things in your life that are challenging you, eating away at you. Whether it's friends or relatives or health related stuff or business or personal or your next-door neighbor decided to have a party until the wee hours of the morning, and he kept you up, or you've got a kid in school and you don't like their teacher—whatever it may be.

If you are a human being and you have emotions, there are those days that are awesome, great, can't wait to go! And there are days that maybe start that way and then there's challenges that come in. But as we look at the totality of us, you know, call us entrepreneurs, call us whatever you want, but we have a personal life and we have a business life, right?

Now, our personal life comes with an entire variety of different things that, whether you work for yourself or you work for someone else, we have those personal life things. We have friends, we have family, we have parents, we have children, we have personal finance, we have work, we have sleep, we have yard work, we have things that we want to do with our friends, we have vacation. You know, we lived in this world of Covid and we had all of the implications of that. The isolation, the challenge, there's a lot of stuff. That's just our personal life.

Now you as the entrepreneur, you get to double that. You get to go and look at your business life. You get to go and look at your strategic plan and your vision. And God knows if you went through the Covid thing, you've got the EIDL loans and PPP loans, and just trying to keep your employees and trying to keep your business.

You know what? If it's not Covid, it's going to be something else. The one guarantee that you have building and running a company is that change is coming. Wherever you are today, change is coming. It may not be as dramatic as when Covid hits, and you have a certain company in a certain industry that says, oh by the way the government tells us, Guess what? You can no longer have customers. That's a punch in the gut!

But there are so many things: employees, our strategic marketing, our sales strategies, our financing, our growth, our customers, our vendors. No matter how you slice it, there's a lot to it. It can become complex and overwhelming, and when you take and combine the personal stuff. And then you take the business and entrepreneurial stuff, what you get is one unbelievably, potentially overwhelming, set of circumstances and things that go on in your life that can max you out!

So my point with what I’m talking to you about today is, I encourage you, from the depth of my soul, to adopt some way so that you can own your morning and win your day. It is essential."

Ask Yourself

"So ask yourself the question: what is the typical way that I start my day? How do you start your day? What is the very first thing that you do when either your alarm goes off or you open your eyes? Do you turn on the news? Turn on the TV?

There's nothing good on television. In most cases. There's no news that's good. They're trying to keep you drawn in. They're trying to tell you about all of the tragedy and garbage and economy and bad stuff that, you know movie stars do, and politics. It's all negative. So as soon as you start your day and turn on that TV, you're beginning to pump in garbage. You know the old saying: Garbage in, garbage out.

If you get on your phone and you check social media… social media has its own way of just kind of… people go onto Facebook, or wherever, and like… look at how wonderful my life is! It's so great. Look! My kid got a c-minus on his report card! Or, Look at the vacation I took! And oftentimes it can take us when we start to see these things, and say, Geez I wish I had their life… Gee, I wish I did what they were doing, man oh man.

My point is, don't check the TV, don't check the cell phone first thing when you wake up. Don't go to your computer."

The Opportunity Clock

"A good friend of mine—not good friend—a mentor of mine, many years ago, Zig Ziglar, you may know him. He introduced this thing. One of the sayings that I heard, it was phenomenal. He doesn't call it an alarm clock, he calls it an opportunity clock. Opportunity clock! You have the opportunity to wake up and go attack today. Go have fun, go enjoy this journey called life. Because guess what? We don't get to do it twice. Right? We don't get to do it twice."

One Decision Away

"So when you first get up… what's your typical day like? And is there a way to alter the pattern in the methodology that you start your day with?

And I am telling you—you are one decision away from a completely different experience. One decision away. You could be happy face, you could be sad face. You could be Mr. Fired Up and Go-Getter, or Mr. Down in the dump. Ms. Energize, energetic, ready to hit the road. Or Ms. Grumpy.

It's a decision. You have the power to make that decision now. There's a lot that goes into that.

Think about this, just for one second. Think about the day or the morning that you are going on vacation. Say you've got a trip with your family or your friends to go somewhere, and you have to get up at three in the morning, three in the morning, to get to the airport.

When you're going on vacation, that mindset, that belief system, that anticipation of something fun is going to be a lot different than you just getting up on a Monday, or whatever it may be, you get up early. Oh man, it's Monday morning. If you get up on a Monday morning with as much fire and energy as you do when you get up on the day of your vacation… how cool would that be? How cool would it be?

Now, I’m not sitting here blowing sunshine up your ass, making believe that this is easy. No. It's not easy. It really is challenging. You know what? We all got challenges. We all got crap that is just there all the time. Whether it's friends or family or relatives or business or global tragedies, whatever it is, the negative and the bad stuff is there. It's always there, but so is the good stuff."

It Only Takes 20 Minutes

"I believe if you can take the first 20 minutes of your day and change the strategy… now some of you are saying, Well, I got kids. I gotta get up early in the morning. As soon as I open my eyes, I gotta get the kids ready, and like I got screaming kids. Whatever it may be, I get it! I’ve got kids too. I used to have babies. Now they're both in college, but my point is, you still have the choice. At maybe a later point in the morning, when the kids get on the bus, to kick back and take 20 minutes for yourself.

You deserve to be excited and fired up. Because there's a reality. Every day of your life is not going to be exciting and emotionally rewarding. There's going to be losses. You will lose loved ones. There's bad stuff that's going to happen to you. You may lose a job. You may you know get in an accident. There are things that happen, but let's make that the absolute smallest minority that it can possibly be as we're going through our day. So we're talking 20 minutes."

Start TODAY! Baby Steps - Progress Over Perfection

"I encourage you, I am gonna plead with you, to take one step today.

Now I’m gonna step you through. I’m gonna give you all the details that I have for my morning routine which I call the Savage Sunrise. I didn't just create this. This was a combination of my own personal experiences, studying a lot of really smart people, and it's 20 minutes.

If you are interested in the Savage Sunrise, please go to the savagesecrets.com/sunrise. It goes into so much more detail. There's handouts, there's multiple videos, they talk about each of these areas, but I’m just going to give you a snapshot today.

Now, when I talk about going after this, think about it as when you started to walk as a baby. Progress, progress every day, not perfection. I’m gonna share with you the 10 things that I do each morning. They become structured. I don't have to think about it. I don't need a list.

But if you can just take one, if you can just pick one. If there's just one thing that you can do as you're starting your day that can maybe tweak the amount of energy and the amount of passion, the amount of fun and the amount of excitement that you have going into your day. If there's one thing, try it!

Try to do it for seven days. Try to do it for two weeks. Try and do—they say it takes 66 days to implement a habit. Just try it! See if you can stick with it for 66 days. If you need a coach, come back, and watch the video. I'll get you fired up!

I’ve lived in the world, I’ve had many companies in the area of fitness and exercise products, and the greatest day, the greatest holiday for every single one of us and our companies, was January 2^nd. Why January 2^nd? Because January 1^st is New Year's resolution day! And January 2^nd is when we go out into the world and attack it, and it usually lasts 4 to 6 weeks.

Why? Because you want to get one thing right. And so many people go deep, and they try to do everything and try to do it all at the same time. I’m saying try one thing. Just one little baby step."

Savage Sunrise Top 10

"So, the first thing I’m going to talk about is Savage Sunrise Top 10. I’m going to go through quickly, if you're interested in all the specifics, you can definitely check out the course."

# 1 - Only Input G.C.P.P.P

"But the first thing, I think the single most important thing, is as soon as our head comes off the pillow, as soon as it comes off the pillow, as soon as the alarm goes off or someone wakes us up, you gotta begin to put in the good, the clean, the pure, the powerful and the positive. You've got to put good stuff in first thing.

Do not turn on the news. Do not read your social media. Do not go and start pumping in all that stuff that's going on outside the world. You have the ability, you can go and craft your day around pumping in the good, the clean, the pure, the powerful and the positive. So that's really step one."

#2 - Cold Plunge (if you dare 😅) 

"Step two: now this is not for everyone. I totally get it. But I would say 99% of the time, I shock my system. What do I do? I get into an ice-cold shower. If my pool has just opened up, I’m up in New England, I’m up in the Boston area, so it's pretty damn cold in April. We open up our pool on April 1^st, I jump in, the water’s 48 degrees! It wakes you up. You jump in a cold shower, it wakes you up.

Now, there are physiological reasons why a cold plunge helps your body. I do not do any of it because it helps my body. I do it for one reason. The reason is I get to win the very first decision of the day. Once you get your butt out of bed, in most cases, obviously if you have physical challenges this doesn't apply. In most cases, there is no physical challenge to walking into a shower and turning on the ice-cold water. No physical challenge. It's 100% mental.

And if you can win that first decision of the day—you get in there, you turn on the cold water, you jump in the ice cold pool—if you can do that first thing, you win the first decision. And it is 100% a mental decision. It's totally psychological.

You don't need any skill. So step one for me is always you know cold plunge. You know, like I said, not every single day. If I’m on vacation with Donna and you know it's the second day and we're down living on the ocean or hanging out by the ocean somewhere, and it's beautiful crystal clear, you know what? I may skip a day or two. I’m gonna be honest. Don't take this stuff so seriously."

#3 - Brush & Build

Number two, or number three I should say, I call it Brush & Build. So as I’m brushing my teeth, I got my cell phone there and my cell phone is doing something. It's putting in good stuff. If you want to pump in dance music, pump in dance music. If you want to pump in motivational stuff or some study stuff…

I’m always either listening to a podcast or I’m listening to some real high energy music. I’m doing something to build my mindset for the day. So as I’m brushing my teeth, I’m doing this. This is number three."

#4 - Meditation

"Number four is I am blessed and grateful that I live on a beautiful lake, a reservoir, and there's no houses on the lake, so I get to go down there every morning. I meditate.

Meditation is one of those things, I think it's like 3% of the people in the world meditate. It to me has become a game changer. A 100% game changer! It takes practice. It takes a lot of work. There's a zillion different apps you can use. But the point is, this is stop mode for me.

Some people meditate for a couple minutes, some people meditate for an hour, two hours. multiple hours, go away for weekends and meditate. To me, it's 10 minutes.

I just sit there and I meditate. I use an app called Calm. And there's some great lessons in there and some great training on meditation. Love it. So that's step four."

#5 - Gratitude & Prayer

"For me then I go into, you know I think all of these are important, but quite frankly this to me is the single most important. I have a phase of my morning routine, once I finish my meditation, called Gratitude & Prayer.

And I don't spend hours and days in this, but I do thank whomever, if you believe in God great, if you don't great, whatever it is. But I am thankful for the good stuff in my life. And sometimes it is really hard to find those good things.

Sometimes it's really difficult depending on where you were brought up, depending on your situation, your social, your family, your emotional, whatever it may be… sometimes it's hard. But, man oh man, if you can just think about, for a couple of minutes, what are those things that you are grateful for in your life.

If you are happily married, be grateful for your spouse. If you have wonderful kids, wonderful parents, be grateful for them. If you have your health, most important, if you have your health, be grateful! You know be grateful for those things that are in your life right now that you are proud of, or happy for, whatever it may be. If you live in a beautiful house, great! If you're able to breathe and see the stars and see the grass, whatever it may be, be grateful.

And then I go right immediately into prayer, where I pray for those people in my life that are suffering. Because it's not easy every day.

There's no way in hell that people are on all the time. And then there's another quote from my buddy Zig Ziglar. If you're on all the time, you're probably on something. But it's really hard to be on all the time, so try and join the 99% club. Try and be on as much as you can. So, Gratitude & Prayer."

#6 - Visualization

"And then I take not even a minute where I visualize my perfect day. What is my day going to be like? If I have a meeting, if I have a speech, if I have just a day with my kids doing sports, with my wife doing some activity, I visualize that activity. I visualize that one thing that's gonna bring a smile to my face, gonna bring swelling in my heart. I visualize that, and that doesn't take long at all."

#7 - Self-Talk

"Then I go into what I think is again essential. I have a conversation with myself. I talk to myself.

You hear about this all the time in sports. Think about golfers or field goal kickers, batters or pitchers, whatever it may be. I’m big on sports and sports analogies to real life. But no one walks up to the tee, about to hit a golf ball, and says like, “I’m probably going to duck hook this in the woods.” No good golfer! Or the baseball player that walks up, “You know what, chances are I’m gonna strike out.” No!

Start your day with some conversations. And I have conversations with myself that are pretty powerful and intense. “Mike go change someone's life today.” Or, “I will change someone's life today.” Or, “I’m going for it.” Or, “I just can't wait to get on stage and elevate a whole bunch of entrepreneurs.” “I will dominate the day.”

So, I have a list of the things that I talk to myself about. I change that all the time, but self-talk is so powerful."

#8 - Plan Your Day

"Then I go and I plan my day. I don't just go, hey, okay I’m jacked up, fired up. I go and I sit with my calendar. I may look at some stuff, I plan my day. Now does the plan for every day work out? No. Most days it doesn't. Most days there's something. There's a curveball. There's something that comes in and messes the whole thing up but at least I plan my day.

I go to my calendar, I look at what I got going on, I try. And if I’m on vacation, planning the day is I just can't wait to hang out with Donna at the beach. I can't wait to go for a mountain bike ride. Whatever it may be. I plan my day."

#9 - Exercise

"Number nine, exercise. And there are days I do this, some days I don't. I typically my exercise comes halfway through the day. I get up typically very early and by the time noontime or one o'clock comes around, I am wiped. A little bit beat up, a little bit challenged, because when you're starting the day with this kind of energy you kind of need that release. So my workout time is typically in the afternoon.

It could be the evening for you. It could be the morning for you. The reality is and I talked about this in my last training. We only get one body. We don't get to screw this up and come back in another life and say, “You know what? I’m going to do that. I want to take care of my body.”

It isn't easy. I would encourage you to get someone that can help you win this journey of health and wellness. Maybe it's exercise, nutrition, but my point is exercise is one of those things if you have the ability, it doesn't have to be painful. Go have fun with it."

#10 - Have Fun with It!!!

"And then finally, number 10, I would say go, like I just said, go have fun with this! Don't make this a chore. Don't make this something that is painful and overwhelming and difficult.

Pick one thing. Pick something and damn it, be determined! Go talk to yourself in the mirror and say from now on, absolutely every single morning I’m gonna meditate. I’m gonna sit there and I’m gonna visualize a perfect day. I’m gonna open my eyes and say thank you, Lord, for giving me life today!

None of us—I don't care who you are—are guaranteed tomorrow. No one's guaranteed tomorrow. There's tragedy and crap that happens all over the world. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. So live today, enjoy today.

Have some fun. Have some fun with this. Have some fun with your morning routine. Don't look at it as a chore, but just try it."

Morning Routine Transformation

"It transformed me. There's no two ways about it. It has transformed me.

Believe it or not, I didn't used to be this high energy. I don't know, I think for most of my life I have been, but this grounds me.

This gives me an absolutely perfect way to start my day.

Motivate & Celebrate!

So I’m going to close with this: motivation is like showering. It only lasts for a day and if you stop doing it, you're going to start to stink. Now you can get motivated, jacked up, fired up, excited by inputting stuff into your brain or you can stay fired up, excited, motivated, by yourself.

But having others in our world that are playing the game better or differently than we are, especially if you're not happy with, if you're trying to get somewhere, whether it be what if you want to be a great skier? You want to be a great water skier a snow skier, what do you do? Hang out with people that are great at that. You want to be a great gardener, you want to be a great carpenter, whatever it may be.

Hang out with people that are playing the game better or differently than you are. Aspire to get to that next level and when you get there celebrate. My God, celebrate. Actually celebrate along the way. If you start your day tomorrow and you exercise, celebrate! Look yourself in the mirror before you go to bed and say, damn Mike, good job!"

Growing Your Business Takes Growing Yourself

"I am in the world of entrepreneurship. I talk about business stuff to entrepreneurs. Now it's not all about business. If you know any of my training, I talk about the Entrepreneur’s Trilogy. We were always men and women long before we were business men and women. but you are only going to be able to grow your business to the extent that you can grow yourself.

You are the founder. You are the CEO. You are the entrepreneur. You're the one with the vision. You're the one with the dream. You're not going to be able to grow your business unless you can grow yourself, and that's physically and mentally.

Meaning skill sets—what are the skills I need to run my business? And also what is the mental aptitude I need? Because as you are running a company, you are going to get punched in the gut many, many times.

I’ve had tons of punches. I’ve had so much pain. You know pain to the extent of you know I didn't want to be here, quite frankly. And there were a few times in my life I was just really, really down. It was difficult.

So you are only going to be able to grow your business to the extent that you can grow yourself. And I promise you that your mindset, as it relates to whatever you want to do, if you are fearful about things, how do you squash fear? How do you take your business to that next level?

Business, entrepreneurship is risky. That's why I love what I do, because you went out there and you took a risk. You said, you know what maybe it was, “screw you, boss” or “I think I can do it on my own.” Congratulations! Continue to take yourself and make yourself better.

I think your business can only get to that next level if in fact you do propel yourself. Attitude 100% determines your altitude. If you believe you can, if you believe you can't, guess what? You're right."

Flying Solo

And I will close with this: I think it is virtually impossible, in the society we live in, to fly the plane of life solo. To fly the plane of entrepreneurship solo. I really don't care where you're at because I think the greatest of the great have coaches.

The greatest of the great have people, mentors, in their lives that can act as a sounding board as they're going to build their business or build their career up, build whatever it may be. They have people that can help them.

A coach literally—I’m not saying this figuratively, I’m not saying this you know, sort of tongue-in-cheek—a coach saved my life many years ago. I didn't want to be here. It was a bad, bad time. He said—he didn't let me make excuses. He didn't let me get down. Like, you've got an opportunity. He helped me and I’m grateful beyond words today.

I Want to Hear from You!

So let me ask you:

How do you start your day?

What is the one thing that you do that gets you going? Or do you not have anything?

I’d love for you to share your thoughts, whether it be an email or comment or a post whatever it might be.

What are some of those things that you may struggle with? You know when you start off your day, do you start off mopy? Do you start off down? Do you start off depressed? Or do you start up fired up and energized and ready to rock?

And if anything that I talked about today resonated with you, I would be delighted if you shared in the comments.

What is the one thing that you would do?

What is the one thing that you can start tomorrow?

What's the one thing that you're going to commit to?

You know, let me know in the comments.

Like, Comment, Share, Connect

And if you are listening to this on a podcast, I would be honored and delighted and love you to share it. If you're watching this on YouTube, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Subscribe to my podcast. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear from you. If you want to email me, please email me [email protected].

I promise you I will respond to every single one of your emails personally. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope some of the stuff that we went through today resonated with you. I want to wish you an amazing day. Go out there, dream big, have a ton of fun, and I will see you soon!