In today’s episode of A Drink with The Hurricane, Steve discusses the importance of a morning routine and shares how it has been critical to his success as an entrepreneur and marketer.
I wanna take a moment to talk about your daily routine as a business owner, as a marketing rep, our daily routine is everything. And I know there are definitely days where I fly by the seed of my pants, I wake up later than I’m supposed to. I have three young children, I have a pre-K, I have a first grader and a third grader. I’m married, I like to workout and keep myself pretty fit and active. I am very involved in my church.
I’m a deacon, I’m a minister, I preach, I visit people in the hospitals. I greet the parents at our child care center at the church twice a week. I have a lot of things and a lot of directions that I’m pulled in and I love them all. And I’m also the owner of a multi-million dollar international marketing company who also speaks at conferences 20 to 25 times a year. So I’m pulled in many different directions and I love it, but if I have those mornings where I oversleep and I gotta get to the office it throws the entire day off.
I’m runnin’ behind schedule, I’m forgetting things that have to get done, I’m moody, I’m agitated, I am short tempered. People will come up to me with a challenge or a problem and it’s always on days like this, where there’s a challenge, right? Like there’s always a challenge on the day when you’re not at your best, right? And we react in a way that we shouldn’t and then by the time you blink the day’s over you didn’t, you were not productive and you didn’t get stuff done the way you wanted it to. Now that doesn’t happen often for me because of my morning routine, but I know people who live like this and that’s the reason why I’m making this episode. Because for me I like to get up four hours before I have to be in the office.
Now, four hours depending on how your day starts some of us have to be in the office at eight o’clock, that’s four o’clock in the morning. You gotta be in at nine o’clock that’s five o’clock in the morning. I usually come in the office around 11 o’clock in the morning but that’s also because of the way I stagger my business and I do a lot of after-hours things after the kids go to bed, the wife goes to bed so it’s 11 o’clock at night I can do a lot of emails and that kind of stuff. So I come in later but still I’m up four sometimes five hours beforehand.
For me personally I wake up and I start my day with prayer and scripture, nothing crazy 15 minutes maybe 20 minutes, pray, meditate, read two or three chapters of the bible. It just sets my day in the right priority. I put the Almighty first and he takes care of the rest. That’s just me.
After I do that my kids start to come downstairs. My kids are early risers, they wake up before the sun. So I get my reading in and then they’re coming down the stairs. But you know what I do when my kids come down the stairs? I don’t just let them go downstairs, no. They come over to me, and I give them a nice hug. And I will hug my kids for a good minute, two minutes! When was the last time you hugged your child for a minute and just held onto your child? And rubbed their head and told them you loved them.
And they tell you I love you too, Daddy and they’re wipin’ the crusties and sleepies out of their eyes, they love it! My littlest one she’ll be on the fifth step and she just jumps right into my arms. And I give her a hug and I just hold her she’s my kitty, that’s why I call her Kitty. And I just hug her, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. For a good minute and then I put her down and then they go and they play their video games, they go on their iPad, or we watch a program or something like that.
It’s too early for eatin’, we don’t get hungry we don’t eat until like eight o’clock in the morning. Then my wife comes downstairs and I already have coffee made and it’s waiting for her and I don’t have my coffee yet. I gave her a hug, I give her a kiss. And now it’s like, we’ll say 6:45, seven o’clock in the morning and we sit down, we have coffee together. And we can actually talk for 15, 20 minutes before we start makin’ breakfast for the kids, makin’ the lunches and we do this together as a family.
Then we go out I either take Sienna to the church, which is where our child care center is she goes into class and then I greet the parents as they come in in the morning. After around say 9:30 ish that’s when I leave and I go to the gym and then I work out. I’m home, grab something to eat and then I get into the office by 11.
Now think about what I just said, that’s a lot of time there, that’s a pretty rigid program but what did I take care of? Like how do I get into the office, when I am in the office I am ultra, super, mega productive with my time there, why? Because I don’t need to worry about anything else because everything that is important to me my highest priorities, my God, myself, my wife, my children are all taken care of. The parishioners at my church, right? They’re all taken care of before I step into the office. So anything that would distract me, because we all know personal life, every one of us, you don’t have to be married with children.
Some of us are divorced, some of us are single parents, some of us don’t any kids, some of us don’t have any– it’s just us, we don’t have any children but we still have things that we care about outside of our business, right? Anything that happens to us personally can always affect us in the business. And by having a routine like this, I preached on this before, having a routine like this takes care of the things that are most important to us so that when we step foot in the office we are productive, ready set to go and we can handle whatever happens because the things that are important to us outside of our office are taken care of. The priority is there, there’s no worry.
And so those days, which is the majority of my days are always better than the ones where I don’t do that routine, even though it means sacrificing a little bit of sleep, it’s only a little bit of sleep. That’s what coffee’s for, right? That’s what working out is for, get the energy going, right? It makes you feel good, you look good, you feel confident and then boom you go take care of what you’ve gotta take care of. So when I come into the office yeah, stuff that could happen doesn’t affect me the way it would otherwise.
And when things are going right I can make the right decisions. When I have to make a decision I can make the best decision, clear conscience because I’m not distracted by what’s going on outside the business. Every business owner that I speak to is stressed out.
Every one of ’em. This is the best way to reduce the stress in our life. Because when the things we– what are we usually stressed out about? It’s usually one of the things that I just discussed. That if we take care of it first give it the priority that it should be everything else takes care of itself. And then yeah my company I got that, my staff, I got them and they got me. And we’re gonna get through this day and it’s gonna be an amazing day. That’s how you never have a bad day. It all starts with your routine. So I shared my routine with you, that’s what I do.
If you don’t have a morning routine or your morning routine is hectic consider starting your day four hours before your workday begins. What a difference it will make in your life. Especially if you work out. Because you spend an hour working out that’s gonna give you the energy you’re gonna feel better, you’re gonna look better you’re gonna be more awake, more alert and able to serve all the people who entrust you with their care.
So that’s the tip for today, folks. Take from it what you want, but I hope that this makes a difference for you and I hope I get to meet you one day at a boot camp. So have yourselves a blessed day and remember, don’t just beat your competition but BLOW THEM AWAY.
