Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - The 5 Steps for the Ultimate COVID Morning Routine - 163

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Discover the 5 steps for the new ultimate COVID 19 morning routine and see how to ensure you keep your overall mental, physical, and mental edge.    Here’s what you’ll discover: 1:40 - Stick to the script and see why a Navy Seal never deviates and neither should you. 7:49 - Ninety-minute mind right game plan, gratitude and work on top 3 MIT’s. 12:13 - Why you must now and reward later and why you shouldn’t work out in your top will power time. 15:23 How to take your night time seriously, plan your next day and be present during family and recharge time. 18:13 - Man Up & Beat Your inner bitch. Never hit the snooze, don't negotite with your inner bitch. "If I can control my morning routines, get shit done on my top priority list  I can control the rest of my day " - Bedros Keuilian

I can't control who's going to be president. I simply can't. I can't control what Governor Newsom in California says, what can be open, what can't be closed, whether I should wear a mask in a restaurant or not. I can't control any of that shit. What I can't control is what time I wake up, what I put in my pie hole in the morning,

the work that I do, right, the thoughts that occupy my mind, and how much thunder I bring during my workouts. Those are five amazing wins that I can absolutely control. And if I can control that, I can control the rest of my day. The COVID-19 has messed up your morning, And today, Craig Ballantan and I are going to teach you the five steps for the ultimate COVID-19 morning routine on the Empire show. Craigie.

Hey, my man. I like how you rhyme that out. COVID-19 morning routine. That's right. You like that? Yeah, very much. So obviously with the COVID-19 happening, everyone's schedules messed up. And when you think about even on the bigger picture, you got parents who counted on school systems to kind of watch their kids. And schools are now, at least throughout the United States, most of them are going to be remote. And so parents are like, man, my morning routine's messed up. What do I do? How do I operate? Do I need to wait until I go back to normal? You and I, of course, never wait. We adapt, overcome, and move on. And so let's talk about sticking to the script. And I like how you talk about why a Navy SEAL never deviates and neither should you. Tell us more.

Yeah, absolutely. And so you know the Navy SEAL stick a whole lot more about how they get the mission. and when they're on the mission, doesn't matter what happened. The mission is number one. And I know how difficult it has been for people who are entrepreneurs and who have kids at home and now their spouse is working at home. Listen, this is not an easy time. But I'll tell you what. Research is showing that people's sleep is being disrupted, that their productivity is down,

working at home. And it's because we don't start the day right. So whatever was working for you before, we have to get you back as close. as possible to that. And a lot of people, even if they haven't been, you know, dramatically affected by the COVID changes with their routine, they didn't have a routine in the first place. And they're waking up and winging it in the morning. But if you think about the Navy SEALs, you think about your favorite Broadway play like Hamilton, you think about your favorite football team, nobody's making that stuff up as they go along. It's not like, hey, you know, I'm going to try

different opening lines tonight, like in a Seinfeld, you know, skid or something like that. No, It's always scripted. And so go back to the script. Stick to the script. Go and identify the best time for you to get up. What you're going to do in that first 10 minutes to get your mind right? And then how you're going to get into your deep work as quickly as possible so that you can dominate your morning. So when you do that, you know, one of your posts today, Bedros, you talked about stacking the wins.

So if you could talk about how important it is to stack the wins and why you've got to start in the morning would be really helpful. Yeah, yeah. So to that point, sticking to the script, the best example I can give you on that is when the family and I go on vacations, whether we're going to Hawaii, we're going to Europe, wherever, I immediately try and find a few things. Like, how am I going to do my morning routine? So where's the coffee? How can I get coffee in my hot little hands? You know, where am I going to sit on the couch and work off my laptop in the morning because I do my best work? And then when 9 o'clock, 9 a.m. comes around.

Doesn't matter where we are in the world. I need to head to the gym. where's the nearest gym with the most amount of poundage? And I'm looking for those three things because that's so ingrained. Like when I have my morning coffee, when I have my laptop and get my work done and I have that sense of accomplishment, I need to have a sense of accomplishment before I can go and get the next one, the next win, the workout. And so if I go on vacation and I don't do any of that stuff, believe it or not,

the vacation doesn't feel enjoyed. I don't feel I enjoyed it. I feel like I just was a glutton. and I let myself go and I let myself sleep in. So I'll wake up at the same time as I normally do. Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Like, I just had a Facebook memory pop up and going,

and we were in the UKA and Scotland a couple years ago. And we were doing the same thing back then. It was like a couple hours of work in the morning. And then, man, did we have a good time? Because we were free from the responsibilities. We felt good. We got the victories. And it made the vacation amazing.

So that's what you do still when you're, when you travel, right? Yep, and that's so important. So it's not to say that, you know, we work around the clock even when we're on vacation. We don't. But we stack those early morning wins because we know that we're going to, that feeling of accomplishment in the morning just makes the day go better. So, so first off, you know, sticking to the script, absolutely.

Secondly, when you're stacking wins, something psychological happens, you end up stacking more wins. Just like they say in the sales world, if you were on a phone call and you just got to close, call the next lead. If you don't have a lead on the list, find a lead and call someone. You have a higher chance of closing. If you just close the deal, you have a higher chance of closing the next deal.

Just like if you lost the deal, you have a higher chance of losing the next deal. So you might as well call, lose them if you have to, move on to the next one, move on to the next one. Like, look for that W as soon as you can. And so, you know, the post I put up today, I think fits perfectly with this, which is

that morning routine. All right, great. So there's uncertainty everywhere. We're in a political environment right now. It is August of 2020. In three months, we're going to have the election for the president of the United States. Everyone's fighting over the... I can't control who's going to be president. I simply can't. I can't control what Governor Newsom in California says, what can be open, what can't be closed, whether I should wear a mask in a restaurant or not. I can't control any of that shit. What I can't control is what time I wake up, what I put in my pie hole in the morning, the work that I do, right, the thoughts that occupy my mind and how much thunder I bring during my workouts.

Those are five amazing wins that I can absolutely control. And if I can control that, I can control the rest of my day. I can control my money. I can control the so many other variables. The hike that I'm going to go on today, the relationship with my wife, the relationship with my... The energy you bring to your leadership meetings? The energy I bring to my leadership meetings. All those things matter.

And so while people will look at all the things they can't control, well, the uncertainty, the economy, the COVID, the masks, the political climate. Hey, you can't control that. Get off of it, right? Stick to the W's. And there's so many Ws you can control. The question is, do you want to? Or would you rather just be like a victim? And I think that's the delineating line here. Yeah, I had a mutual friend of ours, Brian Stecker, a fighter jet gym owner up in Washington State. He reached out and needed a little guidance to get through the COVID. And, you know, he had fallen off on a couple of habits. And there's a couple of there's some, something I do for my top clients. I allow them to send me a daily email and it has to answer

three questions. And each person has three different questions. But his is, what time did I get up? Did I do my workout? Did I reach out to 10 people? And you, those are all things you control, right? You control those things. And just doing those things really quickly, early in the day, is going to stack those wins so that you can go forward. And listen, when you do something right, it bleeds into the next you get that momentum. I love that little, you know, when the sales closure makes a sale, they got to get right back on the phone as quickly as possible. Now, here's the thing.

In order to have a script, you must script it out the night before. So this is principle number two, step number two. You need to make the game plan the night before so that you wake up in the morning. And I like what you do. You wake up in the morning. You do your gratitude. Then you work on your top three MIT's. And I think that if everybody can give 90 minutes in the morning to their

number one priority in life to their drumming up of business, boy, will they make it through COVID 19 a whole lot better? So walk us through the first 90 minutes of your morning. Yeah, so, you know, the first 90 minutes is I believe the most critical piece of every person's morning. I'll wake up without hitting that snooze button. I'll drink 30 ounces of water and then jump in the shower. I'm out of the shower and now I'm downstairs and I've made a protein shake. I've got my coffee and I'm sending out my three gratitude text messages. Now I'm I've got time to sit and work on my business. I'm not perusing Instagram and seeing, you know, what's happening on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, any of that stuff. The people that

lay in bed and check in on social media are the laziest people on the planet if you ask me. Well, you're not Mark Zuckerberg. There's no reason for you to check it on Instagram or Facebook to see if that fucking platform is up. Mark Zuckerberg needs to see if the platforms is working, if it's operating slowly, if it's got a glitch. You ought to be checking on your business. Like, I'm logging in on 10. Like, is my business running? my emails coming in? Are people paying me money? Are the bank accounts filling up? Like, that's what I'm after. And so if you can have that discipline, like for me, like I said, it's once I drink the 30 ounces of water, have the coffee, the protein shake, three gratitude

text messages that I send out, I lock on and work on my GSD list, the get shit done list, usually two to three things that are going to move the money needle. Now I've done this brain dump. I feel good about myself. I've stacked wins. I can go to the gym and crush the iron and get here to HQ by 11 a.m. where then I can serve my team who is serving the different companies and the customers and clients and franchises that we have.

It's not rocket science, but that first 90 minutes, if not controlled, will take you down a toilet bowl because you're going to see a post that makes you feel jealous. You're going to see a post that's going to make you feel like

you're missing out on something. You're going to get an email that is a sales email that's taking you down some weird rabbit hole of looking up reviews on YouTube of a fucking pair of tennis shoes that you don't even need. You know what I mean? And it goes back to discipline. These things are built to be addictive.

I mean, understand that you cannot beat Instagram at its own game. It will addict you. So will YouTube. So will Netflix. Any of these things. Man, it will suck you in. There's actually a term for it. Let's share it with our audience.

So when you go to Las Vegas and you see all those slot machines and you see all those people playing slots, and you wonder, man, the hotels get bigger, they get more elaborate. So clearly more people are losing than winning. Yet people continue to play. Why? Because of a mechanism called variable response. Variable response means that when I put a dollar in a slot machine and I pull the thing, oh man, I almost won.

I almost got the three cherries. I'm going to put another dollar. Oh, shit, I was rewarded with a win. I made $2,500. Okay, let me see if I can hit the jackpot, which is $25 million. So variable response means I'm going to keep trying because I almost got it. I kind of got it. I got a little reward.

It now makes me want to get more. So when we post on this freaking thing and then we keep going to check, how many comments did I get? Refresh. How many likes that I get? Refresh. How many shares that I get? That's variable response. Variable response is the second most addictive thing on the planet, the first being sugar, which is more addictive than cocaine.

Wow. Well, I remember back when I really wasted. time in my younger years, I had this thing that I called, well, Evan Pagan gave me the term. It was OCD loop. And I got in this OCD loop of checking stats, checking Facebook. This is just when Facebook came out in like 2006, 2007, checking my email and then checking sports scores. And you go back and they're always changing.

So you get in that loop. And so everybody listening, check your OCD loops and make sure that you are putting something in place that stops you, whether it's blocking yourself with something, you know, there's self-controlled.io, there's a bunch of things that you can do. Now, there's something that I love that you do later in your morning, and it leads me to stuff number three is work early, reward later. Don't work out in your top willpower time. And you and I know a lot of fitness entrepreneurs, very successful, but holy cow,

do they love to do the workout first thing in that morning magic time? And here's the thing. In the morning, you have the greatest discipline, willpower, and intention, which makes it easy to work out. But if you work out first and you try and write that sales copy later or do that presentation later, you'll start to find excuses for it. So as Mark Twain said, if you have to eat a frog, if your job is to eat that frog, the best thing to do is eat that frog first thing in the morning. And if you have to eat two frogs, the best thing to do is eat the biggest frog first. So Begros, did you always work out kind of at 9 or 10 in the morning or were you the type of person

who worked out first thing and when did you switch if you did i instinctively knew that working out after i checked off the the money boxes were important for me and it honestly and i don't feel i lose any more willpower or intention or drive by working out between the nine and ten o'clock hour versus waking working working up at five a m and working out you know between that five and six you're going to do it anyway you're not going to miss it anyway i'm not a little bitch i'm going to bring the thunder as long as it's in the morning in the evening i've seen i've seen you you work out at like 11 o'clock at night. I mean, one time you dragged me out at 8 o'clock at night to work out in Arizona.

It was basically like two in the morning for me. That was actually fun for me. I know you didn't enjoy it, but that was fun for me. No, I did. That's always good. So everybody listening, just understand that you've got to do the hardest thing first. And if you're working out first thing in the morning and doing the yoga, meditation, and turquip dance and all this stuff that you're doing, you just have a perverse form

of procrastination. I don't want you to do that. So work now, earn your rewards. And to that point, to that point, can I just look, look, look, as the CEO, as the person in charge, you probably have people under you who work for you, work with you, whatever term you want to use. And the bottom line is, if I know my team gets into the building at 8 o'clock in the morning, I want to have moved as much stuff onto their plate as possible first thing in the morning so they can start executing on that stuff. And so... Yeah, you don't want it the other way around. No, no. So I will work during that quiet time before, and that's the other thing, what you talk about, where if you wake up early

and enough, early enough in the morning and work when everyone else was sleeping, you have a lot of this universal energy that's focused on you. And look, if my phone's not blowing up for my staff because I'm working between six and seven and eight o'clock, by eight o'clock, I put the sales copy on their desk or in their inbox for them to make the website. Here's a broadcast to send out when you when you get into the office. Here's a post to put up. Here's the three emails and how to respond to that person

that wants to open up eight locations and Dubai. And once I've done that, dude, they can execute while I'm getting my fucking pump on, man, and that's the fucking thing. Exactly, exactly. So then the next thing,

in order to know exactly what to do the next day is you have to plan the night before. And if you haven't read any of my books, let me break it down the three steps. At the end of your workday, or sometime in the middle of your afternoon, when you're thinking about tomorrow, what you're going to do is, number one, you're going to do a brain dump. You're going to take all the jumbled up thoughts, things to do, emails to send, calls to make. You're going to get them all out.

We're just going to scribble out the 19 or 25 things that you have to do tomorrow. Step number two is you're going to organize it in a priority to-do list because if you're making your to-do list in the morning, you're already too late. Remember, we have the greatest discipline, willpower, and intention in the morning. And if you're spending that time making a list, you have really wasted that time. Now, the third thing that you're going to do is a little process planning to make the path the next morning smoother. So if Begros has to write sales copy, he'll jot down a couple of bullet points the night before. His subconscious mind works on it overnight. He wakes up the next morning.

He opens up his computer. It's not a blank screen. He's not going to get writers block. And he just crushes that sales copy three times faster than if he had just thought, oh, my goodness. now, he had started with his to-do list and thought, oh, I better write some copy. Yeah. Yeah, well, say that's how you do it. Sassy, that is how you do it.

And you know what, man, I think like anything else, it becomes a muscle. When you do it long enough, there's no effort required. And so people are like, yeah, but I'm not strong at that time or I'm not clear at that time. I promise you try it for 30 days and watch how like a muscle you'll build it and you'll be able to do it and you'll think of sport. Well, I'll tell you what, you know, I for a long time have never worked out early in the morning. And then I started traveling, you know, back when I started traveling a lot around 2011,

I had some flights at eight, nine in the morning that were across country. And it's like, man, I got to get my workout in because when I land, I got to do something. So I remember I got up at 4 o'clock in the morning one time. This was before I was getting up that early. It was getting up at like 5 in the morning. And I went right to the gym and I went, wow, I can have a good workout. I was just telling myself this lie, this myth for so long that I'm not good at working out in the morning or I can't work out before noon or all this junk. And it's the same with not writing or not doing hard work first thing in the morning.

You can train yourself because like a Navy SEAL does not, it's like, no, no, it's, listen, you want to have a firefight right now, but it's like it's two o'clock. And, you know, I don't usually get into my shooting zone until before. So you guys want to come back, you know, ring the doorbell this time. you know and then then we'll play no that's not how it's done if you're if you're a pro you're going to turn pro and you're going to turn it on and turn it off at will well said which leads us to point number five and i'll let you say it because it involves a curse word which i'm not allowed to say all right so basically you need a man up and you need to beat your inner bitch because your inner bitch wants to hit this news button it wants to negotiate

with your goals and dreams and the reality is that it many many times in life, you come to a crossroads. And do I hit the snooze button or not? And if you do hit that snooze button, you're telling your subconscious mind, I'll take 10 more minutes of interrupted sleep over living my path and purpose in life. And I do believe that that does tend to then set you up for more L's or losses for the day. And so what if you can just pop right up? Like what if you have a rule where when the alarm goes off, my feet got to touch the ground within the first 10 seconds? And you turn off the snooze feature. Like the only feature I have when my alarm goes off is stop. I have to I can manually reset my alarm and that already wakes me up.

You just go into you the fucking app and you turn off the snooze feature. Like it's a little toggle that Apple put in there. I'm sure the other brand, whatever, Android, has that too. But make it convenient to be successful. And so, and then when you're not feeling like it, let me tell you, there's a lot of times that I don't feel like doing something and I'll start negotiating my way out of it. Well, I don't feel like going to jujitsu, so I start negotiating my way out of it. Oh, okay, well, how am I going to feel if I'm out somewhere and say,

some dude wants to rape my wife. I guess I wasn't feeling like jujitsu, so I don't know how to defend my wife. So go ahead, honey, right? Like, you just, if you decide to not let your feelings determine your actions, you don't feel like it. Do it anyway. You're just going to do it with a little resistance, and then here's what's going to happen. Whether it's work or working out or eating right or anything, all of a sudden the endorphins will kick in. And this has happened to everyone. It's like, I didn't feel like going to the gym, but I went anyway. It was a shitty workout in the beginning. And then, man, the workout ended so awesome. It was just a great workout. I walked out with this pump. The veins were all splattered everywhere. It was like, how did that happen? The endorphins

started to pump. So do it anyway, and don't let your feelings and emotions talk you out of or negotiate you out of your goals and dreams. I'll tell you what, you know, even I don't negotiate with this news, but there's something that I'm building my way up to, which is this fasting on the first of every month. And it's funny. Like two weeks out, I'll be like, like, well, like, you know, the 1st of July is Canada Day. So, you know, maybe if we started at 7 o'clock at night and then went until 7, you know, be kind of different. Man, like, your brain will negotiate with you and you just have to build up that resistance.

And I love what you say about self-confidence is built by making a promise and keeping a promise to yourself. And every single time that I nailed that fast, like we just finished one the other day, one of my longest ones, like 34 hours. And I, you know, I was tempted. Somebody said, come on, just one snack at like 7 o'clock at night. I was like, no, I want it. And I couldn't even fall asleep that night. It was like, maybe I should have something to eat.

It'll help me fall asleep. And I lasted. And when you laps, you will build that self-confidence. So the five ways to have an amazing morning routine, no matter what the world is throwing at you, is stick to the script, build that game plan, work now, reward later, plan the next day tonight, and man up and beat that inner witch. Yes, there you go. Thank you. Dubbing that over.

Those are the five things you're going to help you dominate. And you can't let anything, you know, quarantine, lockdown, COVID. You can't let you get you off your game because you are a pro. And to that point, guys and gals, I got to tell you this, that like anything else, if you're looking for that one thing that's going to make you the next million dollars, $10 million, $100 million, there is no one thing that's going to that we can tell you. There are anyone can tell you that'll get you that. it's that one little win stacked with another win and another win and another win

where Craig you're just saying like look I went 34 hours I didn't want to go someone's like hey one little snack that's not going to do anything just one little snack and it's easy to start justifying why it's Canada Day it's this day it's that day well she's sexy and she's asking me to eat and she's my girlfriend so I'm going to do it and so you know I've seen pictures of Michelle she's beautiful I'm not saying she's sexy but she's beautiful she does the fast with me I'm super grateful because it's awesome to have support Right. Support. So anyway, so to that point, stack all the little wins. There is no one magical thing we're going to tell you that's going to make you the millies, but there's going to be all of these little winds stacked on top of each other that will make you the millies. And to that point, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to this episode of The Empire Show. Be sure to leave us a review on iTunes and all the different platforms that you're listening and watching the song. Give us a five-star review. And as always, don't forget to share this with your own mama.