The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 557: Hal Elrod - How To Create a Morning Routine That Works For You

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com X/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 The SAVERS acronym – Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing. If you implement that consistently, you'll probably do better. 72% of people said they were not a morning person before implementing SAVERS. The makeup of a great sales professional: They are coachable... They bring energy and enthusiasm to the job... They are consistent. They can handle rejection and keep going. They focus on the process... Affirmations: First, affirm what you're committed to. Next, why is it a must for you, and finally, affirm the specific actions you will take and when. That's how you bring affirmations to life… Hal died for 6 minutes, broke 11 bones, suffered permanent brain damage, and was told by doctors that he would never walk again. Then, at age 37, he nearly died again when his heart, lungs, and kidneys were on the verge of failing, and he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer. "Any time you find yourself "wishing" you were further along than you are, or comparing where you are with where someone else is, keep in mind that when you finally get to point you've been working towards for so long, you never wish it would have happened any sooner. Instead, you see that the journey and the timing are perfect. So be at peace with where you are while maintaining a healthy sense of urgency to make the consistent progress each day that will ensure you get to wherever it is that you want to go. " "Those who only do what they feel like, don't do much. To be successful at anything you must take action even when you don't feel like it, knowing it is the action itself that will produce the motivation you need to follow through." "It's temporary. Tolerate it, accept it, embrace it, or enjoy it. Whatever it is, just know that it is temporary." "The moment you accept 100% responsibility for EVERY aspect of your life is the moment that you claim the power to change ANY aspect of your life. I think where people get caught up with this is when someone else is to blame for a situation. But understand that accepting responsibility is NOT the same as accepting blame. While blame determines who is at fault for something, responsibility determines who is committed to improving a situation. It really doesn't matter who was at fault; all that matters is that YOU are committed to improving and creating the circumstances you want for your life, regardless of who is at fault. That's what taking responsibility is all about."

Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of the learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off. Right. You'll also receive details about how my book The Pursuit of Excellence,

will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 6-6-866. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Back after seven and a half years, the great Hal Elrod has survived multiple near-death experiences, including a head-on car crash with a drunk driver that left him with 11 broken bones. And more recently, a rare form of cancer

that doctors gave him a 30% chance of... surviving. In addition to those incredible events, he's the author of 12 books, most notably The Miracle Morning, which has sold over 2 million copies. During this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss what Hal learned from his time as the number one cut-code knives salesperson in the company and why it would benefit all of us to learn how to sell. Then Howe shares the six practices that make up the miracle morning and how you can implement them tomorrow. Then he shared the deeply personal story of being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that gave him a 30% chance of survival

and how he beat it. So good. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy Howe Elrod. How, it is seven and a half years later. You're back on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. Dude, thanks for having me. And I say we don't wait another.

That's a long time. Too long. Between coming back on. I think that we need to cut that in half, like in a few years maybe. Let's go somewhere a little bit sideways for a second because it's something I'm most curious about. You're one of the greatest cut go knife salespeople of all time. What does it take to be an excellent sales professional? I think that it's not about reinventing the wheel.

So I think number one, you have to be coach. And that's one thing that in Cutco, mostly college students were beginning an internship or whatever with Cutco. And that's how, so most of their sales force was college students back in the day and with zero sales experience. So they're very much like, here's the exact word for word script that you say on the phone when you call somebody. Here's the word for word script that you say when you show them the product. And you roleplay that over and over and over again during your three day training. So number one, it's not reinventing the wheel and following an approach that works. Number two, it's bringing enthusiasm.

I think that's my greatest sales attribute is that I'm just genuinely enthusiastic. And so I was like, whoa, these knives are amazing. I'd show a customer like, check these out. Look at how cool these are. Right. So there's that transfer of enthusiasm. And then number three is consistency, resiliency, like that's it. is you're going to fall, you're going to fail, you're going to get rejected, and most people

can't handle that or they don't allow themselves to handle that. But if you follow those three steps, if you follow a proven approach to selling, you bring enthusiasm to the presentation, and then you just keep doing it. You keep trying and you keep trying over and over and over for as long as it takes. Your success is inevitable. They train everybody that way. That's true. They coach everybody to do it that way. And yet, you still have rose to the top. What was the difference between you and the majority of people who were selling cut-co knives door to door?

Yeah. So it might be step two and three, right? Like the enthusiasm, the personality that I brought to the presentation. And it's just there's more than enthusiasm. I would say it's just like, it's just how you show up, right? showing up with love and intention and energy and genuinely caring about the customer across from you and being enthusiastic, right? So that's the piece of how like my average order size was higher than most salespeople or most people, most of my peers. My average referral percentage,

that's probably the biggest thing is I got two, three times as many referrals from a higher percentage of customers because people really enjoyed the time they spent with me. And then that third piece. So that's like the quality, if you will, of like how good you can do at your job. But then that third piece is just that sticking with it. And I know there are salespeople that I'm friends with where they actually did not have a fast start. They were not very good for an extended period of time. But they just kept with it. It might have taken them like a year. Then they finally figured it out. Now I have one friend in particular I'm thinking about. He's been with Cutco. He started right before I did. Now I left, you know,

what, 15 years ago, he's still there. But he was always like a very average, if not below average sales rep. And I don't know how long it took him, but he's now one of the top sales reps in the company 20 years later. So I worked in the profession of selling for the first 12 years of my career after I finished playing football after college. And I didn't know it at the time. But I think it was the best possible first job for me to have. Smile and Dial, Cold calling new business sales. And Really tough. Lots of rejection. Lots of being hung up on. Lots of people who didn't want me to call and just had to keep going and going. Right. You're not really going to win with brilliance. You got to win with endurance. You just got to go. You got to go. You got to go. And I'm so grateful now looking back because, and I want you to expand on this too, I think selling is a part of every single role we will ever have in our lives. Even if you don't carry a bag or have a quota, we all are in sales every day. What have you taken from your time as a sales professional that has now helped you with what you've done since selling Cutco.

I think one of the biggest takeaways, and to your point, like you mentioned the rejection and this and that, like that just simply sales enables you to develop resiliency that most professions don't, you know, right? You're not getting rejected if you're working at the movie theater, right? You're not failing at the movie theater. So in sales, it's a microcosm for life's adversity at an amplified and accelerated pace. right so occasionally the average person gets rejected occasionally they fail but when you have it happen every single day and then you don't do what feels right which is giving up which is why that's

the answer to your question why do most salespeople not do well because it's a difficult profession and they give up before they give themselves a chance to actually see what's possible for them but the greatest lesson one of the greatest lessons i learned is it's what i call the power of the process. And I created this while I was at Cutco, I was going through a period where I was in like a slump, not selling for a few weeks, not getting good results. And I remember one night on the phone, I made 20 phone calls or whatever it was. And I got zero appointments and a bunch of people hung up on me. And you're a human being. You can only take someone who are going, don't ever call here again. You disgust me. And you're like, I'm a nice person. Just because I'm in sales. I'm not a horrible

monster. And I remember I like, I got off at my last call. I was like, dude, I can't do this anymore. Like, I just want to go get a regular job where I clock and clock out. And then that night, as I was falling asleep, I had this epiphany. And I went, okay, wait a minute. I'm emotionally attached to my results, which is very normal. Human beings are emotionally attached to their results. So good results on the phone, you feel good and you keep going.

Bad results, you want to give up. Good results on the sales week. I had so many bad results that it was compounding. And I went, wait a minute. at the end of this year, how much cutco I sold is actually dependent on how many times I picked up the phone and dialed a phone number. Let me give you a simple math equation, right? 100 calls will equal X amount of sales. 200 calls will equal double that amount of sales, right?

Very simple. Now, the particulars of, oh, yeah, but this was a bad day. This was a bad week. This was a bad phone session. And if you zoom out, none of that really matters. And so I had this epiphany. I go, well, wait a minute. The only thing I can control is how many times I pick up the phone and dial a phone number.

And at the end of the year, how much I sold will be determined by how many times I picked up a phone and dialed a phone number. If I 2x my calls, I'll 2x my sales. And it was like this head scratching. Is it really that simple? So I went, okay, I got a new goal. Instead of setting sales goals every week, I'm just going to commit to making X number of phone calls each day, five days a week, regardless of my results. And if someone hangs up on me on the phone

and says, don't ever call here again, click, I'm going to smile and go, that was a fastest call I could have made. Cool. I'm that much closer to my 20 calls for the day. And so I started that process. And literally, it completely changed my psychology, where when people went, instead of when they hung up on me, I just was like, great, fast call on to the next. And I made my 20 calls. And it didn't matter if I scheduled three appointments or zero appointments or seven appointments because I was in it for the long run. I wasn't worried about that phone time session because I knew if I zoomed out, it would all average out. And so what was crazy is my sales manager hated it. You go, what's your goal for the week? I'm like, I'm going to make 100 calls this week. He's like,

no, but what can I put you down? What can I count on you to sell? I'm like, we'll see what that average is out to. It'll probably be different every week. And he's like, I drove him crazy. But here's the crazy part. There were roughly 60,000 sales reps in the Cutco company at that time. When I tried this approach, the first three months of that year was when I tried it, I was the number one sales rep out of 60,000 sales reps. But here's the best part. They were still riding the emotional roller coaster of sales. Good days, bad days. I want to quit. This sucks. I hate it. My job was cake. I just picked up the phone 20 times a day and called a number. and that was it. That was my job. I didn't care what happened after that. And then I brought my best

to the appointments, of course. But it's amazing, right? So it completely shifted the psychology, enjoyed my job, wasn't stressed, didn't care about the rejection at all, and became the number one sales rep with the easiest job of anybody else that I was competing against. We're talking about process-based goals versus results-based goals. Think about your life now. Do you set similar goals that or just focus almost purely on the process, divorcing yourself from the result. How do you approach it? And let's go beyond sales. Welcome to use any example you want.

But how do you set these types of goals for what you're doing now? For example, I'll use one really simple example is the work. I used to have workout goals of. I want to put on 10 pounds of muscle. I want to get, dude, I just work out five days a week. I don't care what happens. I don't measure it. I don't step on the scale.

I don't care. Like I'm just in it for the effort, right? Like for the process. When I was writing, writing my books, it was like my daily process. I'm committed to writing for X amount of hours a day or one hour a day, five days a week, no matter what. And then occasionally I would do like, I'm committed to like the 20 calls. I'm committed to writing a thousand words a day no matter what. And what I, a friend of mine who's an author gave me a little tip. He said the problem is most authors edit while they write. And so they don't write very much. And I could totally relate. I'm like, I yeah, it's what I do, man. It takes me, I'll spend an hour massaging a paragraph. And he said, you'll never get your book done that way. So he said, turn the brightness completely off on your computer screen, set a timer for 30 minutes or an hour, whatever it is. You can't see what you're writing and you're making mistakes, but you just have to keep going and then you go back and edit

later. So that's committed to the process of I'm going to just keep typing for an hour and I can't even go back and edit. And so that was really helpful to make progress on my book. Let's get into Miracle Morning. When we talked about this years ago, this was like a newer thing. Now it is talked about so much that I think people are almost sick of it. And you hear, you know what I mean? And I'm curious though. And you started this movement, dude, which is insane. And now it is just everywhere. What's it been like for you going on this journey of Miracle Morning, one of the first guys, if not the first guy who's really focused on this. and now the entire world, what's your morning routine? What's your morning routine? Everybody's asking the question. What's that ride been like for you?

Yeah, it's surreal. But and it's also, in full transparency, this might sound weird to say. When I was in my 20s, I did a lot of work around disassociating myself from my ego, right? I read a lot of Eckhart Tolley and Ken Wilbur and Andrew Cohen, these like enlightenment authors, if you will, right? And I really got present to, oh, man, I've been living for my ego. Like my ego has gotten me this far, but I don't, I want to transcend my ego. I want to live beyond it. I want to come from a place of a spiritual connection to purpose and God and all of these things and not because I want the coolest car, make the most money, or be the best or any of that.

And so that work I did before Miracle Morning. And so I almost have some people, you might even say an unhealthy disassociation for my ego where I actually have trouble feeling great about what I've done. If that makes sense, here's a good example. I have a friend that I went to high school with Brian. And he was in an event with me and these people were coming up and they're like, you changed my life, Hal, your book changed my life. And they walked away and hit he from a place of ego was like,

dude, that must be amazing. Like that must be so cool. I'm like, I appreciate it. It feels good. But I almost try to be more in their shoes. And I don't feel cool for it. I just try to understand, wow, what is that like for them? And how amazing that they got to have that transformation.

And so, yeah, so it's really weird. Like, it doesn't, I don't drink alcohol very much. But sometimes if I have a beer and I get a little buzz, that's actually when I'm most connected to like, dude, I've done some amazing stuff. That's where a little bit of alcohol will bring my ego out. And I actually get to feel like, hey, great job, buddy. So it's almost an area of improvement where I like have to work on really feeling proud of myself, if you will. I don't know if that's the right word, but for the work I've done.

But it's just been amazing to see. I just feel called. I feel like it's not about me. This is not about me. This is a mission that God put in my life. It's bigger than me. I'm just doing the best I can to keep sharing the miracle morning and forwarding the mission because I see it. Here's the last thing I'll say.

Millions of people have read the book. And on Amazon alone, there's 32,000 reviews. And so many of them are like, this saved my life. This changed my life. So where I come from every day is I have a responsibility to share this with as many people as I possibly can for as long as I possibly can. That's it. So it's not about me. It's not about it's not about the recognition.

It's not about that. It's about I just feel like I have to do this. I'm supposed to do this. And it's what I was put on earth to do. Let's dig into it for a second because I don't want to make any assumptions. I want to go through the savers acronym again. I think it's worthwhile. It's been a while since we've talked about it. And for the people who haven't heard of this and haven't implemented, this could change lives.

So can you walk through Savers and what that means to you and what that could mean for somebody else if right now their current morning routine is like wake up, hit snooze, try to take care of the kids, wander their way to work, whatever it may be. Let's get practical now. Yeah. So let me answer this in a sentence. Earlier today, my team, we were on a call and they're like, how would you answer? answer what the miracle morning is in a sentence. So this is perfect timing because I just answered that. I said the miracle morning is a six step morning ritual that can be done in as little as six minutes a day that sets you up to be at your best first thing in the morning in a peak state so you can win the day, right? And even if you're not a morning person, that's an important caveat because the majority of people that do the miracle morning every day, roughly 72% have said that they were not a morning

person before they read the book. So it's an important piece of it was like when I wrote the book, it was holding someone's hand of like, if you've never been a morning person your entire life and you don't even want to become one, I get it, neither was I. Here's how you can get to the point of where you go from. Yeah, this idea makes sense, maybe for other people to I'm actually going to do it to, wow, this is a lifelong habit that I'm never going to change. So the six practices, you mentioned the savers. This is the acronym that represents these six practices, is S-A-V-E-R-S. The first S is for silence.

That is your meditation or your prayer time. It's starting the day with creating that mental and space for you to calm your nervous system, get centered. And usually that's where your best ideas emerge, right? When you ask Ray Dalio, billionaire, his number one key to his financial success, he says, it's his daily meditation practice. The A in Sabres is for affirmations. Now, affirmations, I believe, are the most effective.

form of personal development. They're my favorite form of the sabers or favorite practice. I think they also have the worst reputation, like they have a bad rap, because affirmations, the way they've been taught to us is usually in a very ineffective way, cheesy, inauthentics. For example, one of two problems with the way you probably heard affirmations. Number one is we're taught to lie to ourselves, like, and say something that we don't believe is true, but we wish we're true. Such as if you're struggling financially, some well-meaning self-help guru may have told you, just tell yourself, I am wealthy, right? Like, just say it.

And eventually you'll believe it. The problem is the truth will always prevail. If you say, if you state something as if it were true and you don't actually believe it, you are creating an unhealthy internal conflict, right? If you're struggling financially and you go, I am wealthy, your subconscious is like, No, you're not. Right? Now you're fighting yourself.

Like, shut up, I'm doing my affirmations. So the truth will always prevail. Lying is never the optimal strategy. The second problem is we're taught to use this flowery passive language that produces a almost magical result without any effort on our part. Example, I am a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance. Like, that's a very popular affirmation that has somehow,

some waste of the test of time, but it's delusional. Like, you're not a money magnet. That's not even a thing, right? The odds of you attracting financial wealth and prosperity by just sitting on the couch affirming that you're a magnet are very unlikely, right? I'm not saying it's never happened, but it's highly unlikely. Now, the reason I think people like that formula is because they're like, if they look at their bank balance on their phone on their bank and they're like,

oh my God, I'm in the red. Oh, I need to do my, like, I'm stressed. I need my affirmations. I am a money magnet. They're like, oh, yeah, that feels better. Oh, money is going to magically flow into my life and everything is going to be better. Okay, that feels a lot better than my reality, right? It's a delusion.

Here are three quick steps to produce affirmations that are practical, actionable, rooted in truth, and results oriented. Step one, affirm what you're committed to. I am committed to blank no matter what there's no other option, right? In your life, you don't get what you want because you want it. only get what you are fully committed to. So I'm committed to blank no matter what. That blank might be an outcome. I'm committed to losing 10 pounds. I'm committed to increasing my revenue by 50% this year, right? I'm committed to growing my team by it could be a measurable outcome. It could also be the

process we talked about, the activity. I'm committed to working out 30 minutes a day, four days a week. I'm committed to making 30 sales calls a day, five days a week, right? Whatever the commitment is, it could be an activity or an outcome. Step two, affirm why it's a must for you. Affirm why it is a must for you. What are the reasons that you are, that is a commitment that you're willing to make and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve? So for me, that's usually two, three, four, five bullet points. I'm committed because how is it going to affect me? How is it going to affect my family? Like, what are the biggest benefits of that commitment becoming a reality? And then step three, which specific actions will you take and win,

which affirm which specific actions you will take and when you will take those actions that will virtually ensure that you are moving closer and closer to that commitment that you've made. And I'll give you a quick example of how I applied this when I had cancer. Now, before I give you the example,

I use this formula in every area of my life. I have as a dad, I affirm what I'm committed to, why it's a must for me, and which specific actions I'll take and win. I do that as a husband. I do it in my business. I do it right in my fitness.

Every aspect of my life follows that formula. When I had cancer six years ago, I was dying as the rare aggressive form of cancer and I was given a 20 to 30% chance of surviving. I'm going to give this example because this shows you how powerful this is. I started out being very afraid that I was going to die. Again, I only had a 20 to 30% chance of surviving, which the opposite of that would be,

that means I had a 70 to 80% chance of dying. Now, I had a 7-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son. So being a dad, a parent, being told you're probably going to die. And when I went in the hospital, my heart was failing, my lungs were failing, and my kidneys were failing. So this cancer, it shuts your organs down. And I was already on death's doorway. And I was afraid.

I thought, man, I'm optimist. I'm an optimist. But what if I do everything right and I still die? There was a lot of what if. And then I realized, okay, fear is not. serving me, right? You can apply this to fear of your financial goals with the economy right now. You name it. For me, it was the ultimate fear of like, I'm going to die and leave my kids without a dad. So I followed these three steps for my affirmations formula. Step one, affirm what you're

committed to. I'm committed to beating cancer and living to be 100 plus years old alongside Ursula and the kids, no matter what, there is no other option. I read that Ryan every single day, multiple times a day during the miracle morning, but multiple times a day, whenever I felt the fear, I realize fear does not serve me. I need to have faith that I can beat this cancer. And so I read that affirmation over and over. Step two, why it's a must for you. I'm committed to meeting cancer for Ursula because I promised her forever and a day. I'm committed to being cancer for Sophia and Halston, my kids, because they need their daddy's love, guidance, and leadership, and I want to watch them grow up. Number three, I'm committed to being cancer for my mom and dad because they already

lost a child. My sister died when I was younger. And they don't deserve to lose another one. Number four, I'm committed to beating cancer for myself because I deserve to live a long, happy, healthy life. And number five, I'm committed to beating cancer for the millions of people who are themselves battling cancer or some of their disease and may not be blessed with the knowledge and resources that I have. And it's my responsibility to figure out how to beat my cancer so that I can help them on their healing journey. Those five reasons, those were my must. They were so compelling, Ryan, that I was willing to do whatever it take. And when I was sick from chemo, when I was exhausted, when I didn't want to do it anymore, those five reasons were the fuel that enabled me to

keep moving forward. And in that last step, which actions will you take and win? It was, I won't go to the details of the exact. I had a whole list of holistic practices, but the high level was I will combine the best of Western medicine and do the chemo, but I will not let my life be in the hands of a doctor that has no skin in the game if I die. I will take 100% responsibility for relentlessly researching the best holistic protocols and practices to cure myself of cancer and do that in conjunction with Western medicine. I believe that affirmation literally saved my life. Wow.

Thank you for sharing. I remember following along how your post, Ursula's post, and it was just heartbreaking. I'm like, this is the guy, like the Miracle Morning guy is going to die. I remember saying that. And it was just devastating. And so I remember Ursula's post actually, like I think when you were cleared or whatever remission, I don't know exactly. And she, and it was like an emotional day. And I don't know you that well, but I was like living it through you, man.

I didn't know all of that went into it, though, and that combination of, yeah, I'm going to do what I got to do here with the doctors. But I'm also not just going to leave it in somebody else's hands. I'm going to take ownership, both for the affirmations as well as like studying and research and whatever it's going to take. that is wild man yeah thank you yeah i remember that it was a selfie video that ursler recorded we got the news that i had i was officially cancer free and yeah man it was how are you now how are you feeling now good man it's been what do we at six seven years out from when i was diagnosed and when i stopped chemo was may of 2020 so it's been over three years since i stopped chemo and that's really what i don't count when i was they called me in remission because i was

still poisoning my body with chemotherapy, right? Which that's a whole, another, whole other topic. But anyway, so three and a half years out without any chemo. And there's definitely, I did 650 hours of chemotherapy. So it just, it wrecks your body, man. My, my bones density, my, I've got, there's all sorts of health issues that I'm the healthiest I've ever been in terms of how I live my life. But I have just lingering and lasting damage that was done by the chemo that I'll have to deal with the rest of my life. Oh my goodness. Okay. So A's affirmations. Let's go to V. The V is for visualization. And I'll just start by saying that the world's greatest athletes, almost all of them swear by visualization.

Now, the way they use visualization is very different than how most business people use visualization. Or just the average person uses it the way they've been taught by these, again, meaning self-help gurus. Like make a vision board, right? Just see the end result. So it's compelling. There's value to that. But it's only half of the equation, if you will. It's only, to me, it's one step out of two steps, the second being more important.

Here's what I mean. Step one, visualize the end result, see what it's going to see or what it's going to look like when you finally achieve what you're working towards. Feel what that's going to feel like while you see it. The benefit in that is that will drive you, that will compel you emotionally to want to make that vision a reality. However, if that's all you do, it can be counterproductive because you can control. trick your brain into thinking that outcome is a foregone conclusion, independent of any effort by you because you just keep seeing it. So your brain thinks it's going to happen. But it's not

without you doing the thing that's going to get you there. So the second step in effective visualization is visualize yourself doing the activity that you need to do today, putting yourself in a peak mental and emotional state. So, for example, I hated running. I really still hate running, but I ran a 52-mile ultramarathon after I did the Miracle Morning because I was asking myself, what's level 10 success in every area of my life? Like, and that's how my miracle morning was designed around what's my level 10 goal in each area of my life. Then I would create affirmations for each of those areas following those three steps. Then every morning, I would visualize, not necessarily all of the goals, but whatever I needed to really focus on that day.

So an example was when I was training for this marathon, I hated running. And very often, we don't like doing the thing that we need to do. If you're in sales, I've never met a salesperson that's like, dude, I love getting on the phone every day and making my 20 calls. No, right? You have to do it, but it's not usually the most fun part. So human nature is to procrastinate and put off the things that you don't feel like doing. And so for me, my alarm was set on my phone every day at 7 a.m. It's like, that's what I'm going to go run. And human nature, and what I would find is I would, I'll just, I'll run tomorrow.

Like, I can miss a day or two or three or four, right? So what I started doing is I started using my visualization practice where I spent about a minute or two, visualizing, crossing the finish line of the marathon. So I get excited about it. That's going to be, how is that going to feel? It's going to be amazing. That's step one, but step two is more important. I would visualize my phone alarm going off at 7 a.m.

And I would literally imagine myself picking my phone up off my coffee table and turning off the alarm. Then I would visualize myself walking into my bedroom, getting dressed in my running clothes, walking out through my living room to the front door, opening the front door, staring at the sidewalk that I was about to go run on. And then I would start reciting my affirmations. I'm committed to completing this 52-mile ultramarathon on October 20, 2009, no matter what, there is no other option. The reason I'm doing this is to become the person that is capable of doing such a thing that I don't even know who that person is, but I can't

wait to become him. In order to achieve this goal, I will follow the non-runners marathon trainer training plan. There was a book called the non-runners marathon trainer for non-runners that wanted to run a marathon. So, hey, you hate running? Here's how you get there. And while I visualize, I would see the sidewalk and I would get myself excited to go on a run. And then here's the beauty of that. This is the power of that. You can apply this to whatever you need to do today to move forward to achieve your goals. When the alarm went off on my phone at 7 a.m., human nature would have been to procrastinate.

But that is not what I visualized that morning. It's not what I mentally rehearsed. So it's not what happened. Almost like I was a robot. When you visualize in this way, you're programming your subconscious model. to do the thing and feel the feelings that you're visualizing. So I got up, went in my bedroom, got dressed, went out the door, opened the door, got flooded with positive emotions as I saw the sidewalk and went for my run.

So that's the power of visualization in that way. I love how you bring that to life. Okay. What's the E? The E and savers is for exercise. And there's not rocket science here. It's the idea that you don't have to go to the gym in the morning, but you should do at least 60 seconds of jumping jacks, do some yoga, some stretching,

whatever. The point is to wake up your nervous system and get the blood and oxygen flowing into your brain so that you have more mental clarity and more physical energy that last the morning and throughout the day. Also, we only do get this one body. When it comes to exercise, there are certain things out of our control, but if you have like a current body that works with legs and arms and everything and you can move, I feel like we're doing a distance. service, we're being ungrateful for this working body if we don't use it. We don't put it to use and keep it and try our best at least to do everything within our own power to keep it functioning and hopefully improving and getting stronger as we age. That's one of the things, few things we do

have control over is like what we decide to do with it. And that's why I'm just shocked when I see like people not doing that. I think that's almost that's just mandatory. We have to be pushing ourselves physically. Yeah. And it has such a mental effect. Like if you, if you exercise in the morning, part of doing the miracle morning is like you've already won before the day even starts. Like if you've done your savers, you've already meditated affirmations. Your mind, essentially one way to put it is that the miracle morning enables you to start every day in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state. And to me, we owe that to ourselves and we owe it to those we love and those we lead to start every day in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state.

exercise, of course, is a part of that. How about R? The R is for reading. And again, not rocket science here, but we're only one book away from learning a strategy to improve our marriage or improve our health or improve our leadership ability or improve our right or improve our mornings. The Miracle Morning, of course, is the next book. I would encourage you all to read.

But the update and expanded edition, the here's a little bonus tip. If I ask anyone what their highest priority in their life is, if they have a family, it's usually family, right? Oh, it's my family. I often ask that when I give a speech and all the hands go up family. And then I say, if I were to look at your schedule, would it be consistent with that answer? And very few hands go back up. It's like, no, I'm a workaholic, right? So I have a little self-imposed rule where I'm not allowed to read a business book in the morning until I've read a book on either marriage or parenting, even just three, four, five pages to remind myself that a family is my highest priority. I'm proving that by I focus first on learning how to be a better dad or a better

husband before I learn a better CEO or a leader. And then once I've read that, then I've earned the right to focus on my next highest priority, which is my leadership, my business, etc. Do you have some favorite books from a recent reading, whether it's on family parenting? My favorite book for Choose Her Every Day is a book that it was actually a blog post that transformed my marriage and now it's a book. It's by Brian Reeves. Choose her every day. And it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman that it applies. And then as a dad, the book Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, by Meg, I can think her last name, but that's one of my favorite books of all time. And she has one called Boys Should Be Boys for the Son, Son relationship, but Strong Father,

strong daughters was one of favorites. Choose her every day. Good books. Okay. How about the S? The final S is for scribing. Scribing is a fancy word for writing or journaling, but the J or W would have made the acronym awkward, right? And this is the simple, the magic of putting pin to paper, of getting a thought out of your head and putting it in front of you. And that's done in two different powerful ways to do that. Number one is getting stressful thoughts out of your head and putting it on paper.

So there's three things that I scribe when I write. It's number one, is there anything that I need to let go of? Like anything that's been stressing me out, that I'm feeling angry or frustrated about that I need to get out of my head, put it on paper so I can disassociate a little bit and realize I'm not that thing. I don't have to let that stress overwhelm me. I don't have to embody that emotional turmoil. I can get it out of my head, put it on paper and go, okay, there it is. I can deal with that later or now or whatever. But that's an amazing thing when you get out of your head and on paper.

Number two is what am I grateful for? And I write down what I'm grateful for, but important piece of that, Ryan, is my hand goes on my heart. and I really feel deep gratitude. It's not about just thinking it and writing it down. It's about embodying it with your body, your emotions, really feeling that gratitude so it penetrates you. And the number three is I look at my to-do list. I usually have 100 things on there, at least 10 or 15,

and I say, okay, have everything on my to-do list today. What's the number one most important thing that will move the needle in my life or business that I'm committed to focusing on and putting effort in today before I get to anything else on the list? again, human nature is to gravitate towards the easy things, the things with the least consequence, those that are within our comfort zone. But very often we procrastinate on the things that actually matter. So as I transition from my miracle morning into my workday, scribing allows me as I, that's like the bridge, like, okay, I just, I just finished the miracle morning. Now it's time to

transition. What's the number one thing that I need to get done before I move on to two, three, four and five. And I want to wrap this part up by sharing, I'm going to paraphrase what Robert Kiyosaki said. So if you're listening right now, Robert Kiyosaki is the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He's one of the biggest advocates. I'm so grateful, one of the biggest advocates of the Miracle Morning. I gave him a copy of the book at an event that I spoke at that he was the headline speaker. I was his warm up act. I didn't think he'd read it. I was a self-published author back, probably back when you and I did the podcast like 2015, I think. And I got an email from his assistant three weeks later. She said, hey, Roberts read the Miracle Morning three times.

And my jaw dropped right there. Like, one of my favorite authors has read my book. What? Three times? That's crazy. And she said he's doing the Miracle Morning almost every day. It's changing his life. And he wants to have you on Rich Dad Radio. And I was just blown away. I'll be on there again tomorrow, I think, my third time on tomorrow. But anyway, he, this is what I want to paraphrase. At the end of our interview, he said, how? the miracle morning is changing my life and he said it's because of the savers of course that's what the miracle morning that's the engine that drives it he said if you were to study successful people he goes you'd be hard pressed to find any successful person on the planet that doesn't swear

by at least one of the savers and attribute their success to that practice he said maybe a lot of success people do two or three of them maybe the exercise they read and they might have like a meditation practice. He said, but I've never heard of anyone before you wrote The Miracle Morning. I never heard of anyone that did all six of the most timeless proven personal development practices of all time. And he said, if you do one of them, it'll change your life. But when you do all six, he said, it does create miracles. You named the book correctly. He said it's created miracles in my life. And so I love that idea that, yeah, you can do any one of the savers and it'll be life changing. but when you do all six, it really does create really profound transformation in your personal

and your professional life. And he wrote the forward to the updated version. That is right. Yeah, he did write the forward. Yeah, forward by Robert Kiyosaki. How cool is that? Yeah, really cool, man. And he was in the Miracle Morning movie.

In fact, that's actually my friend who's a filmmaker was trying to get me to make the Miracle Morning documentary. And I was like, dude, I'm so busy. I can't even take this on right now. And then when Robert had me on his show, like a light ball. Bob went off and I was like, wait a minute, that documentary that my friend Nick wants to make, I bet Robert would be in it because he was so passionate about the Miracle Morning. So I called Nick. I'm like, hey, if Robert says he'll be in the movie, I'll do the movie.

Because if he's in it, we can name drop Robert, if you will. We can leverage his credibility. And I'm sure we could other people in the film. And Robert said yes, right out the gate. And then now the Miracle Morning documentary has Mel Robbins and Brendan Breschard and Lewis Howes and Robin Sharma. just these people that are like my idols that are all in the movie. How important is the night before leading into the Miracle Morning? I love that. It's great that you ask that because, so first of all, I've been asked for years about what, how, what's your evening ritual?

Do you have an evening routine? And I've been embarrassed for years to be like, no, not really. I just go to bed early. That's my evening ritual, like so I can wake up early. However, in the new book, in the new Miracle Morning update and expanded edition, there's a chapter called the Miracle Evening. It's a 22-page bohemoth of a chapter that breaks down a seven-step evening ritual. And there's an acronym, Slumbers, S-L-U-M-B-E-R-S.

That makes up the evening ritual. Here's the thing is that I have always said, even though I didn't have a really a legit evening ritual until probably about a year ago, I did always say that the Miracle Morning starts the night before. It starts the night before by A, going to bed on time, you're getting a good night's sleep. Also, I've always used what I call bedtime affirmations, and those were even into the original book,

where before bed, I read these affirmations that set my mindset for sleep and for how I'm going to feel when I wake up. Because something I realize early on is that, when you think about this, I think we can all relate. Our first thought in the morning is almost always whatever the last thought was before we went to sleep.

If you go to bed thinking, oh, my God, I got to wake up tomorrow. I got to deal with this thing. I'm going to be so stressed out. As soon as you become conscious in the morning, go, oh, God, it's Tuesday. I have to do that thing, right? And even deeper than that is whatever emotional state we dwell in before we go to bed, which is often based on what we're thinking, right? But the emotional state we dwell in is often the emotional state we wake up in.

So I realize that being intentional about the thoughts that you think before you go to sleep and the emotional state that you dwell in is consequential. It's crucial. And so the miracle evening gives this process of how to wind down in the evening, let go of stressful thoughts, replace them with thoughts of peace and safety and gratitude and set yourself up to sleep better and to wake up feeling like a million bucks and take on the world, if you will. Yeah. So I think the evening is really important. The new updated and expanded edition, The Miracle Morning, the not so obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life before. 8 a.m. The original sold millions and millions has impacted so many people. And I'm super

grateful for you how one for coming on many years ago and now coming back and writing this updated expanded version of the book. I'm just so grateful that you're here, man. I remember those posts thinking about like, oh, this is not good. And now here you are just absolutely crushing it. It's awesome, dude. It's so good to see you. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, it did not look good, man, the odds were not with me, but the right mindset, I think, can get you through anything. Where would you send to my viewers, listeners to find out more online? So the Miracle Morning book, you can get it wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, you name it. But MiracleMorning.com is the hub for everything Miracle Morning.

And when I say everything Miracle Morning, I'm talking about there are a lot of free resources. The Miracle Morning movie documentary, you can watch that at Miraclemorning.com. there is a Miracle Morning app, which has now over 2,000 five-star reviews. So people love the Miracle Morning app. It's for both iOS and Google. And then the Miracle Morning community is a Facebook group with 300,000 people. And then, of course, the book is to me, that's how you're actually going to dig in, have your hand held and walk through, how to transform your life one morning at a time.

And you can join the millions of people that have had those great results. Love it, man. Thanks again for being here. And let's make sure we don't have as much time past. between this talk and our next one. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Agreed, brother. Thank you so much, Ryan.

I appreciate you. Awesome, man. Thanks, Howe. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this eye-opening conversation with Hal Rod. A few takeaways from my notes.

The makeup of a great sales professional. Remember, we're all in sales every day, regardless if that's in your job title. One, they are coachable. Two, they bring energy and enthusiasm to the job. Three, they are consistent. They can handle rejection and keep going. They focus on the process. Next, the savers acronym, silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing.

If you implement that consistently, I will bet you will get better each day. And let's focus on the affirmations part, since that can seem kind of weird for some people. Howell describe this really well. First, affirm what you're committed to. Next, why is it a must for you? And finally, affirm the specific actions you will take and win. That's how you bring affirmation.

to life and make them as useful as possible. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Hal Elrod. I think it will help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you continue to go to Ryanhawk.net, which launches you and Apple Podcast. And once you're there, you write a thoughtful review and rate the show, hopefully five stars. By doing that, you are giving me the opportunity. to do what I love on a daily basis, and for that, I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so, so much. Talk soon. Can't wait.