Morning Rituals Of An Entrepreneur

I believe your day as an entrepreneur is a pure reflection of your morning rituals. How you start your day will determine the type of day you’re going to end up having. One of the best things you can do is develop the morning rituals of an entrepreneur.

Chances are, you already want to do this. In fact, a lot of people ask me, “Pat, I want to know how your day starts. What do you do in the morning? What time do you wake up. What time do you do this? What time do you do that?”

In this video, I’ll share with you exactly what I do in the morning, and I’ll also dive into the morning rituals of some other entrepreneurs that I respect.

Don’t Wing Your Morning Rituals.

Here’s something to keep in mind. You can’t wing your morning rituals. Think about it this way. Your day is all about momentum. Think of every day like a mountain. You wake up in the morning, and the higher the mountain goes, the more excited you’ll be at the start of the day, and the snowball will get bigger and bigger.

You wake up, and boom, your day starts. If you start your day with boom, boom, boom, boom, you have a great day. If you don’t have a great start, you’ve built a small mountain, and you don’t have a lot of opportunity to create momentum. So it’s very important to have morning rituals in place that will get your day off to a great start.

Everyone Has Different Morning Rituals

Not everyone has the same morning ritual. Some entrepreneurs are single, some are married. Some have kids, others don’t. So you have to figure out what works for you, but if you don’t get your morning ritual down, and you have any desire to compete as an entrepreneur, you are toast. Without morning rituals, you won’t be able to compete with the rest of the guys in the world of business.

With that in mind, let’s take a look of the morning rituals of some of the top entrepreneurs.

Gary Vee

• Wakes up at 6:00 AM
• Reads the news in the bathroom
• Before leaving the house he hugs his kids for five minutes
• Calls a family member while driving

Tony Robbins

• No specific wake up time, because of the traveling he does
• When he wakes up, does a cold plunge, submerging for a full minute under cold, cold water.
• Does breathing exercises
• Expresses Gratitude
• Prays

Mark Zuckerberg

• He wakes up at 8:00 a.m. (if he hasn’t been working all night)
• Wears the exact same shirt every day so he doesn’t have to spend a lot of time thinking about what he’s going to wear

Jack Dorsey

• He wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to meditate
• Goes on a six-mile jog

Richard Branson

• Doesn’t have a set time to wake up, but leaves his curtains open and when the sun rises, the light wakes him up, typically around 5:45 or 6:00 a.m.
• Swims around his island or goes kite surfing if it’s windy
• Plays tennis
• Eats a healthy breakfast

Simon Cowell

• We don’t know what time he wakes up
• Resets the snooze button twice
• Has a breakfast of:Hot water with lemon
• Papaya juice with lime
• Oatmeal
• Tea
• Three smoothies

Tory Burch

• Wakes up at 5:45 a.m.
• Immediately checks her work emails
• Gets her three boys out of bed
• Does a 45 minute exercise such as a quick walk

My Personal Morning Rituals

Before I get into my morning rituals, keep in mind that I’m married and have three kids all under the age of five. I run a company (PHP Agency) with a ton of employees and thousands of agents around the country selling insurance, annuities, and investment products.

You also have to know something about my dad. He has no filters. If you’re out of shape, and a guy, he’ll tell you. (He’s nicer to the ladies.) So a few months back he pulled me aside and said, “Hey, Mr. Body Builder. What happened to your six-pack? Now you have a one-pack.”

Now I love that, because I’d rather have the truth than someone telling me things just to make me feel good. So I got on the scale and found that I weigh 256. I’ve never weighed 256 before. Shortly after that, my daughter was born. And when a baby is born, you have two hours of sleep before waking up.

I started to feel it. My energy was dropping. I knew it because I could no longer hang until 10:00 or 11:00 at night if I was starting my day early. And my business requires me to hang for a long time because it requires me to have a lot of energy.

What You Need to Ask Yourself

There is a different formula for every single person, and you need to ask yourself how your energy is in the morning and how it is in the afternoon. Keep in mind that your competitors typically wake up earlier than you and are able to last longer than you.  That’s the only reason they’re growing faster than you and having a bigger business than you, whatever type of a business they have in place. That is if you’re competitive.

Listen in here for a detailed explanation of what my morning looks like.

Here’s the bullet point version:

• Wake up between 4:30 and 5:15 a.m. (time varies based on whether my training session is at 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m., but I’m getting into the habit of waking up at 4:45 regardless of the time of my training)
• Check email
• Listen to an audio book while driving or walking around
• Do daily affirmations
• Workout
• Cyrotherapy (If you don’t know what this is or if you want to see me doing it, watch this)
• Eat a good breakfast (essential for filling up your gas tank)
• Thinking, ideation, strategy, prayer
• Play with my kids if they wake up early, otherwise do it when I get home

A Different Schedule on the Weekends

Now one thing I’m going to tell you to give you some feedback on, this is what my schedule looks like Monday – Saturday. Sunday is playday, family day, fun day. On Sunday, I do whatever I can to have fun with my kids. I look forward to Sundays because we have a great time together. We play together, we enjoy each other’s company. My wife and I have a great time together. We either swim in the pool or go and do other fun things.

Then on Sunday night, I start preparing for the week, and I also typically do a Facebook Mentions on Sunday night. (If you haven’t already liked my Facebook Page, be sure to do so here.)

This will Cost You, But it’s Worth It

Now there’s one other thing that I recommend that if you can’t do it every week, is to have a massage every other week. Yes, it cost money, but it’s worth it, because it’s important to take care of your body.

Let me explain.

We are not the body. We are the spirit. We’re the mind, right? We live in this body. We need to take care of this body, and then it gives us a lot of miles. It’s like a car. You buy a car, and you drive in the car, but you’re not the car.

The driver dictates how long that car can last. And if you take care of your body, apart from things you can’t control such as cancer, it will last a long time. Focus on the things you can control such as your energy, weight, what you eat, and so on to take care of your body.

This is important because the longer your energy lasts, the better the odds that you’ll outlast your competitors. You need to maintain your health and energy to play at the highest level, because being an entrepreneur isn’t a three year game; it’s a 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 year play.

The play is constantly having the energy to come up with new ideas, engaging, sitting in boardrooms knowing you’ve got the fire, you’re in charge, you’re doing all the right things, and making the right decisions, not perfectly, but 51% of the time. The capacity, the purpose you have, the impact you can make in the world is massive, but you need a lot of energy to do that.

One of the Most Common Aspects of Morning Rituals

There is plenty of research on what people do in their morning rituals, but one of the most common things everyone does, is movement of the body, and proper nutrition. These things enable people to outlast their competitors.

The moment you win in the business is when everybody’s gone, when everyone’s tired, and you’re still at the office, coming up with ideas; everybody’s disappeared, but you’re left. You’re the last one standing. And that’s what it’s going to take, and you better have a lot of energy, stamina and endurance, to be able to compete in the world of capitalism.

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This article was originally published on PatrickBetDavid.com.