Momentum Podcast: 460

Create A Daily Advantage

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

Don't we all wish we had the upper hand? I know that I always want to hold the advantage in my market and in my everyday life. There is a simple way that you can start building your daily advantage. It's a simple concept that you might have heard about before, but maybe not explained in this way. I want to talk to you about morning routines. If you have a morning routine that supports you and creates momentum, you will be blown away by what you can achieve. Make your first hour your best hour and be energized for the whole day. Every day is game day for an entrepreneur so make every day count. 

If you're ready to create a morning routine but you're not quite sure where to start, you can check out mine.Go to morning.charfen.com – Get inspired, take away some ideas, or even give my routine a try for yourself and see how it can help you.

Full Audio Transcript

As an entrepreneur, you want an advantage anywhere you can get one. In fact, I would say we want to have an unfair advantage wherever we compete. We want to have an unfair advantage in our market because you want a market that's a blue ocean, not a red ocean, so you don't have to compete. We want an unfair advantage with our clients, we want to be the person that knows their pain better than anyone else and we also want an unfair advantage day today. There is one way you can get an advantage on your competition, the people around you and for yourself every single day. I'm about to share it with you.

Alex Charfen: I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum Podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Alex Charfen: This may seem like a rudimentary subject as simple subject. In fact, it's probably a subject you've heard before, but I want to share it with you in a way maybe you haven't heard it before. It's the importance of having a morning routine, a morning routine that you use every single day and that something that you actually make part of your life and you create a morning routine so that you will create momentum and start moving, like start making the first hour of your day, the best hour of your day. That's a concept I learned when I was working with Robert Cooper, neuroscientist and he shared that the idea that if you can make the first hour of your day, the best hour of your day, you start every day in momentum and routine is something that I've had to use my whole life.

Alex Charfen: When I was really young, I transferred to a junior high school where I had to get to school and walking was a half hour riding a bike. It was about 10 minutes, but either way I was always late. So I started using the morning routine when I was a kid because I had to. I started doing things in the same order over and over again because I realized if I didn't, I didn't get out of the house on time and I wouldn't get to school on time and then I started getting in trouble and I already got in trouble enough in school. So I had to have a way to stay, like present and get through stuff and actually get out of the house and so I've used a routine forever. I've been perfecting my routine since I was a kid. But it also works with my clients. I work with clients who run, most of my clients run multimillion dollar companies. A lot of them are on their way to a million dollars, but most of them run multimillion dollar businesses.

Alex Charfen: When I can get people to put a routine in place, here's something we see at our events. At our events we're incredibly transparent. Every person in the room shares what their current run rate is, was last year, what they did last month. They share how many people they have, so that we get perspective on what types of companies we have in the room, what type of ... I get perspective on what type of advice people might need and there is a clear advantage to the people who I know have a morning routine and those that don't. They grow their businesses faster because you are the most important person in your business and this gives you a distinct advantage over anyone who doesn't have a morning routine or it can give you a distinct advantage over anyone who doesn't have a really good morning routine like I want you to create.

Alex Charfen: So, if you create a routine in the right way, if you put it together in a way that supports you, if you put it together in a way that creates momentum, it will blow you away, what this does for you because here's the epiphany I've had about process and routine in my life. It's something that I've always struggled with, but it's something that I have a hard time accepting. I fight process, I fight routine, but I also know that process and routine sets people like us free. Process, routine frameworks, systems, like things that we can repeat over and over again. All of it, it sets us free because it allows our mind to go do what we do. This is so incredibly important to see every day for an entrepreneur, every day for you is game day, every day. When you watch a golfer putt, what do they do? Watch golfers putt, they do the same thing every time if you can stay awake watching golf. I'm just kidding, I used to actually play a lot of golf. I haven't since I had kids. It was a huge, that was my exchange. No more golf, I'm just going to spend time with my kids.

Alex Charfen: But, if you watch golfers, every time they putt, they have a routine. They do the exact same thing every time. Some of them will tag on a pant leg, some of them will look at their line in a certain way, some of them and they always take the exact same amount of practice swings, the exact same type of practice swing, and then they putt. Why? They're setting themselves up for success by using the routine. Well, game day is every day for you. A morning routine sets your entire day up for success. The second thing that it does in addition to setting the entire day up for success is it will get you out of fight-or-flight. If you are in a fight-or-flight response and you create a morning routine that has things in it like hyperhydration and meditation and taking a 20 minute walk outside and you commit to doing those things and you do them, you will get out of fight-or-flight through the use of a routine and that routine will help you do that every day.

Alex Charfen: So if you ever slip into a fight-or-flight response, your routine will set you free. It'll get you out of it the next morning. That's it's so critical because we are prone to fight-or-flight. You are an evolutionary hunter. We are very triggerable and if you want to be untriggerable, if you want to be somebody who can sit in the arena, if you want to be the person who can stay at the seat longest, if you want to be able to go to the deep end of the pool, you must get out of fight-or-flight. You can't fight your way there. You can't run your way there. You have to be able to guide yourself strategically there and do what you need to do. So get out of fight-or-flight on a daily basis, and another reason why routine is so important is that you will free your mind when you lower decision making fatigue.

Alex Charfen: If you don't have a routine, if you're not doing the same thing each morning, you're literally asking yourself, what do I do next? What do I do next? What do I do next? What do I do next? Then you're asking yourself things like, have I forgotten anything? Did I leave anything out? Is there anything else I need to do? Is there anything I missed? Is there anything I left at home? If you create a routine, all of those questions go away, that will lower pressure and noise in your life like crazy and the mental energy you've been spending on those useless questions every single morning will come back and you can apply it to what you want to do to the outcome you're trying to create, to the business you're growing, to the team you're growing, to your kids, to your family. Like that is mental energy you get back, that is focus you get back. You burn your focus every morning by asking yourself all those questions, you're going to be a wreck by the time you sit down and work.

Alex Charfen: If you're not energized when you are going to work, if you're not energized when you start working, maybe it's because you've already worn yourself out through decision making. Fatigue is real, so here's what you know about, here's what I feel like you need to know about building routine in the right way. So one, create a written routine and turn it into a checklist, print it and turn it into a checklist. Mark it off every day. There is so much about writing it down with a checklist. First, as an entrepreneur, here's what will happen. If you have a checklist in front of you, you're not going to be able to leave it alone. You will have to actively tell yourself, "I'm not going to complete that checklist". It is an open loop that you will leave open and it's going to bug you. You know what that means? That means you're probably going to do most of the stuff on your morning routine every day and if you create the checklist, you will start focusing on it and you will do what's on your routine and put it in front of you and you'll have a hard time leaving anything off.

Alex Charfen: So here's how you build your routine. You make sure that it has everything you want to make sure you do it in the morning, like some of the things that I just named. I have read 20 minutes on mine. I have 20 minute walk with my kids, I have aligning with Cadey, I have doing my ... Using my momentum planner every single morning. I go through the system in the momentum planner and here's how you build it. So first, make sure it's written and so write out what you already are doing and then start optimizing it. Ask yourself, what did I feel friction? Where was it frustrating? Where did I have a hard time this morning? Where did I forget something? Where did I need to backtrack? Then edit it over the course of weeks or months until it feels like there's no friction and what you'll find is that by creating a routine that makes your morning friction free, you will recognize other areas in your life you are tolerating and you will want to get away from them.

Alex Charfen: When you create a morning routine and you start doing the checklist, it actually creates this magical dopamine loop. When people like us achieve, when we accomplish, when we put down a check mark, when we have a completed morning routine with marks all the way down, we start getting, we get used to achieving more. We love that feeling, that dopamine feeling. We are evolutionary hunters, we want to get things done when we want to achieve. We want to make things happen in the world. We want to keep this tribe alive and we do that through achieving and if you check off boxes everyday, you will find that after a week or two you start getting a huge rush of dopamine every time you do it. So not only does it get you out of fight-or-flight, it takes you to the other side, to the dopamine serotonin loop where you feel the joy and the excitement of achieving and accomplishing.

Alex Charfen: If you're trying to grow a multimillion dollar business and you don't have a morning routine, you are leaving yourself at a disadvantage. So if you do this, if you create a routine, if you put the time in to do this, it will give you leverage, time back, focus back, energy back for the rest of your life. All you have to do is tweak it over time and make sure that if it ever starts feeling like it has friction or it gets too boring or you don't feel momentum anymore, you just do it again and you will make the first hour of your day, your best hour of your day, which means you will start every day with near guaranteed momentum. Think about that.

Alex Charfen: You create a morning routine, you go through it, it releases dopamine, it releases serotonin, you get out of fight-or-flight, you actually do the things that you need to do to support yourself physiologically, breathing, hydration, nutrition, movement. You make sure those are in your routine so you never leave one out and then you are ready for what we do as entrepreneurs. You are ready to step onto the battlefield, you are ready to take on what's coming, you are ready to go out and fight for your tribe. When you make sure that you are fully supporting yourself and when you create a routine, you make it important, you make it real and you don't miss it again.

Alex Charfen: So if you're ready to create your morning routine, we've put together a page where I have mine and I'll share it with you and if you don't have a place to start, take a look at mine and it will inspire you, give you ideas, or you might want to just try it for a couple of days. You can go to morning.charfen.com. Again, that's morning.C.H.A.R.F.E.N.com. Download a copy of my morning routine, I hope it inspires you to create yours. I want you to start every day with the highest level of momentum possible, ready to take on the world. morning.charfen.com

Thank You For Listening!

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With gratitude,

Alex

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