Making Love and Business Work: Marriage Morning Glory

This is the Momentum podcast. I joke around that my wife always says process in a marriage isn't sexy, but you end up having a lot more sex. The reality of that statement is that she said at one time, and then I repeated over and over again, end quote. So it's really I say that all the time. But Cadey gave me and the idea. So today we're going to be talking about morning routines, and I'm excited to have Cadey back with me.

Hey, everybody, I'm excited to be here for the second time this week.

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.

So, you know, when it comes to morning routines, I'm just going to do a quick background on me. I have been using the morning routine since I was 10. When I was a kid, I transferred from sixth grade to seventh grade. I was young. I was always the youngest in my class or one of the youngest in my class, and I had trouble getting out of the house and having to go to a school that was like six or seven miles away from my house had to either ride a bike or leave really early and walk, and maybe it was three or four miles. I don't want to be in. One of those people is like walking backwards in the snow with no shoes, but it wasn't great. And I had to have a morning routine because what I found was if I got up and I didn't follow some type of process or structure, I was always late and I started getting in trouble in school and there was enough that I didn't score to be in trouble already. I didn't need to add to it. And I realized that when I wrote everything out and I checked the boxes as I was going through them, I actually went way faster. And as a kid, my morning routine developed from just getting out of the house to then like going and walking and doing other stuff for myself and being able to have time for reading or watching what I wanted to watch on an early morning TV. And I have kept that discipline all the way up until now. So I'm forty nine years old. I have almost 40 years of morning routines. Cadey morning routines for you were not the same.

They were not the same. So I'm a little bit more free spirited, and I also am, I would say, process averse and a lot of ways. I mean, I think in our our business, I understand structure. I obviously understand led operational systems, and I absolutely believe that process will set you free. And but yeah, I definitely have been slow to develop or slow to adopt a morning routine.

Now, you know, I'll say you can have

had fits and starts.

Yeah. And you know, just just for on the concept of morning routine, you can be a free spirit and have a morning routine. You can be somebody who's completely process averse. Like in a lot of ways I am. I know that process is has become a strength of mine, but it's because I had so many weaknesses I had to build around it. And so if you're listening, the reason that we recorded this is a making love them business work podcast is because over the course of time, Cadey has added a morning routine, and I think it's made our marriage much stronger. And I know that might seem like way, way to say one person, adding the morning routine has improved the marriage. How is that? And so today for this podcast, I wanted to just do a quick interview with Katie on how a morning routine has helped her, especially in the past year or two where she's really dug in on it. How a morning routine, how she feels. It's supported our marriage and how overall what it's done for her in her life. So when you think about it now, you know, you just shared how you were with routines, why don't you get everybody caught up to where you are now as far as morning routine goes?

Sure, I have a written morning routine it and you know, I also put it really a daily routine because I have a portion of the morning that, you know, is really structured and then I have things throughout the week that I want to get done. And if I don't have them written down, then I don't get them done because I have a lot of things going on. And, you know, life is busy for entrepreneurs. You know, we are we are not exempt from that. And so, you know, I, that's the way that it's structured. It has things that I want to get done during the week so that I can just make sure that I'm checking them off my list throughout the week.

Now you and I have a similar structure to our morning routine and the morning is just like one block. And I do these in in spreadsheets so that I can save them over time. I don't fill them out on the computer. I actually print them in and use a pen to jack them off. And then I have a block of all the things that I want to get done on a daily basis and I want perspective. So I have all of the biohacking I could do. And then I choose on a daily basis what I want to do, and then I'd check a box. And so I get perspective over time. I know how much I've done, and then I also have the things that I want to do with my family. Like, I run with my oldest daughter, Reagan. I walk with my youngest daughter, Kennedy. I walk our dog. I I want to make sure that like, I don't get to the end of the week and I'm like, Man, I think I ran with Kennedy or I think I went for a walk. We like to do it maybe five, five times a week, and it gives me a perspective. Is that similar for you?

It is similar for me. I think that there are things that I want to get done with you. I also want to walk the dog where you recently started taking voice lessons. So we have vocal warm ups that you know I want to get done. And you know, I also have, you know, different types of things that I do. I like to dance. So but I won't take that time for myself. I realize because I'll figure out something to fill the day if there's not structure around it. And so what used to happen is I wouldn't get them done. And then I would be like, Oh, you know, I'm failing, I'm beating myself up, beating myself up. I'm a recovering perfectionist. And so, you know, now I can look at it and I get perspective on the week instead of it all living in my head. And then I'm like, Hey, like, I didn't get everything done, you know? But I feel like if I'm at 80, 85 percent that I'm really succeeding.

Yeah, I think, you know, shooting. I think almost every entrepreneur, in some ways, a recovering perfectionist, even when we don't admit it. Even for people like me who I don't even feel like I have perfectionist vibes, other people point out that I do because like when I have a morning routine, I want to get a hundred percent of it done. But I've actually adjusted to and said, You know, if I get to 80, 85, 90 percent, that's going to be a really good week because I build such rigorous routines and I put so much into it. So Katie, how do you feel like having this routine has helped our marriage?

Well, I think it helps our marriage because I get that the things that I want to get done for me so I can show up feeling well rested and well taken care of. And so I'm not living in my head, I'm more in my body, so I definitely show up in our relationship, more centered and all of my relationships, more centered. And and then I think because the way that the mornings are structured, you know, we we I have always done our our morning alignment, but I'm on time for it. You know, like we're we're together and we're meeting and we're both prepared. And so when we're coming, not one of us is like, Oh, I need ten more minutes, you know, like, I forgot about it because I'm not. I'm not looking at the clock and understanding kind of the pace of the morning. And, you know, we get the kids to school on time now, you know, we're not ever like chasing them out. We're rarely going, you know, hey, we got to go. We got to go, we got to go, which is kind of how it was when I didn't have a morning routine, which was not the mom that I wanted to show up as either. And so I think it's just it creates a very structured morning and which creates more, more more peace in our relationship and more peace in our household.

Yeah. And yeah, for sure. And when you think about when you know, when you look at the morning routine that you have now, how in our company, you know, I often tell people that we run our company together and they always go, Oh, well, how does your wife support you? And it's funny, because that's like, that's one of the assumptions people make is like, Oh, you must be the assistant and you're not, you know, we co-founded this company with both executives in the company, and we both have our own responsibilities, but both equally important. I don't think there's one that's above the other one. And so as an executive in a business, as an owner, in a business who's running it, how does the morning routine help you show up in a way to make the business successful?

Well, I can give you a contrast. When I didn't have a morning routine, like I said, there was no real self-care. It was just kind of my morning was really fluid. I might get three or four things done. I might get, you know, two done depending on what time I woke up. You know, now I wake up at a consistent time. So like I said, there's time and space for me to take care of myself, and I think that helps me show up to the team more grounded. It helps me show up more prepared to meetings. I, you know, I'm really intentional about the day I understand what I want to get done. I understand what conversations that I need to have to drive things forward. You know, if there's things that I really want to like, look at and and, you know, take a deeper dove in. And that's in my schedule. And I'm looking at it and I've set myself up for success. And I think that when you show up in a way where you have created intentionality in the day, then your team feels that if you show up when you're restless or or you know you overslept or, you know, like you show up with that energetic and people feel it, whether they say it to you or not, they're definitely feeling it on your team because you're showing up in a way that's frazzled and reactive. And I just don't show up that way anymore.

So when you know I want to close with this question, when you look at your morning routine today, what do you think if you had to highlight what are the most important things for you that you do each day in the morning routine that you used to leave out that one when you didn't have a routine, when things were overwhelming, like what were the things that were easy to skip? I know for me, like if I'm not following my routine, I usually leave out all the stuff that supports me 100 percent, you know, it's like it's the things that are really the important stuff, like the breath work that I do or going outside for three minutes for my circadian rhythm or doing squats in the morning to reset my hormones. Those types of things are the things that I'll leave out or meditation. Yeah, that would be the first thing that I threw out the window. Like when I get up there and there are times, it's more and more infrequent. You know, nobody's perfect, but there's times where I get up and I get distracted by something. And I'm such a creature of habit that if I'm distracted by something like one of the kids comes in and need something and I go to help them and I don't come back to my morning routine, I'll start the I'm also, you know, an entrepreneur. So maybe a squirrel runs by or there's a shiny object or a shiny penny, and I start going in a different direction and then I'm like, Man, why do I feel terrible today? Why? Why is it like nine 30? And I feel like I can't get anything done. And usually this happens on a weekend, and it's because I haven't done those things that support me every day to show up the way that I want to in my life. What are those things for you?

So I think the highest leverage habit that I have is our momentum planner, but I've used that for years consistently. So even when I didn't have a morning routine, I was using that, but by far the highest leverage habit that I have. And then definitely the self-care. You know, I as a child love to dance, and I stopped dancing for years. And now, like, I'll dance two or three songs in the morning and it moves energy and my system and I sit down and I do energy work and I light candles and I play music and I pull cards and so out of the spiritual closet now, so.

And you know, there's a documentary coming out which is going to be zero spiritual closet any more yet.

And but so I do the things that that for me work and help me feel grounded. That may look like prayer or meditation or something like that for somebody else. But those are definitely the things that help me be sent that help me show up centered and feel. I can really like seize the day with confidence and perspective and intention, and those are the things that would definitely have been left out before final thought.

What is the final

nail in the biohacking like? This morning I got into the sauna, I did a cold plunge and you know, most of the time I'll do red light therapy or PMS. So there are definitely some biohacking things that I sprinkle into that morning routine, which is just, I mean, I feel so much better in my body.

By the way, guys, if you're thinking, man, his wife does biohacking for, she makes fun of me. In the first she questions me, then she makes fun of me. Then she joins me. So I just know that there's a little bit of a process there. Yeah. When I first started doing cold punches, she's like, You're crazy. There's no way I'm ever doing that every morning. Now it's happening. So final thought on morning routines. Cadey What do you want to share with everybody? Just wrap this up.

So I think that if you're adverse to structure and adverse to routine, you know, we say this in our content and it's like process will set you free. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs look at process and they're like, Oh, that feels so constraining and so rigid. And I want freedom. And I became an entrepreneur for freedom and to feel fluid. But if you will take, you know, just a little bit of amount of amount of time like, you know, for morning planning, for me, it's like ten or 15 minutes. It's not a huge it's not like an hour. And if you'll take just a little bit of time to support yourself, you set yourself up for the day and it's just you get so much more leverage in your day. And and so I think it's first like shifting your mindset around process and structure is is first

process will set you

free process will absolutely set you free. And I understand that most people are like, No, but I've experienced it firsthand. A lot of our members experience it firsthand, and I just won't ever go back to the way that I was. I didn't like the way that I felt. I didn't like the way that I was showing up. I didn't like the way that I was interacting in relationships, and I'm a much better leader when I support myself.

So if you've enjoyed this podcast, I really appreciate you being here with both me and Cadey. And so I haven't ask Cadey doesn't do a lot of podcasts and I want to bring her on more, and we are actually even considering the possibility of the two of us doing a breakout podcast separate from this momentum podcast on what it takes to grow a business, grow a family and be together for 18 years, made for six years, running multiple multimillion dollar companies and winning awards in them. And how do you do that successfully over time? Not that we've always been successfully doing it, but at least we've at least made it through all the issues where we weren't. So if you enjoyed this podcast, here's my ask. Go on social media. Tag me. Tag Cadey. Let us know what you thought about it. Give us some feedback here. I'd love to see it, but I really want Cadey to see it and have the encouragement that we should be putting more stuff like this out there out there, because I think it's awesome. When Cadey comes on and shares her insights of having run multi-million dollar businesses while having children, raising children and being in a very connected and I. A very connected and fulfilling family, and so let us know we'd love to hear from you, and if you have a minute, go join our Facebook group. Simple operations it's called simple operations. Operating your business just got simple. That's how you can find it on Facebook if you join the group in the next week. Cadey and I are going to post our morning routines in that group, and we're going to show you everything that we have on ours. Not so that you can copy it because ours is going to work for hours worked for us. It's not going to work for you, but it'll give you a really good example of how to go in the direction of building your own morning routine. So, so I know I'm only supposed to have one ask and it's only one call to action, but I think you can handle this, especially if you're one of my listeners. So post on social media, tag us. Let us know that you love this and let us know what you think. We love feedback of any kind. And then go join simple operations operating your business. Just got simple Facebook group and check out our morning routines.