- Hey, there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur,
investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this episode, I'm gonna share with you
the morning routine of a multimillionaire,
my process and the ones of my friends.
I'm fortunate and blessed to be friends
with extremely wealthy individuals,
and we talk often about our morning rituals
and our habits, so I'm gonna share that with you.
Be sure to stay to the end where I'm gonna tell you
how to get access to my top books on high performance
around personal development, motivation, sales.
And during this conversation,
I'm even gonna share with you the books
that specifically served me in designing
and crafting my morning routine.
(energetic pop music)
When I was 26, I was building my company, Spheric,
and I felt crazy overwhelmed.
I think at the point, we had about 16 people.
We're doing about 2 1/2 million in revenue.
And it just felt like I had a pressure on my chest
like there was a cement brick on my chest all the time,
and I didn't know where it was coming from.
And I decided to reach out to one of my mentors,
and he started asking me about my habits,
and my week, and the amount of hours I was working,
what was I doing for self-care, et cetera.
And it was through that journey
of trying to discover for myself
that I realised that my morning ritual, my habits,
how I start my day is one of the most powerful things
that's gonna allow me to bring focus, energy, motivation,
clarity of thought to the rest
of the work I'm gonna be doing, okay?
And it is a non-negotiable in my life today.
I've been super blessed since I discovered this process
reading all the books.
I've probably read about 25 books on just habits,
high performance, morning routines.
Two years after that moment where I felt overwhelmed,
I exited the company, Spheric.
I became multimillionaire.
And I've continued to do that in my career.
And I don't share that to brag or impress you.
I'm just sharing it so you have context
for who I am and what I've done.
And I have the privilege of spending multiple times a year,
I go away with friends of mine that are extremely wealthy,
and we talk about our habits and our processes for growing.
I've read the books "Morning Miracle."
Great book, by the way, Hal Elrod, get that book.
"Own Your Day" by Aubrey Marcus.
Another great book.
That's intense, so definitely check that out.
"The 5 AM Club" by Robin Sharma.
These are probably the three books
if you said I wanna read some books on morning routines
from very successful people, all multimillionaires,
go get that book.
But I'm gonna share with you my process
and why I do it in these eight steps.
Number one, drink water.
So when I wake up, I have a 500 millilitre bottle of water,
a clean canteen, a bright orange one,
sitting next to me to my bed,
and I chug the whole thing before my feet hit the ground.
I believe, and I've read a bunch of research,
that we are dehydrated
from the moment we wake up in the morning.
Now if you read "Own Your Day" by Aubrey Marcus,
he'll tell you to put some lemon,
and some salt, and all that stuff.
You can get fancy with your morning elixir, okay?
I'm just telling you drink water,
and keep that going for the rest of the day.
Another really simple one is,
I'll keep it to the morning routine,
but is drinking similar amount of water before
and after a meal, okay?
That's probably the easiest life hack
from just nutrition and hydration.
But I think if you wake up in the morning,
first thing you do is chug 500 millilitres of water,
you're kicking off the day in an incredible state.
It just rehydrates your body, gets your mind clear,
and lets you attack things fast.
Number two, meditation.
Now I suffer with meditation.
I have ADHD, I have a hard time focusing,
but I am always committed to five minutes.
Now what app should I use?
What meditation?
Should I use TM, transcendental meditation?
Should I use Headspace with?
It literally doesn't matter.
I'm just saying set a timer five minutes,
sit there, and just be.
And when the timer goes off, move on your day.
It's almost like a reset for your mind.
It allows you, I think, to get ready
for the creative type of thinking
that hopefully you're doing in your work
where it's not about just churning things out,
but it's actually solving problems in a creative way.
So meditation for me allows me
to set my mind up ready for that,
and this is the sequence that I do it in.
Number three, affirmations.
So some people have an argument
that affirmations aren't powerful.
So affirmation is just saying I am, right?
Or money flows to me easily and effortlessly.
It's these things that you want in your life
that you have to speak into existence.
I was actually talking to my videographer, Sam, this morning
about speaking your future into existence.
And to me, affirmations is one way of doing that.
If you wanna have a network of people
that are positive and motivated,
just say I have an incredible community
of supportive and motivated friends.
And it sounds weird.
I don't know why,
but I've been doing this for 15 years probably,
and as I kind of put that out in the world,
and it's not about "The Secret,"
or quantum mechanics, and vibrations,
although, I do believe in that level of energetic field,
it's more about telling yourself
that you're worth having that
and that that is the direction.
It sets almost the radar for your heat-seeking missile
to go create that.
By saying it and being positive in the affirmation
of what you wanna create into the future,
I think you create the scenarios by your decision-makings,
by the way you respond to emails to make them come to life.
Number four, goals.
I am huge on goals.
If you tell me you wanna build a business,
and I ask you where do you wanna be in a year,
and you don't have an answer for that,
like specific SMART goals,
specific, measurable, obtainable, and realistic, and timely,
if you don't have that design,
then I don't know how you're building a business.
So I'm a big fan of goals.
What I do is I review in the morning,
these are all five-minute things,
I review the yearly goals,
or the quarterly goals ahead of me that I set,
business and personal, so I do both.
I do the same thing for the next year.
And I do the same thing for the next 25 years.
So I'm a big fan of knowing short-term,
medium-term, which is the year, kind of like range,
and then the 25-year 'cause I believe it's more important
to know where you're going
and disconnect from the how in the mid-range level,
but be very specific and measure your performance
on a daily, weekly, monthly basis
towards your quarterly goals,
and let the middle fill itself in.
It's kinda crazy, but that's the way I do it,
and a lot of friends of mine do it
is they're very clear on where they wanna end up
in their BHAG, their big, hairy,
audacious goal 25 years out.
If you haven't read "Good to Great,"
if you're an entrepreneur, read the book.
It's the Bible, it's very good.
That's where BHAG comes from.
But you wanna know that 25-year where
and disconnect from the how,
but then focus on the day-to-day, the week-to-week,
the monthly, the quarterly.
So that's how I review my goals
to make sure I can use that as an input
to then assess am I working on the right things today,
this week, next week?
'Cause if not, I gotta readjust my calendar.
Number five, gratitude.
I am such a fan.
It doesn't matter what's going on in your life.
If you're dealing with a struggle,
if you're feeling overwhelmed,
if you're not in the zone, if your energy is low,
go back to gratitude.
You can't be grateful and frustrated at the same time.
You can't be grateful and sad at the same time.
You can't be grateful and angry at the same time.
And to me, I use "The Five-Minute Journal."
I'm actually really fortunate to coach Alex,
one of the co-founders of "The Five-Minute Journal."
And I've been using it, coaching Alex is a recent thing,
but I've been using it now for like five years,
pretty much when it first came out.
And it is a morning ritual that I haven't abandoned.
It is just this beautiful, simple questions and structures.
Part of it is gratitude, part of it is affirmations,
part of it is setting the goals for the day.
So that's the high level.
But definitely check it out, highly recommend it.
There's a mobile app as well
that I actually helped Alex build with the team,
the mobile version.
I'm a big fan of written pen to paper.
So definitely check out the mobile
if you wanna get something quick,
but my preference is the physical book.
Number six, visualise.
I know I mentioned in the beginning I'm not a fan
of "The Secret" and all that stuff.
Here's the thing, one of my friends and mentors,
John Assaraf, has this thing called the law of GOYA, okay?
GOYA stands for get off your A, your butt, right?
And his rule is, and even though he was in "The Secret,"
that's how I got to know him,
he just believes like I believe
that we need to do stuff and take action.
So that's why I'm a big fan of the goals.
I'm a big fan of energy management,
and hydration, all that stuff to get that outcome.
But it's important to visually.
Our brains are visual.
Our communication strategies, communicate strategy,
the way we think and communicate is more visual.
It's easier for me to draw you a picture
than to write out exactly what I'm thinking.
So it is best if we're trying to create an outcome
in our lives to represent it in a image, visual format,
and look at it.
But again, I'm always designing.
Every year, I reset my vision board for the next 25 years.
Not the next year, not the next three years, or five years,
25 years out, what does that look like,
and disconnect from the how.
I don't worry about the how.
I just focus on this is what I want my life to look like
on all core areas from my personal life
to my business life to my community
to the reason I'm here, my purpose, all those things.
But I'm not stressing out about, man, I'm here,
and there's just such a huge gap, I don't care.
I honestly don't care if I achieve any of it.
I just wanna know that I'm reminding myself
on where I'm going and why I get up.
I believe that people typically are gonna be successful.
They're gonna climb the ladder of success.
The question is did they lean that ladder up
against the right wall?
I've had too many friends of mine be successful,
end up at the top of the ladder of success,
to look around to realise it was leaning
against the wrong wall,
and they weren't happy with where they ended up.
And to me, that's why I use a vision board
and visualise every morning.
Number seven, read.
I think it's important that we feed our minds.
We need to increase the amount of knowledge that we have
so we can improve our ideation,
the quality of our ideas, our ability to problem-solve.
So for me, every morning, 10 pages, non-negotiable.
I like to read on my Kindle,
but I also really enjoy reading a physical book
because I feel like I don't even
remember the title of the book.
Somebody recently is like, "What book are you reading?"
"I don't know 'cause I've been reading out of my Kindle.
"I can tell you the context of it,
"but I can't remember the title, the name, and the author."
So I'm a big fan of feeding my mind every morning.
And for me, I like personal development, why?
'Cause I wanna bring that level of energy,
bring that level of betterment into my creative work, okay?
And for me, a lot of my work is problem-solving,
and creative, and talking to people.
So I want to read books around personal development,
leadership, motivation, habits, strategy, et cetera.
So those are my morning reading,
and then I also read in the afternoon and at night.
I'm just gonna give you the morning ritual.
10 pages every day, non-negotiable.
It's part of my routine.
Number eight, the final step, is move.
You need to move your body.
When you wake up,
I don't care if it's stretching, yoga, et cetera.
Here's my prescription,
I believe I got this from Hal's book, "Miracle Morning,"
is I do 33 push-ups, 22 jumping jacks, and 10 air squats.
They're body movements.
They take probably a minute to do if you're fast.
Well, maybe not a minute.
But it's just about moving your body
to get the blood flowing.
It's before you sit down and do anything else.
That is my morning routine.
I do it 95% of the time.
If I'm travelling, depending on time zones, et cetera,
I may not get to everything.
But for me, it's not about perfection.
It's about progress.
And if you're not doing something today,
you should start to own your morning, own that.
And so some people are like, well, I have kids.
I have two kids.
Here's the deal, I have to get up before they wake up, why?
Because that's when I get that done.
As soon as they wake up, if you know this
if you have kids, it is crazy and it's chaotic.
But the people that claim their day, claim their morning,
invest in themselves first, refill your glass, okay,
self-care, you'll have more.
So we wanna pour into ourselves first
so we have more to pour into others.
That is why the morning routine of millionaires
is so dialled in, because if we do that,
it brings a sense of confidence, momentum,
and motivation to the rest of the day
that allows us to create more value in the world.
So quick recap, the morning routine of a multimillionaire,
number one, drink water, number two, meditate,
three, affirmations, four, goals,
five, gratitude, six, visualise,
seven, read, and eight, move.
So that is how we design a morning routine.
If you're stressing 'cause there's eight things
that you gotta add, and right now you're doing nothing,
here's what I'm gonna suggest.
Habit, stack it, okay?
I think I got this from James Clear,
another great author and thought leader in the space.
Just add one new habit every day.
Start tomorrow morning by drinking the water.
Do that for 21 days, or two months, or whatever,
and then add the next one, add the meditation,
and keep stacking those habits
until your morning routine is just your default
because it's in having that habit
that when you have those moments of challenges
and frustrations that that's what's gonna pull you forward.
A lot of people don't realise I don't do that
for necessarily that day.
I'm building that muscle so that when something bad happens,
I'm prepared emotionally, mentally, physically.
I've got the level of energy
to be able to overcome it, okay?
I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I wanna share with you an exclusive resource.
These are my top books.
You can click the link below to download them.
I've categorised them in marketing, entrepreneurship,
salesmanship, personal development.
If you wanna know what my personal favourite books,
I think there's about 60 reference,
so you can click the link below to download your copy.
And if you think there's anybody
that this video could serve,
feel free to share it with them directly.
Be sure to smash the like button.
Subscribe to this channel.
And as per usual, I wanna challenge you even more today
to live a bigger life and a bigger business.
And I'll see you next Monday.
Okay, GOYA stands for get off your butt, okay, A.
(laughs) Why don't I wanna swear?
I don't know, I'm just.