WS1023: Game-Changing Habits and Morning Routine for Successful Entrepreneurs with Jeff Wickersham | #MindsetMonday

EPISODE 1023

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell. 

[INTERVIEW]

0:00:31.4 WS: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Jeff Wickersham. If you have been listening to this show for very long at all. You have heard me talk about importance of my morning routine or being up early in some specific things I believe has helped me to grow business and move fast as an entrepreneur, Jeff is gonna help us today to think in detail about our morning routine and some of specific habits that you should consider even ways to make it difficult to do some bad habits. So Jeff is a sought after morning routine guide. His mantra is rise fight, love, repeat, which also is a title of his number one best-selling book, rise fight love repeat, ignite your morning fire. He’s the founder of the morning power coaching, which specializes in guiding clients to implement game-changing habits for more energy, focus, abundance and time in their lives through the power of the morning fire methodology. I encourage you as you listen to show, think about some things Jeff and I talk about some things that has changed our business personally, but there’s some examples that he gives you from ways to get out of the bed on time to just having more energy throughout the day, and some ways, some things he does specifically in his morning routine that may help you as well, Jeff to the show, you have some skills that I feel are very important to any entrepreneur. When I started doing some of these things, that’s when my business really changed and ultimately… Or your life in many, many ways, and so looking forward to getting into your skill sets, but before we do, give us a little bit about your background and how this kinda came down.

0:01:45.9 JW: Yeah, and Whitney, thanks for having me so grateful to be on the podcast, so I spent about 20 years in corporate America, and then about six and a half years ago, I had that life event that kind of changed everything. Unfortunately, I lost my mom to breast cancer. So it was that punch in the gut company’s transformational moment where I question everything in the days, weeks, months ahead, and I really went deep and asked myself, was corporate America having me bound out of bed on fire and after soul searching, the answer was resoundingly, “No.” So I knew I needed to make a switch. 

I knew life was short, we get one opportunity, one go round. So what was I passionate in? And I soon realized that really it was fitness, and I opened up a local gym, I was always in a fitness, my late mother was always into fitness, and then what organically grew out of that was high performance coaching, 100 people would put an application on Facebook to come see me, only 15 to 20 would actually pick up the phone and start a text message, and start an email, and it was a pain point.

0:02:59.7 JW: Why is that? Why are people stopping? And it’s all what’s in between our ears? Our mindset, our beliefs, our habits that we have. So I dove deep personally, I went down that personal development rabbit hole, coaches courses, podcast, books, mentors, you name it, and that’s where I came up with my four-step morning fire methodology, the rise, fight, love, repeat, where you’re rising like a phoenix, reborn each day new opportunities new possibilities, obviously, I know that with the passing of my mother each day is I’m just grateful, I’m grateful to have this conversation with you, right, the fight portion, that dog that we need to have, and I feel like so many times now there’s a world full of walking zombies that are fine with mediocre, good and average, and you only get one opportunity, so developing that fight mentality, that dog mentality, loving yourself, most importantly, we’re the only species that beat ourselves up for things we didn’t do yesterday, three weeks ago. Three years ago. So I love yourself, then you can love all those around you, and then the secret piece is that repetition, repeating it over and over again, so it becomes automatic, it’s in our subconscious mind. And that’s what I eat, sleep and breathe on a daily basis now, so… 

0:04:04.9 WS: Well, I appreciate you sharing some of that and you’re helping many people with… I think some of the most important foundational things that we need as entrepreneurs, I just spoke at the conference is Best weekend on some of these things. And I think it’s gonna be interesting ’cause I’ve seen it in my own life as well. I know the listeners have heard me talk about it, and you’re an expert, so well, talk about some of the habits that are most important in some of the morning routines that you suggest people hire or things they do… Let’s just jump. Either, one of those things that you feel is best to start us off and let’s jump in. 

0:05:04.1 JW: Let’s start first with habits, because having an awareness of the sciences habits is so critical to being successful, and so many people aren’t successful, you think about New Year’s resolutions, 80% of people fail within three weeks related to those New Year’s resolutions. So part of it is we don’t really understand the science and the power of the science behind it, so the first point is so much what we do is driven through our and rituals, it can be up to 90, 95% on a daily basis.

0:05:04.1 JW: And by habits or rituals, I mean things that you don’t have to consciously think about it… I always relate it to a computer program, you butt up your laptop this morning, I did the same… You press the power button, there are so many things that go on behind the scenes that you’re not aware of, and the same thing happens in our lives, it’s why so many people stay stuck, they’re in the same spot they were three years ago, and they don’t know how to break through, they feel like they’re on this never-ending treadmill of life, every day is Groundhog Day, and it’s because so much of what we do on a daily basis is our habits and rituals, so that’s the first piece to be aware of how much is driven through your habits and rituals, the second piece is, we’ve all heard 21 days to create a habit, that’s the bare minimum, and neuroscience is proven out there, it can be anywhere from 21 to 67 days. So if we all think we’re gonna take 21 days to build this habit, but it could take three times as long, it’s no wonder why 80% of people fail on their New Year’s resolutions and why it’s so difficult to build those habits because we’ve been almost lied to a little bit where 21 was a bare minimum.

0:06:13.6 JW: We all stuck with that, we all want easy route, but it could be up to 67 days, I would even say too though, like 60 days and the grand scheme of things, it’s not very long, but it’s still so difficult, it sells so difficult to make that change so anyway, go ahead. It is, and the other pieces, they’ve done brain scans of the brain and they see the old habit… That old neural network. The new habit, the new neural network, and the thing is, if you fall back to that old habit, it can click in just like that and it fires, it just goes kind of dorm it, and you can get back into those bad habits so quickly, so it takes discipline, it takes consistent effort, and I always relate discipline to freedom, if you’re disciplined, that is the foundation for having freedom in every area of your life, consistency is so much more important than intensity and Simon cynic and his book, The Infinite Game, says the same thing he says, we go so intent, so quick, we want those six-pack abs in six minutes, we wanna hit the grand slam home run, but you just need to be consistent over time, and if you are consistent, you will eventually get there.

0:07:18.1 JW: The issue is, we don’t know when we’ll get there, right? So those are just a couple of foundational pieces to building habits and really creating that foundation for success, I love how you link this under Edom… It’s so true, so true. Not having self-discipline, you mentioned earlier too, like breaking through some of that, or the old habits, how do they do that? How did people break the old habits and maybe we’re gonna get into that, but… Any tips? Yeah, so from Breaking Bad habits perspective, putting resistance into the equation, how can you put some… It can be 10-20 seconds of resistance in the equation, and it can be a little bit longer where you’ve gotta think about it and requires more effort, then you’re gonna be set up to break those habits, so for example, if you come home and you flop on the couch, and the first thing you do is turn on the TV, and the next thing you know, you’re net flexing for five, six hours and you wanna be more productive, read a book or spend time with your family, a way to put resistance into that is take the batteries out of the remote control and hide them upstairs somewhere where they actually physically remember where they’re at and have to walk up the steps to find them, there’s 10 to 20, maybe 30 seconds of resistance.

0:08:31.6 JW: Many times you will say, You know what, I’m just gonna read a book or I’m gonna spend time with the family. So if you can put resistance into the equation, that’s a very powerful tool to break those bad habits. For sure. It’s like, how bad do you want it? Right. How bad do you want it? I love that, but some resistance in there, so you at least have to think about it, it kind of breaks that habit a little bit delay, is that any way you have time to think about what you’re doing… I like that a lot. All right, anything else about habits that you wanna share? Yeah, so related to building good habits, there’s a couple of strategies that I absolutely 100% agree with endorse, coach my clients on is one is, you want to be able to make what you’re going to do public, so social media is a great thing for posting pictures doing different things, put it out there that you’re going to do something for a certain number of days. I remember it was last May, where I said, Alright, I’m gonna go Facebook Live every single day at 1230.

0:09:27.7 JW: Now, 999% of people in my networks could care less if I went live on Facebook, but we have a little switch in our subconscious mind that we inherently don’t wanna look like a liar, so you follow through it because you put it out into the public ’cause you don’t wanna look like a liar, so there it was at The Jersey Shore on a May, Friday at 1230, coming off the beach, hot spotting with my laptop going live on Facebook to follow through on what I did. So that’s one strategy to definitely make building a good habit much more easy and set you up for success is make it public, two would be to part with something you already do it, so you have something you already enjoy, pair that habit with something you already enjoyed and one of my friends, his wife was pregnant with their second child, and he said, You know, meditation would be great for… Or she feels a little anxious with the second baby coming and I said, Well, does she like to drink coffee in the morning… Be caffeine coffee, obviously. But he said, Yes, I said, well, why doesn’t she brew the coffee, go meditate, and then her reward is a cup coffee afterwards, and when you do that, you’re set up for success as well, because you already enjoy doing something and now you’re just pairing it with something you want to build an ads, those are a couple of strategies to build good habits.

0:10:44.5 JW: Nice, I just think it even goes back, I appreciate you bringing up from the beginning to just the awareness of the science of habit, some of that, that’s helpful when thinking about putting in the resistance or even a reward, helping yourself to break through ’cause it’s so difficult but it’s so important, it’s so important. There’s consistent things you do every day, go to bed is determined so much about, well, you are a year from now and 20 years from now… All right, anything else on habit? So before we jump in to maybe some morning routine or on those habits that we should have them… Habits are the foundation of what we do. So much of what we do is driven into your point, Whitney, the consistency is so, so important. I have a mantra that I coach clients with and is never missed twice, because we continue to beat ourselves up many times for what we didn’t do, unless the life is gonna happen, but if you never missed twice, that means you’re gonna hop right back on the train that’s rolling down the train tracks and you’re gonna continue the progress, and so many times people when they stop, maybe they missed a day, if they’re seeing how many consecutive days they can meditate, I’m almost to 1300 straight days of meditation, if you can never miss twice, just jump back on, you’re gonna be that much more consistent and you’re gonna stay for the long-term, so that’s just another thing that people can hang on to.

0:11:58.4 JW: Nice, well, let’s jump into the morning routine and maybe why that’s important, some tips you have around creating that morning routine, why it’s important again, to the point of having an awareness, the habits side in the morning routine side, we’re not really taught in school, I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t taught how to wake up properly in elementary, college, any level of education, it’s not talked about really in family circles, Hey, what do you do to wake up and have all this energy and have this focus, but it truly is the foundation and I like to call it the book, end of your days. What’s that last 30 minutes of your day look like? How do you prepare for success? And that’s even missed by so many different people where sleep is such an important part of our lives because we recover mentally, we recharge physically, our bodies and minds repair, so… How are you setting yourself up for a good night’s sleep, are you throwing some blue light blockers on so you’re not getting the blue light and stop some melatonin production at night? Are you reading a book? Are you winding down or you’re preparing yourself for a good night’s sleep, so that’s a very important piece to the puzzle, and then how do you wake up? I always eat, waking up, you have a choice to play defense or offense the moment the alarm clock goes off, and so many people play defense…

0:13:14.9 JW: And I have two sons that are 12 and 11, I coach him in basketball. I’m a huge basketball fan. When you’re in that defensive stance for basketball, your knees bent, your Heaven, your clouds are burning, it’s exhausting, and so many people play defense, the moment the alarm clock goes off by checking their phone, checking email, diving into the news, diving into those negative things that can pull you down that path that you don’t wanna go, that’s why they end up exhausting stress and have nothing left at the end of day, so it’s your choice, right when you wake up to take control of your day, either be on the offense or the defense, and it’s so vital to success. So you talked about sleep being so important, and my wife and I over the last couple of years have so much more thought into that… Right there, exactly. I’ve been somebody who’s like, Now I make it on four hours of sleep for so many years, and then finally it’s like, You know what, there’s something to this sleep thing, and so help us to think through that a little more. You mentioned a few things there.

0:14:10.9 JW: Anything else about sleep and how we can sleep better, helping us part… You mentioned about the phone, blue lit blockers, like What is that? And then obviously, I’d love to hear more about, you know, how do you get up in the morning and feel focused and energized, and some of those things… Eilat is so important ’cause that’s how you start your day. Right, it is. So at night, I love to think about what am I gonna prepare for the next day? Close around my glass of water is ready for me right when I wake up, anything that you can finish at the end of the day and prepare for the morning is just essential to your success and there are strategies, right? Blue light block, you mentioned right, the phones, the electronics we get that stops your natural production of melatonin. Melatonin is a sleep aid that helps your quality of sleep, so 7 o’clock, I’m thrown all my glasses and I’m making sure that I am going to get a quality night sleep, and so many times we aren’t intentional about, Hey, I am going to get a good night sleep… And that’s another piece to the puzzle.

0:15:08.7 JW: Right, telling yourself, I am going to get a good night sleep. What we say, our words are so powerful that you say that before you go to sleep, nine times out of 10, you’re gonna get a good nights sleep because you are telling the mind how to act, not the other way around, so whatever you can do at night to prepare is so vital to success, and I mentioned the glass of water… That’s the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning. I have a full glass of water. We are made so much of water that the longest stretch we go without it is when we sleep, so you’re dehydrated a little bit, so that rehydration process is so vital to waking up, I put my glass of water with some casal in a cabinet and people are like That’s ridiculous. Why do you have that prepare… Well, think about this for a second. I imagine you come down the stairs and you’re going to go to the cabinet and get your favorite class, you open up the cabinet, there’s no clean glasses in there, you go to the dishwasher, somebody didn’t close the dishwasher…

0:16:01.6 JW: Right, the tabs in there, but they didn’t shut it completely, so now you have no clean glasses of water and you’re frustrated, you… So you’re starting frustrated and that’s the mind’s first opportunity to say, You know what, we… This is too hard, just Go back to bed to what you’re used to, so… That’s again. Preparing for Success the night before. So you have that out. Full glass of water. I love some affirmations. I love working out for about 10 minutes, so push-ups or squats, set up, maybe some burpee because… We rely on caffeine a lot to get started. Our bodies are meant to move. You do 10 minutes of exercise, just when you wake up after a glass of water, you’re gonna feel this rush of energy, you’re gonna feel the blood moving through your system, and it’s a tremendously powerful way to start your day, and then I move into meditation because not only is it so important to wake up physically, but to calm your mind and meditate, breed, focus on your breathing is just another powerful piece to the equation, and you might notice in that scenario that I just took you through, there’s nothing related to checking my phone, right this time when you wake up and your time and your time only avoid distractions at all costs, and that’s probably the hardest thing that the clients that I work with when they first implement the morning fire routine, is that tractor being…

0:17:17.8 JW: That is the phone, when they wake up, they might see six notifications on a text message and they wanna check who it is, I’m like, You cannot do that until you’re done, give yourself this time and it will create so much for momentum that you’ll be able to really? Just do amazing things in your life. No, that’s such great advice. No doubt about it. What about the amount of sleep that we should get? So it really depends on the person. I typically get six hours of sleep, and I always like to break it down in the sleep cycle, every sleep cycle is 90 minutes in length, so six hours, seven and a half hours, those are typically the two sleep cycles that I love to get, but I’m typically getting six hours and then I upgraded to go now, I’m preparing for a good night sleep, and my wife always jokes that she can be mid-conversation, my head hits the pillow on five seconds, I’m out, but I get up quite early and I’m preparing for sleep, so I’m ready to sleep, so that’s why six hours and six hours of quality sleep is enough for me, but I always tell people to put on their white lab coat and become the scientist and experiment, and so many times, whether it’s what we put in our bodies from a food perspective, how much we sleep.

0:18:29.7 JW: We don’t correlate. I feel fantastic today. Wait, how many hours of sleep that I get, maybe I should do that again tonight, often I hear Jeff, people say, ’cause I’ll talk about my morning routine when I started focusing more on my morning routine and I need to personally work on some of these things, you’ve mentioned myself, but still even just getting up earlier and having some structured time in the morning just started to change things for me personally, and it wasn’t until then they’re like… I just started noticing, Hey, I’ve read more books over the last few months, or I’ve just educated myself more. I feel better throughout the day. All these things, but often I hear people say, Well, I’m just not a morning person. It’s just not the way that I work, that’s what I hear. What do you say to that? I hear that too, Whitney, and I love it. And that’s why I was smiling in year… In a year, because I always like to say, Okay, I can completely understand that. But do you think when you were born, whoever in the hospital, rubber-stamped you, not a morning person? Absolutely not, it was from your environment, it’s from how you were brought up with your parents, more than likely, your parents said they weren’t morning people, right.

0:19:34.0 JW: And you adopted that belief, it’s just a belief that you have now, are some people wired to be a little bit more of a night as and you like to stay up later. Yes, but you can absolutely change your habits and rituals, it’s gonna take time, and I usually… If somebody’s going to bed at 10 AM, I don’t say, Hey, start going to bed at 10 PM, I say, back off for a week, 15 minutes, go to bed at 12-45 Next week, 1230 and gradually do it right then just be consistent over time. So typically, not a morning person is how you’re raised? And what you heard growing up. Oh yeah, I used to say that as well, but so many people that I talk to always asking about some daily habits are disciplined about that have helped them achieve success, and so often it’s, man, I’m up early doing these three things or whatever, and they’re not always the same things, but they’re up early with a structured day… Your IT structured morning. Love that. But what about you, any daily habits for you, Jay, are disputed about… I know you mentioned some, but which one or two would you say have helped you achieve the most success? Yeah, so three that I love, and then what I’m gonna add at the end, three that I always do and can go with you when you’re on vacation traveling wherever is drinking a full glass of water, exercise in a bit and meditating those three components.

0:20:46.3 JW: You can do those regardless of where you’re at, right, so those are must-haves on a daily basis and meditation, almost 1300 straight days is just a daily practice that has completely transformed my mental state, my ability to deal with stress, my ability to become… When I’m driving, where if somebody cuts you off, you get really ticked off about it, now you breathe and you kinda breathe through it, so meditation is a key piece. The other one I love is cold showers or IEPS, so I’m a huge cold shower ice bath guy, almost to 900 straight days of that, and that mental and physical test is another key component that I do day in and day out, and especially when it’s cold in the winter time, and your mind is telling you, why are you getting in this coach were to be able to shut off that noise, and again, very similar to what I talked about when you wake up in the morning to control what you’re going to do with the mind, to be able to shut off the mind and say, I’m stepping into this ice cold shower anyway, it just gives you tremendous mental strength, mental toughness to be able to get through anything.

0:21:55.9 JW: So it’s definitely a key piece of what I do on a daily basis. That’s interesting. So I’ve heard different people over the last few years talk about this cold shower, there’s been times in my life when I was in IR different places, and I was so thankful to have a shower, it was extremely cold, but I was still so thankful to have it right, but I just almost can’t pull myself… Nail Dodson purpose. That’s interesting though. So is it more the… It’s like mental accomplishment, you think of, Hey, this is… I can do this, I’m a type of thing. There’s mental and physical benefits, physical benefits, improve circulation, boost your immunity, activates brown fat in the body of which burn some more calories, those pieces are great, helps your skin, but the mental test is where I love it, right. And to your point, getting that courage to step in there and I go full out cold, so in January, when water heater was going, my sons and wife said, Hey, the hot water heater is going. And I said, I’m not aware of it because I get cold showers, I said, I’m fine, but that mental test, once you get out, you feel this moment from, you feel this burst of energy, you feel this sense of accomplishment, and that’s so incredibly powerful.

0:23:04.2 JW: It’s basically the same thing I was talking about, those things I do in the morning. You get these quick wins, you feel this momentum, and then it’s just fuel in your vein, and so many people don’t realize the power that that can give you when you do those things first, when you wake up, imagine the momentum you’re gonna carry throughout your day, you’re gonna be more energized, you’re gonna have laser focus, it’s so counter-intuitive, but I tell people, you give yourself 30 minutes and in the morning, you’re gonna have more time throughout your day, and they’re like, How is that? Well, you’ve got more energy, you get things done quicker, you’re more focused, you have this different mindset, so it’s incredibly powerful. So yeah, I love the mental stress and the mental challenge that a cold shower and ice bath can definitely put it in front of you. I meant to ask you also, when we were talking about just getting up in the morning, you don’t have your phone, you don’t wanna see your phone, or what do you use for an alarm? So I do use my phone for an alarm, but I put it away from my bed, so if you are a snooze button hitter, there are two tricks, one, put it away from your bed, you physically have to get out of bed, walk over…

0:24:08.7 JW: Once the cold air hits, you want a little bit of movement, you’re gonna be less likely to hit that snooze button as well as you can eliminate the snows button. If you have an iPhone, just go to the alarm, go into settings and you can toggle down and remove the snows button, and I always wonder why that was the snows button so big, the stop button so small, they’re almost setting you up for failure to hit that snooze, but you can eliminate it from the screen and you have one option, and I love to make it so simple, so straightforward, you’re… One option is stop and you’re getting… It’s putting that resistance in there again, I don’t make it easy for yourself to fail… Correct, so you would have to reset the alarm, just get up, right, so those pieces are… Any way you can be a scientist can figure out strategies, tricks to make it either hard to what you wanna stop or easy to do, what you wanna build… We’ll create that success. Nice. I also set the phone across the room, so I have to get out of the bed, it does like you said, it’s that move, I could hit this news button, I don’t know if there’s a way for me turn it off on mine, but maybe there is…

0:25:14.0 JW: I need to look at that, but either way, just having to get out of bed, if I don’t get out of bed, my wife keep me out of big… ’cause alarms going off, right? That’s great advice, Jeff, what’s the number one thing? That’s contributed to your success. It’s that morning routine. It’s that foundation, and I spent years not with it, had habits and rituals that didn’t set me up for success, but once I figured out how incredibly powerful it is and how much momentum and energy and focus it gives you, it’s been the absolute game changer. I couldn’t agree more. Even for myself, it’s a small, consistent things… Right. Over a long period of time, man, it just compounds in a big way and must make an excuse to say all that little… Those little things don’t matter, but man, you give it some time. You never go back. Right. How do you like to give back? I love to interact with people, I love to have sessions give energy and give excitement, enthusiasm, because nothing great life can be done without that, so I love to… One, coach kids and youth sports. That’s one area that I’ve been doing it for about 20 years, and then I love to give back.

0:26:18.9 JW: So any of your listeners, if they wanted a complimentary 30-minute session with me, they can go out to my website and the morning fire dot com, grab the session, and I’d love to speak to you how I could help support you. Guide you in any way to build those habits that you wanna build or break the habits that you want to break. Nice, Jeff, I could not just thank you enough to being on the show and just this topic I’m pretty passionate about, and I’ve just seen it change in my life and grateful for you just sharing some important habits and the importance of the morning routine to tell the listeners, how they can get in touch with you and learn more value. Absolutely, so I mentioned they can go out to www dot the morning fire dot com, I’ve got my podcast out there, I’ve got other links, and if they want to grab a complimentary session, they can go out… I have a published book out on Amazon, rise fight love, repeat, ignite your morning fires, they wanna get that, or an e-book or pay format they can, and then I’m out on all the socials, Instagram, Jeff wickersham out on LinkedIn, out on Facebook.

0:27:16.3 JW: So if they want to find in or they can as well.

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