Transcription
Check out my calendar. This setup has made me over $200 million. Is it right for everybody? Maybe not. Does it allow me to get done more in a day than most people do in a week? Yes.
Success doesn't come from one big move. It comes from lots of little tiny micro habits that you repeat so frequently that they rewire your brain. Here are the ones that made me rich.
Micro habit number one. So, my calendar literally runs my life. If you want to get any time with me, it has to go on the calendar. Otherwise, it doesn't exist in my world. And I've set it up that way so I don't need to think about what I've got to do, what's coming up, and what needs to get done. I simply wake up, look at my calendar, and away I go. And I have learned that I have to batch my tasks. I go from having to solve problems in my business to then huge creative tasks like creating content like this. It just doesn't work. So, the way that I've set up my calendar is Mondays and Fridays are my meeting work. They are my shallow work days. So what do I mean by shallow work? It's not some big task that's going to propel my business forward. However, it's the stuff that has to get done. It's the HR meeting, meeting with my general manager, and any of the last round interviews that I have to do to get talent into my business. They're done on Mondays and Fridays. And then Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, they are my deep work days. Whether it's scripting content, writing promos, coming up with incentive systems, or just thinking about what are the moves that I need to make to take my company to the next level. And I just wake up and I know exactly what I'm going to be doing on all of those days. And that is micro habit number one. What you can see gets done.
Which brings us to micro habit number two. Whatever the stats are for the metrics that you're measuring that are important to the business, these are the things that you want to look at every day. I like to look at the bank account first thing in the morning. All of my ad dashboards. Look at how much leads are coming in. What does the rorowaz look like? Or it's just like a fitness goal. You want to look at the scales every single day because what gets measured is what gets managed. If you've got something that's really important to you and you look at it every single day, then you're never going to get off task because you're just rubbing your nose in the most important stats every single day and nothing's going to get away from you. And that is micro habit number two. Create a success flywheel.
Which brings us to micro habit number three. So when you wake up, there is always constant gravity that is pulling you down. You're looking around everywhere that you look, it's average. So unless you have a very clear picture of what the future looks like and you are constantly brainwashing yourself and reinforcing of that, then you are just going to accept whatever reality that the world serves up to you. So the way that I like to do that is I like to use vision boards. I like to have my goals literally recorded on my phone that automatically play when I get in the car. So when I wake up and I don't know why I'm doing things and I'm just going through the motions, and it brings me back to reality of why I'm doing all of these things in the first place. And that is micro habit number three. Brainwash yourself daily.
Which brings us to micro habit number four. When you run a business, there are literally hundreds of decisions that you need to make every single day. And only broke people use their precious mental RAM on the trivial minutiae of life. I.e. what am I going to eat today? What am I going to wear? So, what you want to do is just go super hardcore and delete all of the decisions that have to be made frequently that aren't going to get you closer to your goals. So, for me, I just wear black all the time. I wear black t-shirts. My wife laughs at me. It's the same thing with food. Most people will typically eat only like 11 meals in a fortnight. So, instead of trying to figure out what it is that I want to eat every day, in my household, we just have a menu and we change the items on that menu every so often. But we don't need to wonder what's on the menu. My wife doesn't need to be like, "Hey, what do you want to eat for dinner tonight?" It's just those small things of me having to use my brain and being like, "Oh, what do I want to eat? What do I feel like?" I don't need to think about that. She knows these are the meals that I just love. Away we go and we just lock them in. And it just works like clockwork. And I try to do this in every single area of my life. From packing my gym bag the night before, it's in the same location. My keys are in the same location. I try to remove every and all bit of friction so that I can allocate my mental RAM on the things that are really going to move the money needle in my business. And that is micro habit number four. Simplify decisions.
Which brings us to micro habit number five. If you don't get what it is that you want in life, you either didn't want it bad enough or you tried to negotiate the price. What do I mean by that? Well, specifically for me, I don't negotiate with myself on what time I'm going to go to bed. So, I found it to be far more important to set a go to sleep time than I did a wake up time because when I started measuring my sleep with the Aura Ring, I quickly realized that I get literally 80% of my deep sleep before midnight. So, instead of trying to just force myself and wake up at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. every day, regardless of what time I went to bed, I got more strict with the time that I went to bed to make sure that I was getting my sleep in so I could recover for the next day. And the ultimate currency that you have is the energy that you have. A huge, huge impact to that energy is the quality of the sleep that you get. If you're new to tracking your sleep, you want to make sure that you get combined 3 hours of REM and deep sleep per night. That's like the bare minimum of what you need to really be functioning at a high level. Some hacks for prioritizing your recovery is take magnesium glycinate in the evening. It will dramatically improve the amount of deep sleep that you have. Get a good pair of shoes and a good mattress. If you're not in one, you're in the other, so they may as well be the best quality that they are. Walk after every meal that you have. And typically try to avoid carbs if you can during the day, but you know, your insulin levels spike after you eat. And if you don't want to get that crash that just takes you out of the game, you just go for a walk after every meal. If you have meetings that are on Zoom, for the love of God, please do them as a walking meeting. That's a huge, huge hack. It will make you feel really good. Also, if there's a block of work that it is that you need to do that you can do out of the office. Another thing that I love to do is go for a walk and literally talk to ChatGPT and unload all of my thoughts. Get it to do a lot of the grunt work that I would typically need to do sitting behind a computer, but do it outdoors in the sun getting fresh air. Then you come back to the office, you've got all your raw materials that you've done from that back and forth with ChatGPT and away you go. And that is micro habit number five. Prioritize recovery.
Which brings us to micro habit number six. Everybody is hooked to their phone on social media all the time. And the internet is full of consumers, but not a lot of creators. What you want to do is to make sure that you're measuring what your screen time is and that you are creating way more than it is that you're consuming. Cuz if the product is free, which social media is, then you are the product. I like to treat social media as a place that I just need to get in and get out as quick as possible. Get in there, post what it is that I need to post, and then be out. But most people use it in the opposite way. They go on there to check something and then they get sucked into the whirlpool that is all of these crazy algorithms that keep them on these things wasting hours of their time. And that is micro habit number six. Create more than you consume.
Which brings us to micro habit number seven. At any given time, I'll have 10 to 20 split tests running. And I learned this the hard way where I ran a bunch of split tests and literally increased my conversion rates by 50, 100, 200%. And then I ran the math and being like, okay, I'm spending this much on ads per month. Holy, I just added X amount to my bottom line. And so from that moment on, I was like, there is no activity that I can do in my business that's going to make me more profit than actually running a split test given the amount of money that I spend on generating leads and on traffic. So, I just made it a rule that I always have a split test running. And you would be surprised. That is the tip of the spear. If you have 15 to 20 split tests running at any given time, you can literally increase your profit margins by 100, 200, and 300%. And that is micro habit number seven. Always have a split test running.
Which brings us to micro habit number eight. The older that you get, unfortunately, there is a gravitational pull to become less curious. However, when it comes to making and saving money, this is something that needs to be an activity that you do every single day. So, how do I make my ads more profitable? How do I get better at copywriting? Right? How do I put together better offers, have better incentive systems? How do I reduce my merchant fees and make more money by saving money? What's some certain ways that I can restructure my tax up so I can actually take home more profit just by having a constant commitment to learning about either making or saving money? These things compound over the long term and they make you an unreasonable amount of money. So just do it. And that is micro habit number eight. Learn something new about making or saving money every week.
Which brings us to micro habit number nine. I have a rule. Before I buy anything, I say to myself, okay, cool. You really want this thing, Subrey. Let's just wait 4 weeks. Let yourself marinate on it. Just percolate and see if it's something that you actually need. And even at my stage where I have a lot of means, I still deliberate over this stuff for at least 4 weeks, maybe even 2 months before I buy something that might only be $100, $500. Because the cost of the item has absolutely nothing to do with it. Everything that it is that you buy has an emotional debt. And humans, their default state is just to consume. They're like hoarders. You just want to keep buying, right? And you just end up collecting all of this that you don't need in your life. So for me, whenever I'm buying something, I have a rule where one, I have to deliberate on it for 4 weeks, and two, I have to actually get rid of something and replace it with the new thing that I want. Otherwise, as the years go by, you just end up with all of this that you don't need. So, whenever you're looking to buy something, don't give into the impulse purchase. Sit on it for 4 weeks and see if you still need it or still want it, and then buy it, even if it's on sale, because there is nothing more costly than the emotional debt of buying something that you don't really need. And that is micro habit number nine. Delay every purchase for 4 weeks.
Which brings us to micro habit number 10. You are going to get presented with so many opportunities and some of them look really enticing and they look very exciting. However, they are going to bleed away from what the main thing is. So you need to be ruthless in prioritizing your time. So if you run a business, the way that you want to think about it is by answering the first question. How much either customer or enterprise value is this task that I'm looking at or this opportunity that I'm looking at going to create? And then number two is how long is it going to take to actually execute on this? And it can sound rude for the default to be no. And there's going to be people that you do offend. And there's going to be things that you might want to do but aren't going to be supportive of getting you to where it is that you want to go. Most people's default state is yes. They're like, "Yes, let me check." Right? But I found that if you just say no to most things, whenever you're saying no to something that isn't your goal, then you're saying yes to your goal. Where people just agree to do all of these things, they are bleeding away from the thing that they want most. And that is micro habit number 10. Make no your default.
Which brings us to micro habit number 11. So whenever you're faced with a decision, you have both first order and second order consequences. I.e. I eat the chocolate cake. It tastes delicious right now. That's a positive first order consequence. However, the second order consequence is negative. My insulin levels are going to spike. I'm going to have all these excessive calories and I'm going to end up fat. I'm not talking about in moderation. I'm using this as a black and white example. So, typically when you make a decision, if the first order consequence is positive, then the second order consequence is negative. Therefore, you want to do things that are hard. To wake up in the morning and go to the gym. That's not something that for most people is a positive first order consequence. It's hard. I have to get up when it's dark outside. I don't feel like going to the gym. I have to lift up these heavy ass weights around and do all of this. However, the second order consequence is positive. So, whenever you're faced with a decision, taking the hard road is always going to be the right road because every shortcut that you try to take, it creates two new problems. And then those two new problems, they create two more problems in itself. And it just keeps on multiplying as you go out. So whenever you're looking at, okay, this is the opportunity. This is the decision that I need to make. What is the road? Door number one, it's easy. Door number two, it's hard. I take the hard road to go on the easy road in the long term. And that is micro habit number 11. Think in second order consequences.
Because wealth doesn't just show up overnight. It slowly creeps in from your daily routine. And if you do it for long enough, one day you'll wake up and people will call your discipline luck. Stay dangerous, take action, and I'll see you in the next one.