As an entrepreneur, what you do outside of work matters. I was reminded of this recently when one of the leaders in the business I co-founded decided to go on a weekend bender for the third weekend in a row.
Yes, it was summer, yes, he’d been working hard, and, yes, his department (sales) had been hitting all of their numbers for the last quarter. Maybe he deserved to blow off some steam. But how much is too much? Where does the line need to be drawn, especially for one of the company leaders, someone the team looks up to?
The British Medical Journal looked at 61 studies that included 330,000 people in 14 countries and determined that those working 49 hours or more per week are 12% to 13% more likely to start drinking heavily than their counterparts working 35 to 40 hours per week. So, I guess we should have expected this behavior?
We’d definitely been overworking him, but he’d also voluntarily chosen to overwork himself to make more money, routinely clocking 10- to 12-hour days over the summer. Either way, my business partner and I were forced to have a couple of disappointed-dad talks with this employee. We tried to encourage him to tone down the partying and implement some of the four successful habits of entrepreneurs in his own life.
What are these four habits?
Successful Habit 1: You Have a Solid Morning Routine
Most successful entrepreneurs have some sort of established morning routine. Most go to bed early and wake up early in order to feel good, think clearly, and make good decisions throughout their day.
When our sales leader comes out of his weekend bender, reeking of booze, how clear-headed can he possibly be to deal with a high-level resolution with a tough customer? How quickly will he “snap,” so to speak, on that top sales rep who’s bringing in a large chunk of the company revenue? It makes everything else more challenging if a good night’s sleep has not been had.
Waking up early and reading something positive each morning is a great way to properly set your sail, your attitude, for the challenges of the day. The book we most often encourage our people to read is The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. The author has hundreds of golden nuggets spread throughout the book, including this one: “Practice uplifting self-praise. Don’t practice belittling self-punishment. You are what you think you are. Think more of yourself and there is more of you.”
Many successful entrepreneurs choose to adopt a morning meditation habit as well. Meditation helps to decrease all of the feelings that cause us the most stress—anger, aggression, sadness, and hopelessness—and increase feelings of equanimity, or mental calmness in the heat of a stressful moment. “Like a ninja in a street fight” is how Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio describes it, after 40 years of meditation and an amassed fortune of $19.1 billion.
It's no surprise that some of the most accomplished people in the world—Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Sienfeld, Richard Branson, Bill Gates—have made meditation part of their daily routine. Oprah even shuts down her company twice a day so that all of her employees can meditate at 10:00 am and 4:00 pm. You can get started meditating by trying a guided technique that's offered on YouTube. Or if you want to dive in headfirst and do the type of meditation that the Beatles practiced in the 1960s, you can pay $1,000 to take a course in transcendental meditation (TM).
Successful Habit 2: You Exercise for Mental Agility
Successful entrepreneurs get their exercise. Most try to break a sweat once a day, or at least three times per week.
Wait—why wouldn’t they just keep their nose to the grindstone and try to move the needle all day every day to try to accelerate their company ahead of the competition?
It comes down to working smarter, not harder. Increased hours do not necessarily translate to a bigger bottom line. Aside from preventing burnout and minimizing frustration with co-workers and employees, a regular exercise routine is said to provide increased energy and productivity, more so than that grande triple vanilla latte you have every morning.
We tell our people, “I don’t care if you exercise and work out to try to look like Vin Diesel with his shirt off. You need to work out to keep your mind sharp.” Especially our salespeople. Every sales call is a miniature battle of the minds, the prospects are either selling you on why they don’t need our product, or you’re selling them on why they do. A little exercise every morning will give you that advantage, that horse’s nose out in front of the race.
It may be cause and effect, or it may just be a coincidence, but there is definitely a strong correlation between having an exercise routine and having continued, long-lasting success in business. The discipline and consistency required to maintain an exercise routine are the same discipline and consistency needed to have a few years of a good run in business. The simple act of stringing together enough successful days in a row is an accomplishment in itself, and there’s no arguing, exercise helps. It helps with our self-esteem and our self-image, in order to take the right, disciplined actions all day long.
Each time you work out, your body releases powerful endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. Sounds like some complicated science, but these are more simply known as “happiness hormones.” They’re the reason we talk about a “runner’s high,” and oftentimes you can ride that high all day at the office.
Though it may seem like you’re wasting time by forcing an exercise routine into your busy schedule, in the long run you’re actually increasing your business longevity. It has been said, “Those who do not find time for exercise now will have to find time for illness later.”
Schedule exercise just like you would a meeting. Put it on the calendar if you need to. It’s that important. Personally, I schedule my Tuesday and Thursday mornings for running, and no one can interrupt my running time. If Barack Obama could make 45 minutes every morning during his time in office to work up a sweat, you can too. No excuses, play like a champion.
Successful Habit 3: You Mine for Ideas in Solitude
Entrepreneurs treasure their time in solitude, often “mining for ideas” and solutions to their problems before anyone comes in or after everyone leaves the office. It has been said, “Decisions made in solitude are 100% accurate.” There’s no one there to influence you, it’s simply you, tapping into your intuition, your divine wisdom.
Idea mining is the process by which you direct your mind to think of ideas. It is intentionally “putting your thinking cap on,” just like we were routinely told to do by our second grade teachers. It is exercising your muscle for creativity to think of creative solutions to pressing problems.
Why do you think there’s more wealth created in Silicon Valley every day than there is in the rest of the country? Because the leaders of the tech companies are constantly creating new things, they are building our world as we know it.
My method for idea mining is to use simple Sony digital recorders to record ideas, seminars, and coaching calls. Almost everything I do in business gets recorded. When I’m exercising, I then listen to and reflect on these ideas and recordings, and create new ones based on current circumstances. A synthesis of thoughts, if you will. Whether it’s a major customer complaint or how to handle our sales leader’s affinity for partying, I’ve learned the ability to think on my feet and deal with the issues quickly and effectively, and I know my time in solitude, thinking, recording, and reviewing my ideas has helped me here.
Earl Nightingale, the founding father of the audiobook revolution, promoted the idea of regular exercise for your brain by using a simple daily routine. He would write the most important problem in his life at the top of a page and direct his mental energy to creating 20 solutions to that problem. Twenty ideas, big or small, that would serve him to solve his most pressing problem at hand. Not every idea will be a winner, but can you see how this would give you a massive advantage over your competition?
Idea mining helps you dig for golden nuggets that allow you to break through any obstacle you may encounter during your entrepreneurial journey. Rest assured, you can handle any difficult situation thrown at you in business by giving yourself a little time to reflect in solitude.
Successful Habit 4: You Push Your Comfort Zone, You Do Hard Things
Entrepreneurs push their comfort zones on a regular basis. They force themselves to do hard things. Entrepreneur Nat Eliason says, “Our self-image is composed of historical evidence of our abilities. The more hard things you push yourself to do, the more competent you will see yourself to be.”
If you can wake up before sunrise and do intermittent fasting until 2:00 pm, a traitorous employee is nothing more than a small annoyance.
If you’re training for a marathon and have to run 11 miles in the morning before work, an unfaithful customer becomes only a mild irritant.
More than 40% of what we do is influenced entirely by our subconscious programming, not our conscious minds. Most of our actions are deeply ingrained habits.
Instill the habit of doing hard things, and they will become easier. Did one of your key employees totally miss their numbers last quarter? Don’t avoid the issue, have that hard conversation and talk it out with him. Make sure they know the pressure is on to step up this quarter.
Are you afraid of public speaking? Join Toastmasters and really get out of your comfort zone.
Bottom line is, the more you teach yourself you can do things you don’t want to do, and train your brain via positive neural pathways and positive habits, the more success and longevity you’ll have as an entrepreneur.
