Hal Elrod: The 6-Step Morning Routine That Unlocks Peak Productivity | Productivity | YAPClassic

What does it take to build a mindset that can withstand life's toughest setbacks? Hal Elrod survived a near-fatal car accident at 20, lost more than half his income during the 2008 recession, and later battled a rare, aggressive cancer. When his coaching business nearly collapsed, he realized that changing his circumstances meant changing himself first. He created the Miracle Morning, combining six daily practices that helped him rebuild his life and business. In this episode, Hal shares how to use the SAVERS routine, turn goals into daily action, and build lasting habits for greater productivity. In this episode, Hala and Hal will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:17) Turning Life’s Hardest Setbacks Into Purpose (07:54) Surviving Financial Collapse, Cancer, and Burnout (15:56) The Power of Self-Belief in Achieving Success (18:35) The SAVERS Framework for Better Mornings (24:10) How to Make Effective Affirmations (30:04) Using Visualization to Achieve Goals (36:10) How Morning Exercise Boosts Productivity (38:37) Reading and Scribing for Personal Development (43:58) Why Entrepreneurs Need Intentional Morning Habits (48:55) The 30-Day Habit Formation Framework Hal Elrod is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and host of the Achieve Your Goals podcast. He is best known for creating The Miracle Morning, a bestselling book that inspired a global personal development movement and has sold more than two million copies worldwide. His six-step SAVERS framework has helped people develop intentional morning routines and lasting habits. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at⁠ Indeed.com/profiting⁠ Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at⁠ Shopify.com/profiting⁠. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit ⁠northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree⁠ and start using free resources to build something amazing. HeyGen - Create AI avatar videos without constantly being behind the camera. Get your first three videos free at ⁠HeyGen.com/profiting⁠. AG1 Next Gen - Support your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and superfoods. Get a free Immune Support Bundle with your first subscription order at ⁠DrinkAG1.com/PROFITING⁠. Whatnot - Grow your business through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W H A T N O T, in the App Store and start selling today. MOD - Connect with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness. Visit ⁠MOD.com⁠ for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with code PROFITING. See the website for important safety information. Prenuvo - Get a radiation-free whole-body MRI in about an hour, with no contrast dye or needles. To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your scan, visit Prenuvo.com/hala. Terms and conditions apply. CallRail - Track which marketing campaigns drive calls, texts, and leads, and use AI to turn more leads into customers. Start your free trial at ⁠CallRail.com/profiting⁠. Resources Mentioned: Hal’s Book, The Miracle Morning: bit.ly/The_MiracleMorning Hal’s Book, Taking Life Head On: bit.ly/LifeHeadOn Hal’s Podcast, Achieve Your Goals: bit.ly/AYG-apple Hal’s Website: halelrod.com Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz: bit.ly/Psycho_Cybernetics The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer by David A. Whitsett: bit.ly/Marathon-Trainer Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new LinkedIn Creator Club - Skool.com/linkedin-creator-club Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Work-Life Balance, Work Life Balance, Team Building, Motivation, Manifestation, Time Management, Life Balance, Goal Setting, Resolutions

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by Pranuvo, AG1, Whatnot, and MOD. Pranuvo offers radiation-free, whole-body MRI screening to give you a detailed look at your health. Get $300 off your whole-body MRI at prenuvo.com/hala with code HALA. That's H-A-L-A. Terms and conditions apply. AG1 is a daily nutritional drink with 75-plus ingredients in one scoop. For a limited time, get a free immune support bundle with your first AG1 Next Gen or Pro subscription at drinkag1.com/proffiting. Whatnot is a live shopping app where you can sell everything from fashion to collectibles and connect with buyers in real time. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away.

• 0:44Hala Taha?

  MOD connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers who may prescribe a modifinal drink to keep you energized, focused, and alert throughout the day. Visit mod.com, M-O-D dot com, for a free consultation. 10% off your first order and free shipping with promo code PROFITING. See their website for important safety information. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals. I was really surprised to find out like how many tragedies you've really had in your life.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  At age 20, I was hit head-on by a drunk driver at 70 miles per hour. I was found dead at the scene. My heart stopped for six minutes. Came out of a coma six days later to be told I would never walk again. It was 2007. I started a coaching business and my business was taking off. And then 2008 happened. And so I lost over half of my income. Like, it was eight years after that that I was diagnosed with this rare aggressive form of cancer. My heart was failing, my lungs were failing, my kidneys were failing. They gave me 30% chance of survival. When you find yourself upset, something doesn't go your way, set your timer for five minutes and give yourself five minutes to bitch, moan, cry, complain, vent. And when the timer goes off after five minutes. They say everything happens for a reason, but I think that we have to choose the reason.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  If you can find the benefit in the tragedy, then everything changes. But how am I going to get someone to change a lifetime-limiting belief that says, "I'm not a morning person"?

• 2:08Hala Taha?

  Yap fam, how many times have you promised yourself you'd change your life, only to wake up and just repeat yesterday over again? Now, that's the cycle Hal Elrod set out to break when he created The Miracle Morning. In this Yap Classic episode, we're bringing back our conversation about making personal growth part of your day before everything else takes over. Hal gets specific about how to turn a goal you're excited about into a commitment that you'll actually stick with even after all that excitement wears off. And the best part is, you don't have to become a "five in the morning" person. You just have to give the life that you want some space in the life that you're already living. Yap fam, let's get ready to level up with Hal Elrod. Enjoy the conversation.

• 2:52Hala Taha?

  Hal, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Hal, it is so nice to be here.

• 2:55Hala Taha?

  I'm really excited for this conversation. I feel like we've gotten to know each other a bit over the last few months. And now we get to do this in person. We're neighbors in Austin, so that's been pretty cool.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06Hala Taha?

  So I was doing some research about your journey and I was really surprised to find out like how many tragedies you've really had in your life. Car accident, bankruptcy, cancer. When you think of rock bottom, what is the memory that really stands out to you?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  I think that rock bottoms are relative to who you are at any given moment, right? One adversity for two different people might, one, it might be a rock bottom. One, I might be like, "I can handle this. I've been there before." So for me, my first rock bottom was at age 20. I was hit head-on by a drunk driver at 70 miles per hour. I broke 11 bones. I was found dead at the scene. My heart stopped for six minutes. Came out of a coma six days later to be told I would never walk again in a wheelchair the rest of my life and I had permanent brain damage. So that was for sure. Like, it doesn't get any lower than that for me. And so that was the first one. But here's how I look at it. When I say rock bottoms are relative, they're relative to the individual. Like, meaning, when I share my story sometimes, it would go, "Oh, my gosh, that, I've never been through anything quite like that."

• 4:06Speaker 01

  And I said, "Well, whatever we've been through, like if you're a child and your parent is abusive or you're bullied or even you're outcast in your friend group, that can be a rock bottom. It's those moments that test you, that challenge you, and that challenge your faith in yourself, your faith in God, right?" Yeah, and so I think that from those, of course, either those can destroy you and create lasting trauma, or they become a launching pad for you to learn and grow and become a better version of yourself.

• 4:36Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and for you, it's certainly the latter, right? You became a better version of yourself. So you got hit by a car, 20 years old, pronounced dead, told you were never going to walk again. How did you then overcome that? Because here you are, walking into the studio and had a really thriving life since then.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  So when, a year and a half before my car accident, I started selling Cutco cutlery. In fact, it's interesting, we have so much in common. At 19 years old, you started on Hot 97. I started on Q97.

• 5:05Hala Taha?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  And I DJed midnight to 6:00 AM because I was the new person, right? It was the ground shift. Yeah, and I got hired to sell Cutco. And the opportunity to make income with Cutco was significantly greater at the time than on the radio.

• 5:18Hala Taha?

  Yeah, radio had no money.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm making, you know, 10 bucks an hour. And so with Cutco, I started doing really, really well. And on my second day of training, my mentor that hired me, Jesse, he taught the training class, there was about 25 of us, something called the Five Minute Rule. And it simply said, "When things go wrong," and he was using it for sales, like, "You're going to face a lot of rejection and adversity and you're going to set goals and miss them and you're going to, you know..." And he said, "You need a strategy to quickly move through the challenges that you face so that you don't get emotionally bogged down, but you can just dust yourself off and keep going." And so he said, "The Five Minute Rule is, when you find yourself upset, something doesn't go your way, set your timer for five minutes and give yourself five minutes to bitch, moan, cry, complain, vent. Fully express and feel the emotions.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Don't suppress them. Don't say, 'No, no, no, I don't have time for this.' Feel them fully. And when the timer goes off after five minutes, he taught us to say three really powerful words. It's 'can't change it.' It's a simple acknowledgement. I can't change what happened five minutes ago, so now I got a choice. I can continue to dwell on it, wish it didn't happen, be upset about it, feel sorry for myself, or I can accept my reality exactly as it is. Can't change it, let's move forward."

• 6:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  So a year and a half of practicing that, that three, that Five Minute Rule, I came out of the coma, told I'd never walk again. And within, it took more than five minutes, but within a few days, I realized, "Well, I can't change this." So I can either be depressed and upset and sad and feel sorry for myself, or I can accept my new reality exactly as it is. And I told my mom and dad, "If I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, you guys, I live by the Five Minute Rule. I can't change it. I will be the happiest, most grateful person that you've ever seen in a wheelchair. But I'm not accepting that as my fate. I'm going to visualize, I'm going to pray, I'm going to affirm, I'm going to put all my energy into walking again while I'm also at peace with the worst-case scenario." And three weeks later, the doctors came in and they looked at the x-rays and they said,

• 7:12Speaker 01

  "We don't know how to explain this, but your body is healing so fast that, 'I know we told you three weeks ago you'd never walk again. You can take your first step in therapy today.'"

• 7:20Hala Taha?

  Oh, my God.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was called a miracle. And I wasn't thinking it could happen that fast, but you know, the rest is kind of history, as they say.

• 7:26Hala Taha?

  Amazing. So was this a starting point of you figuring out your miracle mornings?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Not my miracle mornings, but it was my starting point of figuring out my new career.

• 7:37Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  My dad came in after a meeting with the doctors and said, "The doctors believe you're in denial, Hal, or you're delusional because you're so happy." And this was before I knew I would ever walk again. I was still, you know, two weeks after the crash. And, but I'd already lived that Five Minute Rule and accepted it. And I said, "Dad, they say everything happens for a reason, but I think that we have to choose the reasons." I don't think that they're predetermined and we're supposed to figure them out or ask to, what are the... I'm deciding, I always wanted to be a motivational speaker ever since I started selling Cutco and I would get to give speeches at the conferences. I said, "But I didn't know how to, I don't know how to do that. I never had anything to talk about." I said, "I believe that's why this happened to me. I'm supposed to overcome this, learn from it, and then teach other people."

• 8:21Speaker 01

  And so that's where I thought about writing a book. And my first book, which was called Taking Life Head On, that came out six years later, and thought about launching my speaking career. And that started in high schools and then colleges, then eventually, you know, big stages with companies. But it did, in that hospital bed, start with like, "How can I use this adversity to help other people?"

• 8:39Hala Taha?

  Yeah, what a positive way to kind of reframe everything going on. Use it as a way to help other people overcome what they're dealing with. So then, fast forward to your mid to late 30s, you were diagnosed with cancer and your whole body was basically failing.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:54Hala Taha?

  And I think you had bankruptcy around that time as well or at some point in your career. So talk to us about those two adversities and how you dealt with them.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the first one in chronological order was at, ooh, it was 2007, 2008 when the US economy crashed. I had hit Hall of Fame with Cutco, so I had, well, I wanted to move on and I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Cutco was selling somebody else's product.

• 9:17Hala Taha?

  How long were you at Cutco?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Six years.

• 9:19Hala Taha?

  Wow, okay.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so, but I had this, like, I was an entrepreneur when I was 15. I started my first DJ business. I always wanted my own business. And I loved Cutco and what it provided, but I'm like, "I want to create something from thin air," you know? And, and so I left Cutco and I started a coaching business. That was the first thing I did. I thought, "What am I qualified to do?" Well, I was really successful with Cutco. I'll teach other salespeople how to be successful. So that was the first thing. And my business was taking off and then 2008 happened. And all of my clients, their sales dried up. And so they quit coaching. And so I lost over half of my income, like, within a few months. And I kind of hit rock, that was a real rock bottom. It was really scary, it was depressing. I had bought my first house. Now I'm foreclosing on the house, I'm losing my home.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  I'm going deep into credit card debt to pay my bills. And that's where The Miracle Morning was born. I realized that I have to become the person that I need to be to turn my financial situation around. And so I created a morning routine. It was the ultimate. It was like, I want to do not just one morning practice, but what are the most timeless, proven, personal development practices?

• 10:27Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  And I had a list of six. They became the savers, silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. And within two months of doing those every morning, and keep in mind, this is 2008, I'm depressed.

• 10:38Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  I'm out of shape. You know, I'm like, I'm just like really physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, in the lowest point of my life. And within two months, I doubled my income. I started training for a 52-mile ultra marathon and I had never run before in my life. And my life changed so fast. I went to my wife, I can remember the moment in our hallway. She was coming out of the bedroom folding laundry. I said, "Sweetheart, we signed on two more coaching clients today." She goes, "That's great, good news." I said, "No, no, you don't understand, it's monumental news. That second client put us over doubling our income before the economy crashed two months ago." And I said, "It's all because of this morning routine. It feels like a miracle." And she goes, "It's your miracle morning." And I go, "I love it." So I wrote in my schedule Miracle Morning. It wasn't a book idea, but then I taught it to my coaching clients and then that evolved. It worked for them and I thought...

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I have to share this with the world.

• 11:26Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  So that was the Miracle Morning piece. And then it was eight years after that, that I was diagnosed with this rare aggressive form of cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. My heart was failing, my lungs were failing, my kidneys were failing. And they gave me a 30% chance of survival if I did chemotherapy. And so I reached out to some of the best holistic doctors in America. And they said, hoping like, I don't want to do all this. It's 700 hours of chemo. I said, I do not want to, you die from the chemo as much from the cancer. And the best holistic doctors in the country, both, two of them said, it's your best bet. Your organs are failing. This cancer, you don't have time to do anything holistic. To recover, you do after the, but you have to do chemo to, to stop the cancer.

• 12:09Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  So I just combined the best holistic practices that I could. Chemo, 30% chance of survival with two young kids was the, by far, the hardest thing I'd ever dealt with, knowing there was a, the doctors say most likely 70% chance you're going to die and leave your seven-year-old daughter and your four-year-old son without a dad. And I used my Miracle Morning to beat the cancer as well. That was a big part of it. But yeah, now that was seven or eight years ago and I'm cancer-free.

• 12:36Hala Taha?

  Wow. Oh, my gosh. Thank God you're cancer-free. And you know, when I think about that, I feel like so many people would have just been like, you know what? Why me? Like, I already got into a, I was dead at 20 years old. Like, I take care of myself. I wake up every morning and I exercise and I journal and I have gratitude. And did you feel any sense of why me at this point? Or did you just have so many tools in your toolbox to know that, okay, I gotta just be positive?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  And both.

• 13:05Hala Taha?

  Okay. Yeah.

• 13:09Hala Taha?

  Yap fam, these days it feels like I'm starting a new LLC every month. In fact, I recently bought a commercial property that has tenants and I wanted to keep that venture separate from Yap Media and my personal assets, which means another LLC. So of course I turned to Northwest Registered Agent. That is my go-to for business formation and registered agent services. I can get an LLC application started online in less than 10 minutes and their filings have been super quick. Northwest also helps you build your complete business identity. They give you a business address, operating agreement, website, professional email, phone number and built-in privacy. And when I missed a step, a real person from Northwest actually texted me to help. Starting another business should feel exciting and not like another full-time job.

• 13:52Hala Taha?

  And Northwest has a lot of free resources that you can leverage for starting your business. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get for free from Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/yanfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/yanfree. What's up Yap fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become.

• 14:36Hala Taha?

  That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself and use it to make videos on demand. So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content. And you guys know I'm always looking for tools that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. 30 million people already use it, from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com/profitting. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N.com/PROFITING. Heygen.com/profitting.

• 15:25Hala Taha?

  Yap fam, I have an expensive confession. I need an outfit for practically every interview. And I love designer clothes, so you can imagine what that does to my budget. And after talking to Haley Sachs, who's a financial expert, I was unfortunately reminded that I can't just assume that every outfit is a business expense. You guys know that I love hosting live streams and webinars and I love selling. So I'm planning on opening up a pre-owned designer shop on Whatnot. Whatnot is a live shopping app where you can show off products, interact with buyers in real time and turn shopping into a fun, interactive experience. And you absolutely do not need designer clothes to get started. People sell everything from sneakers and beauty products to sports cards, Pokemon cards and collectibles. All you need are your products and your phone. Whatnot handles payments and provides shipping labels.

• 16:10Hala Taha?

  So I recommend you take a shopping trip through a few live shows, see how it works and maybe you'll be inspired to start selling too. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the App Store. Download and start selling right away.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  There were for sure moments where I'm like, God, what? Like, I've already been on the edge of death.

• 16:29Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Like, what else could I possibly learn?

• 16:32Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  You know, and the answer was a lot, actually, right? Like, it was a whole new evolution. And, and so it was also such a, you know, the car accident was such a rare thing where most people can't relate to that. Like, they, there's a huge distance between like, wow, that's wild, but it's not something I would ever go through. Cancer, almost, that's such, almost everyone's life. And so whenever I go through something, and I think this is important for anybody to consider.

• 16:56Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  I believe the purpose of adversity, or at least a purpose, is for us to learn, grow, evolve, become a better version of ourselves for ourselves, but in service of other people. So to me, like, and I learned that from my mom. When I was eight years old, my mother, my sister, who was 18 months old, she was a baby. On a Saturday morning, I woke up to my mother screaming across the hall. It was just me, my mom and my baby sister, Amory, home. She was screaming, my baby, my baby, my baby. And I went in and my sister was dead in her arms and my mom was performing mouth-to-mouth, trying to resuscitate her. And within a year, I mean, it was obviously devastating. My sister died that morning. And at eight years old, it was for me, I, I was, I didn't know how to process it.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  But of course, for my mom, it was, she was 30 at the time. It wasn't just the worst nightmare for a parent. And within a year, my mother was leading a support group for other parents who had lost children. My mom and dad were leading a fundraiser every year, which we did that for like 12 years, our whole family, every year to raise money for the hospital that cared for my sister. So I learned from my mom and my dad that, oh, when you go through tragedy or adversity, you find purpose in your pain, you find a way to help other people. And now it's like, yes, this sucks. Yes, I didn't want this, but it's what's supposed to happen so that I can help the most amount of people.

• 18:22Hala Taha?

  That reminds me of like what I went through. I'm Palestinian, right? And what I went through with everything happening in Gaza. The way that I dealt with it was like, how can I raise money? How can I help people? How can I educate? How can I just do something positive, even though it feels so terrible? But all you can do is kind of just try to help other people. It's the best thing for your mental health.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  It is, it is. Then it's not, because if you're focusing on why me? Why did this happen to me? I don't deserve that, right? You're just, you're perpetuating emotional pain.

• 18:50Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  And as soon as you get off of yourself and find a purpose, whether that's a purpose to be the best parent for your kids or the purpose, even just to evolve yourself, whatever your purpose, you've got it. You have to turn the pain into a purpose. And once you have a purpose, now it completely shifts your mental health. It shifts your focus. You're like, okay, there's a reason for this that is beneficial. And if you can find the benefit in the tragedy, then you, you know, everything changes.

• 19:17Hala Taha?

  So you were mentioning that you didn't think you were going to learn anything else from cancer, but you did.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:22Hala Taha?

  So what is one belief that you did, that you had before you had cancer that you no longer subscribe to?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  It was a belief that I am meant to help millions of, not that I'm meant to help millions of people, that my mission is to help millions of people. That that's my number one mission in life, is to help millions of people.

• 19:41Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Because that's what was happening with the Miracle Morning. And when I went through the cancer journey, I realized, oh, no, my mission is to help three people. It's my wife and my kids. And I was, I was confusing quantity over quality. I was living this like, I'm on a mission from God to help millions. And I still believe I'm helped, to help millions of people, but only after I've served the three most important people in my life and they were getting put on the back burner. I'd become a workaholic, a workaholic unknowingly, where if you would have asked me, how, what's the most important thing in your life? Of course, my family, my wife and my kids, of course.

• 20:13Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  If you would have looked at my schedule, you'd be like, well, wait a minute. You sure do miss a lot of Saturdays because you got a speech or because you're writing another book. You sure are working. So it was one thing to believe or think that I had my family as my number one priority. I wasn't living in alignment with it. And so that was the big shift was, oh, all those millions of people, I'll get to them once I've made sure my family's taken care of. And so now it's like, I only work when my kids aren't in school. I drive one child to school every day.

• 20:43Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  I pick one child up every day, right? Like, that to me, those are my greatest accomplishments, not the Miracle Morning.

• 20:50Hala Taha?

  Yeah, even with this interview, you're like, I have to be done by three so I can go get my daughter.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:55Hala Taha?

  So you're man of your word. So let's go back to the Cutco days because a lot of my audience are entrepreneurs. Sales is the lifeblood of entrepreneurship. One of the most beneficial things I think you could do as an entrepreneur is to actually work at a big company and kind of get your feet wet, learn on somebody else's dime. So sales-wise or just, you know, career-wise, what are some of the important lessons that you learned at Cutco?

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the first lesson that I learned, day two of training, back to when I learned that five-minute rule, same day, we learned about something called the fast start. And it's the first 10 days that any, every sales rep starts at Cutco. And again, there's like 20 people in my training class. So it's like every week, they're like, they're launching 20 people, you know, 30 people, 40 people out of the training class. And the first 10 days, they have, Cutco has it set up, very smart, that it's like, there's all these additional incentives. If you hit a thousand dollars in your first 10 days, you get this bonus and you get this Cutco. And at that time, Cutco was so cool for us. We're like, awesome, I get a free knife? I would love that. And then 2,000, you get, right? And the bonuses just increased. And then the, the highest reward was if you break the fast start record,

• 22:02Speaker 01

  which at that time was, a woman had just broken it, 50-year-old company. She had broken it the week before. And she lived an hour and a half south of me in Bakersfield and she sold $12,000 and change. And for my whole life, I was very mediocre. I did not get good grades, so I didn't excel in school. I didn't play sports. I didn't excel in sports. I wasn't popular. Like, I was a very roughly, relatively mediocre kid. And I didn't have a lot of belief that I was capable of anything that I had, beyond what I had done in the past, which wasn't much, right? And on my second day of training, it came from, I don't know where it came from, but it was like, wait, this girl just sold $12,000 at Cutco. She just broke the record. She lives in Bakersfield. That's not Beverly Hills. She's not, because I lived in Fresno, right?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  You're thinking, so I'm like, she didn't live in like some fancy, smancy place. She lived in Bakersfield. If she could do it. Why not me? And I believe that's the first and most important belief for all of us to embody for success, that every human being that's overcome or accomplished something, they're not different than us, they're not better than us, they're not more capable than us, they're not more qualified, they're human beings and they are evidence of what's possible for us. And I think we create separation, we're like, we always find the reasons, whoa, but they're younger, they're smarter, they're better looking, or they're, you know, they've got more experience, or whatever. And it's like, you've got to realize that we all have limitless potential.

• 23:22Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Right? And that's not cliche, that's legit, we have limitless potential, and look toward people, like, if you wanted to be in podcasting, you'd look at Hala and be like, hey, she's your evidence, and especially when I know your story, right? You, you went through, you were let go, and you were fired from this and that, and you just kept pursuing your dreams and your goals, and you made them happen. And so you're evidence, and we're all evidence of what's possible for every single one of us.

• 23:47Hala Taha?

  So inspiring. Okay, let's talk about your morning routine, because I'm sure it would be beneficial for all my listeners, so it stands, savers. So talk to us about what that stands for.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it started where I Googled, what do the world's most successful people do during their morning routine? And I was looking for like, one or two practices. And I came up with journaling, and meditation, and affirmations, and visualization, and reading, and, you know, and I had a list of six. And again, keep in mind, 2008, I'm like, you know, rock bottom. And so, I'm like, why, I can't do all of these. And then I had the epiphany. I was trying to go, which one's best? Which one's the best? And then I went, wait, what if I did all of them? What if I woke up tomorrow 30 minutes earlier, and I did five minutes of the six most timeless, proven, personal development practices that the world's most successful people have sworn by for centuries? And so, that, that was the start of the Miracle Morning. And, and I didn't know how to do any of them, I didn't know how to meditate, I didn't know how to do affirmations, felt goofy, right?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  And so, over the last, what is it, 17 years, I've studied each of these individually. So the first S for silence.

• 24:49Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  That is meditation, or prayer, or breathwork. You think about, when do our biggest breakthroughs come? They come in the shower.

• 24:56Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  When we're in a period of silence, we're falling asleep at night, right? It's in those moments of peaceful, purposeful silence. And so, rather than letting those be haphazardly, right, like, just happen by chance, it's engineering your day, that it starts with that. And for most of us, what do our days start with? They start with our smartphone.

• 25:14Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  And you literally, we put ourselves in a state of reactivity. We, our nervous system, we go, you're reacting, you try to get off airplane mode, now you're reacting to notifications, and you're acting to text messages, and emails, and social media, and you're literally putting your nervous system in a state of reactivity versus proactivity. So starting your day in a period of silence enables you to calm your mind, calm your nervous system, lower your blood pressure, right? And, and listen to the wisdom of God, or higher intelligence. And I always have my journal next to me, because my best ideas come during those periods of peaceful silence. And again, whether you meditate, or you pray, or you do both, and there's countless forms of meditation, I do all different styles sometimes. It's a specific intention, like, God, I need to, I need a solution to this issue.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  And then I just get quiet, and I just wait for it, and it always comes, I always get the ideas. The A for affirmations.

• 26:05Hala Taha?

  Can I ask you a question about silence?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, interrupt me as, anytime I keep going.

• 26:13Hala Taha?

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• 26:58Hala Taha?

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• 27:10Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? So, I recently caught a really bad summer cold, at the worst possible time, it was right before my interview with Gary Vee. Everything turned out okay, thankfully, but it did remind me how quickly getting sick can throw off your plans, especially when you're running a business. So I've been taking my health routine way more seriously. And one habit that I'm sticking with, it's AG1. It's a daily nutritional drink with 75+ ingredients, including vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, pre and probiotics, and superfoods, all in one scoop. I just mix it in with cold water every single morning. Plus, AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials with key nutrient levels, improving within three months of consistent use. There's also AG1 Pro, designed to support performance and recovery.

• 27:54Hala Taha?

  It includes 5 grams of creatine for muscle strength, C, A, H, and B for muscle protection, and zinc, carnecine for gut health. I can't control when a cold hits, but I can keep my morning routine consistent. For a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/profitting and get a free immune support bundle, including omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3K2 with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/profitting.

• 28:23Hala Taha?

  Yap fam, these days, it feels like I'm starting a new LLC every month. In fact, I recently bought a commercial property that has tenants, and I wanted to keep that venture separate from Yap Media and my personal assets, which means another LLC. So of course, I turned to Northwest Registered Agent, that is my go-to for business formation and registered agent services. I can get an LLC application started online in less than 10 minutes, and their filings have been super quick. Northwest also helps you build your complete business identity. They give you a business address, operating agreement, website, professional email, phone number, and built-in privacy. And when I missed a step, a real person from Northwest actually texted me to help. Starting another business should feel exciting and not like another full-time job.

• 29:06Hala Taha?

  And Northwest has a lot of free resources that you can leverage for starting your business. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get for free from Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/yapfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/yapfree. You talk about emotional optimization meditation. That's, I've, you know, I've talked to so many experts, I've talked about meditation 100 times, never heard of that, so who had that, and why does it help?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I made it up, I always say, I think I made it up.

• 29:38Hala Taha?

  Oh, you made it up, that's why I never heard of it.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so most meditation, forms of meditation are about, like, clearing your mind, focusing on your breath. I'm a result-oriented person, as you are, I know. And so for me, emotional optimization meditation is where I'll look at my schedule briefly, and I'll go, okay, what's on my agenda today? And then I'll ask myself, what is the optimal mental and/or emotional state that, that would best serve me today, based on what I'm doing? My default is bliss, by the way. Like, if it's just a general day, and I got nothing, I need to, you know, specifically get into a specific state of like, I need to be confident, because I have a keynote speech in front of 12,000 people, right? But if it's just general, it's bliss, which to me is love, contentment, gratitude, and peace.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Those four components of bliss. And so I'll just sit there, sometimes I'll put my hand on my heart, and I'll just get in states of love and gratitude, and I'll set my timer for five minutes, or 10 minutes, or 20 minutes, and I'll just meditate, if you will, meditate or marinate in that state. And what you're doing is, you're hardwiring your nervous system, you're creating new neural pathways in your brain, so that those states that you intentionally choose in the morning and meditate in, become your default states that you can access at will. And again, for me, I want to live life in a state of bliss, I want heaven on earth, and it comes from, to me, from the internal state, is how you create that heaven on earth and that bliss, so.

• 31:02Hala Taha?

  So are you, like, thinking of past memories that, where you felt blissful, and kind of like, reimagining yourself in those situations?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in the new edition of the Miracle Morning, which, right, is where I teach this, and, and I talk about, there's different ways to get yourself into that state. And so, for, for example, let's say I'm giving a speech, and I want to get a state of confidence. Yeah, I'll go, when was the last time I felt really confident in front of an audience? And I'll go, oh, it was last month when I spoke for Leadercast. Okay, all right, what did that feel like? And I'll pick, so yeah, I'll, I'll bring in the other savers, I'll visualize that, right? I'll affirm, I am a phenomenal speaker, I am going to make a phenomenal impact today. Or, I am at peace, I am grateful. So yeah, it's using visual imagery, it's using memories, it's using affirmations. And here's the beauty of it, once you do this for a while, you don't even need those anymore.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Like, I know how to access the state of bliss, like that, I can just put my hand on my heart and close my eyes. And I can just sink into a state of bliss because I've done it so many times. It's literally like exercising, right?

• 32:04Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  You get physically stronger, you get spiritually, mentally and emotionally stronger through that form of meditation. So that's my favorite.

• 32:11Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And when it comes to silence, do you recommend like, is it also stillness? Or can you do your silence while you're doing other things? Or is it more of like, you need to just like be really intentional and be still and silent?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  I honestly, I don't know that I've done, well, I, that's a trip down, walking meditations.

• 32:27Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Where, and that's usually where I'm walking outside, right? When the weather's nice and, which in Texas is a short window. It's either too hot or too cold.

• 32:36Hala Taha?

  Not from setting for New York, Texas is awesome.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  But, but, and then, and that's usually like, I'll usually do a typical meditation where I'm just literally listening. I'm listening to every sound that I can. I'm being totally present to my environment. I'm letting my vision almost blur where I'm just seeing the field in front of me. I'm hearing the sounds. So that's a walking meditation, but I would say 99% of the time or 95% I'm sitting in a chair. I've got my feet on the ground, my hands on my knees or sometimes up and I'm, I'm totally still.

• 33:09Hala Taha?

  Okay, affirmations.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  All right, I'm going to go a little deep here. This is my favorite form of the savers.

• 33:16Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Uh, or my favorite of the practices. And I think it's the most, number one, it's the most misunderstood. Affirmations are usually thought of as cheesy, ineffective, goofy. Either because if you grew up in the nineties, you watched Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live. And he had that skit where he's like, it was daily affirmations with Stuart Smalley. Did you ever watch that?

• 33:34Hala Taha?

  No, but I, I know what you're talking about in terms of like how it's kind of like woo woo.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and here's the two, I'll give you two really specific reasons. I think affirmations have not worked for people. Number one, lying to yourself doesn't work. We've been taught to affirm something that's not true, that we wish were true, as if it were true. So for example, if you're struggling financially, a well-meaning self-help guru may have said, just affirm, I am wealthy.

• 33:56Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  I, right? And if you say, I am, and it's followed by something that isn't factually true, then you're creating an internal conflict. As if we don't have enough of them, right? Already, um, and so it's like, you go, I am wealthy. And then your reality is like, no, my bank account balance is negative, right? And so you're going, shut up, I'm doing my affirmations. You're fighting reality. So the first problem with affirmations, they have to be rooted in truth. You can't lie to yourself. The second problem with affirmations is flowery passive language does not produce results. So a really popular affirmation is I am a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance.

• 34:33Hala Taha?

  I've said this a lot of times.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so popular. And the reason I think it's popular, Holly, is because if your, if your reality is like, if you're looking at your, you're checking your bank balance on your phone. You're like, oh my God, I'm overdrawn. I need to do my affirmations. It's literally like taking a pill, like, like an antidepressant or something where you're covering up reality where you're going, I'm a money magnet. Oh, that feels better. Money is going to flow to me effortlessly. Thank God I have no motivation right now. Right? And so it's like, it's, it's delusional. You're deluding yourself into thinking everything's going to be okay. And then it doesn't get any better by just, and then you're like, oh, I gotta do it again. So it's like you're, you're putting a Band-Aid on, you're not getting to the root cause. So here are three steps to create affirmations that are rooted in truth.

• 35:16Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  That are practical and that are actionable and will produce results. Step one, affirm what you're committed to. So you don't get what you, if you want to be wealthy, don't say, I am wealthy. Say, I'm committed to becoming wealthy or I'm committed to earning specifically this amount of money this year. Or increasing my income by this, or getting that raise. Commit to a habit or an outcome. I am committed to blank, no matter what, there is no other option. Number two, step two is, why is it important to you? Why is it a must? Why is it meaningful? And as we know, right? Like you've got to fuel the, the commitment. So why is it so important that by reminding yourself of those reasons? And I usually have three to five whys for any commitment. Why, it could be one, but it's usually three to five. Like, why is this important for me personally?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Why is it important for my wife, Ursula, for our kids, for my community, for my company, for the world, right? Like I've got, why is this a must for me in these different areas? And when you read those, that's what fuels you to keep going. You're like, I don't feel like it today. And then you read the why, you're like, oh yeah, it's not even about whether I feel like it. I'm committed to this for my wife and I'm committed for my family. All right, I'm doing it. And then step three is which actions you will take and when you will take them. So you're affirming, okay, here's what I'm committed to. Here's why it's so important. And in order to make it a reality, this is the, these are the actions I'm going to take and when I am going to take them. And last thing I'll say is that I have, I use that affirmations formula for each of my goals.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  So every goal I have, it's what am I committed to in terms of the goal? And the goal, again, it could be an outcome, but it could also be a result. Like you could say, I'm committed to losing 20 pounds or I'm committed to exercising for 20 minutes, five days a week. Right? And then two, why it's a must. And then three, and I have that for each goal in my life and for each role in my life. So as a, as a husband, as a father, as a CEO, as an author, all of those things.

• 37:08Hala Taha?

  Amazing. So are you also using this as a way to like plan your day then? Is the affirmation portion a way to kind of plan your daily goals?

• 37:15Speaker 01

  It's, it's almost like it's pre-planned. So, so yeah, literally every day, you think about this, you're affirming what I'm, you're committed to.

• 37:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah, your priorities basically.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  The only thing in life, we get what we're committed to, not what we want. We have, if we're committed, and so every day you're literally reinforcing and programming your subconscious mind to the commitment. You're reinforcing the why behind it and then you're directing your action. You're like, oh yeah, here's exactly what I need to do. So you look at your schedule, if it's, if anything from the affirmations is missing, right? So the affirmation, like to me, it's the anchor of the miracle morning. It's the foundation. And, and the only way you can fail to achieve everything you want in your life is to live out of integrity with what you're affirming every day. As long as you live in alignment with your affirmations, you, you, you can't fail. And the last thing I'll say is that what you affirm repeatedly becomes your internal reality. Right?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  So when you affirm this, when I had cancer, immediately I, I use these three steps and I created affirmations. I'm committed to beating cancer, no matter what, there is no other option. I'm committed to beating cancer for Ursula because I promised her forever and today. It's part of our wedding vows. I'm committed for my, my, Sophia and Halston, my kids, because they need their daddy's love, guidance and leadership. And I want to watch them grow up. I'm committed for my mom and dad because they already lost a child when Amory died. And I, I can't bear for them to lose another one. I'm committed for myself, right? So I had all these reasons and then I had specifically which actions I was going to take in terms of holistic medicine as well as Western medicine. And I had specific things I was going to do. And so I believe the affirmations saved my life because when I felt afraid, what if I die?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  I read those every day and after a few weeks, that wasn't even a possibility to me because I, what I affirmed repeatedly became my reality.

• 38:58Hala Taha?

  That was my next question. So you write them down and do you say them out loud or do you just read them in your head?

• 39:02Speaker 01

  I read them in my head. A lot of people do them out loud. I've even heard of people that'll read their affirmations into their voice note or voice recorder.

• 39:08Hala Taha?

  That's what I do.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then play them back. Yeah. So there's different ways. For me, um, I just, I, it works for me if I read them, but I will say this, I do read them with conviction. And I guess sometimes I do, I like, I'll say them out loud. My kid, everybody's sleeping nearby, so I don't yell them, you know? But I will like, under my breath go, I am committed to blank, no matter what, there is no other option.

• 39:28Hala Taha?

  Yeah, even when you read something, you're basically saying it in your head, right?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah.

• 39:35Hala Taha?

  Yap fam, these days it feels like I'm starting a new LLC every month. In fact, I recently bought a commercial property that has tenants and I wanted to keep that venture separate from Yap Media and my personal assets, which means another LLC. So of course I turned to Northwest Registered Agent. That is my go-to for business formation and registered agent services. I can get an LLC application started online in less than 10 minutes and their filings have been super quick. Northwest also helps you build your complete business identity. They give you a business address, operating agreement, website, professional email, phone number and built-in privacy. And when I missed a step, a real person from Northwest actually texted me to help. Starting another business should feel exciting and not like another full-time job.

• 40:17Hala Taha?

  And Northwest has a lot of free resources that you can leverage for starting your business. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get for free from Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree. What's up Yap fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become.

• 41:01Hala Taha?

  That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself and use it to make videos on demand. So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content. And you guys know, I'm always looking for tools that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. 30 million people already use it from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com/profitting. That's H E Y G E N dot com slash P R O F I T I N G.

• 41:44Hala Taha?

  Heygen.com/profitting. Okay, visualization. I know we've heard a lot about this, but do you have a different spin on it?

• 41:51Speaker 01

  I do. We've been taught to visualize the end result. You know, like back in the day, The Secret made vision boards very popular. And I think vision boards are fun craft projects. And I think there is value in having a picture of what outcome you want in your life to generate the, the inspiration, et cetera. But I find that my vision boards become invisible boards. Like, right? I eventually like, it just becomes back, like background because I've, it's like, I see it so many times. If you're intentional, of course, you can stare at it. Here's my point though. I believe there are two parts to effective visualization and the first part is the vision board. It's seeing that outcome. But it's the least important part. And I just spend, you know, sixty seconds, like when I was training for that ultra marathon. I I pick, I printed out a picture of the Atlantic City Marathon.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  That's the, that's the finish line that I was going to cross. So I saw it every morning and I closed my eyes and I would imagine, you know, like triumphantly busting through it after twenty six miles. But that just took me like less than a minute to do that. The most important part of visualization is what I call, and I didn't invent this term, it's mental rehearsal. So it's not about seeing the end result, like, yeah, get that in your mind. So you go, oh, yeah, I'm, I'm excited about that. We're gonna do that. Now it's about mentally rehearsing what you need to do today to take one step closer to what's on the vision board. What the ultimate vision is. And so for me, I literally would close my eyes and I would, I was sitting on my couch with my miracle morning. And what I would, the way I'd visualize is I would close my eyes and mentally rehearse the alarm on my phone going off at seven AM, which is when it was time to go for a run.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  And then I would see myself standing and getting off the couch, like an out of body experience. And then I would walk into my bedroom closet. I would picture myself getting dressed in my running clothes. Walking through the living room, opening my front door of my house, seeing the sidewalk. And then I would repeat the affirmations. By the way, you see how these all these savers connect, I would, as I'm visualizing the sidewalk, I would say those three steps. Number one, I am committed to running fifty two consecutive miles on October twenty ninth, two thousand nine. There is no other option. I'm doing this to overcome the limiting belief that I'm not a runner, so that I can overcome every limiting belief that I ever have in my life. Moving forward.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  And to follow through with this, I will read the book, The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer, and follow the training plan to a T every day, whether I feel like it or not. That was those three steps in action and I read them before I visualized. And then as I visualized and I pictured that, I I read them one more time and I saw myself feeling excited to do the thing that I hated doing. And if I hadn't gone through that mental rehearsal, that visualization process, I would, alarm would have gone off at seven, I'd go. Ah, I'll, I'll run to, I don't wanna, I'll run tomorrow, which we all can relate to that.

• 44:35Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  But because I didn't mentally rehearse procrastinating, that's not what I did when the alarm went off. I did exactly what I visualized. Day after day after day. And that's the power of visualization in the form of mental rehearsal.

• 44:48Hala Taha?

  Do you feel like sleeping on it also helps support your visualization? I'll give you an example. So I got asked to speak at Funnel Hacking Live and it was onstage with Tony Robbins. It was six thousand people. Russell Brunson is my client. He invited me to this. And now like I've done a lot of speaking, but this is by far like the biggest stage I was ever on. And I just had like three weeks to prepare, plus I'm running a company and a podcast. So really I had like a week and a half.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:14Hala Taha?

  To prepare, memorize, everything like this. And I found myself visualizing, I would visualize me getting a standing ovation, doing a great job, like flawless. I found myself dreaming about it all the time. And um, I remember, you know, I finalized my speech just the day before.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:35Hala Taha?

  Okay, cuz I had like a lot of edits and was just like really obsessed with the. And I remember on the Uber to the, the venue, I started just saying my speech and I had memorized all thirty minutes.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:49Hala Taha?

  And my team was like, what? Like you, how did you memorize this? This was just yesterday. And I was like, I think I just dreamed all night about it.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:57Hala Taha?

  And then I just did it perfectly. And I was onstage and the notes didn't work. And I had memorized it, so it didn't matter, like nobody knew. And even afterwards, I told like the technical staff, like the notes weren't working. They're like. You did great. And I was like, well, yeah, thank God I memorized it in my sleep. But so I find that my brain will kind of like go over these scenarios when it's really important. And it's not really the best to get like really restful sleep, but it helps me really perform when it matters the most. So I don't know if, if you've really to that in any way.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, and so, um, and I think it was Maxwell Maltz in the book Psycho-Cybernetics. I forgot the term he used, but he talked, he talked a lot about programming your mind before bed. And that your subconscious would go to work on, so every night before bed, he would think of something he needed a solution to. He would set the intention for it and then he'd wake up and he's like, it was always there, like my subconscious worked overnight. So that speaks to what you're talking about. The, the, my relating to that, um, is, so I don't dream. Ever since my car accident and the brain damage, I've dreamt maybe a dozen times in the last twenty years. I don't exactly know why. But uh, I, I created bedtime affirmations when I started doing the miracle morning. And so before I would go to bed, here's what I realized.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Our first thought in the morning and our first feeling in the morning is almost always whatever thought we dwelled on before bed and whatever emotional state we dwelled on before bed, right? And a lot of people go to bed, oh, my gosh, I'm only getting six hours of sleep. I'm only so tired in the morning. I got a big project. I'm so stressed. Right? And that's the intention they're setting. And then their first thought in the morning is, oh, my gosh, I only slept six hours. I have that project coming, right? I'm gonna be a mess. And so I realized how important it was to program our subconscious mind before bed with the thoughts, the beliefs, the intentions, the emotions, the energy that we needed. And so I crafted these words, and these are in the Miracle Morning book. Um, I crafted these words for bedtime affirmations to set myself up that, hey, no matter how many hours of sleep I'm getting, my, my brain is a miraculous organ that can regenerate cells.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  I'm gonna wake up feeling rested, excited, ready to take on the day. And I would, and that was my first thought in the morning was, oh, it's the morning. It's exactly what I thought. I slept for seven hours or six hours. I'm gonna feel great. Let's go. And I jumped out of bed. So really your thoughts before bed become a self fulfilling prophecy in the morning. So I love that you brought that up.

• 48:14Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that too. And I love that bit of advice that you gave us. Okay, so the next one is exercise, right?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this isn't rocket science, so I won't, I won't spend much time on it, but um, the idea that when you move your body in the morning, or anytime. You generate not only physical energy, but you generate mental clarity, right? You get blood and oxygen flowing through your brain and you think better, you have more physical and mental energy. And so the idea is that you need, it's not that you need to go to the gym in the morning. It's that you uh, do sixty seconds of jumping jacks. Like what I do in the morning, so I do a five minute little workout in the morning and I, this is what I'm doing now. It evolves over the years.

• 48:52Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  But I do um, sixty seconds of plank and then sixty seconds of toe touches just to stretch out. And then sixty seconds of backbend where I lay on my stomach and I pull my shoulders back and my, my legs up. Then I go do forty five seconds of each of those and then I go do thirty seconds of it. So it takes like five minutes total. But my whole body is warmed up and I feel awake and alert. And one, I'll answer a question right now that might come up later, which is, do you have to do the savers in order, S A V E R S? And the answer is no. So you can do it in any order you want. Some people like to follow just cuz they can remember them, just follow the S A V E R S. But like exercise, for example, if you wake up, you know, those mornings where you wake up and you were like right in the middle of REM cycle and you're like, oh, my God, I, I feel like I was hit by a truck.

• 49:35Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  That's where I move E to the front. And I immediately do sixty seconds of jumping jacks or something to wake myself up. And now I go from like a, you know, at a scale of one to ten of alertness, I'm at a one when I wake up. Now I'm at a, a seven. And now I can do the rest of a miracle morning with more energy, more clarity and get more out of it.

• 49:53Hala Taha?

  I've never really been a great morning person, but lately I've been like forcing myself to wake up and I do ten to twenty minutes of Pilates. Now, I work out every day and I like to do my hard workouts at night. But I was like, I want a way to feel like refreshed in the morning, to feel more alert in the morning and even just ten minutes. Like people don't realize that ten minutes of exercise is like a decent amount of exercise and you wouldn't have done that anyway, right? So I feel like it's just really good for your physical health and people don't realize that you could just get it done in such a short amount of time.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Robin Sharma, so uh, we have a miracle morning, there's a miracle morning documentary. And Robin Sharma was in the movie and he said, uh, in the film that the, the science, science has proven that the, the benefits of exercise last as long as thirteen hours after the initial exercise. Right? So the idea of, another question I get is like, can I do the savers later in the day?

• 50:44Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  You could, but you're missing out on A, the thirteen hours of benefit from that, the, the, the calming of your nervous system from silence, right? The clarity from affirmations.

• 50:53Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  The, you know, I mean, the emotional reset from visuals, all, all of these things, yeah.

• 50:57Hala Taha?

  Okay, so the next one is reading.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right? Not rocket science. Um, the, uh, but the idea that, you know, I think most of your listeners probably read, I, I would guess that's your audience. The average person does not read self-help books, you know, it's a very small percentage. But I just think that whatever area of our life we want to improve or anything we want to accomplish, right? Somebody spent a lot of time learning through trial and error and then putting their best knowledge into a book. And uh, I have one self-imposed rule, uh, and this came from cancer and realizing that work was my first priority, even though I thought it was family. It was work before cancer. Now it is family. I have to read a book on marriage or parenting to earn the right to read a book on business. So that's a little self-imposed rule that I have in the morning. It reminds me, A, it reminds me, oh, yeah, family's number one. I'm, I'm not, this is what I read first.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Uh, and then number two, um, I learned something. So I actually get to be a better dad or a better husband that I can apply that day.

• 51:51Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And this is really like the learning step. So it can be an audiobook. It could be a podcast. It doesn't have to be like a physical book.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you can, and you can definitely stack habits, right? Where, where people go, I'll listen to an audiobook while I do my exercise, right? Or, or I'll listen to my affirmation, like let's say you wanna exercise for twenty minutes on the treadmill or the bike, right? It's like you've got, you can have your audio affirmations that you're listening to. You can listen to an audiobook. You can, right? You can, if you can write in a journal or do, you know, lots of different ways you can do it.

• 52:18Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Okay, the last one is scribing.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:21Hala Taha?

  Journaling, right?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  And it's, it's funny, this is, you know, when I was, when I was, this acronym started with my wife. Again, she thought of the miracle morning title, right? Even though it wasn't a book title, it was just the name of the, my, my morning routine. And then I was writing the book one day and she goes, I said, sweetheart, I've got these six practices and there's no rhyme or reason. Robert Kiyosaki has the cash flow quadrant and Steven have, you know, there's all these like, you gotta, I need a catchy way people can remember this. And she goes, why don't you get a thesaurus and see if there's any synonyms for those six practices? And so journaling became scribing, uh, would have made the acronym awkward, savager. But right, but so for me, three things I journal in the morning. Number one is, is there anything that I am, that I'm holding on to that I need to let go of? Am I stressed? Am I upset? Am I, right?

• 53:03Speaker 01

  And I, if, if it is, I write it out and I write, I just vent on paper. And then I always end it with, and I accept all of that exactly it is. So I'm completely at peace. That five minute rule, right? I can't change it. That's what's going on. I'm at peace with it. And now I have, that's not weighing me down the rest of the day. And it's there in case I need to revisit it to, you know, figure out solutions or whatever. Then the second thing is I write down what I'm grateful for. And I put my hand on my heart as I write it down, when I'm done writing each one down, I'll write down one, two, three. And I just close my eyes and I picture the thing that I wrote down and I, I really strive to feel gratitude at a deep level. And then the third is I look at my to do list. Usually there's, you know, ten, twenty things on there.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  And I go, okay, just to get clarity, what's my number one most important needle moving activity that I'm committed to, to do first? Before I move on to the rest, and I'll use it up for the top three and just get clarity that way every day. I'm not just busy, but I'm really being productive. And so, and it's a beautiful way because by keeping scribing at the end of the savers, it's like the transition from, okay, I just did my personal development, my inner work. Now I'm transitioning into the most productive workday that I can have.

• 54:09Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I, and do you know who Case Kenny is?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 54:13Hala Taha?

  He's like a big Instagram influencer. He talks a lot about mindfulness and he taught me something that really stuck to, uh, stuck with me. And he was saying that mindfulness is really just self Q and A. And it's just trying to figure out like why you're feeling certain emotions.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 54:29Hala Taha?

  Right? And I've always struggled with journaling and I think it's because, you know, I'm a millennial. We grew up on phones and the computer. And so like, I'm just really used to typing. And when I try to write, it's just like really foreign. Like I can like do like chicken scratch notes and stuff, but like writing a journal, I feel like I could never stick with it. But now with chat GPT, I use AI as like my way to journal. And it's just been so helpful. Like anytime I'm like having a problem and I need to think through it, I just go into chat GPT, start a new session. It, it knows all the other.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. It knows you. Yeah.

• 55:06Hala Taha?

  Knows me. So it will start asking me, well, why do you think this? And do you want help with this scenario? Or let's like write these things down. And it's been helping me get so much clarity. Like it is like a therapist on steroids. So.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  And I'm so concerned for therapists and coaches. It's so many, like, right? So many professions. Um, yeah, no, it is, it is, it is brilliant. And that's, you know, there, we have a miracle morning app, which came out a few years ago. And, um, that is one thing, like the digital journal, right? There is a benefit to being able to search entries to, right? Like, you know, being able to quickly access things, to be able to talk your entries so that it's done much faster. And, and sometimes like when I'm handwriting my journal entry, I don't write that fast. So like by the time I get to the end of the sentence, I'm like, wait, where was I going with that? Whereas if I could have just spoken it. So yeah, I think that, you know, finding whatever works for you, whether it's a digital journal, whether it's a, you know, speaking to type, whether it's handwritten, you know, I think whatever works best.

• 56:02Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And so what are some like prompts that you give yourself when you're doing a scribing? Do you ever give yourself certain prompts?

• 56:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I would say the, the three examples I gave is what, right? Yeah. So it's like, um, yeah, what do I need to let go of? What am I grateful for? What's my top priority followed by my second and third for the day? Those, those are the three biggest prompts. And in, in, so in the miracle morning app, there are over 500 journaling prompts, right? So leveraging AI and such. So yeah, so there are over 500 journaling prompts.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  And you can, in the app, you can pick, we call them journeys where you're like, okay, what area of your life do you need to improve? And you're like, I, I need to make more money. And you choose that as your journey. And then now it sets you up with all six savers focused on that one area. So you've got meditations that are focused on, you know, um, abundance, consciousness and so on and so forth. Affirmations that are focused on what you need to do to make more money, what to visualize. So, so it all is combined with that. So yeah, so figuring out what you want to accomplish and then aligning your journaling prompts with that.

• 57:00Hala Taha?

  Yeah. What do you feel like entrepreneurs struggle with most when it comes to actually getting started with a morning routine like this?

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Um, I think it's the, so a couple, one is, and this is true for all people and entrepreneurs as well. Uh, I'm not a morning person. That's probably the biggest limiting belief. And I've examined the heck out of where that came from. In fact, when I wrote the miracle morning, that was my biggest insecurity.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  As I was writing the book, it took me three years to write the book. I'm a very slow writer and I kept, you know, I go, okay, this all makes sense, but how am I going to get someone to change a lifetime limiting belief that says, I'm not a morning person. I've even, I've tried, it didn't work. Um, and so my, the entire book is like holding someone's hand psychologically and emotionally from, I hate mornings. In fact, I don't even know why my friend recommended this book to me. I don't even want to do this to, all right, I'll do it to 30 days later. Oh my gosh, I've done the miracle morning, you know, 25 out of 30 days. Like this is changing my life, right? So it was holding their hand through that. Um, what was your question? I forgot where's he going with that?

• 58:00Hala Taha?

  Um, just setbacks for entrepreneurs.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. So I'm not a morning person. And so, um, I'll give you my favorite example, a real life story. So Pat Flynn, you know, Pat Flynn is?

• 58:10Hala Taha?

  Yes.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  So Pat Flynn is someone that, um, I love. I just love him as an entrepreneur. I love him as, how he is as a dad. He's just, he's, he's, I, I love Pat. And, uh, we didn't know each other when I wrote the miracle morning and I want, I reached out to be on the show and he said, I think I got declined by his assistant. And then months later, he reached out to me and said, Hey, um, a bunch of people keep telling me I have to have you on my show. They know that I am not a morning person and they've read your book and they're like, you have, you, you know, he might convince you, you have to have him on the show. So I go on the show and I find out, you know, Pat's, I don't know, he's probably making a million dollars a year or more at the time. He's running marathons. He's like a phenomenal dad. And he tells me how I am not a morning person. My best work gets done at night. And he said, um,

• 58:55Speaker 01

  the way I wake up in the morning, I don't wake up to an alarm clock. I wait till my kids come in and shake me awake. Daddy, daddy, wake up. I go, how am I going to convince this guy that has it all, that he should forget the kids waking him up, which is the sweetest thing I've ever heard and use an alarm. By the end of the episode, he goes, Hal,

• 59:11Speaker 01

  um, I've never been a morning person, but based on what you've said, I think I'm missing a level of productivity by not starting my day in a peak physical, mental and emotional state before the kids wake up. I'm committed right now in front of my audience, 30 days, I will do this. And if you've seen the miracle morning documentary, the movie, Pat's in there talking about how the miracle money changed his life. He is now a full blown morning person. And I love that story as opposed to me trying to convince somebody because it's like, this is someone who had as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, who swore that being a night owl was, that's what had worked for him. He gave the miracle morning a shot for 30 days and never looked back. And it became a permanent part of his life.

• 59:49Hala Taha?

  So I feel like when you're start, so I also, um, identify as a night owl.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:55Hala Taha?

  Right? I get, I get so creative at 11 PM at night. If I've got a project due, my favorite thing to do is like stay up till two in the morning and do it. You know, I'm the boss of a company. I can tell my team, we're starting our meeting at 10 and not eight, like, you know? And, um,

• 1:00:11Hala Taha?

  I feel like once you reach a certain level of entrepreneurship, like I know in my gut, that's why I was saying like, now I'm starting to wake up earlier and like really trying to be a morning person. I know in my gut that I'm holding myself back now. That it did work for a while because I feel like I did need to just hustle and sacrifice and kind of just get things off the ground. But now I have a team, like there's no reason for me to do that. I'm better off like managing my energy, making sure I'm like the most positive, productive version of myself and just like living a healthier life, you know?

• 1:00:44Hala Taha?

  So I feel like as a startup entrepreneur, it's really easy to fall into that trap of I need to just stay up and get things done. And it might be beneficial when you're first starting a company, but once you start like evolving as an entrepreneur and you've got a foundation, I feel like you've got to step it up and, and start to fix the way that you wake up in the morning, basically.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, and, and here's the thing, the miracle morning doesn't have to be an hour long. Like it's not, it's really not an either or. It's not like I either stay up really late or I have to wake up really early. Like it's not the five AM club. It's the, okay, I wake up every day, you know, I stay up till midnight and I wake up at eight. Okay, great. I'm going to go to bed at 11:30 and wake up at 7:30 for my miracle morning. Right? So it's like a very small trade off for like, I'm going to go to bed a little earlier, just to wake up a little earlier and then start my day in a peak physical, mental, emotional and spiritual state. And, um, one of my favorite examples of this, um, you know, Robert Kiyosaki, Richard Thad Portad. So I met Robert at an event. I gave him a copy of the miracle morning back when it was a self-published book. And I'm thinking, he's never going to read this. And three weeks later, I got an email from his assistant and said, Roberts read the miracle morning three times.

• 1:01:50Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Which right there, my jaw hit the floor because I was like a huge fan of his book and he wants to have you on his show. And so I go on his show and I had, I Googled, how much is, what's Robert's net worth? I'm like, I was just curious. $80 million, right?

• 1:02:01Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  So I go, if this guy who is a world-class entrepreneur worth $80 million realized that by implementing the miracle morning, he could achieve a, and he told me, he goes, Hal, you named the book correctly because he goes, since I've started practicing the savers three weeks ago, I'm experiencing miracles in my marriage, in my health and in my business. And I was like, if it's good enough for Robert, it's good enough. It's good enough for the rest of us, right?

• 1:02:25Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And he's a hard, he came on the show and he's a, he's a hard guy to please. So you did a good job.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't believe it.

• 1:02:31Hala Taha?

  So I know that you're also an expert in habit formation. I mean, you started this, you weren't even a morning person. Now you've got this miracle morning. You've helped hundreds of thousands of people have better mornings. So what is your approach to habit formation?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So definitely something I've studied and you know, there's a very popular philosophy that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. And actually I believe it's the same book I quoted earlier that was perpetuated or, or, or talked about in, uh, Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, which I think was 1968. And it just like, and then it got quoted and quoted and quoted and quoted, um, becoming part of our lexicon. And so, um, there's also though, the most recent research is from Harvard that it takes 66 days to change a habit. Um, I'm a big believer in it takes however many days I decide that it takes. Like I believe so much in, we create our own reality through the beliefs that we embody and the, the actions that we take. And if you tell yourself it's going to take me 66 days, then that's what it'll take. If you say it's going to take 21, that's what it'll take. I personally have found that 30 days is my favorite approach to changing a habit, whether it's getting rid of a bad habit, starting a new habit.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Um, and I break it into three 10 day phases. And I call this, these, this, this process from unbearable to unstoppable. So the first 10 days of changing a habit can feel unbearable because it's, it's new. It's like, I, I've never done this before and our identity is at stake. It's like, I'm not a morning person. Or for me, when I was doing, training for that marathon, I'm not a runner. Like I don't think I could do this. And as I'm running, I'm like, oh my God, I'm so sore. I, I have no, I don't have any stamina. I can't do this, right? There's so much negative talk during those first 10 days, it can feel unbearable. But if you understand that, oh, that's only a 10 day phase. I can do anything for 10 days, no matter how hard it is, if there's a payoff at the end. The second 10 day phase, days 11 through 20 are what I call the uncomfortable phase. It's no longer unbearable. You're starting to acclimate, but it's still easier to not do it.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  But if you can push through those 10 days and go, okay, I'm going to keep doing it because I'm committed for 30 days, no matter what. And that can be part of your affirmation. I am committed to do this new habit for 30 days. No matter what, there's no other option. Here's why I'm doing it. Here's which actions I'll take and when, right? I'll wake up and so on and so forth. Like for your miracle morning, you could say, I'm committed to the miracle morning for 30 days. Here's why I want to become the person I need to be to create everything else I want for my life. I want to start every day in a peak state. So in order to do that, I will go to bed at 30 minutes earlier and set my alarm 30 minutes earlier. Right? Like, here's what I'll do to make sure I'm set up for success. And so the final 30 days or the final 10 days of the 30 days is what I call the unstoppable phase.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Because somewhere during that point, you wake up and you don't even, there's no resistance anymore. You like, forget that you didn't know how to do it 20 days ago. And you just get up and you just do it. And then all of a sudden, you're like, you're halfway through the miracle morning, like, wait a minute. This was automatic. Oh, my gosh. It takes no effort anymore. And that's what happened for me when I was training for the marathon is I just got up, got my dressers and I'm running. And I'm like, and I get through the run and I go, wait a minute. I didn't have one negative thought during that run. And that's when you become unstoppable because you have fully acclimated the habit. There is no more resistance. So that 21 days may be true that it takes 21 days to implement a habit. But you need those extra 10 days to reinforce it in a positive way without the negative talk or the resistance.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  So that it becomes something that you're excited to continue.

• 1:05:48Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and that you actually enjoy. And I love the fact that if we know that the first 10 days, we're going to have imposter syndrome. It's going to feel like crap because we're not good at it yet. We don't know what we're doing yet. If we are, if that's like, you know, on our radar. We won't feel as bad. We'll just be like, oh, okay, I'm supposed to feel like this. This is the first 10 days. Let me just try to get through this.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, because but if we, you're exactly right. Because but if you don't have that, what happens? Here's what people do. They go on day two or day three, they go, oh, my God, this is so hard. I don't want to do this. I don't feel like it. And here's what our brain is not good at doing. It's not good at playing how things will be in the future. It literally just, it lives in the moment. And so we go, oh, this is what the new habit's going to be like? Never mind. We think unbearable is forever. We literally are like, oh, this is what running feels like? Oh, this is what waking up early feels like? Never mind. I can't do this forever. But it's like, no, no, it's not like that forever. It's only hard for a little bit. And it's so worth it when this becomes a lifelong habit that's automatic, that takes no effort. And it changes your life day after day after day, year after year.

• 1:06:54Hala Taha?

  I'm really excited to try to do the savers morning routine with this 30 day challenge. I feel like I'm the perfect candidate.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, you got, you gotta do what Pat Flynn did. Commit on air.

• 1:07:05Hala Taha?

  I will. I promise, guys. I'm going to do this savers morning routine for the next 30 days, no matter what. And hopefully it will become a habit.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:07:14Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So I am in Austin, Texas. And something that's become extremely popular here is cold plunges. So now that there's the, you know, this new thing that everybody loves to do in the morning. I don't hear that being a part of your routine. So tell me why.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  No, I don't cold plunge. I don't. It's funny, I'm speaking at the biohacking conference in next month.

• 1:07:36Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  And I'm still working through the message because I don't want to step on the toes of like vendors.

• 1:07:42Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  But I'm going to be like, hey, start with all the free stuff. Like you could buy a red light therapy device, or you could just go stand in the sunshine in the morning for 15 minutes. You could buy a PEMF machine, or you could just go ground in on the earth, right? Like, which also feels like more natural.

• 1:07:56Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  And then the savers. So I'm doing right now, I'm researching all the scientific proof of how every single one of the savers is hacking your internal biology. Both physical biology, psychological biology, rewiring your brain, so on and so forth. So I don't cold plunge. And I have cold plunged and it, yeah, it just, it doesn't also a cold shower occasionally. But yeah, it's not part of my morning routine.

• 1:08:19Hala Taha?

  I'm not into that either.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Okay, all right, good. I feel better.

• 1:08:22Hala Taha?

  I'm not, yeah, I'm not into it. I never have. And I actually don't think it's good for women. I, there's some new, I heard somebody on Mel Robbins podcast that was saying that like, women actually shouldn't cold plunge. Like we, we get colder than men. And so I feel like because biohacking is led by so many men, women just like are getting this guidance from men and what makes them feel good. But we don't really have anybody to look up to in that space yet, who can talk from a woman's perspective. So I thought that was interesting.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  That's interesting. And it makes me think even for men, though, one thing that, that trends often miss is long-term studies, right? So it's like, I, I've actually read, I've read, obviously, there's all this, you know, buzz about cold plunging. But I've read like, it actually puts your nervous system in fight or flight. There's actually negative benefits, right? So who, or negative consequences? So who knows? Who knows what it's going to be in the long run?

• 1:09:10Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Hal, this was such an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. I end my show with two questions that I ask all my guests. Doesn't have to be about what we talked about today, just answer from your heart.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Hala Taha?

  So what is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it honestly is wake up 30 minutes earlier. If you want to do a full hour, go for it. And just do one of the savers. Like you don't have to start with all six. It's not this all or nothing thing where a lot of folks, if you've never read The Miracle Morning, you know, order the book, get the audio book, get the Kindle. And or download the app. And then during your first miracle morning, just wake up like 15 minutes earlier and just do the R. Just read. And then as you get to the chapter on silence, you can add that in and build your miracle morning over time. But whenever you're trying to change a habit, the easier it is, the more successful you'll be. So just wake up a little bit earlier, 15, 20, 30 minutes, and do one of the savers and then build it over time.

• 1:10:01Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that you're saying you don't have to wake up at 5:00 AM to do this.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:10:05Hala Taha?

  Anytime you wake up is fine. Cool. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? And this can go beyond financial.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  So it's a philosophy that I, I came up with in Cutco. I was struggling, I was in a period of my Cutco career where I was like, I was at three weeks of in a slump. I couldn't get appointments scheduled. I couldn't sell. And I was ready to quit because I was emotionally attached to my results and my results were bad. And I had an epiphany. I went, wait a minute. At the end of this year, how much Cutco I sold, this is, you could, this is true across all industries, is not based on how any individual day or week went in sales. It's based on how many phone calls I make this year. It's the process that determines the result and the outcome.

• 1:10:47Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  And so my epiphany was, okay, I got the calculator out. How many calls do I need to make to sell my, hit my sales goal this year? And I go, okay, I need to average 20 calls a day. Okay, got it. I've made 20 calls in a day. That's easy. If I make 20 calls a day, five days a week, if I commit to that process without being emotionally attached to my day to day and week to week results. Statistically, at the end of the year, I will hit my goal. And so that was my epiphany is I went, I'm going to change the game that I'm playing. I'm no longer going to worry about my day to day sales. I'm going to focus on making 20 phone calls per day, five days per week, and not care, not worry, not give it a second thought. How any given phone time session goes. And know that at the end of the year, I'll hit my goal. And that's what happened. At the end of the year, I hit my goal.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  In fact, I was the number six rep in the entire company. And here's the best part. Everybody else was so stressed out, entrepreneurs are so stressed out because they're looking at the short-term results. I'm not where I want to be. It's not happening as fast as I want it to, right? Everybody else that I was competing with was living that same stressful life. I had no stress. I made 20 calls a day. Then I went to the pool and I hung out until I had my first appointment. It was the easiest life because I committed to the process without being emotionally attached to the result. So that for me as an entrepreneur was the big game changer.

• 1:11:59Hala Taha?

  I teach that to my students all the time. I do sales webinars and I call it bottoms up, uh, sales. Bottoms up sales. So you just figure out what are the actions you need to do.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  We have so much in common. I know. The more we hang out, the more we're going to find out that's true.

• 1:12:11Hala Taha?

  I know. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? And I know you also have a podcast, so tell people about that.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Achieve Your Goals Podcast, that's been, that's my podcast I've had for 10 plus years. And miraclemorning.com is the hub for everything. You can, you can find the books on Amazon, but you can, miraclemorning.com, you can watch The Miracle Morning movie there, which features Mel Robbins, Brendan Burchard, Lewis Howes, Robert Kiyosaki. Bunch of cool folks, captures my cancer journey. And then you can download the app as well in the App Store or miraclemorning.com is the hub for all of it.

• 1:12:41Hala Taha?

  Thank you so much. You definitely inspired me. I'm really excited for my miracle mornings.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Thank you, Hal.

• 1:12:45Hala Taha?

  Thank you.

• 1:12:49Hala Taha?

  Hey, Yap Bam, if you're growing an audience on social media, but struggling to turn those followers into actual customers. I've got a podcast recommendation for you. It's called Build Your Tribe, hosted by social media expert and entrepreneur Brock Johnson, right here on the App Media Podcast Network. Brock shares practical strategies to help entrepreneurs and creators grow their online presence and turn engagement into revenue. Whether you're trying to create content that gets noticed, grow your email list, launch a digital product, or figure out how to monetize your audience. Brock breaks it all down into simple, actionable steps you can start using right away. Because growing a following is one thing, building a profitable business around it, that's a whole different game.

• 1:13:30Hala Taha?

  If you're ready to grow your audience and turn that attention into something bigger, check out Build Your Tribe. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen or watch podcasts.