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It’s no secret that all the greats, had a morning routine to fuel their success.

Alexander the great

Michael Jordan

Ernest Hemmingway

And now it’s your turn.

It has taken me 5 years to filter through all the shit out there and distill what are the absolute best habits to implement into your morning routine.

Here are the five:

1. Hydration

2. Movement

3. Goals

4. Your One Thing

5. Scheduling

Let’s breakdown each one so that you can have a miracle morning, every morning. 🙂

1. Hydration

The body is composed of 80% water. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it’s important you get enough for optimal functioning?

You agree? Good, we’re on the same page.

Yes, call it H20, liquid life or Dasani, hydrating yourself is the #1 thing you can do for more energy, vitality and taking control early in the day.

Furthermore, it helps wake you up!

I promise after you chug 500ml of water, you won’t want to go back to sleep.

That being said, it’s even more imperative you chug it first thing in the morning?

Why?

Because you have touched any water for about 8 hours. Your body is in a state of dehydration and craves liquid life. Give it what it needs.

Your action step: Place a bottle of water somewhere near you so as soon as you wake up, you drink it. Make it the first thing you do, every morning. 

2. Movement

Here’s an interesting question I got asked a while ago…

Are you lying down because you are tired OR Are you tired because you are lying down?

So you feel tired, you lie down. And now you are more tired then ever?

Ever think it’s the habit of lying down that is influencing you to be tired?

From my experience, and that of my private clients, energy is a habit. You can cultivate and grow it so that you have abundant energy on demand.

When you wake up, you’ve been lying (somewhat) still, for the past 6-8 hours. It makes sense you are tired. Not because you haven’t slept well, but because you just haven’t moved.

Hence the second most important factor to a miracle morning, every morning: Movement.

It’s critical that within the first 5-10 min of waking up, you do some sort of movement. Whether its going for a quick walk, pushups, bodyweight squats or even a little morning fun with the beautiful (hopefully) human beside you, movement is imperative.

It will stimulate blood flow, get the heart going and get (and keep) you wide awake without any side effects.

Even if you don’t feel like it – do it. Within 2-3 minutes, you’ll wonder why you ever even considered starting your day with coffee.

Action Step: Pick a movement, whether its 20 pushups, 5 squats or a 5 min walk and commit to doing it every single morning, even if you don’t feel like it for 30 days.

3. Rehearse your Goals

Ah, the word of the century. It seems these things. called goals, draw the line between success and failure.

While that is true, to a certain point, it isn’t the whole story.

I’m sure you know of someone (maybe even yourself) who has set new years goals and then never touched them again.

That’s not what we want. Goals are helpful because:

1. They keep us on track and focused on where we want to go
2. They motivate us to do better, become more and improve our lives
3. They show us what we don’t want in life

Take a ship out at sea. Without a goal, the ocean will swallow the ship whole. But with a predetermined, rehearsed goal, the ship will course correct until it arrives at its end goal.

The key there is predetermined and rehearsed. When people set new years goals, they have 50% of the equation correct. But you need 100% to make it work.

This is why goal rehearsal is important to implement into your morning routine.

By setting aside 3 minutes to go over your goals, you allow yourself the opportunity to:

1. Get refocused on where you want to go
2. Course correct, if need be
3. Get inspired with what your life will be like once you achieve that goal

Action Steps: If you haven’t already, decide on one goal you want to achieve in the next 90 days. Write it out and frame it where you can easily see it every morning and every night before bed. 

4. Attack your One Thing

You have your goals.

Excellent.

Now it’s time to do the one thing most people don’t do…Take action.

It’s important to take action on your goal now, in the morning, every morning because life gets in the way. Furthermore willpower is strongest in the morning.

If you wait until later to take action on your number one goal, you might not. Things come up,  you are tired or you simply just don’t feel like it and you willpower reserve isn’t strong enough to combat it.

That’s why we block off time now to do it. If that means getting up earlier and going to be earlier so be it. You can sleep in (if you want) after you achieve your goal.

Action step: Block out 1 hour of time to attack your number one goal right now. If that’s getting in shape: block out time to meal prep or go to the gym. 

If thats building a business, do the one thing that will help you move a little bit closer. Everyday, it may see like you aren’t making progress. But over time, you will be miles ahead of anyone else trying to achieve the same thing. 

5. Script your day

The last ingredient I want to add to your list is scripting every second of your day.

Structure = Freedom

When you don’t have anything going on, you tend to take on unproductive tasks. Furthermore you allow, what I call time vampires, to suck away the time.

What’s a time vampire?

Anything unproductive that will fill a gap of time that is not scripted.

If everything is scripted, there is no room for the time vampires to come and attack you.

However, you must actually stick to the script.

Making a script and not following through is a waste. Furthermore its a disrespect to yourself. If people want some of your time and they aren’t scheduled in, then tell them you are busy.

Would you ever miss an appointment with a doctor about to tell you about your cancer screening results? NO.

And who is more important, you or your doctor?

You are the most important person in your life.

Why would you disrespect yourself and miss an appointment you made with yourself. People will learn to plan in advance and stop bothering you with minute crap.

Action step: Script every moment of your waking day. That means meals, showers, work and fun. 

What if I told you there was a way you’ll never have to market a day in your life and have a highly profitable and successful business.

Would you do it?

I bet, you won’t.

Today I’m going to share the strategy and show you how to do it while challenge your thinking.

Ready?

A few weeks ago, I decided to run an experiment. An experiment solely designed to increase the number of people who buy my courses or invest in a coaching program, to get their desired end results.

Yes I did something most “gurus” don’t.

Learning how to create, successful students.

(gasp)

Earlier this year I made it my #1 goal to help 10,000 people build the body of their dreams by Jan 1st, 2020. That’s just 3 years. And that’s a gigantic goal.

The main reason I settled on that goal is because I’m 1,000,000% convinced that with 10,000 people per year getting their health in check our world will drastically change for the better.

Better doctors, lawyers and school teachers.

Better solutions to problems like cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.

Better solutions to big world problems like poverty, food shortages and clean water.

The way I see it, right now, some of our smartest minds, the people who were born to solve these problems, are stuck dealing with their health. Whether its trying to be in better shape, or battling binge eating or trying to eat right, so they are around long enough to see their grand children – all there attention is focused on one thing:

Their health.

And don’t get me wrong, I believe through and through, that your health is the crux of your life. Without it, you have nothing.

However, if we can have successful fitness students, ones that go though a program (completely) and get results, instead of spending 5-10 years on a weight gain and loss cycle, we can free up their mental prowess to attack and solve all of these big problems.

Also, it doesn’t hurt that health care costs will go down, people will be generally happier, everyone will have more fun (and probably more sex too) AND it’s good for business.

Like really good.

To reach that goal of 10,000 successful students, I am going to have to get a lot better at everything I do and my staff and I are going to have to stay maniacally focused on that one goal.

In order to help us stay focused, we filter every major decision we make through the Body Graph™.

This graph is, well, important.

Why the body graph™ is really, really, really important

The journey to becoming one of my hall of fame students, is broken down into three major milestones.

Milestone #1: Leaning down to 8-10% bodyfat while maintaining strength

Milestone #2: Bulking up to 15% bodyfat while getting significantly stronger

Milestone #3: Carving the diamond and getting back down to 8-10% bodyfat with substantially more muscle and strength

Those three milestones form the basis of my Body Graph™.

Most people start out on this graph in the lower left-hand corner.

Sometimes they are very overweight and out of shape. Other times not.

They have limited knowledge no basic idea how to go from bottom left to top right.

But they’re eager and ready to do something.

To become a hall of fame student, they have to go through 4 different phases.

Phase #1: Fit body dreamer: A whole lot of dreaming, but no clue what to do.

Phase #2: Have what it takes?: Not really sure they can actually do it

Phase #3: Might make it: It’s getting hard but I think I can do this.

Phase #4: Hall of Fame student: BOOM! DID IT!

Each phase has its own unique challenges and struggles.

But a successful student will navigate all 4.

Here is where it gets tricky though.

Most people who start this journey will not complete it.

They won’t reach the Hall of Fame.

Each phase has roadblocks and challenges that cause people to drop off and quit.

We call these the Cliff Moments.

For people Dreamer phase, those Cliff Moments look like…

1Deciding on the program they are going to use

2What supplements to take

3Should they be going to the gym everyday

4Eating Breakfast or not

5Should they being doing cardio

At any point, a person on their journey to the Hall of Fame could reach one of these items and experience a Cliff Moment. If they do they’ll almost always quit.

If they get stumped on picking out the program they’ll try out, then they’ll never move forward, they’ll never get to the getting stronger phase, then life will get in the way and shortly after they’ll quit.

Then they’ll never realize they have legit potential, they never run for president and we’re all left sitting here trying to decide between Trump and Clinton, all the while shaking our heads and wondering how on earth it got to this point.

I’ll tell you how…

The person who should have run experienced a Cliff moment, fell off and quit.

So…

How to Actually Create Successful Students

Alright, sorry for the long intro, but none of the rest of this would make sense if you didn’t first understand the lens through which we are running this business.

Our job, to create successful students, is to do a few things:

Goal #1: Figure out what the Hall of Fame looks like for our users.

Goal #2: Know the major milestones our users have to pass in order to reach the Success Line.

Goal #3: Identify the Cliff Moments for each milestone.

Goal #4: Keep those Cliff Moments from causing our peeps to quit by teaching people strategies to overcome them.

Let me break it down for you using my business as an example.

Goal 1 – My Hall of Fame Student would be someone who has achieved their ideal body!

Goal 2 – The major milestones they would have to pass include losing weight, gaining muscle and strength, losing fat while keeping the new muscle/strength.

Goal 3 – Within the first milestone, cliff moments include:

1. Deciding on the program they are going to use
2. What supplements to take
3. Should they be going to the gym everyday
4. Eating Breakfast or not
5. Should they being doing cardio

Goal 4 – Providing solutions in the form of free articles, ebooks, guides and coaching services.

Your Turn

Successful students are the single best point of optimization in your business.

Take a look at your star client. What ladder did you move him or her up to get them there? What steps were necessary. What traps did they have to overcome to become a successful student.

Break it all down. Now, have an answer to every single Cliff Moment. That way you make creating successful students, inevitable.

Create 1,000s of them and you’ll never have to market a day in your life.

The butterfly effect is a scientific theory.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re wrong.

This isn’t some washed up, fluffy theory, that has been chewed up and spit out by the fitness world. This isn’t “the secret.” And this certainly isn’t the magic key that will give you razor sharp abs overnight, bulging biceps in a week, or make that Instagram model fall madly in love with you with 3 little questions.

This is, however, a theory for living a successful and fulfilled life. It’s a theory that meteorologists and wall street financial analysts both utilize and respect, like a physicist respects gravity.

It’s a theory about how every. Single. Little action.

Matters.

But Why Butterflies?

The idea came to be recognized as the “butterfly effect” after Edward Lorenz – an American mathematician and meteorologist – suggested that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in South America, might ultimately cause a hurricane, across the world, in India.

It may take a very long time, but the connection is real.

Lorenz observed that runs of his weather model, with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner, would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data.

A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at that exact moment in space and time, the hurricane would most likely never have happened.

Our everyday lives, are an ongoing demonstration of this principle.

Every action you have taken, are taking right now, and will take in the future, influences your future. No matter how small or insignificant it may seem at the time.

Have You Actually Been Taught To Be Fat?

Throughout your childhood, did this saying ever come up:

“3 more bites and then you can have dessert!”

If you were like my parents, this was nightly occurrence. I mean how else were my parents going to get me to consume the mini, bland tasting, green tree-like forms of matter on my plate known as broccoli?

Those 3 bites of broccoli were not the problem. It was the dessert afterwards. It was the fact that my parents were teaching me (obviously by mistake) to ignore what true satiety feels like.

They were ingraining in me, that magically, there was always room for dessert…like my stomach had a separate storage place for it (which I am now convinced, after years of obscene chocolate binges, there is).

As I progressed through adolescence, I began to do this unconsciously; I would eat a meal, feeling full, then seemingly all of a sudden, I was hungry again.

There is a reason I clocked in at 239 pounds at 18.

Now as a fitness professional, I’ve had to relearn what true hunger is (I still love you, mom and dad), so all is well in the world. That being said, an argument could be made for this simple fact:

Had I not learned what true satiety is, would I still have consistently overeaten through adolescence? And thus, would I have ever become obese? And without the hardship of obesity, would I have ended up where I am today, writing to you, these glorious words, right now?

Lets take another approach; your high school gym class, running assessment.

The high school I went to, and all surrounding schools, had a running evaluation every year during gym class, to asses your physical fitness level.

Call it the cooper test, the beep test, or legal torture – It certainly was my second least favourite part of high school (I’ll tell you about the taco truck and the one-armed homeless dude another time).

Anyways, I had the 12 minute run aka the Cooper Test.

While it’s important to run, the point here is that these tests were brutal, and confirmed one simple fact within me:

Running, or rather strenuous exercise = pain, lot’s of it.

Thus as I progressed in my years, I always subconsciously avoided any sort of heavy cardiovascular activity, because I knew it was gonna suck. Big time.

Did The Butterfly Get You This Morning?

How did you start your day this morning? I can bet you did something similar to yesterday.

Morning routines are one of the most powerful success hacks you can install into your everyday life. This is because it is the butterfly effect in full, unadulterated action.

Have you ever had a morning where you woke up before your alarm clock went off and felt great? You got up early, made yourself a well deserved breakfast (unless you are practicing intermittent fasting of course, in which you would have had time to make a delicious lunch,) beat rush hour traffic, and even got to work before the boss?

Those days are awesome.

Have you also had mornings where you snooze your alarm only to realize you have 5 minutes to get to work, so you throw on some wrinkled clothes, brush one tooth (how do you choose?) and spill coffee on your neatly wrinkled shirt because you are in a rush?

I’ve had both, and my guess is you have too. I’d also like to place a bet and say this:

You and I would choose the first scenario, every time.

And while you could argue that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t have hit snooze 17 times in a row, you could also argue that because you hit snooze once, your whole day was affected and went to shit.

A very small change in initial conditions, had created a significantly different outcome.

Everything Matters. Everything.

The point I am trying to tattoo to the inside of your skull, my young grasshopper, is this:

The little things absolutely matter.

The biggest pitfall for novice trainers is to be inconsistent. Skipping a workout here or there DOES matter. Cheating on your diet a little here or there DOES matter.

Skipping your supplement regimen DOES matter. Not meticulously tracking your macros when you are first starting out DOES matter. Not allowing your steak to marinate for the allotted amount of time DOES matter.

Getting stronger and changing your body requires you to string together a series of workouts over time. Remember that every workout, every bite of food, and every supplement you take or skip counts, and moves you closer or farther away from your goals.

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step… In The Right Direction

What you do every single day matters more than you think. It can influence who you become 10, 20bnd even 30 years down the road. That one bite of cake may lead to a weekend of binge eating, setting your fitness goals back weeks.

Missing that workout may leave you room to let yourself slide in the future, delaying your body goals by weeks.

So today, and every day moving forward, I challenge you to take control. Choose to skip the one extra piece of pie. Don’t hit the snooze button and instead get up and dominate your day. Kick ass in the gym instead of skipping that last set.

Because you never know what kind of storm, one tiny action, may cause in the future.