5 AM Is Funnel Time

How I shifted my morning based on the book “The Perfect Day”.

On today’s episode Russell talks about how to get 2 hours more of work in everyday and his schedule that will make it happen. He also shares a cool story about Marcus Lemonis.

Here are 3 cool things you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why Marcus Lemonis called Russell 3 times in a row in less than a minute.
• What book convinced Russell to change his schedule and devote two hours a day to funnel building.
• How Russell’s new funnel building schedule is working for him since he started it two days ago.

So listen below to hear how Russell gets 8 hours of work done in just two hours every morning.

---Transcript---

Good morning everybody and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Alright, so it’s a beautiful day, things are amazing. I’m in a great mood and I want to talk to you guys about something that I’m doing that’s a little bit crazy, not gonna lie. Little borderline, well you guys have been with me for a lot crazier things, but this one is really cool. I’m going to be trying to convince everybody that I’m friends with that this is a new way to live. I’m going to begin with you guys, because if I can convince you, then I can convince anybody. So this is where we’re at right now.

I have always been trying to figure out how to get more done each day. That’s the hardest thing. How do you get more crap done every single day and be able to spend more…….? For me it’s like, I got a lot of crap I gotta get done for work, family, church, there’s so many things. So it’s like, if I get an extra 3 or 4 hours a day or 4 or 5 days a week or whatever, that’s amazing, but how do you do that? So I’ve tried all sorts of stuff. It’s been interesting, in the past I always try to wake up at 6 to go lift weights, with that, it’s interesting, it works sometimes, but it’s easy for my brain to say no. I usually do probably 2 or 3 days a week, when I get up early and actually lift at 6. It’s not consistent and kind of hard, and I lift and hang out with my kids, then go to the office, the office day happens and there’s people and stuff. Then I come home and play with my kids again. It’s always good and I get a lot of stuff done, but how do I get more?

Last week I was in Joe Polishes 25K group, and oh man I’m going to tell you guys a story. I wonder if I should tell you another story. I was going to do a podcast since then, I totally forgot. This is called an ADD moment, then we’ll head back. So remind me when I get stuck, where to head back.

We’re heading back to the book, but before then…this is amazing. So the last day at the 25K group we were stting in the meetings and all the sudden my phone rang 3 times from Marcus Lemonis The Profit, and I was like, “Oh man, I’m stuck in this meeting, I can’t answer right now.” And then he texts me, “Call me right now.” And I text him like, “I’m stuck in a meeting, I really can’t. I’ll call you as soon as I can.” So at the break I called him, no one answered. I called again, no one answered. I’m like, “Dangit. I missed the little window.” And part of me is kind of freaking out, what in the world is happening where he would call me three times in a minute, there’s got to be something happening. So then that night, he texts me and he’s like, “Can you talk now?” And I was about to jump in an Uber, but I was like, I just dialed right back immediately. So I called him and first thing he says is “Hello.” And I’m like, “Hey Marcus, this is Russell.” He goes. “You’re being….I’m” What did he say? “I’m on location and we’re recording right now, you’re on camera is that okay?” Isn’t that crazy?

So I’m like, ”Yes, that’s totally cool.” He’s like, “Okay Russell, this is the deal. I’m at a meeting with these guys, they own a watch company and I’m thinking about doing a deal with them. But I was talking to them about the business model and they mentioned funnels and I asked them what they knew about funnels and they were like, ‘There’s this guy named Russell Brunson.’” And he was like, “Wait, you know Russell?” and  they’re like, “Yeah, we’ve been to his events, we use Clickfunnels.” And Marcus is like, “Hold on.” And right then he called me 3 times in a row trying to get hold of me and obviously I didn’t answer the phone, I blew it. He’s like, “I’m sitting with them right now and I’m trying to make a deal, but I’m curious if I do make a deal with them, would you be willing to come on the show and actually build their sales funnel for them?” And I’m just like, I wish you could see me. I’m trying to be all super cool guy on the phone, so my voice is trying, I’m trying not to start squealing like a little girl, have my voice crack or something, but I’m jumping up and down on the spot and going nuts. All the people about to jump in the Uber with me are probably wondering. Did Russell win the lottery or something? What’s happening? I’m jumping up and down and going crazy.

So I’m like, “I would be honored. I would love to come help you guys build your funnels.” And he’s like, “Okay cool. That’s what I needed to know. Thanks man.” And I’m like, “Alright, thanks.” And that was it. Isn’t that crazy. Oh so crazy. So I’m going crazy and then I text Marcus later, and I’m like, “What’s the company, give me more info about it.” He texts me back and tells me what the company name was and he’s like, “I’m going to cut you in on equity on this deal.” And that was it. I haven’t heard from his since, it’s been like 3 days. I’ m going crazy. But is that insane? Crazy. Anyway, I just wanted to share with you guys. I was going to that night, but I must have forgot. So there you guys go. There’s my ADD tangent. Now I need to come back to the story at hand.

Okay, so back to where we’re at. So at the event they gave me, Joe Polish handed out these boxes. These big orange boxes. I’d gotten one before, I had one in the mail. I didn’t know what it was. The outside says The Perfect Day. You open it up and there’s a book and a journal and a bunch of stuff. And it’s this product created by Craig Valentine. I’d gotten it before, but I never read it. I’m like, “Oh cool.” Anyway, I took the box and when I was heading home that night, I pulled the book out and I’m like, “I’ll read this on the plane, so I jump on the plane, start reading the book. And in this book, he’s talking about how to create the perfect day and he’s showing a bunch of things, and the book was awesome. But the thing that was the most powerful for me, was he showed what his schedule was. Craig’s schedule is, he gets up at 4 o’clock every morning. From 4 to 6:30 he writes. At 6:30 he has breakfast, he does meditation or something and then I don’t know, at whatever the next time is, an hour later, he gets back and writes for another 2 ½ hours. Then he has his stand up meeting with his company at 10:30. So by 10:30 in the morning, he has had 5 hours of focused energy time writing and doing what he needs to get done. And then the rest of his day is answering emails, meeting with people, all the crap that normally we do in an office. He goes to bed at 8 every single night.

At first I’m like, “Dude, he is insane. 4 in the morning, I will never in a billion, infinity, million years do that ever. It’s just not going to happen.” And I was like, because I don’t go to bed until 2 in the morning, so if I got up at 4  that’s  2 hours of sleep and I would die. But if I went to bed at midnight, how would it work? Midnight to 4, 4 hours is not enough. So I’m like what if I went to bed at 10, 10 to 4 that’s only 6 hours, that’s about how much sleep I get now. But what if I extended that. What if I woke up at 5 and go to bed at 10 o’clock and wake up at 5. I try to do his process. And my day is different. I’ve got a million kids. I don’t have the luxury of breakfast and meditation before I start writing again. I’ve got breakfast and diapers and screaming, you know getting kids ready and it’s insane. But I was like, what if I woke up at 5 and from 5 til 7, 2 hours every morning, I got up and that’s my funnel time. I always tell people that if I could do anything in the business all day, all I’d do is sit there and build funnels. But I rarely have that time, just to sit there and build funnels. So I’m like, what if I made it so the 5am to 7am every morning is my funnel time. I don’t check emails, I don’t check Facebook or anything. All I’m allowed to do is open up Clickfunnels build funnels and write copy and all the pieces I need to do to push funnels forward.

So I was kind of excited so Sunday night I got all ready and my goal was to get to bed by 9, but I forgot that my kids go to bed at 9, which usually bleeds into 9:30 or 9:45. So that didn’t work, so it was like 9:45b finally the kids are in bed and I told my wife, “I’m going to bed, my goal is to go to sleep at 10” You know she’s been married to me for a long time and knows I typically don’t go to bed until 1 or 2. I was like, I’m going to try this. So I went to bed at 10 and it took me a little while to go to sleep because I wasn’t used to that. But luckily I was tired, it’d been a long day. So I fell asleep at 10, woke up at 5, got up and went in there and I started working building funnels for 2 hours. It was amazing. It wasn’t like when I wake up to go work out, there’s a lot of resistance. I have to get up, get clothes on, go out. There’s a lot of things that have to happen. Whereas for me to get up and go sit on the computer and build funnels, there’s zero resistance and it was really easy and I did it. And then I ate really healthy throughout the day and did supplementation stuff to keep my energy levels high throughout the whoile day, but I felt amazing. Then last night I went to be at about 10:30, I was trying to get to bed by 10, but I just had things that came up. So about 10:30 I went to bed, set an alarm for 4:45 basically, that way I can snooze it once. 4:45 my alarm’s going off, I totally slept through it. My wife starts kicking me like, “Why is your alarm going off at 4:45?” I’m like, “I’m so sorry.” So I went and turned it off, and jumped out of bed and because it wasn’t like, I gotta go put on my workout clothes, all the things your body freaks out about, it was just walking to the other room and start building funnels. I’m excited about it. I  just walked into the other room, jumped on and from 5 to 7 today I just built funnels.

And I tell you what, in my 2, 2-hour morning so far, I’ve gotten as much work done as I typically do in an 8 hour day. So I’m going to the office, we have a webinar today, so I’m going to be selling on a webinar, I’ve got meeting and all this other stuff. And I’m not going to be stressing out, because usually I’m stressing out on days that I have webinars and meetings because I’m like, I need to move my things forward and I can’t. Where now, I’ve already moved things forward by the time my kids are awake, now the rest of the day is just a bonus. Anyway, I’m excited.

So that was my first chunk was trying an earlier morning thing, now I’m going to start reorganizing the rest of my life and my schedule to kind of tweak some other things to kind of get it in. Especially since, I don’t know if I mentioned this, I probably have, I’m sure I have. We’re building a bio-hacking room, so I got a flow tank and a cryosauna coming and a couple other things so I’m trying to map out my ideal day, where it’s 5 til 7 I do this, and then 7 til 9 I’m with my kids and then 9 o’clock, I do cryosauna and freeze and then 9:15 I go and lift weights til 10. At 10 o’clock I do flow tank for a few hours. 11 o’clock I come in. I don’t know, something like that, I’m trying to figure out exactly what the daily routine will be. But I started it with waking up basically an hour to 2 hours earlier with focus on 2 hours of funnel time and I tell you what, it’s been amazing.

So what I’m recommending for you guys to do, is wake up an hour to 2 hours earlier and do some funnel time, or writing time or whatever it is that you need to be doing more of in your business and your life. Spend that time there. And it’s interesting.

Anyway, I’m two days in, loving it and having a great time. I hope that you guys try it as well. I’m going to try to convince everyone I know to do this as well. I would rather, knowing how I’m feeling right now, I would rather wake up two hours earlier, and leave the office two hours earlier, because you’ll get 10 times more stuff done. Which is crazy to think because it’s the same time, it’s just sifting it all a little bit. So there you go.

I guess one problem if I convince all my team to wake up earlier, then we’ll all be awake and it’s just like we’re all at the office again which will just ruin us. So maybe I shouldn’t let them know about this big secret we got. Anyway, that’s what I got. I’m at the office, I’ve got a call with a lawyer, never fun but my lawyer’s awesome, so that’s one good thing. First lawyer I ever met I liked. Then I got a meeting with my accountant, which accountants are as bad if not worse than lawyers. But we got a new accountant that I actually like, so it’s going to be a good day. Then we got a webinar, some selling. It’s going to be a good day and I’m excited and the sun’s beautiful. A lot of good stuff happening. So appreciate you all. Have an amazing day and I’ll talk to you guys all again, hopefully tomorrow. Alright guys. Talk to you soon.