Master Your Mornings

Fountain 45

Owning your morning is one of the simplest ways to make a big impact on your life.

Most people think their day “happens to them.”

But if there’s one lesson I’ve learned over the years, it’s that your morning is the start of the mental factory. A part of the day you fully control and something that starts momentum. The quiet hour before the world and kids wake up, when East Coast Time is starting its day, before the world starts asking things of you, you have a window to set the sail.

That window matters more than people think.

When one get their morning right, they make better decisions, their more patient, will feel sharper, and not have the day take them for a ride. When one gets it wrong, the whole day feels like your trying to catch up.

This week, Ria and I have been talking a lot about what it really means to have a morning routine and own your morning, especially for people who don’t think of themselves as morning people.

We’re not here to preach perfection. We’re here to talk honestly about the routines we’re working on, the habits that build momentum, and the small choices that quietly compound to share some moves which have been great - so take or leave - but anyone can be a morning person.

If you’ve been feeling scattered, reactive, or stretched thin, this routine sharing is for you. And if you know one person who might benefit from this one, we hope you pass it on. Crush the morning.

⏳️ Estimated Read Time: 6 minutes

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.

Leadership and Personal Growth

A great day is not something you stumble into.

It is the snowball which rolls into the base of the snowman with momentum, and everyone can control the first hour. If you lose that hour, the rest of the day is wounded.

If you win it, everything else feels more grounded, more direct, and more aligned with who you want to be.

A powerful shift you can make is starting your day is to try to wake up without an alarm. The mellow moment you naturally wake up don’t grab your phone, check the time sure, and then get up. As Rick Rubin says try to get to fresh air or light on your face and hard to argue with a creative legend.

My first move is to gather my clothes quietly as to not wake up Ria, and then I head to the Kitchen for my 1-2-3: I usually wake up between 5:45am and 6:00am and go to bed at 10:00pm.

1. Get me lemon a lemon water - My friend who is a naturopath turned me onto this. I cut a lemon in Half and I use one of these beauties to squeeze.
2. Vitamins. I drink the natural lemonade with my Vitamins - (1) Fish Oil and (1) Men’s Over 40 Daily Vitamin
3. Smoothie. Crush my Orange Juice, Mango, Spinach, with Collagen, Creatine, Protein Powder.

I put the coffee on, and then watch what is happening with the markets and catch any new episodes of the Joseph Carlson show. For you it could be different but those first fifteen minutes are routine and each creates momentum to the next.

Then I hit my 100 pushups and around this time the house starts to wake up. surrender your focus to the outside world. You move into reaction instead of direction. And once you start your day reacting, it is very hard to recalibrate.

This is a great lesson from Steve Harvey, please watch, as he talks about the million factory workers inside your mind waiting for your first instruction of the day.

If your first instruction is “I’m tired” or “not today,” those workers follow that order. You set the tone for your mental factory. This is a jewel video. Thank you Steve.

Everyone has reasons their mornings feel difficult.

But I have met people with serious obstacles and challenges who build stronger mornings than most able-bodied adults.

Watching them removes my excuses. If they can command their first hour, we can too. And so can you. Shoutout to the most positive guy we know in Chris Koch who always shows up with a smile and a joke to get the day started.

Most people try to reinvent their mornings overnight. Those routines never last. The real change comes from stacking small, repeatable habits that compound over time.

Mastering the first hour does not require perfection. It requires consistency.

Here are the tiny wins that matter most:

Design your ideal morning, and figure out a way to carry that out each day, one small step at a time.

I am pretty good at mornings now. I’ve been lucky enough to design my ideal morning and follow it. I don’t set an alarm, it’s more natural for me.

Ria admittedly struggles a little more in the morning. She is incredible with the kids in the morning, but that’s what takes up her morning. She’ll tell you she hits snooze sometimes, nobody bats 100 at their routine. I definitely don’t.

If you miss a day it’s okay, but every day is a new opportunity to show up for yourself in the morning. The reason we’re writing on this subject this week is because Ria brought it up. Her lock screen is from Instagram reminding her to Master Her Morning.

If you want to try this method feel free to save this image and use it!

By 7:15, then I will check a few emails and see what texts I may have to respond to, I take Eddie for a little walk along the Strand, then I am back for Kids off to school and mom and dad off to work.

These small, simple actions activate my mental factory in the right direction.

Admittedly, our mornings looked different when building SAXX (no kids) and many later nights. They were a little more chaotic, but still calculated.

I knew what time zones I had to be privy to, whether that was China for suppliers or for partners in the east coast, I knew when I needed to be paying attention to what and that’s how I designed my mornings back then.

Your morning routine can be amplified by a solid night time routine.

Choosing a bedtime, avoiding the late-night scroll, understanding what you have to do in the morning, being intentional and limiting the decision making of the morning.

Great mornings create momentum. Little habits trigger bigger ones. One good decision makes the next one easier. Over time, those small wins add up. They compound. This is the quiet math of growth.

A few habits that consistently create momentum are:

If you have never owned your morning before, you do not need to overhaul your entire life.

Pick one promise and keep it. Wake up fifteen minutes earlier. Put your phone in another room. Drink water before coffee. Take a short walk. Do that for a week, then add the next habit.

In the book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School they talk about small practical changes that shift the entire trajectory of your day.

For example, leaving the house an hour earlier so you’re not sitting in traffic first thing in the morning. You walk in calmer, clearer, more grounded. You make a better first decision, which leads to a better second one, which leads to a better day. Ideally this let’s you leave earlier and beat the traffic on the way home.

These little adjustments stack. They build momentum. And over time they quietly help you evolve into the person you are from the person you used to be.

Q&A with League of Innovators Accelerator.

LOI is Canada’s biggest accelerator for founders under 30. I speak with their newest cohort every year, here were some of their best questions.

Q: How do you choose and prioritize the most important parts of your pitch for a specific audience?

A: Ask yourself, “What do I want to get out of this?” and work backward from that. For investment, include things like cap table and specific asks; if not, leave those out. Tailor your content to the meeting’s purpose and outcome. Don’t do it generically—have a goal for each meeting, and structure content accordingly.

Q: How important was retention or repeat purchase rate for you, and how did it evolve?

A: Retention/repeat buyers are the most important sign of business health. If they come back, you’re on the right path. Once you have them, give them referral and membership tools—or surprise them with something above expectations—so they become advocates for your business. Focused storytelling, word-of-mouth tools, and delighting “ambassadors” was key.

Do you have a question, click reply and ask us!

Some interesting additions we saw this week.