Get sweaty, improve your business…
Hey there Rainmaker… I’m sweaty. (Yes, you read that right: sweaty.) Today’s topic, a diversion from the routine. But worth it. Totally.
Although I may get a few unsubscribes for veering too far off topic, anybody I lose would simply be degrading the quality of the list.
Like this jerkball who signed up a few days ago…
After my first email he sent me this note…
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Hello Roy I don’t want to be a sucker I want suckers working for me So let me in on what your doing here and I will make money for both of us
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To which I replied…
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Welcome. No suckers here. I don’t even want my employees to be suckers!
You want to know what I’m doing? Just make sure you read the emails!
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Well, I had ALMOST unsubscribed him after that first email. But I figured there was little harm in letting him keep reading. Maybe he’d see the light. But then last night, he did me the favor of unsubscribing himself.
Here was his parting shot, telling me WHY he unsubscribed…
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Because your going on about nothing I want to know how to make money online not pay you for nothing
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That was after I told him exactly how I’m building a business to make money online today.
What do they say?
“Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out…”
Okay, on to today’s topic — which you’ll notice is a diversion and NOT a book chapter.
I have a little confession to make.
I let my fitness go for the last couple years. Probably since 2012 or so.
It’s not for lack of opportunity. I have a weight lifting power rack sitting just to my right. This is what power lifters use to train. I also have a few good-sized kettlebells. And of course, I know plenty about body weight exercises. Oh and then I could always go for a jog, or ride my bike. (I have gone for quite a few bike rides over the last few years, though mostly at my whims and not with any regularity.)
Well, I’ve grown beyond frustrated with myself. Sick of myself, more like it.
Not for any body image issues, feeling flabby, etc. (Even though I’m starting to get there — I am at my highest weight ever, but only by a couple pounds.)
No, I got sick of myself because I could feel my poor fitness weighing me down. Preventing me from accomplishing everything I want to accomplish.
An early copywriting friend of mine, Henry Bingaman (who is now a superstar copywriter for one of the Agora financial publishing companies), and I used to have this saying…
“Strong body, strong copy.”
By staying fit — and this is proven — your brain actually works better.
Forget caffeine, nootropics, Bulletproof coffee, whatever.
If you actually get up and work out, regularly, consistently, your body and brain will function better. You’ll be more productive in your work time, and your rest times will be more recuperative.
BUT, I also always felt like I had a ton on my plate. No time to work out. Even when I had a workout plan, it was hard to find the time in my day to make it happen.
Excuses, excuses.
Anyway, I’m very lucky with one of my brother-in-laws (actually, all of them, but I’m talking about one of them).
Not only is he obsessive about fitness… A black-belt in Karate… A state trophy-winner in power lifting…
He’s also just graduated from med school. Got his M.D. And he’s started a residency in pathology.
But as you can guess… He carried his obsession with weightlifting into his med school education. And one of the things he worked on, while he was there was figuring out…
How to enjoy maximum fitness in minimum time!
And in order to get me going again, he gave me a strange workout based on something called “density.”
Basically, I set a timer for 12 minutes. I have two exercises I alternate between. Today it was squats and push-ups. I do the same amount of reps in each. My goal is to keep increasing the amount of reps I get in the time period. And when I get to a certain level, I increase the weight.
Well, I’m three weeks into this, having a different set of two exercises to do on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.
It’s not easy.
There’s a lot of discipline I have to apply on myself to get under the bar, again and again, when I feel out of shape.
But every time I do it, I feel better. Every time I’m done, I’m more productive for the rest of the day.
What the heck does this have to do with business?
Well, nothing. And everything.
There’s the obvious, of course. Better fitness and health leads to more productivity and higher performance.
I don’t care what kind of work you do, or what your business is.
A healthy body will help you have a healthy mind, and a healthy mind will help you achieve more.
There are also a few more subtle lessons.
I mentioned how hard it is to get under the bar, again and again.
There are plenty of lessons there.
The times I most need to lift are the times where I least feel like it. If I don’t do it when it’s hard, I’ll break the positive habit. And when I break the habit, it becomes much harder to start again.
Apply that same attitude to doing the hard things that you know will move your business forward, and just watch how far it takes you, and how fast.
Also, by making THIS a discipline, it’s easier when I need to enforce other disciplines in my life.
The ability to sit down and start working immediately is hard for me. ADHD. An entrepreneurial personality. Drive to do a million things at once. I don’t care what you call it, it can make it hard to make that first hour or three of the day productive.
When I work out though, when I lift weights, it’s suddenly much easier to go immediately from that to another productive activity — like writing this email. (Hence why I’m sweaty — though less so now 27 minutes and 800 words later.)
And, the sense of achievement I get from lifting creates a positive feedback loop. I won’t always keep hitting personal records. I won’t necessarily lift more reps next time than I did today.
But even the sense of achievement I get from getting under the bar, keeping up the habit, and getting a little bit more fit each day… Well, it makes me feel good about myself.
Yes, I’m achieving things in other areas of my life. But my failure to keep myself fit was admittedly offsetting some of that. By keeping my body healthy, my mind feels more healthy too. More confident. More self-assured.
How to apply this lesson, even if you don’t lift weights…
I know not everybody is going to go out and buy a weight set like I have.
(If you’re curious though, I have this power rack, and this bench, and this weight holder, and the Olympic bar and plates I bought used on Craigslist. If you’re really curious I could record a 20-minute video describing what specifically I do, and share my lifting plan spreadsheet with the video. I’d probably have to sell it for something like $29 though to justify the time invested. Email me if interested.)
But what I do encourage you to do is to come up with some physical fitness discipline. Something you can do to every day. Or, if it’s significant weight lifting that specifically suggests NOT doing it every day, do it as often as you can during the week. (I’m limited to only being able to lift 2 days in a row.)
It should be short, so you can squeeze it between things. Preferably at the beginning of your day, so the neurotransmitters it releases can impact you throughout the day.
And “Just do it.”
Make it a discipline (noun) that you just do, so you have to rely less on disciplining (verb) yourself to get it done.
The first couple weeks might be painful.
But when you get in the swing of it, you may find yourself actually having more energy to take on bigger challenges, and accomplish bigger goals.
It will start to make a huge difference in your life.
I’m looking forward to what else I can do in the next 6 months that I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish otherwise. How about you?
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
P.S. — Rumor has it you haven’t taken Ryan Levesque up on his $1 trial offer (although the free Ask books have flown out the door). I know there were some link issues when my first email went out. If you had trouble getting the link to work yesterday, this link will take you to the $1 trial. Tag me in your first post in the private Facebook mastermind group and I’ve got a free gift for ya.
