a day in the life of an online entrepreneur

Summary

people ask what a day looks like. here is the real one, not the LinkedIn version. it took years to engineer and I still adjust it.

1. 5:30 a.m. start. breath work, meditation, mobility, audiobook in the background. low-stimulation entry to the day. coffee comes after, not before.

2. Monday and Friday are meeting days. team calls, admin, anything that needs other people’s input. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are deep work days. I say no to meetings on deep work days, even good ones. they are protected.

3. family time is on the calendar like any other commitment. afternoons with the kids. I will move work around to keep this. work expands to fill the available time, so I shrink the time on purpose.

4. evening routine, not just morning routine. it’s the morning routine for the next day. if you blow up the night, you blow up the morning.

your version will be different. but it has to be designed. accidental schedules produce accidental results. try harder.

Transcript

introduction to a day in the life of a digital entrepreneur

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. So today I’m going to talk about a day in the life of being a digital entrepreneur and what my daily routine looks like these days. This is the Better Human Business podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And I remember over a decade ago, one of my only real goals was to work from home.

Maybe I’m a bit of a introvert, but that was one of the main things that I wanted. I just wanted to work from home. I like how I could manage my schedule better, and I didn’t really care about the income or impact or anything like that. One of the more selfish things I wanted was just the ability to work from home.

overview of the morning routine and its importance

And I’ve been doing that for basically a decade now. I have three kids, I’m married, and summertime right now, probably the most challenging to work from home. But I want to talk about what a true day in the life looks like for me and how this can fluctuate through the week. My routine has changed quite a bit over the years, but just going over what a day looks like right now.

So typically, I’m up by 5.30 a.m. every single day. That’s kind of my wake up time. That gives me enough time to go to bed, get enough sleep, and wake up with enough energy for the next day. I’ve tried back in the day waking up at 4, 4.30, all those kind of things. There was a time for those things, but I’d always end up just be completely dead by the end of the day.

So I wake up at 5.30, straight from 5.30, I’m going to do a quick morning routine. This has evolved over the years as well. I’ve gone from doing it, not doing it, but now I’m pretty much in the camp of doing it. So morning routine for me is 5.30 to 6.00 a.m. I’m typically going to do some breath work, and then I’m going to do some meditation.

transition from family time to personal workout and work start

Then it’s basically some stretching while I’m listening to an audio book, typically. So fairly straightforward. Again, it’s just 30 minutes, but what it does, doing like meditation and breath work and listening to an audio book while doing some of my stretches, it just sets the tone for the day. I like to be ahead of the day and not wake up feeling like I’m behind already.

And it’s pretty easy to feel that way when I have three kids and they all wake up pretty much at 6.00 a.m. on the dot. My kids wake up very early. And so that at least 30 minutes is great for me. Now starting at 6.00 a.m., my summer schedule is a little bit different than when the kids are in school because I’m the one who takes them to school and everything like that.

But in the summer, I’ll either feed them breakfast or let them on their own and make sure that they’re fed or whatever. But then it’s quickly off to a workout right there, right at 6.00 a.m. So 6.00 a.m. till probably 7.00, 7.15, really 7.30 all said and done doing, because I do the workout. Then after the workout, I’ll have like a shake or breakfast, shower, all those things get closed and then off to work, right?

explanation of weekly work structure for optimal productivity

So off to work is just an office in my house. And again, I’ve never had a brick and mortar location. I’ve only ever worked from home. I’ve never had customers coming in and out or clients. I did train people in person back in the day, like after work, those kind of things. But I’m talking about since I’ve been a full-time online entrepreneur, it’s all been at my house.

So anyway, starting work from like 7.30 to 8.00 a.m. is basically start time. And then what my day looks like from there, it depends on the day. Now I can tell you how productivity-wise I’ve set things up that works really well for me now. I bookend my weeks with meeting. So Monday and Friday are just my meeting days.

Typically, if you want to talk to me, you want to have a meeting, you want to do any of those things, I’m going to do my best to schedule it on a Monday or Friday, not a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and just making sure that I know already in my mind, those are not days where I’m going to be super productive, getting work done, no focused work really.

details on afternoon routines and balancing work with family activities

Those are my days just like, hey, let’s meet, let’s delegate. If I do have some time, I’m doing email, communication, those kind of tasks, nothing serious, no deep work, nothing super focused. Those are typically Mondays and Fridays. And that’s going to be most of the day, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays, exact opposite.

I try to take no meetings, only focused work, whether that’s creating content, writing, maybe a big project at work, something we’re trying to get launched, creating new things for resources, anything like that. So it’s focused work, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And I’ve had to fight really, really hard for that, in all honesty.

It’s gone in waves of like being able to do that, then not able to do that. Right now I’m able to do it. So I try to keep Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, if you look at my calendar, it’d basically be wide open. Most every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for me to work on very focused, deep work those three days.

evening routine and strategies for unwinding after a busy day

And when I’m doing that, the business is making the most progress. So that’s what it looks like now. If we’re getting through the day, I typically break for lunch, obviously somewhere in the middle of the day, briefly. And then also depending on the day is different things can be going on. Like it’s summer right now.

So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I stopped working around three o’clock and I’m actually running my kids and some of their friends through training. So we’re doing a more structured strength and conditioning for my boys and their friends. And what this looks like about an hour of training for them. It’s really just general physical preparedness, nothing crazy, no sports specific stuff.

I’ve talked about this in length on the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, but really just trying to help them find a love for fitness and really they do enjoy it. So that’s Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I’m knocking off work a little bit early to be with the kids and help them get some fitness in, get some training in.

final thoughts on maintaining work-life balance as an entrepreneur

And then Tuesday, Wednesday, or Tuesday, Thursdays, typically I’m working until about four o’clock on those days and then knocking off early to again to, or knocking off after that to be with the family and then only their sports practices, all these other things in the evenings. Then it’s dinner time, dinner time with the kids, hang out and be with the family.

And then once I put all the kids into the bed, into bed, typically that’s either time for Emily and I to hang out or a lot of times she’ll do like a bath, which means I’m going to be doing the sauna because that’s both like our, our heat therapy, right? And so that’s a quick like 15 to 20 minutes, but I typically try and do a sauna almost every single night.

Then after that, that’s about it. It’s, it’s wrapping up and in bed. I try to be in bed between nine and 10 PM every single night. And again, like I said, that gives me enough time to fall asleep and wake up well rested for the next day, starting at 5.30 AM. Pretty simple day. I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned being an entrepreneur, working from home is you really have to set the rules around your productivity because you could jack around and not accomplish much in a day.

I’ve definitely had those days, but if, Hey, here are the milestones, here are the rocks that I’m trying to achieve. Every time I have focused work, focus blocks, how am I working on those? And this hasn’t always been the case. And I don’t want anyone to hear that schedule and be like, well, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you basically do whatever the hell you want.

That’s true. But whatever the hell I want is very focused work that grows the business. And I would encourage every entrepreneur to try and get to that point at some, some point in time. Because when I was training a ton of athletes, even with remote programming, that’s my day looked like how a lot of other people’s fulfillment day might look like to where I would have to be on calls or zooms or video check-ins or phone calls starting around 7 AM until the end of the day.

And so I didn’t have those Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays to just be wide open for focused work. I had to find that focused work around athlete or client calls and programming. You know, I had to find time around all those things. I’m in a position now where I can really focus big picture on moving rocks forward.

And this is where I want to be. This is absolutely where I want to be. But it can be a dangerous game if you have a wide open schedule and you don’t know what you’re working on. So that goes back to always setting goals, always know what you’re working on, having accountability either from an actual coach or business partners or whatever that, hey, we’re moving these things forward this week.

That’s pretty much the day in the life for me. I try to focus, be very productive most of the time. I feel like it’s a disservice to my clients, my customers, and my team if I am not super focused. And this is fluctuated. I’ve been in the 5 AM to 8 PM camp of grind, grind, grind. But I don’t really do those things as much anymore because I don’t find it to be actually as effective.

And family is a huge priority for me. I want to be there. I want to be with them. I want to hang out with them. I actually really like my family. I like the people that they are. They’re interesting humans. I want to be around them as much as I possibly can. And I feel like I’m in a really good spot with being able to juggle it all.

So hopefully you got some sort of productivity tips out there. One thing I’ve had to do to get the schedule to where I like it is I’ve had to try really hard. I’ve had to say no to a lot of things. I’ve had to focus. You know how many meeting requests I get for a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday? Like it happens, if not daily, several times per week.

Hey, can we meet on Tuesday? No, we can’t. Can we meet on Thursday? No, we can’t. We can meet Monday. We can meet Friday. That’s very hard to do. I have to say no to a lot of things to be able to maintain that schedule. Hey, can you do this call 5 PM? No. Family time. These things pop up all the time.

People texting me, work, Slack messages at 6 PM. Sorry, can’t respond. Family time. A lot of no’s in being able to manage a schedule that you actually like and that feels more fulfilling in your life where you’re able to focus on the things that you want. But to say no means you are going to have to try harder.