The $1 Million Dollar Morning Routine (It's Stupid But It Works)

Here's my exact morning routine. First,

I go on a walk for 30 minutes. And then

I start writing for 90 minutes. After

that, I eat a small meal, go on another

walk, respond to a few messages along

the way, go to the gym, then start

emails, meetings, and other non-creative

work. Some days, of course, I record

videos, but we'll save that for later.

Now the importance of this is that this

routine 30 minutes of walking, 90

minutes of writing is responsible for

generating over $10 million. Now, oh $10

million, why am I even saying that?

Because one, people want to make money.

There's no shame in that. It's okay if

you want to make money. Second is that

me mentioning that number helps grab

attention, right? it gives me some form

of authority or whatever other

psychology we're going for here to get

people to watch the rest of the video to

understand why 30 minutes of walking, 90

minutes of writing can absolutely change

your life. And I'm going to prove that

to you and that's the only time I'll

mention money. Just un well I'll kind of

mention it, but understand that's why I

mentioned it. So to some that's a big

number, right? $10 million obviously a

lot of money. To others that's not much.

If you've been in business for a long

time, that's like a good amount of

money. But obviously with a business,

you want to make more. Now, the thing

here is this may sound out of bounds for

a lot of people, but you have to

understand the power of this routine.

The reason I'm telling you about this

routine is because $10 million is just

like the end point, right? I've been

doing this routine for the past five or

so years. And at first, it led to

$10,000, then $100,000, then a million

dollar. And that's the incredible thing

is that your income can scale. Your

income can increase without doing more

work, right? If you've watched the

4-hour workday, if you've watched my

other content, you understand what I'm

getting at here. But so many people feel

like they have to grind for 12 hours a

day like every other entrepreneur when I

don't think that's the case at all. So,

if your goal is to make more money,

which is most people's goal because your

work, bills, status, and sense of

control over your life depend on it,

you're in a safe space here. You can

care about money. But if nothing in your

morning routine directly generates

income, you're doing something wrong.

Most people's morning routines are just

filled with a bunch of random habits

that someone else, probably someone on

YouTube, told them to do. Or their

routine is unconscious and they think

that they don't have a routine. Hint,

that's still a routine. But the point

here is that most routines are

unintentional hidden forms of

procrastination. A powerful routine, no

matter how long, decreases cognitive

load and allows you to streamline

achieving your one true priority. The

world's most successful people leverage

routines to automate repetitive yet

necessary behavior and focus their

limited mental energy on the right

tasks. That's how important this is. If

you get this one thing right, you can

finally start achieving your goals. You

can finally start pursuing your life's

work. You can finally start making

money. If you don't want to go the money

route, you can finally start losing

weight. Whatever it may be, the

principles still apply. We're going to

use money and writing and walking as

examples here to explain what the

routine is. But we need to understand

the depth of it first. So, let's talk

about this. We'll just call it the 2hour

routine. Now, the first question you're

probably asking is like, "Writing?

Writing? Really? So, you just journal

for 90 minutes every morning and you

make money?" And I mean, when you say it

like that, yes, actually, that is kind

of what's going on. But to spare you the

hundreds of thousands of words I've

written on this before and created

videos on this before, I want to just

share my weird little life philosophy in

a nutshell with you. This philosophy and

therefore this video is specifically for

creative or ambitious people who know

they are meant for more and want to

pursue their life's work. So here's the

condensed philosophy. Humans are

creators, not content creators per se,

but people who leverage the tools and

technology available to them to solve

problems, build solutions, and attract a

group of people who can benefit from

those creations. Value exchange is a

pillar of a meaningful life. Solving

your own problems and contributing the

solution are the two master keys of

happiness. Today we have the internet

and AI. Incredible tools that most take

for granted or use in a way that

destroys their own life and others.

Anyone can learn anything, build

anything, and earn accordingly if they

have taste, agency, and a sense of

responsibility. Ideas are the new oil.

Digital media is the new real estate.

Creators are the new interestbased

education system that teaches the

leading edge that can't be taught in

schools. So, why writing? Because

personally, I've always had the desire

to do something creative, right? I never

really wanted a job. That's just me. If

you want a job, do you. I'm talking

about me and people like me. I wanted to

do something that had some kind of

positive impact, right? I wanted to feel

at least decent about making money. And

the thing here is that the internet

exposed me to many opportunities that

would allow myself to do this. And after

failing at seven different online

business models, I landed on web design,

got a job, and started freelancing on

the side until I could eventually go

full-time with that. Now, I always

thought that social media was for unique

or talented people who could articulate

their thoughts or uh people who were

super funny. But around this time, I saw

other people talking about web design

and landing web design clients. So, I

decided why can't I do that? And I

started on Twitter while doing this of

all places. And that's important because

that's when I realized the power of

writing. I learned that writing is a

meditative process. Writing is how you

practice thinking. Writing is how you

document your growth. Writing is how you

attract supporters to your work. Writing

is the foundation of media like video

scripts, marketing, web pages, etc. I

never thought that I would become a

writer and I'm not a a great writer by

any means. I understand psychology. I'm

not good at grammar or articulating

sentences in a poetic way or academic

writing or English writing. I'm simply

I' I've become good at articulating my

ideas and the point I'm trying to get

across. But I quickly realized that if I

wanted to combine learning, thinking,

and earning, which are the traits of

highly successful people, into one

singular morning habit, this was the way

to do it. And I mean beyond that, it

serves the purpose of a meditative

practice because writing can be like

journaling or some form of catharsis and

even serves the purpose of something

like a cold shower because actually

sitting down and doing it is difficult.

So it's a very efficient and holistic

overarching habit that you can do in the

morning. Now what does this have to do

with journaling? Well, I realized that

brands and creators, the good ones at

least, were just sharing the most

important things in their head. Their

brands, their social media profiles were

just their public journals. Their head

or personality or how they perceived the

world and collected an intersecting set

of ideas that nobody else could

replicate was their competitive edge.

So, when I started to treat my social

media account as a public journal or

where I take notes, work started to feel

like play. Now, how does that make

money? Well, first you need to

understand that there is a new class of

assets. Before the internet, we had

traditional assets like real estate,

gold, silver, stocks, and fine art. And

now we have digital assets that revolve

around media and code. Now digital

assets are different because anyone can

build them. You can go and build a

digital asset today. You don't need

capital or connections or to be in the

right physical location or go to the

right college or have the right

credentials or status to purchase fine

art or get into real estate or buy the

right stocks or get gold. You can build

the digital asset by just doing things.

What that means is that you can quite

literally start building wealth right

now and increasing that wealth as your

skill increases. These digital assets

are skillbased assets. So we have media

and code. But code as great of a skill I

think it is and I mean I am building a

software. I have a team of coders.

Without media code kind of becomes

worthless because nobody can be

attracted to it. And little money can be

made if no one sees the code or buys the

code or the software or whatever you're

building. So I decided to stick with

media. Right? I was a web designer in my

past. I studied code for a decent amount

of time. I just slowly realized that

media was the more creative route and

potentially more impactful route that I

wanted to go. Now, media in the digital

world are things like videos, podcasts,

and posts. If they are valuable and you

understand the mechanics of social

media newsletters algorithms and

things like that, you can attract an

audience of people. It doesn't matter if

you want to write a book, build a

software, make music, do public

speaking, create a course, offer a

freelance service, or sell hand-crafted

cutting boards. You need to get that in

front of others and persuade them of its

value. And the most accessible, lowcost,

and high leverage way to do that is with

digital media, specifically writing.

Now, of course, you don't have to be the

person that creates media or writes, but

if you're just one person starting a

business on your own and you're not

already on a team or you don't have a

company where you can hire someone to do

this for you, then media is an

incredible place to start. So, what you

do is you write and you build your own

brand in public and you gain some kind

of authority because you are getting

better in public and people can see

that. And whether or not you sell your

own product or start your own business,

that is all for all of the reasons we

just went over. This is the most in-

demand skill right now. Not necessarily

writing, but the the umbrella above

writing, which is media. If you can

generate traffic or attention, you will

not get replaced. You will make as much

money as you want to if you are good at

that skill and you can actually do it.

Because if you're actually good at it

and you can get a post to do well and

people see that, then they're going to

hire you. If you are pitching yourself,

it's kind of obvious. If you can master

media, you can make as much money as you

want. So, it's now obvious why I write

for 90 minutes in the morning. Now, why

do I walk for 30 minutes in the morning?

This video isn't about walking, but if

you insist, walking is low friction and

gives you one single thing to focus on

when you get out of bed. Walking burns

calories, increases insulin sensitivity,

and improves health markers across the

board. Morning sunlight is beneficial

for circadian response and thus sleep.

Sleep is the best neutropic. All of the

above reduce stress. Stress is the mind

killer. Walking puts your body on

autopilot so your mind can solve

problems and birth ideas. Going outside

pulls you away from distractions inside,

acting as a creativity block that gives

you uninterrupted time to think and

learn. I do most of my reading and

listening on a walk, which doubles as

research for my writing. And if it's too

cold outside, good. Now you have a way

to train your mental strength. And most

of the world's most renowned

businessmen, creatives, and ancient

philosophers swear by it, walking. And

who are you to question them? Walking,

as stupid as it sounds, is such a

holistic habit. It's writing and

walking. Like, you take all of the

benefits of all of those things combined

and holy crap, what else do you need in

a morning routine? you cover all bases

without filling your morning with all of

these disjointed little habits that are

stacking up into one, but not moving you

any closer to your goals. So now that's

the routine in a nutshell and why we do

it. Now let's talk about the intricacies

of the routine a bit. So this routine

has a few critical parts. I have an idea

I want to write about. I have a soft

outline for a newsletter. Those are what

I think about on walks and I normally

have a lecture or audiobook for my

walks. and I jot down any ideas that can

be used for my writing in my notes. That

is my entire ideiation and research

process. The best, most energetic

writing comes from experience. When I

sit down to write for 90 minutes, I'm

not just sitting there with a blank head

wondering what to write. I already have

all of it written down in my notes from

my walk because I listen to stuff that

sparks an idea or the idea is in the

thing that I'm listening to. Most

writing just comes from research, right?

If you don't know what to write or what

to create, it's because you're not

researching things. You're not reading.

You're not listening. You're not

searching on perplexity nowadays or AI

or other things. And forming all of

those ideas that you gather into a

compelling narrative. A narrative in

this case doesn't have to be a fictional

story or even a story about a person in

general. It just has to follow a problem

and solution flow. Now, there are quite

a few caveats here, so I'll explain

those. But after my walk, so the first

30 minutes I wake up, I drink water, I

go on a walk, and then I shower, sit

down, start writing. What do I start

writing? I start with social posts,

right? Because that's kind of like uh

another idea generation mechanism. So my

walk, it gets the juices flowing. I'm

researching. I get back, I start writing

social posts, and those allow me to

write shorter ideas without worrying

about the long one. So I take my

research and I flesh those ideas out

into bigger ideas that get put into

social posts. So after that 30 minutes

of social post writing, it goes into 60

minutes of newsletter writing. Now when

I state that, that's where I start to

lose people because they don't

understand the value of newsletters and

don't understand that it's not just a

newsletter that you're writing. So let's

talk about newsletters and their

function in this. The first point here

is that newsletters are the new

audience. And the first objection to

that is, well, nobody checks their

emails anymore. And that's exactly what

someone who isn't in the arena would

say. Because if that was the case, my

newsletter analytics wouldn't be double

my YouTube analytics with 900,000 fewer

subscribers. Yes, you read that

correctly. Frankly, most people just

suck at writing newsletters. Or all they

want to do is write about their deep

thoughts without caring or providing

tangible value to the reader. So they

get stuck in this noble loop of being

mad at the world for not caring about

their writing, which reinforces their

inability to make money. They don't want

to change. If you want to achieve any

form of success, you need to strike a

balance between art and business. You

must care about what you do, but so must

other people. You must play the

attention game and learn to play it

well. Now, contrary to popular belief,

you can capture attention and be helpful

at the same time. In fact, you can't be

helpful unless you capture attention.

Okay, back on topic. Why are newsletters

so important? First is that algorithms

have switched to an interest graph.

Social media followers don't mean much

because anything can go viral. But

having followers is a slight advantage.

This means direct access to your

audience has shifted to email lists and

communities, but emails are still lower

friction than joining a community

platform. Platforms like Substack have

integrated newsletters with a social

feed so people don't only get emails but

notifications on their phone and a

better reading experience. And last,

long- form content is how you build

trust and talk about your deeper

thoughts because social media biases

surface level content. So those make

sense to most people, but many are still

missing the real power of a newsletter.

First, if you're a oneperson business,

it would be stupid to write original

content for every single platform. you

wouldn't have the time or you'd be

writing all day and due to the nature of

focus, you wouldn't be writing anything

high quality because quality comes from

focus on one idea and dissecting it. So

instead, you write the best possible

content you can. You write the best

newsletter and then you write the best

social posts and then you reformat all

of those things for every single

platform. You take your newsletter and

that becomes a YouTube script. You take

your social posts from X or threads or

whatever it is and then you cross-ost

them everywhere to LinkedIn. You turn

them into a Instagram carousel or you

turn them into a real script or a short

script or a Tik Tok script and then you

record it in front of a camera and post

it. Don't worry about people consuming

the same thing across all different

platforms because people benefit from

repetition of your most quality ideas.

When you listen to uh an artist, a music

artist, you listen to their best music

over and over and over again, that's

what you are as a creator or writer.

People don't read one of your posts from

3 years ago and then understand

everything that you're about. You have

to repeat yourself constantly from new

angles. And now, the other thing here is

that the more you write newsletters, the

better you get at them. And you can test

the title and the thumbnail beforehand

because it's the title and the thumbnail

of the newsletter. Now, the funny thing

here is that people always think that I

have this massive content team. Like,

they'll reach out to me and be like,

"Hey, does your team do this, this, and

this, and they're asking me questions

about my team?" And it's just me and my

editor. I do all of the content, right?

I record the videos. I write all of the

posts. I literally write one to two

posts a day and I write one newsletter a

week. That's all of my content. It's

nothing more than that. It just seems

like I do a lot because I'm everywhere

because I do what I just told you to do.

Now, I would recommend watching some of

my other social media videos because uh

just posting isn't going to get you that

far. You actually have to understand I

mentioned it in this video, but you have

to actually understand the mechanics of

social media and the algorithm and

attention and other things. You can't

just you can just start writing and get

better, but most people start writing

and they don't understand that if they

aren't growing, something's wrong. And

so, they just keep posting and getting

the same amount of engagement. and they

don't realize that that's an error that

should be corrected through education,

experimentation, and practice. So, you

can start posting, but if you aren't

going anywhere, you need to continually

study social media, marketing,

persuasion, etc., and implement

the tools and tactics that you're

learning until you start to see results.

And then you double down on those

results. Repeat the process. Boom. Now,

you don't have to buy a course. Now, the

second thing about why newsletters are

important is because they're going to

make you the most money. That's where

you promote your products or services.

So, my strategy is very simple. Every

single thing I publish online leads back

to my newsletter. I link to my

newsletter on all platforms once a day.

Sometimes I forget, of course. And my

newsletter is where I pitch my products

or services. Since my newsletters are

somewhat long, deep, and valuable by my

standards, even if people don't buy from

me, they still get something out of it.

This removes most of the sleaziness from

sales and keeps the focus on value

first. And since my newsletter gets

turned into a YouTube video, those

promotions naturally carry over when I

tell you, "Hey, check this out in the

description." That's because I've

already done that in my newsletter. Now,

if you want to understand how I write

newsletters, check out the link in the

description to a post I have on Substack

about writing a newsletter as a

beginner, and I'll link a few others

there, too. So, we understand

newsletters, but what about social

media, right? Because the morning

routine is kind of like 30 minutes of

walking, 30 minutes of social post, 30

minutes of newsletter writing, and

that's the foundation. That's literally

just how you make money, right? You you

can build a product, and that's going to

take some time. But once you build the

product, all you have to do is send

traffic to it. You need to be just

focused on distribution and brand, which

is writing content every day, and making

sure that you're continuing to grow. And

then you promote the product. And the

more uh the better you are at generating

traffic or building an audience, the

more money you make on the products or

services that you've built or affiliate

offers or sponsorships or whatever it

may be. So, you're saying that that all

makes sense, but you've been writing for

however long and your newsletter isn't

growing. And that's the newsletter trap.

It's actually the long form trap in

general because it applies to YouTube

and podcasts and newsletters. You start

writing them because someone like me

persuades you of all the benefits. So

you prioritize only that without

understanding the complete system and

then you get discouraged when you keep

writing into the void. Newsletters are

like blogs. When you post a blog, it

kind of just sits there and does nothing

until you send people to that blog. And

yes, SEO is a thing, but I haven't cared

about that, so I'm not going to even

attempt to teach it. I want instant

feedback. I don't want to wait months

for traction. The point is, one of your

sole priorities for the longevity and

success of your brand is getting people

to subscribe to your newsletter. Your

newsletter is your core audience, the

people who trust you and want to support

you. Newsletters only grow if they are

physically placed in front of other

people. And it is extremely unlikely

that they will grow just because they're

good. Either you have to generate

traffic and promote your newsletter to

them or someone needs to read your

newsletter and enjoy it so much that

they share it with their friends or

their audience. So you need to play both

the shallow and the deep game, right?

YouTube podcast newsletters that's

the deep game. The shallow game is

social media. That's where you attract a

broad audience. Then you put your

newsletter in front of them on a

consistent basis. If you stop putting it

in front of them, it stops growing. When

it comes to YouTube, I posted for like

five years inconsistently given that and

I didn't know much about YouTube. I

posted inconsistently for five years and

it didn't go anywhere. And when I

started writing on social media after I

started freelancing with web design, I

realized that I didn't have to play the

YouTube game because I was building an

audience on short form and I could lead

them to the long form. I could just

promote my YouTube. That's what got me

to 10,000 subscribers and then one video

popped off and now YouTube is kind of

self- sustaining. Now, if you don't know

how to write social posts, I'll also

leave link in the description to

articles that I've written on those so

you can start practicing. But now, we

need to talk about, okay, how does this

actually make money? If 2 hours of

writing a day consistently grows your

audience and you have a product or

service that people want, your income

increases as your audience does and you

don't need to increase the amount of

work you do. Of course, this is

variable, right? If you're a freelancer

or a coach or a service business and you

have clients, the more clients you get,

the less time you have. So, you have to

understand the how to productize, right?

If you're you get to the point where you

have so many clients that you can't take

them on anymore and then you either hire

a team and continue growing the service

business or you productize down and you

start doing a community or a cohort or a

course or some kind of other tool or a

software or something of that nature.

Because if you have a successful service

business, you have money and you can do

that. But as your audience grows, then

you productize down and you get your

time back. I work more than two hours,

but what I'm saying for the entirety of

this video is that this two-hour routine

is the literal backbone of anything that

I want to do. Most people don't actually

study the skills that allow them to

succeed at being a creator. Instead,

they see a YouTuber or Twitter account

that they like. They decide they want to

start writing, which is great, and then

expect money to just magically appear.

They pray that YouTube AdSense or

Instagram's monetization features will

pay them enough to do it full-time. Now,

here's the thing. I've tried those

monetization features. With my audience

size, 1.7 million on Instagram, I make

about 300 a month while generating

almost 6 million impressions per month.

That's just insane. So, if you actually

want to get paid, you need to build a

product or service and promote it every

single day or in your newsletters every

single time you write them. If you have

a product or service and most of your

audience sees that, you can make 10x to

50x more than any platform would ever

think of paying you just for posting on

it. A good metric is aiming for 50 cents

to a dollar per follower per month. If

you can't hit that, your product stack

needs a refinement or you need to study

marketing and sales more. So, how do you

promote? First, you write social

content. Then, you send people to your

newsletter. Then, you promote one to two

times in your newsletter. and then you

promote the newsletter with your links

inside of it or the promotions inside of

the newsletter on social media. The

other benefit here is that if you do

this, you aren't selling directly on the

social media timeline, right? You build

a lot of trust in the audience that

chooses to follow you because you aren't

selling all of the time. You give people

something more to read, right? You sell

them on your newsletter and why that's

beneficial to them because it is. It's

valuable. long, but that has links to

your products or services inside of it

so people can go view those, purchase

those from a place of trust. Right? This

is this doesn't have to be a

ClickFunnels countdown timer to get

people into this scarce mindset. You're

going value first, trust first. And

lastly, why I like this so much is that

it's antithetical to what most people

tell you to do. And if most people are

doing it, that either means that it's

saturated or people are used to it or

the market sophistication is high and it

doesn't work as well as it used to or

it's going to stop working pretty soon

because I personally don't sell anytime

that I can. I want to play the long game

and that's not for a lot of people. If

you need cash and you need it fast, you

can either get a job or you can study

customer acquisition strategies for a

service business like an agency or

freelancing and just grind that out. So,

that's kind of it. That's the 2-hour

routine. 30 minutes of walking, 90

minutes of writing. That's the baseline

of any kind of bu business you would

want to build ever. And your income

increases without your work increasing.

Make sense? I hope it does. If it

doesn't, leave a comment. I can make

another video. Before you leave, like,

subscribe. It's just two buttons. And

consider watching the next recommended

video or just going to my channel and

checking out a video that piques your

interest. So, thank you for watching.

See you in the next one. Bye.