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Did you know that waking up early can transform your life and business?
In this episode, Sharran reveals the single habit that helped him build two billion-dollar companies. He also shares the five key steps that made his morning routine successful.
Sharran breaks down how to design your mornings for maximum impact and productivity, offering actionable insights that enable you to stop feeling like you’re grinding and start making progress.
“The way you own your morning is the way you own your life.”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
01:17 – The power of waking up at 4:45 a.m.
02:39 – Step 1: Evening routine is more important than your morning routine
03:36 – Step 2: Do something you enjoy when you wake up
04:28 – Step 3: Remove all friction the night before
05:19 – Step 4: Shock your system immediately
06:11 – Step 5: Be part of something bigger than yourself
07:56 – How waking up early led to breakthroughs in business
Resources:
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Board Member: ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Board Member: The Real Brokerage
Connect with Sharran:
– X
– YouTube
– Threads
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast, and today I’m gonna teach you about how to wake up at whatever time you want. Now, you may think that this is not a valuable skill, but I’ve done this for 14 years, meaning I, I wanna tell you about the single most powerful habit that I’ve had a chance to install in my life.
[00:00:17] And that is waking up at 4:45 AM. Now, you don’t have to wake up at 4:45, but I’ve done it for 14 years in a row and it changed everything for me. I’ve probably tested every alarm clock, every productivity book, and I’ve figured out the only five steps that actually matter to make it all happen, and I break it all down for you step by step.
[00:00:34] Starting right now.
[00:00:42] One thing is for certain, just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:01:04] That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa, and Welcome to Business School.
[00:01:17] The single most powerful habit that helped me build, not one but $2 billion companies, is waking up at 4:45 AM. Every single day and for 14 years straight, I wish I could tell you that there was some other magic time, but that. Looking back is the thing that made it all happen. Now, it may sound simple, but it is kind of like the anchor that kept me focused.
[00:01:42] It gave me the two extra hours in the day. It kept me clear and consistent and some of the hardest and most busiest years of my life. I will tell you that over that time I’ve probably tested every alarm clock. I’ve worn every sleep tracker. I’ve tried almost every productivity hack that was promised to change my mornings, and in this process, I’ve coached maybe.
[00:02:06] A few hundred entrepreneurs on building their own morning routines, and I learned something insane after all of that. After all the hacks, I’ve always come back to the same five steps, the five little routine secrets that make this 4:45 AM time stick for me. And what I wanna do for you today is to break it all down for you, because if.
[00:02:28] I’ve done this for 14 years, I’ve had a chance to figure out what exactly works and I can give you the cheat code so that you don’t have to go through the 14 years. So here’s step one, which is the evening routine. Your evening routine is more important than your morning routine. What happens at 9:00 PM decides whether you succeed at 5:00 AM So if I go to bed scrolling emails and social media, or letting my brain sprint on tomorrow’s problems, honestly, I’m kind of already behind, right?
[00:03:02] But if I treat the evening like a onboarding or a ramp up into the morning, everything changes. Because especially for me, that means shutting down things at the same time every night. That’s hard for people. Setting out what I need exactly for the next day, making sure I’ve given my brain a chance to unwind because you can’t mess with biology.
[00:03:24] There’s only so much productivity and phone time and reading that you can compress before you actually get to sleep because the wind actually starts the night before. Now, here’s a step two, which is. You gotta do something that you enjoy when you wake up. So for one full year, you probably won’t believe it.
[00:03:43] I woke up, I made a cup of coffee and I sat by the fireplace with a book That was my 5:00 AM ritual, and you may think that’s crazy, but that was super important for me at that time. 5:00 AM has to feel like a reward for you. If it feels like a punishment, you will quit. Now the activity doesn’t matter as much as the emotion of it.
[00:04:07] I had a friend always wake up, um, at 5:00 AM and call his mom on the East coast. That was felt good for him. If it feels good for you, that’s what you will keep doing. That’s why my first kind of move was reading by the fire. It made that routine something that I loved and that’s why I never quit ’cause I looked forward to that thing.
[00:04:27] Step three, you gotta remove. All possible friction. You just cannot have any friction when you’re waking up in the morning. Most people lose their mornings to their excuses, so my job is to kill every excuse the night before. It’s like I lay out everything. Water, clothes, headphones, wallet, you know, my wedding ring all the night before be bed.
[00:04:52] And that way when I wake up, it’s all ready. And I have a routine and there’s no wasted energy. There’s no lost time. And literally I have no excuses because I just roll over into bed and get into my socks. You don’t need motivation at 5:00 AM You just gotta keep it smooth. You just have to have like this.
[00:05:08] Smooth momentum. And when that starts, you have zero friction. And then it just feels like you’ve kicked the first domino out very simply, right? That’s the big idea. And here’s kinda like step number four. I learned this later, four or five years in which you gotta shock the system. Meaning the first 60 seconds decide everything, you either wake up your body or you slide back under the covers, which are very comfortable by the way.
[00:05:35] So for one year, uh, I’ll tell you what I did. I woke up. I rolled outta bed, I popped on the floor, and I did one pushup. One pushup. Now I wake up and I chug a big bottle of water the second I get out of bed. The, the main point is you have to shock your system immediately. It’s either a pushup or a cold splash, or a brisk walk or a chug of water.
[00:05:56] It doesn’t matter. What matters is you gotta flip that switch really fast to let your body know and let your mind know that you are who you say you are, and you’ve made this decision and you’re gonna shock your system into doing whatever is necessary to win. That’s what’s important. Alright, here’s step five.
[00:06:12] You gotta be a part of something bigger than you, and this is the piece that I really think that makes it last over time. I’ve missed our 5:00 AM club call only three times in 14 years. Tens of thousands of people count on me to being there on that call and that kind. Pressure keeps me consistent. Now, when it’s just you and the alarm, you can kind of bargain with yourself.
[00:06:38] But when there are people depending on you, thousands of people, depending on and depending on you, you don’t negotiate. You show up. Otherwise, you let a bunch of people down and that was a big deal for me as well. So. The reason I wanted to make this episode for you is to show you what I’ve learned in 14 years and distill this note into five big ideas.
[00:06:58] And so here are the five big ideas, and if you do even one of these, you will increase your chances of having that routine significantly. Number one, your evening routine beats your morning routine. Number two, you gotta wake up to something that you really enjoy. Number three, you gotta remove all the friction the night before.
[00:07:14] Number four, you gotta shock your system immediately. And number five, you gotta find something bigger than yourself. Right. So the reason I’m sharing this is these five steps have kept me waking up at 4:45 AM every single day for 14 years. Now, the, the, the time itself isn’t the real point for me. It’s 4 45.
[00:07:36] For you, it may be five 30 or. Six or seven or six. Seven. What matters is designing your mornings to create momentum and speed before the world starts pulling at you and you actually have. No reason to respond to the world. Only respond to yourself at that time. So I will tell you that when I look back at almost every big breakthrough in my life and in my career, and maybe building multiple billion-dollar companies, or structuring a hundred plus deals or making critical decisions, all the good judgment time started in those quiet hours before the noise of the day.
[00:08:13] It didn’t make me feel like I needed to check social media or check email or um, listen to a podcast or what have you. I knew that I could. Protect this routine, like my life depended on it because in a lot of ways it does. Those 14 years of two hours of time that I got was the judgment that created all of this.
[00:08:32] That was the shift. And so, by the way, if you wanna want some help as a part of this, you can join the 5:00 AM Club. It’s 100% free. It’s five minutes a day, seven days a week at 5:00 AM. We have over 11,000 entrepreneurs worldwide. You have two billionaires that are on the call every single morning, and everybody shows up for five minutes just on the phone.
[00:08:50] You don’t have to show your face. And I do all the talking. The most important thing is this. The way you own your morning is the way you own your life, and I just want to give you the gift of something that took me a long time to learn. So if hopefully this idea of like getting. These 14 years of lessons down into five help you just pick one of these and I think you will create some space and time for you that you can do some amazing things with.
[00:09:18] Hey, by the way, if you like this episode, can you just screenshot this and tag me? That way I can make more like this for you. So please, if you like this, screenshot this and tag me. I can make more like this for you.
[00:09:35] Hey, this is Sharran. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I’ve got a chance to build $2 billion companies the hard way. So if you like this episode, you’ll love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It’s on my Substack, called My Next Billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from the trenches as I go for a three-peat and build the next billion. So everything’s free at mynextbillion.com. Please check it out at mynextbillion.com.