Spotify
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Apple PodcastsIn this podcast episode of “Open Source Growth,” Dean, the founder and director of Owendenny Digital, discusses the impact of health on entrepreneurship. He shares his personal experience of giving up caffeine due to health reasons and emphasizes the importance of maintaining good health for business success.
Dean introduces a unique working arrangement he and his wife have adopted, where he dedicates the first four hours of the day to deep work and strategic tasks, capitalizing on the scientifically proven peak productivity time for men. He then hits the gym in the middle of the day, experiencing a second wave of clarity and energy, allowing for increased productivity and a more balanced lifestyle.
Dean encourages self-employed entrepreneurs to consider incorporating a midday workout into their schedules and invites feedback on the potential scientific backing for this approach.
Overall, he highlights the positive impact this lifestyle change has had on his business and personal life.
Here are the top 5 lessons learned from this podcast:
1. Prioritize Health for Business Success: Dean emphasizes the crucial role that personal health plays in entrepreneurial success. Taking care of one’s well-being can lead to increased productivity and overall business growth.
2. Strategic Time Management: Implementing strategic time management is key. Dean discusses the importance of dedicating the first four hours of the day to deep work and critical business tasks, taking advantage of the scientifically proven peak productivity time for men.
3. Adopt a Balanced Lifestyle: A balanced lifestyle is essential for sustained success. Incorporating a midday workout, as suggested by Dean, not only provides physical benefits but also contributes to mental clarity and enhanced energy levels, positively impacting work performance.
4. Customize Work Schedule to Fit Productivity Peaks: Acknowledge and leverage personal productivity peaks. Dean recommends aligning work tasks with individual energy levels, such as focusing on strategic work in the morning and incorporating a workout during midday to maintain optimal productivity.
5. Flexibility in Work Routine for Global Clients: For entrepreneurs dealing with clients in different time zones, flexibility in the work routine is crucial. Dean shares insights into breaking up the day to accommodate international clients, highlighting the importance of adaptability in a global business landscape.
Hey everyone. And welcome to open source growth. It’s Dean here, founder and director of Owendenny Digital, Australia’s top ranked SaaS marketing and growth agency, where we discuss everything from direct response advertising, customer acquisition strategies, marketing, brand strategy, and a whole lot more.
Now today’s episode is part of that whole lot more where we like to duck into things that the everyday software CEO and CMO will experience. And this is all about your health.
A few episodes ago, I released a podcast on my experiences in Indonesia. And I was talking to everyone about how I gave up caffeine by necessity. After being diagnosed with dyspepsia. Now. I’m not sure if dyspepsia may have been a false positive at the time. However, it felt like I had something completely wrong with me. And regardless of whether that was true.
I’m still off the caffeine. Five days out of seven. And I’m experiencing the overwhelming benefits of really getting your shit together when it comes to a great diet, plenty of water, no caffeine, no substances. And you know what it has been blowing my business op. We’ve had our biggest quarter ever.
Um, in the last quarter of the financial year. Uh, we’ve got an amazing slew of incredible clients that have joined the agency. And you know what I’m feeling on board and I think I’ve done it again. I think I found another hack, which I simply cannot wait to reveal to you guys today. Now if you are a CEO or a founder or a head of growth or a sales person. You would all understand the pressures and stresses and what it takes for you to succeed? From a health perspective as a entrepreneur. Right. You know, there’s early mornings. There’s late evenings. There’s conversations you need to have with your team to get them riled up. There’s a whole heap of, you know, sales calls you may need to make, if you, especially, if you’re a growth lead founder, um,
And, you know, back to back to back 50 to 60 hour weeks, or even 80 hour weeks for some entrepreneurs is just simply unsustainable. Your health will give way, you’ll start developing a whole heap of weird things like I did. A few weeks back when I had a style in my eye. And. You know, It’s it’s really crucial that you do whatever you can to maintain your health. Now, my wife and I, and I’m going to get her on the podcast at some point. Hannah, she’s the copywriter here at Owendenny digital. Um, that’s how that came to be is a story for another day for all you lovely people, but. My wife and I were thinking like, how can we change this? How can we hard code life into our schedule? How can we hard code?
Exercise into our schedule and how can we do the best we possibly can with the 24 hours we’re given each day. Now here’s some additional facts. Number one, it’s scientifically proven that your best work happens as a man. From the moment you wake up to the four hours after you wake up. So if you’re a biological male,
You’re more than likely to be able to do your best thinking your heaviest work between the moment you wake up and the four hours after that, which means that as a guy. It makes it doesn’t really make sense for you to go straight to the gym in the morning. If you want to do your thinking, if you want to do your strategic work, you want to get your deep work done. It makes perfect sense for you to not go to the gym right away. But instead.
Go and about your most critical long-term shit that you need to do in your business. Right? But then there’s the other side of the coin where it’s like, well, often you go to the gym, you feel unstoppable because you’ve done the reps, you’ve done the weightlifting, you’ve punched the bag. You’ve ran the kilometers on the treadmill, or you’ve swammed the laps in the pool or whatever your exercise choices may be.
And those endorphins can push you through the day. So I was talking to Hannah about this. I was thinking well, I’m kind of in a bind here honey. I’m I’m a male. Um, I have. You know, I I’ve got my best work. Possibly. can only come from like waking up early and grinding it out. But then I also want to make the most of when my testosterone levels are highest, which are between those four hours.
So, what do we do? And how to came up with this cutting-edge solution. It’s not really that complex FYI, everybody, but she came up with this great idea and she goes, Dean, you know what we’re going to do? You’re going to get up early. You’re going to work for four hours and then you’re gonna go to the gym.
Now the reason why I have named this podcast. The I get two mornings a day. And here’s how it’s because of the fact that I am working out in the middle of the day. And what’s insane about this is that my typical day involves me waking up at about six or six 30, depending on how long the snuggles in bed go for with my beautiful wife. I literally get up.
Pour a cup of decaf coffee and just get to work. And that’s sits at around about, you know, seven o’clock I’m doing work and then all the way through to 10 30. I am just working. I’m doing deep work. I’m recording podcasts, just like this one today. And I’m getting all the long-term strategic vision stuff done for the business, because that is.
100% the most difficult shit to do. As a founder, when you have teammates, you’ve got to get that done before anyone is up. It sounds crazy. It sounds like you need to have two workdays and one, yeah, you kind of do when you kick off as a founder, but that’s what you often need to do is just get up as early as you possibly can. Feasibly not, I’m not saying just join the 5:00 AM club Willy nilly, right?
Like you need to be able to do this. And then it’s at your time when you’re most productive as a man to get in there and do the best work you possibly can for the first three to four hours a day, use timers, the Pomodoro technique, like whatever it takes for you to be most productive and most efficient during this time, which provides you with the greatest leverage inside your organization.
That’s how the first four hours of your week need to begin. Not the fall, not the week, the first four hours of your day need to begin. Now. Why I’m saying it feels like you get a second. Wind or a second morning in a day. It’s because of the fact that when you get to the gym and then you get through your, your gym workouts, or you go to the swimming pool and you do your swim or whatever exercise you choose to go about doing, believe it or not, the endorphins replicate that same feeling of clarity that you’ve experienced in the morning.
So essentially you can get to.
Beautiful mornings in a single day. It is absolutely insane. And. Why this has been fundamentally important for myself as well. And this is a little disclaimer, is that. When you run a marketing agency, which has international clients from all over the world, like we are so blessed to be working with companies that have teams in Switzerland, in the Philippines, in Singapore. Um,
In Indonesia, like we’ve had so many incredible clients beyond Australia. We’ve also worked with companies in the United States. Um, in the UK, like there’s so much diversity with the work that we do in the companies and the clients we so graciously serve. That. Often you need to be on your toes. Much.
Longer in duration than your typical. You know, nine to five job in Australia. See if we were only servicing Australian clients, you know, getting up at six and working till five makes pretty logical sense. But when you have clients in different time zones, It makes perfect sense that you’re able to break up your day. So like what I’m starting to realize here, that I think that a lot of you self employed entrepreneurs may have the opportunity to do such a thing or self-employed marketers, or if you’ve got a business or you’ve got flexible working conditions from home.
As a man, I would totally suggest you to consider doing a workout during the middle of the day. Don’t go and wait for the end of the day, you’re going to feel rooted and you’re not going to get any of the clear minded benefits. I know a lot of people use the workout at the gym as a means to book end day.
However, I believe that if you can get to unique opportunities to do great work in a day, why wouldn’t you. Because you’re going to be feeling better because you get all the hard. Work that needs to be done totally uninterrupted. And it’s going to feel great. And you know that you’re not wasting, you know, quote unquote communication hours. When you have to communicate with people, you then get to the gym. And then when you communicate through these conversations, because you’ve worked on your self esteem, you’ve worked on pushing those reps or any of those hard quote, unquote activities that you need to do.
You get in there and you feel like, oh, Hey, this isn’t a problem. I can bounce through this. Or, oh, I’m reading this right now. Yeah, that’s fine. Like any form of like emotional, um, you know, turbulence that you may experience. In the afternoon, you can quite simply abolish in real time. So I’m not sure how scientifically backed this is. Let me know in the comments section of this video. So if you do know anything about the logic of having a workout during the middle of the day, I want to know about it because I sincerely believe that this is the reason why.
Were accomplishing a whole lot more. We’re feeling a whole lot more relaxed and feeling as if we’re living a whole lot more life. Now that we’re doing this in our household. See Hannah spends a lot of the time in the morning feeling creatively inspired. She’s doing amazing work inside the house. Like she’s, whether she’s doing art or she’s riding or she’s journaling or she’s learning, I’m spending a great.
Majority of my morning doing things. I love like reading great books and learning about particular marketing things and building our marketing strategy for our own agency. Like all the stuff that I love to do is getting done before 1130 and then all the things I need to do happen after that. And it’s making a tremendous difference in our business. And I want to give you the challenge.
Give this a go, like, honestly, give this unique working arrangement. If you’ve got the capacity to do it a go and let me know. I want to see if there’s any science behind this, because at the end of the day, this has made a massive difference to the way we live our lives. And holy smoke. I think it’s going to enable us to grow a whole lot further.
As an agency. So guys, I hope this has been value to you. Uh, if you’ve got any further questions, feel free to hit me up. Dean dot denny@owend.com. You can check out all my email, et cetera, et cetera in the job notes. But if you need some assistance with your direct response advertising, or if you’re struggling to get your software company to grow.
Just hit the link in the job notes of book, a friendly chat with me. We can go through what you’re currently doing. Explore some opportunities to see whether or not you may be able to grow through the power of paid traffic and direct response advertising. And we can take it from there. Anyway, guys, this has been unreal. Thank you so much for tuning in my name’s Dane, founder, and director of O and D digital. And you’re listening to open-source growth. Be well
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