“It’s more about doing like two maybe three things really, really well and preparing yourself doing those one or two things versus doing five or ten things for 15 minutes and jumping back and forth.” – Chris Horton in today’s Tip 940
What’s your morning routine?
Join the conversation below and check out the full interview with Chris!
Chris Horton on Sales Success Stories Interview
Chris Horton on LinkedIn
Workstream Website
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I’ve got a clip from last week’s Sales Success Stories interview with Chris Horton of Workstream. Just for a bit of context, Chris came onto my radar because he was the first seller at Workstream to sell over $1M. That got him to about 200% of his annual number and he did it in just six months! Here he is talking about how his morning routine has changed over time:
Chris Horton: I’ve been every single end of the spectrum as far as time that I wake up and that, I’ve woken up at 4:30 a.m. consistently for six months. And then I’ve also just like gotten to a point sometimes at some points where I don’t even set an alarm or set an alarm for 8:00 a.m. and then naturally wake up at 7:30 or whatever it might be. So I was doing the 4:30, 5 a.m. type thing which I loved because I could get so much done before the sun was even up before people started shooting emails to me or slack messages started coming. And then I just, you know, I guess stepped back a little bit. I know it’s funny, but like I was reading an interview with Jeff Bezos about his morning routine and he was saying that with how much stress he deals with every single day and the decision fatigue that he gets and just the types of meetings that he’s in, he has to have a very slow, easy morning and doesn’t necessarily hold him to like, well, I’m going to be in the car on my way to go by 8:30 a.m. or whatever it might be. You know, apparently, he kind of takes it slower and so I kind of realize, OK, when I was building the pipeline and when I was starting from scratch, I kind of needed that discipline of waking up at 5 a.m. and doing all my things. And now that I am dealing with maybe a little bit more stress or a little bit more, you know, high-level meetings and that sort of thing, during my you know, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. and that sort of thing.
I need to have like a little bit more calm morning to where I can really just understand. And so, anyways, alarm will go off at 7 a.m. right now. And we’re talking like I said, I’ve kind of been everywhere, but right now it’ll go off at 7 a.m. I get out of bed and I try as hard as I possibly can to refrain from looking at my phone, because if I do, then it’s just like work mode, like I can’t get out of it. If I look at my phone first thing, get out of bed, then I’m going to go downstairs. I’m going to open my laptop. I’m going to, you know, respond to emails and that sort of thing.
So I try to refrain from looking at it, unless I, of course, have a meeting that I need to get on to or anything like that. But try to refrain from that. I’ve been going on runs lately with my dog as we’ve kind of transitioned out of a work from home model and more into, you know, 3 to 5 days in an office. I’ve had I feel bad because my dog hasn’t quite had the interaction since we’re in offices more. So I try to go on a run with him around 7:30. I’m not a huge runner. I’ve done one-half marathon because my sister forced me to do it. But I do maybe a 20 or 30-minute run, nothing super impressive. And then I usually will get home, shower, get ready. That takes 20 or 30 minutes and then I’m in the office by maybe 8:30 to 9 a.m.
So nothing super glorious but you know kind of what I found is that I tried packing so many things that I tried to like, read 15 pages, go to the gym, run, feed the dog, take them on a walk, you know, talk to my wife, make breakfast, do all of those things in the morning time. And I started to realize that it’s not necessarily about doing everything before the workday. It’s more about doing like two maybe three things really, really well and preparing yourself doing those one or two things versus doing five or ten things for 15 minutes and jumping back and forth and only getting a piece of the one thing that you’re actually focusing on.
Scott Ingram: I wanted to share this clip to get you thinking about my own tip I’m planning to share tomorrow. So make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast so you don’t miss that and if you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/940 you’ll find links to this full interview with Chris on the Sales Success Stories podcast and a link so you can connect with him on LinkedIn.
Thanks so much for listening and I’ll talk to you tomorrow!