If you’re into that, take 2 min 32 sec of your day and keep reading!

Damn, I’m tired

The start of this year has been A LOT! We got ourselves a little short-staffed at WeHero and I found myself putting projects like The Impact Job on the sidelines temporarily to fully focus on getting WeHero back on track. Traveling for events, doing sales again, and keeping the day-to-day of the business moving was definitely kicking my energy levels in the ball sack.

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To keep my energy and good vibes high, I started really taking a look at the inputs for my body and how I can squeeze some more juice out of them. I’ve been going deep on podcasts like Hubberman Labs, The Drive with Dr. Peter Attia, and others. Out of those dives, here are the key changes I’ve made over the last 30 days that really made a difference.

Dialed morning routine. The first thing out of bed, I hit the scale to see where my weight, muscle, water weight and BMI are at. I’ve been addicted to the improvement. Then, I meditate for 5 minutes. Right after meditation, I work on Japanese language lessons for 15 minutes (gets my mind going in a really nice way). The fancy jargon for this is stimulating neural plasticity in the morning. I just think it’s a good start to the day.

Then I eat (I’ll get to diet in a second), check the markets and my investments, and go through all my emails before I head to the office. The last thing I do is a Cappucino right before I walk out the door. Apparently, if you do your caffeine hit 60 minutes into your day you don’t have an afternoon crash. Turns out it works!

Diet. I do intermittent fasting 2 days out of the week. You can research the health benefits for yourself. I eat probably 20+ different plants or seeds a day (blueberries, kale, swiss chard, sweet potatoes, hemp seeds, flax seeds, on and on). Increasing the variety of plants you consume is supposed to help you with your microbiome. I limit red meat to 2x per week and when I eat it, it’s 6oz or less grass fed only. My other protein is coming from fish and beans mostly. I have a sweet maybe 1x a week. I use to have sweets every day! With these small changes, I feel super awesome and I’ve dropped my fat percentage by 2% already in a few weeks and picked up 2% more muscle.

Disclosure: Currently writing this while smashing a Chipotle burrito. I’m human.

Sauna (and sometimes cold plunge). I know cold plunge is all the rage but I’m such a baby! I’ll do it 1–2x a month but I am not doing it daily. What I will do though is hit a Sauna twice a week. This has been amazing! Definitely noticed a bump in energy levels and just positivity as well. Google the health benefits of Sauna or DM me on Twitter if you want to learn more.

Exercise. In the past, I would work out 2–3 times per week. I’m now working out 6 days a week. But the biggest difference is the diversity of my exercise. In the past, I would do the same things over and over again hitting the same muscles. Now I’m trying to do a nice mix. Running, weights, core HIT workouts, skiing, biking, rock climbing, the list goes on. It’s made my workouts way more exciting and I feel just all around stronger.

Last but not least, sleep. I get terrible sleep. I’ve been really trying to find good solutions here. What’s worked the best for me? No alcohol after 6:00 PM, don’t overeat (diet is really helping here), do hard exercise 3–4 hours before bed, and hot shower right before bed. When I do all these things, I’m out for 8 hours solid.

“Ben, why are you trying so hard to act like you’ve been featured in Men’s Health next to Chris Hemsworth?”

Why am I sharing all this? As a reminder to take care of yourself! It’s so easy to wire in, focus on work, and ignore your own health. Mind and body are one system. With these changes, I’ve comfortably increased my workload, and my energy levels are high. Higher energy levels, higher business performance.

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More on the business side of things 💵

I read tons of #buildinpublic threads on Twitter and LinkedIn. I love history and I love business so I got to thinking: I wonder what a “built-in public” would have looked like 160 years ago for some of these massive Fortune 1000 brands. I did some research on John Deere and decided to write one up. So much fun! Yes… this is now how I’m spending my Thursday nights. If you’re interested, check it out here on Twitter and here on LinkedIn.

The next “build-in public throwback”? I’m thinking about doing Sam Walton. Stay tuned!

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Hang out with more builders!

I’ve been hosting peer group meetings for people that are building and growing businesses that are bootstrapped/self-funded. It has been so much fun and I’m learning so much and meeting amazing people because of it. If you’re interested in joining our next peer group meeting, here are the details.

The next peer group meeting is April 5th, 2020, 12:30–2:00 pm PST. What will we be covering?

• 12:30 — Introductions and business updates
• 12:45 — Advertising. What’s working? What’s not working?
• 1:15 — Making your first sales hire and organizing a sales function. Where are folks finding success here?
• 1:50 — Concluding thoughts and follow on actions

Want to join? I’d love to expand the community! Email me and I’ll send you an invite 🙌

Final randoms from me

• A mentor of mine is investing in student groups to build businesses. So much better than learning from a book! I’ve gotten to be on the board of advisors which has been weird (since I’m usually the one asking for advice) and a lot of fun.
• Netflix’s Formula 1 show is awesome. I can’t stop and I love some of the business takeaways in how the managers operate these massive teams.
• Half of Instagram is dog profiles. Should we build an app that’s a social network for dogs? PupPals?
• Learning to love operating almost as much as building. I’m still a work in progress.
• My favorite note to self for the month.

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About The Writer:

Ben Sampson is a product nerd and current co-founder at WeHero. He has built 4 companies in the past 10 years, and worked as a consultant for 4 years helping some of the largest companies in the world like Bloomberg, Dun & Bradstreet, etc. make some of the best products in company history.

Yes, I wrote this in 2nd person because it just sounds sooo much cooler! See you all on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: I don’t pay an editor to review my writing. If I made a typo you can publicly humiliate me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you find any of my writing too direct or unprofessional, god made an <unsubscribe button>.

It actually wasn’t a god. Just some guy named Jared Dunn.