6 Ways Entrepreneur’s Can Use Exercise To Excel In Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is hard work, lots of hard work.

It’s constantly kicking my ass and if it wasn’t for exercise, I would have been toast long ago.

If you’re not prepared for it, entrepreneurship will swallow you up and spit you out.

Entrepreneur’s who are serious about success always find time to exercise and those who do not are setting themselves up for failure.

If you’re not making time for exercise than you’re not making time for success.

Getting It Done

I have lots of friends who are entrepreneur’s and what I’ve been noticed more of lately, is that many of them struggle with finding the time or motivation to exercise.

They often find themselves stuck behind a computer screen, in a funk, and trying to get themselves out of it.

Sean Ogle of Location 180 who’s a lifestyle entrepreneur mentions exercise as a perfect remedy to break out of a funk.

When you exercise regularly, you’re more positive, energetic, and productive.

You bang out more content and projects.

You’re more alert, creative, and focused too.

I wrote this post as a guide for both established and aspiring entrepreneur’s who value their time, health, business, and success.

Here are six ways to incorporate exercise into your daily routine that will help you excel in entrepreneurship:

1) Identify Your Options

Do you own workout equipment or have access to a gym, pool, or park?

Maybe you purchased P90X or Insanity?

Identify a variety of exercise options so you know what’s available to you no matter where you are, how you’re feeling, or how much time you have.

It’ll alleviate the monotony of doing the same exercise day after day.

Also, you don’t need exercise equipment to exercise. You can go for a run or do push-ups, sit-ups, squats, or stretches – for example. Here a 12 minute routine you can do anywhere.

2) Develop a Schedule

Daily Schedule

If possible, consider scheduling a specific time to exercise each day.

Get it done first thing in the morning if you can.

You’ll start your day with more energy and motivation. And, regardless of what the rest of the day brings, you won’t have to worry about exercising. It’s done.

If you’re not a morning person, exercise right before having lunch. It’ll make your lunch taste that much better – you earned it.

You can also exercise in the evening although there’s a higher failure rate when waiting until the end of the day to complete your exercise – there are just too many distractions.

Weekly Schedule

If your day to day schedule is too hectic and unpredictable, then commit to a weekly schedule.

Choose how many days per week you’ll exercise and pick the days that are easiest for you. Creating a weekly schedule allows for more flexibility but requires more discipline.

Don’t put off your exercise until the end of the week and then run out of time to get it done.

3) Build It Into Your Day

If there’s an interview or TED talk you’ve been meaning to listen to, play the video, crank up the volume, and exercise while listening.

Multitask.

Instead of coffee or lunch meetings with family, friends, or other business colleagues, schedule something active such as a workout at the park, a run, or a game of racquetball or golf.

Anything that gets you moving, your blood flowing, and your heart rate up.

4) Location, Location, Location

As an entrepreneur, you can often work from any place you choose.

While coffee shops seem to be the popular choice amongst entrepreneurs, you can work from a beach, park, library, bar, your car, hotel lobbies – or even a gym.

Choose a location where you are able to take a break and conveniently exercise.

It could be a park with workout stations, a gym (many have smoothie shops with tables), or the beach where a run and a quick swim can be the perfect workout.

5) Fitness Hacking

When you’re able to exercise at any time during the day, you can take advantage of deals that are only offered during odd hours.

Look for gyms, boxing clubs, yoga or Pilates studios, or CrossFit centers that offer mid-week deals – sometimes at half their normal cost – in an effort to bring in more customers during off-peak hours.

You can often find several of these on livingsocial.com.

If you’re traveling, walk into any gym you see (or call ahead) and let them know you’ll be moving to the area soon (even if you aren’t). Tell them you’d like a free one or two week trial membership to get a feel for the place before joining.

More often than not, after providing them with some basic information, you’ll have scored yourself a free gym membership for a few weeks while you’re in town. Fitness hacking at its best.

6) Keep It Simple

Exercising doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s a matter of being active and getting your heart pumping, blood flowing, and muscles working.

Chris Guillebeau put it best in one of his recent posts, “15 minutes of exercise, or even less in some cases, is far superior to simply not doing anything.”

Some exercise will always be better than no exercise. I recently spoke about this in one of my podcasts. You can listen to it here. 

It doesn’t require sweating profusely or spending an hour or more in the gym.

If you don’t have access to a gym, fitness equipment, or videos, that’s okay.

Do jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups, squats, lunges, and crunches – they all work just fine.

Keep it simple.

Making The Time

We all have the same 24 hours in a day.

We can’t make more time but we can decide how and where we use our time.

Have you ever taken stock of how you spend your time on any given day?

If you haven’t, I highly encourage it.

You may be surprised at what you find.

Time Inventory Exercise

For one entire day, take inventory on what you spend your time on.

Write it all down.

Everything.

Don’t leave anything out. Surfing the web for 10 minutes, talking to a friend or neighbor for 5 minutes.

I’ve done this exercise several times and always get surprised with what I discover as far as how and where I spend my time during any given day.

I always end up identifying an hour or more of wasted time.

I define wasted time as unintentional actions, such as reading meaningless articles, completing unimportant tasks, or looking through social media.

Time that could be spent on more intentional and important things such as exercise.

If you’re one of many entrepreneur’s who claim they don’t have time to exercise, I encourage you to complete this exercise.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll discover you have plenty of “wasted time” you could be dedicating to exercising.

Why Exercise

Entrepreneur and New York Times best selling author Michael Hyatt said it best, “exercising is like funding your 401(k). Shorting the contribution only shorts yourself.”

Exercising regularly is important for everyone but especially entrepreneurs. If you’re not exercising regularly, you:

• Become less motivated
• Have less energy
• Become less productive
• Become more stressed and anxious
• Gain weight

Personal Story Of My Almost Demise

When I first launched The Wellness Bucket 18 months ago, I became instantly consumed with writing, creating blog posts, writing newsletters, calling into webinars, attending seminars, and more.

Finding time to exercise became a challenge – even a chore.

I struggled to find a balance between entrepreneurship and exercise, even though exercise was and is a huge part of what The Wellness Bucket is all about.

It took me a while but I finally did developed a method that allowed me to get my work done and exercise too.

I’m glad I did too otherwise I don’t believe I’d be here today as an entrepreneur writing this post.

Here are six ways exercise has helped me and why every entrepreneur who’s serious about entrepreneurship and success should be exercising regularly:

1. Keeps You Healthy

Exercising regularly helps to lower you stress and anxiety levels.

As entrepreneur’s, we’ll always experience some level of stress and anxiety although exercise helps manage these and keep them at a minimum. 

Reducing stress also helps to keep your weight in check by limiting your body’s production of cortisol which is responsible for weight gain.

Just 20-25 minutes of exercise a day, even if it’s just a brisk walk,  can drastically reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer.

2. Increases Productivity

There’s a direct connection between exercise and productivity.

Everything from problem-solving capabilities, creativity, and planning.

Exercise helps to increase your cognitive thought process and performance throughout the day.

It also stimulates your body to secrete hormones in your brain responsible for helping you to formulate arguments, develop strategies, creatively solve problems and process information more easily.

3. Improves Mental Focus

Aerobic-type exercises such as running, biking, or swimming, can significantly improve your ability to focus.

There’s lots of research suggesting aerobic exercise helps to improve your memory as well because of increased blood flow and oxygen to the brain that stimulates growth.

More growth, more focus, more success.

4. Reinforces Good Habits

Maintaining a consistent exercise routine helps you build confidence and a positive sense of accomplishment.

Similar to entrepreneurship, it also requires self-discipline and at times, sacrifice.

When you prioritize exercise and make it a daily habit, you encourage and reinforce other successful habits that are congruent with what you’re out to create.

Good habits breed more good habits.

5. Increases Your Odds For Success

Regular exercise forms the kind of character that wins in the marketplace.

According to the researchers, exercise has the ability to make us more persistent when faced with obstacles and difficulties.

It also increases your desire to engage in competitive situations.

6. Keeps You Committed

Whether you’re well established or an aspiring entrepreneur, you stand to gain lots of by exercising regularly.

Successful entrepreneur’s never skip out on exercising or fall into the trap of thinking they don’t have time.

Part of working on your business is working on yourself.

Commit To Your Health And Success Will Follow

Being an entrepreneur is awesome. Every day is filled with new opportunities and challenges requiring you to be at our best.

Energy, motivation, and health are all essential for any entrepreneur to remain an entrepreneur.

We all get busy and overwhelmed with what we’re working on at times, I know I do.

It’s so easy to justify not exercising today – then the next day, and the day after that.

You tell yourself that after this one project is completed, you’ll get back on track with exercise and working out.

That one project ends up leading right into another project.

Before you know it, you’re taking a trip somewhere.

You tell yourself once you get back from your trip you’ll get back to exercising.

You get back and there’s hundreds of emails to sort through, people to call, interviews to do, posts to write, projects to finish and new ones to get started.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Get Started

There’s never a right time to begin taking your health and and success seriously.

What good is success if you aren’t healthy enough, physically and mentally, to enjoy it?

If you’re serious about success, entrepreneurship, and seeing what you’ve created or are out to create through, I challenge you to take your health and fitness seriously and begin making time to exercise regularly.

The best time to start is right now.

If you’ve read this far, congrats! It shows you’re committed to yourself, your health, and entrepreneurship.

When you make time for exercise, you’r making time for success.

If you need help creating a quick and simple routine specific to you that you can complete anywhere, reach out to me – I promise to help.

Because you’re awesome, and I want you to succeed.

Cheers to you!

Mike

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