In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Joel Hawbaker about his morning routine, setting limits on social media, mindset, relationships and more.
In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Joel Hawbaker about his morning routine, setting limits on social media, mindset, relationships and more.
Ryan
Hey morning upgraders it's Ryan. Before we get to the show, I have a quick question for you. Do you want to start a morning routine, but you don't know what to do or don't have a lot of time? Well, I have an exciting announcement. I just launched my first product called the morning upgrade cards. It's a journal type product, but in card format, and they help anyone start and stick with a morning routine. And you only need 20 minutes every morning to take a card pen to paper and answer the questions and follow the prompts. The morning upgrade cards make it easy to build what I consider to be the number one habit and that's investing in yourself first thing in the morning with a morning routine. To learn more, go to morning upgrade.com forward slash cards. Thanks for letting me share and now on to the show.
Announcer
Welcome to the Morning upgrade podcast with Ryan cote where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.
Ryan
Hey, everyone, this is Ryan cote from the morning upgrade podcast and today I'm super excited to be speaking with Joel Hawbaker. Hey, Joel.
Joel
Ryan, you're talking to music going? Good. Good for a typical day here in Tennessee, but doing well.
Ryan
So why don't you tell everyone what you do and then what your interests are what you enjoy doing?
Joel
Sure what I do for work, I run a couple of companies that are in the technology sector. So one of them is venture, and we help CIOs, CEOs, CTOs, anybody in it really, and medium or larger businesses, we help them with their networks. So securing their networks managing them. Top security is a big deal these days. So we help with that. And the second company is epic, integrated AV. And we design and install Audio Video Systems in companies and not in buildings. Typically, that looks like conference rooms, you think video conferencing and zoom rooms, team rooms, things like that. We specialize in that. Now as far as what I like to do, I do enjoy that a lot of I've always been into technology. So I love doing that. What I do outside of that I love getting out into nature. So that kind of leads to why we live in Tennessee right now. We moved out to the country a few years ago and bought a farm. We love being out in nature, enjoying time on the farm or going to the Smoky Mountains, or many of the areas around here with, you know, rivers and lakes and just getting out there in creation.
Ryan
That's pretty neat. Where did you come from when you move to Tennessee?
Joel
Chicago lived in Chicago area almost my entire life. So a few years. Wow.
Ryan
That's pretty cool. It sounds like a really cool lifestyle change. I know you work from home and you got to farm. I feel relaxed just listening to that.
Joel
Well, let me tell you what a farm is not that relaxing. Yeah, I guess. You know, it is nice. So you know, it's sometimes it's easy to take it for granted. So it's sometimes I gotta just go outside and be like, Man, look at this. Like I used to live in a condo in Chicago like, and I can walk outside and I'll get acreage I'm getting animals wandering around on the fields. And you know, I can sit around a fire anytime I want to. So yes, it's it's really a blessing. What kind of animals we have goats, eight goats right now, and a couple of sheep, and some guard dogs for them and chickens and pigs. I think that's it for now.
Ryan
So I'd imagine you know that this podcast is about personal development and imagine that you take your personal development very seriously because I know you have a family and you've got animals everywhere. You know, you're you have to be a leader for family and you're an even in the animals, right? There's a sense that there's a lot to take care of there. What does your personal development routine look like morning routine and then any habits that you have?
Joel
Sure. So morning routine. No, I'm not always had I'm not someone that's always had you know, super strict morning routine for years and years and years. But this past year, I've really gotten more serious about that. Because I find that it makes such a huge difference in my day and just life in general. So what I do now is wake up at 5 am and do that mainly because I love it when it's still dark outside the house is quiet, because there's no bed I can get a little bit of quiet time when my mind gets centered for the day. So I wake up at 5 am and read a devotional book and then read a few chapters in the Bible do some prayer that's been such a huge help for me before when I did not have that routine I thought you know get a little more sleep would be good for me but turns out a little more sleep was not nearly as good as doing this. The Ops are not centered you know mentally throughout the day and it'd be easy to become flustered or distracted or whatever it may be so very helpful. And then you know after that, I also got real serious about my diet. So a healthy breakfast, sausage, or eggs that we get right here on the farm and along with some almond flour waffles and muffins and veggie smoothie. So all the stuff you kind of want to know about but all these things I do that because I found that, you know health is also a huge part of it. If I wasn't taking care of myself, health-wise that And again, my mental processes were not there. And I cannot focus and be as effective throughout the day at work or with the family.
Ryan
Sounds like you've got, you don't need the exercise part, you probably just naturally get that just from taking care of the farm and imagine, right?
Joel
This is true. Yep, I do a short workout typically after breakfast, but very short. Because yeah, the workout side. And again, it's hard to get a better workout than that. But I mean, building fences, or just repairing things, putting logs, any of that stuff, it just keeps me active.
Ryan
You're so immersed in technology. And my phone could be somewhat of an addiction I'm trying to be careful with. And I see with my kids trying to table how much screentime they have. But you're like, that's your business, you're in technology? How do you balance the two between running the business, but also being careful that technology doesn't control your life?
Joel
Good question. Yep. That's, that's also something I've been working on this year. What I find is, you know, technology itself is not really the issue. It's what you're doing with it. And especially what I found, and you can look up studies on this, too, that social media, there's studies that have found the social media, you know, can really be detrimental to your mental health, if you go overboard on it, right. If you spend all day scrolling, or whatever it may be, it's definitely for kids. So they've shown us where, because the kids that kids feed, and Instagram or whatever may have a lot of things that that it's not necessarily good for them. And it starts to build up in their mind, even if they're not consciously digesting it as they go. So what I found is that the same will happen for me, if I would get to a point where I'm just addicted to Facebook or some social media, man, I just, I just go downhill fast. So I've set limits on my phone. And you know, as far as screentime limits, and I try to stick to them as best I can, you know, I've got some things for business where I need to get on social media. But aside from that, I really check myself where I feel that urge to shave, want to go check out Facebook for a few minutes. Well, no, let's not back off of that. Right. Keep it very intentional, right, a few minutes in the morning, a few minutes at lunch, maybe a few minutes at night, just again, because I've got some business stuff I gotta check in on. But aside from that, once I started getting strict on that, again, I just saw a huge improvement in my mental processes.
Ryan
Yeah, and you know, social media is not something I typically talk about in this show. But it's so tied to mindset and mental health. There's a Netflix documentary on social media. And then I had my kids start to watch, I watched the whole thing. And we're I think we're like halfway through it, just showing that it can affect your mental health if you take it to an extreme. And so I think it's really important to mention on this show that yes, you need to be careful with that and protect your mindset, avoid negativity, and just do what you can just to shield yourself from that. So I'm glad we Gabi spoke about that. On the flip side, though, being that you are in technology do you have do you use technology at all for your personal development? Any apps that you recommend anything along those lines?
Joel
Well, I will use probably not too much. No, I mean, productivity tools, of course, project management tools, things like that. Note Taking tools and organization. But I don't think I'd say that I have that I use anything specifically for personal development cipher, I'm just keeping track of things to help me organize stuff, what I like to do is really just because I'm in technology all day long. I mean, that's what I really love, in the morning, reading a book and the Bible, and not reading the Bible from my phone. Just for me, there's nothing, nothing wrong with that reading, if it works for somebody great. But for me, I need that paper book, I need to hold that in my hand and just have my coffee and just have no screens looking at me in the face, you know, because that's, that's my whole day. 100% agree. I've got my morning routine. And some of it involves my phone, like Insight Timer for meditation. But I'm trying to transition as much away from the phone as I can. So I read in the morning, and that's, I have a Kindle, but Kindle on my phone. But I tried to use the physical book. And then I was even using this app for a gratitude practice. And I've transitioned that to this product called three by five life that has like my to-do list my gratitude practice pm wins. I mean, it's the pen to paper, which is so nice. So yeah, I think it's with, you know, to my productivity tools for my work. We use Trello for that. So you have to embrace technology sometimes because it's so key for business. We're pretty heavily invested in office 365. And it's got a lot of great tools there. I mean, teams and planner and things like that. So again, totally agree with that. But again, just I'll step outside of that once I'm outside of work. Exactly.
Ryan
I don't think we spoke about your habits. We heard your morning routine, but what habits do you have throughout the day that support your personal development, whether that's your mindset, health, anything that comes to mind?
Joel
Really, I think going back to the morning routine. I can't say I have a lot of strong habits right now aside from that, but you go into Morning Routine that devotions. That's, it's such a big part of what keeps me sane these days. And I think that's if I were to encourage anybody to do anything, that's what I would say, you know, get out with God be spending your time. That's the priority. That's what we need to prioritize, right. Just keeping, keeping good habits around technology, like I mentioned, keeping good habits around making sure I'm, you know, getting decent meals throughout the day, doing some exercise, getting outside, stuff like that, just that I keep a balance in my day. But another magical,
Ryan
I think you mentioned the habit of just doing the morning routine every day, that if I can boil down the mission of morning upgrade into like, one sentence, it would be that is to inspire people to start a morning routine, you know, created habit around a morning routine. And that morning routine, you know, feel listened to all the previous episodes, everyone's routine is a little bit different because it's just whatever works for you. But that one habit alone could be life-changing. So that's sort of my mission here with this podcast. So Joe, let's talk about your business. What's the hardest thing about your business right now? And, and how are you tackling it?
Joel
The hardest thing right now is growing a team of people that are voted and bought into the company like, like, you know, I am and my partner is, and what we've realized what we're learning right now, you know, in the masterminds, and just through just trying to understand this, this issue better is that we need to do more work in our vision. That's what we're so we're working on that right now, to get a more concrete vision, something that inspires something that draws the right people repels the wrong people. And, you know, give someone something to look at, say, what's your company about? Do I want to be part of this, and if they decided they want to be part of the team, then they're, they're automatically going to be, you know, mentally bought into it. So that's been a challenge. You know, otherwise, we end up with, you know, people there that are just here for a job. And you know, that quality suffers. And so it's hard to delegate when we're so focused on quality.
Ryan
I think vision is key. I'm gonna go into that right now for Ballantine, just trying to figure out what that vision looks like. So something that we haven't really fully, we've kind of dabbled in it a little bit more like strategic planning, but not really vision setting. But I'm also thinking it's something that I need to do with my family, too, like, what is our family look like in five years? Where do we what do we want to be doing? Where do we want to be? So I'm starting to I'm not finished with the book yet. But I'm going to start to try to map that out for both business and family. And that'll be key. So I got one more question for you, Joel, then you can wrap up by telling everyone how they can learn more about you. My last question for you is, what does the perfect day look like for you?
Joel
Well, there are so many answers to this, you know, what I found is what probably runs through most of them is that they were one I've gotten a good start with. And I feel like I am living within God's will for my life. Right with and this sounds very, you know, lofty and kind of cliched, but I really mean it, where I feel like I am living the calling that he's given me. So that can take shape in a lot of ways. If it's, if it's a workday, just that I've been focused, I've been diligent, I've been a good steward of what God's put on my trust, and do my best to help my team and customers succeed. If I'm looking at fun things, and a fun day, you know, I, I just love taking the family out, either, like I said, to the mountains or to the river, get out on the river for a day. No agenda, just enjoying time with family. You know, if it's, if it's a workday, it's so hard to turn the stress level down a little bit and enjoy kids enjoy it as much as when it's a totally no agenda, relaxed date. And I can really just enjoy them and watch them and let them be kids. So those are always great days for salary.
Ryan
Nice. So why don't you wrap up by telling us if someone wants to learn more about you connect with you learn more about your business? What are the best websites to share with them?
Joel
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. The company is a VA luncher. That's a l e n t u r e.com. That's, as I said our IT management company. And you know, either there connect with me on LinkedIn, you know, we're out there so I will love to connect with you guys there. And also epic dashi av.com. That's the audio vo company which we're putting up on the website as we speak. Just got loaded today. So hopefully it'll be published here in just a little bit. And again, can reach out via messages or, or phone calls and get hold of me is really good to up when you Joel, thanks for coming on. And thanks, everyone for listening.
Ryan
Thank you, Joel. Thanks for listening to the morning upgrade podcast. Please subscribe and review. And don't forget to visit us at morning upgrade.com For more content