#43 - Your Three Most Important Resources with George Grombacher

In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with George Grombacher about scheduling and structuring your day, business, your three most important resources and more. 

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Ryan  

Hey guys, it's Ryan real quick. So my mission with the Morning Upgrade blog and podcast is to raise the awareness of morning routines and personal development. And I now have two products that are also helped me with this mission. The first product helps you start a 20 minute morning routine. And the second product is a book that outlines how to use personal development, upgrade your life and business. You can get full details on both products over at morning upgrade.com. 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, George, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?

George  

I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me.

Ryan  

Absolutely. I'm excited to speak with you. And I would love for you to start off by telling everyone you know who you are, what you do for a living, and what your interests and hobbies are.

George  

Appreciate it. So my name is George Grumbacher. I am the founder and chief community officer for Money Alignment Academy, we are a financial wellness resource for companies and their employees, the host of the lifeblood podcast, say sort of how do I get better at stuff so I can live the kind of life that I want kind of a show I am husband to Emily and dad to James and Jack a four and a one-year-old, committed member of the community. And this is awesome because I am a proponent of having routines and intentions with your habits.

Ryan  

Yeah, and that's actually a great segue into, I always like to find out from my guests and what their morning routines are because I find that, you know, I've got my way of doing it. And the guests, my guests have their way of doing it. And there's some overlap, of course, but I like to learn from my guests and what they do. And hopefully, my audience can pull some things from your routines that they can apply to their life. So that's a long-winded way of saying what does your morning routine look like George?

George 

And I appreciate that. Because there's always, always room to be sort of changing things up a little bit. And depending on what season of life you're in, that's probably going to also impact that. So as we talk right now, and it has been for probably the last couple of years, I wake up every morning at 420. And then it's just because I figured out that there's a lot of things that I want to get into a short amount of time. So I wake up at 4:20 pull myself out of bed and go and put my shoes on. And my earphones in, and I do cardio for a short amount of time, literally 10 to 15 minutes, pretty high-intensity cardio, just to get the body moving, I then go and grab my laptop, which is sitting exactly where I left it the night before. And I do some podcast stuff. So Lifeblood is a daily podcast. And so I release it and I push it on social media. During that time, I'm also drinking an enormous amount of water. So every morning I drink almost a gallon of warm water with a little bit of salt in it. And that sort of jumpstarts my body. So that usually will take me about 15 minutes or so to get everything down with the podcast and get that pushed out. And then I do a little bit of stretching. And depending on what my body is telling me that morning, I will then use the bathroom just to be brutally honest with you. And so finished my stretching, do that. And then I do a little bit of breathwork, sort of like similar to Wim Hof if you all are familiar with him. So a little bit of Wim Hof breathwork, which rolls into some affirmations and, and a brief meditation as well. And by this time, it's probably 510 515 ish. And that gives me about 15 minutes to get ready for the podcasts that I'll be recording that morning. Or check out the Wall Street Journal, stuff like that. And then I happen to shower at 530. And by 550, I am done with getting ready for the day. And I'm back in my office in front of my computer and I will then record a podcast at 6 am My time and podcast at 630 my time. And then my kids wake up at 7 am. And so I wake them up and make breakfast for them and my wife. And my mom comes over and then at 7:30 I'm typically recording the third podcast the day and then I drive my son James to school at 8 am and then I'm off and running so that is a typical morning for me.

Ryan  

Wow. Okay, that is intense. That's like four hours of intentional, like his personal growth. So I love that. You know for those listening though you don't have to start off I am sure Georgie said that. Like you said that was an evolution. You could start off small and build up to that as you really start to start to see the benefits of the morning routine, correct?

George  

Oh, 1,000% Yeah, I mean, getting started with waking up at the same time every day, it's irrelevant to me what time people get up, I find that I am way more productive in the morning than I am the afternoon, come, you know, four o'clock in the afternoon, I'm not going to do a lot of serious brain work, or real, real heavy thinking stuff like that. So if I'm going to get that stuff done, then I'd like to get an early start. And that just means that I'm in bed, probably around eight o'clock, or 8:30.

Ryan 

Yeah, I was gonna ask you what kind of if you put a full day in, could you start so early, you said your day shuts down around four o'clock?

George 

What a perfect day for me, I fancy myself a little bit of a creative kind of a person. I'm always writing or formulating some kind of idea. I do a ton of presentations. So I'm always trying to be unique. I mean, fundamentally, I'm talking about financial stuff all day long. And if I were not to try and to change that message or make it fun, well, then I would drive myself crazy and certainly, be ineffective and drive everybody else that I was talking to crazy. So I'm always creating. So when I drop my kids off at school, or at this point my kid off at school, I will then just endeavor to get to a coffee shop and not have meetings for at least 45 minutes. So I can just sit down and actually get some writing done. Or formulate ideas, just move a presentation along, move a podcast episode along, but just have some free whitespace or open space to create a little bit. And then it's a matter of meetings. So if it's presentations, or sales meetings, or client meetings, whatever it might be, that will happen for another couple of hours after that, then I'd like to try to get to a gym just for some brief weight training. Again, I'm not a guy that's going to do a ton of cardio for like an extended period of time. And I'm also not a guy that's going to spend hours in a gym just because I don't have that. But I do both almost every day. But I'll jump into LA Fitness. And do you know, Justin back, or, or do legs and I just will be in there for 15 minutes, literally in and out. And then it's just more meetings or, or whatever it might be before I pick up my son at school, which right now is at one o'clock. So I'll bring him home. And then I'll normally record another podcast at 2 pm. Work for another hour or so. And then it's family time with the kids. And then it is dinner. And then I'll usually work for about 45 minutes after dinner, and then wind down from usually about seven to eight.

Ryan  

It sounds like you've got your day very well structured. I was I wanted to ask about habits. It's a big topic here in the morning, a pre podcast, obviously your morning routine, you've got the breathing and the soul order. You know, working out early fitness. Are there any other habits that you really rely on for your life? Or your business?

George  

Yeah, certainly, I mean, every aspect, everything is is pretty well scheduled out. Like you could look at my calendar, and it's going to look pretty similar. So I just sort of go through a few. I've got podcast spots that are booked out, like usually three, four months in advance. They're not all booked out. But the times are blocked. I produce, I do monthly presentations for my work, which are blocked. So there are throughout the course of my week, just things that are always there. So I'm always working towards those things if it's created a new presentation or new course or if it's just making sure that I've done the prep work and I'm ready for each one of the podcasts, interviews. Just having those things booked into the calendar allows me to not have to scramble around and wonder when I'm going to get things in. Because I'm always advancing and knowing that there's work to be done on all those different things.

Ryan  

I like the idea of scheduling things into your calendar, I've listened to this podcast by his name is Aaron. I don't remember his last name, it's business school. And he talks about something similar where you say where he doesn't create a to-do list. He kind of says to dues and they just go right into his calendar. As like, I'm going to spend this time block I'm working on this to do so this is a half a to-do list. It's to do is go right into the calendar, I guess what would that be called calendar blocking your time blocking sounds like you do something very similar.

George  

Yeah, yeah. It's It's fascinating. And I haven't always I wasn't always that way. It's really, once I had kids. Everything just gets condensed, you know? Yes. Like, I don't like to get up at 4:20 in the morning. It's not that I love it.

Ryan 

Why 4:20? I meant to ask you that. Why 4:20? It's a random time.

George  

It was 430. And I just didn't have quite enough time. So like, like, seriously? So I needed that 10 minutes. So that's it. Yeah, I always heard you know, you heard if you want something done, give it to a busy person sort of a thing. And I think there's truth to that. Because once you start fitting things in, it's possible to fit more in. I'm not looking for new stuff, but you just figure out how to make it happen. And it just helps you to focus I read years ago about how our minds wander, like, 50% of the time. So being super mind full of where your thoughts are. If you're like, oh, geez, I can't get everything done in an eight-hour day. Well, you probably only work in four hours legitimately. Yeah, if you can work a little harder on making sure that you're paying attention.

Ryan  

Yeah, I like to set my top three priority priorities in the morning, top three things I want to get done. It feels good. Getting those main things accomplished throughout the day, has been my approach to it.

George  

1,000%, that's awesome. Just knowing these are, these are the keys today, I think that's a really powerful thing.

Ryan  

Let's talk about business, what have you had the most success with growing your business?

George  

For me, it took me a long time to sort of recognizing that I needed to allow other people to help me along in my mission, I was one of those people for the longest time of you know, I'm just gonna put my head down and run through walls, and nothing's gonna stop me kind of thing. But getting a little bit older. And I suppose gaining a little bit of wisdom, has helped me to recognize that if I'm able to actually let other people in and benefit from their expertise, and just accept some help, that's really served me over the past probably 510 years, just finding great partners, and then being able to rely on and leverage them to do what they're great at allows me to do what I'm great at to?

Ryan  

How do you find great partners?

George 

Yeah, that’s not always the easiest thing in the world. Or it's or it's super easy. What I found is that doing the work that I really enjoyed doing, and what I'm good at doing, has put me in front of other like-minded people. So I want to call that a little bit of serendipity. But also, you sort of positioning yourself for success, once you're, once you're focused on the work that you're doing, or rather focused on doing the work that you really want to be doing. And really working hard at that I, I've, I've experienced and found that you will encounter like-minded people along that path. So it's a little bit of an abstract way to answer it. I'm always intentional, let's just say, for example, that I was interested in, developing relationships with companies that do wellness programs for companies like physical wellness companies, or programs for companies, then I will go out and research some of those companies, and I'll invite them to be a guest on my podcast, and they'll come on and we'll have a great conversation. And if there's an opportunity, if I think that our values are aligned, well, now I've met that person, and there's an opportunity to pursue that relationship. So I think a lot of it goes down to intentionality and trying to figure out who, who you need in your life, things you need more of.

Ryan 

I was thinking about, like my experience, Ballantine, or marketing agency, my family's marketing agency, and, you know, it's like, when you're taking daily action, you're working towards a goal, you're sending out certain vibes out there, and you just tend to attract certain people into your inner circle. And some of those people could be potential partners. And I know that sounds sort of like, is it abstract or woowoo. But it's, it's very true. And especially as you go, as you get more experience with business and working with partners, you kind of or your radar for what is a good fit for you is higher is better and stronger. And so the more experience you have, you're able to seek out those partners more quickly. And also, I would say, I know me personally, like if we're evaluating like a new partner, whether it's for creative or whatever the case is, like, how quickly do they get back to you? How thorough are their answers? They seem like they're really into the potential opportunity or in the potential partnerships. So there are all these little things that you could look for that seem I think to help you find a better partner quicker.

George  

Yeah, I think that's really well said.

Ryan 

George, I've got one more question for you. And then we're gonna wrap up with how people can connect with you. I usually like to ask like number one personal development tip as though closing question. Be that your finance guy though, I feel like I need to ask you something about finance. So what is your number one financial tip?

George 

One financial tip is to actually spend the time thinking about your three most important resources, and that's your time, your attention, and your money. And when you think about those three things, think about how the ideal version of yourself spends those resources. So this is not just a quick tip, this is really, really an important exercise that I encourage people to go through. If you are already the ideal version of yourself, well, then great, well then think about, am I how do I really want to be spending my time attention, and money? If you're not thinking about that ideal version? Like what's, what's the, just the best version of George Grumbacher? So okay, think about that guy. And then think about how he actually chooses to allocate his time. What does he spend his time on? What does he spend his attention on? Is he on? Is he playing video games all day? Are you on social media all day? Is your reading? What is he doing? And then what does he spend his money on? And if you can go through that exercise, and then actually put that to practice, and allow those values to inform how you spend your time, attention, and your money, I think that'll really set you up for long-term success.

Ryan  

Like that time, attention, and money developing the ideal profile so that it's on so that you, you know what you're looking for, and it's on your radar. I like that a lot. Okay, cool. Well, George really probably really appreciate your time I enjoyed this conversation. If people want to learn more about you and connect with you. What's the best website that they can visit?

George 

You can find me on LinkedIn. Certainly, that's probably the best and easiest way to actually connect with me. You can find my work at MoneyAlignmentAcademy.com Then check out the Lifeblood podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

Ryan  

Awesome. Yep. And we'll link up those on the show notes page. Again, appreciate it, George, And thanks, everyone for listening.

Ryan 

Thanks for listening to the Morning Upgrade podcast. Please subscribe and review. And don't forget to visit us at morningupgrade.com for more content.