PP 020: Morning Routines for Health and Wealth with Lianne Soller

In this fantastic chat Lianne and I chat about how she helps her clients create a morning routine which gets their days started off in a positive, uplifting way, and how recognizing your limits – and your need to focus on yourself – always needs to come first, rather than second, third or even 20th in line.

Connect with Lianne Soller

Resources Mentioned

Episode Transcription

Kim: Welcome back to Positive Productivity! Today we have Lianne Soller, who is a health and wealth coach. And, let me tell you, as an entrepreneur myself for almost four years, going over Lianne’s background, I’ve just wondered where she has been this whole time. And no, we haven’t even rehearsed this interview beforehand, so I just want to say, thank you, Lianne. I’m so excited to have you here.

Lianne Soller: Oh, thanks, Kim! I’m so excited to be here with you.

Kim: So tell me about your favorite clients to work with, and how you see what you do with health really making an impact in their business. Or tell me about it all in a whole. Sorry I’m a little bit jumbled here, but I’m just so excited about what you’re about to share.

Lianne Soller: Yea, of course. Of course. So, I work with a whole bunch of different kinds of clients but my favorite client to work with are specifically women entrepreneurs who are really new in their business. They might even still be at their regular job – at their day job – and they are passionate about helping other women, or helping men and women – with their business. And they’re just really struggling to get it all done.

They’re struggling to have time for their business, they’re struggling to have time to take care of themselves. They are, you know, trying to really get in – anything in their business done during the day, but they are just so busy with their day job, with their kids, their husbands, trying to balance it all. So that’s really the type of client that I love working with.

Because, what’s amazing, is that I have really been able to completely change the way that these women operate, and actually get a lot done in their business just by giving them very simple techniques where they can actually make massive shifts in their business, achieve their goals and actually start to make money, but also make sure that they’re prioritizing their health, and their happiness, and their family life.

It’s a really interesting mix of women that I work with, but it’s been super exciting to see them shift and become successful in their lives, but also in their businesses.

Kim: I am intrigued. As a mom of five, married to my best friend, I’m just curious…

Can you give an example of what one of those shifts would be? Because quite honestly there are weeks that I am working 80 hours and still running around like a mad crazy woman, you know, trying to do everything else.

Lianne Soller: Yeah. Yeah.

Kim: So, just off of that little bit, what are one of these shifts?

Lianne Soller: Yeah.  One of the really really important things that I share with my entrepreneur ladies – and it’s one that is not necessarily viewed upon favorably because it requires waking up 15 minutes earlier in the morning.

And, even 15 minutes, I get, you know, I get flak from my clients. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to wake up 15 minutes earlier. I don’t even want to wake up when my alarm goes off, let alone waking up earlier.”

But I actually have my clients wake up 15 minutes before they are used to, and that’s the magic amount of time to actually allow yourself wake up feeling like you have the day ahead of you. You are maybe waking up before your partner or your kids, and you have like that additional 15 minutes in the day to really just allow yourself to wake up calmly, relaxed and start the day off right.

And what I teach them to do in that 15 minutes, is really to spend that 15 minutes doing something that is going to start them off feeling really, really, really positive and good about themselves.

Well, oftentimes that includes visualizing their day going off without a hitch. The reason that I like to do this, is because I feel that a lot of women – and you can tell me if I’m right on this, but  – a lot of women wake up in the morning, you know, their kids are crying, or they are like, “Oh my gosh, we’re late for school. We have all these things to do.”

They start their day running. And that is not the best way to life your life. It’s not the best way to happiness. It’s not the best way to health. And it’s also not the best way to productivity and success in your business.

If you’re constantly running on fumes, and have the adrenaline pumping, you’re not going to get much accomplished – even if you get lots accomplished you’re going to do it in a way that doesn’t feel good.

So I actually have my clients do 15 minutes of visualization, quiet time, even just lying down in their bed. Actually, how I do it is I face my palms up to the ceiling. I do this from my bed, and I just close my eyes, and I really just visualize what my day is going to look like. How it’s going to go off without any glitches, any problems. Everything is going to be great. I’m going to achieve all my goals. I even visualize myself checking the things off my checklist. I envision myself going for a yoga class or my run, eating healthy food. And so I really put in as many details as I possibly can about my day. And I just allow myself to feel it and soak in the feelings of success, of positivity, of making money in my business, of being productive, of taking care of my health and my family.

So that’s how I start my day. So that’s one thing.

And the other thing that I always recommend to my clients is to have their day ready before they go to bed. So their next day, to have that ready before they go to bed.

What that looks like is writing down three things you want to get done in your day, in your business, before you actually end your day and your work day. So, rather than waking up in the morning and trying to frantically get your kids to school or go to the gym and then come home and then start getting into your business and then you sit at your computer… “Well, what was I going to do today?”

So rather than doing that, what I actually have my clients do is write down – at the end of their work day – right before they close their computer and they go and spend time with their family or doing whatever they want to do – is really to write down three action steps that they’re going to take the following day that are very important and are aligned with their business goals at the moment.

So those would be – and I know you asked for one but those are two, two of the things that I have personally done in my own life and also with my clients that has totally shifted the way that they live their lives and run their businesses.

Kim: Those are fabulous. And I myself have five kids, and this morning was a struggle trying to find warm weather clothes for the three younger ones before they got off. So I think I would have to put that on my list the night before is making sure all their clothes are ready so it’s not a frantic search the next morning as to what they’re wearing. Right?

I do set the alarm to get up early the next day, but I’ve found that depending on what I know I have to do the next morning, it indicates whether I am going to push the snooze button four or five times on my alarm before I actually get out of bed.

Lianne Soller: Yea, yea.

Kim: Does that make sense? Am I doing something I’m excited about? Because if so, I’m jumping out of bed and I’m coming right out here and I’m getting to work.

But, if it’s not something I’m excited about… I love my clients, don’t get me wrong. There’s just days I would much rather jump out of bed and work on my own projects then jump out of bed and work on theirs.

Lianne Soller: Yea. So there’s lots of different ways that you can use that 15 minutes. I’ve actually started to do it actually for 30 minutes. So I just keep extending the time from before I actually get up and do things.

So if you want to, you know, that first 15 minutes of day, or 30 minutes, however you want to chunk it out, is to spend some time doing things that you want to do. And so every day, I actually – when I wake up – so I do my 15 minutes in bed and honestly, if you think about waking up in the morning when you have this 15 minutes in the morning, and all you’re going to do is lie there and feel awesome, how good does that sound? Right? I mean, it’s…

Kim: Incredible

Lianne Soller: If I were you, I would just… That’s what I would do.

I would set the alarm for 15 minutes early and just lie in bed, visualize your day going amazing, having fun. Your clients are getting great results. Your kids are off to school, they’re happy, they’re laughing. You are getting through your day without any glitches – like everything’s going your way.

And then the other thing, which I didn’t mention, is that I always do one hour of focus time on my projects. So that is what fulfills me, is to get something done in my own business that’s going to make me feel successful during my day.

So like, Kim, like you said that  when you have projects that you’re working on you really enjoy that and sometimes you would rather be working on your own projects than working with the clients, so in that case, what I would say is, make that a priority for you.

If it’s a priority for you to wake up and start your day working on your projects then make sure you give yourself that hour or that 30 minutes or 2 hours or 3 hours – as much time as you want, where you’re really just focusing on the project at hand, that you’re super excited about, say it’s a launch or a webinar or a sales page – or whatever lights you up, whatever your project is in the moment that you’re super passionate about creating, make sure you get that done first.

That’s what I have been doing in my own business and… Not only do I get the project done a lot faster – because if I leave it until later in the day, as you know, often times it doesn’t get done because you have lots of other things that come up. And also the other thing is – so it gets done faster – but then you feel like you’ve actually done something. Because you’ve done this huge thing in the morning – you’ve spent time focusing on one project, and it’s a project you’re super passionate about and you feel successful and accomplished. So, going through the rest of your day having that feeling of success and accomplishment makes you a lot happier person overall. Right?

Kim: Oh, absolutely. One of my favorite business books is, “Eat That Frog” and he’s talking about chomping off the items on your to-do list actually gives you an adrenaline rush, right? So, I’d have to imagine that rush is actually multiplied when it’s not just getting it done, but getting done something for you.

I think you just changed the way my calendar is going to be formatted.

I think it’s also my peak productivity time, and I think people need to be aware of when that time is in their day.

Lianne Soller: Definitely.

And often time, it’s funny because a lot of people tell me that they’re not morning people, but that’s actually a myth. There’s people that say they’re night owls. They’re not morning people.

Humans are meant to wake up with the sun and go to bed with the sun. It’s actually just the way that our modern society has become because of artificial lighting.

And then I know this is not at all the topic of conversation, but I have done lots of work on insomnia and sleep, and it’s actually a fact that we were meant to go to bed at say, 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock, you know? Whenever the sun goes down. In the summer it’s later, but in the winter, imagine going to bed at 6pm – a little early – but then waking up with the sun.

And so, I think that we all are, really deep down, we all are morning people. And that’s actually the best time of the day to create because nobody knows the secret yet. Like, everybody’s still sleeping. You’re ahead of everybody. So you’re getting stuff done and people are still sleeping around you. You know, you can feel like, “Wow, I’m actually ahead of everybody else when I wake up early and create in the morning.”

Not only do you feel awesome and successful, but you can feel like, “Yes, I’m ahead of the game. I’m that top 5 percent. Or top 2 percent. Or top 1 percent of people.”

Kim: Well, I found a major shift when I left working full-time outside of the home to when working for myself. And I’m a little bit embarrassed to say this because now I’ve come back around and fixed it, but I found that when I was working outside of the home I made a point of getting up, getting showered, getting dressed, putting on makeup. You know, making myself look good to feel good.

But as soon as I started working for myself – and I’m working out of my home everyday, I sort of slacked in that area. I found it impacted how I felt.

Do you talk to your clients about that?

Lianne Soller: Yea so, like I said, most of my clients actually work full-time and then they do their business on the side, so that isn’t necessarily an issue for the clients I work with.

However, in my own life I will say that was definitely something that I struggled with too and I would spend the whole day in yoga pants and I would never leave the house and you know, I started to feel isolated.

So there’s also the thing about working at home, by yourself, right?

You start to feel alone, and the way that I’ve actually totally solved that problem is when I’ve gotten through my morning which the 15 minutes of visualization and then I do a yoga meditation, journaling, breakfast.

And then I usually… What I would normally would do is… I actually get dressed, and put makeup on and I go to a coffee shop. And I work for like 2-3 hours.

The first hour of that is my focus time. So I work on my own project first – as soon as I get to the coffee shop.

And in that case, I actually get to go outside and walk to the coffee shop. I choose a coffee shop that’s about 20 minutes from my house so that I have to actually walk there, get some fresh air.

And then I sit down and I get to talk to the person when I order my coffee. And then I get to sit and work for my one-hour of focus time, but I also have the hustle and bustle of people in the coffee shop, coming in and out.

When you go to the same coffee shop over and over you see the same people, right? And So you start talking to them. Maybe you have a little conversation, so you’re getting in that one-on-one interaction, and you don’t feel as isolated. And it also solves the problem of staying home all day in my yoga pants. Because then I know, that in the morning I will get dressed. I will leave the house. I will interact with people, and I’ll get my focus time in. So I’ve kind of killed multiple birds with one stone just by changing that part of my day, that part of my routine.

Kim: Well, you just changed another routine for me, too. Thank you.

Lianne Soller: You’re welcome.

Kim: I mean, there’s so many great, locally owned coffee shops in my town. We don’t have a Starbucks outside of the grocery store, and I can’t imagine going into the grocery just to go to the coffee shop, right?

Lianne: Yea.

Kim: Yea. Supporting local companies while supporting my brain and local projects, that sounds incredible.

What were the biggest challenges for you when you were building your business, and how did you overcome them?

Lianne Soller: Oh my gosh, Kim. That’s like such a good question. And for me the biggest issue that I faced was how to do everything and have time to do it all.

I was actually pretty lucky because – it just turned out this way – that I actually ended up working full-time in my business from the very beginning of my business, because I was actually working on a PhD at the time I decided to move into entrepreneurship and I was getting funding by the government.

I had finished my PhD thesis. It was kind of in the process of being reviewed, etc. etc. So I was just waiting, kind of twiddling my thumbs waiting. And I was getting paid by the government to get paid to basically sit and work on my business. Which is great, because I had lots of time to work on my business full-time.

I know a lot of people don’t have that luxury, but what I did notice was that I was spending a lot of time on my business. I was spending so much time, in fact, on my business that I didn’t have time to do anything else.

So I actually forgot to go to the gym. I would forget to eat sometimes, or if I would eat it would be something really easy. And that was often a bagel or bread. Really carb heavy. Not a very good diet.

Yea, so I stopped going to the gym. Stopped eating well. I was spending the day in my pajamas, drinking lots of coffee, and I wasn’t sleeping because I was stressed because I was not making any money in my business and I was seeing this impending deadline of, “Oh my gosh, if I don’t start making money by the time I get cut off from funding then I’m going to be broke.”

So for me the biggest things was balance between working on my business and taking care of myself.

And I actually ended up having a burnout very early on in my business, about six months into working on my business. And it came out real real slowly. You know, I didn’t notice the signs at the beginning when I started to change my habits and stopped taking care of myself. But over time I could really notice that, first of all, that I wasn’t sleeping properly so I had no energy. I was spending all my time by myself in my apartment. I just became very depressed, and unhealthy, and I was not being productive at all because I was so exhausted all the time from not sleeping.

I ended up in the hospital with a very very severe stomach pain and they could not figure out what it was. And that was really interesting because normally, when you’re in so much pain – like they gave me tons of Morphine I was in so much pain. When you have something like that, normally it’s a health problem. Right? It’s health related.

But they couldn’t find anything. They did all the tests possible and there was nothing wrong with me. So the doctor actually said to me, “Well, it’s stress related.”

And my mom was there at the time and she said, “Well, I’m not surprised. Because you’ve been burning the midnight oil and you haven’t been taking care of yourself.”

And so that was a huge “Aha!” moment for me. That was really the turning point of where I actually made the decision that if I wanted to remain an entrepreneur and be successful that I had to prioritize my health and my happiness. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs miss that, because we see all these things online, like “Oh, you need to hustle. You need to work hard. You need to struggle. Entrepreneurship is all about struggling and hustling.”

And I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s a lot about doing the right things at the right time, but making sure that you’re always building your business in accordance to how you feel, and your health, and your happiness. Those need to be the priorities.

To me that was the biggest lesson, and it was a big lesson, and I had to get to a place of burnout to notice and to realize. But people who are listening to this podcast, you don’t have to. You don’t have to go there. You don’t have to burn out to make a shift. You can just make that decision now. And what’s what’s more important than your health and your happiness?

There’s nothing. There is nothing more important than that.

Kim: Oh, there totally isn’t. Without your health you can’t keep it going, and without your happiness, what’s the point of getting your goal? Right?

There’s a great program out there… I should say, there’s parts of this program that are out there that I signed up for about six months ago, and it’s about compressing your goals into shorter sprints. The goals that might have been part of a year long, they get put into shorter sprints and it’s all about work-work-work-work-work-work. And over the course of this program, there were quite a few participants who were having that same burnout.

And I have to say, I was one of them.

And giving up sleep to meet these goals, it’s not good. It’s not good for your mindset.

Lianne Soller: No. And I guess that’s why you call this Positive Productivity. Right? Because it’s not being productive to burnout. It’s being productive in a way that really honors your health and your happiness.

Kim: Exactly. And then, on the flip side, keeping a positive mindset. Because not everything is going to right always. It’s just not.

And, I’ve seen enough launches, I’m a launch strategist, so I’ve seen enough launches just watching others and also helping clients, that I see haters. And let me tell you, the first time I saw a hater, as I was watching a launch, I told my husband, “When I get my first hater, I’m going to raise a margarita glass and ‘Cheers!’ this person.”

You know? Because it will mean I’m being recognized. Maybe they’re not recognizing me for what I want to be recognized for, but hey! You know, that’s awesome! I’ve got my first hater!

So, I did. I “Cheers!”‘d. I was unfortunately not with a margarita, but I had my “Woot!” moment. Right?

So, yea, it was exciting, but if you focus on those negatives, then no, it’s just going to hold you back.

Lianne Soller: Yea.

Kim: And I know, a lot of people also think you need to have a lot of money to start a business. And that’s also, unfortunately, untrue. And I think a lot of people think they can’t do it because they don’t have $100 or $500.

Lianne: Yea.

Kim: We started our business with no money. Well actually, $10. Just, on Elance. But we weren’t planning on starting a business. Like, we were just looking for some extra money. So, you can do it.

Lianne: Yea, yea, for sure.

Kim: Well, this has been incredible. Where can listeners find out more about you and your offerings?

Lianne Soller: I am on Facebook. Lianne Soller is my name on Facebook. I am also on Instagram… Twitter. I am not really on Periscope, so I wouldn’t really recommend people try to find me on there.

All of my usernames are all liannesoller so you can find me anywhere on line.

I also have a website where I post weekly and sometimes twice a week. I do lots of blogging, video blogging, lots of webinar training as well. Oooh, I’m on YouTube too, so you guys can find lots of free training there as well.

But I… my website is healifyyourlife.com. And I’d love to offer a free gift to your audience. It’s actually a 5-step productivity checklist and audio training.

So basically the checklist is just a really quick kind of visual tool to have the five things that are going to allow you to have your most productive day ever. And then I made a little audio training to go along with that. It’s under 10 minutes so it’s very manageable but it just gives you a few more details around those five things that I talk about on the checklist.

So if you go to my website and it will be the URL for the landing page, is healifyyourlife.com/5-steps-productivity-opt-in.

And I know, Kim, you’ll have the link on your show notes page, correct?

Kim: Oh, yes. All of these links will be in the show notes.

Lianne Soller: OK, perfect. So yea, that’s what I would like to offer your audience. And it’s really my five steps that I take on a daily basis for my own productivity and exactly what I teach my clients, so I hope it will be helpful for you.

Kim: I am going to be opting in as soon as we are done here. So thank you!

Lianne: You’re welcome! It was great.

Kim: Do you have any last closing tips, like a powerful “Aha!” that you would like to give listeners before we wrap up the show?

Lianne Soller: Yea, of course, of course.

So, I think that really the main thing for me is that you have to honor your health and your happiness first. Those need to be your priorities. And everything else comes second, comes third, comes 20th. But your health and happiness need to come first.

So if you are sacrificing that in your life, then you really need to take a cold, hard look at what you are doing, and if you think it’s really worth sacrificing those things.

So that would be my final word for you. Thank you so much.