My Morning Routine As An Entrepreneur And New Mom
Your Biggest Vision
Season 3, Ep. 84
Peoples’ morning routines are all over the internet. What is your morning routine? Or do you even have one? In this episode, I share my morning routine, and how it is crucial to my days as a mom and a business owner. Tune in to hear:
- An inside look on my entire morning routine
- How I use my mornings to set the rest of my day up to be successful, and how I optimize my free time
- Why quitting my 9-5 job was crucial to me having more productive, successful days
- How I balance work, being a mom, and being a human with my morning routine
Go behind-the-scenes of my Leah Gervais Methodology, which has allowed me and my clients to excel to new heights time and time again. These journal prompts will walk you through the exact steps. CLICK HERE to download, and head on over to the Your Biggest Vision website and join our weekly newsletter!
Hear the Episode
Episode Transcription
Leah Gervais: Welcome back to the show. Today, I wanna take you behind the scenes of my current morning routine. I’ve shared my morning routine a lot over the years. I have shared what it was like when I was still at my nine to five job in the early days of my business.
I would get up at 4, 4 30 in the morning most days so that I could work on my business, sometimes five, and work out before I would go to work. Um, I’ve always been a morning routine person. I just enjoy getting up early. I enjoy the quiet time to myself and I just love being able to set the tone for my day that way.
So, in that sense that not much has changed, but in another sense, everything has changed. Now, of course my morning routine is not for me and me alone. And it’s funny because I look back when we first got Ruby, our dog, and for those of you that don’t know, we got Ruby when I was very, very early in my pregnancy so early that we didn’t know I was pregnant.
So I was probably just a couple weeks pregnant and before we had Ruby, we had so much freedom. The most freedom you could imagine, really. It was just my husband and I, we didn’t own a car. We don’t, we’ve never had a car. We’ve always lived in New York City, so no need for a car.
We don’t, we didn’t own our, uh, apartment at the time. Uh, we didn’t have all that much furniture cuz we had just gotten married and kind of had what we had had from, you know, the years. We didn’t like buying new furniture for a new place or anything like that.
Point is, we were pretty nomadic. We didn’t really have a lot of assets. We didn’t really have anything tying us down. So when we got Ruby, that really changed. Little did we know we were gonna have a much bigger change coming very soon, which was a baby.
We joke that Ruby was sort of like a, it was like a buy one get one free sale, you know, buy a dog and then also get a baby. Oops. Or kind of like an upsell of like, Oh, you, you’re getting this, uh, this responsibility, you’re getting more.
No, it was, it, it, it, the timing was, was divine for sure. But, uh, Ruby I would say actually was a little harder for me to adjust to than, um, oops, than having my baby in the mornings. And I think that that’s just because since Ruby was the first experience of like, not having my time be completely my own, I never felt a shock of it quite the same, uh, as I did initially.
That, and I think that with, uh, with, with Paul when I had him, when we finally did get to the place where he was part of my morning routine, I was just so grateful that he was sleeping through the night and that we were all well rested, that it really felt like it was just such an easy morning routine instead of like a morning routine where you’re going off of a few hours of broken sleep.
So with that, and, well, I just, you know, I, I guess I’m just trying to say that I, I empathize for those of you that feel like you want to have these really sexy morning routine where you’re up really early and you drink a, a water with lemon and you go on a run and you, or you do yoga and you journal and you meditate and you do, you know, all of those things.
And in reality, life just doesn’t always look like that. Especially if you are, if part of your morning routine is taking care of someone else, something else, a pet, a, a child, or you know, anyone, anyone else.
And so I hope that this gives you some insight on how I manage to do that, but still also experience the things that are important for me in my morning routine. So here is what my morning routine looks like at this point in my life.
I still get up between four 30 and five every morning. I use an app called Sleep Cycle, which I’ve been using for years. And I love, I only use a free version I think, I don’t actually know, but I don’t think I pay for it. And it detects where I’m at in my rem cycle. And I set this range for the time period, the time range in which I want to wake up, which is between four 30 and five.
And then it wakes me up between those times based on when my sleep is the lightest. And I gotta say, I think this really works. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m so used to it at this point, but I never wake up jolted. I never wake up alarmed. I never wake up in kind of like a shocked state. I always pretty much just roll over and, and the alarm is going off.
So I really do think it gets me at my lightest state of sleep because I’m never woken up from like a deep, deep slumber and I’m pretty excited to start the day. I gotta say I still love mornings and I just really feel excited to get up and conquer the day.
Ever since I quit my nine to five job, I’ve had that feeling of, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I get to work for myself and see what else the day brings.
So I wake up between four 30 and five. Then the first thing I do after of course I brush my teeth is pump. So I’m still breastfeeding. I’m not gonna talk too much about breastfeeding cause I know it’s not everyone’s favorite topic and there’s some, uh, charge behind it. But in my experience, I have breastfed for the whole, the whole time that I’ve had my sound of course.
And, um, I, uh, pump in the right when I wake up because to keep up my supply basically because he sleeps through the night so well. But if I go that long without, uh, breastfeeding or pumping, then I notice my supply dips a little.
To be totally honest, I don’t actually know if that’s true anymore. It happened once, It happened once when he was like six, five or six months old. And so that’s when I started pumping, uh, both before I went to sleep and right when I woke up.
And it’s just kind of become a habit at this point. It also is a way for me to store breast milk and freeze it and keep my supply up. So that’s usually what I do. I did stop the pump session right before I went to sleep when he turned 10 months old, just cause I hated it.
It, I was, I was over it. It just isn’t that fun, like trying to get ready for bed and then having to be attached to this wall. Um, so I just do it when I wake up now.
Uh, so that’s my morning routine while I pump around. This is usually around 4: 45, I journal, so that works for me really well.
And my journal is very uncomplicated. I don’t have a super specific rhyme or reason. I journal in bullets, so if that doesn’t tell you my brain works, I don’t know what, what does. I very much work well in lists and spreadsheets and seeing things visually out. I don’t really love, just like words thrown everywhere. It feels so incoherent to me, which is not, you know, necessarily a good thing, but I know myself.
So I journal in bullets and I just sort of go through and share what’s on my mind or what I’m hoping to bring into existence or what I’m feeling really grateful for or what I’m thinking about or what is feeling really exciting.
Just sort of like what my brain is naturally focusing on when I wake up in the morning. It’s usually a mix of what I’m really grateful for and what I am praying for manifesting, um, you know, working on working towards something like that. And it just kind of asks for guidance toward those things and helps me think about them in an undisrupted way before, you know, I start my day.
So once I’ve pumped and uh, journaled, then I leave my bedroom and I go out and start my morning routine. Then at this point it sort of depends on when my baby wakes up, but typically I’m lucky enough to get in about an hour before he wakes up. And this is one of my favorite times of the day because it is the only time of the whole day that is just for me.
So I know that it might feel ridiculous that I wake up so early, especially if you are not a morning person.
And, but I don’t think you necessarily need to wake up as early as I do. I think the importance of my morning routine and what I would suggest or what I think is valuable is just having a dedicated timeframe or time period to yourself every day. Whether that’s late at night, early in the morning, at some point during the day.
If you, if you’re a mom, if you can have either your husband or a caretaker or your partner take your children out for a little while, just having at least one point of the day that is just yours and yours alone.
So I go to bed very early. Uh, my husband is a night owl, so he has that time before he goes to bed, and then I have it in the morning. So a big part of the reason that I wake up so early is because I want that time and I know that it sets me up for success for the rest of the day.
So much more if I have that built in versus if I just sort of like get up and start thinking about everyone else, thinking about my baby, thinking about work, thinking about, excuse me, everything else. Um, thinking about and putting myself first is really helpful.
And I really, this was one of the harder things about the early months with the lack of sleep when I was, you know, a new mom, very new mom, and my son was a newborn. Just having the first thing that I did wake up in the morning or having the first thing that I did after waking up in the morning, being, you know, hearing him cry and going to him, of course I was, it’s part of it and it’s, it’s just, I think every parent goes through it.
But I, I really noticed that even if I woke up just like 20 minutes before him, even 10 minutes before him, just having that time to center myself, think about think, think to myself, gather my thoughts, reflect a little bit, like take care of myself, you know, shower, drink, water, whatever I needed to do made a huge difference.
So I was very excited to get this in back then. And I think that that’s why it’s kind of easy for me to wake up so, so easily.
Now, sometimes I sleep a little, I sleep in a bit late. If I have a very big day, like if I have ton of calls or a lot on my plate at work, sometimes I will, uh, sleep in a little bit because I just want the extra sleep.
Um, also sometimes if I know I have a lot of childcare, like if our, if our nanny’s here for eight hours or something, which doesn’t, which rarely happens, I will, uh, I will also sleep in a little bit then, because then I feel like, oh, well I’ll be able to do some stuff, you know, by myself, um, during that day. So sometimes I sleep in, but typically I don’t.
Uh, so during that hour I usually work, but I usually do the type of work that’s more big picture and strategic. So I’ll get on my computer and this is usually when I go through, um, what my team is working on, or I’ll go through what our monthly goals are, or I’ll go through what we’re currently striving for in a launch that we’re in, or what our projections are. I’ll do some brainstorming. I get very creative during this time.
So it is work time and I know that, that, that might feel a bit intense like that I’m up working at, you know, five in the morning and I get that. But I think it’s important to just know the chapter of life you’re in. And for me, I would prefer to work during that time and then be with my baby more during his waking hours for the rest of the week.
So I’ve, you know, been very open about the fact that I don’t really work on Thursdays and Fridays. Sometimes I do some things here and there when he is napping. But for the most part, I really only work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
And part of the way that I’m able to still have this business and still serve my clients and still lead my team while only working three days a week is because I do decide that it’s worth fitting in work when I can. Uh, even if that means it being very, very early in the morning. So that is sort of just a trade off that I’m willing to make at this point in my life.
And I think that, well, I’ll get to kind of my interpretation of that in a little, but that’s the next thing I do. And during this time, I typically also fill, I have, I believe this is a 32 ounce, yeah, a 32 ounce thermo.
And I usually fill it with water and drink the whole thing during, I’m not that strict about this because I’m naturally a very big water drinker. It’s not something I have to work that hard to do. I just drink a ton of water by nature. I love the taste of water.
I know some people don’t enjoy water. I’m not one of them, but I am very intentional about, uh, getting up in the morning before I sit down to work. I’ll go to the fridge and, uh, fill that whole thing with water.
And it’s usually, it’s usually, um, empty by the time, uh, Paul wakes up. So that’s one thing I do for myself. I get Ruby out of her, uh, little bed and then her and I like to snuggle and I work and I usually put on some bad reality TV in the background and I light candles and it’s just a very peaceful time.
It’s where I can reconnect with a part of me that is such a big part of me, this visionary entrepreneur. I really feel like I was born to be an entrepreneur and I really think I have a natural mind for it. I just feel like it’s what I’m meant to do.
And this has really helped me not lose that as I’ve stepped into a huge new identity of, of a mom and a and a very, um, this isn’t to say, well, I don’t know how to put put this, but I’m just, I’m with my, I’m, I’m momming a lot, I guess is how I’ll say it.
I know when my mom went back to work, she was working 40 or 50 hours a week and we had a nanny during that time. I don’t have a nanny for 40 or 50 hours a week, so I’m, I’m momming a lot more than, um, my mom was.
And I’m, I’m really grateful that I’m able to do that. Uh, but it would be because of that very easy to sort of let this huge piece of me, this, this entrepreneur, this visionary, this coach, this um, really business minded person just fade.
And so having that time to reconnect with that part of me and also being intentional about the work in the morning routine, not being just like checking things off my to-do list that are just, you know, very kind of, uh, I don’t, I don’t know what the word I’m looking for, is just very like, not strategic, just sort of like, uh, tactical things like sending an email or, you know, creating an Instagram post or whatever.
I really try not to do those in my morning routine cause I feel like it’s very much a better use of my time to use it in that sort of big picture and just most exciting part of my business.
So that’s usually about the first hour. Then at around six my son wakes up and I go, It’s just the best. Scoop him out of his crib, see him smile up when we go and get him. I mean, he never gets old . And then I nurse him as part of my morning routine and this is just a time that I cherish so much. It’s just, it’s, he’s still quiet.
Um, usually Ruby sits at my feet while we do it and he’s just, he’s so curious about everything now, everything. And it’s amazing to see. But these nursing sessions in my morning routine are some of the only times when it’s still quiet, still just us, so kind of peaceful. So it’s a very, very special thing. It is a little hard. I just wanna be honest about this because I don’t think a lot of people talk about it.
And I think moms have to deal with it a lot to switch back and forth between my entrepreneurial mind and my mom mind. And this is why I am so intense about how much I work on the days that I do work. I really work a lot on those days. I get a ton done. I work in my morning routine before I mom. I work all day while our nanny’s there. And then I also work after my son goes to bed on those days because I know that it is most productive for me to just fully be in work mode on those days.
And to, of course, I’m still a mom and I’m there to take care of my son, but I notice a huge difference in my energy on the days where I’m fully momming and I’m not thinking about work and I’m fully thinking about him and, you know, meal prepping for him, thinking about classes that we wanna go to, going to classes with him, thinking about how his development is going, doing, uh, like practice practicing things with him.
So there’s a very, um, stark contrast and I struggle sometimes to go back and forth between it, uh, in my morning routine. I’ve kind of gotten used to it now just because there’s really no, no other way. And I just love both parts of my morning routine. I love the work part. And then I also love getting to go into mom mode.
But on the a normal day to day thing, you know, if, I don’t know if I have to get a little bit of work done on a day when we don’t have childcare or, um, I stop working on a day, we do have childcare to do something with him, I notice I really have to intentionally pause. I actually have a playlist that I listen to to help me switch out from mom mode or work mode to mom mode. On Mondays I finish work early and I take him to a music class, which I love.
Um, but on the walk there, on the walk to that class, I listen to this playlist because it helps me, like kind of let go of work, let go of all the thing emails I was just sending and things I was just thinking about and spreadsheets I just had on my computer and projects I was just working on. And kind of exhale and like look at him and really just remember like, okay, here in this moment, now this is, this is what it’s all about. You know, this is what you work so hard for.
Uh, but I have to be intentional about it. Otherwise it’s very easy to be with your kid, but thinking about work or be at work and think about your kid. And I think a lot of moms can relate to that. And, um, I’m not immune to that. So I’m being intentional about it has been a big priority of mine.
So anyway, after he gets up, he has his nursing session. We eat breakfast with him. He and I eat breakfast together. And then my husband takes both he and the dog on a walk, which is nice because that’s kind of the time then that I shower, put my makeup on, put my clothes on, get ready for the day, kind of start to get everything around the house and everything for Paul ready.
Um, and just basically get everything situated so that once, if it’s a workday, once childcare comes, then I can just sit down and work right away. Or if it’s a day where we don’t have childcare, either he or I or both of us will play with him until it’s his first snap, which right now is usually at about nine 30 or 10 in the morning. He is still napping twice a day, uh, which is definitely helpful to be honest.
But, um, it will be also, you know, exciting to watch him grow.
So anyway, that’s kind of my morning routine. It’s a lot of moming, it’s a lot, not a lot, but it’s also work. It is about getting up early, but it’s also about just cherishing the parts of my identity that most most fulfill me right when I get up, which is being a mom and then, and doing my business and having my business be what really fills me.
And I feel like when I can do both of those in the morning and do both of them in a really present way, it really grounds me for the rest of the day. And sometimes I like to even go on the walks with, um, with them, with my husband and my dog and, and our son because I do love seeing New York in the morning and just getting fired up about being here.
But it is also nice to have that time to myself too, get ready for the day while, um, while he’s being taken care of. So there’s just a few things I wanna share as kind of takeaways to this, because as someone who loves listening to other people’s morning routines and who’s listened to them a lot and who has tried to perfect them a lot over the years.
I think that they have a lot of power behind them. But what I’ve learned, especially from my morning routine, changed so much over the last year in comparison to what it was like before I had a baby and a dog, I think that the important thing to recognize is that there is no perfect morning routine.
And I think you should get to trust yourself about what you need in this chapter in your life, given your goals and even given what your body is telling you and your mind, um, needs you to do on that given day.
You know, I kind of went through what my morning looks like, but sometimes it looks different. Like I said, sometimes I sleep in, sometimes I eat a cookie for breakfast, , sometimes I’m the one that goes on a walk with them. Um, sometimes I, I don’t know, don’t journal. I usually do journal.
But this has been my routine for about a month and I know it probably will evolve.
And I think that I spent many years setting other people’s mornings routine and thinking if I don’t get X, Y, and Z all done before 6:00 AM I’m setting my day up for failure. And I wish that I could have seen then what I know now, which is that every chapter is different, every day is different, and every person is different.
And instead of looking at what other people are doing to find out what you should be doing, what would it feel like to be so in tune with who you are and trust yourself so much that you know, you can get up in the morning, hear what you need from your soul, from your body, from your mind, and act on that.
And I think that this, that’s really shown, this has really shown me this. You know, I have less time than ever. Um, I have less alone time than ever. I have less work time than ever.
And yet my business is doing better than ever, and yet I feel more myself than ever.
And that also brings me to another point that I wanna bring up with this, which is to stop using excuses as reasons why you can’t have what you want. And stop assuming and, and absorbing what other people say as what is true for you.
And here’s what I mean. When I was pregnant and, and still to this day, I mean, not to get on a whole ramp, but it felt like whenever people would see me, they would sort of just be like, Oh, just wait until you have this baby. You have no idea what’s coming for you.
You have no idea how hard the sleep deprivation is. You have no idea how much breastfeeding hurts. You have no idea how you, you know, just negative, negative, negative foreshadowing.
And they would, when they talk about my business, it was sort of just like, Well, what are you gonna do with your business when you have this baby? And I was like, What? I’m gonna run my bus. I like, what do you mean ? I’m gonna run my business with this baby.
And so I decided a long time ago, I decided when I got pregnant that I was not going to subscribe to this dusty, patriarchal, toxic ideology that just because you become a mom, your work therefore must suffer. And I understand where it comes from. I’m not trying to like just dismiss all the very real struggles women have gone through in the past.
Women couldn’t as easily both work and be present with their kids because we didn’t have the power of digital marketing, online business, online marketing that we do now.
And you don’t even have to be an online business owner to access that. People work from home. Now where remote work is bigger than ever. We are in a totally new chapter where women really don’t have to choose one or the other quite the same way that we have in the past.
But a lot of women still have those ideas in their head because either that was their reality or that’s what has been told to them.
Additionally, of course, having a baby takes up a lot of your time. A lot of the time that you had either for yourself or for work is not yours anymore. But that’s all true. But the jump then to this statement that because you have more on your plate, because you have less time, because you won’t be able to work as much, means that you can’t be successful.
That’s a choice that you don’t have to make.
And so I decided that being a mom, becoming a mom, be having this baby was only going to help my business. And I detached from what that looked like specifically. I didn’t say this is gonna help me make more money right away, or this is going to make my business hit eight figures or whatever. I, I didn’t have that energy.
Maybe you could, if that’s like a belief you subscribe to, you can play with that. But I do think it’s worth really evaluating what you are choosing to believe, choosing to absorb just because that’s what other people have experienced, have told you or have believed themselves.
And I definitely honestly think I am, my business is better than ever and I do think I am a better entrepreneur than ever because I’m a mom. And part of it is because I actually don’t have as much time now to overthink things like I used to, to feel anxious like I used to, to question things like I used to.
If I have something I’m working on, if I have a sales pitch I’m working on at five in the morning and my baby starts crying, I have to hit, I have to hit send. I can’t sit and wallow in my confusion, in my fear, in my anxiety, in my second guessing in my, oh boy, did I do a good enough job? Or should I reevaluate this?
Or what does this person think of me? Or, um, should I like obsess over what they could be saying about me or all the things we like to play in our mind that could be happening, that keep us stop, that keep us stuck and stop us from doing what we really want. I don’t have time to do that anymore.
And I’ve chosen to allow myself to just move faster because I don’t have as much time to overthink things to even, you know, be doing things like I used to.
And that actually has really served me. So your dynamic could look different.
This also might not feel applicable to you if you have no interest in becoming a mom or if you’re not a mom or if that’s just not what you’re at in life.
But I had this same mindset with Ruby when we got her, and I think the message I’m trying to share is where are you indulging in your excuses? Where are you thinking that because x, y, and Z is happening to you because you still have a nine to five job or because your business hasn’t worked out the way you thought thus far because you didn’t make as many sales as you thought?
Or because you’ve had so many personal things going on, or because you’ve had a health issue or because your partner is going through something, therefore your business can’t be X, y, and Z right now?
And where can you flip that on its head and decide that those things are going to light a fire under you and you’re going to make it happen in spite of them? That is the power of our choice.
And so often we forget that and we surrender to what we think is easier, which is just allowing these things to, to take over frankly it. And that is easier. That is easier.
It would be easier for me to say, I have a baby now. I’m not gonna work as much. That would be easier, but that’s not what I want. And that’s not what’s best for me, and that’s not what’s best for my clients and that’s not what’s best for my baby. I want him to see his mom work and I want him to see his mom passionate.
So I hope that this morning routine helped you give yourself some permission to listen to yourself, to have different chapters and different seasons, and to fluctuate. To not use your excuses as reasons why you can’t do things, and to reframe them as reasons why you will or why you are.
And invite that playful energy into how much better things can get when you start seeing them as your secret weapons instead of things being weaponized against you. All right everyone, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for tuning in and I’ll talk to you soon.
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