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In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Norman Hanania, a seasoned 
entrepreneur whose journey from the early days in his father’s ice cream shop to becoming a successful franchise owner is nothing short of inspiring. Norman’s story is a testament to the power of passion, persistence, and the entrepreneurial spirit.
In 2011, he pivoted into franchising, where he grew his business to an impressive 11 locations with over 65 employees. Today, Norman is dedicated to helping franchisees and entrepreneurs scale their businesses and achieve sustainable growth through his coaching.
We then dive into Norman’s 20-year career in mortgage banking, where he developed a deep understanding of the financial industry and built a reputation for his expertise. Norman reflects on the pivotal moments that defined his career, including the challenges he faced during economic downturns and how he navigated those turbulent times.
Throughout the episode, Norman’s passion for business and dedication to helping others succeed shine through. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, this conversation is packed with valuable insights and inspiration to take your business to the next level.
In This Episode
- Norman’s entrepreneurial journey and his background
- The significance of aligning your business ventures with your passion
- Insights into the critical factors to consider when selecting a franchise, including market potential, brand strength, and alignment with personal and financial goals.
- The role of effective productivity habits in driving business success
Norman, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Dave.
Yeah, awesome to have you on the show. I know everyone is going to enjoy our discussion and what I find, you know, fascinating from our discussion so far is just really how your journey has evolved from corporate America and got into entrepreneurship, really, you know, making that transition that so many of us, know, maybe we already have done or we’ve been thinking about doing. And frankly, it takes a lot of courage.
I think we all want to be our own boss, of create that lifestyle design that we aspire to, but it really takes a lot of courage to get there and especially having a career on the corporate side, it gets harder and harder really to kind of transition and remake yourself. So why don’t you share with the audience your background?
Some of your journey and really that inflection point for you of how you really transitioned from corporate into entrepreneurship and really ultimately managing franchises to provide you with the passive income that you have today.
Yeah, I think, you know, it was kind of a lifelong journey for me. It’s just we grew up in franchising. My dad had a small business, so it was kind of in my blood. And all of us have kind of, a lot of my siblings kind of have taken that path. But when I got into corporate America, was, really enjoyed it. Kind of, I knew that it just seemed that it kind of meshed with what I wanted right after college. And so, you know, I did that for a while, and then as time goes on, I realized it was, there had to been something more.
I had a desire for, I think it starts with word freedom. You know, I think a lot of us as entrepreneurs now we’re kind of in search of, you know, we’re in search of freedom of money, right, so that we’re not tied to a paycheck, I think is kind of where my initial kind of desire, but I had no idea where to go from that. And then I got turned on to a book by Robert Kiyosaki and, you know, Rich Dad Poor Dad, I think you refer to it very eloquently as the Purple Pill.
And which I absolutely love that analogy because it’s the truth. So that book kind of set me on the path of getting my mindset right. And then which led me to my the next book of cashflow quadrant. So I read that while I was in corporate America and it just clicked. It really clicked. And I realized that for me to kind of take that path, I have to just look at things differently. really it when it the whole cashflow quadrant itself just really kind of solidified that I was on the wrong side, where I needed to be and that for me to have the life I wanted to have of freedom of time, freedom of money.
That I needed to be on the other side of the quadrant, the right side of the quadrant, so anyway, that’s kind of how it started with me and just consuming that information while I was still working in corporate. from there, it naturally just morphed into I was sitting there looking for real estate and
I said, “you know, let me try the real estate gig”. And ran and came across a dear friend, family friend. He had reached out to me and said, “hey, I understand you’re in the finance business and we own a bunch of shopping centers. And would you be willing to kind of come help me and restructure these loans and figure out what we can do with our current lender?” So meeting with him on a Saturday one day in his office, I got really intrigued by the whole business model of property ownership.
With shopping centers and needless to say, Dave, wasn’t, I don’t know, probably about four months later, five months later, a deal crossed my desk that I’ve reached out to a realtor and said, “this is what I want”. And he says, “you got the perfect shopping center for you.” I bought a shopping center and brought in two partners and was running it for many, many years and learned a lot.
That set me on my whole path to being an entrepreneur, understanding passive income, which was just so important and realizing just how much work it was to work a day job, but then also to see how fruitful and how rewarding it can be to have that first piece of passive income. And then from there, a great story is getting my hair cut and I’m talking to at this one place with franchising, just in there getting my haircut, talking to the manager.
She just, I think what did it for me with Craiclips was the fact that she said that she was meeting with a franchisee after she was done for the day. And I just said, “how many times have you met with the franchisee?” And she says,”this will be my third time.” And then I asked her, “how long have you been working here?” And she says, “three years.” And I said, “so you’ve met with a franchisee once per year.”
She says, “yeah, he comes to town once per year.” And I was like, “well, where does he live?” And so she had no idea where he lived. But she says, “I think he lives in a state that starts with M and he actually lived in Minnesota.” But funny story, after that, I kind of looked and said, she told me there was a general manager that was running all of his locations here locally. And so anyway, that started me on the franchising side of things. And getting back into franchising was just continuing to have the growth that I wanted to have freedom that I wanted to have. And so, yeah, that’s my path.
Yeah, excellent. No, and you know, I know 90 % of our listeners have read Cashflow Quadrant, but if you haven’t, strong recommendation, read it tonight. You can read it literally in a day or two. It’s that quick. But you know, just for reference, right, there’s four different quadrants. And on the left -hand side of the quadrant, it really highlights how you can be either an employee paid and kind of go through life as an employee and paid W-2 earnings, right?
Or you can be self -employed business owner, someone like, let’s say, a dentist, right? Who is not actually earning money unless they’re there doing work. And then on the right-hand side of the quadrant, you have a B, which is for business system, which is creating a business system, which is like a franchise or Amazon or large business.
Then you also have I which is for investor, right? And the investor is just making a professional investor making professional investments like we like to do in syndications, right? But I wholeheartedly agree with you that, you know, after you know, my stint and the Marines and the corporate America, it was such an eye opener to just to really just, you know, paint the picture of hey, here’s your choices.
How do you want to play the game? How do you want to live your life? And of course, Tom Wheelwright really talks about, you know, if you want to pay the least amount of taxes, you have to be a business owner and an investor. Also, really, if you want to have no cap on the income that you have, you have to be a business owner. I mean, it’s really that simple, know, outside of, you know, top CEOs and let’s say entertainers, know, or athletes, right?
The majority of capital being made is really from business owners creating value in the marketplace, where you can have unlimited potential on your growth, right? So, so for me, that really resonated. And that was such a helpful learning lesson. I think it’s great for kids to really learn that.
I love your story, how you’ve really translated that, right? And followed your path into, you know, into entrepreneurship, started out, you know, doing some real estate, and then kind of getting into franchises, seeing that opportunity to really realize that. Was there a certain inflection point or something that just, you know, just, you know, drove you to, hey, you know, this franchise or on the real estate side, like this is something I have to do, something that really compelled you.
Absolutely. Back when I was in corporate America, and I’m sure there’s many listeners out there that have probably been through this before, I was working countless hours in corporate America. there were promises that were made that weren’t fulfilled with my boss that was above me. I kept getting bosses. Things just kept changing, even though I was with a Fortune 50 company.
I just realized, I began to see the bureaucracy and I began to see the pyramid, you know, that if you had to work, got to, it’s just really, really, just was a struggle to kind of, to see kind of how you could work your way up within the corporate America. And it seemed, anyway, it just seemed like there was, I had a great experience while I was there, but I just realized it wasn’t for me, you know, Dave. And when I started going through that, I realized, you know, I didn’t want to wake up one morning and be in my 60s and pushed out into retirement and forced into retirement and then trying to figure out.
And I think that kind of was a piece of it. The other piece of it was the fact that, you know, it was one of these things where I just didn’t see the path to kind of where I really wanted to be. And I think the inflection point, it’s so telling that I made the decision that I wanted to go that route for owning commercial shopping centers or opening, know, starting my entrepreneurial journey. And I just told myself, “you know, this is my future. This is where I want to be.”
I think I had to make a decision to burn the boats. I had to make a decision at that moment that I had to close all the other doors. And the only door that was left open was the one at the end of the hallway. And I had to go through that door for me to really achieve the life I wanted to have. Again, I was pursuing it purely for financial freedom.
And as you know, probably many of your listeners know that once you go through it, you realize, there’s so many other things that come with it. Where as you grow, it took me a little while to figure that out, but as you grow and you get bigger, the less time that it demands from you if you’ve done it the right way. And so that was a true eye-opener. But back to the inflection point, it was, I just knew that I didn’t made the decision. I think it was just that simple.
I just said to myself, there’s a better life, there’s a better way. I saw other entrepreneurs achieving and living a life that I was dreaming about and the best, like I said, the best thing that I could have ever done for myself was close all the doors and burn the boats and say the only way that this is going to happen is I have to take the island and go in that direction.
Yeah, no, that’s really fantastic. And, you know, it’s interesting, you know, because we’re always talking about financial freedom, and that’s what kind of what gets the press, right, that phrase, and we all really, you know, yearn for that, right. But as Dan Sullivan really cleverly talks about, there’s really several freedoms, right, there’s freedom of purpose, there’s freedom of relationship, right, there’s freedom of time of these other things.
And I think this is, you know, what’s really important for the listeners out there to understand is that, you know, as we design that ultimate life that we want to live, right, you know, becoming an entrepreneur, a business owner, or even as a professional investor, right, it’s not only about that freedom of money. But I would guess, Norman, that your freedom of purpose probably 10x’d from the time that you left corporate America to what you’re doing today.
Absolutely, absolutely. you have your point, I didn’t realize that freedom of purpose was the ultimate kind of pinnacle of entrepreneurship. But now having been kind of knowing that that’s it and being exposed to that concept like you, I can tell you that is the only thing that drives me. And you are absolutely correct is that when you do pursue that freedom of purpose, you know, it is a 10x multiple.
When you do pursue that freedom of purpose, it is a 10x multiple.. Your 10x business is your purpose, to me it is everything that is centered around where you wanted to be all along.
I love the quote that I heard, think Tom Willwright himself came up with this and he says, you build a 2x business and the 2x business helps fund your 10x business. And you know, your 10x business is your purpose. To me, it is everything that is centered around, you know, where you wanted to be all along. so I think it’s so credible, but you’re right.
The four freedoms, like I said, most entrepreneurs start off with freedom of money and you realize that with freedom of money comes freedom of time. Then comes the freedom of relationships, which is so critically important to everyone. And know, the concept Dave of, know, using your business to buy your time back was just such a foreign concept to me. but it has been a game changer, an absolute game changer.
That as I’ve grown my existing business, I now look for ways to buy my time back, whether that’s a collaboration with another firm that can do things for me, whether it’s hiring a new employee that can take things either off my plate or make us more efficient, or whether it’s leveraging my existing team to take on some more responsibilities or watch them grow. And it has just been this whole entire entrepreneurial journey.
For me has just been such an amazing, amazing journey. I wish everybody could really get a taste of this and realize that it is in your hands and it is available to everyone. And franchising was my avenue to do it. Others go directly into opening their own business. Some just stay in real estate. And to me, what I loved about the combination of having both is I look at my business as being the cash generator and I look at you know the investments the eyesight of a quadrant as you were saying and real estate and the investments like you do Dave as being a preserver of that that wealth and you know protecting those that principle and so yeah it’s been it’s been I’ve loved it.
Yeah, I really encourage people to do some real deep thinking on, you know, the freedom, right? And what you’re really looking for because again, you know, on the surface, we think that financial freedom with passive income exceeding our expenses is going to get us to this nirvana land, right? And where we want to be and we do aspire to that but how is it going to change your life?
You have to keep asking yourself why. Because I believe that a lot of people are actually looking for financial freedom and I include myself in there at different points in my career that it was really an escape from what I was currently doing. When I was in corporate America, I wanted financial freedom so I didn’t have to do that job but it was really more about purpose, right? And really finding that purpose.
And now being able to have, you know, the mission to serve others, wake up every day and, you know, I’m constantly fascinated and motivated by the work I do. So I don’t even use the word retirement, is not in our vocabulary. It’s, you know, what am I going to be able to get done in the next 25 years?
Where can we keep growing? How can we keep doing things? know, whereas a lot of, you know, others are just thinking about actually winding everything down, right? But when you have the right purpose, you can really bust through walls, you know, you can create a bigger impact. And I think you can just live such more of a fulfilled life.
When you have the right purpose, you can really bust through walls, you can create a bigger impact and you can live such more of a fulfilled life.
Yeah, you know, David, you bring up a very good point about purpose. And I don’t know if it’s the same for you as it is for me, but purpose now is kind of evolving. In other words, it started off with, you know, one purpose. And then as we started, as I started to kind of achieve that first purpose, like you said, it’s the part that drives you, gets you up every morning. And, you know, it is such an amazing energy boost for me to be able to fulfill my purpose. But now my purpose is growing and it’s infinite.
Because you start looking at it and going, wait a minute here, if I can do this, then I can do this, and then I can do this. And your mind begins to expand and it’s basically, you start to live a limitless life in your ability realizing that, wait a minute here, if I can conceive it, if I can dream it, then it can happen. It can really, really happen. And the beauty of being an entrepreneur is the fact that you have that foundation of you know, income coming in while you’re pursuing this purpose.
Again, to me, I’ve noticed that my purpose is growing. It’s changing, it’s evolving, it’s getting deeper, it’s getting bigger. And I think that’s the part that really has just been such an eye opener and such a blessing is the fact that my purpose is now kind of getting bigger and bigger and bigger beyond even things that I even, you know, could even dream of.
I think that’s the real gift of entrepreneurs. think that’s the real gift of making sure that whatever, in my case, whatever you choose as your entrepreneurial journey, that you do it. You do it with gusto. You do it with 100% devotion. You close all the doors. You burn the boats. Because you will achieve success. It’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when. If you’re just tenacious enough and pursue it like you should.
Then once you hit that and you break through, it’s just amazing. Dave, this brings me back to this amazing quote that I’d heard that says, entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t. And I don’t know who made that quote, but they were genius, because that is exactly what entrepreneurship is.
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s really fantastic. And I think, you know, getting into franchising is really such a great opportunity. know, we obviously we talk a lot about private equity and investing, right? But you have to, you know, you have to have capital before you can actually multiply it, right? So on that value creation side, I think the path to franchising is such a great way for many people who are say on the fence or maybe even thinking about a side hustle, right?
To try to start something while they’re at their day job because really you’re kind of self -funding that and you can learn some of the ropes, reduce your risks and kind of get into, you know, franchising without taking all the risks because you’ve got a proven model, you have systems that you can leverage and everything.
So why don’t you share with us a few of those considerations that you had kind of getting into what that looked like for you.
Actually, that was exactly my path. I was still working in corporate America and then decided to get into franchising and then reached out and wrote the initial check. I saved up enough money to write the initial check and then also to just be part of that team, that franchise concept. And like you said, to be able to have access to the recipe. But yeah, I opened up my first location while I was still working in corporate America.
Also managing my own real estate at the same time and then opening up another location. So it was a very trying time, but it was a very worthwhile time for me. But yeah, I did that, opened up my first location and then set my sights on the second location after the first location was cash flowing. And I got it stabilized and learned everything, explored everything. I counsel a lot of franchisees that are new franchisees that try to get into concepts and try to grow. And I always say the same thing to them.
You bought a recipe, stick to the recipe. Don’t change a thing. Listen to what successful franchisees are doing and do it exactly how they do it. Don’t, you know, don’t alter the ingredients of any of the recipes. You know, I used to, my favorite one is like when you’re making chocolate chip cookies and it’s maybe gives you a great recipe and it says a pinch of salt. And most people go, why am I putting salt in a freaking cookie?
If I just add more sugar and take out the salt, it’ll make it even better and it just ruins it. So I tell, I use that example a lot with new franchisees and they get it at that point. I was like, you have to follow it to the tee because that’s what they spent the time and the effort and the energy to build. you know, that’s what led to my success. I followed it to tee. I followed what successful people have done. I’ve done that my entire life. I’ve always tried to seek out mentors.
Mentors that are in a particular field that are actually doing exactly what it is that I want and that they’re successful at it. And so that was kind of how I did it. And then I just grew from one location to a second location. And then from the second location, I was able to kind of begin to kind of wind down the day job.
And just a funny story, and this may resonate with some people, is the fact that I was, remember I just taken on a new job in the banking world, in my day job, and I was given a lot more responsibilities, and I was meeting with my boss at the time, and we were in Dallas, Texas, and he had found out that I actually had other interests, right, that I had some real estate, and that I had some franchising, and I just remember him asking me, well, you can’t do them all, so which one are you gonna give up to pursue your career in?
You know, our industry. And I just said, “I don’t need to give him up. I know I can do them.” And he wasn’t really fond of that. But, you know, because he thought it was diluting my time. And so it wasn’t a little bit, but you know, I was just putting burning the midnight oil. But anyway, I after having that discussion with him, it wasn’t a week later that I reached out to him and said, I’m stepping down. And I stepped away. It was a tough, tough time. I wasn’t ready financially to do it.
I knew I had to do it for me to see my future being an entrepreneur. And it was the best decision I ever made. And it was a tough, tough few years. Financially speaking, I’d saved up a bunch of money and kind of transitioning, making that transition from releasing your day job and moving into entrepreneurship. That pivotal time is such a critical time in your life. is, a lot of people hesitate with it.
And for me, I did, but then I said, you know what, which one is my future? Where am I going? And what do I really want to do? And I think the best question that I asked myself at that time was, okay, five years from now, and I’m looking back at this time, what am I going to think? What am I going to really, really think? Where am I going to be five years from now? And do I want to regret not taking this step? And I’m so glad that I did.
Yeah, that’s really excellent. And what did you think about in terms of franchises, right? mean, are there certain things people should be thinking about? which, you know, where do you go? You know, is it because there’s everything from a cookie shop to, you know, home services to, mean, you know, cutting hair, right? You name it.
How do you advise people to kind of really get their head around that? Is it following something they’re passionate about? What are the things that you really look for on franchises that would be successful? And also, again, align towards that purpose that we’re looking for.
Yeah, it’s a really great question. And a question I get quite often is how do I know which franchise is the right one for me? I think, number one, it’s a personal choice. Number two, looked at, know, number two, for me, I looked at kind of the economics of the business. I don’t know the first thing about cutting hair and, you know, but I looked for a franchise that, number one, was one that I would visit myself.
It was one that I could see. It was one in my local neighborhood. I saw how it operated. I saw the actual, you know, the boots on the ground, so to speak. I saw how the staff were interacting. I saw, you know, I saw it firsthand as a customer in my case. And I think that’s what attracted me to it. You know, if you go into a franchise and you don’t have that experience and you and it’s all brand new, you know, there’s a lot of people out there that just look at the cost or they look at you know, item 19, if you will, in the FDD, the Franchise Disclosure Document.
That discusses the financial health of the business or kind of what you’ll make. And I tell people all the time, “don’t do that. You know, what you want to focus on is, you know, focus on the business model, focus on the business, you know, does the business have longevity? Does it have a long runway ahead of it? Does it have, has it been there a while?” To me, I chose a business that had been in business for, you know, at the time 25 years.
Now it’s 40 years that it’s been in business. Yes, it’s competitive. Yes, there’s other franchisees, but it was a choice that I made to get into that business because of the staying power and the depth of the leadership. And that’s another big one because when you buy a franchise, you’re looking at not only the support at the corporate level, but you want to make sure that the corporate people at the corporate level are, you know, executing and doing the right things and they look at franchisees as being a partner and looking at franchisees as being an asset.
The ones I shied away from, and this is just me personally, not saying that others don’t have success with this, many of them do, but to me, I didn’t want to compete with the franchisor. There’s a lot of franchises out there where the franchisor themselves have opened up retail locations or locations or are in the business that you’re in.
And then they start selling franchise. And in the beginning, that’s kind of normal because they’re proving the concept. But over time, you want to know that their game plan is to exit owning any or dealing directly with the consumer and then leaving that up to their franchisee network to do that. Because I found that it’s just like us, Dave. The more focused you are on what you do, the better you’re going to be.
And so I have found that the best franchises, the ones that have the strongest legs, if you will, and have the staying power to get through downturns in the economy are the ones that are just purely focused on supporting franchisees, the ones that are not competing with them necessarily. And that they have the franchisees, the franchisees are partners. They look at them as being, they have a say, that you have a seat at the table as a franchisee, so to speak.
You know, there’s many of them out there, but there’s few that actually have like advisory boards where they have franchisees, you know, and the advisory board isn’t just a ceremonial thing. It’s actually real. You know, make sure it’s a real thing and talk to people that are on that board when you’re doing your investigation and just say, “Hey, look, is the franchisee or listening to us? Are they taking some of the feedback or they, you know, are they, are they taking this to heart?” And I think that to me was the critical and pivotal part for me. And it’s what I look for now, any franchise I get involved.
Norman is a high performer who’s running 11 different franchises now and continuing to really scale your business and crush it. What are some of your top personal productivity habits that you have?
You know, I can tell you, you know, it’s to me, it’s I call it the evening in the morning. At night, I try to get a bed, get to bed at a reasonable hour. And I know this may sound may sound strange to some of you. But really, the matter is, know, getting your mind right is probably one of the biggest productivity hacks that you can that you can have.
So to me at night, I try to turn off any sort of technology and hour before bed to unwind, do little bit of journalizing and I write in a gratitude journal at night just to set my mind on the things that I’m really grateful for the day. I get to bed pretty early and I get up five o ‘clock, 5:30 or so and I do some meditation and I do some additional writing just to kind of clear my mind. At that moment, I either take a walk and get outside, get some fresh air or if it’s raining outside I’ll usually sit down and do some sort of movement exercise just to get my body going.
You know I’ll enjoy my cup of coffee at that time and begin kind of looking at kind of you know my schedule of what I’m doing that week, where I’m going, looking at the big goals. I always start off with my annual goals and then look at quarterly and then look at you know monthly and then daily weekly and then from there, I kind of have my, at that moment, my mind is kind of solid on kind of where we’re headed.
And then from there, just dive right in. And then from a productivity standpoint, I have really found myself that when I start chunking or putting things together, like I have certain days that I do certain things, and I kind of stick to that. And usually my Mondays and Tuesdays are my busiest days, and it’s when I try to book all of my meetings that are on Zoom and in of a camera, usually on those two days.
Then that frees me up for the rest of the week to have maybe on Wednesday some in -person meetings if there are any of those. And then usually Thursday, Friday is kind of, usually Thursdays are I’ll visit the businesses. Usually Wednesdays, Thursdays, I’ll visit the business depending on how those go. Trying to take Fridays off, trying to take some free days. Dave, you and I are familiar with that concept.
It’s not always a doable concept sometimes, but starting to focus on Fridays being kind of a free day to just recover, recuperate, think about my thinking. And I’m realizing now that how important that is of just really thinking about your thinking, really thinking about your business, sitting down and kind of, I know we shouldn’t be doing that on a free day, but when you sit down, it’s just really just think of the future. Think of where your business is headed. Think of what’s around the corner.
You know, as entrepreneurs and as owners and CEOs of our own companies, we’re kind of, you know, we’re, we’re expected by our team to look, you know, see around corners. We’re expected to see future, you know, way out there and protect the, protect the ship from hitting the iceberg. And a lot of times, so often we don’t take that time and I’ve been guilty of that. And so what I’ve committed to doing, at least in the last year or so, is having that time to really sit and think and ponder about kind of where we’re headed, where’s my business headed, where’s the economy headed, what do we need to think differently, how do we need to think differently, what do we need to put in place from a process standpoint or a procedure standpoint, you know, and who do we need to align ourselves with from a collaboration standpoint. So, you know, those are kind of the, that’s my week, but also my productivity, you know, as best as I can say, my productivity hack.
Yeah, great insights there, Norman. And I’d like to unpack the evening routine because I think morning routines get all the airtime and everyone is always talking about, what’s your morning routine and how can we optimize that? you know, you really hit the nail on the head with the evening routine. And in fact, I heard someone say it, I can’t recall who, but they talked about, you your morning actually starts with the evening before, right?
So, you know, what are you doing? And I would also, you know, with my experience and I keep optimizing and really keep developing this. I’ve actually, you know, kind of moved into some, doing some stretching and kind of working with this health and nutrition coach now. So I’m trying to really optimize my physiology at night as well. So part of all, you know, the techniques you talked about, like turning off the technology.
It’s really interesting because you can see real time your data on an aura ring or a whoop and look at your heart rate and your HRV. So if you’re watching some kind of action movie or some kind of, you know, things on TV, it’s amazing how elevated, you know, you will be versus if you go and you take a walk, you kind of, you know, calm things down, you remove yourself from the technology.
And then one thing I’ve started doing recently is actually working into a nice kind of stretching routine and foam rolling in the evening and then either doing either hot shower, sauna is even really ideal because you basically get your body really hot and then it tries to overcompensate and then cools itself down. So I’m really seeing some improvements in my sleep scores there and you know to your point it’s all around getting your mind right.
So if you can get your body right, your mind is gonna be right, and it all starts in the evening. So I think some really good thoughts, good ideas there for all of us to keep developing that.
Yeah, you hit unit that yeah, I mean to me and you and I do, you know, there’s a lot of similarities in what we do. And I always say this, know, success breeds success, you know, other people kind of do the same things. Yeah, that my evening routine, I figured out Dave, to your point, I would try so hard to make my morning routines, my focus, but my evening routines were a train wreck. And I was like, man, why can’t I just get into it the morning and oversleep, I’d be exhausted, I’d be tired. And I was like, “wait a minute, I gotta get onto this. I gotta focus on doing before I go to bed.”
Some of the things I do, know, obviously, you know, people know you shouldn’t be eating more than like three hours before bedtime. So I try my best not to eat within three hours of me going to bed, which allows your body to kind of process. It’s actually it’s actually better. I think I read somewhere it’s actually better to kind of go to bed with a little bit of hunger, just a little tiny bit of hunger. When you go to bed, you actually sleep better. But so I do that.
And then we talked about, you know, turning off what I call screen time. No screen time an hour before. So I try to shut off everything that includes my phone, that includes the laptop. It’s really tough to do with a phone, by the way, because it’s always in your hand and you want to touch it, you know, but TV is easy for me to shut it off. But I just shut it off. And that’s usually what I usually that hour, about two hours before bed, I begin to kind of unwind. I am really careful about what I watch, right, that last two hours before bed, making sure that whatever I watch is either, you know, that it’s, you know, knowing that I’m gonna dream about it.
So I think to me, what did it for me is, “hey, what am I here? What am I watching?” Because I’m gonna have to dream about this. It’s gonna be the last image in my head and it’s gonna be, you know, so if you, to me it’s changed dramatically what I watched. I watched things that are kind of much more, I would say motivational much more, you know, sometimes I’ll watch a little bit of comedy, something funny, kind of unwind.
But then that last hour is so critical. Aside from no screen time, what I do is then I go walk around the house and I dimming the lights and I start turning down the lights and I refuse to turn on any bright light from that for that last hour while I’m kind of writing. And I think that just the journalizing or the gratituting, as I call it, writing about everything you’re grateful for that before you go to bed is so much more important than doing it the next day when you wake up.
I think once you sit back and you focus your mind on all the wonderful things that have happened that day, and it gets tough in the morning, it gets tough in the beginning, but once you really get good at it, you really start looking for all of the things you’re grateful for, all the things you’re thankful for, all the big wins that you had for the day. Believe it not, you accomplish quite a bit in a day. And so I just started to capture as many of those as I can. And it’s like peeling back the layers of an onion, right? You really don’t have a lot that’s kind of crusty and brown on the outside, but you start really getting down to the really good stuff and you’re like, yeah, I forgot.
I did that today or I had that interaction or I had an amazing meeting. And so when I find that when I write that down, I go back and I reread it and it just sets my mind in the right intentions and sets my mind in the right kind of frame of mind. And that’s where you sleep through the night. find that people that, and I’ve had this problem too, where you wake up in the middle of the night.
I learned now if I ever wake up in the middle of the night, I jump up and grab a pad of paper and go sit, get out of my head and go, and I’ll write. And I’m like, what am I thinking about? What’s on my mind? And then I go back and, you know, I’m sleeping like a baby again. But anyway, that nightly routine, and I’m not perfect at it, believe me. You we all have our weekends where we’re having a late dinner with some friends and family and things like that. But if you get into it, believe it or not, your body just starts to shift and begins to expect you. to be in bed at a certain time, it expects you to dim the lights.
To your point, not a of people focus on the evening routine, and to me, that is the critical thing that you should do because I launch up in the morning without an alarm clock. That’s just how my body works. It knows when to get up, and I get up without even an alarm clock, and I spring out of bed, and I’m able to conquer the day.
Yeah, great insights. Norman, really appreciate your time today and sharing all your wisdom with the audience today. I think it’s been really insightful. If people would like to connect with you, learn more about what you’re up to, what’s the best place for them to reach out?
They can reach me on LinkedIn. It’s just Norman Hannonia and you can look me up. But just connect with me on LinkedIn. I’ll be glad to connect with anybody and if you know they have any questions at all they can just send me a message there and I’ll be glad to answer answer anything that they have to ask.
Awesome. Really grateful for your time today. Thanks again.
You bet. Thank you, Dave.