How does one build a perfect week? For starters, it’s simply seven perfect days, one after the other. Craig Ballantyne teaches this in his book, “The Perfect Week Formula,” which helps entrepreneurs structure their working week in a way that allows them to build their business around their life instead of the other way around.

In this value-packed episode, Craig comes back on the podcast with Chris Larsen to give you the opportunity to get this book for free. “The Perfect Week Formula” will help give you the tools of a multi-7-figure business owner.

These tools helped Chris personally to build his business, become a better husband and father, and help hundreds of people move one step closer to financial independence. Listen in and get your free copy of Craig’s book now!

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How To Build Your Perfect Week And Live The Life Of Your Dreams With Craig Ballantyne

We have Craig Ballantyne. Craig is known by his clients as the most disciplined man in the world but Craig was not born that way. He was born lazy, introverted, and also suffered crippling anxiety attacks. He talks about that in this episode. He spent years inventing systems to help make success automatic for anyone. He also built his Turbulence Training Fitness franchise to over 151,000 customers and 15 million YouTube views. He also owns EarlyToRise.com which is how I first got to know Craig. His first book, The Perfect Day Formula, has helped over 35,000 high performers own their day and take back control of their lives. Craig coaches entrepreneurs to make more money and work less using the techniques in his Wall Street Journal bestseller, Unstoppable. Craig is going to talk about how you can get a free copy of his book, The Perfect Week Formula.

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Craig, welcome back to the show.

This is going to be a lot of fun.

You were the first guest on the Next-Level Income Show for a reason because of the inspiration you provided me to help me write the book and start this podcast for my original partner, Caleb, who’s now our marketing lead as well. We’re having you back on the show to help talk about some of the things you’ve refined over the past couple of years. To think back on those past years, it seems like it was just a couple of weeks ago.

It’s been a great journey for you. It’s been awesome to see what you’ve been up to, and now I’m getting your advice on my own money matters. It’s been in a full circle.

It’s a blast. I get to work with you one-on-one. For those of you that don’t know, Craig is now one of my coaches here. It’s been wonderful as we launch our new coaching program within the Next-Level Income. For those that haven’t read that first blog yet, Craig, could you share a little bit more about your story and how you’ve come to have the business that you do?

I started off in the fitness industry. I was a personal trainer. I went and started selling my own products online like Tony Horton and P90X which we follow along with workouts. I spent over a dozen years in that fitness industry doing that. I really enjoyed it. It helped a lot of people but I always knew that I wanted to do more. I bought Early To Rise and you’ve been a subscriber for a long time. I bought it from my mentor, Mark Ford, who wrote a lot of books like Ready, Fire, Aim. When I did that, I started writing books of my own and I wrote The Perfect Day Formula and Unstoppable which chronicles my journey of overcoming entrepreneurial anxiety and my anxiety attacks because I’ve been to the emergency room a couple of times. My other book is The Perfect Week Formula which helps people build their business around their life and not their life around their business. It also applies to anybody working in the corporate world too.

I love how you make the analogy with making the time for those most important things and putting those things first. My parents came from farmers. My mother’s parents were vegetable farmers. My father’s parents in Denmark, Wisconsin were dairy farmers. You talk about something in The Perfect Week Formula called the Farm Boy Morning Routine. This is a lot different from these morning routines you hear on social media and other places. What is the Farm Boy Morning Routine?

We sell very popularly. It was first called the Millionaire Morning Routine, which is based on the Farm Boy Morning Routine, which I learned from my father. I grew up on a farm and he, imperfect by any means, but he got up early every single morning, 365 days of the year because he had to feed the cows. Cows don’t take a day off. Not on Christmas or New Year’s or anything. I learned to get up and go to work. That’s a way to be productive. Many people in these morning routines where they get up and yoga, meditation, gratitude journaling, do affirmations, and then do an exercise session. The next thing you know, it’s 8:30, 9:00 or 9:30.

I had a new coaching client and he said, “Sometimes, my morning routine takes me until 9:30 before I sit down and start doing anything.” He’s been up since 6:30 in the morning and that’s not a productive way. I believe that meditation and journaling are very helpful activities, but when you do the routine of those things, there’s a lot of diminishing returns. Also, those things don’t necessarily have to be done first thing in the morning. It can be done another time. The problem is we all have priorities that we need to accomplish in our businesses and our careers, the hard work.

If we don’t do that hard work first thing in the morning, the chances of putting it off and procrastinating on it rise with every app that we’re up because the longer we’re up, the lower our willpower is. We have the greatest willpower discipline attention first thing in the morning. If your job is to eat a frog, the best thing to do is eat that frog first thing in the morning. If your job is to eat two frogs, the best thing to do is to eat the biggest frog first. That’s what we teach in the Farm Boy Morning Routine. It’s to get up and do the work at the start of the day, but that’s the message at the end of the day.

That’s neat about a lot of the lessons you teach. The amount that people pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to work directly and one-on-one with Craig. He’s giving away these pearls of wisdom. Read until the end of the show to learn how you can get a copy of his book free sent to you. Going back to that, Craig, I knew this myself. I was a cyclist. I didn’t quite make it to a professional level but I raised at a pro-level as an amateur. When I got a job, professional, and working every day in the OR as a medical device rep, I started racing again and I had to train at 5:00 in the morning.

To me, that was one of the most important things I did outside of my career before I had a family. I get up, I train from 5:30 to 6:30 every morning, and I would do intervals, which suck. For anybody out there and you know what a view to interval, you know. When I read this in The Perfect Day Formula, I initially cut out the training and brought in doing the most important thing to me. I wrote my book from your strategy from 5:30 to 7:00 in the morning. I use these specific strategies in my life to make that happen. Craig, if you could tell the audience what’s your morning routine look like? How do you apply this in your own life?

When I say what time I get up, people would say, “I don’t want to get up that early. I’m going to discount this message.” I’ll say, it’s not about the hour that you get up, it’s about what you do with the hours that you are up. I tend to naturally wake up around 4:00 in the morning. I take my computer and start working by about 4:15. I work for an hour and a half. I take a break for coffee and hanging out with my dog and my girlfriend for a little bit. Michelle and I will have coffee together, I take the dog out, and then I go back and do another 90-minute block then we do a trip to the dog park. I have breakfast before that second 90-minute block around 6:00 in the morning, sometimes 6:30.

I’m back in for another 90-minute block from 9:00 until 10:30. Around 11:00, I either do a podcast, film something, or I’ll go to the gym and then lunch. In the afternoon, I’d do a couple of calls. That’s the way that my day works. It’s almost the same every single day, except for Fridays, I don’t do any calls or meetings. What I do there is a little bit more thinking on the business as much as possible. Every entrepreneur has heard the old phrase, “You got to work on the business, not in the business.” I try and put as much a Friday into working on the business as possible.

That’s a terrific story in the way you talk about it in the book. It is filling up those big rocks first in your life, as your father’s friend talked about, “Putting the big rocks in the jar then the small rocks, the pebbles, and the sand.” Unfortunately, in life, a lot of us get up, watched the news, read the news, surf social media, and fritter away those super-productive hours. It is true that the early bird gets the worm that’s out there.

The way that we want to look at things is around your life and not your life around your business. As we think about it, you could fill your entire calendar and weeks with meetings, learning, and all this stuff, but you got to put a time for yourself, workouts, family time, and date nights on the calendar first. Otherwise, you don’t find the time, you only make time. Make time at the start. We tell people to do their Sunday morning planning for the week ahead. Make sure what goes on the calendar. It forces you to be a better entrepreneur or more productive person because instead of allowing yourself to work 55 hours in a week, what if you forced yourself to work 35 hours a week. It would force you into some difficult but important and beneficial decisions that would help you live a better life.

That’s what brings a lot of the entrepreneurs to you, is what I found. They are looking for their life back. They’re not only looking for how to grow their business. This is the other thing I took from your book. When you say the most important thing, that may be something like a date night that you planned or time with your children. It’s easy for us professionals to go out and work sixteen hours a day. Sometimes, it’s hard to spend that time and make that time.

I was working with a new client. He’s watching three hours of YouTube videos at night. He’s like, “One more YouTube video.” That one more or in the workday where you say I will do it myself and you don’t do it, that kills you. It’ll steal all the time from your family and your relationships but also from your health. We all know that people built a business and have a great family but they’re 40 pounds overweight and pre-diabetic at 50. Especially with what’s going on in the world, you can’t afford to be unhealthy in any way because that puts you at great risk these days. If you’re stealing time from your health to go and make money, we need to fix your calendar and your schedule. It’s all within our control. We got 168 hours in the week and we all know people who do it all. We might not be able to achieve what the greatest and most productive people in the world can do but we can all do better. That’s what’s going to help you.

One of the things that I used when I was training reps, some people call it the Eisenhower matrix. Do you mind sharing how you help people use that to define what’s important and how to build out their schedule?

It doesn’t matter. I didn’t even remember who won the Super Bowl. Why am I following sports with such fervor? It was a waste of my time, I got away from my time, I’m so glad, or we’re watching the news about a hurricane halfway across the world. None of that matters. Even though it’s timely, stop the time in it, which leaves us with urgent and important, and non-urgent and important. The urgent and important is the stuff that you will deal with. For example, I own a gym in Charleston, South Carolina and almost every other year the air conditioning breaks. That’s urgent and important.

From April to October, you don’t want to be without air conditioning. That is something that must be dealt with. Fortunately, I have a team that can deal with it but that’s an urgent and important thing. Other people will say, “My email is urgent and important. I got to go check my email first thing.” Understand that your email has been sitting there for 8, 10, 12 hours and wait another 90 minutes while you go and do something from your non-urgent, important block, which is you’ve written a book and I’ve written a book. If you don’t write the entire book now, you’ll be okay. If you don’t start now, you can also be okay but in three years from now after you said, “I’ll start tomorrow.”

All of a sudden, you’re now suffering the consequences of, “I never got around to writing that book. I didn’t expand my reach. I didn’t start a podcast. I didn’t grow my coaching business. I didn’t invest in this property. I didn’t make the time to talk with the tax advisors. Here I am and I got so much better.” All because you got caught up in the emails of the day-to-day or worse. Those other two boxes that we said should take none of your time. When you separate this stuff like that, it is so helpful and gives you so much clarity about what matters. That’s a real-life example of this. I started reading a book about Eisenhower a couple of years ago. It was a huge, long book. I was very fascinated by how somebody planned D-Day? I learned they were entrepreneurs.

They failed at launch attacking North Africa and Italy, which then allowed them to, fortunately, pull off D-Day. They did a lot of things wrong. It’s fascinating. It’s his life story. I got 2/3 of the way through it. I got busy with life. That’s when I met Michelle and I have no time to read this Eisenhower book. I said, “I’m going to quit it because it’s not urgent and it’s not that important.” I had to take that book which was interesting to me, and shifted down into that box of the Eisenhower Matrix. I haven’t picked it up again. I got rid of it.

I know a lot of people reading and they’re like, “How do you do this?” People call you the most disciplined man in the world but you weren’t always this. I grew up in an environment around alcoholism and different challenges with substances and emotional issues. You talk about your anxiety attacks and dealing with alcohol as well. How did you get from there to where you are now?

Like most hero journey stories, you have to go pretty low. My lowest was self-induced in that. I drank too much, I ended up having anxiety attacks, and I went to the emergency room thinking I was having a heart attack. It’s definitely not what was me. I wasn’t hit by a drunk driver or anything. I was a stupid young kid, I stayed as a stupid young kid until I was an older adult when I should’ve known better. I made those mistakes. This is very important to note, when I had my anxiety attacks, I was in the best shape of my life. I was making more money than ever. Being in great shape doesn’t mean you can’t have anxiety, stress or even depression.

What I was doing was I had no structure in my life. I was working all the time, going out all the time, and it caught up to me. One of the things that I was doing was wake up at 7:30. I’m a natural morning person. I love doing everything in the morning. I want to go to the gym, have a coffee break, do a lot of work and do some reading. I want to do twelve hours of stuff before noon. You can’t and getting up at 7:30 in the morning, we’ll put you behind eight balls. I was getting up at a time where I knew it was too late for me naturally, mentally and physically. The first thing that I was doing was I was rolling over in bed and checking my email. It’s the two of the worst things you can do.

The thing is we also know, intuitively, that there’s got to be a better way. It’s right around when I had the anxiety attacks and I realized I need to put more structure into my life because structure brings you true freedom. The author, Paulo Coelho, says more eloquently, “Discipline and freedom are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent because without discipline, you sink into chaos,” which happened to me. One day, I sat and I said, “I don’t like this anymore.” I decided, the next day, I was going to get up five minutes earlier and wait five minutes longer before checking my email. I did that for a week. The week after that, I went five minutes earlier and five minutes longer. Within a few weeks, I was getting up at 5:30 in the morning which felt right. I was not checking my email until 9:30 in the morning. That’s when I started writing my books and being able to do more revenue-generating activities earlier in the day. I had greater control over my life. It’s a huge breakthrough for me.

I went through something similar, not with the anxiety attacks but in the process of optimizing my day. My thing was I’d lay on the couch after the kids went to bed years ago and I watched the news. I thought, “I’m being educated. I know what I can talk about,” but it would change. I was being brainwashed. Every 24 hours, it was something new. I thought to myself, “I was this massive information but it was inconsequential.” When I canceled cable, what I realized was I didn’t get anything done in that last hour of my day. I thought, “What if I get up 30 minutes early and do that?” That started the process for me. It’s amazing. If you’re reading, I would say, that’s one thing you can do now. Think about, “What if I was able to eliminate something that’s useless at the end of the day and get up a little bit earlier in the beauty of the day.”

There’s a double bonus to that. Watching TV and all that stuff stimulates the mind, which then impairs your sleep and if you impair your sleep, you wake up groggy late the next morning and have a bad day then impairs the next day. It’s this vicious cycle that’s almost impossible to get out of. That’s why I teach people, “You got to turn off the TV for at least an hour before bed because if you don’t, you will be wound up and wired. You won’t sleep well. In the next morning, you might wake up in a dark mood as well.” You’ve got to be very careful about what goes into your mind. Treat your mind like a garden and plant good things only.

You have a system you call your 10-3-2-1-0 system to help people do that.

Ten hours before bed you stop your caffeine intake. Three hours before bed cut off the alcohol and heavy meals. Two hours cut off all work. An hour before bed cut off all the electronics and don’t hit the snooze button in the morning.

I’m guilty of that when my dog jumps back in bed with me. Sometimes, I hit that stuff for five minutes. I think about Uncle Craig looking over my shoulder saying, “What are you doing?”

That’s the same thing with me. I have my friend Bedros and there was a while where I wanted to sleep in a couple of days. I thought, “What would Bedros say?” Bedros has a good line. There are two reasons why you shouldn’t snooze. The first reason is my boring reason, which is when you hit the snooze button, you go back into poor quality sleep. Ten minutes later, you’re no further ahead. You’re more tired. That doesn’t hit people hard enough but Bedros has this line that, “If you hit snooze, you’re telling your hopes and dreams that they can wait.” That should be unacceptable to anybody who is reading this blog.

The next time you’re tempted, just go, “Am I serious about achieving these dreams, generating passive income and financial time freedom.” If I am, I got to get my butt out of bed. I need to go and do what I promised myself the night before, which is the third reason you shouldn’t hit snooze. A great line from Bedros is, “The best way to build self-confidence is to make a promise to yourself and keep that promise.” By setting your alarm for 6:00 in the morning, it’s telling yourself you want to get up at 6:00. If you don’t follow through on that promise, then your mind thinks, “What am I serious about? Maybe I’m a joker and I’m not going to be successful.” You can go down a rabbit hole of low self-confidence when you don’t keep the promises to yourself.

That’s the line that goes through my head now. Craig, we could talk for hours about all the information that you’ve packed in your book. I encourage you, readers, to get a free copy. Send me an email at Chris@NextLevelIncome.com and say FREE BOOK in the subject. We’ll make sure that you get that if you include your address in there as well. One thing I want to hit on, Craig, you went back and you talked about happiness, you were in the best shape of your life and you’re making as much money.

I read this book called The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor and this was several years ago. What stands out is the curve that he paints in there. It talks about this natural curve where we have this peak of happiness. In our early 20s, when we’re coming out of college for most people, and then it drops into your late 40s, early 50s, maybe around 50 it starts to pick up again. A lot of people don’t know about this. One of the things that coincide with what you talk about in the book is your healthy relationships at age 50, which ultimately makes you healthy at age 80?

That’s powerful. First of all, being around the right and positive people who had positive habits and positive activities certainly will be that way. Positive people, in general, uplift you. What’s important is that you become the people you spend your time with. That is so essential.

That is the amazing thing. All these techniques that you teach not only can they help you build more wealth, be more successful, but ultimately be happier and potentially live longer. If you would ask anybody, “Is this worth it?” If you’re 80 years old, that’s what people want. It’s more relationships.

There’s a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. One of the things is they wish they would have done certain things differently. They wish they spent more time with loved ones. It’s all so basic. As successful as the doctors, lawyers, and people that are on here, do you want to be in 30 years or 50 years sitting there going, “I wish I would have done more of this.” I had a client who went on a hike with his father and he has three older daughters and he was very regretful in his email.

He said, “I wish I would’ve known you ten years ago when my teenage daughters were this age because I missed out on so much stuff with them.” I don’t want people to have regrets like that. I’m impressed, by the way, you built your life and spent time with your boys. I’m building my life to spend time with my kids because that stuff is going on the calendar first. I’m building my business around my life and not my life around my business.

It’s been a lot of work for me. I’ll share this story. I was coming back from Salt Lake City on an impromptu ski trip with my older son. It made me make some choices. He looked at me and he said, “Dad, I love you. I had such a great time. I want to do more of this.” I was fortunate that I had the tools that you’ve given me, Craig, and the accountability that you’ve provided to help me have the ability to now spend more time with my kids and know how important it is to do that. I lost my father at age five. Life is precious.

We don’t know how much time it’s going to be left on us on this earth. I’m going to make the audience go back to that first episode and know the advice that you gave to your 25-year-old self. That was our first episode. Check it out at NextLevelIncome.com. Craig, if you had to go back to your 35-year-old self, I’m not going to tell the audience, although you can tell how old you are now. We’ll have you back on and you can go back another ten years but at age 35, what would you show up and tell yourself?

That’s where I had to step into being a better leader, but letting my ego go and ask for more help in the business. I want to do everything myself. I thought I was smarter than everybody else. Even when people started passing me that were my peers, some of them did, some didn’t. I didn’t say, “What are you doing right here?” Even fixing the fines and stuff. I haven’t done a poor job but I haven’t done the best job of being a steward with the money that I’ve earned. I would’ve asked for help in certain areas sooner. There are certain things that I wish I would have done earlier. Eventually, I did them and everything got better. I did a lot of things right along the way. I’ll give myself a little pat on the back but those are a couple of areas where I could have been better in the leadership and asking for help.

Thank you so much for being on here sharing everything that you’ve done in your book with the audience, Craig. You also have a special offer for anybody. For the first 100 people that email me with FREE BOOK in the subject line with your address, we’re going to send you a free copy of Craig’s book.

I want to get this book in the hands of as many people as possible.

If you want to get a free copy of Craig’s book, email me at Chris@NextLevelIncome.com. Put FREE BOOK in the subject line, include your address, and we’ll make sure that we get you a copy of Craig’s The Perfect Week Formula sent out. Craig, thanks again for being with the audience.

Absolutely amazing, Chris.

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I hope you found this episode valuable. I have one more gift for you. If you haven’t got my book, Next-Level Income yet and would like me to send it to you in the mail for free then go to NextLevelIncome.com and click on the book tab. If you fill out the form on that page, I will send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for being a reader. Please like, share, and take 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.

Important Links:

• EarlyToRise.com

• The Perfect Day Formula

• Unstoppable

• The Perfect Week Formula

• Ready, Fire, Aim

• Chris@NextLevelIncome.com

• The Happiness Advantage

• The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

• Apple Podcasts – The Next-Level Income Show

• https://FreePerfectWeekFormula.com/giveaway

About Craig Ballantyne