In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Tommy Newberry about his morning routine, gaining experience in a field, teaching your kids about morning routines, taking steps to becoming an entrepreneur and more.
In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Tommy Newberry about his morning routine, gaining experience in a field, teaching your kids about morning routines, taking steps to becoming an entrepreneur and more.
Announcer
Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.
Ryan
Hey, Tommy. Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How's it going?
Tommy
Fantastic. Ryan, great to be with you. Yeah, I'm
Ryan
Yeah, I’m excited. In the pre-show, you had me laughing pretty hard. So I had to regroup myself before I started recording. So I'm excited about this.
Tommy
Let's see what other prizes we have coming.
Ryan
Yeah, you never know. That's life. So let's kick off by telling my audience of Morning Upgraders who you are and what you do for a living. And then something you're grateful for in your life at the current moment?
Tommy
All right, that's a good one. Tommy Newbery, I am a coach for entrepreneurs. I've been coaching since 1991 and probably starting earlier than I should have. But that means beginning tomorrow or beginning tomorrow be 31 years. I started in October of 91. And I am very, very grateful for people that are praying for me on a regular basis, at the current moment, some clutter and stuff that I'm dealing with. And so we're feeling prayers, my wife and I, especially for that. And was there another question? I would be grateful for my short-term memory, but is there anything else?
Ryan
What you do for a living, and what you're grateful for?
Tommy
So I'm grateful for the prayers, and I coach entrepreneurs primarily. I'll add this to make it more complete. I work with entrepreneurs who have a strong track record, they don't really need me, but they're trying to get to the next level economically without screwing up their faith and their family under Help. And that's been kind of the interesting little niche that I've carved out here for a while now.
Ryan
How old were you when you started coaching,
Tommy
I was maybe just a few days, and I turned 56. And about a week and a half. So I was a little bit before turning 25. And I really had no business doing that. But I was either going to coach baseball or coach people. And I thought I could control my definitely Destiny a little bit more by coaching people, and I started trying to call on corporate Atlanta at the time. And that just didn't work. So one of my prospects said you know what you're calling the wrong people to start calling on entrepreneurs. They'll appreciate the risk you're taking, and they might give you a chance, but the corporate folks aren't going to do that because you have no resume, track record, or credentials. Well, I'll focus on the positive part of that. But he was correct. I had nothing except faith and confidence in myself to go on. So my angle that it eventually worked was I was single, lived in an apartment, and didn't have any expenses. So I just told people, let me work with your prospect to try to find the right people. Let me work with you for a quarter. And you don't owe me anything till we're done. And if I deliver the results, then here's what you owe me. And then if I don't, you don't have to pay me anything. So 10 of my first 12 clients paid me, the other two gave me advice that was worth more than what the other 10 piping and one is still periodically working with me even, you know, almost 30 years later.
Ryan
So the answer to the question I was asked was you were 25. How did you convince people to work with you? But the US answered that with the, with that awesome offer?
Tommy
And yeah, it was hard. It was hard. But finally, I, fortunately, don't have to do that now. But I literally was going up with identify places where there were small businesses, and I would go door to door. I mean, I was just literally knocking on the door and introducing myself. It was very awkward and weird. But, you know, eventually, I got better and better. And then it just became referrals. And that didn't do the cold call stuff.
Ryan
How did you get the experience as a young buck to recommend, like, get them results and just for people listening that are maybe starting to think about starting a business I'm trying to pull like, like, what did that process look like for you since you were so now you're 25 million have been working for years. But you know.
Tommy
I had a couple of years out of college working, and I taught workshops for a software company. Then I also sold with that company. So I sold software for a little bit. Then I started teaching, and I found out I really love teaching. But I had been obsessed with baseball growing up. So I studied sports psychology. And then, when I got into sales, even though it was only for about a year and a half, I read everything I could on sales, and so much of it was psychological and about mindset and being your head right. And so I turned that into like a curriculum, a goal-setting curriculum with, you know, an emphasis on accountability. And, I mean, I really had the confidence that you could almost get in this is no offense to any coach, including myself, but I mean, if you just have somebody check-in, you know, ask you questions about your goals, and then check in on you every week for 10 or 15 minutes, then at the end of the quarter, you're gonna get better results than if you were just going alone. And then if you happen to have a quality person who can ask really better, you know, better questions exam really push you and has some instincts, then you can make more progress. But I was just kind of I was an outside person pushing people who were their own bosses and they didn't have a boss. They didn't have a board of directors. They were kind of alone proprietors, kind of folks, commercial real estate, financial services, restaurant tours, that kind of thing.
Ryan
And you're an author, too. And we're gonna go; we're gonna go to personal development in a second, but another question. You're an author, too. Are they two standalone businesses? Or is it kind of a flywheel where the books lead to coaching clients? Is there a marketing system behind that?
Tommy
We’re still working on that. They're kind kinda is, is the official answer that we've written down. But I started coaching. I did a reverse of what most people did or do, and nobody was coaching back. Then I used the word coach just to kind of camouflage the fact that I was 25. And so I was calling on people hoping to play upon their experience with athletic coaches, you know, I'm not better than you, but I can make you be better, or I can draw out better results from you. But there's a limit to how many people you can work with one on one. So I took about my first 100 clients. That was several years in the making. And then I pulled them together; I tried to get all of them, and I got about a third of them to come together to be in a group. And then I kind of converted to group coaching. And then the clients have given me most of my best ideas. But one of them said, you need to write a book to help draw people in. And so I self-published a book called Success is not an accident back in 1997. And I sold just a crazy number of books because all of my clients would send it to their best relationships, and then they tell friends, and then this company called, what was it? Oh, yeah, amazon.com came along. And all of a sudden, we had distribution channels that we never would have dreamed up. And then eventually, the book got picked up by Tyndale House Publishers, when I proposed another book idea called the four eight principles, the secret to a joyful life. And so we then we got it out mainstream, and we're kind of like the tortoise and the tortoise and the hare, we're just, we're not doing like amazing sales. But we're Steady, steady, steady, decades after the pub date. And before a principal did hit the New York Times, we've hit some lists. But you know, we're just kind of steady, we're kind of under the radar type of approach. And so yes, we do get business from the books. But most of our coaching, our high-end coaching, is a referral, almost like 99%. And then our lower-end coaching comes from social media, which we're not that good at. So probably not a lot from that or from books and people joining our mailing list, which we do a pretty good job of.
Ryan
Okay, so writing down two questions; I want to ask you about business, but I want to go back to, and I'm gonna go to personal development for a second before I ask. This is the moment of great podcasts. I have to ask about your morning routine. Give us a peek into your world and your morning start.
Tommy
My morning starts usually around six I like to use to get up a lot earlier. But I like getting up maybe five till six just to give me a little bit of an edge, like, literally the five minutes. So I'm up before six, but five minutes before six, we have a concept in our coaching called em Sr. And that for us stands for early morning success ritual. So I love the idea of what you're doing with the podcast. So the first thing I do is I have a pre-planned Thought for the Day, which is either a spiritual one like this is the day which the Lord has made, I'm going to rejoice and be glad in it, or it's just going to be something positive. Like, I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today. So I'm still in bed. And I think that thought I'll do a quick prayer, then I'll have my earbuds on the night table, I'll put them in, I have an early morning playlist, that's just kind of fire you up kind of playlist with some old cliche music, maybe a couple of spiritual things mixed in, but I usually don't end up listening to all of it. And then I drop before I go to the bathroom, do some push-ups try to get 40 in. And I've got my goals on a laminated sheet that we use called the portable coach, and I have that right in front of me, get to the bathroom, do that. But I've also got a bottle of water with some electrolytes in it. So I chug that before I go get coffee; I tried to piggyback a lot of things. So I usually will use a coffee maker or traditional or Keurig. But I'll have some Bible verses by either one of those machines. So as I'm waiting for that to get done, I'm just kind of flipping through the Bible verses. And that's kind of my Express quick routine. What I normally like to do is extend a little bit longer and do a devotion, review my goals, get a full workout in and then have like a protein shake or bulletproof coffee or something, and then I'll assess my priority. So I will sometimes have that entire thing. Stretch until 930 or 10. And that's becoming a trend with my client to start their day with the outside world later and later. I mean, when I was 25, I had my first appointment for the day's work at 7:30. And now I rarely have an appointment before 10:15. I'm just booked, you know, to the outside world. I'm booked before the end, but what is it? I'm really doing? I'm trying to get my head on, right? And think, and then I can go hard. I mean, think about it. If you don't have to get home early for kids working from, say, working. I do think that the early morning ritual is working. But it's a different kind of work. But from 10:15 to, let's say, 6:15. If you have had the foundation of an early morning that is successful, then that 10 to six is beautiful. Yeah, man, a morning breakfast can really throw everything off. No offense to breakfast places, but most people that get up and go to breakfast have a compromised morning routine. Then they're reacting to whatever the appointment was. I know some people have to do it. It's not an inherently bad thing. But I've just found for entrepreneurs; it's not the best way to start today.
Ryan
Have you managed them? Just looked at your about page.
Tommy
You'll see I have four kids and the beautiful young lady, there is my daughter-in-law. So we've been able to add a female to the mix as of about a year and a half ago.
Ryan
Nice. Okay, so three sons, correct? They adapted your morning routines or thoughts around that.
Tommy
Yes, the oldest one, who is the one that is married, is like me. When I was his age, he’s 26. And except he's better than me. And he is super fit and has a great early-morning success ritual. The other son, who's a couple of years younger, also has an early morning routine but is probably not as gung-ho about it. But he is actually working with one of my associate coaches. You know, he grew up with me, but I've, I've put one of my best guys on him, Charlie. They work together. So he's kind of learning the ropes. He's only about a year and a half out of college. And then the 16-year-old, the younger one there, he is only fond of getting up early VIPs will actually let me restate that he's not fond of getting up early. And his only early morning routine would be if I force it upon him, which I do why while he's eating breakfast, but he gets up early for school because he's still in high school. And otherwise, he loves to sleep late. But he's, he's worked. He understands the concept of it because we do, and several of those components are rattled off. We do those with him. You know, while he's eating in the morning, we'll watch a two or three-minute video, we'll do many devotions, we'll do positive self-talk, we'll talk about what would the day looks like when he gets home. It was an excellent day. And then, you know, I'm sharing little motivational tidbits with them. And until this year, when I was still driving them to school, we talked about success and goals and rattled off positive affirmations on the way to school. That's awesome.
Ryan
Yeah, I asked him because my kids are younger, 12, 10, and seven, but I do gratitude practice with them and just try to pepper them with some thoughts. I mean, obviously, they will have a morning routine or anything like that. But they're very competitive in sports. And so yeah, I'm trying to, like, love it, not force it upon them. What kind of like suggesting to them?
Tommy
Yeah, well, that's awesome. Those are great ages. And one thing I started with my oldest, who was dyslexic and had auditory processing, is he helped me create a tool called 30 Days to a self-confident kid. And so this is the reverse of the early morning. But every night, we'd recap the day and in the framework or the context of what were the three wins from the day discoveries, compliments from teachers, you know, small goals that he accomplished, fun things he did, and that kind of thing. That really helps. So it's amazing how young, I think seven is, is early enough to, you know, have a 92nd early morning routine or two minutes. I mean, in fact, with some of my clients, we call it an express MSR or a four-minute Blitz, and they have a competition to see how many different elements they can cram into a four-minute period. And it's really amazing when you have a group that's trying to compete with one another, and they figure out how to streamline and optimize everything. And so the four-minute blitz would be like if you had an urgency or your situation was weird. You never have to blow off your early morning routine, or as I was telling you in mind, I just built in a four-minute complete segment right at the beginning. So I got a prayer, and I looked at my goals, and I did the push-ups all in the first 90 seconds. None of that is noteworthy or amazing, but it's kind of telling my body, hopefully, in my mind, I'm in charge. And then, after I went to the bathroom then, the pace kind of slowed down. That's how I get people into the MSR. Just say house. How short can you make one that still covers? Spiritual, directional, and physical, and somehow four minutes seem to be about the shortest we could get it.
Ryan
My morning routine is 30 minutes, sometimes less, but I cram in, and those 30 minutes, 2530 minutes, I'm cramming in setting the priority for the daily gratitude practice celebrating a win, who I'm going to reach out to today, some journaling and meditation exercise like pull-ups and stuff. Push Ups. Yeah. Reading. And so it's like, what bite size? So, first thing, what's the first thing you do? Like the very first thing?
Tommy
The first thing is I grab a cup of water and a cup of water and sit at my desk. And then, I break down my priority for the day as you are the first thing I do.
Ryan
The first step. So is anybody else up in the house when you're doing that?
Tommy
Generally not. I mean, it just depends. I don't give myself a hard start date, typically, but usually, no one's up. But sometimes they are islands that I love that time just for the reason that I'm usually nine days out of 10. I'm usually the only one up, and I kind of got addicted to having the run to the house with no noise, the quietness; it is kind of nice.
Ryan
Yeah, this time flew; I can think of 1000 questions I want to ask you; I do like to keep this podcast for less than 20 minutes. So we're going to hold steady at that. But I do have one last question for you. I was gonna ask you a question about joy and happiness. But you've got the book about that. So we'll, we'll get back to entrepreneurship. So to the entrepreneurs listening, what I'm pulling from what you're saying is that you started the coaching business when your words you had no like, you were young to start it. And so you figured it out, you know? And then you're right, right? You've written all the books, and you've some of them are selling really well. And you figure that thing whole thing out. So for someone that's starting out, thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, like, what's your process for that? Like, what's Where do you get the grip from the just the wherewithal to, like, figure all that out? Is there an easy answer there? Is that a long answer?
Tommy
No, I won't say I don't think there's an easy answer; I can give a kind of short answer. But I have kind of encapsulated it and started before you're ready. Because you'll never ever really be ready. I remember when I was around the age of that started the business; the Braves were doing really well back in the early 90s. And I remember sitting around at a sports bar with my buddies, and there were five of us, and the other four sitting at the table all were all had just finished getting their MBA, and I did not. So somebody's kind of being a smart aleck and said, Hey, you're the only one without a graduate degree. So I thought, well, yeah, I'm the only one working for myself that didn't have a boss. It seemed to land pretty well. And, of course, they're smart and bright. But what I found out is only one of those, you know, 30 years later, has gone off to start their own business. Everybody doesn't need to start their own business. But I was so ignorant, in a good way. Kind of like, you know, you're not real smart, you might step into the, into the street off the curb when you shouldn't. But once you're you see the cars coming at you, you start to dash and turn, and you figure out how to get across the street without getting hit because you have no other choice. Well, if I just didn't know, I shouldn't start my business that young. And but going to graduate school, basically, we're learning all the things that could go wrong, all the reasons you might not want to start, the fact that 80% of businesses fail in the first five years, and I wasn't exposed to that. So I just kind of started. And then I did have some confidence that I could figure it out. Either I could learn it. Or I could ask somebody, and I still kind of think that I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. So I might not have competence like that everywhere. But it's kind of like. I'll figure it out. I'll figure I'll find somebody to the model I'll ask the better questions. I'll keep at it. And so that's my encouragement. This doesn't mean being stupid. I wasn't trying to say that or being impulsive. It just means there is forever, this one thing will never change, and there will always be good reasons not to follow your dream or to start your business. There'll be good reasons not to do that, solid, logical reasons not to start. But there'll be solid, logical reasons to start. And you just have to figure out which path of thinking you want to follow, to start or not to start, and either way is going to be full of challenges. So I decided to go down the path that I thought would produce more freedom for me, and then probably I could have made more money a lot quicker if I had stayed employed, you know, in a traditional sense, rather than starting my own business, but I like thinking of the freedom that I have is part of my compensation.
Ryan
Excellent advice. Great way to end this conversation. Thank you, Tommy, thanks for everything you shared. If someone wants to make you Ryan, where should we send them?
Tommy
Send them to tommynewberry.com just like it sounds tommynewberry.com Or they can track down my books on Amazon.
Ryan
Thanks, Tommy. This was a lot of fun.
Tommy
Thank you, Ryan.
Ryan
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