The Morning Upgrade Podcast Featuring Jeremy Streten
Thanks for joining me today for episode #7 of the Morning Upgrade Podcast, where I talk to entrepreneurs that have a growth mindset. Today, I’m talking to Jeremey Streten, owner of the Business Legal Life Cycle. He shares about his morning routine and how he starts the day at 4 am to read, workout, and get some work done before his kids get up. Every morning, he spends time playing with them and focusing on his family.
What We Talk About in This Episode
- Be proactive in the legal aspect of business, not reactive and solve problems before they arise.
- Using the Kanban post-it note system by Jim Benson for greater productivity.
- How the perfect day starts with the right morning routine.
Resources & Links
Connect with Jeremy Streten on LinkedIn or his website the Business Legal Life Cycle
Share link for this episode
Find The Books Mentioned on Kindle or Audible:
The E Myth by Micheal E. Gerber
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Transcription
Announcer:
Welcome to the morning upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.
Ryan Cote:
Hey everyone, this is Ryan Cote with the Morning Upgrade Podcast. Today, I’m excited to be speaking with Jeremy Streten. Hey Jeremy.
Jeremy Streten:
Hi Ryan, how are you?
Ryan Cote:
I’m doing good. Happy to talk to you, excited to have this conversation. Why don’t you start off by telling everyone who you are, what you do, and then what your interests are?
Jeremy Streten:
Yeah. Great. Thanks for having me on. So my name is Jeremy Streten. By training, I’m a lawyer and you can probably tell from my accent that I’m from Australia, I’m from a city called Brisbane in Australia. And I’m a lawyer by training and I’ve moved out of being the lawyer day-to-day and more of I am the business owner of that business. But I also run another business, which is a tech business, all about helping business owners to find the blind spots in their business from a legal point of view in a really efficient manner. And that’s called the business legal life cycle. So what do I enjoy doing? I love helping people. I love finding solutions for people in innovative ways and really solving complex problems and making them really simple. I really found a niche for that in what I do, in law, in consulting with other businesses. And I really love just helping people to find those really easy to find solutions from complex problems.
Ryan Cote:
You say you enjoy helping people. So would you say you get energy from talking to people? Do you feel your highest energy when you’re engaged in conversation and trying to solve problems?
Jeremy Streten:
Yeah, absolutely. So if I’m in there and I’m helping someone to find a solution to their problem, that’s when I really get great energy. I really enjoyed that part of it. And yeah, I get awesome energy out of actually just helping people and finding those solutions.
Ryan Cote:
So the Morning Upgrade Podcast is about personal development and growth and morning routines so if you have a morning routine, what does it look like? And if you don’t, what habits do you have that grow your personal development?
Jeremy Streten:
Well, I do you have a morning routine, It’s not that complicated. I’ve tried different ones, but really what I do is I get up at around 4:00 AM most days, I drink a glass of water, about 500 mils. I don’t know what that is in US terms but 500 mils is the glass of water that I make sure I drink. Then I will get up and I’ll read, I love reading and I love learning. And so I’ll get out my Kindle and I’ll read for an hour and then really get into, start doing some work for an hour before my kids get up. So between that four to six mark is really my time to focus in on what I want to learn, making sure that I read then getting into doing some work. And when I say some work, that’s usually about writing articles or working on my business, not working in my business and try and achieve something by 6:00 AM when my kids get up, normally, and then go and play with them for an hour. By then I find that if I’ve won the morning, if I’ve achieved all that, then I have an awesome day and it’s worked really well for me. I’ve tried different things with my morning routine and they haven’t really moved the needle as much as that has for me.
Ryan Cote:
Morning routines have been key for me, sort of like addicted to it now. I’m on 90 days straight, which for a while, I was doing it like every day, but I would stop a little bit and I would feel bad. Then I would start up again, feel great. Now I’ve got myself into a 90-day routine. I also use the Kindle, but I find that I prefer reading a physical book better because the Kindle, though it’s convenient having it, I find myself wanting to check Instagram and my emails and it’s become like reading while also trying to control myself and so it becomes distracting. But I do, like this morning I use my Kindle, but I prefer the actual physical book in my hand. I don’t know if you feel the same way, but…
Jeremy Streten:
I love the physical book and I think you’re right. My big thing is I love traveling as well, and I can have all my books on my Kindle and I can take them wherever I like around the world and they’re all there. So I kind of force myself to read on the Kindle. But I agree with you, a physical book, nothing beats that as far as reading and really learning.
Ryan Cote:
I recently subscribed to success magazine, like the actual physical copy and I haven’t had a magazine delivered to my house in, I don’t even know, 10 years or something like that. And it was weird to get a magazine and be reading through it. It’s kind of nice actually, the Kindle is so convenient. So you talked about your life cycle business. What’s been the hardest thing about, I guess, trying to grow that business and how have you handled the situation or handled the challenges?
Jeremy Streten:
So the life cycle is all about, as I said, helping business owners to see their blind spots. So they can really plug those blind spots and stop… Problems that happen in business because people don’t go and get legal advice proactively. They’re very reactive. People come to lawyers when they have a problem and we solve the problem. Life cycle is about changing that and being more proactive. So the biggest challenge there is around educating, not only business owners but lawyers, that there’s a different approach. Because I started being a lawyer, when we recorded this, about 17 years ago, so back in the early two thousand, and you’re trying to be reactive and I’m trying to change an industry to be more proactive. And so the challenge is really around teaching, one, business owners that there is a proactive approach to law. They don’t have to just solve problems as they arrive, they can prevent them before they occur, but also to educate the attorneys and show attorneys that there can be a different way and that if they do it the right way they can actually help their clients solve their problems before they arise, which means that they build better relationships with those clients. And they become the trusted advisor because they’re solving problems they’re not just solving them after they arise. So that’s the biggest challenge in the business is really around just that education piece for lawyers… Lawyers, attorneys, I have the product in Australia, the UK, the US, and into South Africa as well. And it’s the same common amongst all four countries.
Ryan Cote:
They don’t feel like they need it, or is it that they don’t have a growth mindset or they just don’t think they need this type of training?
Jeremy Streten:
For the lawyers, it’s very much the, they’re so in the business doing the work that they don’t see that there’s another way to actually help their clients. And for the business owners, it’s the same problem. People are so busy in the business doing the work that they’re not thinking about prevention, they’re just thinking about reaction. And so it’s an education piece to show people how there is a better way, how there’s a cost-effective way, and how they can solve their problems really easily if they just take the approach now.
Ryan Cote:
Previous guests, Adam Leem, he was talking about the same thing like working, he helps businesses with their finances. And they’re often too much in the weeds in their business, not working on their business. And we were talking about the E-Myth revisited book or E-Myth, which is that whole, Michael Gerber, is a whole description of what happens to a person that’s good at something, they start a business but they’re not really a business person. Now they’re working in the weeds and they’re just not working on the vision and the strategy of the business and just starts to crumble around them. So definitely can resonate with that a little bit. So let’s talk about, you said you’d get up very, very early, much earlier than I do. Let’s talk about your day though. What does a perfect day look like for you? Have you ever mapped that out? What it looks like, elements of the perfect day for you?
Jeremy Streten:
So I’ve been very big and implemented what I call a default diary, which is like an ideal week. So I have the whole week mapped out of everything I do and when I do it. And so the perfect day looks different every single day and will depend on the type of work that I’m doing. So, yeah, I usually get up at four. I don’t get up before every day, I’m not gonna say that I get up at four every day. I do go to bed very early. When I had children, my mother gave me the advice of go to sleep when they go to sleep so that when they wake up in the middle of the night you’re not too tired. And I kind of just got into that habit. And I haven’t got out of that habit. We had my kids up at six and five and I just form that habit. So my day does vary per day. And the perfect days is if I can start out with that routine, if I can start out by reading, if I can start out by doing some good work on the business and then spend an hour with my children, at least, sometimes two and take them to school, it sets me up for a good day no matter what the rest of my schedule is. So I don’t have a perfect day for every day, but I have a perfect day for the week. And I find that works really well and I find that I achieve more. That changes too, Ryan, it’s not a set in stone and forget about it thing, every three months or so I will adjust that to just keep things interesting and where I find a tweak to that. And I find that works really, really well to just get my days going and making sure that I’m achieving what I want to achieve.
Ryan Cote:
Do you plan out the week on a Sunday or something, how does that look?
Jeremy Streten:
I’ll plan it out over the weekend. Usually, the week is set on what I’m going to do and when I’m going to do it for say a three-month period. And then I’ll plan out, I use the Kanban system, which was popularized by Jim Benson. And it came from Toyota, I think it was in Japan. And that’s the post-it notes and you’re using those to put out your tasks and I’ll do that on a Sunday and put out my tasks for the week and then make sure that I achieve all that by the end of the week,
Ryan Cote:
I haven’t heard of that system before, I need to check that out. How do you say it, what was the name of the product?
Jeremy Streten:
Kanban. So it’s K A N B A N. It’s a book called Personal Kanban and it’s by a gentleman by the name of Jim Benson who lives in Seattle, I believe. And his partner’s name just escapes me for the moment, but it’s a really good read and a really good system to get stuff done.
Ryan Cote:
Put that in the show notes for sure. So I’ve got one more question and then you can tell everyone how they can learn more about you, connect with you maybe on LinkedIn, whatever you want. So habits, it sounds like you’ve already given some of them reading, going to bed early, waking up early, the system you follow for planning out, your Kanban system. What other habits do you have around personal development that help you be a better father, a better leader, a better business owner?
Jeremey Streten:
So the ones that we’ve mentioned before, there are definitely ones that I have. Another one is that I also use, I love systems, will be able to hear, but the 12 week year, which I’m sure you know about from our ISI group. And I have mapped out the high-value activities that I want to get done. So things like making sure that I have at least exercise three times a week, making sure that as far as being a better father goes, I always make sure that at least two days a week, I go and pick up my kids and I drop them off at least two days a week at school, that I make sure that I spend some time with them and I have that all mapped out and I’d actually sit down in that three month period and map out everything that I’m doing and make sure that I actually do those things. So not really any more habits than that, except for one other one that I like to do is spend some time, three times a week during critical thinking on my business and really shut myself off from the world. We were talking about the Kindle and distractions there and putting all the devices away, getting out a piece of paper or a notebook, and doing critical thinking about the business. I found that to be a really useful habit to really think about, think things through, and really get a good result for the business going forward and really decide where you’re going. So that’s another habit that I’ve found really good.
Ryan Cote:
A hundred percent green shirt on that last part with your journaling on your thoughts and make new ideas flow. I’ve been doing that recently too, where I have a pen and paper, no phone, and I’ll look at my journal and see what I wrote down in previous months or previous weeks and just whatever flows on my mind, I’ll just start writing ideas down and thoughts and it’s really cleansing. I didn’t think I would like it as much so appreciate you saying that. I appreciate all the information and habits and tools you’ve given us. What’s the best way that someone can connect with you if they’re interested in learning more?
Jeremy Streten:
So the best way is LinkedIn. If you search for Jeremy Streten, I can put that in the show notes because it is a bit of a weird spelling. I’m the only one, at least on LinkedIn, but I’ve not seen the world. People can connect with me there, that’s probably the best way. Happy to help anyone out if they’ve got any questions about what we’ve talked about today.
Ryan Cote:
Thanks for being on. Thanks, everyone for listening.
Announcer:
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