Welcome to My Blog

I’m not a morning person.

My morning consists of waking up as late as possible and feeling personally victimized by my alarm clock. And no matter how many times I wake up to my alarm, my first thought is always, “Why are you doing this to me?!”

It has caused a love-hate relationship between my phone and myself. 

Disgruntled, I then scroll through my Instagram feed. Oh, did I say, “As late as possible”? I should mention I give myself ten minutes to get out of bed.

Here are (a few) things I do NOT do in the morning:

• Work out
• Make a to-do list
• Meditate
• Visit my personal trainer
• Hang out in my home gym
• Address critical emails
• Read all the tech industry headlines
• Call family members
• Say goodbye to my kids

Maybe that’s why I am not a widely famous life coach, rich entrepreneur, CEO or founder of any major corporations, creator of any mega-popular social media channels, or author of any best-sellers. 

And that’s also why, for five days, I decided to try the morning routines of five highly successful people: Elon Musk, Gary Vaynerchuk, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey, and Tony Robbins.

At the end of it, did I actually become more productive? You’ll just have to read to find out. 

1. Elon Musk

The famous figure behind Tesla and SpaceX gets six hours of sleep, typically waking up at 7:00 a.m. From there, his routine looks roughly like this:

• Addresses critical emails for 30 minutes
• Drinks coffee — but is too busy for breakfast
• Sends kids off to school
• Showers and goes to work

To prepare for my Elon Musk morning, I stayed awake until midnight to ensure accuracy. He doesn’t get more than 6 hours of sleep, so neither could I. 

 

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Apr 24, 2017 at 11:49pm PDT

That meant my “address critical emails” time was partially cut short — in my half-asleep state, I flung my cell phone behind my bed and needed to take some time to move the bed to retrieve it. How Musk runs two multi-billion dollar companies on six hours of sleep is beyond me.

I soon realized I had another problem with the address critical email activity. As you might imagine, being a marketing blogger doesn’t require quite as many critical back-and-forth emails as being founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. So, I refreshed my email and replied to the six emails in my inbox, which took about seven minutes — leaving me with 23 minutes to spare.

I’ll admit that I didn’t love starting my morning with emails. I wasn’t fully awake, so I can only hope my responses resembled something coherent. Plus, by the time I got to work, I had to re-read the emails because I forgot what they said.

But I understand why Musk does it. Emailing can put you in a task-oriented mindset: “Okay, here are the things I need to tackle first when I get to the office.”

Showering is also something I also do every morning — and likely the only thing Musk and I have in common — and I don’t have any kids to say goodbye to. And while I respect that he only drinks coffee in the mornings (with only six hours of sleep, I needed it, too), by the time I got to work at 8:45, I was starving.

So, although Musk skips breakfast, I allowed myself a banana. After all that hard work responding to critical emails — not to mention, moving my bed frame — I figured I deserved it.

2. Gary Vaynerchuk

This entrepreneur, author, and speaker wakes up at 6 a.m., followed by these tasks:

• Reads Techmeme headlines, Business Insider, and ESPN, among others
• Checks out Twitter and Instagram
• Works out with his personal trainer, “Muscle Mike,” for 45 minutes to an hour
• Calls a family member

How Vaynerchuk — better known to some as “Gary Vee” — devours this much information and actually retains it at 6 a.m. is nothing short of miraculous.

 

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Jan 22, 2018 at 9:44am PST

But I made a list of these links in my Notes app the night before, and at 6:01, I opened Techmeme and read the headlines. I then made my way through Business Insider, ESPN — which I barely skimmed, since I don’t understand sports at any time of day — Twitter, and Instagram.

It felt like a ton of information to devour before getting out of bed.

While reading these articles in their entirety wasn’t entirely feasible due to time restrictions, checking out “what’s going on” in one’s industry in the morning seems a good idea. The article headlines inspired me to jot down some new ideas before I even reached the office.

For the next time, however, I don’t have a personal trainer — but I do have Shaun from the T25 “high-intensity” workout DVDs. I figured that was close enough. And I’ll admit: It felt really good to get the workout over with. I was energized and refreshed by 7 a.m. and didn’t have to worry about fitting in a workout after work.

That said, it’s also really hard to do a high-intensity workout without any breakfast. So buyer beware: You might feel like passing out.

After that, Gary calls a family member on his way to work. I called my brother and spoke to him for exactly 47 seconds, mostly about why I was calling him that early and thought it was okay to wake him up.

3. Jack Dorsey

The founder/CEO of both Twitter and Square wakes up at 5:30 a.m., followed by meditation and a six-mile run.

After checking emails during my Elon Musk morning and devouring news outlets during my Gary Vee experience, I was enthusiastic to meditate during Jack Dorsey’s morning. Granted, I was less thrilled to run six miles — but we’ll get to that later.

I’m a meditation rookie, so I downloaded a meditation app called Simple Habit. I didn’t think I could do real meditation if I tried to do it on my own — in fact, I’d probably just fall asleep.

The Simple Habit app starts you off slowly. My first lesson was only seven minutes long, mainly focused on my breathing. Admittedly, at 5:30 a.m., staying awake was the biggest obstacle — which I actually managed to accomplish

Surprisingly, I enjoyed meditating that early. It was easier for me to focus first thing, before my thoughts had the chance to ramp up. Plus, the research behind meditation has indicated numerous benefits to the well-being of employees — things like creativity, focus, decision-making, stress-reduction, and more. 

Of course, then I had to get up off my meditation floor and run. Keep in mind that I’ve taken about five months off of running outdoors, because Boston winters are, in a word, brutal. But Dorsey lives in San Francisco, so I believed it would be unrealistic to re-enact this part of his morning. Oh, shucks.

Wow pic.twitter.com/EmlgVrUu8G

— jack (@jack)
September 1, 2017

But then, I did some research and found that Dorsey’s average morning weather in San Francisco is about 39 degrees — which, on this particular morning, was actually colder than Boston’s. So, I got out the running gear. It wasn’t easy, and about three miles in, I took a full-mile walking break upon the impression that my frozen lungs had collapsed.

But I did it. It took me about an hour — so I’m not sure I can make it a standard part of my morning routine.

Six miles seems like a lot, but I see the appeal. Meditation and running can encourage you to start your day in a healthy mindset. Meditation reminded me to stay present and focused throughout the day, and running got my endorphins and energy going. And, once again, I got my workout out of the way — which meant I could spend my evening relaxing.

4. Sheryl Sandberg

The author and Facebook COO wakes up early, in order to get to the office by 7 a.m. And before then, she manages to:

• Spend an hour responding to emails
• Work out in home gym
• Drop her kids off at school

Once again, I ran into the same predicament I had with Musk’s morning. I have about four emails first thing in the morning, and Sandberg has an hour’s worth.

So I took my time responding to those four emails, then scrolled Facebook for a bit, and — in a nod to my Gary-Vaynerchuk-day — read some headlines, and checked Instagram and Twitter.

I missed my Dorsey-meditation-morning.

 

A post shared by Sheryl Sandberg (@sherylsandberg) on Nov 29, 2017 at 2:14pm PST

Unfornately, I don’t own a home gym — but I do own a yoga mat, the aforementioned T25 DVDs, and my very own state-of-the-art staircase. My home-gym exercise consisted of me completing one of those DVD workouts, followed by 10 laps up and down my stairs, topped off with a dash of yoga. And when I think about it, Sandberg’s home workout might not be so different.

Silicon Valley executives: They’re just like us.

I don’t have any kids to drop off at school, but after the investment in creating my make-shift home gym, that might be a good thing  — I wouldn’t have had time.

5. Tony Robbins

This motivational speaker gets three-to-five hours of sleep, waking up between 7 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. After that, he:

• Performs a breathing exercise
• Expresses gratitude
• Experiences connection
• Visualizes success

I left this morning routine for Friday because it sounded — well, the easiest, if you will. But admittedly, I didn’t follow the three-to-five hours of sleep part. If I had, I wouldn’t be writing this post right now, and would probably be sleeping in HubSpot’s nap room instead.

Robbins curated his own personalized morning routine, which he calls “priming,” which is supposed to bring you into a positive and energetic mindset at the beginning of each day.

First, there’s a breathing exercise, more accurately known as Kapalbhati Pranayama. Robbins sits up straight, closes his eyes, and inhales through his nose as he simultaneously lifts his arms — think of the way you’d do that during a shoulder press.

Then, as he exhales through his nose, he brings his arms back to his body, palms up. He does three sets of thirty, with short breaks in-between.

Truth time: I felt ridiculous doing this on my bedroom floor first thing in the morning.

 

A post shared by Tony Robbins (@tonyrobbins) on Apr 28, 2017 at 3:08pm PDT

The breathing was nice, but without my meditation guru — a.k.a., my Simple Habit app — my mind kept wandering. What should I eat for breakfast? How many reps is this? What time is it?

Next, Robbins spends three minutes thinking about what he’s grateful for — roughly three items per minute). Three minutes doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you only have three objects per minute, it kind of is.

My first minute went something like this: Okay, I’m grateful for my family … and, my health … and, hmm, I am grateful for clean drinking water.

I processed these thoughts for what seemed like an adequate amount of time, only to open my eyes and realized it had only been 20 seconds.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve thought of things to be grateful for, but it was the first time I’ve tried visualizing the list. And even though some items are tricky to visualize, it did make the exercise more genuine. At first, for example, I imagined the word “family”. But when I realized I needed to spend more time on it, I started visualizing specific relatives, and what it is about each one that I’m truly grateful for.

After finishing his gratitude exercise, Robbins moves onto an “experiencing connection” activity, in which he imagines a light flowing through his head, energizing him, and then imagines the light flowing back up through his head and outward to his loved ones and strangers.

This step is supposed to last three whole minutes. My light entered and exited my body in about 20 seconds, so I had to close my eyes and do it again. And while I appreciated the gesture, I’m not sure if this particular exercise is going to become a enduring part of my morning routine.

For the last three minutes, Robbins spends each minute on one goal and imagines how it will feel to accomplish that goal. And for me, that one was easy.

Visualizing success is similar to prioritizing your day, which I noticed seems to be a theme throughout the morning routines of many famous, successful figures. After visualizing three big goals, I was able to organize my day better, by choosing tasks that immediately supported that goal.

In a way, it actually made my day less busy. I visualized high-level goals, then narrowed down my to-do list to ensure these goals were met first.

Long-Term Takeaways

What I’ll Do Next

At the end of my five-day morning routine experiment, I considered going back to my ordinary routine. But there were some morning activities I actually enjoyed — and therefore, some that I’m going to adopt.

First, I agree that working out, even a little bit, is a great way to start the day. But I also enjoy attending late-evening workout classes, so I’ve created a moderation schedule. On Monday and Friday mornings, I now do a T25 DVD or go for a run, inside on a treadmill, weather permitting. On the remaining weekdays, I plan lunchtime or after-work workouts, because let’s be real — I have more time to do Barre classes than Gary Vee does.

I’ve fully adopted tiny increments of morning meditation. And although I haven’t gone full enlightenment, I found it’s easy to switch out my morning Spotify playlist for a seven-minute breathing exercise, which I can do on the train — so I have no excuses.

I don’t like waking up and starting my day with emails or industry headlines, mostly because — as previously stated — I’m only half-conscious in the morning. I do think it’s a good idea to tackle these things early, but since I’m not Sheryl Sandberg, it can usually wait until I’m in the office.

And finally, I’m not going to continue visualizing any lights going through my head and into my soul — sorry, Tony. But instead of a full ten minutes of Instagram in the morning, I’ve switched to seven minutes on Instagram and three minutes dedicated to gratitude.

I’ve done that primarily for two reasons. Not only do I have more time to visualize things I’m grateful for in my own life, but it also leaves less time to feel envious of other people’s “Insta-perfect” lives.

What Else I Learned

And while they didn’t get their own full sections in this article, I came across two other interesting takeaways in the course of my research. First, I learned that Mark Zuckerberg once said he dresses the same way each day, as it gives him “one less decision to make.”

I’m no Mark Zuckerberg, but I will admit that he has, at the very least, proven himself successful. No matter what he wears — or what else people might say about him — he can come into work and no one is going to think, “Wow, what a lazy slacker.”

But on the first day I planned on wearing my Mark-inspired uniform — a grey t-shirt and jeans — I looked into the mirror and realized I looked like someone who had either overslept, or didn’t really care about my appearance. And I’m not the founder of any companies. So I changed, because this early in my career, appearance is still an indicator of effort.

But I like the premise behind Zuckerberg’s routine. Why am I wasting fifteen minutes deciding what to wear each morning? While I don’t want to wear the same thing every day, I can choose my outfits the night before. 

The second thing I discovered is there are both good and bad times to drink coffee in the morning.

As it turns out, your body’s cortisol generally peaks between 8 and 9 a.m., which is when your body is naturally “caffeinating” itself. If you drink coffee during that window, you’re probably not getting the full effects of your cortisol — or your coffee. Plus, your body builds up a higher tolerance to coffee during this time, because it’s thinking, “We don’t need any more of this.”

Now, I try not to drink coffee until 9:30 a.m., when my cortisol levels are dipping. So far, so good.

Give It a Try

And with that, it’s your turn. Try these morning routines for yourself, and see how successful you can become.

If you need a “cheat sheet” to get started, here are seven commonalities of successful people’s morning routines:

1. Wake up early.
2. Decide and review what to do for the day, and set goals.
3. Work out.
4. Have a healthy breakfast, or at least a smoothie. Whatever you do, don’t start with coffee.
5. Maintain a journal or visualize how you’re grateful.
6. Meditate.
7. Tackle the day — early on — with emails and/or industry headlines.

At age 11, I dreamed of being an editor at a major magazine. I even put together my first publication, Teen Scene Magazine, using colored construction paper, yarn, and in-depth feature interviews with … my dad.

Flash forward to today. I’ve swapped my colored construction paper and yarn for PowerPoint and InDesign. I’ve replaced my dad with marketing experts and influencers (in the office, that is). And week after week, I have the satisfaction of being an ebook creator.

But making an ebook can be overwhelming. Not only do you have to write the content, but you also need to design and format it into a professional-looking document that people will want to download and read. With lead generation being the top goal for content marketing, however, ebooks are an essential part of an successful inbound marketing program.

In this post, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of creating an ebook by, well, creating an ebook. And if you’re worried about your lacking design skills, fret not …

Got your free ebook templates? Ready to make an ebook? Great — let’s get to it.

How to Create an Ebook

Step 1: Choose a Topic That Matches Your Audience’s Needs

Remember: The goal of your ebook is to generate leads for your sales team, so pick a topic that will make it easy for a prospect to go from downloading your ebook to having a conversation with your sales team.

This means your ebook shouldn’t deviate much from the topics you cover in your other content marketing channels. Rather, it’s your opportunity to do a deep dive into a subject you’ve only lightly covered until now, but something your audience knows they need to learn more about.

For example, in listening to sales and customer calls here at HubSpot, I’ve learned ebooks for use in content marketing is a huge obstacle for our audience, who are marketers themselves. So if I can provide not only this blog post, but resources to make ebook creation easier, I’m focusing on the right topic for opening up a sales conversation.

To get your creative juices flowing, here are some example ebook titles to consider. (Note: Replace “x” with an appropriate number.) You can also use our free Blog Topic Generator tool to come up with more ideas. Most blog topics can be made comprehensive enough to serve as longer form ebook topics.

• X Best Practices for [Insert Industry/Topic]
• An Introduction to [Insert Industry/Topic]
• X Common Questions About [Insert Industry/Topic] Answered
• X [Insert Industry/Topic] Statistics For Better Decision Making
• Learn From The Best: X [Insert Industry/Topic] Experts Share Insights

For this blog post, I’m going to use the PowerPoint version of template two from our collection of five free ebook templates. Through each section of this post, I’ll provide a side-by-side of the template slide and how I customized it.

Below, you’ll see my customized cover with my sales-relevant ebook topic. For help with writing compelling titles for your ebooks, check out the tips in this blog post.

Step 2: Outline Each Chapter of Your Ebook

The introduction to your ebook should both set the stage for the contents of your ebook and draw the reader in. What will you cover in your ebook? How will the reader benefit from reading it? For tips on how to write an effective introduction, check out this post.

Some ebook creators say that an ebook is simply a series of blog posts stitched together. While I agree you should treat each chapter like an individual blog post, the chapters of your ebook should also flow fluidly from one to the other.

The best way to outline your ebook is by thinking of it as a crash course on the sales-relevant topic you selected. In my example of creating an ebook, I know I need to cover how to:

1. write effective copy
2. design an ebook
3. optimize ebooks for lead generation and promotion

While my example has a few chapters, keep in mind that your ebook does not need to be lengthy. I have one golden rule for ebook length: Write what is needed to effectively educate your audience about your selected topic. If that requires five pages, great! If that requires 30 pages, so be it. Just don’t waste words thinking you need to write a long ebook.

With that, let’s move on to the actual copy you’re writing.

Step 3: Break Down Each Chapter as You Write

Get writing! Here, you can approach each chapter the way you might write a long blog post — by compartmentalizing each chapter into smaller sections or bullet points, as shown in the picture below. This helps you write simply and clearly, rather than trying to use sophisticated language to convey each point. It’s the most effective way to educate readers and help them understand the new material you’re providing.

Be sure to maintain a consistent structure across each chapter, as well. This helps you establish natural transitions between each chapter so there’s a clear progression from one chapter to the next (simply stiching blog posts together can rob you of this quality).

These practices should hold true for all your other marketing efforts, such as email marketing, call-to-action creation, and landing page development. “Clarity trumps persuasion,” as Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MECLABS often likes to say.

Want to make sure you’re keeping your ebook exciting for readers? Here are some key tips to keep in mind:

• Use keywords in the title that emphasize the value of your offer. Examples include adjectives like “amazing,” “awesome,” or “ultimate.”
• Keep your format consistent so you create a mental model for readers and enhance their understanding of the material.
• When appropriate, make use of formatting — like bulleted lists, bold text, italics, and font size changes — to draw people’s eyes to your most important content or emphasize certain points you want readers to remember.

Step 4: Design Your Ebook

Our downloadable ebook templates are offered in both PowerPoint and InDesign. For this example, we’ll show you how to do it in PowerPoint, since more people have access to that software.

You’ll notice we only have one “chapter page” in the template (slide three). To create additional chapter pages, or any pages really, simply right click the slide and choose Duplicate Slide. This will make a copy of your slide and allow you to drag it to its proper place in your ebook via the sidebar or Slide Sorter section of PowerPoint. You can then customize it for any subsequent chapters.

Step 5: Use the Right Colors

Ideally, our free ebook templates would magically match your brand colors. But, they probably don’t; this is where you get to truly personalize your work. However, because ebooks offer more real estate for color than your logo or website, it’s a good idea to consider secondary colors within your brand’s color palate. Ebooks are where this color scheme can truly shine.

To learn how to add your brand’s colors to PowerPoint, check out this blog post. That way, you can customize the color scheme in our ebook templates to match your brand!

Step 6: Incorporate Visuals

Images and graphics in ebooks are hard to get right. The key to making them fit well is to think of them as complementary to your writing. Whether you add them during or after you’ve finished writing your ebook’s copy, your visuals should serve to highlight an important point you’re making or deconstruct the meaning of a concept in an easy-to-understand, visual way.

Images shouldn’t just be there to make the ebook easy on the eyes. Rather, they should be used to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material you’re covering. If you need help gathering visuals, we have three sets of free stock photos that might help you along the way:

• 75 Standard Stock Photos
• 160 Business-Themed Stock Photos
• 250 Holiday Stock Photos

And if you’re compiling a data-heavy ebook, you might want to download our free data visualization ebook for tips about designing compelling charts and graphs for your content.

Step 7: Highlight Quotes or Stats

Another way to enhance your ebook is by highlighting quotes or stats within your design. Just be sure the quote or stat you’re using genuinely adds value to the content.

Whether you’re emphasizing a quote or adding a visual, keep all your content within the same margins. If your copy is consistently 1-inch indented on your page from both the left and right side, keep your designed elements aligned using that same spacing.

Step 8: Place Appropriate Calls-to-Action Within Your Ebook

Now that your content is written and designed, it’s time to optimize it for lead generation, reconversion, and promotion.

Think about how you got here — you clicked on a call-to-action (CTA) in an email, on a social media post, or somewhere else. A CTA is a link or visual object that entices the visitor to click and arrive on a landing page that will get them further engaged with your company. Since your ebook readers have probably converted into leads in order to get their hands on your ebook to begin with (more on this in Step 2 below), use the CTAs within your ebook to reconvert your readers and propel them further down your marketing funnel.

For instance, a CTA can lead to another offer, your annual conference’s registration page, or even a product page. Depending on what this next action is, CTAs can be an in-line rectangle or a full page teasing the next offer (see both images below).

To hyperlink the CTA in your ebook (or any image or text in your ebook) to your destination URL, simply go to Insert >> Hyperlink in PowerPoint.

We’ve even designed 50 customizable calls-to-action in PowerPoint you can download and use in your ebooks. You can grab them here.

Now, we don’t have a dedicated CTA template slide in the PowerPoint ebook templates for you to customize … but it’s still simple! All you have to do is duplicate slide four (the Header/Subheader slide) and customize copy or add images as needed. You can also go to Insert >> New Slide and work from there.

Step 9: Convert It Into a PDF

Once you’ve finished writing your ebook — CTAs and all — it’s time to convert it to the right file type so it’s transferrable from you to your recipient.

To convert your ebook to a PDF, click File >> Save As in the ebook template you have open. Under File Format, select PDF and select a destination on your computer for this new file.

Why can’t you just attach what you have to a landing page and be done with it? Word documents, PowerPoints, and similar templates are perfect for creating your ebook, but not for delivering it. Because these templates are editable, the contents of your ebook are too easily corrupted, distorted, or even lost when moving from your computer to the hands of your future leads. That’s where PDFs come in.

You’ve seen these letters at the end of files before. Short for Portable Document Format, the .PDF file type essentially freezes your ebook so it can be displayed clearly on any device. A popular alternative to PDFs is the .EPUB file type. See a comparison of EPUB to PDF here.

Step 10: Create a Dedicated Landing Page for Your Ebook

Your ebook should be available for download through a landing page on your site. A landing page is a web page that promotes/describes your offer and provides a form that visitors need to fill out with their contact information in order to access your ebook. This is how you are able to convert your visitors into business leads that your sales team can ultimately follow up with.

For instance, you went through this landing page in order to access this ebook template. To learn more about how to optimize your landing pages for conversion, download this free ebook.

Step 11: Promote Your Ebook and Track its Success

Once your landing page is all set, you can use that destination URL to promote your ebook across your marketing channels. Here are five ways you can do this:

• Advertise your new ebook on your website. For example, feature a CTA or link to your offer’s landing page on your resources page or even your homepage.
• Promote your ebook through your blog. For instance, consider publishing an excerpt of your ebook as a blog post. Or write a separate blog article on the same topic as your ebook, and link to it at the end of your post using a call-to-action to encourage readers to keep learning. (Note: This very blog post is the perfect example of how to promote an offer you created with a blog post.)
• Send a segmented email to contacts who have indicated an interest in receiving offers from your company.
• Leverage paid advertising and co-marketing partnerships that will help you promote your ebook to a new audience.
• Publish posts to social media with a link to your ebook. You can also increase social shares by creating social media share buttons within your ebook, such as the ones at the bottom right of this ebook. Here’s a blog post that shows how to hyperlink them.

After your content is launched and promoted across your marketing channels, you’ll also want marketing analytics in place to measure the success of your live product.

For instance, you should have landing page analytics that give you insight into how many people downloaded your ebook and converted into leads, and closed-loop analytics that show how many of those people ultimately converted into opportunities and customers for your business. Learn more through HubSpot’s Landing Pages App.

And with that, we’ve built an ebook, folks! You can check out the packaged version of the example I built through this post here:

Ebook Creation Resources

• 5 Free Ebook Templates in PowerPoint and InDesign [Free Download]
• 13 More Customizable Ebook Templates in PowerPoint [Free Download]
• Data Visualization 101: How to Design Charts and Graphs [Free Download]
• How to Easily Turn Blog Posts Into an Ebook [Blog Post]
• A Simple Guide to Creating Social Sharing Links for Your Ebooks [Blog Post]

Do you have any other tips or resources for making ebook creation easier? Apply them to your content marketing strategy. I’d be remiss not to admit every company’s ebook will come to fruition differently. It all depends on the needs of your brand.