As most of you know, I grew up in a highly controlling religious organization. What many don’t know is just how far that system distanced us from the rest of the world particularly when it came to education and structure.
I was never enrolled in public school. No kindergarten. No classroom. No teachers. In our environment, education was left up to individual parents, and in my case, it was wildly inconsistent at best. But the thing that turned out to be even more destructive than the lack of education?
The absence of structure
I was one of seven kids, somewhere number 3, the two under me were twin girls… Our home was loud and unstructured. The lights stayed on way too late. Conversations, laughing, distractions, and endless noise kept the night going well past midnight. And when we finally fell asleep? It wasn’t uncommon for us to wake up at noon or even later.
I grew up thinking this was normal. But it wasn’t. It was dysfunction disguised as freedom. And it came with a cost I wouldn’t fully understand until years later.
One time, I was having a conversation with someone about the public school system, and they were venting about how poor the education was. I remember blurting out:
“Well, at least they’re getting up in the morning.”
It just came out and it shocked even me. That moment forced me to confront something painful: my bar was that low. Just the act of getting up and showing up was, in my mind, a huge win.
That’s how deeply broken my foundation was.
When I first started All Nation Restoration in Austin, I thought I’d figured out a clever workaround to my struggle with mornings: I designed the entire company around working late.
We took on commercial projects that needed nighttime work, dialysis clinics, dental offices, daycares. I pitched them on after-hours service to avoid disrupting daytime operations. And it worked.
But over time, I saw the flaw.
You can’t build a high-performing company while living in a broken rhythm.
You can’t lead when your sleep is off, your mornings are shot, and your energy is misaligned with your team, your family, or your clients. There is no substitute for waking up early, going to bed with your family, and starting your day with purpose.
It took years and a lot of grace for that truth to finally reshape my life.
Getting married helped.
Having children helped even more.
When I see my kids getting tucked in at 9 p.m., getting ready for school the next morning, it reminds me of what I missed and what I want to give them. These days, shutting the house down at a decent hour and getting up early to kick ass is my normal. It’s not always perfect, but it’s radically different from where I came from.
I had to make big changes not just in my personal routine, but inside my business too. I started identifying early-morning priorities. Meetings. Estimates. Calls. Things that must happen first thing. These structural shifts forced me to adapt and slowly, I rewired what had been broken.
And through it all, I learned this: freedom isn’t about sleeping in it’s about showing up.
If you’re a small business owner who feels constantly exhausted, let me tell you… You’re not alone. Especially if you came from a background like mine, it can feel impossible to stop the cycle
You stay up too late.
You think too much.
You over-plan in your head.
You can’t shut it off.
You sleep in.
You lose momentum.
And then you do it all over again.
But there is a way out.
It starts with acknowledging that structure serves your freedom, it doesn’t threaten it. It means facing the patterns you inherited from your past and being willing to dismantle them one by one.
Yes, it’s hard.
Yes, it takes time.
But the payoff? A business that’s healthier. A family that sees you. And a life you’re actually awake for.
You don’t have to be perfect. But you do have to get up.
You do have to show up.
You do have to decide that how you live matters just as much as what you’re building.
And if you’re willing to face the parts of your past that still haunt your habits trust me, you can change everything.
Stay Strong. Stay Focused. Stay in Business.
