If your mornings feel like chaos – phone buzzing, inbox exploding, clients already chasing you – you’re not alone. In fact, I would wager that is a pretty typical morning for a busy recruiter.

But that doesn’t mean it’s a good morning.

Most recruiters start their day by reacting. Reacting to what’s in front of them, to what happened overnight, but I truly believe that you don’t win your recruitment day this way.

You win it in that first hour.

That first 60 minutes sets the tone for everything that follows: your focus, your energy, your confidence.

So, let’s break down how to actually win your recruitment day in the first hour.

Step 1 – Delay the digital dive

Don’t reach for your phone or check your inbox. Start there and you’re already playing defence.

One of the BIGGEST shifts that took me from averaging around $600k in billings a year to becoming a Million Dollar Biller was realising that your inbox is a list of other people’s priorities.

Give yourself 15–30 minutes of digital silence.
No email. No Slack. No Teams. No “quick check”.
This isn’t about meditation. It’s about control.
You’re setting the rule that you run the day – not your notifications.

You’re protecting your time for what matters.

Step 2 – Nail Your Morning Routine (before you even get to work)

If you don’t have personal energy, you’re already cooked. You will not win your recruitment day.

I believe it & every single success coach out there says it (so there must be something in it) – get your morning routine RIGHT.

For me this is about getting the basics right.

• 6am – alarm after 8 hrs sleep (sleep is technically the night before, but still 100% vital)
• 6:30am – GYM / Movement + 1L water
• 7:45am – black coffee, magnesium, B Complex, probiotic, supergreen supplements
• 8am – Kids (drop off, music, swimming etc)
• 9:30am – start work + 1L water by midday
• 12pm – break my fast (I fast until 12pm every day for a few reasons – the biggest being it massively helps me manage my Type 1 Diabetes, but some other great effects include mental clarity & gut healing). 

Now, you don’t need to have the same routine as me – but there should be some kind of routine – if you can incorporate movement into it, even better.

Movement is how you charge your battery.
Walk, stretch, breathe – whatever gets blood flowing and brain firing.
Even ten minutes changes your state and sharpens focus.

Step 3 – Define your Top 3 outcomes

When you get to the office or your desk, before you even open your inbox, decide what success actually looks like today.
Write your Top 3 outcomes – not tasks, outcomes.

Example:

• Book two client meetings for next week.
• Get Candidate Y an offer.
• Secure 3x interviews for X candidate.

These should be measurable (as if they’re not, how on earth do you know if you achieved your outcomes?)
When you set clear outcomes first, your activity starts driving results instead of noise.

Step 4 – Protect your Power Hour

Every recruiter should have one sacred, uninterrupted hour to start their day.
No meetings. No emails. No distractions.

Use it for the work that moves the dial: business development, client strategy, or key candidate calls.

And get SUPER protective over this time (I don’t care if you offend people to do it). If you protect this block like your commission depends on it (because it does), you’ll see results compound fast.

Step 5 – Feed your head, not your stress

Most recruiters (and people in any profession) start the day doom-scrolling – which equals an instant stress injection.

That temptation to pick up your phone and scroll is SO strong (I know, I fight it too) but there is so much science now around how damaging it can be for your brain – particularly first thing in the morning.

Harvard Health says doomscrolling triggers the body’s stress response, increases anxiety and depression, disrupts sleep and can shorten attention spans by constantly feeding the brain negative and / or emotionally charged content. 

So Flip it.

Spend 5–10 minutes on something that expands you:

• Listen to a podcast that fires you up (I know a good one ;).
• Journal what “winning today” means.
• Read one page of a book that sharpens your mindset.
• Call someone you love talking to & get your energy flowing.

Ignore that mobile phone temptation for as long as you possibly can.

Step 6 – Build the ritual

Winning your recruitment day isn’t a motivational moment. It’s a repeatable system. But the thing you need to know is, to have a truly successful, repeatable system, YOU have to be the one to create it.

It’s kind of like when you write out an SOP so that it’s not in your head anymore – even if you learnt it from someone else, it ends up working better because you have made it your own.

To give you can example that might help you get started, your system could look like:

• 1 hour of digital silence.
• Min 10 minutes movement.
• Top 3 outcomes written.
• One Power Hour blocked.
• 5 minutes mindset feed to reset your energy.

It’s boringly simple – and that’s why it works.

Bonus – When the morning inevitably blows up

Recruitment’s unpredictable. Candidates ghost, clients panic.
Some days go off the rails early. We know this.

Here’s the fix: pause for two minutes, breathe, and re-anchor on your Top 3.
Pick one thing you can move forward and do it.
Still counts as a win.

The payoff

When you own the first hour, everything shifts:

• You start proactive, not reactive.
• You lead your energy instead of leaking it.
• You build consistency that drives performance.
• You finish days knowing you actually moved the needle.
• You win your recruitment day.

You don’t need to master every hour – just that first one. The rest will follow.
Because when you win that first hour, you win your recruitment day.

Let’s f*cking go.