The 5 am club

—Michelangelo
“São Paulo is so special, isn’t it?” said the billionaire as the unmarked and
economy-class car navigated by a driver in short sleeves stopped and started
through the thick traffic of this city of many millions. As in Mauritius, he sat
in the front passenger seat.
The three companions had just landed at the jetport and were heading to a
boutique hotel in the center of this financial capital of Latin America.
“It’s a big city,” noted the artist, offering another blinding glimpse of the
obvious.
“We so appreciate you flying us down here to Brazil for our wedding,” the
entrepreneur enthused.
“Thanks, brother,” the artist added.
“He really wanted the ceremony to take place at your compound by the
ocean,” said the entrepreneur, pointing to her fiancé with a warm look.
“I did,” stated the artist agreeably. “That place was paradise.”
“And, to be honest, I did too. But I wanted to honor my father, given that
he was Brazilian,” the entrepreneur explained.
“And a happy wife means a happy life,” confirmed the artist with a grin.
He then quoted the words from A.A. Milne’s 
Winnie-the-Pooh
: “If you
live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never
have to live without you.”
The entrepreneur moved closer to the artist in the back of the car as it
sailed past magnificent neo-gothic cathedrals, along great avenues with
towering high-rises, down a thoroughfare that showcased the impressive
Theatro Municipal de São Paulo and across a roadway where the majestic

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Ibirapuera Park sat.
What the artist shared made the billionaire think of his wife. He still
thought of her every day. And it wasn’t the luxurious trips to exotic places
that he most recalled. Nor the beautiful meals at the world’s best restaurants.
His mind drifted to the simplest and most apparently ordinary of moments in
her company. Sharing a cheap but excellent pizza with olive oil drizzled over
it. Reading books in silence in front of a dazzling fire. Nature walks and
movie nights and trips to the grocery store. Dancing in their bedroom to
music that reminded them of how much they adored each other. And things
like how patiently she taught him Italian, the way she’d snort when she’d
laugh really hard—and how utterly devoted she was to their only child. 
Life’s
finest treasures live in its simplest moments
, contemplated the billionaire. In
those daily occurrences that most of us take for granted. Until we lose them.
Lifting his hand to proudly display his engagement ring, the artist
continued to express the depth of his love while the car rolled along.
“I love her hard, man,” he spoke to Mr. Riley. “She’s my sunrise. My art
used to be all that mattered. Didn’t have much of a need for anyone around
me, you know. Guess I never knew what real love was. Can’t imagine living
without her now.”
The entrepreneur considered how blessed she was. In the period since she
attended The Spellbinder’s event, her Mindset, Heartset, Healthset and
Soulset were being reordered and upgraded. Radically. And irrevocably.
She was releasing the limiting beliefs that had been forged from her
tumultuous childhood and letting go of the toxic emotions that grew out of her
past traumas, as well as from the current predicament with her investors. The
billionaire was quite right, she was realizing to an even deeper degree: we
each do the best we can based on the level of awareness, maturity and
personal security we are at. People who hurt others really are hurting within
themselves. They are behaving in the wisest way they know how to behave. If
they were capable of conducting themselves with greater leadership,
generosity and humanity, they would have done so. This profound insight had
sown even stronger seeds of forgiveness within the entrepreneur. When she
first heard The Spellbinder at his seminar, she was cynical and resistant to a
lot of his teachings. She’d since pivoted considerably and was now embracing
everything she’d been fortunate enough to learn, wholeheartedly. It was an
inspirational evolution to see.
It had been three weeks since the visit to Rome. In that time, the
entrepreneur had been doing wind sprints for twenty minutes at 5 
AM
each
morning along with some serious weight training. After that at, 5:20 
AM
,

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she’d use the tranquility of the second pocket to contemplate quietly, write
lists of the things she was grateful for in her new journal and then meditate.
Finally, at 5:40
AM, 
she’d listen to an audiobook about a business maverick or
read something on the subjects of productivity, teamwork and leadership.
She’d also, and this was a hard one, broken the addiction to technology that
had been her lifeline—as well as her escape from producing her greatest
work. And her diversion from being fully present to life. During these
fantastic days away from her office, she’d been creating the brightest output
of her career, leveraging the phenomenon of transient hypofrontality the
billionaire had taught her to orchestrate results at a level of genius she’d never
experienced before. And reclaiming the sense of inner well-being she’d lost.
Everything she was applying was delivering enormous rewards.
Everything in her life seemed to be clicking again. She was fitter than she’d
been in years, happier and more serene than she’d ever known, and more
productive—during the periods she was away from the artist, conducting
business—than she’d imagined she could be.
All thanks to The 5 
AM
Club, which she understood, more and more,
allowed her to protect her natural talents in a commercial world of such noise,
stress and invitation to relentless interruption. The Victory Hour was
providing her with an insulated period, at the front end of her day, to build her
four interior empires. So she could construct outer ones.
With her newfound hopefulness, confidence and forgiveness, she’d even
made excellent progress in negotiating a solution with her investors. She was
excited that, shortly, the whole horrible ordeal would be behind her.
And soon, she’d be married. She’d always wanted someone special to
share in her delights and successes. And she’d always wished to balance her
hunger for fortune-making with her dream of having a family. The kind of
family she’d missed being part of as a girl.
Just as the entrepreneur was about to respond to the artist’s musings on the
extent of his love, a gunshot rang out.
The glass of the vehicle’s windshield shattered, instantly looking like a
spider’s web. Two broad-shouldered men in ski masks, with machine guns
over their shoulders, violently motioned for the driver to unlock the doors.
When he attempted to accelerate out of harm’s way, another bullet pierced the
glass, grazing the chauffeur’s ear and prompting an outburst of blood.
“Open the door,” instructed Mr. Riley, stunningly calmly. “I’ve got this,”
he said as he secretly pressed a red button strategically located under the
glove compartment.

---

The doors unlocked. You could hear a 
click
.
Speaking in staccato bursts, one of the gunmen screamed, “Everyone out
of the car. Now! Or you die!”
As the occupants of the car followed the orders, the other gunman grabbed
the entrepreneur by the neck. “We told you to leave the firm. We told you
we’d kill you. We told you this was gonna happen,” he said.
Suddenly, a long SUV, the sort you see combat leaders in war zones
traveling in, raced up to the scene.
Four more people, two men and two women, in flak jackets with pistols
raced up on sleek motorcycles.
The billionaire’s protection team had arrived.
Fighting broke out in the street, knives were pulled and more shots were
fired. The billionaire was whisked away with an efficiency that was striking.
He still appeared unruffled and, as if he were a general leading a military
mission, said simply, “Save my passengers. They are my family members.”
A helicopter was now floating overhead. Yes, a helicopter. It had “5AC”
in large orange letters on the side of it, over white paint.
The magnate’s security squad quickly disarmed the larger of the two
gunmen, the one who had threatened the entrepreneur, and removed her to the
safety of the waiting SUV. But the artist, well, sadly he was gone.
“I need to find him!” the entrepreneur screamed at the personnel in the
armored vehicle. “I need to find my husband,” she added, clearly in a state of
acute shock over the entire scenario.
“Stay here,” ordered one of the security agents, firmly, holding her by the
arm.
But the entrepreneur, in her newly created state of mental toughness,
physical fitness, emotional resilience and spiritual fearlessness—thanks to her
new morning routine—broke free from the burly guard, kicked open the door
that had been left slightly ajar and started to run. Like an elite athlete, she
sprinted deftly across a highway with traffic speeding down four lanes. Horns
blared, and some passionate Brazilians shouted words in Portuguese,
concerned for her welfare. But she kept running, as fast as a gazelle.
She ducked into a café. No sign of her man. Then into a restaurant. Next
she raced along a street renowned for its steak houses. The artist was nowhere
in sight.
Then the entrepreneur spotted his notebook, the one in which he had made

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all his notes from the lessons of The Spellbinder and the billionaire. The same
notebook she saw him clutching tightly when they first met, seemingly
randomly, in the conference hall—when she was at the darkest place of her
life. And he, as an angel of sorts, made her feel safer, calmer and happier by
his loving presence.
What happened next was tragic. As the entrepreneur slowed down to a
walk and turned onto a thin slice of an avenue, she saw blood. Not a pool of
blood but drops and specks of fresh blood.
“Oh, God. Oh, God. Please, no,” she cried out.
Frantically, she continued following the trail, pushing past a series of
parked cars, a mother with a baby in a stroller and a line of elegant houses.
“Please don’t let him die,” the businesswoman prayed. “Please, God.”
“I’m here. Over here,” a squeaky voice rang out.
The entrepreneur darted in the direction of the artist’s calls. Growing
closer, she spied the gunman holding a revolver directly to the head of her
fiancé. The thug had removed his ski mask. One could see that he was young.
And looked extremely scared.
“Look,” declared the entrepreneur, behaving courageously and slowly
walking over to the two men. “Look,” she repeated. “I know you don’t want
to hurt him. I know you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in a prison
cell. Just give me the gun and you can go. I won’t say a word to anyone about
you. Just give me the gun.”
The gunman was frozen. Speechless. And shaking. Slowly he turned the
gun away from the head of the artist. And aimed it squarely at the chest of the
entrepreneur.
“Just relax,” she implored in a fierce yet empathetic voice. She continued
walking toward her fiancé and the kidnapper.
“I’ll kill you,” shouted the bandit. “Stay there.”
The entrepreneur took step by careful step while staring directly into the
eyes of the gunman. She now had a soft smile on her face. Such was the grade
of her newly earned bravery. So was the degree of her considerably enhanced
confidence.
After a long pause, the criminal stood up. He stared at the entrepreneur
with what looked like a combination of mountainous respect and visceral
disbelief. Then, he hurried away.
“Baby, are you okay?” The entrepreneur embraced the artist tenderly.

---

Gathering his composure, though perspiring unstoppably, he replied,
“Born okay, baby. Born okay. Um. You just saved my life, you know?”
“I know,” she said. “I didn’t do it because we’re about to be married, you
know. I didn’t save you because I love you.”
“What?” questioned the artist. “Then why did you do what you just did? I
mean, that was