A real day in the life of an $80M revenue CEO

Executive overview

Most "day in the life" content is performative. Noah Kagan opens with a parody of that — early mornings, suits at the gym, Ferrari — then cuts to his actual routine.

The real version is unglamorous: sleep until 8am, make your bed, work through hard leadership problems, then do something that scares you after hours.

Optimise your energy and attention, not your image.

Morning routine

• Wakes at 8am (sometimes 10am); views sleep data on an Oura ring before planning the day
• Makes bed immediately — a small win that sets the tone
• Uses 3x5 note cards for to-dos; crosses items off through the day
• Reads before checking messages; mornings are distraction-free by design
• Journals with no prompt, no rules — a habit from The Artist's Way

Leadership meeting

• Weekly session with senior leadership focused on the hardest unanswered questions in the business
• Three agenda items: budget overruns, time management, and strategic alignment
• Values disagreement from the team as a signal of organisational health

Afternoon meetings

• Leads an all-hands for 100+ teammates covering budget, Q1 goals, and office search
• Five back-to-back sessions with team leads: marketing channels, liquidity ratios, gross profit margins, org changes, engineering challenges
• Uses the phrase "business forward" as a filter for how to show up in difficult meetings

After work

• Flies a small plane for training — a fear he faced deliberately by getting his pilot's licence
• Bikes with a stranger met through Warm Showers (Airbnb for cyclists)
• Winds down with bath, Kindle, and a hard stop on Slack and screens by midnight