Joe Lannen is a serial entrepreneur, software engineer, soon to be father, and former digital nomad with over 10 years of experience building businesses. He’s the founder of Order Automator, a Shopify SaaS app helping e-commerce stores automate workflows. Joe’s passion for health, creativity, and purpose drives his approach to work and life, as he balances family, business, and a dream of preserving forests.

INTRO:

Can you tell me a bit about your background and what success looks like in your world?

Joe: I grew up in a small town in Illinois, left at 18, and lived all over: San Diego, New York City, Thailand, Colombia, and Brazil. In 2014 I was a freelance web developer and bartender in New York, then bought a one-way ticket to Chiang Mai, Thailand and lived around the world for 10 years. I’ve always been passionate about health, fitness, and nature; I see those as the core to existence, business is just another layer on top. One of my previous businesses was a lifestyle brand that planted trees with every sale, and we ended up planting 400,000 trees! My dream has always been to protect forests and live off the grid but realized I can’t just step on to a forest and live there, I have to own the land, so I realized I had to 10x my income to do that and so my entrepreneurial journey began.

Now, I run a SaaS app called Order Automator, which helps Shopify stores automate tasks. Success for me is about maintaining flexibility, being able to design my life, spend time with family, and still dream big. Right now, I’m back in Illinois with my wife, we’re expecting our first child, and we’re figuring out the next phase of our adventure.

ROUTINES & HABITS:

Do you have a nonnegotiable routine or habit?

Joe: I intermittent fast for 16 hours most days and do mobility exercises every morning. I have a list of 20 or so stretches I do every day, and as a result, I feel more flexible now at 45 years old than I did my entire life. It has also switched my mentality into being prepared for anything when I leave the house, which you don’t think much about until you’re older, so the stretching gives me a good baseline for injury prevention across everything. Whether my niece and nephew want me to sprint, run around, and play baseball with them, or I’m going to the gym with my wife, I’m already loose from the morning.

Another nonnegotiable is reading and deep work. I devour business books and structure my day with blocks of deep work in the morning. I’m always involved in multiple things at once, whether it’s reading multiple books at a time, side products, multiple businesses, multiple hobbies, etc., but the deep work block allows me to focus on one thing at a time.

I also have daily recurring tasks that remind me to stretch, wind down at 8 pm, and have various habits for work or my hobbies like experimenting with a new AI tool or drawing for 10 minutes, but health is always the foundation for me, and I’ve found that my best ideas come from the sacred time away from the computer.

MINDSET:

What do you tell yourself on days where you feel off or unmotivated?

Joe: That's a hard question, because that doesn't really happen very often right now. I’m fortunate enough now to where I’ve created my business, life, and systems to where I really enjoy the things I’m working on, so it’s really easy to get motivated because I’m mission focused. For my Order Automator App, it automates tasks to save hours of time, and to me, I see that as more time people can use to spend with their families and improve their business, so attaching that mission to it motivates me to complete any tasks that “move the needle” for the business.

Obviously, there are days I don’t want to certain things that I need to do, like taxes of course, but on those days, I just do something else; there is always something to do in my ecosystem of business and creativity. If something is mandatory, I’ll just get highly caffeinated and knock it out.

TOOLS & TRACKING:

Do you track anything when it comes to your health?

Joe: I use an app called Strong to log my gym sessions. I plan the workouts and then switch up my routines quite a bit. Sometimes I'll be on a kick and wake up at four o'clock every day, drink a yerba mate, and get into work. Or sometimes I won’t use an alarm clock, and I'll work out when I wake up. Sometimes I work out every day, at noon. I'm always experimenting with different routines, so it could change at any time. But, for the last couple years, I've just been using the app Strong.

Last year I bought a Whoop, and it got me super dialed into all these different metrics, but over time I just got fatigued tracking everything. I like the data, but I don’t like tracking it.

Business wise, I was tracking the things I did every day, but always felt like I could’ve done more, which is the constant battle with ambition. I’ve evolved my life into just simplifying and thinking about the one big thing I can accomplish this week, and if I do, then I’ll have 50 significant accomplishments in a year, which I consider a success.

CLOSING:

What is something you’re looking to improve in your health, business, or personal life?

Joe: I always have way too many tasks, and I can't keep up with my ideas, and even just on one business. So, I have a document called key impacts, which is basically what I decide is best to focus on this week, and a document called on deck, which includes the ideas I want to do the next week. That goes from 7-10 things to 100 things quickly, so I created a tertiary document called level ups this month. I’m constantly coming up with great ideas but it’s to the point where I wish I could wake up and just say “What do I want to work on today?”. My goal is to feel like I don’t have a million tasks to accomplish every day.

The interesting thing about that is I literally could do that if I want. It's just a decision. It's one of my biggest mantras in life: It's just a decision, because it goes for everything. I could schedule one day a week to not do anything, where I wake up and decide what I want to work on. I've tried that, but then I inevitably think about this feature that I've been working on and think it’s urgent. That's the struggle that I have right now, is trying to not have so many tasks at the same time on my plate, but I’m trying to improve that.

Which habits or routines truly move the needle for you? And what’s one thing you would advise others to do that could move the needle for them?

Joe: Scheduled blocks of deep work is my number one factor of success, and my number one performance metric for the week. If the week goes by and I did a solid four-hour deep work block every day, then I won the week. As long as I execute the system that I created, then it's guaranteed that I'm moving the needle. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish without getting distracted.

I want to combo that with creating systems, since then you know you’re going to be achieving the steps to your goal. That's the number one factor to me is just being disciplined about scheduling that block of time.

ORDER AUTOMATOR:

Joe is the founder of Order Automator, a Shopify app designed to save store owners hours of time by automating workflows and extending store functionality.

Joe previously built an eco-friendly brand called Tree Tribe that plants trees on every sale, and with 400K+ trees planted, the software engineer in Joe started looking for ways to automate processes for his own team.

This turned into Order Automator, now helping thousands of Shopify stores streamline backend operations, with new features added regularly based on community feedback.