58 pages • 1 hour read
Robin SharmaThe 5 Am Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.
Nonfiction | Book | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Stone Riley
Content Warning: The section discusses death by suicide.
When Stone Riley is first introduced, the entrepreneur and the artist mistake him for an unhoused man. His appearance is disheveled, and he looks the part of someone down on his luck. However, when he discusses the Spellbinder’s seminar with the other two, it becomes evident that there is perhaps more to Riley than meets the eye. The artist picks up on this when he notices that Riley is wearing an extremely expensive wristwatch. Eventually, Riley invites the pair to his private retreat on the island of Mauritius, and there we learn more about his story.
Riley is a very wealthy businessperson. He is referred to as a tycoon, a magnate, a billionaire, and an industrialist. He owns his own fleet of private jets and helicopters, and his compound is private and elegant. He appears to have an ever-ready supply of assistants at his service, as he often calls them up out of nowhere throughout the book.
Riley, now in his fifties, was once critically ill with prostate cancer when in his thirties. After meeting the Spellbinder, Riley began to discover a fuller appreciation for his success and followed his mentor’s teachings, including the advice that one should pass down the teachings and lessons of the 5 AM Club. Riley is enthusiastic and at times eccentric; he often spontaneously dances, sings, and drops down to do push-ups. The narrative reveals that he was once married to a woman named Vanessa, whom he met while living in Rome. Eventually, Vanessa passed away, and Riley did not remarry nor seek a female companion. The narrator of the book reveals in the Epilogue, which is recounted five years after the book ends, that Mr. Riley passed away five months after the final lesson he gave to the entrepreneur and the artist while in South Africa. We also learn that the Spellbinder, his old friend, was at his bedside as he died, as was his daughter; this is the first time it is revealed that he had children.
The Entrepreneur
As the book begins, an unnamed woman is contemplating death by suicide. She is struggling in her professional life. Having invested all of herself in the company that she founded, she is devastated that some in the company have enacted a kind of coup in order to push her out. We later learn that there is a family history of death by suicide, as her father suffered a similar turn of fate in his life and ultimately died by suicide. The entrepreneur decides that she has nothing left to lose and decides to attend a seminar given by the Spellbinder as a last resort.
After witnessing the speech, the woman meets the artist and Riley. When Riley offers to host them at his private retreat, the entrepreneur is at first very skeptical. However, after hearing Riley speak more about the Spellbinder and some of the lessons he has learned from the mentor, the entrepreneur reconsiders. She tells the artist,
I just can’t keep going on like this. I’ve been suspicious of pretty much everyone and everything ever since I lost my dad when I was eleven. A daughter growing up without a father is incredibly scary. To be honest, I still carry a lot of the emotional trauma with me. I think of him every day. I’ve had some bad intimate relationships. I’ve struggled a lot with low self-worth and made some horrible choices in the relationships I’ve had (43).
This is a critical moment, as it is the first time that she begins to open up to someone else and reveal her true thoughts. From this point on, the entrepreneur undergoes a dramatic transformation under the tutelage of Mr. Riley and, to some degree, the Spellbinder.
The entrepreneur, who at one time had struggled to find any sense of personal fulfillment in spite of her impressive professional accomplishment, soon begins to feel this as a result of applying the methods she learns in the 5 AM Club. She eventually falls in love with the artist, and later in the book, she marries him. The narrator reveals in the Epilogue that the entrepreneur has become one of the most successful and wealthy businesspeople in the world and continues to apply the methods of the 5 AM Club, specifically in her commitment to teaching others the lessons that she learned from being part of it.
The Artist
The artist comes to the seminar because he is familiar with the Spellbinder’s work and has been a follower of some of the methods the Spellbinder advocates and lectures on. The narrator reveals that the artist is a painter and
[b]ecause he wanted to elevate his craft as well as improve his personal life, he followed the Spellbinder’s work. But, for whatever reason, the demons within him seemed to hold power over his greater nature. So, he’d inevitably sabotaged his Herculean ambitions and wonderfully original ideas (12).
The artist is prone to procrastination and also tends to easily become distracted, so his art suffers as a result.
The artist is also an independent thinker for the most part and offers many criticisms about the state of modern culture, specifically that it trends toward becoming more superficial all the time. In terms of his natural disposition, the narrator claims,
It was becoming increasingly evident that, like many in his field, he was acutely emotional, vigilant to the infinitesimal and carried a sensitivity born of latent pain. Those who feel more than most people sometimes believe they have been cursed (41-42).
The artist tended to see his shortcomings as insurmountable until he discovered the Spellbinder’s work.
The artist is compassionate and kind toward the entrepreneur, a trait that she is drawn toward. He is a good listener, as evidenced by the willingness the entrepreneur feels about revealing some of the tragedy of her life story to him. The narrator reveals in the Epilogue that the artist eventually learned how to fully access his true creative genius. He became one of the more famous painters in the world, and his work is of high financial value.
The Spellbinder
The Spellbinder’s actual presence in the text is limited to a few separate occasions when he shows up unexpectedly and when, at the beginning, he is on stage hosting a seminar. However, much of what Mr. Riley teaches the artist and the entrepreneur is influenced by the Spellbinder’s teachings, so his off-stage presence is large throughout the book.
The Spellbinder is in his eighties as the book begins. He is an inspirational speaker, and his lectures are designed to guide people in finding their own inner strength. In Chapter 2, the Spellbinder becomes emotional at his own words, a trait that we also see reflected in Mr. Riley, who occasionally does the same. Also during the speech, the Spellbinder suffers from exhaustion and collapses during the presentation. Initially, it is unclear whether or not he survives the incident, as both the artist and entrepreneur wonder aloud what the man’s fate is. He survives, and he makes periodic visits during a few of the lessons Mr. Riley provides to the artist and entrepreneur. The narrator reveals in the Epilogue that the Spellbinder, five years after the end of the story, is still alive, and he is still giving seminars all over the world.
