Archives for March 2019

A very big part of living a happy life is surrounding yourself with the right type of people.

Who are the right type of people?

They are what I like to call, Rich Relationships.

There are two telltale signs of someone who qualifies as a Rich Relationship:

1. Positive Outlook – They possess an upbeat, positive outlook on life. They seem to be perpetually optimistic and forward-looking.
2. Emotionally Stable – They are in complete control of their emotions. Their emotions are on an even keel. They do not have wild swings in their emotions – happy one day, depressed the next day. They don’t get overly excited when things go right or wrong with their lives.

Your #1 goal in life should be to surround yourself with these Rich Relationship types.

Your #2 goal should be to exorcise from your life those individuals who are Toxic.

Toxic Relationships have many negative characteristics. I’ve written about the traits to be on the lookout for here: Toxic Traits – http://richhabits.net/toxic-traits/

But the most dangerous and destructive Toxic Relationships are those who have a Dependent Mindset.

Why?

Those with a Dependent Mindset constantly seek out favors. They abuse your time and your bank account. The worst trait of those with a Dependent Mindset is that they develop a sense of entitlement – they expect you to continue to bail them out in life.

What makes them the worst of the worst is their reaction when you finally catch on to their habitual shakedown scheme and cut them off. That is when they bite the hand that feeds them, and turn against you.

They will spread false gossip about you to friends, family and acquaintances.

They will attack you and anyone within your inner circle.

They will perform evil deeds in an effort to punish you and those you love.

Beware of the Dependent Mindset. Be very circumspect whenever someone comes looking for a handout. They may be setting you up to be their next victim.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

How many of you honestly love what you do for a living?

By “love”, I mean:

• You look forward to getting to work, as soon as you open your eyes in the morning.
• You’re excited and pumped up about the day ahead.
• You often think about how lucky you are to be doing what you’re doing.
• There isn’t anything you would rather do for a living.

OK, so you’re not in the “I love my job” camp. But, you also don’t hate your job. In fact, you actually like what you do for a living.

How many of you are in that camp – the  “I like my job” camp?

In my five year Rich Habits Poor Habits Study, one glaring statistic that I found very interesting related to this very topic.

86% of the wealthy in my study said that they liked their job, while only 7% said they loved their job.

How about the poor in my study?

97% of the poor said that they did not like their job and 58% said they actually hated their job.

Probably the most interesting thing about the job satisfaction data I gathered in my study was how it was directly correlated to how much money you made and how much wealth you accumulated.

Those wealthy 7% who loved their job earned the most income every year and had a net liquid worth that was more than twice that of the wealthy who merely liked their job.

When it came to the poor, those who hated their jobs made, on average, $12,000 less than the poor who simply did not like their jobs.

That $12,000 worked out to an almost 40% difference in earnings.

Clearly, there is a financial cost to hating what you do for a living.

What this data makes clear is that if you want to have any shot at becoming rich, you’ve got to at least like what you do for a living.

Hating what you do for a living almost certainly means you will struggle financially in life.

Loving your job and having passion for your job, it seems, are joined at the hip.

The wealth in my study who said they loved what they did for a living, also said that they were very passionate about their job and that that passion gave them seemingly unlimited energy. As a result, they were able to work longer hours and this work ethic enabled them to perform at the highest levels, adding value to those they served.

When you love what you do for a living, you have essentially hit the lottery. You will make more money and accumulate more wealth than those who don’t feel the same way about what they do to earn a living.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

When most people think of risk, they think of it in terms of some financial investment they make: investing money in a new business, investing in stocks, mutual funds, bonds etc., the lottery, or lending someone money.

But financial risk is not the greatest risk. You can always earn more money. Money comes and goes, as they say.

The greatest risk you take is time.

When you devote time to anything, that time is lost forever. Time never gets renewed or returned.

Those who do not value time, spend it.

Many people spend their time by engaging in wasteful activities – watching T.V., reading/posting on Facebook, viewing kitten videos on YouTube, drinking at a bar for hours, laying in bed or some other non-productive activity.

Time spenders don’t begin to value time until they get older and time begins to run out.

Those who were taught to value their time, invest it.

Time Investors go by many names – Successful people, self-made millionaires, Virtuoso’s, the healthy or physically fit, executives, entrepreneurs, teachers, etc.

Those who understand the value of time, invest their time wisely by pursuing dreams/goals, reading to become more knowledgeable in their job or profession, practicing their skills until they become a Virtuoso, building Rich Relationships or creating a legacy that benefits others.

Any investment you make of your time should pay dividends down the road in some meaningful way – increased happiness events, financially security, fewer financial worries, longevity, a legacy that benefits future generations or helps improve the lives of others.

When you see time as the greatest risk of all, it will force you to become more aware of exactly how you use it.

Are you spending your time or are you investing it?

Invest it wisely, because you will never get it back.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

If you ask any business owner or business executive, they should be able to rattle off a list of their main competitors.

In small companies, most of your competition is local, maybe even regional.

Large companies compete with other industry leaders, trying to coax market share away from a handful of other large companies.

In reality, however, there is only one rival you should be competing with – Yourself. Or should I say, your “Yesterday-Self”.

The exceptional are focused on competing with their “Yesterday-Self”, rather than some business competitor. These special individuals recognize this as the true path towards unlimited success.

When you shift your focus from external competition to internal competition (yourself), you seek out and engage in activities that push you to become better; that force you to improve.

That daily desire to improve eventually transforms into a Rich Habit, and when it does, most of the competition melts away – unable to keep pace.

Daily self-improvement automates growth and puts you on the path to becoming a Virtuoso at whatever it is you do.

It’s hard to compete against Virtuoso’s and, besides, there are fewer of them at the top of the mountain.

The more you grow in knowledge and skills, the better you become at what you do. The better you become at what you do, the more value you’re able to provide to your customers/clients. And those who provide the most value, the Virtuoso’s, get paid the most money.

Individuals who devote themselves to improving every day, don’t really have to worry about their competition. It’s too hard to keep up with someone who gets better every day.

There really isn’t any competition for those intent on being better than they were yesterday.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

I never had a success mentor. Like most, I had to figure things out on my own. In my case it was through the School of Hard Knocks and by reading books.

But, still I longed for a success mentor; someone I could learn from and who could guide me in making the right decisions in life.

So, in the absence of having a success mentor, I created my own. I even gave him a name – JC Jobs.

JC Jobs is the main character in three of my books, Rich Habits, Rich Kids and my latest unpublished manuscript, Rich Neighbor Poor Neighbor.

Through my books, JC evolved into my success mentor. Whenever I am unsure about what I should do, I ask myself, “what would JC do?”

JC Jobs is the future, ideal version of Tom Corley. He is who I intend to become, before I die.

Everyone needs their own version of JC Jobs in their life.

And here’s the great news – you can create your own personal JC Jobs.

Here’s the process:

Step #1 – Describe Your Ideal, Future Life

Pretend it’s June 12, 2039, twenty years into the future, and you are writing in your Journal. In 2039 your life is amazing. Everything you ever wanted to be, do or have has come true.

In your June 12, 2039 Journal, I want you to write about what your amazing life looks like. Be specific and detailed down to the color of the rugs in your amazing house, what your backyard Irish Pub looks like, where you dock your mini-yacht, how much money you make, how much you’re worth, etc.

I also want you to describe the amazing person you are in 2039.

What superior knowledge and skills do you have? What successful people do you associate with? What does your body look like? What good do you do with your wealth? What are your outstanding traits?

After you’re done describing your future, amazing life, the next thing I want you to do is to describe the journey.

Step #2 – Describe The Journey

What happened,? What did you do over the past twenty years that made your new, amazing life possible?

Describe the big changes you made to your life: changes in the way you made money, changes in the way you saved and invested money, the dreams and goals your pursued and realized, etc.

When you are done with this little exercise, you will have created your very own version of JC Jobs – your own personal success mentor – someone you can look up to and who can guide you in life.

If there’s a best version of yourself, why not let that best version be your success mentor?

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

The human brain is lazy. Or, looking at it another way, the brain finds ways of doing things that allow it to work less.

And that’s precisely why we have habits. Habits enable the brain to work less.

With habits, the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s primary energy hog, has a minor role – identifying external triggers in the environment and communicating those triggers to the basal ganglia, the command and control center for habits.

Once the basal ganglia is notified about a trigger, it takes over from there, leaving the prefrontal cortex free to do other things, like be lazy.

So, you can imagine, the prefrontal cortex loves habits.

Habits put you on autopilot. This is a good thing if you have far more good habits than bad habits and a very bad thing if you have far more bad habits than good habits.

The vast majority of people around the world have far more bad habits than good habits. How do I know?

Bad habits show up in a number of ways:

• Ever increasing credit card debt – Poor Money Habits
• Obesity epidemic – Excess Eating Habits
• Type II diabetes epidemic  – Unhealthy Eating and Poor Exercise Habits
• High rate of infidelity – Poor Decision-Making and Emotional Control Habits
• Various addictions (drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.) – Destructive Addiction Habits
• Criminals behind bars – Toxic Relationships Habits
• Unemployment – Bad Work Habits or Lack of Self-Improvement Habits
• Millions disabled – Poor Health Habits (in most cases)
• Widespread high blood pressure – Poor Eating, Excess Drinking and Poor Exercise Habits

I could go on. The point is, you see the affects of bad habits all around you.

The next time you are in a public setting, just spend some time observing those around you.

It’s an eye opener, for sure.

You’ll see many bad habits on display.

How many overweight people do you see?

How many people smoking something?

How many people cursing?

How many people just sitting, doing nothing?

You’ll also see many good habits on display.

How many people do you see jogging?

How about biking?

How many are reading a book?

Do you see more bad habits on display than good habits?

When you have too many bad habits and too few good habits, your life sucks and you are unhappy. Bad habits lead to a bad life.

When you have many good habits and few bad habits, your life is great and you are happy. Good habits lead to a good life.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

One of the common denominators of most of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study was the fact that they had more than one source of income:

• 65% had 3 or more streams of income.
• 45% had 4 or more streams of income.
• 29% had 5 or more streams of income.

Expanding and diversifying your sources of income enables you to weather the economic downturns that always occur. These downturns are not as severe to the wealthy as they are to those with one stream of income, typically their job.

The non-rich have “one pole in one pond” and when that single income stream is impacted by an economic downturn, the non-rich suffer financially.

Just look at the 2008/2009 Great Recession. The rich did fine.

The non-rich, however, did not. Many lost their jobs and the lives of their families were negatively impacted.

Some non-rich parents could not afford to pay tuition, room and board for their children, who were forced to change colleges or suspend their college education.

Some non-rich families could not pay their mortgage and were forced to sell their homes and move back with parents or family members.

One of my clients had to sell their boat, vacation home and move from New Jersey to Pennsylvania in order to survive financially.

When you have one revenue stream, you are not in control of your life. Outside forces, like a recession, can pull the rug out from underneath your feet, very quickly.

The rich have “several poles in many ponds” and they are able to draw income from other sources when one source is temporarily impaired.

Richard Branson started with one revenue stream, a magazine. But, because he desired to be rich, he reinvested his profits from the magazine into a second revenue stream – Virgin Records (Record Store). He then reinvested his profit from the record store into another new business – producing records (Virgin Atlantic). And the rest, as they say, is history. He now has over 400 revenue streams and is a billionaire.

Some of the additional streams the rich in my study invested in included:

• Real estate rentals
• REITs
• Tenants-in-common real estate investments
• Triple net leases
• Stock market investments
• Annuities
• Seasonal real estate rentals (beach rentals, ski rentals, lakefront rentals)
• Private equity investments
• Part ownership in side businesses
• Financing investments,
• Ancillary product or services and
• Royalties (patents, books, oil, timber, etc.).

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

I’ve failed frequently and consistently (What It’s Like to Fail 35,000 Times).

In the beginning, my failures took an emotional toll on me. Thanks to my Rich Habits research of self-made millionaires I learned that these unique individuals develop an immunity to failure.

Lower Your Expectations

The main tool they used to do this was lowering their expectations on a day to day basis. By dialing down their short-term expectations for success, they were better able to come close, meet or exceed their expectations.

Don’t mistake lowering your expectations with lowering your desire to succeed. They are two very different things.

Lowering your expectations with respect to achieving specific goals, gives you some slack, in the event you come up short on your goals.

In fact, by taking a page out of the self-made millionaire playbook, in lowering my expectations, I was able to come close, meet or exceed my expectations.

When I came close to my expectations, it dragged me down, but only for a short while. Knowing I came close actually inspired me to keep trying.

When I met my expectations, this boosted my confidence, which kept my desire and energy levels where I needed them to be.

On the rare occasion I exceeded my expectations, well, it nearly knocked me off my chair. It was so completely unexpected … and joyful.

Celebrate your Victories

And this brings us to the second tool the self-made millionaires in my study used to keep themselves in the game – they celebrated their victories. Some even maintained a Victory Log, in which they logged all of their victories.

What I’ve learned from all of my failures is how important it is to soak yourself in those rare successes. They are like an oasis in the Sahara. They renew you. I’ve learned to stop and let those rare success events pour over me like sweet honey.

I think there’s something important in failing. Failures not only teaches you important lessons in what not to do; failures also teaches you the importance of cherishing those rare successes.

I’ve learned, over these past eleven years, the importance of making a habit of celebrating my victories. They may not be often but when then happen, boy, they’re like life’s white out. They erase the pain of previous failures, as if they were never there in the first place.

When you succeed, for a moment in time, you feel happy and good about yourself. I think we all need to celebrate our rare victories when we have them.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

Success isn’t an event, it’s a process.

We have become conditioned to view success as some singular event that transforms ordinary individuals into self-made millionaires.

The reality is that success is mostly incremental, not a one-off thing.

When you peel the onion down to its inside core, success is really the accumulation of knowledge or the perfection of some skill. It is the result of daily growth and consistent efforts that move you closer to achieving your goals and dreams. The more dreams and goals you realize, the closer you get to success.

The fact is, you become that successful person everyone wants to be, long before the money hits the bank account.

So, how do you create incremental success? It’s actually a simple process.

Knowedge-Based Occupations

Each month focus on learning one new thing. Ideally, this new thing should be something related to:

• Your main job
• A side job
• Your side business
• A future side business
• Goals or a dream you are pursuing

Here’s the “Success Process”:

1. Every day for a month spend at least 30 minutes reading about a new topic or subject (alternatively, you can listen to podcasts or watch videos on the topic).
2. Write down important facts on a sheet of paper. I call this my Fact Sheet. I recommend creating a Fact Binder, broken down by topic, in which you will put all of your Fact Sheets.
3. Summarize the most important facts, facts you desire to keep in permanent memory, on a “Summary Fact Sheet” for each month of the year. Ex: “January Fact Summary”, “February Fact Summary”, etc.
4. At the start of every new month, review your current month’s “Summary Fact Sheet”, fifteen minutes every day, for the entire month.
5. At the end of the month, put that month’s Summary Fact Sheet in the front of your  “Fact Binder”.
6. Repeat this process each month focusing on a different subject, topic or new facts.
7. At the beginning of the new year, review all of your prior year’s Summary Fact Sheets.
8. Repeat this process every new year.

After one year you will have learned a significant number of new facts. You will have grown in your knowledge. This new knowledge will help you add value to those you serve.

Through this process,eEvery year you will grow and become more valuable to those you serve and they will be willing to pay you a premium in order to do business with you. The number of clients or customers will grow incrementally, along with your knowledge.

If you stick to this process, eventually you will have a large number of customers/clients, more money in your bank account, and a knowledge-base that no one can take away from you.

Skill-Based Occupations

Daily repetition in developing a skill is the hallmark of many skill-based self-made millionaires.There are two types of practice that lead to success:

Deliberate Practice

69% of the rich in my Rich habits study practiced some specific skill for two or more hours every day. Deliberate practice requires conscious practice as opposed to unconscious practice. Conscious practice is practice in which you study everything you do that goes into the skill you have. It’s about studying the intricate details that enable you to become a virtuoso at what you do.

Analytical Practice

Deliberate Practice will make you good at what you do. Analytical practice, however, takes you from good to virtuoso.

Analytical practice requires feedback. When you engage in Analytical Practice, you practice certain specific elements of your particular skill every day and seek feedback from another expert with similar advanced skills. This feedback often comes from either a coach or mentor, who is equally expert or more expert than you are at what you do.

Success is a process. It’s not an event.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

Most of us do as we are told. This habit forms early in life. Our parents, for our own good, make us do things we don’t want to do: wake up early for school, eat broccoli, do homework, house chores, etc. Doing what we are told is conditioned into us from the very beginning.

But then we become adults.

This metamorphosis begins at about the age of fourteen and continues until about age twenty five, when the prefrontal cortex matures.

Smart parents begin handing over decision-making to their children during this metamorphosis stage. They encourage their children to take individual responsibility. They let them make mistakes. They allow them to experiment and fail. They stand ready to offer advice and direction.

Unfortunately, parents like this are in the minority. Most parents hover over their kids, insulating them from life and imposing their will over the lives of their children, well into their twenties. This prevents their children from becoming independent thinkers and doers.

As a result, most young adults wind up pursuing goals and dreams their parents desire.

Most put their ladder on their parents’ wall and spend much of their life climbing that ladder.

At some point, they come to the realization that they are unhappy doing what they are doing. This leads to a feeling of despondency about the work they do and the life they are living. This unhappiness usually begins to manifest in the late thirties, at a point when they have children of their own, a house and a mortgage.

Despondency sets in when they realize they are stuck between a rock and a hard place – they must continue to climb the ladder they put up on their parents’ wall, in order to meet the many financial demands of family life.

How do you break free? How can you take your ladder off your parents’ wall and move it to YOUR WALL?

You must have a come to Jesus moment with yourself.

What would you like your ideal life to be like in, say, ten years?

Take out a piece of paper and pen and write down exactly what that ideal life would look like.

Embedded inside your narrative of that ideal life are the dreams that must be realized in order for your ideal life to become a reality.

Next, take baby steps in the pursuit of each one of the dreams that make up your ideal life. Devote just twenty minutes every day pursuing just one of those dreams. This will help build momentum. Eventually, that momentum will accelerate and you will soon find yourself lost in the pursuit of your dreams and the goals behind those dreams.

Once you get going, your passion will take over and energize you. Eventually, one by one, you will begin realizing each dream and as you do, you climb higher up your ladder and closer to the top of your wall.

The greatest part of pursuing your dreams is that you will begin to feel happy and enthusiastic about life.

Don’t wallow in self pity because you do not like what you do for a living. Take action. Put your ladder on your wall and start climbing it every day. Take action today.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!