9 Rich Habits of the Rich | The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals with Best-selling Author and CPA Tom Corley

Audio Transcription

All right. Thrive nation. Welcome back onto the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. For those of you who have helped us to reach number two on the itunes charts. Very special. Thank you for you in CSI as a gift. I don’t know if it’s proper to give a guest as a gift. Well, without their permission. Well, I think sometimes they answered the phone. He answered. Here’s the deal. I was listening to Dave Ramsey years ago. I love listening to Dave Ramsey. I love reading his stuff and he had this guest on the show, but the name of Thomas. See quarterly now. So you’ve been. You’ve been having a hard time pronouncing his name, you think it’s corleone. Is that what you thought it was? I think it probably was born that way and you just changed it because connotation, connotation, and people thought German news and financial is a very successful author. He is the guy who’s running an accounting practice and he has distilled this thing called the habits of the rich. If you’ve never checked out Thomas, see quarterly, check them out today online at [inaudible]. C O r l e y Thomas Corley, his book. The habits of the rich is an incredible book filled with intense research about what makes people successful in what makes people stay perpetually stuck. Mr Tom, correlate. Welcome onto the thrive time show. How are you sir?

I’m doing great. Clay. Hello, Dr Z. Hey. You know, I just figured since you were from New York and that name, you probably changed. See, just forget about it. Forget about it. Take take the lifting. I used to shovel a Mr Castillo was driveway. I’m not kidding. We’re about three years. Oh, well, there you go. Okay. I thought he was a Wall Street broker.

Let me see. Let me try this again. Here.

Let me try it again. We’ll come onto the show. Today’s show, we’re going introduce to you Thomas Dot coolio. You can’t refuse. You can listen to the show. You either have to have it to the rich to be poor and we’re going to make you do. You can’t greet shoes. Don’t you do one day I may ask.

All right, so Tom, your book rich habits, the daily success habits, success habits of wealthy individuals. When I read the book, it blew my mind, but it’s based off of your actual interviews with 233, rich in 128. Poor people. Tell us about when you were first inspired to write this book.

Here’s what happened. I had a small business client I just taken over the helm of my CPA from a small business client had demanded to meet with me almost within, I guess two months of my taking over. So I met with them at night and um, he was kind of a big burly guy, intimidating. Uh, but he, um, he came into the office, she said, I need you to get me a line of credit by this Friday. And she sat down, uh, and as I said, there’s absolutely no way I’m going to be able to do that. It might take me months to get you a line of credit. And, uh, the guy almost immediately broke down and started crying because he, his bank had shut down his line of credit. They termed it. And uh, he had payroll that Friday and he wasn’t going to make payroll and he didn’t and he ended up going bankrupt. But, uh, what, he sat there and he said, look, what am I doing wrong? What is it that your successful clients we’re doing that I’m not doing? And, uh, I started trying to research it on the Internet. I couldn’t find anything other than the millionaire next door, but that didn’t really help us. So, uh, I started doing my own research and it evolved into what became a five year rich habits study.

And what you have discovered is that, you know, you might not be able to change your results today, but rich people change. Their habits, reverts. People have changed their habits. And then when you do those habits over time that allows people to earn real wealth and these habits or things you know, you can immediately implement. I mean, maybe you can immediately become successful, but you can immediately implement these habits. And so I want to do is spend a lot of time breaking down the research and the habits that you found. And, and I’ve heard you say that 40 percent of the actions that we take during the day are habitual is, is that correct? Tom? You’re saying 40 percent of the actions that most people take during the day are habitual.

Yeah. And it’s not just me saying it. It’s actually a 2006, uh, duke study that they had on habits and they found that 40 to 45 percent of all of your daily behaviors are habits. And habits are subconscious. Things are subconscious behaviors, thinking emotions, decisions. So if you’re, um, you got good habits, clay and Dr. Z dot, you’re on autopilot for success. If you’ve got bad, bad habits, you’re in a bit of trouble

and you have in your book so many what I would call in the show, we call them knowledge bombs. It’s something that’s so powerful that you almost have to duck tape your head back together after you read it and you have so many knowledge bombs, but I want to have you break down 10 of them that I thought were very, very powerful and I’m certainly not. I don’t have time to get to all of them. No. Maybe on a future show we could have you on again, because your book is so powerful. A one is living below your means. You studied that wealthy people. You observed that wealthy people spend no more than 25 percent of their income on housing. Wealthy people spend no more than 15 percent of their income on food, but that’s not normal for most people. Talk to me about living below our means.

Yeah, so this is. These are the habits that you primarily pick up from your parents. Most of our habits we pick up from parents or, or some mentor or influential in our life, but uh, you pick these habits up in early childhood. And what I found with the poor people in my study is they’re so used to spending 100 percent of their income. I mean, it becomes a habit. So if they make, if they have a year or two years, they get a promotion or a new job and they income doubles. Guess what happens? They spend 100 percent of their income they never save. So the idea is to get into some type of savings regimen, some habit of saving, even if it’s just five percent of pay per paycheck, you’ve got to try and forge that habit because that then when you make more money, you can contribute more.

You can increase 10 percent, 15 percent, but you know, if you don’t save, you can invest. And when opportunities pop pop up and you have no money to take advantage of them, somebody else does. And they become successful down the road and you scratch your head. And how many people said, Oh, you know, I could have bought that house if I only invested in that business. Uh, you know, everybody has these stories and they don’t do it because they don’t have the money and they don’t have the money because they don’t get into the habit of saving.

One example in your book you talked about, is it 94 percent of people live below their means by buying a vehicle and it used vehicle as opposed to leasing. So I’m gonna pick on Dr Zoellner and myself, I drive an h two hummer that gets. AndTom Corley, if I’m really adding all the fuel additives and I’m really z come into like a slow stop. I get about seven to eight miles per gallon, which we know you’re not doing so. And that vehicle for miles paid for though the vehicles paid for. Right? And I look at is I got about 15 miles to work 15 miles back. So bottom line, if I can’t afford $6 to get to work in $6 to get back, I got bigger life issues than, than the Hummer getting 98 miles, eight miles a gallon. But the vehicles paid for it. I bought it used and it’s been paid for.

I don’t feel the need to constantly least the newest make and model z. You drive a porsche today. Did you show up in the porch tonight? You guys 2010, nine slash 11 and now you own an auto auction. So it’s kind of not even a fair discussion but you and an auto auction. So Tom, he could probably. He has the t cells, a thousand cars every Friday so we could probably buy any car he wants but it’s a nice vehicle. But why do you not always get the 2018 brand new, the 2019 brand new. Why do you always not upgrading upgrading. It’s a very nice car. But why are you not one of these pilots always leasing the newest make and model?

Well, just like what Tom Corley was saying, I mean, I think that’s a habit of, of people that are successful and that is living below your means and for me, I always drive out a car. I buy a car a used typically. Um, you know, your recently used and because you know, you buy one new as soon as you drive it off the lot it’s. Guess what it’s used. Yep. And so, um, you know, um, and then I drive it out. I drive it for many, many years. The car I had before this was a really fun car, is a BMW and I drove it for 11, 12 years and then finally was like, okay, it’s costing more to maintain it. I could go get another one.

Cars seen an old car. You saw oprah, Oprah’s vehicles. I think a Bentley come through your auto auction. Exactly. It. Is it amazing to you how much less money the person who repurchases Oprah’s Bentley is going to pay then maybe when the car was originally purchased?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s a wholesale value of cars and the way they go down in value and a 20 investments at large investment for most people, but when investment, that almost always goes down. Investment, you know, homes, homes in some parts of the country go up more than others, but homes typically go up in value.

Tom, want to get your take on this. Do not habitually gamble. You noticed that 77 percent of poor people play the lottery consistently. This is what they do. Seventy seven percent. That’s a huge number.

Yeah. So here, here’s the deal with that. So poor people, they believe that, you know, because they were raised in poverty that they can’t break free. They have these limiting negative beliefs that basically, uh, once, if you’re born poor, you’re going to stay poor. And the only way, the only great equalizer and their mind is playing the lottery because they don’t think that they’re going to be able to work their way out of poverty. They don’t think they’re going to have any of that good luck and success that you know, by starting a business. So they look at the lottery as the great equalizer and a Po. I had one individual in my study who owned a couple businesses and he said it made him sick every Friday when he would pay his, uh, the people who were working in one of his businesses, they’d run, right? Almost all of them. We run right to the Deli or two to get some lottery tickets. They’d spend about 20 percent of their income, you know, within five minutes.

I will tell you that one time I went to a, I used to own a company called DJ connection Dot Com. Tom, we were one of the nation’s largest entertainment companies for weddings. And uh, one of my employees, his car didn’t work and he said, can I ride with you down to the, down to the trade show at the Dallas Market Hall and Dallas, Texas and Susie, I thought, okay, sure. So we stopped at the gas station. Now this guy’s making about 70,000 a year, upper sixties, lower seventies. We stop and I go to the bathroom. Now Tom, this is one of these places where they have like a place you can shower, a place you can buy a subway sandwich and a place you can buy gas all in one multiplex. Don’t. American truckstop Thomas. Do you know what I’m talking? You had those kinds of beautiful things.

We have them in New Jersey. We have the same thing.

Okay, so I pull in, I go to the restroom, I come back. I noticed the guy has purchased a lot of lottery tickets and just kind of, you know, casual. I said, hey, how many, how much money did you spend there? He goes, oh, like 60 bucks, but you know, but it’s how much am I going to win out? We go to the next gas station on the way back home and another 60 bucks. And I asked him, I said, hey, typically when you go into the great state of Texas and you have the ability to buy lottery tickets, so this is before the Oklahoma lottery was a thing. Do you buy tickets every time you stopped for gas? And he goes, yeah, I mean I look at it, I kind of cap it at 60 bucks every time. So every time you fill up a car with gas, when you DJ in Dallas, which is every other weekend, you spend 60 bucks, he goes, well, yeah, yeah, I mean 60 is my limit. I mean that’s my limit now. Z, if somebody is making $65,000 a year and they’re spending $60 every time they fill up with gas, which is half the time they filled with gas and your mind, is that over the limit? Is that okay? Is that too much? What do you think?

You know, I just want to take that young man right now and just throw punching. I say stop it. Stop, stop. Stop the idiocrasy because it, it’s uh, it’s uh, you know what it is? It’s a poor man’s tax. It’s a volunteer tax. I mean, that’s really what it is. I mean, the odds of you winning are. I mean, you’re more likely to be bitten by a shark while you’re in Iowa. I mean, come on. While I was struck by lightning riding the tornado, now we’re going too fast.

Seven here. Okay. Read every day a, as you study wealthy people, the statistics show that 58 percent of wealthy people read biographies or autobiographies of six of successful people. Seventy nine percent of wealthy people choose to read educational career related material, but just 11 percent of wealthy people are reading for entertainment purposes only. And a poor people almost never read it all unless it’s merely for pleasure. Can you talk to me about the. Absolutely. It’s a huge disparity between wealthy people reading and poor people. Reading

what’s going on here really is a perfect example is one of the questions I asked in my dad is 144 questions is what do you do at the end of the day when you’re done with your, your regular job, what do you do? Uh, and uh, when you get home. So the rich people answered on, I’m on this board of Directors and coaching this team. I teach at night. Um, I do speaking engagements at 100 different things that they did at night. Poor people said, oh, I’m so tired from working, you know, I had a hard, hard, long, hard day. Uh, so I eat dinner, maybe I have a glass of wine or beer, a sit down and um, you know, because I’m tired, I watched TV to kind of relax and, and you know, that. So they’re wasting their time is my point. They have, they have a routine in which they waste their time. So reading isn’t part of their routine. TV is a big part of their routine, so they’re just not doing the things that you need to be doing. They don’t have the habits like reading to educate yourself to gain knowledge, to learn a little bit more. You know, that the rich people, the people who are pursuing well to pursuing success, they have the routine of reading every day. They read on average between 30 minutes to 60 minutes everyday. It’s typically about their career or their industry and the poor people don’t.

I have not yet to publish a book like yours, but I have personally coached chuck with nearly a thousand business coaching clients. Uh, you know, over the years, and I’m 37, I’ve do this for 12 years and one thing I’ve discovered is that poor people tend to mindlessly watch TV. Tom, they tend to mindlessly surf the internet, Tom and they tend to mindlessly play video games. And I talked to a guy, this was about six months ago. He’s in his late forties and the guy tells me, he said, I did not know this is, this is a guy who has a business. I won’t give any of the information, so no one can guess who he is. Okay. It’s been about six months ago because he, this is a guy whose business is stuck in about 300 to $400,000 a year of gross revenue. He can barely pay himself $70,000 a year, 80,000 a year. And he said the reason why he could not call his leads, as he said, I’m just so tired and I was playing this video game and I was trying to go that next level and I just, I was right at the end. See if you’re a 45 year old man and you, you, you, you, you can’t, you came and you’re an entrepreneur. You can’t just be spending two hours a night, three hours a night for his night playing video games, Kenya. Oh, you can. Oh, you can. Wow.

You know, through all of our actions, we have consequences this, Justin and, and I love it that, that Tom has called them out as habits. In other words, these are things that you should just be doing automatic. And at first, you know, in order for a habit, Khatami, I’ve done a lot of research on this. If you do something where for two weeks and if you’re continuously like, okay, I’m not going to do this or I’m going to do this, and two weeks past, then you can kind of start to make it more of a habit.

Is it a month, Tom? How long do we need to do this?

Was the timeframe you probably researched out, Tom Corley.

So according to my research, it’s about 90 days,

90 days. That

was a great study on this where they looked at about 100 people. And, uh, it took an average of 18 to 254 days with 66 days being the average to forge a habit, uh, that was a Philip Allali from the University College of London, so she, so she, she was really one of these trailblazers on these, on trying to understand how habits are forge. But what I’ve found in my research is it takes about 30 days for a, the normal infrastructure. That’s the neurons that are talking to each other to create a, it takes another 30 days for it to get the attention of the Basal Ganglia, which is the command and Control Center for habits. And then it takes another 30 days for the Basal Ganglia to decide that that is a habit, uh, and it marks it as a habit. And once the Basil Ganglia marks as Sin Apps as a habit, it stays a habit for life. This is an important.

You

lose your habits because it’s like building a house. You, you, the house is built. It doesn’t go away. It’s still there. Uh, and with habits, it’s the same thing. The infrastructure is there. The only way to really change a habit is to forge either to forge a new habit or to take an existing habit and what I call habit stacking. You kind of a, you know, leveraged at that synapse and you stack another habit on top of it. Like, uh, if you, if you exercise on the stairmaster. I do. I did this. I put a book up there so I could read while I’m doing the stairmaster. Well, guess what, that’s habit stacking.

Oh, we had a listener who tried to call through during while you were talking. And Chuck our call screener was he wanted to cut this. He said this is a very rude color. I cannot let this caller call in, but you did get an audio of what he had to say. I heard chuck, this is one of the callers he tried to call him while you were talking. This is what he said.

Like, I picked the wrong week, quit smoking, quit drinking.

Like I picked the wrong week. Put on no jersey. Why not me? Okay, so I’m going to be Basal Ganglia. You be a neurosurgeon APP. Okay. Yeah. So hey, they’re a neurosurgeon. Neurosynapse, you’ve kind of started changing your ways a little bit. Been a week or 10 we what direction we go in here. We’re going gluten free all the time, baby. Well, okay, now we’re three weeks into this thing and I’m kinda starting to get a little. You know, you start. I’m sure you’re coming on my radar. I’m starting to kind of pay attention. I’ll gluten free all the time. My skin, I eat kale all the time. Will be the Basal Ganglia and I’m like, you know what, you got to get on my radar now and you’re kind of looking little sexy. Their neurosynaptic bison. That’s what I do. No extra carb. That’s what I want to fire. And the fire and fire. Now we’re 30 days and you know what? I know they’ll go gamble. No, no, I think I’m ready to go on a date with you. What they have to ask. That’s great because that’s what I wanted. Steak and shrimp, that’s for people to know. It doesn’t happen overnight. These are things that are conscious effort and you have to be purposeful and it takes anywhere from a month to three months. Right? Is that, is that what I heard from you, Tom?

Yeah, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s gonna. I mean the 30 days gets the, you know, the, the, the snaps in place, and then the other 30 days they kind of gets the attention. Yeah.

Romance earlier. And then, you know, 30, 31 to 90 days. Ninety days. Good number. Yeah. And then we got married. So I have a hot. I, I have five final hot questions for Tom so we can fit them in here. So here we go. We can, I’ll habit number seven. Number five, you want to bite your tongue and control your emotions. Only six percent of wealthy say what’s on their mind. Wow. Tom, break that down.

All right, so here’s, here’s the problem with emotions. Emotions are primarily a directed by the Amygdala. That’s where fear, anger or the negative emotions anyway. And there’s a lot of studies and research on the fact is the broaden and build study that says, look, when you allow negative emotions to take over, it shuts down your prefrontal cortex to some extent. Prefrontal cortex is the command and control center. That’s how you make a logical decision. So imagine you know, you, you’re allowing your emotions to take over. Well, you’re not making, you’re not, you lose the ability to make good decisions. You’re making poor choices. And uh, so this is all bad. You want to be able to work, you want your whole brain to be working, especially if you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve got all these hurdles and these obstacles and these pitfalls. If you losing your cool all the time, you never gonna be able to solve those problems.

Tom, uh, I used to travel around as a business comedian back in the day after I sold dj connection, doing comedic business speeches. And one thing I told people about the Amygdala is don’t let an almond, an almond decides part of your, of your body control your whole body. I think a lot of people let the allmond size part of their mind control their entire body z. You see this all the time. You Migdal oats and almonds, size part of the mind and people are letting control their entire body,

which is unfortunate and sad and that’s a very good point and I’m glad you know, tom’s throwing out some pretty big words, but he’s really talking about parts of the brain and what and what their purpose is and, and understand that gives you wisdom into how you operate. And so if you are an emotional person and you’re not as emotional as dictate and you can’t use the frontal part, which is your, I love that command and control center that really allows you to make those logical good decisions. You know, without all the, they hurt my feelings kind of kind of feeling more than feelings. This is good stuff. I’m loving this because I tell them. I have a quick question for you as we’re going into the final four here. This is hot and what was your threshold for someone being rich and what was your threshold for someone being poor? Because you said you interviewed 240 some odd rich and 100 and some odd poor. What was your cut off? What was your threshold?

Yeah, show the wealthy was three point $2 million in net liquid wealth. That’s investible assets plus a 160,000 or more in income. So it was a two part test and poor people. We’re a 30, less than 35,000 in net income and less than $5,000 basically in the bank.

Wow. Okay.

Dulles calling for me to our reference point number six, which is the ochoco minus to develop the habit of doing more than paid for jump. Thank you for uh, Eric Chop our, our kind of our show observer here. He started to laugh just a little bit. So the develop that habit of doing than paid for. Some people call this the golden rule. Poor people call it being a workaholic. Some people call this the golden rule. Poor people call this is this my job? Tom Corley talked to me about how wealthy people have developed the habit of doing more than paid for it sounds very Napoleon Hill. ISC, ISC,

there’s a lot more to this onion. So when I found out that there was a, there’s a lot of psychology going on with the wealthy people, what they would do is they would manage the expectations of whoever was their customers or their clients or the patients, so they would under promise and over deliver, whereas the poor people would over promise and then set themselves up for underdelivering. So the smart wealthy people were teeing it up just perfectly.

This is a powerful concept in Tom. I’m not trying to paint you into a corner to have you on the itunes number two podcasts, but I would love to have you on again to talk more about this because this is so good. There’s so much here. I wish I had more time with you. Uh, move number seven here. Habit number seven, choose to set concrete and specific goals. Uh, according to your research, 80 percent of wealthy people are focused on accomplishing one single goal every day, but only 12 percent of poor people are focused on accomplishing a goal. Break that down my friend.

Yeah. So again, this goes to the psyche. You know, poor people, they have the negative limiting beliefs that they’re never going to be able to break out of poverty. So why the hell should I, I, you know, try and set goals or, or pursue dreams, the wealthy people in my study because they had parents that were pretty much raised them to as success mentors. There was success mentors to the kids. They said you can be anything, you could do anything. And so they had this belief system, hey, you know, I’m going to pursue dreams and I’m going to pursue goals.

This is a powerful concept right there. You have the capacity and the tenacity to change your life. Z, did you go, Jay z? Did you grow up rich?

No, I grew up poor, but I grew up with a mother that spoke that over us. And she said, listen, you guys, um, you’re smart, you can do whatever you want to do, you’re going to do it. And she just gave us unconditional love. She was very strict, but we grew up a very uh,

but you and I both grew up in the same and the same environment. Feel safe. Well, did you know you’re a poor? Yeah, because we were there. Oh yeah. Okay. So move number eight. You want to get up earlier, 44 percent of wealthy people wake up three hours before work starts. Now I also know very wealthy people that stay up three hours after people go to bed to work on their, to do list. But at the end of the day, Tom, talk to me about why waking up earlier has been proven to be statistically better for most entrepreneurs. Struggling to find the time to get things done.

Yeah. So I used this strategy because I was running my cpa from my financial planning practice and I decided, hey, I’m going to write a book. Uh, so the only time I had, because I had three kids and a wife and I didn’t want to get divorced, was a. I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. So a 4:30 to seven in the morning is when I did my writing. I just took a page out of the wealthy people, the self made millionaires in my study and uh, and Lo and behold that I’ve been using that routine ever since and since then I’ve written five books and done a whole host of other things. So, uh, that morning routine, uh, has been paying off like crazy for me. I, and I think that’s why wealthy people do it because they know that’s the first thing in the morning. They won’t be interrupted. Nobody’s up anyway, uh, they can get a lot done and it’s called the block time blocking so they can focus their mind through this time blocking strategy and get things done

that’s struggling to find time to get things done. Wake up earlier. The final move I want to talk to you about today, Mr Tom Corley is getting a mentor, getting a coach. Eric Schmidt, the most successful CEO of some would argue of the modern generation. The former CEO of Google said the most important advice he ever received was from John Doerr, the venture capitalist who said, you need a coach. Bill Gates says, everyone needs a coach. Uh, let’s go with Steve Jobs said, you need to hire a coach. All these people hired a coach. It is so important that you have a coach or a mentor in your life. 90 three percent of people, according to your research, 93 percent of wealthy people that had a mentor attributed their achievement and success in the world to their mentor. Tom, break it down.

Yeah, so mentors, I found in my research where they fast track to accumulating an enormous amount of wealth because mentors tell you what to do and what not to do. They tell you what to read, what not to read. They tell you what skills to develop, what skills you don’t need to develop. They basically, I’m like a pinpoint. They identify exactly what you need to do in this large circle that you call your career. They said, now just focus on this thing here and you’re going to be wildly successful. So they, they help you avoid making mistakes, wasting time, and that saves you time and money.

Tom, if the listeners out there want to learn more about to or want to purchase a book, what’s the best place you would direct them? You want to direct them to Amazon? Do you want them to go to your website? What’s the best place? Because our listeners are voracious readers, they love to take action. They love to buy books. What’s the best way they can learn more about Mr Tom Corley and the things that you offer

so they can get my book just about anywhere. Amazon’s a good place to go, but I also. My rich habits website is also a blog and I have my tip of the morning to you and it’s based on it’s only my content so I don’t have any advertising or any of that crap on there and I get that every day. Somebody asks me everyday can, can we advertise on your website? And I said nope. And so you’re going to give a tip of the morning to you and sometimes I post blogs and I have my tip of the week, which is usually a video with my friend in Australia who’s the top real estate expert in rural Australia. So I got a lot of good content on there that’s based on my research,

which stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum for our millions of listeners all around the world. So if it’s okay, we’re going to time it out here. We’re going to say three, two, one. And then if tom is, you’re feeling it, you kind of give us a boom or tomorrow. Are you okay with giving us a boom? I’ll give you a big boom for a. are you ready? Are you ready for the book? I’m always. Chuck, are you ready for the moment? Here we go. Three, two, one. No, Tom, I appreciate you so much. This show’s going to go out on I believe Monday. And as soon as it goes out, we’ll, we’ll send you a link to it. And, uh, right now we’re number two on itunes and hopefully you get hundreds of thousands of downloads and, uh, I loved your energy, man. I love your, I love your research. It was awesome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. I really do.

Hey, take care. Well, have a great day. Okay, you too. Bye. Bye.