18 Tiny Habits That Made Me a Millionaire

The key to getting rich isn't about working past midnight every day to stay ahead of the competition or having a three-hour morning routine. It's actually about forming micro habits, tiny habits that compound over time and make getting rich easy. So I'm going to share with you the 18 tiny habits to help me get rich and how you can apply them in your life. Starting with tiny habit number one, look at your money daily. Every day I get an email for all of my companies called daily cash report and it includes all the balances, all the credit cards, all my accounts, the transactions for the previous day, because I want to get a sense of the heartbeat of cash flowing through my businesses. I want to be aware what you focus on expands. If you don't know how much cash is being generated in your bank account, in your businesses, then how can you give it the right attention? I call it the 24-hour rule. You should be checking your money every 24 hours. Don't hide from it. Don't pretend like you don't want to see it. I don't want you to go to the ATM machine to find out you don't have enough money to pull money out because you're not aware. Have the app on your phone, check it often. If you don't like the number, make it better. Which brings us to tiny habit number two, value your time. If you don't value your time, no one else will. You'll be upset that people are taking advantage of you, asking you to do favors and never returning it in the first place. Rich people say no more than they say yes, because a yes is a no to their future and a no is a yes to their goals. What do you want to create in the future? It's actually okay to be a little selfish to create a better scenario for who you are and what access to resources you have so you can be richer, so you can be more for people in the future. Which brings us to tiny habit number three, set clear goals. When I started my first company that succeeded, Spheric Technologies, I read a book called Good to Great and it said you have to have a vision for your life. So I sat down and I created a vision. Five years, five continents, 50 million in revenue, 50 people. I don't even know where it came from. It sounded good. Did I get to that level in five years? No. Just shy though, and that was the business that made me a multimillionaire. What I had was clarity and focus. See, a goal properly set is half complete. Most people just don't write it down. Without a deadline, that goal is just a dream. So I use this thing called the rule of 300 to help me hit my goals. It's all about having 100% clarity, 100% belief, 100% of the time. If you do that, you'll hit your goal. Which brings us to tiny habit number four, review your goals daily. Every day I use triggers. When I sit at my chair in the morning, when I'm doing my morning routine, or I get in my car, or I come to my desk at my office to remind me to review my goals that are on my phone. So it's literally pinned at the top of my notes file and they're my 12 power goals for the year. Most people set goals and don't review until the end of the year and they realize either hit them or didn't hit them. It's like business plan. They usually write them and then stuff them in a drawer. I review my goals three times a day. The way I make it easy on myself is I just connect it to a trigger. It literally activates this thing called your reticular activating system to help you scan the world for opportunities to make that a reality. It's like when you're thinking of buying a new car, let's say a red Volkswagen, and for the longest time you didn't see any other red Volkswagens, all of a sudden you can't stop seeing them all over the place. Why? Your brain is on the search of red Volkswagen so you'll see them all over the road. Which brings us to tiny habit number five, automate your savings. My philosophy is very simple. I want to set it and forget it. I want to make the decision when I'm feeling good about life and then never revisit it. Even though I live off 10% of my income, most people should follow the 50, 30, 20 rule, which is 50% of their income goes to what they need, 30% goes to what they want, and the other 20% should go to savings. What I do pretty much every week is any extra cash in all of my companies get swept out, put into my holdco, and then my holdco automatically invest it in the portfolio I've already decided. I either do high risk stuff in private equity or I do low risk stuff in index funds in the public markets, but I don't want to think about it. I want to set it and forget it. Which brings us to tiny habit number six, avoid bad debt. Bad debt is high interest debt. This is consumer debt, hard money lending. I remember when I was starting off, I had to buy some furniture and I thought I'd be the cool guy and go get an apartment and finance a bunch of furniture because they said it would cost me nothing, no interest payments for three years until it did. And that interest payment, plus the fact that it took me a few more years to pay it off, cost me more than double of just buying the furniture outright at the beginning. And did I need that at 20 years old? No, I was being silly. Lenders have an incentive to take advantage of you. It's why most credit card companies try to get you some kind of credit early on. I'm talking college campuses. It's wild. You should only take on debt for things that can make you money. Think real estate. Think business investments. Think investing in yourself where you can get an ROI by investing in the SME 500, not the SMP 500. It's all about short-term leverage. Don't make other people rich off of borrowing money from them. Which brings us to tiny habit number seven, exhaust the body, tame the mind. At 11 years old, I got diagnosed with ADHD and it messed me up. I was taking Ritalin and Adderall and all these pills to try to make me normal, but I never felt normal when I was taking those pills. I actually liked who I am. What I had to do was figure out how to be me without the medication. A big part of that is going to the gym. That's why I say every day I go to the gym to work on my mind. Yes, it has a physical value to doing that, but if I don't go, I can't think, I can't focus, I can't get things done in my day. Which brings us to tiny habit number eight, use your feed on social media to feed your mind. The other day, my son's friend came over after school and he was asking me how I deal with being distracted from things like girls and TikTok. And I was laughing because I said, I actually scroll TikTok two hours almost every day. The difference is, is what's on my feed. I like to use my social media to teach myself things, to micro learn, to use it almost like a social university. So what I do is I'll search for topics I want to learn about and then go look at those videos and leave comments on the videos that are good. And then it's just my feed. That's how I use my feed to feed my mind. Which brings us to tiny habit number nine, read 10 pages a day. The other day I was at the gym and some kid asked me, what's the number one habit millionaires have? And the truth is, out of all of them I had to pick from, it's got to be reading. And the reason why is that nobody knows how to do the thing they're about to do the first time they do it. And the best way to avoid all the pain of trying to do it through trial and error is to read books. My life was built by books. I've read over 1600 books. I actually did a video on it. You can go search for it. But the whole premise is that every philosophy, idea, process, habits was all inspired by other people much smarter than me that have lived a big life and mastered skills. And they were sharing everything they learned for 25 bucks and a six hour investment of my time. I think it's the best trade in the world. Which brings us to tiny habit number 10, wake up early. A lot of people talk about getting up early, but let me tell you why. A lot of people sleep in because they stay up late. What I do is I set an alarm to go to bed on time. And that 5am club, that's cool. But what you learn over time is 4am is even cooler. And the reason why is between 3 and 6am is where it's said to have the thinnest veil to the spiritual realm. So it's not just about getting up early to get work done. It's also about being connected to your creator, connected to the universe, taking advantage of the inspiration and ideations that will come to you at the quiet in the morning. It's a beautiful thing. Some of my best ideas have come from that. Instead of setting an alarm for what time to wake up, set an alarm for what time you go to bed. When people see me get up at 4am, they think it's impressive, but it's not that impressive knowing my alarm went off at 9pm to go to sleep. I've been sleeping for seven hours. Which brings us to tiny habit number 11, invest in your environment. Four years ago, I was renting a house and I was there for six months. And the office had this beautiful window, but it was directly in the sunlight where I couldn't see anything. And I decided within the first few days to hire a sign company to come put a film over the glass. And when my wife heard about it, she thought, that's crazy. Why would you spend 1200 bucks to get the glass covered so that you can stay in that spot? And I was like, I don't want to move my desk. I like the energy of this space, this environment, and I'm willing to spend $1,200 so I can be in the energy of the vibe. And it's funny, I see people make this mistake all the time. They spend most of their time at their desk and they don't have a great chair. They don't have great monitors. They have invested in keyboards. They have invested in the tools. Maybe it's a camera, maybe it's the ring light. Whatever would make your work environment feel fun is something I'm a big fan of investing in. Which brings us to tiny habit number 12, follow one course until successful. That's what focus stands for. See the richest people in the world do one thing, they just do it for 20 years. They go all in and dedicate themselves to a decade. They don't get distracted. They don't have three businesses with one making some profit and the other two being unprofitable. They don't diversify earlier on because diversification is diversification. If you want to create wealth, you have to be concentrated. So don't be easily distracted. Pick something and decide to be a master at it. Which brings us to tiny habit number 13, protect your space. Words matter. What you hear matters. I'm a big fan of turning off the news, cutting out toxic friends, curating my feed to show me opportunity and possibility. The end of the day, the quality of your inputs will determine the quality of your output. You have to protect yourself from the things you're being exposed to. Which brings us to tiny habit number 14, stop asking for money. There's this great Pitbull song that says, ask for money, get advice, ask for advice, get money twice. And that to me is how I live my whole life. Most people are asking for money from investors and friends and family. Why don't you ask for advice? And what happens is when you do that, the person tells you all the things that would need to be true for them to be excited about it. And you just get really good at agreeing with them. And next thing you know, instead of just getting advice, you'll actually get money. Which brings us to tiny habit number 15, live below your means. Being wealthy isn't a number, it's actually a ratio. When I was making 120K a year at 25, I was driving a 15 year old car. I was living off of 30 to 40% of my income. Today, I probably live off of just over 10% of my income. Why? Because it's not what you make, it's what you spend. Broke people buy stuff, rich people buy things that make them money. If you want to be wealthy, don't buy things that you don't need to impress people you don't like. Which brings us to tiny habit number 16, give back to your community. I learned a long time ago at 17 in rehab that I can only keep what I give away. If I want sobriety, I have to help other people be sober. If I want to be rich, I got to help other people be rich. If you want abs, guess what? Go help other people get abs. See, when you have that abundance mentality, focus on other people and being of service, you will create the opportunities in your life to get those results. Most people are running around with scarcity, you want to be there with expansion. So share your things. If you have a nice house, invite people into your home. If you have nice cars, please share your freaking cars. I have a neighbor that's got a beautiful car that never sees the light of day because he's worried he's going to curb his rims or somebody's going to from a selfish point of view. You want to be the person that brings smiles on other people's faces every day. Which brings us to tiny habit number 17, reflect on your achievements. Oftentimes when I'm feeling doubt, or I'm not certain about my decisions, or I've got a big meeting, a big keynote I got to give and I'm just not feeling it, I go back to a thing called my achievement list. And this is a list of all the accomplishments I've had over the years, no matter how small, from my very first kickflip to my first exit. I've listed them and I review them because the energy of those moments reminds me what I've accomplished in the past, what I'm capable of doing, and when I'm sitting in this low energy self-defeatist mindset, I want to go back to those moments where I've won. Because massive success is built on tiny little wins, and that's how we build momentum. When you're in momentum, you can't be stopped. The hardest part about winning is getting back into momentum. If you're not feeling it, you need to use your achievement list to get that energy going. It's like a rocket. When it takes off, it uses 90% of all the fuel to just get out into orbit. Once it's in orbit, it can maintain. Your achievement list can help you stay in that momentum so you don't ever come back down to earth and you stay flying high. Which brings us to tiny habit number 18, be blissfully dissatisfied. I got this language from my coach, Ed Milat, because he believes that you can achieve and have a lot and be grateful for that stuff, but in the same moment, be dissatisfied with the fact that you know you're here to do more. I think about this all the time when people are like, how much money is enough? I'm like, what are you talking about? As long as I'm here, I'm breathing and my heart is into the work to create for other people, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to create. I might have an attachment to the result, but I'm definitely involved in the creation. I just believe if you're listening to this, that you're here to do something more with your life, that you're here to do something massive with your life, that you're here to create something special. And it doesn't matter how big that is, if you're getting up every day, you might as well go build something. So if you want to learn the seven skills of the top 1%, click the video and I'll see you on the other side.