10 Habits I Quit To Go From Broke To Millionaire - Stop Wasting Your Life

I'm going to share with you 10 things that I quit to go from broke to millionaire. These are the exact same things that I quit to build two eight-figure businesses. So without further ado, let's get into my 10 things to quit to go from broke to millionaire, starting with number one. Quit spending time to save money. People underestimate the value of their time. They think it's an infinite renewable resource. It's not. It's the most precious thing that you have. And how you leverage your time is really important. What successful entrepreneurs learn is that they trade their money for their time. The example is this, you're going to drive across town, wait in line for 30 minutes so you can save some money on toilet paper. Is that really a good use of your time? And how much money are you really saving? Now, that seems pretty obvious to most of us that we wouldn't do that. But think in your own business. How many times that you've sat there and interviewed the 50th person for a $10 job? It doesn't make sense. Take a shot. Take a risk. But whatever you do, prioritize your time. Legendary business consultant Peter Drucker wrote in The Effective Executive, the number one most important thing that you need to do is to protect your time. To gather and consolidate the largest amount of discretionary time. In corporate culture, what is the biggest time suck of them all? Meetings. We have meetings about meetings to talk about more meetings that we're about to have. Nothing is getting done. If you add up the value of everybody in that room, you start to realize how they're using that time so poorly. Which leads us to number two. Quit spending your time with energy vampires. You know who they are. As soon as you're around them, they suck all of your energy. They're usually pessimists. They're negative Neds. And Jim Rohn wrote about this. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So when you're spending time with people who don't value their time, who have bad habits, who are spending money frivolously, some of that actually influences you to do the same thing. Stop spending your time with them. You know the expression misery loves company. So when misery sends you the invitation to the pity party, send that invitation back. Don't be a part of this. Millionaires, the people who are very successful, live in the world of possibility. They say I can versus I can't. This might work versus why would this work? And number three. Quit shiny object syndrome. You know how like dogs are. They're doing something. They're super focused and they see a squirrel running by. And they're like, whoa, squirrel, squirrel. They're easily distracted. They're never getting anything done because they're constantly switching their tasks or their focus or their goal or their mission. It's constant second guessing and it gets stuck in this loop. And then you look back one year, five years, ten years, and they have not done anything with their life. They've not moved forward because they've moved laterally. Number four. Quit taking advice from the wrong people. It's not so easy to determine the wrong people unless you use some kind of criteria for who you're going to listen to. Let me give you the easiest one. Somebody on social media says don't do this, don't do that. Or this is dumb or that's good. And you're like, yeah, I should do that. Well, who are these people? What have they done? General rule of thumb, not always true, but take advice from people who are where you want to be, who've done what it is that you want to do. Number five is a big one. Quit playing it safe. You need to take some risks. Again, let's quote Peter Drucker here. In business, all profit comes from risk. You don't have big gains from not taking big risks. The world rewards you for taking big risks. The first person to do something is taking all the risks and they pave the way for everyone else to follow. And so in business, it's best to be first. You've got to learn to take some big risks if you want the big reward. Here's the analog for you. If you want to play it safe, you're going to get safe returns. So if you put your money into a mutual fund, a bond, you're going to get a couple of percentage points. Put it in a bank, it's safe. It's not going to go anywhere. But that's the sad part. It's not going to go anywhere. Now, conversely, in tech stocks or even cryptocurrencies, you can risk a lot and get a lot. And that's what the millionaires do. They're willing to make nine bad bets to have one bet pay off 1,000 times their investment. So you can understand how that works in the real world. Apply that to your own thinking. Number six, quit blaming others. I'm a big believer in radical accountability and to take responsibility for everything that happens to you, for you, with you. It's the only way you grow. It's the only way you learn. We can get stuck in saying, well, this didn't happen because someone didn't do this for me. Or, you know, I was born into this life, therefore, I can't do this thing. You're resigning yourself to be a fatalist. Like my fate has already been sealed because other people have set things in motion that I have no control over. Now, let's just have a philosophical debate right now. Let's just say your life is predetermined or set. And if you resign to saying this is how it's going to be, well, pretty much that's how it's going to be. But let's say there's a 1% chance that you're wrong, but you take responsibility and you actually do something about it. I'd rather live in a world where I believe I have influence over my life and outcomes that I have than to accept that nothing can be changed, even if there's only a 1% chance that that's true. You notice how often when something works out, everybody's got their hand. I'm like, well, it worked because I said this, or I gave him that idea, or I executed this, or I showed up the door and knocked on the door. There's this expression, and maybe it's a little off color expression, but success has many fathers, but failure has one mother. And it's kind of a truism. Like no one wants to step up to own the failure. Well, I personally believe when I understand the failure, I have a better blueprint for success. So I'll be the one who's like, it's my fault, even when it's not my fault, because at the end of the day, everything's going to be my fault anyways, and I want to learn versus pushing on that responsibility to somebody else. Number seven, quit acting on impulse. You got to think long-term. You got to play the long game. Think in decades and not in days. This is all about delayed gratification. So in my life, my dad told me this thing. It's a piece of advice that stuck with me all these years. He goes, in life, you have a short time in which you can make it. Rather than having fun and working a little bit, having fun and working a little bit, which will prolong the amount of time in which it takes for you to achieve the success, make all the sacrifices, work really, really hard, achieve the level of success, and then you can decide there from the platform or the place that you're in what you want to do with the rest of your life. You can coast if you want, you can live on your success, or you can continue to build that so it compounds even more. That's up to you. Number eight, this one's going to be hard for you here. Quit saying yes to everything. Because every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. This is a problem I've always had because as a middle child and as a people pleaser, I always said yes because I didn't want other people to feel uncomfortable. And then I found at the end of the day, I didn't get my work done, I didn't honor my relationships, and I just created more stress for myself. This is really, really important. Derek Seaver writes about this in his book, Hell Yeah or Hell No. Basically, if it doesn't fill you with joy, if this is not something you're really looking forward to, you need to honor yourself, honor your time and your relationships. And say, you know what? This isn't what I want to do. Give yourself permission to say no more often. Saying no more often gives power to your yes. Because if everything's a yes, your yeses have little meaning. And now on to number nine, my favorite. Quit looking for shortcuts. You see everybody trying to promise you the easy way to do something that requires no effort, no money, no time. Why would that even work? My mom taught me this many years ago. If it's too good to be true, it's probably not true. Life is difficult. And it rewards people for doing the difficult work. And this is really important for you to understand. I just had a wonderful conversation recently with Mark Manson, the author of Subtle Art of Not Giving a F. And he starts his book with something like this. I'm paraphrasing here. That the avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering itself. It's kind of a very Buddhist idea that life is suffering. And we're trying to avoid suffering. So we don't like stress. We don't want challenges. We don't want to do difficult things. So when challenging things come, difficult things come, we don't know how to respond. I've built my life up to embrace the difficult things, to do the things that few people are willing to do, to do it with the conviction and the perseverance that I need to do it with. And I know at the end of that hard work rainbow is a pot of gold. If everyone could be an influencer, create content that connects with people, if everyone could be a great teacher, I'd have nothing to do. So I enjoy doing the hard work so I can get into this place where not a lot of people are able to achieve because they quit. And because it's scarce, because not a lot of people want to do it, not a lot of people see it through, it's valuable. Scarce things are valuable. Do the difficult work. When you take shortcuts, what you're trying to do is to get to a result with acquiring the skills. This is a very important thing. Rather than looking at life as a pursuit of money or things, look at life as a pursuit or acquisition of skills. Because the skills compound in you and no one can take them away from you. The more valuable skills you acquire, the more valuable you become, the more value you will create. Number 10, quit being an information hoarder. So many of us get stuck in this state where we want to learn and it creates safety for us. Like we're forever students, we stay in school, we get a master's degree, we get a PhD because we're trying to delay the inevitable, which is to test our skills in the real world in the marketplace itself. So what I want you to do is to love learning but to love applying what you learn more than what you do. So what I'm saying is, I want you to love learning but I want you to love applying more than just learning for learning sake. That's some form of mental masturbation, I believe. So here's the hack, right? When you're reading something, ask yourself a few questions before you even pick up the book. Ask yourself, why am I reading this book? What is it I want to get from this book and how will I apply it in my life? That way as you're reading through the book, you're searching for pieces of information that you can easily and immediately implement. You made it all the way through 10. Well, I have a bonus for you as a reward for your persistence to make it through this video. It's bonus number 11. Quit comparing yourself to others. There's a quote, comparison is the thief of joy. So much of our happiness, so much of our well-being and our self-worth is defined by where we sit relative to others. We're constantly comparing, competing against what others are accomplishing according to our own set of rules. The best kind of competition is the one where you compete against yourself. Where you say, in the last year, this is what I've been able to do. This is how my mind has expanded. These are the risks I've taken on. These are the ventures I've taken on. These are the relationships that I built. This is how much I've grown in the last year. The only comparison that's worthwhile is a comparison with your old self. Putting these rules into practice will help you become successful in any industry. And if you want to learn how to do that, watch this video, The Secret to Being Successful in Any Industry. It's a short five-minute video.