15 Habits Self Made Millionaires Have

Today I read through an article from Property Update about 15 habits that transformed 177 average people into self-made millionaires in just 12 years.

We read through it together, talk through some of the points and I think about the things I’m doing well and what I can do better.

Property Update Article

0:00 – Introduction
1:19 – #1: Rich People Do Work That They Love
3:28 – #2: Set Good Goals vs Bad Goals
5:22 – #3: They Make Living Below Their Means a Daily Process
7:51 – #4: They Don’t Gamble
9:28 – #5: They Read To Learn Everyday
13:20 – #6: They Avoid Time Wasters
13:58 – #7: They Control Their Words and Emotions
14:41 – #8: They Dream-Set Before They Goal-Set
17:00 #9: They Develop Relationships With Other Success-Minded Individuals
17:48 #10: They Never Quit on a Dream
18:40 #11: They Seek Out and Find Mentors
20:59 #12: They Develop Multiple Streams of Income
22:15 #13: They Are Open Minded and Positive
22:46 #14: They Don’t Give Into Their Fears and Doubles
24:36 – #15: They Create Their Own Luck

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Transcription:

Ryan 0:00
Today, I want to read through this article from Michael yarny, his property update website about 15 habits that transformed 177 average people into self made millionaires in just 12 years, I want to go through these 15 habits, see which ones of them that I’m working on. We’ll talk about them as we go through. And then hopefully, we can learn something together, I will link up to this article in the description down below. This is a great website that has a lot of cool stuff on it. I’ve had a bunch of financial habits that have changed in my life over the last year going from near bankruptcy, to paying off more than $20,000 worth of debt, and setting myself up with about four or five months worth of buffer financially. If I donate any money, then I can survive for that long. So completely transformed myself over the last 12 months. But it’s learning things like this and creating these little daily habits, that makes such a huge difference over the long term. In in a year from today, I want to be so much better off, I want to have all my debt paid off, I want to be saving my deposit, I want my business to be in a really good place. So it’s always really good to learn. So here’s 15 habits, we’re not going to read through the whole article, because as you can see, it’s quite long. But we’re going to touch on some of the habits here and talk about it. So the first one, which is really interesting is that rich people do work that they love. This is something I’ve been talking about more and more. And it’s getting rid of this idea that financial freedom is so we can retire early, we should be living a life that we love right now. And financial freedom just gives us the insurance policy gives us the security that we can continue to do what we love, no matter what happens to us financially. So it’s really interesting that rich people do what they love. It says in the data 96% of the poor did not like what they did for a living 86 86% of the rich did like what they did, and 7% of the original loved what they did for a living, I actually would be right between like, like and love what I do at the moment, I can definitely expand upon it. And I’m excited for the future, probably in the like at the moment, moving up towards the love when I worked in the cafe. For the last year did not love that I didn’t hate it. It was great. The people that I worked with were amazing, the customers were great, the job was pretty chill, and easy and like fun. But it just didn’t stimulate me mentally, there was just there was no difficulty in it. Once you learn how to do everything, just kind of go through the day, it was good social job. But you know, I didn’t love it. And so here it’s saying that rich people love what they did. Now, obviously, some passion projects aren’t going to deliver us any money. But finding the combination of what you love, and what can make money is obviously so powerful. So for me, I I just love the challenge. And I love creating content. And I love researching and learning about things, the stuff that I’m creating content on on my other websites other than on property, I would not say is life changing. I would not say it’s a natural passion of mine the stuff that I’m writing about. But I love researching. I love learning things. I love helping people. And so I found a way to love what I do. And that that makes me money. I know it makes me money. And I found a way to love it and love the process. And second one is they set good goals versus bad goals. Now, you know, setting goals in general is obviously really important. And if you don’t set goals, like Where are you going, they talk about the difference between good goals and bad goals. An example of a good goal would be to lose 20 pounds, which is going to create changes in your life that are going to be positive and healthy outcomes. So for me kinda like one of my goals around health at the moment, is to live longer. I want to live to like 120 130 150. And so that’s actually creating this massive onward effect of different habits in my life. And so I’m cutting down on sugar. I’m like eating less during the day, I’m eating healthier, I’m exercising more. And yeah, that’s as a result of that longevity goal. They set an example of a bad goal would be to own a Ferrari, Daytona Ferrari must make more money, which involves working or taking excessive financial risks. I don’t know

why it’s a bad goal and why they say that it’s a bad goal. Are they saying the happiness you derive from owning more or better stuff will fade over time, since happiness derived from buying stuff, always short term. And I have heard studies about that sort of stuff where if you give someone a certain amount of money, and if they spend it on something material, like a car, or if they go and spend it on something like a holiday in an experience, and then you interview those people a year or two later, who is happy are based off the money that they’re spent and it was people who purchase the holiday and who had the experiences the memories from that were better and they were happier overall so yeah i think i’ve kind of gotten away from wanting to be rich to have stuff and just wanting to have choices to pursue what i love but also choices to have awesome experiences as well so yeah set set some good goals number three is they make living below their means a daily process definitely not something that i was doing two years ago and obviously i got myself into a hole it was not a daily process to live below my means it was not fun budgeting was difficult talking about budgeting with my wife at the time it was also a stressful endeavor for both of us it was not something that was an integral part of our lives and then that started to shift but it started to shift a bit too late but definitely over the last 18 months that has been an integral part of my life learning how to budget learning how to live below my means but making it a daily an easy part of my life so for me setting up an easy budget and one that i can follow was key to that i call it the 15 minute budget i’ve done a video on credit a template i’ll link out to that down below if you’re interested in that but creating a budget but then also finding fun ways to enjoy life but live below your means so for me i talked about it all the time but making coffee at home i found ways to love it make amazing coffee but it also saves me heaps of money and then you know living at home with family at the moment which i’ll probably do for the next six months that’s not ideal but i am currently recording in my van which i already had and i’ve just kind of cleaned it out and turned it into my office so that’s made living below my means easier because i’ve got my own space there so living below your means is a daily process it’s once you start doing it it’s not that hard to do i guess i’ve gone minimalism and got away from material things but allocating savings by category i guess you may as well living below your means paying yourself first is a big part of living below your means but it doesn’t even feel like living below your means because if you get paid and then a chunk of that money goes towards your savings your focus you kind of just forget about it and your focus becomes on okay what have i got left to live with i need to live within my means of what i have left but you’re actually living below your means because you’ve already started saving so they talked about allocating savings by category establishing savings goals automate automating and savings process yep definitely been a massive one for me and then they talked about the expense minimization strategy talking about tracking your spending audit your expenses there’s a lot of good stuff in here that i won’t go through all we talking for ages number four number four is they don’t gamble so that’s interesting something i guess i didn’t expect to see in this article but 77% of those who struggle financially play the lottery weekly while 70% of people who struggle financially play the lottery and 94% of the wealthy do not wealthy people don’t rely on lanham random good luck for their wealth they create that own gridlock and yeah i have not gambled in quite a long time unless you count like a random gamble here and there like a betting $1 or two or something who knows but i used to work in a news agency i used to work in the lotto i remember spending my sundays working there which was one of the more popular days for people to buy lotto tickets or maybe it was saturday anyway i remember working out and calculating the odds and calculating okay how much would you have to spend to buy every single option and i would sit there and do the math and it just did not make sense in order to gamble and the risk and reward was just not there like i was looking at return on investment how much would i have to invest to guarantee your winning and then how much winnings would i get and even when it’s like a $4 million one or a $10 million one if multiple people win then that’s actually split so you don’t get the full $10 million so i remember analyzing that and just being like this is just it’s not it’s actually not worth it looking at it as an investment it’s not worth it so i definitely don’t gamble i don’t buy lottery tickets or anything like that

number five they read to learn every day this is really interesting and if you’re listening to this you obviously love learning now reading to learn they might say reading here but i would also put in there podcasts educational youtube videos audio books and things like that you need to physically read to learn i learned a couple of years ago that i am an audible learner i learned things by listening so much better that i learned things by reading even talking this out i’m learning this better then if i was to go through and read this so listening for me is key i’m always doing podcasts mainly on youtube these days i don’t really use like apple podcasts or anything like that i just listened to them through youtube or i’m doing audio books as well and so i’m i can learn so much through through listening but not through reading so yeah you could you can look at this at both but they’re saying 88% of wealthy individuals read 30 minutes or more every day i would listen 30 minutes or more every day not necessarily to learning things about wealth about property investment about personal finance or business sometimes it is i learned a lot about business at the moment but sometimes it’s you know learning about health or wellness or having more energy you know 63% listen to audiobooks during their commute that’s a huge one i remember being a pharmaceutical rep driving around so much i would go through all the audio books all the podcasts i’d run out of things to listen to whereas all of my colleagues would just listen to music or to the radio 79% read educational career related career related material that’s me 35% read self help books 58% read biographies of successful people yet 94% read current events i kind of keep up to current events when it comes to my business and when it comes to property but i’m not a big news buff or anything like that 51% read history and the 11% read purely for entertainment purposes i read for entertainment purposes but that is more something that i learned from tim ferriss which comes around like actually switching your mind off so someone who’s always doing business always thinking about investing and property and websites and things like that i find it hard to switch my mind off so fiction helps me do that and it says only 2% of those struggling financially in life engage in daily self improvement reading and as a result they are among the first to get fired or downsize or not so much worried about the fight or downsize but seriously through reading and through learning about so many different things and listening a lot of us listening for me these little things that you learn sometimes have the biggest impact sometimes i’ll listen to things for months and i’ll you know i’ll learn a bit along the way but then i’ll be listening and we’ll be like one thing will stick out and be like oh my gosh that is actually life changing and so in my business i’ve been listening to things and this one thing stuck out about how to find keywords that you can easily rank for and i discovered that in february and started implementing that in my business and it’s had a huge dramatic effect on the performance of the articles that i write so i’m doing the same amount of work we’re getting much better results from this one idea and i heard the idea probably 100 times before that date but it just really stuck on that date changed my mind i changed my life and increased my income dramatically and there’s been so many things so those people who are struggling financially and not learning you’re missing out on all those opportunities to learn those little things that are going to increase your finances and over time it just builds up and i talked in a previous video about living a long life if we’re learning every single day how much is that going to build up over time number six they avoid time wasters 67% of wealthy people watch less than an hour of tv okay i’m probably i had definitely got a time waster in terms of youtube i definitely watch too much of that they say 63% spend less than an hour a day on the internet unless job related i definitely spend more than an hour a day on the internet on instagram and stuff like that so avoiding those time wasters is definitely something that i need to work on to be more diligent in my work and then when i’m out of work to just have better experiences in life number seven they control their words and emotions not every thought needs to come out not every emotion needs to be expressed 69% of those who struggle financially had the poverty habit of saying what’s on their mind and expressing their emotions conversely 94% of wealthy tend to filter the words that come out of their mouth and rein in their emotions

i don’t know how you would exactly measure this but obviously being in control of your thoughts being in control of your emotions is important so that you can make those good decisions to move forward in life i don’t know if i get a tick for that i definitely i control my words and emotions a lot then then sometimes you know they come out and i can be stressed and things can happen number eight they dream set before their goal set okay this is interesting you must dream set before your goals that dream setting provides you with the destination goal setting the transportation to get you to your destination okay cool yeah i like that idea dreams represent a vision of your future your ideal state or reality and Then dreams, your goals are based off trying to achieve your dreams. So rather than setting a goal of, I want to earn a million dollars or I want to be financially free, that’s a good, that’s a good one. But well, I want to own a Ferrari. It’s like, okay, no, let’s actually take a step back. Let’s take the money out of it for a second. And just imagine ideal lights. What is my ideal life going to look like? What do I want to feel? What sort of experiences do I want to be having? What sort of water relationships? What am I going to be doing with my kids and my family? What I want to be doing work that I’m passionate about, what does that look like? And then once you have that dream set, then you go ahead and you set your goals to say, Okay, how can I move towards this dream, they say, for example, making an additional 100 grand a year is a dream, not a goal. Becoming an Olympic athlete is a dream, not a goal, owning a house, on the beach is a dream, not a goal. Okay, so you set the goals, and then goals were goal setting requires you to build goals around your wishes or dreams. So what do you need to do? What are the activities that you need to do to get you there? One of the best books that I read on this is called the four Disciplines of Execution are for dx, which talks about breaking down, okay, what do you want to achieve? And rather than just tracking, okay, how close Am I getting there, track the things that you need to do to get you there. So for me, in my business, it’s like, I want X amount of money per year in income from my business. Okay, I can track the finances and how I’m going to get there. But rather than that workout, what actions do I need to take to get there? For me? That’s article writing, publishing articles. So I’m tracking Okay, how many articles and my publishing and then I’m tracking the performance of those articles? Are they hitting what they need to be hitting. So 40x completely changed my life last year, over the last year. So I’ll link up to that in the description down below. Number nine, is they develop relationships with other success minded individuals. And I would say this is true for myself, but something that I need to work on more I need to network not because I need to get anything out of anyone. But I just need to meet more people who are like minded more people who are doing business that I can learn from, I’ve got people like Ben who pushed me to be better. I’ve got, you know, friends who are visionaries, and dreamers, who I talk to about my dreams, and they encouraged me, my partner, she is, you know, very dedicated to herself and growing as a person and super smart. And so she’s a success minded individual, as well. So I don’t know, maybe a passing score on that, but I can definitely do better. Number 10 is they never quit on a dream self made millionaires a persistent, they never quit on their dream. They’d rather hear down with the ship than quit 27% of self made millionaires failed at least once in business, oh, I failed so many times in business. So there’s and then they pick themselves up and went and try it again. Persistence makes you unstoppable. I would definitely say that I have that quality. I’ve got that grit. I love the book grit by Angela Duckworth is that her name. I’ll link to it down below if you’re interested. But it’s that ability to just keep going to like grit your teeth, and to just push through and to keep going. And in some areas of my life, I don’t have great, but in a lot of areas, I am determined, and I’m just going to make it happen. No matter what comes up in my path. I’m gonna go for it. So that’s cool. Number 11. They seek out and find a success mentor. The average net liquid wealth of 233 rich people in my research was 4.3 million. If you do the math, finding a mentor in life is like depositing 4.3 million into your bank account. I don’t know about the math on that. But they said 93% of the self made millionaires who had a mentor in life attributed their wealth to their mentors. And 68% said the mentoring they received from others was a critical factor in achieving success. I’ve never had a mentor,

I’m going to be honest with you here, I get a failing pass on this. I’ve never met anyone done like, I want you to mentor me. I love your life. And I want to live like you. And so while I’ve had no, I don’t honestly don’t think I’ve had any personal mentors in my life, or people that have actually played that role for me because I’ve always been on the edge of things. To be honest, I’ve always been doing things a little bit differently. And so I’ve never really had someone that’s been a mentor that’s kind of helped me along my journey. I’ve found my own mentors online and that I guess that comes back to reading comes back to listening to podcasts and things like that. I found my own mentors in each of the areas that I wanted to achieve it and so in online business or in property or in the types of relationships that i want to do i find people who are doing well in those areas and follow them they don’t become mentors for me personally but mentors in that area because they have knowledge there but if i think about the people that have had huge impacts on me as mentors or like electronic mentors through the information that they’ve given you know not one of them do i want a life exactly like this so they mentor me in one area but other areas are just not interested it’s not that i’m not interested in hearing what they say but they meant to me in one area but not necessarily others and they do talk here about parents teachers career mentors book mentors so books can take the place of actual mentors so yeah that would be me so instead of books it would be audio books or it will be youtube videos and podcasts number 12 is they create multiple streams of income so self made millionaires don’t require on one single source of income they do develop multiple streams and three seems to be the magic number in my study 65% had three or more streams of income they created over time and diversifying your income allows you to weather economic downturns that always occur in life and look we’ve seen that over the last couple of months with everything that’s happened with the virus and with the economy i had you know two main streams of income in my business and i was fortunate in the fact that i was actually able to keep one of those steady and then was actually able to grow one during that time and then i had the cafe work as well well that was prior to corona so i had three streams of income are now down to two but eventually you know i want to build up my property portfolio as well and have that stream so definitely having i guess long term for me i want to have multiple streams of income in my businesses maybe have multiple businesses and then have real estate as a stream of passive income and also shares and maybe even cryptocurrency so long term i’d definitely like to build that out more number 13 they are open minded and positive everyone inherits from their parents environment and upbringing certain beliefs that direct your behavior blah blah blah i’m pretty open minded i’m pretty positive and you know my tagline is stay positive and i try my best to do that i think simon everingham from pumped on property he stays positive he’s one of the people that i know that is more positive than me otherwise you you struggle to find someone that’s more positive than i am number 14 they don’t give in to their fears and doubts because fears and doubt sabotage your life fear change of making mistakes of taking risks says those rich and successful individuals in my study play something i call the game called the what if game the what if game silences the voice of fear and doubt inside your head i don’t know what what if it’s a success what if it helps improve my brand okay what if they talked about what if in a good way not the bad things what if it actually ends up good but sometimes i play the game what if worst case scenario what if my businesses go to crap what if i have to go bankrupt what if i lose all my money what if what if and i look at the worst case scenario i play that what if game look at the worst case scenario realize it’s not that bad and then i can also play the what if game what if it does go well and yeah to think about it okay in the last 12 months which is really when i’ve kind of turned my financial situation around it was all based on what if what if my articles delivered this much per month what if i was able to grow and write this many articles per day what if i was able to do this i played that game a lot mapped out a lot of things and then just went to work on it and while the what ifs didn’t come to pass as well as i would like so i had what if articles were making this much money per month within this timeframe it was

a quarter of what i predicted and it probably took four times as long to get to a quarter of my prediction but i guess the what if game got me getting there and now i know i’ve adjusted things down and now my wife is based on more accurate results but because i play the what if because i then did the work it’s actually made a huge difference number 15 is they create their own good luck and the 8% of self made millionaires said they accumulated their wealth because of random good luck and 92% said random good luck had nothing to do with their wealth though you know i would say that i create my own luck but i also get lucky so i’m really fortunate meeting ben from pumped on property For example, super random, super lucky interviewed him for on property five or six years ago. But then we developed a friendship developed a partnership. And that has been so lucky. And one of the most fruitful partnerships and business, like relationships of my life, it was lucky that we ever met. Absolutely lock there, but also nurtured that and also that didn’t happen, I would have found another way to do things. So Oh, that’s 15 that, that brings us to the end of it. So really good article, I really liked that one. There’s a lot of things to kind of think about there. I playing the what if game, you know, never quitting on your dream. Something I can work on is developing more relationships with successful like minded individuals, but a lot of those things that I am doing, but I can just probably step it up and do it better. So what are you I’d love to hear in the comments down below. Is there one thing that you’re not doing well, that you’re going to start working on after listening to this, so let me know about that. In the comments down below. I’ll go ahead and link up to the video that I did. And release the other day on the idea of financial freedom and longevity, and the fact that we may potentially live to 120, even 150 and how that changes the way that we look at our work.

We look at property investing, and we look at financial freedom. So I’ll link up to that line. Go ahead, check it out. I hope that you enjoy this and if you did smash that like button, so that I know that you enjoyed it, and I’ll make more episodes like this. I’ll link out to the article as well if you want to go ahead and read through it because we just kind of skipped over it a bit today. Otherwise until next time, stay positive