Ep 335: 6 Habits That Changed My Life After 30

These are great habits. They’re game changers, and they’re going to be a tremendous help to you.

These are six things that once I started doing them, it changed my life dramatically. And I can say now, since I enacted these things after the age of thirty, life is really good. Everything in my life has been in a better direction than where it was then. These six habits are very simple.

Read Daily

When he was younger, my son played t-ball. I had Audible at the time, and I would listen to books during the games. If you’ve ever been to a T-ball game, you basically would like to jump off a bridge. I’m not convinced it’s a sport. It’s a painful exercise, being out in the heat watching kids that have no coordination hit the tee and knock the ball off constantly.

I started reading and listening to books daily. I remember three books that I read, they were that were collections of condensed books. Each individually condensed book was about two pages and it contained all the best self-help books. All the best books on how to manage money, etc. So I basically got to look at 150 books in just a condensed version. If I thought the condensed book was great, then I would get the real book and listen to it, and that’s how I eventually read Think & Grow Rich and Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and on and on.

Reading daily is also Warren Buffett’s “secret”. I’ts not even a secret to the most successful and wealthy people, but he spends 80% of his day reading. Bill Gates when he travels, carries a duffel bag of books that his assistant puts in there.

Write Out Your Goals Every Day

Writing out my goals every day with something I’m going to do that day to make it actually happen.

I typically don’t want my goals to be more than five or six at the very most, because I can’t do more than six things in the course of a year. I write out my goals with a plan on how I’m going to achieve it.

I write out my annual goals, and then each quarter I write out goals because it might be a sub-goal of that annual goal.

Be Accountable Every Day

I have these goals. Where am I at with these?

Don’t just write them down and hope at the end of the year that you’ve achieved them. I regularly look at my goals and I go, Wow, my goal is to write a book this year, but I haven’t written a paragraph. Or my goal was to grow the profit of one of my companies 20%. That’s a goal I have every year, but maybe I haven’t initiated anything new, no new divisions, no new profit streams. How in the world am I going to grow revenue if I do not have a plan.

I also hold my team accountable. Whoever has responsibility into making these goals into reality needs to be held accountable.

Know the Difference Between Friends and Acquaintances

In my 20s, I could hang out with lots and lots of people, but I realized in my 30s that I could only be friends with so many people. I always say that friends are the people that you can call at 4 o’clock in the morning. They’ll help you bury the body. I’m being funny, obviously, but you understand the concept. I want somebody who, no matter what, they’re my friend. They’ll go through anything with you.

They love to see you constantly improve, but they love you for who you are today.

Acquaintances, they talk to you parties for five minutes and they’re great when everything is great, but when there’s a struggle, when there’s a challenge, when you fail…where are they then?

Know How to Partner

In my 30s, I realized I couldn’t do anything without help partnering. I really understood that if I wanted to be successful in a broad range of industries that I didn’t know anything about, but I knew that the marketplace wanted, that I would succeed if I was willing to partner.

Partnering is my super power. It’s the one thing that I do more than any singular thing in business that makes me the most money and it makes business the most enjoyable. Partnering makes my business so much more successful because I partner with people that have what I don’t.

My next book is called One Plus One = Done, and it’s the concept of partnering. Me plus one other person…it’s done. I know what I can bring to the table, but I also know what I need. I’ve used partnering on endless real estate deals and more than twenty companies. I realized if I partnered, it was really unlimited to what I could achieve and how many industries that I could get in and how many more opportunities that I would have.

I learned in partnering that 50% of a lot is better than 100% of a little.

Be Disciplined with Saving and Investing

I’ve never met anybody highly successful that doesn’t have the discipline of putting money away. I’m sorry, I just haven’t. Anybody who’s struggling week to week with their finances, only has a certain level of self-confidence.

They know they’re one bad thing away from getting flushed down the toilet financially, like a roof replacement or a major car repair. Where do they come up with the money?

I just got a $7300 bill for car repair on my BMW. I’m not happy about it, but it’s not going alter my day. I systematically have been saving money since the day I graduated from college. I have $35 that I saved my very first paycheck out of college. I still have that put away.

I love spending money, I’ve been to the incredible sporting events in limousines, flown private jets to bowl games, own a Rolex and all the other things. It’s funny as I get older, none that stuff really means to me. My point is I’m not cheap, but I still have the discipline of saving and investing. I find that it’s a lot easier to spend money when you do save and invest systematically.

I did my financial work out, so now I can have a little bit of ice cream.

I work out a lot, and people say, well, I bet you never eat such and such. I say no, as a matter fact, I have pretty much eat cookies every night and/or ice cream. You’d never know it, but I have the discipline of working out every day, so the few hundred extra calories doesn’t alter it.

That’s the same way when you have the discipline of saving and investing. If I want to go out and splurge on something, I do it. I mean, two weeks ago, I bought an AMG 43 GLC  Mercedes, and it’s amazing. Why? Honestly, I felt like it. No, really, I kinda felt like. My son and I were taking a drive and I said let’s stop in at the Mercedes dealership. I looked around for like two minutes, saw something I liked, and I said, let’s just see if they give me the deal that I want. They did. And they delivered it to my house on Saturday.

But I’m disciplined. I save and I invest. So if I want something, I’ll buy it. It never comes out of my savings or investments. It’s my “above that” money.