7 Habits Millionaires Have (That You Don’t)
Last week, nearly 50 high performing entrepreneurs gathered together at our Unstoppable Mastermind meeting in beautiful Miami, Florida with one goal…
…To get the tools and strategies they need to grow their business in 2020 without working more hours.
Our attendees ranged from $10 million/year+ veteran entrepreneurs down to budding freelance copywriters just trying to make their first 6-figures and everyone in between.
And let me tell you, it was EPIC!
We learned from Dan Fleyshman, the youngest person in history to take a company public (he was 23 when his business hit the NASDAQ), Joel “The $700 Million Man” Marion, Robby “The Ads Whisperer” Blanchard and half a dozen other Empire Builders and millionaires.
And throughout the mastermind, I noticed something interesting.
The entrepreneurs at the 7-figure level or above weren’t any smarter, more talented, or harder working than the people at the 5 or low 6-figure level.
They simply have different habits and routines to help them achieve success faster.
And after personally coaching more than 1,000 entrepreneurs (including 260+ millionaires), I’ve found that there are 7 key habits millionaire entrepreneurs have that “struckling” entrepreneurs don’t.
And in today’s essay, I’m going to give you an insider’s look into these habits to help you earn more, work less, and 10X your impact and lifestyle in 2020.
1. They Plan Out Their Days, Weeks, and Months
I’m a big believer that success is simple…once you accept how hard it is.
And one of the simplest (and most powerful) habits you can adopt to 10X your success and make your first million faster than you ever thought possible is to strategically plan your days, weeks, and months.
Here’s the thing…if you don’t have a plan for the big things you want to accomplish, they’ll never happen. Period.
Without a clear blueprint for success, you’ll default to distractions, temptations, and busywork that do nothing to drive you toward the life of your dreams.
Can you imagine what would happen if you went to see Fiddler on the Roof at Broadway… and the actors, director, and production team tried to improvise the entire performance?
Or if a team of Special Forces soldiers were sent on a life-or-death mission without being told where they were going, what they were doing, or what their objective was?
Or if you boarded a plane where the pilot decided not to use the navigation system to find the destination?
It would be chaos!
This seems like common sense. Yet all too often, in our own lives and businesses, common sense isn’t common practice.
If you want 2020 to be the year where you make your first 7-figures (without working crazy hours), you must have a plan for every quarter, month, week, day, and hour.
I encourage you to use my 90-day “Reality Maker Blueprint” to build a proven strategy to dominate each quarter… my Perfect Week Formula to make time for what matters most each week… and my Perfect Day Formula to conquer the chaos of your days and accomplish more by 9 am than most people do all day.
These tools will give you an “unfair advantage” over your competitors and help you compress an entire year’s worth of productivity into three short months.
The best of the best all have a plan for success. And to become a millionaire in 2020, you must too.
Download these tools, use them every day, and I promise…your life will be unrecognizable in 12 months.
2. They Delegate Aggressively and Focus on Their “Area of Genius”
One of the easiest ways to rapidly increase your income and make your first million is to eliminate all of the tasks, activities, and obligations that you do not need to do.
Too many entrepreneurs take a perverse satisfaction in doing everything themselves.
They think they can be the CEO, CFO, CMO, CCO, Sales Manager, Executive Assistant, and janitor in their business…and the end result is always the same.
Burnout, overwhelm, anxiety, and underperformance.
Listen…if you want to become a millionaire and create a business that fuels your lifestyle and gives you the freedom you want (instead of keeping you trapped in a high paying “job”) you MUST delegate, automate, and eliminate EVERYTHING outside of your area of genius.
You must stop wasting your time on $10/hour tasks and focus exclusively on the high level tasks that you and only you can do.
Hire an assistant to manage your inbox and handle your calendar.
Pay someone else to clean your house, cut your lawn, and cook your meals.
Find a salesperson who can close deals for you while you focus on delivering an exceptional product or service.
Even if you have to lose income in the short term, you’ll open up the time and energy you need to focus on the big profit drivers that will add an extra 6 to 7-figures to your bottom line each year.
To get started with this, I encourage you to use a strategy I learned from my business partner Daniel Woodrum called the “Delegation Journal” and it goes like this…
For the next 2-3 days, you’re going to keep a blank sheet of paper and a pen by your desk at all times. Write down EVERYTHING you do whether it’s responding to an email, reviewing a proposal, writing an article, or doing a sales call.
Then, after 3 days, look at your list and ask yourself…what can I outsource, eliminate, or automate to free up my time?
I encourage you to send your list to a business partner, mentor, or coach to get objective outside eyes on your schedule and ensure you’re not wasting time on tasks that are not your job.
I promise, if you’ll do this, you’ll finish the year with more time, more money, and less stress than ever before.
(To really drive this home, be sure to go through my Billionaire Time Matrix exercise here and add an extra 10-15 hours of free time to your week).
3. They Know Their Magic Time (And Max It Out)
Your magic time is the time of the day when your focus, intention, willpower, and motivation are at their highest. When you’re 3-5X more productive than any other time of the day.
Back in 2004 when I first discovered this strategy, I realized that my magic time is early in the morning.
I started waking up at 4:30 am and investing only 20-minutes of time into my online business before going to my day job as a personal trainer.
Within 18 months, those little 20-minute slivers of magic time allowed me to build a 6-figure online business and quit my soul-sucking job (this strategy also helped me write my first book The Perfect Day Formula).
Sure, I could’ve created content in the evenings after twelve hours of training clients… but I knew what would take me fifteen minutes in the morning would take three times longer if I tried to do it later in the day.
Listen…if you want to become a millionaire, you must identify and max out your magic time every day.
You must build a fence around yourself and ruthlessly protect this time with your life…eliminating all distractions and focusing all of your attention on the #1 priority in your business.
If you will do this every day, I promise you’ll make your first 7-figures faster than you ever thought possible.
4. They Take Massive (Imperfect) Action
During our Unstoppable Mastermind meeting last week, my good friend Maddy Fryer delivered a fireball presentation on the power of mindset.
And in her talk, she discussed the problem of “Perfection Paralysis”…something that plagues every entrepreneur at the planet at one point or another.
We want to have the perfect business plan before we take action…we want our products to be perfect before we launch them… we want every word of content and copy to be finely tuned before we’ll share it with the world…
But here’s the thing…
Perfection doesn’t exist. You’ll never feel ready to take action on your big goals. And no matter how many hours you put in, there will always be room for improvement.
The key to success is to embrace your fear of imperfection… accept that the stars will never align and you’ll never feel “ready”… and then take action anyway.
The people who achieve the highest levels of success are the people who are willing to take massive and imperfect action fast… and learn from their mistakes along the way.
Done is better than perfect and no one ever accomplished anything worthwhile by waiting for perfection.
So fail forward fast. Embrace imperfection. Experiment fast and pivot faster. And I promise, your life will change.
5. They Flex Their “Decisiveness Muscle”
Former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a man whose daily decisions literally affected millions of people was once asked how he was able to make so many decisions so quickly.
And his answer was profound.
He said that he followed a simple “40/70” rule. If he had less than 40% of the information, he wasn’t ready to make a decision and needed to spend more time thinking.
However, if he already had more than 70% of the information, he’d already waited too long and needed to make a decision yesterday.
In our own lives, it’s easy to get stuck in indecision. Whether we spend 45-minutes scrolling through Netflix trying to decide on a movie to watch or three months trying to decide what product we should create next, most of us waste years of our life being indecisive.
One of the #1 traits that separate millionaires from the rest of the population is their ability to rapidly make big decisions and pivot along the way.
They don’t deliberate on releasing a product because “I’m not sure if the logo looks right or if I should use blue or purple.”
They make decisions…even huge decisions quickly because they know they can always make a different decision later.
For example, my friend Zander Fryer has a simple rule that he and his wife follow.
For unimportant decisions (like what to eat, what movie to watch, or where to go out for date night), they have only 10-seconds to decide. For important decisions…like whether or not to join Joel Marion’s 100 Million Mastermind Experience (a $100,000 investment), they have only 30-minutes.
And, if you want to become a millionaire in 2020, you must create similar rules in your life.
Stop wasting time “thinking” about what to do. Make a decision and stick to it.
Remember, perfect is the enemy of done. Flex your decisiveness muscle
6. They Are Control Freaks
I’m going to let you in on a little secret…
Every millionaire I know is an absolute control FREAK.
No, I don’t mean they have to have their sheets folded a certain way or their carpets vacuumed in perfect lines…
They are freaks about the people they spend their time with, the entertainment they consume, and the physical environment in which they work.
As my friend Jason Capital, who became an 8-figure entrepreneur by the age of 30, says, “Environment is destiny.”
The people, places, and ideas you expose yourself to will determine who you will become and what kind of life you will live.
Creating the optimal environment for yourself isn’t just some hokey idea. It’s proven that you tend to take on the habits of the people you’re around. If you spend your time with broke people who don’t believe success is possible, you’ll get sucked into that negative hole.
Millionaire entrepreneurs surround themselves with like-minded people through masterminds, at trainings, seminars, other events, or even just online. They understand that they need other millionaires in their life, so they make it happen.
And if you want to break through to your first 7-figures in 2020, you must too.
Find them online. Seek them out in your community. Sell your TV and use the extra cash to pay for flights to a mastermind. Do whatever it takes to be around the people you aspire to be like.
Because when it’s all said and done… nothing will have a greater impact on your future success than your environment.
So do everything in your power to control it.
7. They Have a Proven Strategy for Success (And A Mentor to Help them Implement It)
You can have everything you need to succeed… a proven strategy from someone who has “been there, done that”… all of the tools, tactics, and techniques you need to earn more and work less… a step-by-step blueprint to take you from where you are today to where you want to be.
But this knowledge means nothing if you aren’t taking consistent and massive action on what you know.
Listen… getting the right information is easy… It’s easy to write out your plans on paper, but it’s another thing to follow through and do the hard work required to make your first 7-figures.
You need a coach or mentor (you deeply don’t want to disappoint) who has “been there, done that” and can hold you accountable to taking the right actions and following through on what you know you need to do.
Because no matter how driven or ambitious you are…there will be days you don’t want to show up. You’ll be tempted to hit the snooze button, avoid your blocks of magic time, and spend your evenings in an unending vortex of Netflix specials and cat videos instead of doing the work to live the life you want.
But when you have accountability from the right person… your temptations won’t matter. You’ll do the work you need to do because you don’t want to let them down.
Listen… I’ve helped dozens of entrepreneurs become millionaires through my coaching and mastermind programs. And sure, the strategies I gave them and the people I connected them with were essential to their success.
But if you ask them, they’d tell you it was the accountability, not just the strategies, that helped them get to the next level.
So my challenge for you is simple…
Get accountable for your goals and dreams TODAY. No more waiting, hesitating, or procrastinating. Find a coach or mentor who has the life you want, shares your morals and ethics, and can guide you along the path to success and get their help.
It doesn’t have to be me…but you MUST work with someone.
Every successful person I know used coaching to go from good to great. And if you want 2020 to be the year where you break through to your first million, you must do the same.
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Want me to become my next MILLIONAIRE student and get me to help you grow your business and make 7-figures in 2020?
Then send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Millionaire” and tell me a little bit about where you are in your business today and where you want to go.
If you’re qualified, there are still a few spots left in my Q1 “Millionaire Coaching” program and I’d love to help you achieve your goals in 2020.
Email Funnel Strategist & Copywriter | Helping 6-8 fig. brands leverage emotive, sales-driven email marketing for profitable revenue | #Klaviyo #Sendlane #Mailchimp #Omnisend
4 年Tim, a top guy to follow for mindset, leadership and entrepreneurship...??
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4 年Excellent work! Well done. Craig Ballantyne
Senior Office Manager & Facilities at Amaris
4 年Great post as always Craig : thanks for sharing !!!
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4 年Another brilliant article here mate Craig :)
English teacher in Vietnam
4 年Thanks for posting Craig Ballantyne