Afford Anything - From Millionaire to Broke, Plus the Habits of the Rich, with Tom Corley

Episode Date: February 10, 2016

#10: OMG! It's Tom Corley, the RICH HABITS guy! Jay is having a heart attack. Tom Corley studied self-made millionaires and poor people to come up with some interesting results. He wrote about it in a story called "Rich Habits". Tom shares his story of being well off as a child before his dad lost everything. Then he worked hard to bring himself up to not-broke status and on to becoming an accountant. After studying some of his clients he expanded to 233 self-made millionaires and 150 poor people. The results of those studies were very telling - but nobody really cared about it. Then he got a break when Farnoosh Torabi did a segment about the Rich Habits on Yahoo Finance. The rest is history in the making. Watch for Tom Corley's new book - Change Your Habits, Change Your Life - which gives more of the "how to" rich habit change. You can find it at http://ChangeYourHabitsBook.com For links to some of Jay's favorite Tom Corley articles, visit https://affordanything.com/episode10 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you recording already? Yeah. Three, two, one. You're listening to the Paula and Jay Money show. We'd rather be at a bar with you right now, but this is the next best thing. It's Financial Freedom Time with Paula Pant and Jay Money. What up, Jay? What's up, Paula P?

I am so excited for this guy that we've got coming up on today's show. My boy, Tom Corley. I love this dude. I did not know who he was until you told me about him, Jay. and I started looking him up, this guy's life story is fascinating. When he was nine years old, his family went from being multi-millionaires to being broke in the span of one single night. And when I say broke, I don't mean like, oh, we can't afford the coolest shoes broke. I mean, his father was seriously contemplating suicide level of broke.

That's crazy. I had no idea about any of that stuff until you pretty much just told me. Damn. Yeah, so I mean, I was fascinated about by his story based on his past, his childhood, but you found him based on what he's doing today. Yeah, I found him on Twitter talking about all these different habits of millionaires, good stuff they do, the stuff they don't do. Found his blog, Rich Habits.net two or three years ago, and I was obsessed with this, so I kept blogging about it. And then we just started talking. And I've never talked to him on the phone or on a podcast or anything.

But he just seemed, you know, he's a really, his backstory of how he got this book out the door. like is fat like 100 like literally thousands of like failures and thousands of nose this dude got and he pushed through it all and like became like awesome at the end that is amazing cool let's bring them on let's uh let's hear it from his own words yeah i don't want to talk to you anymore i want to talk to tom hey tom hey paula hey jay thanks for having me on your show i appreciate it we love your accent dude Where are you calling from? Where are you hailing from these days? You got me at my office in Raleigh, New Jersey, which is kind of central New Jersey,

but I was born and raised in New York, so that's what you're hearing, unfortunately. I like it. Now I'm going to think of it every time I'm reading all your tweets and your emails and all that kind of stuff. You're going to know I mean business when I... That's right. That's right. You saying something versus me is way different. Yeah, I'm more likely to listen to you fast.

Thanks for coming on the show, man. We've known each other for a few years, and I've been reading your books and following your blog and Twitter, and you've just been just a wealth of information, man. We're hoping to pull some nuggets out of you on this podcast. I appreciate that. And you're one of the first ones out of the gate that I can look back to that really tried to help me get some of the exposure there.

And every time you post something that I write or that you write, I'm related to my research. My website goes crazy. So you've got a lot of influence out there. See, I feel like I found a little diamond in a rough and got to tell the world about it. Although I've seen you've been on these other podcasts lately. I thought we were going to be the first to have you. And no, my friend, you've been all over the place.

I think I've done about 150 podcast interviews. And how many in the personal finance niche, like in the blogging niche? Do you think there's a big chunk there? Probably about 20 to 20. I mean, it's hard to say it's 20, 25 percent. But, you know, it doesn't end up just focusing on money. But, yeah, there's a lot of money podcasters out there that want me on. And, you know, we end up talking about the rich habits and other stuff.

Yeah, dude. That's exactly what we want to get into, too, right, Ms. Paula P? Absolutely. But first, Tom, I want to know a little bit more about you. So when you were nine years old, your family went from being multi-millionaires to being broke in one night. What the hell happened? Oh my God. I remember like it was yesterday. Now, you know, my dad in today's dollars was probably worth around $20 to $25 million. Oh, my God. But back then it was like $4 million or so. His thing is he was a real entrepreneur. He was an accountant, but he was a real entrepreneur. And he was really good at overseeing and administrating things. In fact, he ran nine congressional campaigns for a congressman and he ran a mayoral campaign for Mayor Beam. And he was even a, involved in RFK's campaign. So my dad was really had a lot of skill sets, a lot of, a lot of good

traits. But, you know, life has a way sometimes of, you know, pulling the rug out from underneath you. And that's exactly what happened one night when I was in the third grade. I was nine years old. And my dad had, he had actually sold his business, right? Well, what was his business? He was a distributor with tools throughout the East Coast. He was one of the main distributors. And he did very well. He knew what he was doing and he managed it. What happened is his partner.

He died of a heart attack at the age of 39. And my dad was smart enough to know that, hey, heck, I'm not a salesman. I'm great at running a business. I'm just not good at selling. So he sold the business. And he got about $5 million for it. So far so good? Yeah, sounds great, right?

And he got, you know, he got his first payment, which was like $1.6. $6 million or something like that. Plus, he already had probably a $2 million in the bank. And then they stopped paying. And in the contract, the way he had written it, if they failed even on one payment, the business reverted back to my dad. So he took the business back after about a, I guess about a year, almost a year. Mysteriously, the business, the warehouse burnt to the ground about three or four weeks

later. Wow. And, you know, I don't know. You have air quotes in that mistake? seriously? Oh, yeah. We know what happened. You know, it was just, you know, they were pissed off that they had to give the business back. But, you know, when my dad took the business back, he had done things a certain way. One of the things that he had done is he always paid his vendors with cash. He never went out on credit. Well, when he got the business back, there was like $4 million in inventory,

which is what he had, you know, when he was running the business. So there was no surprise there. but what he was surprised by was the fact that all the inventory was on credit. When the warehouse burned down, my dad was on the hook. He was the owner of the business. And then the other thing he found out was the insurance that he had on the inventory and the business. These guys didn't carry it. He got pennies on the dollar. Well, he got virtually nothing after 18 months of pursuing the insurance companies

through legal battles and stuff like that. But the one thing I remember Jay and Paula was the first thing my dad did was he stroked a check for $4 million to all these vendors. Oh, my gosh. And years later, I remember when I was, I guess, in my early 40s and we were sitting at my dad's house and I was talking to him. I said, boy, you know, that was, you know, do you think that was a mistake? In hindsight, would you have done things differently? And he said, no. those vendors, they had families that had mortgages.

You know, why put them in a financial situation just because I've got problems? And I had the money at the time and I was very confident I could, you know, turn things around. And so, you know, that was my dad, though. My dad was always about the other person. He was more concerned about you, Jay, or you, Paul than he was about himself. And so he, you know, basically wiped himself. out, spent 18 months trying to get some money out of the insurance company failed. And really, the powerful emotion behind this story is when my dad was telling me that when he lost his last

battle in court, he was in Brooklyn at the time and didn't have enough money even to get back to Staten Island with a cab or anything. So, oh, my Lord. He didn't, you know, he didn't have a car. He lost everything. So he walked, he had, I think, 50 cents. And he walked over. over the Brooklyn Bridge to go to the Staten Island Ferry, which was about five miles away, he said that he remembered stopping in the middle of the bridge. And if you've ever been on the Brooklyn Bridge, you can't literally jump off the bridge. It's kind of hard to do. But my dad said, I thought about jumping off the bridge.

Wow. And then I was looking down there trying to figure out how I would even do it. And then he said, I saw all these crests of the waves capping. and he said, I saw each one of your faces. There were eight in my family. And he said, I just took my foot off the rail and I turned around and I kept walking. Thank God. And thank God is right.

You know, we, you know, we ended up surviving. Somehow my father was able to keep the house. But we had, we were literally every two to three months, some real estate agent knocking on our door to show the house because we were in foreclosure like all the time. Wow. But one of the rich habits my dad has was he was an incredible relationship builder. It took some time, but a lot of people, just like it's a wonderful life. Yeah, yeah. That's why it's my favorite movie.

It reminds me of, you know, my dad. When things really got bad and we were about to lose our house, people just came up with the money and kept us in our house. And this went on from, oh my gosh, from the time I was nine to the time I was 23, I suppose. You know, but the good news is my dad, he recovered. He was almost a millionaire when he recovered, not quite. But he ended up finishing up his life, you know, not so bad, decent shape. And, you know, I had a little bit of money at the end, not much, but a little bit. Right.

It wasn't the worst thing in the world. It was hard on us, the kids, because we all had to figure out how to pay for college. And we did. I was a janitor. My brother Jack was a janitor and did some other. Wow, good for you. Man, your whole family. Damn.

We're survivors, you know. And I have to say, it comes from my grandfather, who I'm named after, Thomas Christopher Coley, who at the age of 19, left his country in Ireland and came to New York City. And can you guys think about, put yourself in his shoes at age 19, leaving the United States to say go to China? No, I die. Or somewhere else, you know, maybe an English-speaking place, but somewhere else. I mean, can you imagine the courage?

So I guess it's kind of in our genes that we're just going to survive no matter what. I think actually all humans have that gene, but, you know, it was quite an experience that we went through. And I'm not sure I can say it was a good experience, you know, one of these character-building experiences. I don't know. I still, the jury's out on that. My story's still not finished. We'll see. We'll see how it all pans out in the end.

I think a better word for the survivor. is hustler if I may. You guys, man, to get through that. You know, and you're right, like, the money sucks and all that stuff, but, like, knowing the difference between, like, would you rather being dead or in foreclosure versus, like, without your dad? I mean, as a parent, like, I have two kids myself, three and a half and one and a half. And, like, just the thought of them, like, scraping their knee, like, I almost start

crying. Like, it kills me, you know? So to, like, me do something that gets me out of my own family, it would just, oh, man, I can't even imagine. So good for him for making. that decision and just, you know, dealing with it all, especially you have to do in such a damn good deed, too. That's what's crazy about it all. Right. Yeah, well, he did the right thing. You know, Jay and Paula, he did the right thing. There were a lot of families that would

have gotten hurt. Four million dollars is a lot of money. You tell a vendor, I can't pay you $500,000. Yes. You know, that could be financially ruinous for them. So my dad, you know, he knew it wasn't their fault and he wasn't going to put it on them. And he could have also file for personal bankruptcy because at that point his debt succeeded his assets but that wasn't the way he was wow it's crazy man well speaking about hustling and stuff i think one of the first articles i came across your site was how it took you like nine years like you had this idea for this book and i'll let you talk about it more because you can do it better than i can but you had this idea of this book and you spent nine years trying to get the word out and then finally you had one or two breaks that

kind of exploded and kind of meant everything to go viral. It was not because I shared it, although that would be cool. You know, I think I was early on, but not that early. But talk about like the process of going through it. And like I remember it was like you sound like hundreds of calls here, a thousand emails there, 10,000 tweets, you know, and then finally one person came to the rescue kind of thing. Yeah, I have to tell you, this book business, this author business, this is really very much a startup business when you write a book and then you follow it up with other books as I've done.

But it really is a business. It's nothing more than a product, the book. Now, the quality of the product is the quality of the content with respect to a book. So, you know, I, from a business standpoint, I knew that. I knew going in. This is really a startup. And I thought to myself, hey, you know what? This is going to be a little ironic. I'm going to apply the rich habits to this startup, I call the rich habits author business. And I did. And one of the rich habits is to pursue your dreams and build goals around your dreams. So I came up with all these different dreams that I wanted. And then I built goals around them. And then I started pursuing the goals, which is nothing more than taking action,

right? Right. So I kept doing this and I kept doing this sometime in 2000 and the end of 2011, maybe mid-2011, I was really so frustrated with this business, with this author business. It's unlike any other business that I've ever started or ever gone into. You have so little control over the outcome. The only thing you can control is your inputs,

the effort you put in to the business. And so I said, well, I can't control the outcome. I can't get inside some media person's head and say, hey, I got a great article. Get it out there or interview me. It just doesn't happen that way. So I just, what my approach was, was I'm going to write content. I'm going to try and write the best content I possibly can off on my research.

And then I'm going to tweet the crap out of it. Yes, sir. I like it. And the funny thing is, like, so you think, okay, tweeting doesn't cost any money, but there's an emotional cost that I can't even put words. I will say this. by the time I tweeted maybe 23,000 times, I had not gotten one response from anybody that said, hey, this is interesting.

We'd like to interview you. Nobody in the media. That's incredible. Wow. That was about at the midpoint to the third quarter of 2011. I said, this is crazy. What am I wasting my time doing this stuff for? I was really going to quit.

I actually took a little bit of a hiatus and wrote another book, an e-book called the Top 100 Cheapest Places to Retire in the U.S., which was really a great book. I sold 7,000 copies of that in like 10 minutes. Oh, it's so less sexy than Millionaire Habits. I never picked that up. I'd pick about the rich one every single day. Well, you know, there's a lot of boomers out there, so I guess they were interested in it. And what happened, though, that kind of reinvigorated me was,

I had gotten one interview with AOL. They did a TV interview. And I went on my PayPal and I was like watching the casinos at Atlantic City, you know? All of these things started clicking. I was like, holy macro, how many are here? I couldn't even count them. It was so many. It took me like maybe three days to count.

And I said, there's 7,000 here. Wow. And so then I said, wow, it is all about the media. So I got an email from someone who had read rich habits, two people that had read rich habits, and they said that it had changed their lives, right? Awesome. And then in the comments, they said, you know, your book reminded me a lot of the wealthy barber, only better.

Wow, that's a classic book. It is. I know that now. I didn't know who the wealthy barber was, right? Okay. So, of course, I went out and got the book, and then I did some research, and I found out who the author was, somehow I got his email address, right? So I forwarded him.

The two emails that I got that basically said, you know, my book is better than your book. And the question I had in email, if my book is better than your book, how is it possible that you sold two and a half million copies? And I have maybe a thousand copies sold. So I shot the email off. More than anything, it was my way of venting. So I got a call from David Chilton, the author of The Wealthy Barber, within five minutes of him receiving that email. Wow. In fact, I had gotten up from sending the email.

I went to get a cup of coffee, and my secretary was trying to reach me on my phone. She said, Tommy, you there? There's someone named Chilton on the line. So I said, Chilton. Who the hell is Chilton? Oh, David Chilton. So I picked up the phone, and we had about maybe no more than a five or ten minute conversation, and I asked him all sorts of questions.

Yeah. But the one thing I remember him saying is, do you believe in your book? And I said, I believe in it. Like, there is no such thing as a thousand percent, but I believe in it like a thousand percent. Right. And he said, do you think it's a great book? I said, it's as good a book as I could have written at the time. And, you know, maybe it's a great book.

I don't know. But I think it's a great book. He said, well, that's all that matters. He said, you have to conquer the media. And he said, the media are four things. It's TV, radio. It's the internet now, and it's print. And he said, oh, you have to, he said, by the way, you have to tackle all four at the same time.

And I said, oh, geez, I mean, thanks for that. I mean, that easier said than done, right? But he did reinvigorate me. He told me to read a book, which I had read like three times, but I read it again. And it was a thousand ways to promote your book by some guy named Pointner. So I read the book again over the weekend. And besides David Chilton's name, now I know why he wanted me to read the book, his name was all over that book. There was another guy named Alex Carroll.

He was famous because he had sold 250,000 books, how to beat the cops. It was basically how to get out of the tickets, right? But he did it all through the radio. And so I bought his program, all in it cost me like $1,000. I got his radio list of all the radio stations, the contact information of all the hosts. And so I spent probably a year and a half making phone calls. Oh, my Lord. I figured I spent about 1,500 hours making phone calls to these radio shows.

That's incredible. And I got about 150. interviews, I didn't sell many books, almost none, except in one radio station. I sold 700 books, but so I looked at that as a complete failure. And I was then once again in, you know, the depths of depression. But then I ran into someone who was really into what I was doing. And she had some great ideas. And so she kind of helped me refocus on what I was doing. And so I can, kept, she said, just keep out of, keep at it. So I kept out and I kept tweeting, which was still wasn't, you know, I was at probably 30,000 at that point. And then at the point when I was really

just going to quit and say, this is, look, besides the 150 radio shows, I can't get media attention. It's just impossible. I don't know anybody. I can't pay somebody 10, 15,000 a month as a publicist to get me these shows. Right. Interviews. I had kids in college. That was my priority. So I said, well, you know, I guess that's it. I'm just not, what can I do? I've got to throw in the town and refocus my energy back into my core business. But at that moment, I got a tweet back from Farnush Tarabe, who Paul and I are very familiar with. Yes, very cool. And she followed it up with an email. And it was right in the heart of tax season, 2013, I remember. I had gotten a lot of these emails from people whose names I couldn't pronounce and who I didn't know who the heck they were.

And I just assumed that they, you know, she was just one of those because every time I followed up with them, they led to dead ends. And I remember mentioning it to my friend and my person that was kind of acting as my publicist. And she said, Farnoosh Tarabe, she's huge. And I said, well, she tweeted me and emailed me and she wants me to do an interview for Yahoo Finance. So we ended up, that was at the point when I was ready to quit. That was the one tweet we received. out of, say, 30,000 that I got. I did the interview. They released it in July 16th of 2013, and within 24 hours, it had over 2 million hits. They had never had on that show, never more than 400,000 hits. I asked them, you know, the producer, Kate Sanichin, I said, Kate, what can I expect? And she said,

you might, you know, if it's good and people are interested in it, you'll get somewhere between 10 and 50,000 hits. We've never had more than 400,000 hits. Wow. She was trying to manage my expectation. Oh, hell yeah. But boy, when it started to go viral, I got all sorts of calls and emails from Cade and Farnous. And they were like, this is amazing. And it didn't stop there.

Two days later, I come home from a late meeting. And my wife says to me, hey, you got to call back some guy named Dave Ramsey. I said, I don't. I said, I don't. I was scratching my head. I said, Dave Ramsey. I said, I don't have any clients named Dave Ramsey. I said, you know what it was about? No, but my girlfriend called. She heard him on the radio talking about you today. Wow. And I said, you mean Dave Ramsey to radio? I said, oh. So I tried to reach his producer, Blake Thompson that night. I think I got his daughter. I'm pretty sure it was his daughter, Dave's daughter. So the next day, Blake called me and he said, yeah, we want to get you on Friday. Can you come on Friday? I said, you bet your ass I can come on.

Oh, yeah. So he said, Dave, he's only going to give you like five or ten minutes. Well, he had me on for a half an hour. What was funny was one of my best friends was, CPAs listened to Dave Ramsey. We all listened to him. He was in his car at a park waiting for his son to finish up his cross-country. And he was listening to Dave Ramsey that Friday. And he said, I almost passed out when I started hearing you on the radio.

It was kind of funny. So I think that because of that, I sold probably 10 or between 10 and 12,000 books in about a two-week period off of those two things. It was really momentarily I was pulled out of my cave. And then that resulted in CBS called. They wanted to interview me. So I shot up to Boston. I did an interview there.

That really took off. They liked it so much. They ran it in eight of their affiliates. And, you know, he just kept going and going for like a year. because of all that stuff, Darren Hardy at Success Magazine wanted to interview me and so I did an interview with him.

I wrote an article that they put in their success magazine's November edition. And my gosh, it was just like my head was spinning for like a year and a half, two years almost. And then you got on the Heart and Hustle podcast. Yeah. You're pitiful. See how far I've come?

So what do you think, why was it that your video with Farnush went viral? The rich habits, I'm telling you, the rich, I have, although it seems like I've gotten a lot of publicity, they've come from about five or six places. When I do a national interview, let's say, it really resonates with people because they're hearing this stuff for the first time. This stuff is really something that they get, they understand it. It's different. It's something unique that nobody else is talking about.

So although I haven't had many national TV interviews, every time I have one, it goes viral. It just because when it gets out there, the people are interested in it. So my mission is really just to try and keep getting this message out and eventually get some more national TV exposure. And this thing will start to take on a life of its own. Yeah. So the book's Rich Habits, your first book out of a few that you're really. working on. A couple that you've already done now that you're working on another. But tell us the background of rich habits just for the people that aren't familiar. And then after that, I want to

get, you know, some of the juicy. I want to know what the habits are. Yeah, I know. Like, it's like the longest intro. But this is good. This builds of excitement, right? So yeah, tell us about the book and the research and all that kind of stuff. Well, the whole genesis of rich habits was this research I'd done for five years. And the research was prompted by a small business client of mine that was failing and he'd come in here one night and he was crying and he was business was going under he ended up filing for bankruptcy but he asked me what is it that my successful clients are doing that he's not doing and what is it that he's doing wrong that he shouldn't be doing and i started doing research uh googled stuff and the only thing i could come up with was the

millionaire next door and a lot of internet articles that really didn't help me much and the millionaire next door was helpful in that it gave me the idea that, hey, you know, this guy, Dr. Thomas Stanley, he was so close to getting this right. He unfortunately just focused on high net worth individuals. And he didn't get into how they became rich, you know, and he certainly didn't get into what poor people are doing wrong, which is the other side of the coin. It's important to know what to do, but it's more important to know what not to do, right? So I said, well, if there's no research out there, I guess I'm going to start doing some research, and I'm very analytical. I guess that's the CPA side of me.

And so I stumbled in the beginning because the key was coming up with the right questions to ask. Yeah. And so that took me about six months, and I finally came up with what I call my 20 question list, but it's really, it's 144 questions that I broke up into 20 categories. When you do the math, it's like something like 59,000 questions I asked because I interviewed 200. 33 wealthy people and 128 poor people. So I gathered all of this information. I ended up putting it all on Excel worksheets and I'm really good at Excel.

And then I summarized it into what is kind of a little famous. It's my research summary. It's out there. Everybody asked for it. So I have this research summary that has about 333 habits that separate the haves from the have-nots. And I got enough feedback from people that were having success with the rich. habits and a couple of them said you got to write a book on this stuff you got to get it out that this is if you don't you're just selfish and so i said i've never written a book before

the best i've done was written you know technical articles i'm good at that you know accounting tax and stuff like that but i said i i don't know if i could write a book so whenever i don't know something my rule of thumb is get three books on it and read them so i bought three books on how to write a book. I'd realize after reading the three books, hey, this is a lot easier than the CPA exam. So I'd say, I'm going to write a book. I can do this. And what's interesting about this is, this goes to really pursuing your dreams, why it's so important. I had no idea I had an inner or innate talent for writing. I do. I know that now. I'm a good writer. I just have that ability and I would have never ever known that if I had never done this research

and written a book I now know I'm a good writer I have the ability the skills the know how to really create a story and to communicate information in writing I never knew I had that I do and I have to be grateful that you know this roundabout way I got I got there yeah well do it takes me like four hours to write like six paragraphs on my blog so like I admire that. I wish I had the innate ability. Yeah, I don't know where it comes from, but, you know, this is the thing, though, when you pursue something that you're passionate about it, you're, I call it the old brain,

you're subconscious. It's been around for millions of years, whereas the new brain, the conscious has only been around for a couple hundred thousand years. The old brain really knows stuff that the new brain doesn't know. So it's giving me this subconscious intuition and insight. Hey, write a book, write a book. And so there's a reason for it. You know, when you follow your intuition and your gut feelings, it leads you down to paths that you would, and it exposes the talents that you never knew you had.

Well, I'll say this too. I think persistence and the dream, the persistence definitely plays a part because you just went through your story of how it took you, you know, eight or nine years to finally get this book out there. And most people like myself, I'd like to think I'm a hustler, but eight years of. failing nine years, that's a hard pill to swallow. Yeah. So the fact that you kept going at, like imagine if all these people said, oh, this book's awesome, what she all did. Oh, I love it.

Get this out there. You know, don't be selfish. Put it out there. Oh, by the way, it's going to take you nine years. Right? I would have ever, never attempted it. Actually, in hindsight, I think about this a lot. In hindsight, if I could go back in time, I would never write Rich Havans because of how much

the emotional downside that I've gone through. In 2010, 2011, and 2012, it was not worth it. I don't care if I make a billion dollars off of this. The depression that I went through because I've never really failed at anything. This book business is so outside your control. These people, like 50 Shades of Gray, they have absolutely no control over the success. I don't care. These influencers out there who grab onto this stuff,

They're the ones that make or break you and trying to get an influencer to, you know, hop on board and become your cheerleader. Oh, yeah. It's hard to do. Well, it'd be interesting, too. If you started out as a blogger or an online influencer and then you came out with the book, like if I wrote a book, like I don't have any dreams to write a books and all that. It's like, I admire you guys that do it. It's just not, it doesn't excite me personally. But if I were to write a book on something and I try to sell it, I'd automatically get sold and get, you know, I don't know how.

super successful I'd get, but we already have communities built in. Yeah. Right. So for us, it's a lot easier versus started from scratch trying to sell something and no online influence at all. You're right. It is turning online a lot more than the, I mean, the media is still obviously big TV and all that, you know, but I'm glad that Farnoos found it because, you know, that's, I mean,

I love your stuff. I referenced it at least every four or five months on my blog. And it's always like in my head. I mean, shit, I'm holding your book right here in my hand. But I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. because you know, you're one of those influencers you have to have on your team. And they're hard to come by, Jay. I mean, they really are these.

I have people that just pirate my information. I don't even get a thank you. I see it a lot on, like, Inc. Magazine and on Fast Company and these people writing articles that I just wrote. And I'm like, geez. There's a professional ones, too. That drives me crazy more than anything. But as Darren Hardy says, the former publisher of Success Magazine, you just resigned. And as Darren Hardy said, you know you're on the path of success when people start to imitate you.

Yes, sir. So I feel that that's, I guess, I'm grateful for that. I should be grateful. Yes. Now, I know Paula's about to ask this, so I'm going to beat her. What are some of these rich habits? Well, you know, I'm updating rich habits. I'm coming out with a second edition.

Okay. The original rich habits are 10 core habits. I call them keystone habits. Okay. They're things like one of the first rich habits is you've got to become aware of the habits that you have. So that's the first rich habits. It's really an exercise to evaluate what your habits are. Do you have good habits or do you have bad habits?

Most of us are completely oblivious. So I take the readers through a process wherein they actually track their habits for a couple of days. And then they do this grading process. you know, is it a plus is a good habit, a minus is a bad habit. And so you go through all that and you say, oh, okay, I have like most people a lot of bad habits. And so your goal is to do two things. One is to adopt one or two, all it takes is one or two rich habits to really transform your life. And maybe try and get rid of a couple of the bad habits.

And so it's, you want to baby step it. It's a, you're never going to succeed if you try and change all of them at once. It's just impossible. The brain can't handle it. So you want to just, you know, one or two habit changes. And then maybe two or three months from now or four months from now, you make one or two more habit changes. If you keep at it, then eventually you're going to have all of these good habits and eliminate a lot of these bad habits. And the interesting thing about just adopting one rich habit, let's say, like, for example, reading every day for education.

30 minutes or more. So that's a rich habit. Well, it's actually like a double in baseball in the sense that not only does it create opportunity, something I call opportunity luck, that's the opportunity for luck to occur in your life. But it also waters down or is like a force field against something I call detrimental luck, which is the opposite of opportunity luck. It's bad luck that's created by your bad habits. So you're actually, a good example better than reading would be, let's say you engage in exercise, daily exercise, 30 minutes a day, and you start losing weight.

And then the opportunity luck, if you will, is good health. But the detrimental luck you avoid or you prevent is, say, type 2 diabetes, heart disease. These rich habits are really intended to have a double whammy effect on your life. Plus, they're keystone habits. And keystone habits are different than ordinary habits in that. that they're like predators. They devour ordinary habits. So staying with the exercise rich habits.

So if you exercise aerobically every day and then you start losing weight because you overweight, people say, hey, you know, Jay, you're looking great. What are you doing? Yeah. Thank you. I read rich habits. You start thinking, oh, I like that because it taps into your emotional part of the brain, right? And you say, oh, I'm going to cut back on cigarettes and I'm going to back off

some junk food. Those are two poverty habits, right? So one rich habit can eliminate two, three or more poverty habits without, without you having to will it out of existence. Because the rich habit taps into your emotional part of your brain. And whenever you engage your emotion, there's a difference between passion energy and willpower energy. Willpower energy comes from your neocortex, your conscious part of your brain. You have to study for something. You for two or three hours, that requires willpower. But when you find something that really stirs your emotion, that comes from the lower brain, the emotional part of the brain.

And there's infinitely more energy that the brain calls forth to glucose mainly, to power that activity. Whereas the willpower part of the brain, it only calls enough energy to get the job done. This passion energy that comes from the emotional part of the brain, it gets you wanting to do exercise more and more. and more and more. And it overpowers those ordinary habits because it's tied to the emotion. So those are just, you know, a couple of the rich habits. I can go on and on. Yeah. Yeah. Do like four or five. You're like I have, I printed out some just so I can do

some. Like one of, here's like two of my favorites. Six percent of wealthy say what's on their mind for 69 percent of poor people. That's pretty crazy. That's a big ass jump. Yeah. I tell you, that one knocked me off my chair because in my family, there were 11 in my family, eight kids, my mom and dad, and my aunt peg. My aunt peg, if you ever remember the Munsters that TV show, The Munsters. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's an old one, but yeah. Okay, so anybody that remembers the Munsters, if you ever remember what Grandpa Munster

looked like, that was what my Aunt Peg looked like. And my Aunt Pegg was crazy. She was funny as anything. She was a spitball, but she was crazy. And one of the things that she taught me, and she used to profess as if it were a superiors. character trait was speaking your mind. Say what's on your mind. That's the right way to go through life. And I listened to her and I, you know, I would say what's on my mind. If someone, you know, was wearing an outfit that looks stupid. I said, that's as stupidest outfit I've ever seen in my life.

And, but that was my aunt peg's programming. You know, we pick up our habits from our, mostly from our parents, but also from other influencers in our environment. And my aunt Pegg was an influencer. So I picked up that poverty habit of speaking your mind. And it wasn't until I did this research that I found out, my God, I have this horrific poverty habit of saying what's on my mind. And it's gotten me in trouble. It really took a little bit of effort to get rid of that poverty habit. And I've done it. You know, every now and then I slip up, but I'm conscious of it now. I'm aware of it. So I'm looking out for it. And so I don't speak my mind anymore because when you speak your mind, as I found in my research, the wealthy anyway, they say it damages relationships.

Those relationships you could have been fostering for three, four, five years. And these are relationships that could help get your kids into a college, you know, by writing letters of recommendation. They can get your kids internships. They can maybe help you get a promotion or any number of things. You name it. They open the door to opportunity. And when you speak your mind, you have that poverty habit of speaking your mind, you damage that relationship and you close that door. And so wealthy people are smart that way. They know this. These are the things that they knew their parents taught them primarily that the rest of us don't know. So that's why I think that rich habit is more profound than a lot of the others because I think everybody, including Jack Welch

of GE, believes otherwise. They believe you should speak your mind. Right. And you know, by the way, Welch, even though he's famous and everything, that was a character flaw of his, even though he touts it as a positive character attribute. I know this because my old boss worked for him for 22 years, and they used to call him a name because of this character flaw that he had of speaking his mind. People did not like him that worked for him. You know, they were not sorry that he left. You know, the problem is you get famous people out there saying you should speak your mind, and it's actually a poverty habit and they're doing people a disservice.

Right. Plus it puts out so much negative energy too. I feel like there's a whole bunch to that one. I mean, unless you're saying something positive speaking your mind, but most people, it's not so positive

what comes out of there. That's right. So another one is 6% of wealthy watch reality TV for 78% for poor people. That's a huge one too. Yeah, you know,

one of the wealthy people in my study, because at the time I was doing my research, that show Survivor, that was kind of famous back then. And one of the wealthy people were talking about that show. And they said, why on earth would I want to watch that show when my life is so much more interesting? You know, I would rather spend time with my kids or my wife than to sit down and watch a stupid reality TV show. But, you know, the poor people do that. They watch these shows. And honestly, I think the reason they do is their lives are so unhappy and maybe even miserable

that when they see someone on TV who's actually worse off than they are, like any of the housewives stuff. If you watch any of that, those people are train wrecks. If you watch them, you feel better about yourself. Yeah, that's why I used to do blog coaching. And people like always want to put out all the positive stuff they're doing. Oh, my life is awesome. Oh, my blog has this. And I'm like, dude, you need to start talking about all the crap parts of your life, the crap part, like how hard it is, blogging sometimes, all the stupid stuff you've spent money on that you regret.

Like all the stuff that make you like a real person. So, A, like you're a normal person. But B, like people feel better when they read that about you. You're like, good, loud. JF's up too. Like, I don't feel so bad now. Like, he's screwed up more than I did. That's such a good point.

You know, there's a person that I really admire who is very successful business person and I'm part of his financial group. and John has this unique ability. He gets, despite the fact that he's uber successful, when he gets up there to share, to give us insight and best practices and stuff like that, all he talks about is his screw-ups. And that's the stuff that I care about. I don't really, I already know I'm supposed to do A, B, and C.

I already know that. And I'm trying to. Believe me, I'm trying. The information I need is what not to do. And I think that's why the rich habits resonates so much with people is I'm not only just spitting out, hey, do this. This is the right thing to do. I'm also providing some insight and data and information on what you shouldn't be doing. That resonates with you because you can see it in your own life. You can see that you gossip, for example. Oh, my God, I have that poverty, have that gossip.

I speak my mind. I got to stop doing that. So most of the time we can stop doing some of the bad things. it's harder, in my opinion, to adopt a success habit than it is just to shut down something that you shouldn't be doing, you know? Right. That's true. Let's see what else we got here. Oh, I know something else you're really good at.

And you've actually, on this show, have already called Paula and I's name like three or four times. You are a master of names. And if I recall correctly, I remember a year or two ago, I got a picture of your wallet. You sent me all the stuff that's in your wallet. Like just to be a cool little series. and you had like a notepad in there and you said something about why it's important for names.

And I'm horrible at names. So one, tell me if that's Rich Habit and then two, how I cannot forget people's names. Yeah, so good. We're on the same boat. We both stink at names. You know, even to this day, if I don't write it down, Jay and Paula, if I don't write down your name into my book. And I'm so overt right now that I just whip out the book.

And I say, what's your name? And I write it down. I don't even care anymore. I'm beyond being self-conscious about it, right? So if I don't write it down, within five seconds, I've already forgotten your name. But the act of writing it down is so powerful. And I learned this from reading different biographies on Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if you know this, but Abraham Lincoln, he used to write his own speeches, right?

But everybody said his recall is amazing. You know, he wrote this speech, and he's remembering a word for, word. Well, what Abraham Lincoln did to remember things was not sit there and just memorize it. He wrote it down three or more times. And he always said in the different biographies that the act of writing it did something in his brain that allowed him to remember it. So I started doing that and I'll be damned. It works for me too. If I write something down, I remember it and it sticks with me. And the more times I write it down, the better the memory. So I think, you know, writing down the names is key. You can't be self-conscious. You just got to write it down.

But there's also something that I use. I think it's absolutely genius. I use it all the time. It's called the grouping strategy. And it's very simply this. So we all have different groups of friends. There's parts of our lives, you know, that maybe we're basketball players. And so we have basketball friends and maybe we have tennis players and we have tennis friends. Maybe we have drinking buddies and there are drinking friends. So what I've done is I've created certain categories. And for me, it's, I have tennis. I have my cult's neck, which is an area I live in. So I have a cult's neck category. I had when my daughter was playing volleyball, I had Kirsten Volleyball category. And what I would do is I would put the names of the people that I met in these different groups.

And before I went to the event, like the volleyball, is a great example because I really used this technique. So I would get everybody's name in the beginning and write it down. And then when I would meet them in the next volleyball game, I would go, hey, Nate, how are you? Hey, John. Hey, soon, what's going on? And they would be looking at me like, I don't even remember this guy. Yeah, they love hearing. That's what someone said that people love hearing their own names.

They do. It's really powerful. I'll tell you how much they like it. The next time that I meet them, that time when I tell them their name, the next time that I meet them, they get my name and they never forget it. I have people to this day that I'll see, you know, who are at the volleyball games, they'll see them at the supermarket or wherever, and they'll remember my name. Because in their mind, I took the time to remember their name. Now, of course, they think I'm like a genius. oh that Tom, he's just superior to all other human beings.

If they had any idea that I had this whole process of remembering names, you know, they wouldn't think so highly of me. Not as exciting. Right, not as exciting. Going back to your wallet here, because I've always been curious about this, I've never asked you. One of the things you have in there, you said, my get out of tickets 200 club gold card. Yeah. What is that? What is it?

How do you get one of those? Well, the 200 clubs started in Chicago. It's not everywhere, but it's in New Jersey. It's in New York. It's in the major cities, I guess. What it is is, so if somebody is a member of the police force, the local police force, or a state trooper, or if they're a firefighter or emergency service personnel, if they die on the job, their widows get an insurance policy that I think is either $300 to $500,000. Okay. Wow.

Yeah, so it's a good cause. And to these people, they, you know, the policemen and the others, they value it so much because it's, it's personalized. That card, what it says is that person is, if I die, going to help provide for my family. So it becomes an emotional connection. And I'm 100% success rate on that. I was coming home late one night from tax season. It was like 9.45. I was really tired.

And I did something that he calls a California roll at a stop sign. I guess it's not stopping and I just rolled through it. I was the only car on the road except for him. And so he pulled me over and he was going to give me a ticket. He was adamant. He was going to give me a ticket. So I gave him my life. license, my registration, and my 200 Club card.

He practically threw that 200 Club card back at me, and he said, I'm going to let you off this time, but don't do that again. Wait, so how do you get the card? Do you donate to the fund or something? Like, how do you get in possession of it? If you Google 200 Club, you can find, I'm imagining that you'll find one close to your area, and it's a really good cause. We have one in New Jersey.

I know there's I know there's one in New York because I got pulled over in New York I used it in Pennsylvania I got away with it so I imagine they have one there if you have it and you get pulled over and you give it to the police officer I'm not saying you'll get at

right it's just a good shot like if they see it there's a good shot of you but yeah I remember there's like some stickers in Maryland where I live like someone said donate 20 bucks and you get the sticker and I was like ah whatever I'll put it on there I never got pulled over but I imagine, it's been a couple years, but I think that's why I bought it.

Like, if someone posted me over, maybe they'll see the sticker. Well, you know, at one time I had all these 200 clubs stickers on because I'm a member every year. Okay, gotcha. And they don't even see them. Okay, so you need the card. When you hand them your license and this 200 club card,

they look at it and they say, oh, okay, he's one of the one percent or one half of one percent or whatever that are helping my family, so I'm going to let them off. you know, 99% of the other people don't have it. Right. Yeah, they don't give that credit very often, I imagine. Listen, if somebody was going to provide a $500,000 life insurance policy for my family, you bet your butt I'm going to bend over backwards for them. Right, right.

Okay, let's see here. Paula, you have any questions? I want to do a speed round before you wrap up, but I've been hogging. No, I was actually thinking this would be a great time for the speed round. Now, some of these questions I'm going to make up now because I'm from talking to you. I'll start with one that I've also been curious. All right. So basically, I'll ask you the question.

You just tell me, this one, you might have to go into. Do I need a helmet for this? Yes. Yes. I might need to crack up with your beer. Some of these are easy. I'll start with one. That's just a curiosity thing.

All right. So the first question is when I was reading your bio, you have a master's degree in taxation. What the hell is that? Well, you know, Jay, I'm so glad you brought it up because I've written so much about this. I put my ladder on my father's wall. You know, when we were poor and I was in college, I was a sophomore. And I asked him, I said, I have to matriculate. I have to pick a major.

You have any suggestions. And he said, yeah, a major in accounting, you'll never starve. And at the time, that meant a lot because, you know, even though we weren't starving, we were real poor. So I put my ladder on my dad's wall. And then I kept climbing that ladder. And I got my CPA. I got my master's in tax. I got all sorts of other licenses too.

All right. So that's like a nickname for CPA and all this other stuff. I was hoping it was like an actual master's of taxation. No, it isn't. Oh, it is? Three years of grad school to get my master's in tax. Oh, wow. Okay.

Very cool. All right. Question two. Are you a millionaire now? On paper, I am. But no. No, because to me, a millionaire, at least based on my, well, a millionaire is someone in my mind that doesn't have a net worth of a million dollars. They have net liquid assets of a million dollars.

There's a big difference. Right, right. So I'm not. I have a net worth, I guess, you know, on paper. I just did, I have to do these personal financial statements for the bank every year. So I just did one and it was like $1.6 million. Oh, juicy numbers. I like it.

Meaning absolutely meaningless. Yeah. Wow. Not if you have if that net worth is zero. Well, I guess it could depend. Yeah. It's better than zero, but I would rather have $1 million in the bank than $1.6 million in net worth. Okay.

Very interesting. All right. Best decision you've ever made financially or one you suck at if that one's easier to come up with. Majoring in accounting. Which department does that go? Yeah, which one did that fall into? Yeah, that was the not good one because. Although I do love consulting and advising clients, that's the one passion I have is I love sharing information.

This industry is, you know, you don't make a lot of money in this industry. It's just the nature of the beast. Well, this might make your next question a little easier. If you had to stop doing one thing, writing, speaking, or running your financial firm? Running the financial firm. All right. If you could share a beer with anyone in the world, dead or alive. My old answer would be Winston Churchill.

My new answer would be Elon Musk. Ooh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a good one. All right. And the last question, what is the weirdest thing in your house? And don't say yourself.

My basement, my home office, it looks like who did it and ran. You talk about that wallet doing a picture of a wallet. If you took a picture of my home office, I don't think anybody would buy one of my books. Why they wouldn't think you're good at accounting either, right? Isn't that, you know, I have it being neat. I have a beautiful office here in Raleigh, but my home office is actually a lab. I imagine when Edison was starting out, his look just as bad. It looks like a train wreck.

I have a table that I bought from Staples like about 30 years ago that you use for picnics. That's my desk because it's low. and I can spread out everything. All right. And it's terrible. Oh, man. Well, thank you so much for coming on this show. Dude, we'll link to a lot of your stuff.

So everyone, we covered a lot of info, but a lot of my favorite articles from you will link to and link to your books. And, oh, tell us about all your books just so people can get a sense. Sure. So the follow-up book to Rich Habits was Rich Kids. This was probably one of my best books. You know, even though you think it's for kids, it really isn't. It's for everybody.

But it's really about helping people mentor. the next generation. But there's all, you know, it's all my research is in there. A lot of my research is in there, so it's valuable. I just finished my third book, Change Your Habits, Change Your Life. This is a little deviation from the story, fictional story-based books that I write. It's really a how-to book because there's just too much data and information that I have. I couldn't weave it into a storyline. And then I'm updating Rich Habits, the second edition. And this is going to be like rich habits, the original book on steroids, because I'm increasing the number of rich habits to 30. There's a lot more, but I'm trying to provide the main ones. Yeah. And I'm also

including my research summary in there, which has over 300 of the differences between the habits of the rich and the poor. So it's going to be a really powerful update to which habits. I think this one might beat the millionaire next door at some point. This could be the one if any book could topple it, right? To me, this book is going to be better than think and grow rich. Whether it sells like that, it's outside my control, but it is going to be a better book. Thank you, sir. I appreciate your time, man. I appreciate the thoughts.

And it's been fun not finally talking to you after all these years. Yeah, same here. We should have done this a long time ago. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you, Paula. Thank you.

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