Ninety-five percent of Americans struggle financially.
They eke out a living. They live from one paycheck to the next. They are barely
getting by. They are hanging on by a thread. And the saddest thing is that this
reality perpetuates itself from one generation to the next. It’s what I call
the generational cycle of financial failure and I’m out to change that. This
disenfranchised group, which makes up most of America, has never been taught by
their parents or their schools how to be financially successful in life.
My name is Tom Corley and I am the author of Rich
Habits - The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals (www.richhabits.net).
I spent 5 years studying the daily activities of 233 wealthy people and 128 poor
people. What I discovered was that wealthy people have vastly different daily
habits than poor people. In fact, I tracked 140 daily activities that separate
the wealthy from the poor and in this article I will highlight some of these
glaring differences. These Rich Habits are the financial equivalent of the Holy
Grail. Because there is no research like this of any kind, these discoveries
are revolutionary and will challenge everything you thought you knew about
becoming wealthy. The Rich Habits will transform your life from one of
financial failure to one of unlimited financial success beginning in as little
as thirty days. I will show you how easy it is to reinvent yourself in these 30
days. In order to become wealthy you must learn how to walk in the footsteps of
the wealthy and this means …
You must adopt the habits of the rich!
According to the Internal Revenue Service, only 5% of
all individuals who file an income tax return make $155,000 or more per year.
That works out to approximately 6.9 million individual tax filers. This 5%
group is responsible for paying the majority of the personal income tax the IRS
receives each year. This is also the group that has adequate retirement
savings, six months worth of monthly income savings for emergencies, little to
no debt, college costs funded for their children and/or grandchildren take nice
vacations, have significant home equity in their modest to above average homes,
good health insurance coverage and adequate life insurance in the event of
death. It is this 5% that many in America call the rich.
To most Americans, rich people keep getting richer and
the poor stay poor. There is a lot of truth to that and there are reasons for
this that go far beyond some Wall Street conspiracy, class warfare or inheritance.
In order to solve for generational cycles of wealth and poverty we need to
understand why some people become wealthy and why most people remain poor. What
is it that these rich people are doing that sets them apart from the rest of
America? Why do wealthy families raise wealthy children? Why do poor families
raise poor children?
Wealthy families embody and pass along to their
children behaviors that I call Rich Habits. These daily habits are used to
accumulate wealth and are taught to their children at a very young age, fostering
patterns that they in turn pass along to the next generation.
Conversely, the reason 95% of Americans cannot break
out of their cycle of failure is that these patterns are handed down generation
to generation. The difference is that these habits are bad habits and are
perpetuated from one generation to the next thus, breeding into every
subsequent generation a cycle of financial failure. Unfortunately, there is no
course taught in our schools on How To Be Financially Successful in Life. Why?
Because financial success has always been a secret. That is why they refer to
it as the secret to financial success. How can we break this cycle of failure
for our children?
During my five year research into the daily habits of
wealthy people, I uncovered the secrets to financial success. In this report I
will share with you one of those secrets:
Rich Habit #2
I will set goals for each day, for each
month, for each year and for the long-term. I will focus on my goals each and
every day.
The Anatomy of a Goal –A
Wish is Not a Goal
Far too many individuals never achieve their goals.
Many who fail to reach their goals simply give up on goal setting altogether.
They act out of frustration or a loss of confidence in the goal-setting process.
Why? Why do people fail to achieve their goals? At the heart of the problem is
the fact that many who set what they think are goals are not setting goals at
all. They are, instead, making a wish. Wishes are not goals. What sets a wish
and a goal apart is action. Wishes are wishes because there is no action-based
plan underpinning the wish. Goals become goals only when action steps are
required to achieve the goal. For example, a typical goal setter may establish
a goal of making a certain amount of income for the year. They may even list
this income dollar amount as a “goal.” As the year moves along they soon begin
to realize that they will not get close to reaching the income goal. This
usually occurs mid-year. At that point they often give up on the goal out of
frustration. Feelings of inadequacy, failure, poor work ethic, lack of focus
begin to filter into their minds as a result of missing the goal. That’s too
bad. It’s sad because the failure in achieving the goal has little to do with
work ethic or focus or competence. Instead, it has everything to do with
misinterpreting a wish for a goal.
A Goal is only a Goal when it requires
some physical or mental activity!
When you define the activity you define your Goal!
So How Do We Create a
Goal?
There are four steps required in creating a goal:
Step #1 Wish - Make a wish.
Step #2 Variable Analyses – Define each variable.
Step #3 Action – Identify the specific activity or
action you must take.
Step #4 Do ability – Can you perform the activity?
The anatomy of a goal is similar to the anatomy of an
artichoke. The artichoke represents the wish, the leaves are the variables and
the heart is the action that is required; your goal. In order to get to the
heart of the artichoke you need to peel back the leaves. Identifying the goal
inside your wish is no different. You need to peel back the leaves of your wish
to get to the heart of the activities required in order for each variable to be
met. Once you identify the activities required that will make your wish come
true you have the goal. The only remaining issue is whether or not you have the
ability to perform the activity. Real Life Example.
At one of my small business Rich Habits training
seminars I was approached by a participant who was a very successful insurance
agent. He confided in me that he had failed, for three consecutive years, to
come close to achieving his goal of increasing his firm’s life insurance
commissions by $100,000 a year. He came to my training session because he was
about to give up on the goal when he stumbled upon my advertisement in the
local paper. He realized now that the $100,000 goal was not a goal at all but a
wish. And as I pointed out to him, “wishes don’t come true.” We met later in
the week in an effort to peel the artichoke and find the goal inside his wish
following my “WVAD” process.
Step #1 Wish – Make a wish.
The
wish is $100,000 in additional life insurance commissions.
Step #2 Variable Analyses – Define each variable.
§ Variable
# 1: Life Insurance Policies Required: Average commissions per policy = $2,000.
§ Variable
# 2: Number of Policies Required: Fifty policies (50 x $2,000 = $100,000).
§ Variable
# 3: Meetings required to close one case = 10. 5 meetings x 50 cases = 250
meetings.
§ Variable
# 4: Prospecting Calls Required to Obtain a meeting = 10. 10 x 250 = 2,500
calls.
Step #3 Action – Define actions or activities that are
required in order to meet each variable.
10
prospecting calls per day.
Step #4 Do ability
Can
you perform the activity? Can you make 10 calls per day, day in and day out?
Goal:
Make 10 Additional Prospecting Calls Each Day
I asked the insurance agent if it was possible to make
an additional 10 prospecting calls per day. Can you do the activity? He laughed
and said of course he could. He would have to prepare by buying a database of
names, develop a script and then hire someone to make the prospecting calls. We
did the math and the cost of the database was less than $1,000. The cost to
hire someone to make the calls was about $5,000. Investment = $6,000 plus time
and effort in meeting and closing the contracts.
In summary, in order to turn a wish into a goal you
will need to look at your wishes as the starting point for creating your goals.
A wish becomes a goal only when you specifically define the action-based steps
that must be accomplished in order for your wish to come true. These
action-based steps become your goals.
Goal-Setting Process of
Wealthy Individuals
1. Long-Term Wish - These are broad-based
initiatives to be accomplished within a five year period. Create a plan for
accomplishing each wish and include the tasks needed to be accomplished. Example-
Long-Term Wish - I will buy a house in five years. In order for this wish to
come true you determine you need to save $1,000 per month for the next five
years. In order to save $1,000 per month you reduce expenses and deposit $250
each pay period into a separate savings account.
2. Next-Year Wish - These are wishes you set
for next year. This wish gets you closer to achieving your long-term wish. For
example, accumulating $24,000 by the end of next year towards the home
purchase. These represent lesser, broad-based wishes that you need to happen in
order to achieve your five-year wish.
3. Current-Year Wish – Similar to Next-Year
Wish only a shorter term. For example, saving $12,000 in the current year
toward the purchase of your home.
4. Monthly Wish –Example would be saving
$1,000 each month toward the purchase of the home.
5. Action Goal – This is your action-based
goal. In the above example, this would be reducing expenses and setting aside
$250 each pay period.
Goal-Setting Toolkit
Tool # 1 Goal Chart
Action Goal
|
Monthly Wish
|
Current Year Wish
|
Next Year Wish
|
Long-Term Wish
|
Save $250/Week
|
Save 1,000/Month
|
Save 12,000 this year
|
Accumulate $24,000 by end of year
|
Buy home
|
10 Calls/Day
|
Close 4 Life Cases/Month
|
$100,000 In life insurance commissions
|
$200,000 in accumulated commissions
|
$500,000 in accumulated commissions.
|
Tool # 2 Daily Affirmations
II uncovered a very powerful technique the wealthy use
in achieving their goals. Wealthy individuals utilize daily affirmations as a
tool to help them reach their goals. The daily affirmations are constructed in
such a way as to be directly related to a specific goal. In order for an
affirmation to work it needs to be directly tied to the action goal and meet
the following formula:
Present Tense + Action Goal
Using the Insurance Agent example:
Make
10 Prospecting Calls Today
“I
Make” = Present Tense. “10 Prospecting Calls Today” = The Action Goal.
Tool # 3 Vision Boards
By Thomas Corley
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