Melissa and I were in what seemed like an insurmountable financial situation a few years ago. We had piles upon piles of bills stacked up and didn’t know where to start. I’m talking well into the six figures in non-mortgage debt. And it wasn’t good for our marriage. Discussions about money led to arguing. The real wake-up call was the sound of our leased Honda Accord being hooked up to a tow truck that fateful Monday morning. Our car had been re-possessed.
It was at this point that Melissa and I decided to make a change. This isn’t what we wanted for our lives. We felt like we owed it to God and ourselves to be better. A lot of faith mixed in with some hard work and we did it. We paid it all off. Now we’re working on the mortgage.
I’m a big believer in modeling successful people’s behavior. We really wanted to get out of debt so we began studying the habits of financially successful people – Truly wealthy people. Not the people that had all the nice things and only looked rich but people that truly handled money the right way.
It turns out there’s a lot of things millionaires and multi-millionaires typically do differently than the rest.
For example:
- They don’t accumulate debt on credit cards.
- They have a plan and a budget each month
- They are long-term minded
- They read one non-fiction book per month
I learned these things by studying them. I ferociously read authors like Thomas Stanley. The Millionaire Next Door and Stop Acting Rich are two of my favorites.
The ideas of reading, learning, and growing really hit me. After all, it’s not how you start but how you finish that counts.
Stanley has another book called The Millionaire Mind. It’s all about how decamillionaires (i.e. a millionaire ten times over) think. Fascinating stuff.
“Pursue growth and learning” is a core value at TBBC. It’s something we live by. We do book clubs together and are constantly watching videos and challenging ourselves with new topics. We attend conferences regularly. In fact, most of the team will be at the Global Leadership Summit this week. We try to educate our members with what we learn.
We are of the mindset that leaders are readers. We strive to have a growth mindset rather than a fixed one. People with growth mindsets are all about improving while fixed mindset people are about remaining stuck in their problems.
One of the reasons I wrote Lose Weight and Feel Great was to share some of the behaviors and habits of people that are fit and healthy. Those that were able to lose weight and keep it off.
Can I really say that fit people read more than those that are unfit? I can’t prove it but I do know that growth oriented people tend to value themselves more. They often have more love. And that includes love for themselves. You can have everything in the world but if you don’t have your health to enjoy it, what’s it really worth? Are you living as healthy as you can? Do you do things like exercise regularly?
Billy Hofacker – Owner and Transformation Coach at TBBC