008: Tom Corley - Studying the Wealthy to Cultivate Rich Habits

Tom Corley is a CPA/CFP and holds a Master's Degree in Taxation. He also is the best-selling author of the Rich Habits book series, which include, Rich Habits , Rich Kids , Change Your Habits, Change Your Life , and Effortless Wealth , among others. Tom understands the difference between being rich and poor, having experienced it firsthand at a young age.

Today, Tom shares his story of overcoming adversity and what inspired him to research the wealthy and launch over 200 daily habits. Tom identifies specific habits that are critical to financial wellbeing as well as which ones to avoid and expounds on why it’s incredibly difficult to break out of poverty.

📺 Watch on YouTube

https://youtu.be/J16CJykqMyg

Key Takeaways

00:55 – Tom Corley shares how his experience with money growing up impacted his career and adult life greatly

09:25 – Studying the wealthy and the inspiration to start the Rich Habits book series

15:15 – The importance of knowing what to do and what not to do

20:04 – Pushback and criticism Tom has encountered throughout his career

29:06 – A scientific explanation for the formation of a habit

32:46 – Why it is so difficult to break out of poverty and Tom’s mission of outreach to the poor

37:35 – Two habits people can work on today to improve their financial wellbeing

41:29 – Two bad habits to avoid

47:02 – Jonathan thanks Tom for joining the show, lets listeners can go to follow him and his research and teases a future conversation with Tom

50:55 – Hustle culture and how to turn it off

52:47 – Tom’s next big project

Tweetable Quotes

“Almost always the things that happen to you as a child follow you into adulthood. It’s not just the emotional experiences, it’s the habits that are forged in childhood.” (03:53)

“The money lesson I learned growing up was don’t save, because if you save somebody in your poor family is going to take that money from you.” (05:28)

“I’m in the self-help and personal development space along with Tony Robbins and all these other people that I’ve met. And they always focus on what wealthy and successful people do. I always say, that only gets you halfway down the football field. It’s nice to know what to do, but you also have to know what not to do.” (15:15)

“The way habits work is when you start a new behavior that you want to forge to become a habit, the group of neurons lights up in your brain. Now, once you start repeating that behavior, after a couple of weeks, the basal ganglia - which is sort of a golf ball sized mass of nerve cells in the brain - sends up a dendrite. And then the dendrite communicates back to the prefrontal cortex that this could be a habit.” (29:06)

“Passion is the brain’s way of alerting you to the existence of an innate talent that you possess.” (39:36)

“I came from a household that was rich and that was poor and let me tell you, rich is great. Being poor sucks. I want people to know that I know what both sides are like and you’ve got to do whatever you can to get out of poverty.” (45:17)