7 Success Habits That Made Me The Most Money

Today, I want to teach you about seven success habits that have made me the most money in my career.

I sold my first product online on January 28th, 2001. And since then, I have sold over $21 million worth of product services, coaching, and all the good stuff on the internet. And today I want to show you the seven habits that made me the most money.

Remember, I came from nothing.

I really didn’t know what I was doing for the first couple of years. I started my first email newsletter in 1999, and didn’t make my first dollar until two years later. But fortunately, it won’t be like that for you. You could probably make your first dollar in about two hours once you start online.

And so, again, came from nothing. I had a degree as a personal trainer and was a personal trainer when I made my first sale. But really just by sticking consistently to these seven success habits, I was able to build first, a six-figure business and a seven-figure business, and then multiple seven-figure businesses.

The first habit is: “Magic Time Money Creation.”

My story starts at 85 Clendenen Avenue in Toronto, Ontario.

It is just a home in the suburbs in the west end of Toronto. It’s actually not the suburbs, it’s actually still in the city proper of Toronto, near a place called High Park. And me and two of my high school buddies lived in the top floor, and that’s where I made my first sale in 2001.

That’s also where I discovered magic time.

Now, if you wonder what magic time is and why this is so important to you, just understand this is a time of day when you’re three times more creative, productive, and energetic than at any other time of day.

This is something you should protect seven days a week.

And if you make a habit of doing your hardest activity inside your magic time, and that hardest activity is a revenue-generating activity, or an RGA.

If you do an RGA inside your MT, (magic time) every single day, then you will make a lot of money over the course of your career.

So for me, magic time was first thing in the morning, and I was a personal trainer living in this house.

I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning because I had to go to the gym and train clients starting at six o’clock in the morning.

My magic time was from 4:30 AM to 4:50 AM because I had tried working at night, and I was too tired.

I did that six days a week.

And in 18 months, I was able to build a business that allowed me almost a seven-figure business that allowed me to stop being a personal trainer.

It’s an absolute game-changer.

So the way that I want you to think of this is… Imagine magic time is a square hole on your calendar.

Your most important revenue-generating activity is a square peg.

You have to put that square peg inside that round hole every single day because your number one revenue-generating activity requires your best mental intensity and energy and creativity and productivity.

When you match those two, then you will move ahead.

What most people do, and the mistake that they make, is they put email and social media and catching up on calls and running errands inside their magic time.

Then they try and do their hardest revenue-generating activity at a time of day when they have low energy when they have low focus, and when they’re just sick and tired of working for the day, and that never moves them ahead.

So by consistently making a habit of using, protecting, and putting revenue-generating money-creation activities inside my magic time for about 300 days a year… That was how I set myself free.

The second habit is: Selling Every Day.

If you were to look at my recent sales reports from Early To Rise, you’d see that we have about 15 different products that we’re selling, and I’m selling them every single day through email, through Instagram, getting my team phone calls through Facebook ads.

But back in the day, even when I was a solo entrepreneur, it was email marketing every single day.

It was trying to write articles for other websites. It was reaching out and doing affiliate networking to get people to promote my products through their own email marketing and YouTube videos and so on and so forth.

So every single day I was thinking about how I could go out there and generate new customers.

In his book, “Ready, Fire, Aim,” written by my mentor, Michael Masterson, whose real name is Mark Ford says, if you do not have a million-dollar business, then you must spend 80% of your time selling.

But if you actually look at the habits and activities of a beginner entrepreneur, they’re spending time in administration, they’re spending time putting out fires, they’re spending time in bad communication and in proper leadership, and that’s dragging them down.

They’re spending a lot of time on the technical side of things, delivering the product, delivering training, delivering the plumbing, whatever it is, and they’re not spending any time selling.

That leaves them at a plateau or worse, the sales degrade over time because you’re not putting time into selling every day.

So you must spend as much time as possible selling every single day because otherwise, you don’t have a business.

It’s like not spending any time breathing over the course of a day as a human. You will die.

Just like if you don’t spend any time selling in a business, your business will die.

So you must spend time selling every single day, and that’s how you’re going to generate revenue in the hundreds, thousands, and eventually millions of dollars worth.

Next, I want you to do more tracking and testing.

Tracking and testing was a habit that I started probably in around 2003.

So I started writing my first emails in 1999, and I wasn’t tracking how many people it was going to and what people were doing, and that’s why I didn’t make any money.

Then in 2001, I started making money, but it wasn’t until 2003 when I finally got an email system that allowed me to automatically send out emails to a massively large audience and therefore I could track the number of people that the emails went to.

I send over 7,500 emails over the course of 12 years.

So, I’m not sure how many that is per month, maybe like 20 emails per month or something. 30, 40 emails per month. I tracked the subject line so that I could improve my subject lines over time.

I could see what worked and could see how that changed the open rate.

By tracking this data, I could see how many people got sent to, and how many people clicked a link in an email. Then I included what copy, and what I was promoting, and I could track my sales.

Just through email revenue alone, I’m making about $1,000 a day. That was just a part of the seven-figure business, including the affiliate marketing and everything I was doing.

So, I was tracking and testing constantly.

I would track an experiment, and then based on the results of the experiment, I would try a new test. It was that loop that allowed me to become very good at marketing.

This goes for every habit in life.

If you want to improve your numbers in the gym, you track and test. If you want to improve your diet, you track and test. If you want to improve your sales closing on the phone, you track and test. If you want to improve your email marketing, whatever it is, your Facebook ads, you track and test.

That was a habit that was really powerful.

The next powerful habit is waking up and going to bed at the same time every day.

I didn’t start this until I was 32. I first read about this habit in Michael Masterson’s email newsletter Early To Rise when I was 25 years old.

I resisted it for seven years because almost every Saturday night, I was going out late.

Now, most of the time during the week, I was getting up from Monday through Saturday at the same time, maybe a little bit later on Saturday. But I was going to bed at all different types of times at night, even during the week and especially on the weekend, and I was ruining my energy levels. It wasn’t until Wednesday or Thursday I’d get back on track after the weekend.

But when I finally made the switch and when I was 32, when I had a really boring weekend one time, or a really boring three-week stretch, I always tell people, give it 21 days, the next time your social calendar is really boring, just go to bed at the same time every night, get up at the same time every day.

You will have so much more energy. That energy will then allow you to be better in your magic time.

That energy will allow you to track and test and do better experiments and think because in the next habit, I really took advantage of white space walks, and I encourage white space walks.

In fact, I have one client that I force to go on a walk every Friday morning.

He has a $10 million-a-year supplement company in France, and by adding these white space walks, he’s solved so many of his problems.

I have another client in the Boston, Massachusetts area with a $30 million a year manufacturing company that makes ocean-degradable straws, and he does hikes.

These are called white space walks because it allows your brain to have a blank space to think.

My first dog as an adult, Bally the dog was my trusted business partner.

We spent a lot of time walking… Sometimes up to two hours a day walking because he didn’t really like playing with other dogs and he had a lot of energy. So, we would go for hour-long or a walk twice a day or three, four to five-minute walks. I didn’t listen to anything. I just walked with no input and I just thought and brainstormed things.

It was on one of these walks in 2012, I had moved to the east side of Toronto, the Beach’s neighborhood, and we were walking through this little gulch, and that’s where I thought of a headline that I was able to use in this home workout revolution program, which was my best selling program of all time.

It was all from white space walks, where you’re away from inputs and it allows your brain to make sense of all the inputs that you’ve had and everything that you’ve studied.

But most people, they don’t make the habit of having any white space in their calendar or in their brain, and therefore they’re always very reactive.

But, if you have whitespace and you go for these walks, you’re proactively thinking and solving problems, and it was a huge game-changer for me…

I encourage you to adopt the habit of white space walks, something on a Thursday or Friday morning or Saturday morning, even if you only get one walk in per week in nature, research shows that your brain thinks differently.

If you go back in time 300, 400 years ago, you look at Sikowski, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens… They all went for long walks in the afternoon. They produced in the morning and then went for walks in the afternoon to get their ideas for the next morning.

So it’s a really powerful habit that’s been used for centuries by some of the most creative minds in the world. I think you would be foolish to ignore it.

Being outside of your regular workspace if the legend is true, Newton was sitting under the apple tree.

He wasn’t sitting in his office when he thought about gravity. The apple hit him on the head. Now, whether or not that’s true or not, that’s a great visualization of being outside of the regular workspace and having a big “aha” moment.

It’s the same when you’re in the shower; you always have those big ideas because your brain works differently in novel environments.

The sixth habit is investing in yourself.

There’s a quote from Warren Buffet that says, “the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself.”

The more you learn, the more you’ll earn.

Now, I guess I should have put this one before the white space walks, because the more you invest in yourself and you learn, it allows your brain on those white space walks.

Whether you’re learning copywriting, sales training, software programming or whatever it is, your brain will have those big “aha’s” after you’ve learned, and then you go for those white space walks.

So Buffet says, take your money, put it back into yourself.

Alex Hormozi, is a very successful entrepreneur. He’s well over $30 million, and he’s under 30 and he invested all of his money back into himself. It was pretty interesting. He said in one of his videos that he didn’t even have an investment account until he had $14 million in his bank. Why? Because he invested all of his money back into himself, and then his business just blew up, and he didn’t even have time to invest.

Now he does, but that just shows you the power of investing in yourself.

Invest in yourself by purchasing books and courses.

I’m going through three different courses right now, from financial engineering to sales to copywriting to leadership to organization. I’m reading books. I’m always investing in myself and learning. I go to events.

I’ve been in masterminds that cost me $100,000 a year.

I have one that doesn’t cost you that much, but you can certainly come down to my events in Cancun and invest in yourself… So make sure that you are doing that.

Habit #7 is talking to yourself.

This habit of speaking was really helpful to me as an introverted, anxious type of person. I had to learn how to speak properly.

What I mean by that is that I had to learn how to properly articulate my thoughts and become a better persuaded, and have more energy.

In 2017 I began making videos every single day.

In addition to that, I also practiced my presentations a whole lot more. I was interviewed 600 times on different podcasts. I started out with these really small podcasts, and I learned how to speak without saying “um” or “uh.”

I learned how to tell my stories better. I even learned how to tell a joke or two.

By becoming better at speaking to my phone, I became better at selling and communicating in many ways. So, what I tell people to do is do a one-minute video every single day into their phone.

You don’t have to publish or post those anywhere, but in addition to the one-minute video per day, every single day for the next three days, I also want you to do two, three-minute videos per week and then one 10-minute videos per week.

If you do that consistently, you’ll build your confidence because you might right now be incredibly awkward and hesitant to speak into your phone.

What really switched my mind was I saw this young woman walking down the street in Toronto, and she was oblivious to everything going on because she was speaking into her phone on FaceTime to a friend.

I thought, “Oh my gosh, that’s how people operate these days. They don’t care if you’re speaking into your phone. No one’s going to judge you anymore because everybody’s just speaking into their phone.”

So, practice speaking into your phone, it will make you better.

You’ll become better at speaking on stage and speaking in front of a camera for YouTube and all that sort of stuff. By doing that, it allowed me to make a whole lot of money as a speaker, even though I was not once a very good speaker.

I spoke as if I had marbles in my mouth, and I used to read my slides word-for-word. Now I’ve learned how to become a better storyteller.

That was just a habit that I put in every single day. Making one-minute videos with a deadline forces you to get stuff out there pretty quickly.

Finally, the bonus habit that I used over the years to quit drinking, quit swearing, to become a better speaker, to become a better person, to lighten up to all these things, and even find the love of my life, Michelle was public accountability.

Accountability is where you get coaching and outside eyes from somebody else who knows you and raises the bar for you.

So, you may think that you’re only capable of achieving a little mountain peak, but then your coach comes along and says, “No, I know that you’re capable of achieving so much more, especially when you use this proven blueprint… You have the talent, you have the skills, you have the energy, you have the ambition, you have the persistence to achieve much more than you’re capable of achieving now, and I’m going to hold you accountable to it.”

I build a plan with all my coaches, and then I spend time with guys like Pedro Escolin who make me play up a level in life, and then they hold me accountable. What that means is, is that they know my goals, and then if they see my actions, are not in alignment with my goals, they know they’re mismatched and they’re going to cause me a lot of stress.

By being around them, I go and play up a level, and I go beyond what they expect.

When you have accountability to somebody, you deeply do not want to disappoint, you will move mountains in your life, and you will achieve the top highest mountain peak that you possibly can.

You’ll reach your full potential.

If you need public accountability, this is where you go and you tell people in a Facebook group, or you tell your mastermind group, or you tell your coach, or you tell your church, or you tell your sports team.

You just say to people, you say, “Hey, I’m going to make this change.” Then by publicly declaring this, you will stick to it because you don’t want to be seen as a man or woman who breaks the word because that makes you a hypocrite.

It’s like people who don’t pay their parking tickets, then people who snatch purses from grandmas, and then under that is a hypocrite.

You don’t want to be a hypocrite because people don’t like that.

They don’t like people who don’t keep their word.

If you can’t keep your word about a goal you’re setting, what else are you lying to me about? Getting public accountability is key.

So is getting individual accountability from somebody you deeply do not want to disappoint. It’s a game changer. It’s a game-changing habit in my life.

Here’s a Recap of the 7 Success Habits

First, I made time every day to create money in my magic time. I found my magic time through doing time journaling and paying attention to my energy levels and realized morning was it for me.

Then I made sure to sell every day because Michael Masterson says that if you don’t have a business worth a million dollars, you must spend 80% of your time selling.

Then I did tracking and testing. I tried a new way of selling. I tried a new subject line, I tried a different style email and I learned, I got results and I adjusted course.

Then I made sure to get up at the same time every single day and go to bed at the same time every day, which gave me more all-day energy to apply to my good habits.

Next, I made time on my calendar for white space walks. That’s the great thing about having a dog or loving hiking or whatever it is. But make sure that you’re not always listening to music, podcasts or audiobooks while you’re walking. Do it without input once in a while and let your brain think and connect the dots. That’s a game-changer.

Next habit is to always be investing in yourself. I spent over $100,000 a year investing in myself every year and have since about 2007, and it’s paid off 10X and more.

Then, talking to yourself will allow you to become a better speaker.

Finally, getting public accountability. Make a habit of sharing your goals with people who are going to hold you on track and who you deeply do not want to disappoint is how you’re going to get ahead in life.

So if you want to hit me up, go to Instagram and message me @RealCraigBallantyne.

If you want to send me a message there, I’m very responsive. I check it twice a day. If you want to see if our coaching and accountability is right for you, then head on over to craigballantyne.com/ig.

Just fill out a little application, and if it’s a good fit for us to jump on the phone, we’ll do so.

We’ll give you some value. It won’t be a waste of your time. You’ll get some value on the call, and if it’s good fit, we’ll tell you about what we can do next. But I’d love to hear from you.

I’d also love you for you to learn more about these techniques that I’ve talked about in my books at craigballantyne.com/freebook.

Share this with a friend, comment down below about what helped you the most, and make sure you come back to Early To Rise for more advice on helping you improve your life.

I started out as a broke, struggling, introverted, socially anxious trainer, and I don’t want you to ever go through what I want through.

I want you to be as successful as I became in a faster time than I ever did.