The #1 Habit That Keeps People Flat Broke for a Lifetime (Silent but Deadly)

When I had almost no money left I spent my last $2000 on a Tony Robbins event.

Image Credit-Midjourney via Reddit (Pictured: office worker trying to do too much who mistakenly thinks he’s Superman)

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Watching people stay broke is exhausting.

Don’t worry, I’m no billionaire myself. I’ve been broke more times than I can count, which is why I can see it from a mile away.

My job in this essay isn’t to shame people, make fun of the poor, or talk down to anyone. It’s to make you see one thing…

The #1 cause of a lifetime of poverty

No more teasing.

The #1 one way I’ve seen people become broke and stay broke is by *not* managing their time. Now, you’ll probably read that and go, “Okay Timbo, but that’s not me so smell ya later.”

Stay with me. Even I fall into these broke people traps:

1. They're afraid to spend money

You might read that and think what’s that got to do with being bad at time management?

Well, we can become afraid to spend money when we don’t understand time. Money is just a mathematical representation of time.

When you say “I can’t afford it” what you’re doing is robbing yourself of pleasure or opportunity. You’re assuming that you can’t use your time better so you CAN afford whatever it is.

Broke people trade time for money.

They keep doing it instead of figuring out how to use their time better. They won’t listen to someone like me who teaches the power of leverage. They simply stay on the treadmill. They do what is easy and comfortable.

They follow the mathematical time formula they’ve always followed and then wonder why the monetary equation doesn’t change. It’s financial insanity. Makes no sense.

To make more money you have to spend more money.

You can’t make 6 or 7 figures online (or anywhere) by spending a few hundred dollars. I don’t know why people manipulate themselves to fall for this lie.

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When I had almost no money left I spent my last $2000 on a Tony Robbins event.

It f*cked with my brain. Some cables inside my head got rewired. To date, it’s the best investment I’ve ever made. But why?

Because spending my last few dollars and the tiny amount of holiday time I had saved up forced me to pay attention. I couldn’t afford to be a lazy ass and not take action. Or do what others did and hang out in the cafe in the foyer looking at their phones.

It was all or nothing. I had to change my life or stay broke and work in a dead-end job at a call center forever, where my pee breaks were timed with a stopwatch.

Time and money are joined at the hip.

Master time and you master money – and vice versa.

2. They say “someday” (MAYDAY!)

I see red when someone says this.

The veins pop out of my skinny head. Smoke comes out of my big ears that stick out worse than Dumbo the Elephant’s.

You will be broke if you say someday. There is only today.

When we say someday what we mean is “this isn’t a priority.” Or “I have no freaking idea what I’m doing and just ‘should’ all over myself.”

I should do this. I should do that.

There’s enough time today. Just time-block an hour in your calendar and go do the thing. If it can’t be done today it’s not worth doing.

Just cancel it. Hit delete. Stop lying.

Saying someday is a get-out-of-jail free card that makes people think their magical future self will be better than their current self. That’s not true. Your future self only gets better if you do stuff today – so by design, someday is a lie.

3. They're stuck … and their excuses keep them stuck

Excuses are a nightmare.

I try to catch myself when I make up an excuse. Stop with the excuses. Stop giving yourself all the reasons why you can’t do something.

You know why we don’t take action?

• We’re uncertain.

• We’re afraid.

• We’re full of fear.

• We know it’s uncomfortable.

They’re the only real drivers of decision-making. The rest are mirages. Rather than avoid what is hard, lean into it. Doing hard things feels freaking amazing. Nowadays, my days are full of hard stuff.

Yesterday I had to ask a customer for $10,000. It felt hard. Right after that I had to fire an assistant. Then I had to tell a customer who made a false accusation that they were lying. And send them the evidence (they caved).

When your day is full of hard things, over time, everything starts to feel easier. What holds some people back for their entire lives becomes a problem you can solve in a day while drinking ya soy latte.

If you spray and pray excuses all day, stop. You’re only hurting future you.

4. They need help BUT won't take help

Anyone who has run a business has come across this.

You meet a prospect. They have a giant problem. They know it. But they won’t move forward and get help from someone who’s successfully solved the problem.

They use a lack of time as a thin veil between them now and who they could be if they got help. So they don’t get help. They’re too good for it, too proud. They think you’re a guru or you’re profiting off their misfortune. They’ll say anything *not* to get help.

One of the smartest things you can do IS get help.

I’ve learned to be wild in this field. I not only get help but I drop huge dollars to get it. Why? Getting help saves you time. If you get help from an expert you can get to where you’re going faster.

I don’t want to sit down and watch free Youtube videos for the next 5 years to learn a new skill. I’d rather skip the queue and pay someone for a 1-1 session who can get me there faster. It’s all about time.

Your whole life revolves around time.

So if you can save time, then you should take that opportunity every chance you get. Not stay broke and try to see every time-saving opportunity as an expense.

5. They lie about what they will do

Broke people are full of sh*t.

Let me point the bazooka at my ugly face first. At 26 I had a successful startup with 100+ employees. I thought I was king d*ck. I lied to myself every day.

I’ve never shared this before. Back then I paid 1000s of dollars a month for a personal trainer. I ate three chickens a day and stacked their dead bodies in my glass office. Employees would come in and give me hell about the smell. I didn’t care.

I got the personal trainer because I was skinny. I started to bulk and put on muscle. But my life got worse. I developed an eating disorder. I’d throw up in the middle of the day for no reason.

Then shortly after I walked away from the startup. My life collapsed.

It turned out my stomach knew what was coming.

I knew that I was lying to myself. I was depressed, stressed, a bad person, and told employees to kiss my feet. No joke.

I spoke down to women and saw them as nothing but objects. My grandmother would’ve been pissed if she was alive back then. So how did I heal from an eating disorder? Not with food, doctors, or dieticians. Nope.

I healed by destroying all the lies.

By rebuilding myself.

By blowing up my mind.

By getting therapy.

By admitting I was an a-hole.

Your mind isn’t stupid. If you lie to yourself it’ll show up in the weirdest ways. I see broke people lie all the time. They make commitments then never follow through. They write goals down but don’t do them.

They give up at the first obstacle. They blame someone like me when their success blueprint doesn’t work out. When you get better at blaming yourself, it gives you back so much time. You can just get on with the show and get out of the mental prison.

6. They use accidental victim labels

A victim label is a phrase such as “I’m a…

• Pensioner

• Veteran

• Single mother

• Job seeker

• Over 50s blah blah blah

The point of the label is to evoke sympathy and get special treatment.

In case you’re thinking I’m perfect in this area, I’m not. I accidentally say “I can’t do X because I am the father of an 11 month old daughter.”

The goal here is to burn these victim labels. Or to let them empower you.

A friend of mine is a single mother. Instead of letting it hold her back, she bizarrely says it’s responsible for all her success.

Without her two kids she says she never would’ve had the motivation to start a business and work hard to provide for them. I try to mirror her.

I tell myself I work hard to provide for my daughter. I do what I do for her. She doesn’t hold me back. No. She holds me to a higher standard, even though she can’t talk or pay bills yet, and spits milk all over Daddy's Nike t-shirts with a smile.

Victim labels don’t give you the sympathy you might think they do.

People are worried about themselves. We’re all fighting our own battles. You might think people care that your life is hard but they don’t. They hear the victim label and go “that’s nice” in their heads.

Sympathy doesn’t give you extra time or pay bills. But adversity can create self-empowerment, which is 10x more deadly for knocking down big goals.

7. They act like a busy bee

Pretending you don’t have any time is another pandemic.

I spoke to this guy who was adamant he didn’t have time to write. I tried everything. Then I said “send me your calendar.” I didn’t think he would, but he did.

He was right. There were a lot of appointments in his calendar. But at night there was nothing. Same with early morning.

“What about these time slots?”

“Ahh that’s when I do housework.”

“So you do 3 hours of housework every night, 7 days a week?”

“Yes. There’s a lot.”

I realized he was full of sh*t. When he did housework he just took his sweet time. It was an adventure. He’d do food shopping and go to three supermarkets. His justification was that each one had their own deals.

So he saw it as critical to waste all this time on housework. That’s right, his highest priority was housework and saving money. Not doing meaningful work, following an obsession, or getting results in life.

Most busyness is bullsh*t.

If you had a gun to your head and had to achieve a goal, you’d probably cut down housework to 30 mins a week. Or cancel Netflix.

Unless the pain to change is high enough, you won’t. You’ll stay stuck.

8. They are everywhere but nowhere

A fellow named James shows up on my LinkedIn a lot.

He’s been grinding away at LinkedIn since 2014 and still hasn’t got 5000 followers. He tries everything. The guy is everywhere.

Each week he runs these in-person LinkedIn networking events at all these different locations. He’s running around with his pants on fire.

He looks and sounds desperate. If there’s a business event, he’s there. If there’s a chance to get an email address, he asks for it.

I saw him a few months back handing out business cards to strangers at an exhibition center. He also uses Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Youtube, Wordpress, TikTok, Slack, and any other social app you can think of.

Content, content, content.

He’s everywhere but he’s nowhere because he has zero focus.

He’s using the old spray and pray method. Instead of mastery in one area, he stays at beginner level in 100+ areas – and thinks he’s smart and hardworking.

Some wealthy people struggle from this problem too.

Understand this … you’ll stay broke if you try to do everything. What you want to do is achieve mastery in one thing and then have a lot of the donkey work done by VAs, freelancers, volunteers, etc.

We try to do everything when we’re afraid to go deep in one area out of fear of rejection or failure. It’s why sometimes the “take small bets” advice is bad.

Big bets create success and buy back your time.

Too many small bets just become death by a thousand paper-cut distractions.

The simplest solution in history to perpetual brokeness

It’s hard to gain clarity when you’re stuck in the grind.

Here’s the antidote to the lack of time problem:

• Take time off work

• Write down everything you’re currently doing

• Next to each activity, write…

  • whether you want to be doing it or not

  • whether the activity is your priority or someone else’s

  • whether it can be outsourced

Now you have the truth.

You now know what is leeching your time, and what must stay or go. Over the coming weeks and months you can reclaim your time. This is what will make you wealthy.

With an abundance of time, anything is possible.

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