088: Success Habit of Millionaires That Will Speed Up Your Business Success

Do you know how many books you read in 2020? I am asking this not to make you feel bad if you didn’t - hey, 2020 has been tough on many fronts, needless to say. But the number of books and what type of books you read can be a key indicator and a key contributor to your financial and business success. And when you borrow books from the library, this reading habit doesn’t cost you a dime.

In this article, I will share some data on how many books millionaires and billionaires read, what my reading list is for 2021 and some links to blogs on how you help us build a reading habit ⏤ all of this to inspire you and myself to read more books in 2021, in order to learn, grow, and make a bigger positive impact in our world.

Let’s get started!

Let’s look at some research on how many books Americans read. According to the research done by Pew Research Center, the average American reads four books a year while 25% of Americans surveyed didn’t get their hands on even one. Compare that to immensely successful and influential billionaires such as Bill Gates who was mentioned article in this Inc.com article, and you get 50. Yes, he reads 50 books a year or around one book a week. If you want to know which 5 books he just recommended, check out his personal blog, GatesNotes.

Correlation between wealth and reading books
In this blog post, Sam Klemens lists ten data points that shows how many books the highly successful read. Now there’s no causal relationship established to show whether reading books led these people to become immensely successful. But in his article, you’ll see that Mark Cuban reads three hours a day while Warren Buffet reads 500 pages a day. Also, just think about Oprah and her love for books and one starts to wonder if indeed there is a causal relationship between wealth and reading. Plus, what type of books you read is equally important, right!

Making Reading a Daily Habit
To make reading part of the actions you take daily, it is important to make it a habit. Building a new habit is a skill and there’s research that says that it generally takes about 21 days to build a new habit. There are tons of books and Ted talks about how to build good habits. One trick that I learnt some years ago from Shawn Achor in his book, “The Happiness Advantage”, was to create positive triggers to help you build that habit. For example, if you want to practice the guitar everyday, keep the guitar in the middle of the living room instead of tucked away in a closet, so that it’s right in front of you. There’s less of an obstacle between you and the guitar. Using that example for reading then, one can keep the book next to your bed on the nightstand, carry it with you so you can read whenever you have to wait, and carve out a reading hour in the day where nothing else will compete with your attention. If you want to learn more about building a reading habit, read this book by James Clear called “Atomic Habits” which is all about building good habits (it’s was recommended by Sequoia Mulgrave of the DailyMode Studio and I’ve purchased the book and added it to my reading list for 2021). James Clear on his blog wrote on how to build new habits which you can read in a snap and use the tips he shares to easily implement right away.

Question: What strategies or tricks can you use to help yourself build this new daily habit?

Setting a Reading Goal for 2021
I want to read a lot more in 2021 and one thing I am doing to help me accomplish this is to create a reading goal. Earlier this week, I set the goal of reading 21 books in 2021. But then I made a list of all the books I read this year and it totalled at 20. So I am now changing my goal to reading 30 books next year. Seeing the stats of successful entrepreneurs who read up to 50 books a year, 30 is just a bit more than half, but for me this is a good goal and it’s both exciting and challenging. That’s roughly 2.5 books a month. I’ve also made a section in my bookshelf where I have placed some of books for the first half of the year. Seeing all these books in one place is motivating to me and I can’t wait to read them and gain golden nuggets of wisdom from each one of them.

Question: What will your reading goal be for 2021? And which books will make the list?

Sharing What You Learn
When working towards a new habit, not only sharing the goal can be very helpful but also sharing what you learn from them can be motivating. I’ve done that in the past on my personal development blog some years ago and I know that it greatly benefitted me when I shared some insights I gained. In fact, my very first YouTube video back in 2010 was a short book review where I shared 3 insights I gained from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are. I will get back to doing this in 2021 writing blogs or making videos about what I learn from each book.

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This is my lovely little bookshelf. Books from the 2021 reading list marked and set aside. Let’s get reading!

My Book List
It’s good to track what books one has read to encourage oneself to read more. So here are the books I read in 2020 and you’ll see a lot of them are about success mindset and motivation. It just so happens that the list totals at 20 books however, I had not made a goal of reading 20 books in 2020!

1. The Secret Door to Success by Florence Scovel Shinn (This was written in 1941. It’s in the creative commons and there are legally free PDF versions you can find on the web).
2. The Game of Life. Ibid.
3. The Power of the Spoken Word. Ibid.
4. Your Word is Your Wand. Ibid.
5. Dollars Want Me by Henry Harrison Brown (An old book written in 1903!)
6. The Abundance Code: How to Bust the 7 Money Myths by Julie Ann Cairns
7. It’s Not Your Money by Tosha Silver
8. You are Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero
9. The Ending of Things by Ajahn Brahm (freely available from the Buddhist Publication Society’s website).
10. Meditating on No-Self by Ayya Khema (freely available from the Buddhist Publication Society’s website).
11. The Decision: Overcoming today’s BS for Tomorrow’s Success by Kevin Hart (Audiobook)
12. Miracle Morning Millionaires by Hal Elrod, David Osborn, Honoree Corder (Audiobook)
13. Goodbye Things by Fumio Sasaki
14. Making Space Clutter-Free by Tracy McCubbin
15. The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley
16. Stop Acting Rich by Thomas Stanley
17. Become Your Own Banker by R. Nelson Nash
18. Building Your Warehouse of Wealth by R. Nelson Nash
19. How Privatized Banking Really Works by Robert Murphy and Carlos Lara
20. The Anapanasati Sutta: A Practical Guide to Mindfulness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation by the Venerable U Vimalaramsi

To Read in 2021
(Update Dec 2021 - I read 25 books in 2021 which I’ve indicated below as Read. See complete list of books read in my 2021 Books Read Post).

1. We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers - Read
2. Chillpreneur: The New Rules for Creating Success, Freedom, and Abundance on Your Terms by Denise Duffield Thomas - Read
3. Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
4. Profit First by Mike Michalowicz - Read
5. Atomic Habits by James Clear - Read
6. 10x Marketing Formula by Garrett Moon
7. Invested by Charles Schwab
8. Weekend Millionaire Mindset by Mike Summey and Dawson
9. Playing the Matrix by Mike Dooley - Read
10. Show Your Work by Austin Kleon - Read
11. This is Marketing by Seth Godin - Read
12. Traction by Gino Wickham
13. Being Nobody, Going Nowhere by Ayya Khema
14. Why Not Me? By Mindy Kaling - Read
15. How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents by Jimmy O. Yang
16. Thought Vibration or The Law of Attraction in the Thought World by William Walker Atkinson - Read
17. Everyday Millionaires by Chris Hogan
18. The Millionaire Mind by Thomas Stanley
19. The Next Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley - Read
20. Millionaire Women Next Door by Thomas Stanley
21. Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day by Jay Shetty
22. Becoming by Michelle Obama
23. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal
24. Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals by Rachel Hollis - Read
Six more to add to this list and I am sure I will be inspired next year to complete this list.

Until then, please do let me know in the chat what your book reading goals are for next year, and which books you’d recommend, especially those written by women entrepreneurs as both me and my book list need more woman power!

You have a dream to build a thriving web design business? You can make it happen!

Peace,
Sophia

087: 5 Traits of A Successful Web Design Business Owner

You want to run a web design business that is successful? Of course, you define what success is and it will be different at each stage of your business. And to create that success, you need to develop the traits that will help you get where you want to go. These are the traits that will not only help you achieve that revenue goal you are aiming for but also help decision-making easier, serving your clients better, and even articulate yourself better in both client communications and content creation. It’s a win-win-win!

So let’s get into some of those traits that I believe have helped me tremendously to move the needle in my business in recent months.

Here are the five traits:

1| A Successful Web Designer Actively Generates Clarity
2| A Successful Web Designer Cultivates Patience
3| A Successful Web Designer Keeps An Optimistic Mindset
4| A Successful Web Design Business Owner Cultivates A Resilient Mind
5| A Successful Web Designer Knows She Is A Force For Good

Traits for a Successful Web Designer:

1| A Successful Web Designer Actively Generates Clarity

This is not the easiest one to start with but it’s been very important for me in the last year especially. Clarity, I realize, is not something that just exists. I have found that I have had to generate clarity in my business through a combination of thinking deeply about things, journaling, discussing with my coach or mastermind buddy and most importantly, by doing.

It’s like knowing the path that leads to your home from your favorite cafe or a place you frequent. You don’t need to follow a GPS or read instructions on how to get home. You just know it because it is clear in your mind. Such clarity is something you actively need to generate about your life, about what you value, about what you aspire towards (both in personal and business life), who your business serves, what your business offers (as services, products, programs), what design guidelines you hold valuable, how you want to communicate to your clients/students, and how you want to build relationships with your peers, and so on and so forth.

For example, if you are a parent and being present with your kids each evening is important to you, you then know clearly at what time you need to shut down your computer - without fail.

As you can see that this clarify goes beyond simply knowing your niche. It’s about what is important to you. Not all parts of you business and life are completely lined up neatly in a row at all times. But if you can take some time to get some of these overarching things crystal clear for yourself, you will find many other decisions and projects and actions will fall into place neatly. Also, once you get clear it seems that with regular reflection and journaling, you enter into a deeper level of clarity!

2| A Successful Web Designer Cultivates Patience

This is something that I am continuing to cultivate and patience is certainly a virtue. Patience is needed at all stages of starting and growing your business. Patience in gaining that clarity (mentioned in point 1), patience in acquiring clients, patience in building a portfolio, patience in crafting your voice, patience in seeing your bank balance grow, patience with your own design skills, patience with your business skills and so on and so forth.

One of the most important aspects of patience we need to cultivate is towards clients. As a self-employed web design business-owner, you are most likely dealing with clients directly. And your clients will come from all types of backgrounds and regions of the world and they will have various levels of intra-personal and communication skills. Plus, even the nicest, kindest person may have a bad day which will lead them to do certain things that could potentially trigger or upset you. Moreover, we may be having a bad day and could misinterpret a completely innocent comment of a client. (I have sadly done that one time and I know that he would never want to say anything intentionally hurtful). So the more we can cultivate patience for our clients, the easier the projects will be and our own experience in creating a successful result for them.

3| A Successful Web Designer Keeps An Optimistic Mindset

There’s a proverb, I believe, it’s an ancient Chinese saying that goes like this: “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps, a singing bird will come”. What I understand this means is that if we keep a positive mind, green and untainted by dirt, then we create a welcome home for a joyful singing bird, or opportunities and goodwill. Now being optimistic doesn’t mean being unrealistic and throwing facts out the door. But cultivating a positive mindset that is uplifting and focuses on the good is very important for persevering. You see, too often, our mind follows the line of what’s wrong: What’s wrong with my marketing, what’s wrong with my client acquisition skills, what’s wrong with my design skills, what’s wrong with me. And this is a very dangerous path. This tendency of the mind to notice what’s wrong puts a dark filter on our eyes through which we only see the “mistakes” and “errors”. And that can quickly drain one’s energy and self-confidence.

Of course, we can look at things that can be improved and tightened and refined in our business and I have shared in Blog 084 with the BBB method how to spot the bottleneck in your business and resolve it.

But we need to cultivate a habit of noticing progress made so far. We need to be aspirational for future opportunities. We need to cultivate an optimistic mindset so that when we face dire times, we can rely on our positive mindset to lift us up and out to the path of joy, peace and success.

There was a moment in my own business when I was lamenting how slowly my business was growing and how revenue was barely just trickling in. That’s when, sitting there in the middle of the living room, with tears flowing down my face, my husband brought up the spreadsheet that I had built to track my revenue. He took the data and made a graph out of it. And lo and behold, I was shocked. The graph showed me how my average monthly revenue was on the rise. I could not read the date on the spreadsheet to see that, but once I saw the graph, I was uplifted. That was the turning point in my business mindset. Now when thinking about my business revenue, instead of the voice in my head repeating “It’s growing so slowly!!!”, the voice in my head now said, “It’s on the rise!”.

4| A Successful Web Design Business Owner Cultivates A Resilient Mind

This is about being resilient in the face of rejections. And this trait has to be cultivate as well over time. Especially, in the early years of your business, when the momentum has still not picket up, you are likely to hear things like,

“You pricing is beyond our budget”
”Thank you but we have decided to go with another designer”
”We like what you have presented and at this time we have decided to stick with the site we have”
”We would love to work with you but right now we are swamped with projects”

And that’s if you are lucky. Often there’s just crickets - where the client seems to have fallen off the face of the earth and is no longer responding to your follow-ups. They could have run into personal challenges or just gotten busy with the million other things in their lives.

Also, if you are building an email list (which I highly recommend you start asap), you will notice that with each email you send out, somebody or the other will unsubscribe. And may be because we are so excited for the people in our email list, or we are just too sensitive as a starting business owner, I don’t know what all the reasons are, but that unsubscribe can hurt real bad. It’s like someone breaking up with you over the phone or worse just falling off the face of the earth (see earlier reference to people falling off the face of the earth!).

Yes, I have been there in both scenarios. Your fledging new business has not yet built the strength to withstand this kind of rejection. But the key word here is: yet. Soon, you will realize that clients who don’t want to work with you are creating room for you to focus on those who want, or creating time in your schedule so you can work on parts of your business that still need some care. Soon, you will realize that when people unsubscribe, it’s really nothing against you. They may even like you and follow you elsewhere but right now they are simply overwhelmed and want to streamline their inbox because they are working on their own sense of clarity. And you will realize that they are self-selecting themselves out of your email list and in that they are really doing you a favor because otherwise you would have to pay for an email subscriber who is not really your ideal client. How kind of them - you will soon thank them for their thoughtfulness!

And finally, the rejections from clients will not ping your heart that much. Soon, you will be focused on serving your dream clients and then when a potential client project doesn’t work out, you will know that divine timing is in play and they may come back to you at a later date when the stars are better aligned for your collaborative project. So, no big deal!

5| A Successful Web Designer Knows She Is A Force For Good

What do I mean by that? A force for good! Yes, a force for good. This is what I mean:

When you have cultivated the clarity in your business that you exist to serve and to help your clients, that because your business exists you are making a difference in someone’s life, then you know that you are a force for good. When so many clients are struggling to get their business become visible online, when they are striving through their own mind viruses of “I am not good enough” and still trying to make something happen, when clients have kids at home from school lockdowns and ailing family members, and find time at midnight to respond to your emails and make something moving in their business, when clients are trying to make a dream come true with their business while working a full-time job, when clients are afraid of technology because when she was a little girl some male-figure told her that she will break the computer or mess it up, and then she puts all her faith in you to help her navigate the scary online world, then you know that your business is needed and is making a difference for all of these people.

When you know that your business is helping people, you build a sense of confidence in your ability to make a difference. This confidence shows up in how you write client proposals, how you convey to them your design process over that virtual zoom meeting, and in how you deliver the work and work through challenges. When you know you are a force for good, all good forces come to uplift and support you.

What Traits Have Helped You On Your Journey?

So these are the five traits that a successful web designer needs to cultivate. And you may already have these and many other such traits helping you along the way. Let me know in the comments which other traits you’ve cultivated that made a difference in your business journey for the better!

You have a dream to build a thriving web design business? You can make it happen!

Peace,
Sophia