Before building the multimillion-dollar shoe business TOMS, Blake Mycoskie had already started and sold a handful of companies, including an outdoor advertising company and an online driver's education service.
And, as he tells Tim Ferriss in AT&T AUDIENCE Network's new original series, "Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss," the entrepreneur credits much of his success to a simple habit he started at age 15: Journaling.
"It goes back to tennis," says Mycoskie, who grew up playing competitive tennis and earned an athletic scholarship to Southern Methodist University. "I wanted to chart my progress. … I wanted to understand if I was really getting better."
When Mycoskie launched his first company at SMU, a college laundry service, writing in his journal started to serve a different purpose. "It became a form of therapy for me as an early entrepreneur, when things were really tough … and you didn't want to tell anyone because you always had to show this air of confidence," he tells Ferriss. "So then at night I could be scribbling about how concerned I was."
Mycoskie, now 40, says that journaling has become the most constant habit in his life: "I do it every single morning, sometimes twice a day. I think it's one of the most powerful habits you can create because a lot of the journaling, too, is goal setting."
He writes down specific goals and how he aims to achieve them, and then revisits them to see which ones he's achieved and which ones he hasn't yet.
And Mycoskie, who became a $300 million man when he sold half of TOMS to Bain in 2014, isn't the only self-made millionaire who sets clear goals. That's a trademark habit of the rich.
"You can learn so much about the things that end up working and not working," says Mycoskie. "You can go back and see what led to the success or the failure of that idea through the journal," and occasionally, "you can also see the things that you thought were so important end up not being so at all."
Ferriss, who's also incorporated journaling into his morning routine, suggests starting the habit by committing to doing just five minutes each day. "Could b----ing and moaning on paper for five minutes each morning change your life? As crazy as it might seem, I believe the answer is yes," he says.
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