Why You Should Hang Out with Successful People

Are you spending time with winners or with losers?

Maybe that’s a bit extreme – are you hanging out with successful people, people who are more successful than you? Or are you hanging around with people who are equally successful as you? Or are you spending your time with people less successful than you?

Evaluate your five closest friends and come up with an average. Are your friends up, down or sideways from you?

I’d suggest that you spend more time with people who are more successful than you.

Why?

Three reasons – (1) Being around successful people will make you want to be successful as well, (2) You’ll get better business advice and input from successful people and (3) You’ll get better referrals from people who are more successful.

Will successful people make you want to be more successful? Yes. Be realistic; we judge ourselves by our peers. We don’t compare ourselves to Michael Jordan or Lance Armstrong when we play basketball or ride a bike. We compare ourselves to the others on the court or the road right next to us. We aspire to do well in the crowd we’re in. When you elevate the level of the crowd, you’ll elevate your game.

Will successful people give you better business advice? Of course they will. The fact that they are successful didn’t happen by accident. They’ve got an understanding of the game. They’ll see things you might miss and they’ll have insight into how to make corrections. The more successful they are, the more they’ll know. If you’re willing to take advice, you’re better off getting it from someone who’s doing better than you.

Finally, you’re going to get better referrals from successful people. They’ve got more successful friends and associates. Do you want to represent Bill Gates’ friends or the friends of the guy collecting the grocery carts from the parking lot? It’s your call, of course, but, I suspect you wouldn’t be visiting this site if you were happy with referrals from the cart guy.

How do you elevate the level of your friends? Get some new friends. Take action. This isn’t rocket science. Join some groups, get up and get out. Keep your eyes open. There are plenty of people out there doing well. Your job is to introduce yourself and get a relationship started. Stretch. You can do it. The biggest obstacle is deciding that you want to make a change.

I’ve got to run now so I can go find some successful friends who are willing to put up with me. That’s not going to be easy.

Related articles:

  1. TechnoLawyer: The Biggest Impediment to Successful Law Firm Marketing
  2. Lots of Clients Do Not Equal a Successful Practice
  3. Are Your People Doing or Teaching?
  4. How a Terrible Law Student Became a Successful Lawyer
  5. Google Isn’t the Best “People” Search Engine

  • http://www.howtomanageasmalllawfirm.com RJON ROBINS

    This is GREAT advice. I have seen the positive effects of this in my own life up close & personal over the past five years. It doesn’t take long. I would add that one has to be prepared for the “unsuccessful” people one hangs around with to work hard to keep you hanging around them once you make a decision to make a conscious choice about the influences in your life. And there WILL be a lonely time in between because successful people tend to be somewhat guarded about who we hang around with for exactly that reason. We have to control the influences in our lives too. So be prepared for the “switching cost”. But it’s definitely worth it!

    • Lee Rosen

      Great input Rjon. Thanks. I love the term “switching cost.” You nailed it.

      Lee

  • http://lawyersvideostudio.com Gerry Oginski

    You are the sum of the five closest people you hang out with. Great blog post Lee.

    Gerry

  • RJon

    Lee, I’d add more more benefit that comes from hanging around with other successful people: clarity of thinking.

    I recently discovered a great quote by Napoleon Bonaparte that I’ve added to my wall of quotes in my office: “If I only see the solution, then the obstacles must give-way.” Do successful people tend to be able to think more clearly and more objectively about the solutions that surround us and that’s why we tend to be more successful or does being more successful give us the clarity? Who cares! Point is, people who are down in the dumps tend to demonstrate poor thinking skills. Not that they’re stupid. Just that they tend to think poorly about their options and focus on the obstacles instead of the solutions.

    And YES by all means it’s definitely good thinking for each of us to strive to surround ourselves with people more successful than we in order to stretch-us, inspire us, and even to help us because no-one got successful all by him or herself. Dan Kennedy offered a great piecce of advice in a book I co-authored with him and a group of my fellow chapter members in our local Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle. He suggests the merits of inviting someone much more successful than you are out to a nice dinner and telling him/her upfront that you want to pick their brain. This has worked for me very well over the years!

Previous post:

Next post: