The Power of Association
written by John Chow
I never did believe the saying that you are what you eat. However, I do believe that you are who you associate with. The power of association is extremely powerful in the way it dictates who you are and how much money you make. If you want to change yourself or you lifestyle, then it may be time to change the people you associate with.
Birds of a Feather Do Flock Together
Have you ever noticed that successful people hang around other successful people? Birds of feather really do flock together. If you’re a beer drinking, foul mouth talking wage slave, then chances are, all your friends are beer drinking, foul mouth talking wage salves as well. This is not by accident. You attract to you what you are.
One of the biggest barriers to success is quite often the people you hang around with. They laugh at your crazy dreams and say you’re wasting time trying to make money online. Come and have a beer instead. More often than not, you’ll let your friends keep you down. If you want to break out of the rat race, then you need to stop spending so much time with your current buddies and start associating with people who have the same dreams and goals as you.
Networking for Fun and Profit
One of the reasons I attend a bunch of trade shows every year is not just to keep up with the industry. These shows provide a great venue to network with like minded and successful people. I also attend many local networking events (Dot Com Pho is an example). Remember, a big part of who you are is determined by the people you hang with. No man is an island. The journey to success is a team effort.
To keep building my success, I make sure I associate with other successful people. Sometimes, that means not hanging around with old friends as much, or letting them go completely. It really depends on your goals. If you aspired to more than what your friends want to achieve, then you’re going to have to find others at your level or above and start associating with them. Success breeds success. This is why the rich get richer. If you want to become rich, then you need to hang out with the rich.
I look forward to meeting you at Blog World Expo next week.
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Yep, it’s not always what you know, it’s who you know!
Absolutely, success breeds success… so why do I associate with you Mike?
oooppps i made a mistake, i meant to hit reply to your comment.. so as i was saying, cause I make you laugh! that’s why you associate with me nick! and you know we also have the same dreams and goals to spur each other on! and by the way, its not like your killing me in the blog game anyway…. although you are winning!
absolutely…you are who you are hanging with…success people hanging around with success people…if you want to be a success blogger as John, so sticking around….
Hey you and me ARE successful then…
Well, my father always said it the other way though, “It’s who knows you, not who you know. That’s the secret to business son. “
I’ve always believed that it isn’t WHO you know or WHAT you know, it is how you USE who you know or what you know.
Hhmmm… I agree to that. I think that’s taking it to another level. Great!
I say it’s not who YOU KNOW, it’s WHO KNOWS YOU? You could “know” all the people in the world, but if the don’t know you and trust you and like you and enjoy your company and find some value in being associated with you, it won’t be helpful at all!
Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted to say.
very true indeed
cause I make you laugh!
I completely agree, you’ll find yourself talking about investing, money, business instead of girls, parties and drinking lol. Unfortunately I stopped hanging out with a lot of high school friends, but my handful of associates have me constantly on the lookout for new opportunities.
Like minded people also inspire one another. They will raise the bar so will be motivated to return the favor. You bring each other up and add to the success.
Great post. Thanks
like minded people are so key.. most of the time they would be in the same area code as you.. you will need to eventually branch out of your county.
This is a post I absolutely agree with. You cant make a good deal with bad people. It just wont work. For most of us developing good relationships with successful people online can be a challenge. I check this site everyday, not because it is necessarily one of my favorites but because its successful. I have said before I am not going to be John Chow , but wouldn’t mind picking his brain a bit. This particular post Ill classify as one a pearl of wisdom. Nice one John.
This is indeed true. Hanging around with a bunch of people that doesn’t see what you are seeing will only make you lose focus. Other than inspiration and motivation, like-minded people also provide advice and relevant suggestions rather than killing your hopes in doing something.
Wait a minute, does that means noobies have a lesser chance of getting associated?
newbies?? do have a harder chance.. b/c they bring nothing to the table.. you better come up with a creative way to run with the big dogs..
I agree that who you associate with can influence ultimately what you end up doing and subsequently making…but sometimes you are actually the one everyone looks up to in terms of who you associate with. Several of my friends make much less than I do but because of my savvy investing strategies, I am the one they put on top of their list…its an interesting thing to keep in mind that you might just be one of the 5 people someone else associates with that is more successful than they are…
This is one thing I definitely don’t do enough… but I don’t know anyone is rl who does what I do.
Good point … hanging out with like minded people in a virtual world isn`t going to have the same affect as having these friends and associates in person. I suggest you look for these contacts offline too ….. a little harder to find but they`re there.
Good point Neil, is very easy to pretent a personality or pretent to be a successful person in a virtual world, and that’s what many bloggers do, they are whiners about stresses in real life, they hate their jobs, and they dream of someday to become pro bloggers to avoid all that. good luck for them if they reach it. in my mind, a succesfull blogger needs to be equally successfull in life too, ( not being the blog part of the success), and is precious to read when some successful bloggers write about their virtues in life, matt cutts, john chow for example, but there are some bloggers who read a book or two and proclaim to be experts in some fields (they get assured of that by reading crap like teaching sells from Brian clark) and they write stuff that sometimes they don’t even understand– but it rhymes good. oh well, I guess I just went too far by saying that
I would a agree.. forums are a good way to network as well. I like to use digitalpoint
You should keep contacts with people heading in the same direction with you. It is important to have someone with the same interests to talk to, yet I can’t say a good friend would talk down you goals…
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John wrote:
“One of the reasons I attend a bunch of trade shows every year is not just to keep up with the industry. These shows provide a great venue to network with like minded and successful people.”
This is exactly why I keep up with my blog John! I recently went to Affiliate Incubator and I learned a lot yet I met some of the greatest people.
I just signed up for Masters Seminar in January too - I can’t wait to learn more and meet other folks. Consider going - I just added that link to my site too. They sound quite interesting.
Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com
p.s. i added this quote to my blog - with a link back of course (like you really need that!
I 100% agree that it is very productive being around successful people. The only good thing about hanging around friends who don’t believe in you is that wanting to prove them wrong is a powerful motivator
There is always competition when two or more people come together. I just hope that I will not be the losing one in the competition.
Still its still a good option to do it. Just be wary.
Hmm.. i’ve been trying to comment on your site without success.. i wonder what happened as i’m ur big fan!
Often here, this happens when you comment for the first time. Since this comment made it live, then you’ll be able to comment successfully from here on in.
Hahaha, that’s awesome John. i wanna hang out with you since you are such a mogul. Too bad you are in Canada. One day, if I can make enough money to fly whereever I want, I will come visit you.
I believe the term is the Law of Association. Something along the lines of ‘you become the combined average of the five people you associate with most’. While I do believe there is some influence with hanging out with the right crowd, I don’t believe that it’s always a finite law.
I agree whole heartedly John.
Writing about Japan is a bit of a niche subject, but making relationships with fellow bloggers in Japan has been great for sharing around the traffic, links and all in all quite rewarding.
The thing is we all find confort in sameness or similarity. Which is why the beautiful people can all be seen together and the not so beautiful also stick together.
The reason why people like me stick around here is simple, it isnt because we are successful, it is simply because we want to be in the august presence of success hoping a little bit will rub off
You see wannabes stick together too.
And i hope what you said above doesn’t mean that if your friends are not as successful as you, then you stop hanging with them so much?
I’m not saying that at all. If your friends are not as successful as you but want to be, then the best thing is to help them. If they have no desire for success, then they are still friends.
True dat…I’ve heard this somewhere else too i think…but it’s good stuff…
teach’em how to fish…
Good man John! Cheers to good friends
You can get them to see how they can be successful. That’s what I do with my friends. They now have their own blogs
I do agree that birds of a feather flock together, and have personally dropped a couple of friends from my social circle because of that they were extremely negative. On the other hand, I have some friends who may not be as successful, but give me great inspiration with their energy and ideas. And that is important for success too - hanging out with people who inspire you.
Quite. It is not necessary that they do what you do or share the same professional goals. As long as the approach to life is similar and you get enthused by and charged by them, you are off and running.
I couldn’t agree with you more, John.
I claim to be completely self-taught, but what I really mean is I didn’t spend four years at business school or university. What I did do, however, was spend many years networking online and offline with people who had already achieved the success that I wanted. Learning from those people and enjoying the opportunities that were presented by that group of people has been invaluable to me.
This is a great post and I bet you wrote it from inside yourself John. Anyway the question is, what IF your friends are loads of fun, they like party and like spending money, they also like to make money (online or in RL), would you let down them?
Well I have this problem that I would NEVER EVER let a friend down, and would never ever ignore a friend just because I should hang out with a shmunk that does not know how to clean his nose and can’t make any different discussion than making money online. Ok, that shmunk can help me build trust online and maybe hook me into something big, but I would STILL prefer to keep the communication with him on regular basis but not the same amount of time I would spend with my friends.
Losing the pleasure for making money is not what I do see my life as.
Perception is everything, if people see you hanging out with successful people then they will just surmise that you also are successful
…No man is an island…
I think it’s the most importent phrase in the post (it’s my mind).
This is great advise except for one rider. One must first define one’s idea of success. Now, for some, material success is very important, for some, recognition in creative fields and so on so forth. It is not necessary for some one in say, the social, non government sector, to attend trade fairs and the like, but seminars and training programs in their field become important.
I completely disagree.
First of all, I value people more than I do business. Sure, I’m not going to be a millionaire, and I’m probably not going to be rich any time soon, but I refuse to look at life in this way. The thought of dropping someone from my social circle because they aren’t successful is dumbfounding.
I work in the media and I have to say that I like my job. Maybe all of us “wage slaves” aren’t deemed valuable enough to be in someone’s social circle, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t successful.
None of my friends have ever got in the way of my goals. I think to generalize like this gives people a false impression of the world. I’m amazed to see so many people agreeing with this. Are people going to start evaluating their social circles now to cast off undesirables because someone said it’s a good idea?
I have my own dreams and I don’t need the people around me to achieve them. I meet a lot of people every day in my line of work, and I can’t fathom how someone would suggest I judge these people based on how successful they are.
Maybe it’s just that I’m young and in a different line of work. Actually, this is probably the reason I chose my line of work, because it is possible to be inspired by everyone — from dot-com millionaires to plain old regular folk.
Yeah, the point from John about dropping old friends in favour of “new successful people” is about the only part I didn’t agree with.
I still fully agree that you must surround yourself with people who are already where you are. Not because that’s good for your image, but because there isn’t any better way to learn than from those people who have already got to where you want to go.
You don’t have to drop old friends. It will happen naturally. Most of the time, it will be your friends who drop you because you’re moving on and they can no longer relate to you.
Friends will only move on when you will not be a friend anymore to them, and that means when you will start ignoring them, when you won’t go and have a beer and share a laugh with them, thats only when your friends will move on from you and not because they can’t relate to you.
I can still be a successful business man during the day and a crazy a** at night with my friends, and trust