You are Who You Hang Around!
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Parental Lessons
From birth, my parents have been trying to protect me from influences that would shape my life in a negative way. Especially, when it comes to my friends.
Like most things my parents have tried to instill in me, I have not fully appreciated this lesson until much later. The concept of surrounding yourself with great people in a business sense mirrors the lesson my parents taught me about friends. You will hear this concept mentioned often from successful business persons and leaders.
Nate Whitehill
My effort to surround myself with like minded individuals is starting to pay off hugely. Most of you who are reading my blog have been directed here from natewhitehill.com. Nate is my business partner, best friend and roommate. We actually went to high school together, and became friends through mutual relationships. One of these relationships is our other best friend and business partner, Matt Blancarte.
We all have common goals and constantly keep each other on track. Without these two people I know that future ventures would be much more difficult to accomplish. We look at the group as we all have different strengths, skills, and personalities that will contribute to our success. The group collectively is much stronger than the individual and will increase the likelihood of success, and decrease the time it will take to accomplish our goals.
You all know Nate as the professional and dedicated entrepreneur that he is today. However, there was a time where all Nate had was ambition. Nate had the courage and motivation to act. Our senior year of high school Nate started infinFX (our web-design company) with another one of our friends, Brad. Soon after, Nate brought me on and we’ve been scheming ever since. Hundreds, if not thousands of ideas later, and we are on our way.
I have learned so many things from Nate and always can find motivation from him, and I know he can say the same about me. Now that Matt, Nate, and I are charging full steam ahead, we can’t be stopped.
What Can YOU Do?
Who in your group of close friends/relationships might need some encouragement? If you are truly dedicated, you need to get those who you associate with the most on the same page as you. Here are a few tips to help get your closest friends in the game.
- Figure out what motivates them.
- Align their goals and interests.
- Align their goals, wants, and needs, with your own.
- Assign jobs/positions that highlight each partners’ strengths.
- Positively reinforce progress.
I’ve decided to give freelance web design a shot as a source of extra income outside of my full time job, and I just recently started meeting up with a friend of mine at Starbucks on a weekly basis. It’s amazing how much motivation you can get just from hanging out with others who have similar interests! Great post!
Yes, like minded people actually fuel the motivation when you are talking to them, I’ve noticed that too…
Sometimes I just have a great idea, but I don’t know if it will work, thus I have a tendency to procrastinate, however if I see that another person likes the idea, I’m ready to move a mountain to accomplish the goal
Yep, that’s what i’ve been looking for. However, it’s very hard for me to find friends who have this simmilar interest as me.
I was doing some volunteer hours in a 5th grade classroom this past year and I heard one student tell another student that he needed to give more thought about who he hung out with on a regular basis, that he needed to avoid being associated with a particular type of person. The student went on to explain that the other student’s friendships would define who he was as a person and eventually influence his decisions in life.
I thought the advice coming from the mouth of a student all of 11 years old was quite sage. It’s a universal message.
Wow Angie. That is truly amazing that an 11 year old would have this advice to give. Probably great parenting. Thanks for the comment.
[...] best friend and business partner Josh also recently touched on this subject in a post entitled You Are Who You Hang Around. Josh says: The concept of surrounding yourself with great people in a business sense mirrors the [...]
[...] are the company you keep. Two great blog posts on this concept can be found at Nate’s and Josh’s blogs. In the post I made about perseverance, I mentioned that you want to avoid nay-sayers if you [...]