Circle of influence

Growing up, I’ve often heard adults saying “Birds of a feather flock together.”
Usually they use that in your teenage years when they have a problem with your friends and people you are hanging out with.

As a teenager, we don’t believe them and reply that “mom or dad, I am my own person… I don’t just follow my friends, I can make my own choices; or I am not that easily influenced”. As adults, we soon realized how true they were.

One thing that I wish I have heard from my parents or any adults when it comes to circle of friends is how they have a direct impact on your income and net worth. YES you read right.

I only found out about this mind boggling truth last year. I was reading a book and there was a chapter about circle of influence. Studies have shown that your net income is the average income of your 5 closest friends. When I read that, I literally screamed “HELL NO”.
I thought about my 5 closest friends at the time and as far as I know, only one or two has a higher income then I am making. So being really good with numbers, I quickly did the math and believe it or not my income was an average of the 5 people closest around me. I’ve never felt sooooo miserable about my income. Even for those who are not too good with math, you most know that the lower the numbers are in an average, the lower the average will be.
So a quick example, your income = (20 000 + 25 000 + 35 000 + 40 000 + 50 000)/5
= 170 000 / 5 = 34 000$
OR
= (40 000 + 50 000 + 70 000 + 75 000 + 80 000)/5
= 315 000 / 5 = 63 000$
As if that was not shocking enough, what follow was even more shocking… the author went on by saying “the only way to increase in your income is by changing your circle of influence”. Simply put: “If you want to make more money, you have to hang out with people that are making more.”

For those who know me well, you can guess what I said when I read that. Yep I said “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!”

The author proved without a doubt the concept (I will spare you the details). That really got me thinking. So here I was, I had a goal of increasing my income by x% this year and I just learned that if my circle of influence remains the same… it is almost 100% guarantee that my income will remain the same (unless all of their income goes up… which is not very likely). I felt bad because I didn’t want to ditch my friends.

After thinking and reading a lot about the subject, I came to this conclusion and this is what I want to share with you: your circle of influence doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as your friends. It is up to you to decide who will influence which area of your life. Since I understood that, I decided to keep my friends as great friends (social). When it comes to career, business and money to seek people who are successful and have them mentor me and shadow them. Guess what? It works like magic!

Who are the people influencing your goals?

Keep well,
Jephtée E.