Success Tip: 5 Steps to Improve Your Inner Circle

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that each day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's topic. Today I'm going to be discussing the 5 things that you can do right now to improve your circle of 5. The 5 things that you can do right now to improve your circle of 5. Let's start by defining the circle of 5. I think we all probably have an idea as to what I'm talking about, but let's, let's all get on the same page. When I talk about the circle of 5, what I'm really talking about are the 5 people that you are really spending the most time with. The most time with. Now, that may not be physically spending the most time with. Maybe you talk to them on the phone, maybe you're engaging with them in other ways, maybe you're on Zoom, maybe you work together and you pass each other quite a bit, or maybe they in fact are your friends. Your 5— these are the people that are taking up the most amount of time on your calendar, both your business calendar as well as your personal/social calendar. Now, why are we focusing on this circle of 5? Well, because we've all heard before, and I found it to be incredibly true, we are the average of the 5 people we're spending the most time with. Not only, not only are we the average, meaning that we portray the behaviors, the habits, the mindset of the people, of the 5 people we spend the most time with, but not only that, I believe that our income levels are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Our relationships are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. And we can kind of go down the No Days Off line. What you're going to find is that who you're spending the most time with is heavily influential on all things that we're aiming to improve in the No Days Off movement. So if that's the case, Always upping our Circle of Five should be on our mind. Now, here's the interesting thing about upping your Circle of Five, improving your Circle of Five, that I think is never really talked about. We all hear like, "You gotta up your circle. You gotta improve the individuals, the group of individuals you're spending time with." We all hear that. We get it. What is rarely discussed is that while you're trying to run and catch up to the Circle of Five you wanna be in, Recognize that those 5 are running as fast as they can away from you. Let me say it again. As you aspire to be in a bigger group, a better group of 5, that group of 5 is trying to get away from you, not because you are a bad guy or girl, but because they're trying to up their 5. They're trying to up their level. So, the question then becomes, how do you run fast enough to catch them before they elude you? That's what we're really focusing on today. So, the 5 things that I think you can start doing right away to increase or improve your Circle of Five. Number 1, this is an awareness idea here, right? This is a focus on awareness. We have to purposefully seek out the type of people that we are aiming to be around. We have to actually determine what I would call our avatar. Who is the person we're looking to spend more time with? Who are they? Not necessarily a name, but what type of person? Where do they hang out? Who are they friends with? You know, what do they do for a living? What sort of families do they have? I think we have to get very, very clear around who we're even looking to spend more time with, the type of person, and then we can start to determine who those individuals may be. So number 1, purposefully seek out the type of people you're aiming to be around. But first, you've got to design your avatar. Number 2, we've got to meet new people constantly. Like, we really, I don't know, I don't think we give this enough credit. We've got to put ourselves in environments where we're going to have more conversations with new people. If you stick to the same environments and the same groups, I mean, you'll probably end up with the same 5. But if you begin to expand your network, put yourself in these environments, where others, people you don't know, or maybe you just know as acquaintances, but you need to build deeper relationships. We gotta get in those environments. And not only do we have to get in those environments, we gotta ask great questions. Remember, we have an episode, a past episode on asking better questions, maybe worth listening to, but we've gotta ask more powerful questions. We gotta use things like FORD, F-O-R-D, family, occupation, recreation, dreams. Like we need to have a structure to the conversations. We've got to be again, super purposeful. And most importantly, with respect to number 2, when we're asking these questions, we have to listen. We got to actually take note of what they're saying. Number 3, maybe the most important of this list of 5, we have to be a giver. We've got to provide value. We have to give these individuals reason to want to spend time with us. And so I think in order to make a breakthrough, in order to break into a new group, We gotta show up and provide value. So you have to find out what they like, what do they need, what do they need help with? If you can solve for a, a pain point that they have or a challenge or obstacle they're trying to overcome, and you provide that value without asking anything in return, and you do that enough, suddenly you will start being invited into the circle more and more and more and more. This is you running faster to catch them as opposed to them trying to run away from you. Number 4, number 4 on this list, we have to reach out to our targets regularly. We actually have to increase our frequency of interaction with these individuals. We've gotta, we've gotta text them or call them or email them. Now, don't stalk them, but building a relationship involves frequency of interaction. We've gotta ask, you know, what are you doing? When are you doing it? How can I help? Is it an event that I can be at? Right? And I think having these regular dialogues builds relationship in addition to asking better questions and listening and providing value, all of this, just frequency matters. So reach out to your targets regularly. And number 5, the 5th way to improve your Circle of 5 actually starts with you. You have to take a step back And you have to look in the mirror. And you have to ask yourself, "Am I prepared? Am I prepared to outgrow my current relationships?" And be honest with yourself. Because I see this as a huge obstacle for many. We say that we want to get into a new group or get around bigger thinkers or be, you know, the dumbest guy or girl in the room. We say that. Do we mean it? Are you ready? Are you prepared to outgrow your current relationships? Are you willing to outgrow your current relationships? Now, here's the thing. If you really are honoring the No Days Off movement and you're committed to it and you're doing it every day, you're upping your game every day, you are in fact gonna outgrow relationships. And you have to be okay with it. You have to be okay. So, there's the 5 for you, 5 ways to improve your Circle of 5. That very last one, look in the mirror and get comfortable and make sure that this is what you're willing to do, like you want to do it, you're willing to take the steps to do it. I don't know, they're all important, but that one, that one is probably, in order of action steps, that might be the one to focus on first. So, focusing question for you, I gave you my 5, maybe you have some other ideas. What can you do today? What can you do today to take steps towards improving your circle of 5, changing or upgrading your circle of 5? What steps can you take today to upgrade your circle of 5? That's all I have for you today. I really appreciate you joining me, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.