Success Requires Leaving Some People Behind

In this episode of Success Is Not Convenient, Bernie Gallerani breaks down why your environment and inner circle determine your level of success in business and life.

Entrepreneurs love to believe they are independent thinkers, but the truth is that human beings normalize to their environment. The standards, beliefs, and expectations of the people around you will either push you to grow or quietly hold you back.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why your circle determines your success
• How your brain calibrates to the people around you
• The danger of surrounding yourself with average thinkers
• Why successful entrepreneurs often feel misunderstood and isolated
• How mentors, accountability partners, and high performers accelerate growth
• Why being the smartest person in the room limits your potential

If you're serious about entrepreneurship, growth, and building a powerful life, you must protect your vision and choose your environment carefully.

Because success isn't convenient, but the right people can help you reach it faster.

Transcript

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Hello, everybody, Bernie Gallarani bringing another episode of Success is Not Convenient. Love the title because success is never convenient. If you're an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I mean, right? You're chasing success, you're trying to find it, but you know what's cool about success is it's really, whether you find it or you don't find it, the cool part about that is it's actually all in your head. That's the best part. The solution to all of your problems in business and in life, financially or otherwise, is in your head. And so success is not convenient because you're actually the one preventing it from happening. I know that sounds crazy, but it is my belief, and I have proven it over and over again with people I've seen, my own experiences, that success lives within your head and nowhere else you make the decision. So success is not convenient because we're in the way. Our title today and what we want to talk about today is who you surround yourself with matters. Who you hang out with matters. Who you call a friend matters. And so we want to talk a lot about who you surround yourself today, and we want to talk about how those particular people and how they influence you. So you don't rise to the vision, you rise to the environment of people. Who is the people in your environment today that are they uplifting you or are they actually pulling you down? That's a real good question I think that everybody needs to answer is am I hanging out with the right people to put myself in a position for a high level of success? Entrepreneurs love to believe that they are independent thinkers, but they're not. They're not independent thinkers. Human beings normalize to their environment. They actually normalize to the people they hang out with. They normalize to the belief systems they have that's going on in your head. And as I just mentioned a minute ago, when we're looking for success, there's not anyone standing in our way of success. There's not one person in our way. Now I'm not saying that there's not friends or family that are naysayers and bringing us down. But if you're around people who are regular normal thinkers, and they're not big thinkers, big money people, big business people, you're subsequently just capping yourself to the people that you're hanging around with. It reminds me of a story of somebody who I work with, still work with, still works within my company. Really great start, did very well, and then I could kind of see this decline. She was telling me about these friends that she was hanging out with, and this went on for several months. And so one night, or one day actually, one weekend, they came out. I was on my boat, and they came out and met me, and she introduced me to her friends. And immediately I said, hmm, to myself, I know why her business is going down. So the next day at the office, I pulled her in and I said, hey, by the way, I figured out why your production is going so low. She says, well, why? I said, I just met your friends that you've been hanging out with, somewhat new relationships, right? And she's like, yes. I said, those are not good people to be hanging out with. They might be good people, but they're not good for you and your business. See, if you're hanging around people who are building a $100 million company, your total nervous system adjusts. If you're hanging out with people who are just partying and drinking and not doing anything, you become that person, and your nervous system adjusts to that. That actually becomes your very normal standard, right? Your standards become normal with people who you like but aren't doing anything. The question is, how do you pull yourself from that? Stop hanging out with people that don't have your goals. Your brain calibrates to what it sees and repeatedly sees. I know this is weird. Remember, success isn't convenient, not because you don't want to be successful, but you have the wrong people around you, and you're not strong enough to overcome that. And that's why when you surround yourself with high performers earlier in your career, when you do it early enough, you can adjust. I love it, because in the world that I lived in, I actually chased the biggest hitters. The biggest people that were doing the work that I wanted to do, I got in front of them, and I went and visited them, and I went to their offices. I flew no matter where it was I was going. I'll tell you an interesting story, and this was probably about a year into my professional business. I was in the real estate business, still am. And I remember I wanted to go meet a couple of people that were on the West Coast in California. Living in Tennessee is where I live now, and that's where I lived then. And so I remember getting on an airplane, and it was on a Sunday, and it was Super Bowl Sunday, let's just call it 20 years ago, and I remember exactly who was playing. And I remember people telling me, you're actually going to be on an airplane when the Super Bowl's on? I don't care about the Super Bowl. Who cares? I'm building a life. See, here's the problem, I think, with a lot of us, is we think, well, that should be fun. I'm going to do that. No, no, no, no, no. Let me understand. Success in business is much more fun. Making money and being able to do whatever you want is way more fun than watching the Super Bowl, which you have no participation in. Yeah, you watch the Super Bowl, you drank, you partied, and you had a good time with your friends, but how did that benefit your life? It doesn't. You get to put something in your memory bank, and that's okay, but does your business suffer because you hang out with the wrong people, or you're not making the right choices? Environments set your expectation of life, who you hang out with. And expectations set behavior, and behavior sets the result. Most people don't understand that. What are you giving up? See, most people will not even understand the vision you have, and so what happens is you're so weak that we are not so solid in our goals that we give in to other people and what they feel we should be doing. Most entrepreneurs, they feel misunderstood for a reason, because they think differently than everybody else. They see opportunity where others see risk. They do things that most people won't do. Are you a person that shows up because your friends tell you to? Are you one that stays home and works on your craft? There's a great one. I saw this podcast once, and it talked about this young man who, they were all young, they were in their 20s, and this guy had started this landscaping business, and every time they wanted to go out and party, the friend that started the landscaping business said, no, no, no, man, I got to work on my business tonight. I got to work on my business, man. I just got to keep working on my business. And the guy went on to be a multi, multi, multi, multi, multimillionaire because he worked on his craft. What craft are you working on? See, this young person who started this business, when his friends asked him to go out, he saw growth where others saw comfort. He wasn't looking for comfort. He was looking for growth. Now, it might have been fun to go hang out with his buddies, but he was building a dynasty. Entrepreneurs see discipline where others see obsession. Entrepreneurs see discipline where others see obsession. See average thinkers protect comfort. That's what they do. They want to go have fun. Entrepreneurs chase expansion. I might be talking to you guys, and you're like, yeah, Bernie, I can't relate. Awesome. I'm not talking to you. But if you're a person who says, man, I just want growth, right? I just want growth. If you constantly explain your ambition to people who don't operate that way, they will absolutely sabotage and question you on why you're not partying and having a good time like they are. They'll joke about you. They'll tell stories about you. You don't need that. You know, listen, being an entrepreneur sometimes is very lonely. They might think that you're too obsessed. I heard that one, by the way. Oh, all you want to do is work, man. It's like, no. I want to have a great, beautiful life. And you scan all of your friends, and you look at them all, and you go, yeah, I probably, if I hang out with you, I'm going to end up with what you have, which is probably not anything. That's very dangerous for you, for your family, and for the goals that you set. They're not bad people because they're in the wrong spot that you're in. They're just in the spot that they're in. Their belief system is different, and that's okay. But see, your friends are important for your growth, so I think choosing your friends are super important, right? They always say one of the most important things you can ever do is choose a spouse. God, what a blessing. I've been married to my wife for 35 years, and what a great partner. It's who you surround yourself with. I have a very supportive wife who allows me to be creative and take risks. Who do you surround yourself with? Because energy is contagious, my friends, but so is mediocrity. And mediocrity is actually rampant. You don't need toxic people around you. You just need to be with people that think like you, and you're going to have to find them. Remember, success is not convenient, so it doesn't just show up everywhere. You have to find good people like that. You need people like that. You need people that don't make excuses, that don't rationalize or want an average performance in life. They push themselves to the limit, and the kind of people we want is people that think big and that don't blame others, people that don't avoid growth. They want growth. They're not afraid of growth, right? You don't need energy drainers. You need high achievers, high performers, people who speak differently, people that say, how do we solve this problem? Where am I the most weak? I love that, by the way. That is probably one of the things. I want everyone to write that down. Where am I the most weak? Where do I lack the ability to push myself forward? Where's my thinking? Who do I need to become? We need to just raise the standards. Our group protects identity. Others build capacity. The question for you is, which one are you? If you want to build at a higher level, you must be in rooms that stretch you to a higher level. Entrepreneurs should constantly ask, who intimidates me? Who is ahead of me? Who forces me to grow? Who won't tolerate my excuses? I'll never forget about, I say accountability slash role play relationship that I had with a business associate, Ira, and I'll give Ira a little shout out. I'll never forget. I was new in my business and he wanted to role play and do some accountability. He scared the heck out of me. Matter of fact, I literally wouldn't call him at times because I was just afraid of the level of accountability. But you know what? He kept staying on me and he molded me and he made me a much more confident person. But I ran from that guy in the beginning. Comfortable rooms kill your ambition. You don't want comfortable people. My mentor always says, the most that you grow is you have to embrace change in your life and you have to embrace being uncomfortable all the time. You need high producing mentors, big time mastermind groups. People that just challenge you and don't put up with your excuses. See we all have them and that's the fun part. I'm not sitting here telling you that I didn't have them. I'm the king of excuses. But I learned that when I hung out with really powerful people through mastermind groups and mentors, accountability partners, they will not tolerate that. Do your friends tolerate your lack of focus and behavior because you don't have the strength and the accountability partners that you need? Operators move faster than you. Big time people push you. If you're pushing people, you have the wrong people. You grow when you're around people operating at a much bigger standard. That pattern is not random. It's the law for these people. I'm telling you and anybody who knows me who watches and a lot of people do because they watch the podcast and they know me personally, I'm going to tell you, I am not a person that lets people get away with their excuses. Your life is way too important. If you're always the strongest, sharpest, most driven person in the circle, you're going to plateau. You need to find people that make you uncomfortable. Absolutely do not be comfortable with anybody that you have accountability partners with. You need someone that will challenge all of your thinking, stretch your vision, and expose your blind spots. I love this one. I had a coach. I don't want to say it was a coach. It was more like an accountability kind of coach where I wasn't really paying this particular person but I learned a lot from this person. He challenged me with something and then I tried to kind of squirrel out of it. I was a little squirrely. You've heard that saying. Hey, I'm going to come up with a reason why I'm not going to do what you told me to do. I was uncomfortable. Finally, I got forced because this particular individual challenged me. He's like, Bernie, I don't understand why you're doing this. I came up with a really good excuse. I actually was really proud of the excuse that I came up with because I had a reason. I had a reason. I had a belief system. Here's what he said, Bernie, if you just try it and you find that it isn't in alignment a month from now, you can always go back to what you had. But what if you just did it for a month and you realized how much growth you got out of it? He says, why don't you just try it and stop resisting it? I did. I called him a month later. I'll just say his name is Ron and I'll just say this to Ron. Thank you, Ron. I called him. I'm like, man, I can't believe it. I wish you had forced me to do it six months earlier. Here's what he said. Don't worry about it, buddy. It's just a blind spot in your life you didn't see. How many blind spots do we have in our life that we just don't see? But if you don't have anybody that calls you out for the way you think, how are you ever going to grow? See, the ego likes being the biggest player in the room. Your ego says, I'm right. And that's what my ego was that day. My ego is like, no, no, no, man, I'm going to justify the situation. Having growth requires you to be the smallest and most open to growth. Your ego, as my mentor Mike Ferry always says, if you just drop the E of ego, you get to go. And your E in ego is what's preventing you from growing because you're vulnerable, you're uncomfortable and you don't want to look bad. You don't want people telling you what to do and you don't even want to share your goals and your dreams with those particular people because you're too afraid of your lack of commitment to change. Misalignment creates internal conflict with yourself. Your inner circle, just your inner being just doesn't align with it all. And you look at growth and you say to yourself about growth, hey, listen, I want to grow, but I don't want to be uncomfortable. I want to grow but I like my friends. I want to grow, but I like my schedule. I want to grow, but I like sleeping in. I want to grow, but I have to read books to be disciplined. I want to grow, but I want to grow, but I can't. I want to grow, but it's too uncomfortable. I want to grow. I want to grow. I want to grow but you don't really do anything different. And what we're trying to do with this podcast is give everybody an idea of all the things you have to do. If there was a better way, we would try to find it. And so what happens is you try to flee or get away from any sort of discomfort. And sometimes discomfort is your friends saying, no, you don't want that in your life. You don't need any of that. You just need to be so focused on what it is that you need to get done. You need to stay focused on what you need to do. Your friends are irrelevant. Entrepreneurship is always an isolating job. You don't need to have people in your life that are naysayers. You need to have people pulling you, right? And I love this one. And I've got, I've found this painful at times to say, and the reality to it is it's the reality to it, in that you cannot uplift the downtrodden. You cannot motivate people to be motivated. You can't change your friend's mind if they have a belief in that. But there's so many great people out there today that will be a fit for you. But it's like success. They're not really showing themselves to you because you're not showing yourself to them. Because big time thinkers don't hang out with average people. Being an entrepreneur is a very isolated place to be. If your environment doesn't understand the sacrifice, it doesn't understand delayed gratification, it doesn't understand obsession, it doesn't understand vision. If you don't have people like that in your life, you are never going to be able to achieve at a higher level. You will either shrink to fit the people you hang out with, or you'll isolate emotionally because what happens is your dreams get squashed. And you know what happens when our dreams get squashed? We get squashed. The healthiest option is build a circle that speaks your language. You have to have people in your life. You're like, well, Bernie, how do you find those people? There's a bunch of them. I've got hundreds of them. But they're going to hide from you just like success because they don't know who you are. Are you having lip action? Are you creating results? And I promise you this, the better you move forward, people that you want in your life will notice. The more you move forward, those people will start paying attention to who you are. Who you're really looking for is this, people who increase your ambition, and people who take your standards and push you to a higher level. People that want to sharpen you, right? Like people that want to make you better. You don't want people who drain your momentum. You want people to encourage all of your comfort. We want people to like say, hey, listen, man, keep moving forward. Keep upgrading, upgrading, upgrading, upgrading, upgrading your friends, upgrading your life, upgrading your business. Thinking bigger. You have to protect yourself, protect your vision. Don't ever explain it. You never have to explain anything to anybody. As I've said in other podcasts before, I've had people that have tried to explain things to me and I think that their ideas are dumb. And I've had that shoved in my face a million times. They don't ever have to explain it to me because I don't see that vision. People aren't going to see your vision. You try to explain your vision and you have a bunch of people that nag you out. It's not good. Always continue to be a person who seeks other people at a high level that encourages them at a high level. Find good friends. The better friends you find, the better you're going to be at achieving the goals you want to achieve. And I just want to say this to you as we end this podcast today. If you don't take this seriously on the people you hang out with, and I am a believer. I just was sharing with one of my folks that I coach inside of my company and he's going to an event on Sunday for the next week. And I said, listen, man, go to the event. It's really great. This is what you have to expect. I've been there several times, but it's the people that you really want to get to know. Don't allow yourself to go there thinking you're going there just for this. I'm going to tell you the inside. I want you to take the next two days because he's going for two days and I want you to find the biggest, heaviest hitters at this event. It's a small event, very small actually, but there's still some really great people there. And I'm like, I want you to go to dinners with them. I want you to go to lunches with them. I want you to go, want to go have a drink with them, have a drink with them. I don't care if you ever go to sleep. You do everything you can to hang out with those people because those people are going to push you to a higher level. You'll get some sleep when you get back, but take the opportunity to be around all of these powerful people and don't let it escape you because your friends are either going to push you up or pull you down. It's completely up to you. I hope you guys found value in this. Please hit the like button if you love it. If you don't, I totally understand. It's not for everybody, but if you liked it, give me a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button. I'd like the opportunity to continue to keep bringing these great topics and ideas to you. Everybody have a great day.