Your Friends Are Keeping You Broke-4 Ways to Avoid It!

Noelle gets honest about proximity, potential, and why 95% of your success may have nothing to do with your resume. This one is personal, it is researched, and it might make you rethink who gets access to you.

Transcript

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Welcome back to We Lead Anyway. I'm Noelle, senior leader, career coach, and your host. Today I may or may not ruffle feathers. It is not my intention if I do. It is my intention for you to be more intentional about your circle. Because your circle is either making you money or costing you money. Period. I know you want to kind of start taking a mental inventory of your loyal, loving, ride or die friends in your head, but just stay with me. Because it's not about loyalty or how dope they are that they gave you $50 when you needed it the most. This is about proximity. And proximity, my friend, is a financial decision whether you treat it like one or not. So I'm a nerd. I'm gonna start with science. I have receipts from Harvard, okay? Harvard psychologist, Dr. David McClellan, spent 25 years studying people who were driven to succeed. 25 years. So no, he didn't just casually scroll through LinkedIn. And what he found after all that time and research was up to 95% of a person's success or failure can be attributed to their reference group. Their reference group, which is a fancy academic term for your homies. The people in your orbit, your circle, 95%. So no, it wasn't the GPA or what's on your resume or the certification that you spent $2,900 on. It's the people that you spend time with the most. And then there's a research out of Harvard and Stanford that found if low-income children grew up in neighborhoods where 70% of their friends came from higher income families, those kids saw their future incomes go up by 20%. You're like, well, yeah, no, well, that's because money is contagious, like a cold. But we know that it's not. It's because exposure expands what you believe is possible, which is why I think representation is so important. But that is an entirely different video. But when you see it up close, when you see what's possible for others, you stop thinking it's for other people. There's also a famous Jim Rung quote that has been repeated so many times, it feels kind of like a cliche, but it keeps getting repeated because it keeps being true. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Your income, your habits, the size of your dreams, the excuses that you accept, all of it. And I only wish this is more true because I have a lot of friends that live at the gym and I do not. Anyway, another famous quote is from Clara Jean. That's my mom. May she rest in peace. She used to say, birds of a feather flock together. We've all heard that one. When I was four, I didn't understand it, but I get it now. My dad, he used to ask, if you go into a room with a skunk, will the skunk come out smelling like you, or will you come out smelling like the skunk? Thank you, Yoda. Daddy, I'm seven. I have no idea where I would even find a skunk. And if that message wasn't permeating at such a young age, you know, I used to go to church five times a week. And I used to hear the scripture all the time in 1 Corinthians 15, 33, still right here, that basically says bad association spoils useful habits. So I got it. At a young age now, I started being very mindful of my crew, even if I didn't completely understand why. And research on social capital backs this up. Studies show that people who use personal contacts in their job searches don't just find jobs faster, they find better paying ones. Access is relational. Opportunity, it lives in conversations. And so the science is clear, your circle has a measurable, documented, peer review impact on your income and your trajectory. And I want to tell you why I know this to be true, not just from textbook, but from my own life. Four years ago, I was doing well, mid-100s. I'd build a career that most people, especially people who knew where I started from, could not believe, right? Didn't have a degree, had a GED that I got in 2016. And I was proud of that. And I had every reason to be. Then I went on a first date. And on that first date, the woman sitting across from me casually mentioned that she had just received an offer, a job offer. That woman is now my wife. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you the number out loud, but I will tell you that my eyes did something I couldn't control. I can tell you that that my heart fluttered just a bit because she was in education and I had a belief, a quiet, unchecked, never-examined belief, that people in education don't make that kind of money. That's that's not what I thought was possible in that field. And she didn't flinch and she wasn't bragging. We read it together. She was just excited for the offer letter that finally came and we celebrated. Well, that moment cracked something open in me, not because of the number, but because of what the number represented. See, she had a different ceiling. And the wild thing about ceilings is that they're not real, they're inherited. You got yours from somewhere, from someone, from the circle you grew up in, the conversations you overheard, the people who told you, that's not realistic. This is more realistic. Her ceiling was higher than mine. And slowly, without either of us planning it, I started bumping up against mine and then busting through it. And over the next few years, I made more and more money. Today, I make about $60,000 more per year than I did when her and I got together. $60,000. That's not a coincidence. That is proximity in action. But here's the part of the story I want you to really sit with because the income piece is the exciting kind of ooh ah part, right? But there's a layer underneath this that matters just as much. She has three degrees in over 25 years in education. She is exceptional at what she does. And she never, not once, looked at me sideways for not having high school diploma or not having a degree. She never made me feel small for where I started. Now, I know she was impressed. I know she saw what I had built and thought, how did you do that? But she never weaponized her credentials against me. She never used her education as a measuring stick to make herself feel bigger. She just walked alongside of me with her three degrees and her 25 years. She just walked alongside me. And in our third year together, I went back to school. And I just graduated a few weeks ago with my bachelor's degree. And now on July 6th, I start my MBA program. So it's not just a personal win. That is what happens when you are in proximity to someone who holds the door open instead of guarding it. This is why you have to be intentional about your circle. When the people around you believe in what's possible for you, sometimes before you even believe it for yourself, you start to act accordingly. So I say all this to say two things. One, your environment is not neutral. It is always doing something to you. But the question is whether it is working for you or against you. And two, to my spouse, thank you. You're amazing. And you rock, and I love you. All right. So let me give you some real talk. Some things you can actually take with you today. So number one, just audit your circle. Like you audit your your budget, your checking, your checking account. Okay, most of us spend hours tracking our spending, categorizing our subscriptions or trying to figure out where the heck our money went. But we spend zero time examining who is in our inner circle and what they are costing us. Not in money, but sometimes that too, but in mindset, in momentum, in the size of goals we are willing to set. Look at the five people you spend the most time with. What are they earning? What do they talk about? What do they believe is possible? What do they do when things get hard? Do they rise or retreat? Because I guarantee you, you are doing some version of whatever they are doing. This isn't about being judgmental. It's just about being intentional about your circle, what you are in proximity to. All right, number two, this is what I want you to keep in mind. Proximity is not betrayal. I know some of you are already in your heads about this, like thinking, listen, I just can't leave my friends. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not saying leave your friends. I'm saying be intentional about how much time and energy you give to relationships that consistently pull you backwards. You can love people and still limit access. You can care deeply about someone and still recognize that an hour with them is plenty. Okay. You don't have to blow up your life. But you need to be honest about what certain relationships are costing you in vision and in drive. You can see someone and say, well, they're perfectly happy. Why can't I be perfectly happy with that? Now, on the flip side, actively seek out people who are where you want to be. Go to the room where those conversations are happening. Join the group, attend the event, introduce yourself. You're not being fake. It's intention. There is a difference. Number three, let people hold a bigger vision of you than you currently hold of yourself. And this one is hard because we are taught to be humble, to be realistic. Don't get too big for your britches, as my grandmother used to say. But the right people in your life will see something in you before you fully see it in yourself. And when that happens, you have two choices. You can dismiss it because it feels way too big and too far away, or you can let it land and let it be a seed. Let someone else's belief in you be a bridge until your own belief catches up. I have someone like that. And I'm standing here today, degree in hand, MBA program on the horizon, $60,000 more on my paycheck, because I let her belief be a bridge when mine was shaky. Number four, protect your environment like it is a professional asset. It is. The people around you shape your income. That's not motivational poster speak, okay? That is documented, respected, peer-reviewed fact. So when you're making decisions about who gets your time and energy and your conversation, treat it the way you would treat any other strategic professional decision. You would not take a meeting with someone who actively undermined your work, would you? You wouldn't keep a vendor who consistently delivered below your standards. Apply that same discernment to your social circle. You don't have to be cold about it, just be clear. Now, hear me when I say this to y'all. This episode is not about cutting people off, okay? It is not about being elitist or only hanging around with people with impressive titles or high salaries or showing out. That's not the point. The point is simply awareness. The point is most of us have never stopped to examine the relationship between our environment and our outcomes. We think success is purely individual, that it is all grit and hustle and talent. And yes, those things do matter, but they do not exist in a vacuum. You can even talk about this on a Google level, which is the level that I speak on typically, and talk about consciousness and being mindful of what you let in, how you feel and how you vibrate helps you manifest what you want in your life. Some of you who know me know I'm a BMW girl. I'm on my fifth one. Okay. Now, before I got my very first BMW, black Z4, cloth top roadster, that was a sexy car. Anyway, I'd go to BMW on Camelback Road in Phoenix, Arizona, and asked to drive one. Used to talk to a guy named Bill. And I did this once a month for almost a year. Then, out of the blue, one day, I had a boss who threw me the keys to his BMW once. And he told me I could go get some food with it. And I thought, I'm getting closer, getting closer. And then when I finally did get my first beamer, listen, I don't even know how my IQ was higher than my credit score. Okay, to me, it didn't seem like there was any logical reason I should have been able to afford it or even qualify for it. But I am convinced, I am convinced that putting myself in an environment where wealth and luxury was normalized, just chilling in the lobby at a German car dealership, sipping coffee, you know, showed up in my Hyundai, by the way, Hyundai, amazing cars. It's just I wanted a BMW. But I think that helped me get to where I wanted to be. And I did that with homes. Went to open houses, took pictures of myself chilling on a couch or a nice backyard until I felt like it was mine. I'd go to Tiffany's and Cartier and just try on jewelry until it became real. And yeah, I know that sounds like fancy material things. It's not just that. It's love, it's friendships, it's opportunities, it's your health. You are absorbing the beliefs, the norms, the ceilings, and the floors of the people around you and your environment all the time, whether you mean to or not. The question is just whether you are absorbing things that are helping you grow or things that quietly convince you to stay small. So again, your circle is your currency. I suggest you spend wisely. If you have a topic you'd like me to discuss, email me at noelle leadsanyway at gmail.com. And if you're interested in personal or professional development, visit leadwithnoelle.com. And until then, go take up space.