Surround yourself with people who have already won

There is a claim that floats around self-improvement circles: your income will end up within 20% of the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Let me be straight with you, nobody has ever produced a rigorous study behind that exact number, and I am not going to pretend one exists. But here is why the idea refuses to die: the mechanism underneath it is completely real, and I have watched it operate on my own income. Who you spend time with sets your reference points, your ceiling, and your default assumptions about what is possible. That makes your circle the most under-discussed wealth strategy in personal finance.

If your closest people think $80k is "doing well," that quietly becomes your ceiling. If your closest people are building businesses and compounding portfolios in their 30s, that quietly becomes your floor. Nobody announces it. It just happens, one normal conversation at a time.

Information flow. People in different financial situations talk about different things. One circle discusses what to stream and where to eat. Another discusses a duplex deal, a job market shift, a business that is quietly printing. Neither circle is better company, but only one is feeding you actionable information for free, constantly. Your circle determines which questions you even think to ask. "How do I get a raise?" and "how do I build a second income stream?" lead to completely different decades.

Standard calibration. Your sense of normal is manufactured by your immediate environment, not chosen. If everyone around you owns property, owning property feels like a default step you are mildly behind on. If everyone rents and calls ownership impossible, the same goal feels delusional. Same person, same market, opposite behavior, purely from calibration. This mechanism is the strongest of the three and the least visible, because normal never feels like an influence. It feels like reality.

Direct opportunity. The people you spend time with are the people who refer you, hire you, partner with you, and bring you deals. Almost every significant income jump in most careers traces back to a person, not an application portal. Network effects on opportunity compound for decades, exactly like money does.

Let me kill the gross version of this idea before someone runs with it. This is not cutting off old friends because they earn less. It is not pretending to be someone you are not, faking interest in golf, or treating every relationship as a transaction. People smell transactional energy instantly, and it repels exactly the people you hoped to learn from. Your oldest friends matter for reasons that have nothing to do with money, and becoming the person who drops them is a different kind of bankruptcy.

Adding rooms, not subtracting people. Industry events. A local business association. Online communities built around investing, entrepreneurship, or a specific craft. The goal is simple: regularly be in rooms where the average level of accomplishment is above yours, and show up consistently enough to stop being a stranger.

Consistency is the unglamorous core. Relationships that change a trajectory are built across 2 to 5 years of repeated, low-stakes contact, not one coffee chat. The compounding looks like nothing for a long time and then looks dramatic, exactly like an index fund.

Here is how I would actually approach someone ahead of me, step by step.

First, pick someone 2 to 5 steps ahead, not 50. The founder of a 10-person business will answer you. A billionaire will not, and honestly their advice is less applicable to your next step anyway.

Second, do real homework. Read what they have written, understand what they built, find the specific thing you genuinely want to understand.

Third, ask one precise question instead of "can I pick your brain." Compare: "any advice for a young guy?" versus "you moved from freelancing to productized services in 2021, what almost made you quit during that transition?" The second gets answered, because it proves the homework and respects the clock.

Fourth, offer something. Time, a skill, a useful summary, legwork. Even a thoughtful follow-up counts. The point is signaling you understand relationships run two directions.

Fifth, follow up when their advice leads somewhere. The single rarest move in networking is reporting back: "I did the thing you suggested, here is what happened." Do that once and you are no longer a stranger asking favors. You are someone they have invested in, and people protect their investments.

The biggest single jump in my income came after I started spending real time around people running actual businesses. Nothing mystical happened. The conversations were different, the default assumptions were different, and within a year my decisions started reflecting the room I was in. I did not get smarter. I got recalibrated. And none of it required abandoning a single old friend.

Identify one person 2 to 5 steps ahead of where you want to be. Send one well-researched, specific question. Ask for 15 minutes of perspective on a real problem, not a favor. The worst case is silence, which costs nothing. The best case quietly changes your reference points for the next decade. The first conversation is the entire game.

Read next: The K-Shaped Mindset | Making Money vs Building Wealth

*Disclaimer: MentorSurge is not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. This post is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and career or networking outcomes vary widely with individual circumstances. Investing involves substantial risk of loss. Numbers cited were accurate when written and change constantly. Always do your own research and consult a licensed professional before making decisions with real money.*