There is one trait I have seen in almost every successful person I know. It is that they surround themselves with other successful individuals. Likewise the way they surround themselves with successful work ethics, habits, and attitudes is very clear.

This concept was made main stream and popular by Stephen Covey’s popular book, 7 habits of highly successful people. However I’m sure throughout history, this principal has been practiced by almost all successful individuals.

You can see this first hand in the poker affiliate industry by simply attending any of the conventions. The successful affiliates tend to all hang out together. When they are in their offices working during the day, they chat and pick each other’s brains on messenger. I don’t believe this is merely by coincidence either.

Everyone has heard this principle before, however there is much more to it than simply speaking with successful people on messenger or having beers with them at conventions. It’s a mindset that you must adapt too. No matter how many successful people you know or speak with, if your thoughts and attitudes are negative, then your results will be too.

It is also equally important to have successful ethics and habits in your day to day life. I’m sure many people like me still have those friends from high school who are no better off now than they were 5-10 years ago. Let’s face it, if you’re daily habits include self destructive activities like abusing drugs, hanging out with losers, or just being plain lazy, then you are clearly not living in a way that the successful people YOU strive to be are.

I hate to throw this out there, but specifically in the poker affiliate industry, I think poker in general can be a major hindrance to affiliates. It’s easy to get caught up in a poker game or tournament online for several hours. Or if you’re running good, it’s easy to just play poker for a month and forget about the affiliate business. That’s great until you have a massive downswing, lose your bankroll, and realize you just lost an entire month of productivity as well as all your money. Not too mention the mental roller coaster, loss of sleep, and other bad habits you practiced throughout this month.

For poker affiliates starting out, this can be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. You need to decide which is more important, being a poker player, or being a business person.

If you’re one of the 5% of online poker players that can actually make a living playing, congratulations. If not, take some time off and focus on building your affiliate business. Trust me, it’s a much more rewarding getting 5 figure checks every month from affiliate programs than from “running good” for a month. Being a losing, break even, or minimal winning player is counterproductive to “Surrounding Yourself With Success”.

One of the most important things I always remember about success in both business and life is this; Successful people to do the right thing even when no one is watching. Sure, nobody wants to sit and write content for 6 hours in an office by themselves. But on the path to success, there are going to be lots of things that you don’t want to do.

Even if you are not at the level you want to be at yet, it’s time to start planting successful seeds in your mind. Start speaking with other successful affiliates. If one of your goals is to buy a new Mercedes, drive through the car lot a few times a week. If you want to make $10K a month, write it on a piece of paper and tape it to the top of your monitor. Perhaps you want to make enough over the winter to take the family on a surprise vacation, make that location your screensaver.

Action Plan: Think about your current surroundings in both business and life. Are you surrounding yourself with the right people? Do your daily habits align with those whom you aspire to be like? Take a few minutes after reading this to think about your surroundings and what you could change.

Also, take away all the ethics of this movie. But if this does not motivate you, I don’t know what will. Much of what is said here could easily be correlated to poker affiliates and the poker affiliate business.

Awesome video, I loved it

Great start to my Monday Jeremy! I remember a thread on PAW a while back where you posted inspirational vids you liked. anyone have a link to that?

Also, has anyone read the 8th habit? It’s a great follow up to the 7 habits.. Him and his son were on Glenn Beck a few weeks back, it was a great show to watch.

I remember that post to but couldn’t find it. I have this post from Shoemoney bookmarked though.

If you are a sales manager in the real word, these are great scenes to start a meeting off with.

Either way though, they are just some great movie scenes.

http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/07/13/movies-that-motivate-me/

J, the posts just keep getting better and better. You should probably go blogging pro. Think of all the sweat sedos you could sell. I know I personally have been wasting a lot of time lately playing poker online. I hate the feeling after a long session where you think, damn, I could have used that time a lot better. I am definitely going to take this seriously and cut the crap out / playing poker online. Thanks for the motivation!

Nice post Jeremy and awesome movie clip I havent seen that one.
I remember a post last year about someone losing their months earnings playing poker and you chimed in saying they could make a hell of alot more doing this if they put the work into it and to stop wasting time playing poker. It wasnt until than that I thought about all my friends who play on a consistant basis and even myself I have cashed in a few games but I wouldnt consider myself someone who can play and live off that alone. Since than I dont bother with it so much unless maybe a few hours a month.
What I want is to make more than the average player spends.

I have got to watch Boiler Room.

Yes you do Jonathan…. Boiler Room is pretty much mandatory viewing

Hey Jeremy,

Your motivations are great to read, and so spot on! I have experienced a huge gain in revenue when totally quit playing poker myself.

I actually made a vision board a couple of weeks ago after reading Justin Goff’s blog. The tip to have a goal in sight at all times works really motivating. I can recommend this to all serious affiliates.

Let’s keep ‘em coming,

Giorgio

I agree that its definitely not a good idea to mix poker and affiliating. Especially when you’re first starting out in the affiliate industry. You don’t want to blow your hard earned $ in a poker game. Maybe this is the reason why poker sites pay us through their poker sites cashier.

When I start playing poker, I get bored and start writing an article. Then I’m not paying attention to my opponents and my article is full of errors. This is the reason I’ve quick trying to make money from poker online. The only time I play is to keep my poker sites with money in them active.

I’m glad to see many of you share the same thoughts about being a poker player and an affiliate. This is one reason my 2008 goal is to push for poker sites to STOP making it mandatory that we get paid into players accounts.

If all the sites would pay us into a legitimate account like Speedpay, it would help many affiliates see this as a business and not a bankroll supplementer.

I know if anyone can push these sites for change, it will be you man. So, sick of having poker account I’ll never use on some of these sites..

Great post man!

J,

We really need to band together and make that happen. if everyone on PAW sticks together and starts to penalize the sites that are doing that then we can probably make a difference. I am down for sure!

That is actually what Poker Affiliate World should be all about. Using our combined voice to make differences in this industry (led of course by our “fearless” leader Jeremy