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.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Motivation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.