Hang Around With People Who Get Sh*t Done

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This is the Music Makers podcast where I read things out loud to you and then offer my unqualified opinions on them. Hang Around People Who Get Shit Done by Jackson Miller. If I can only teach my kids one lesson, it would be to hang around with people who get shit done. Now my kids are still young, so I'm more likely to phrase this as make friends with people who do cool stuff. That would also give us the opportunity to talk about what cool stuff is.

Getting straight a's on every report card? Yeah. That is pretty cool. Building a model of the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks for the science fair? That is definitely cool.

Getting air on a 10 foot ramp with a skateboard? Also cool. I believe that everyone can do amazing things, but, unfortunately, most of us don't. Why is that? The reasons are varied, but in my life, I have found that hanging around with people who are doing amazing things makes me try harder to do amazing things.

This is what makes places like the Entrepreneur Center so great. By collecting a group of high achievers all in the same workplace, it raises the bar for each person comparing themselves against their peers. It's also why some teams are way more productive than others. The converse is true as well: Ditch the people who don't do shit If you wanna be a person who gets a lot of stuff done, you're gonna have to have friends who also get a lot of stuff done. You know the old saying, you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with.

So if the 5 people that you spend the most time with don't do anything, the odds are not going to be in your favor. You're not going to be pushed. You're not going to be spurred on. You're not gonna be inspired or encouraged or motivated because the people that you spend most of your time with aren't gonna be doing anything at all either. The people you spend all your time with shouldn't be able to tell you who got voted off the island, who can't sing, who can't dance, or what celebrity is having a crisis this week.

They should be so busy working on cool stuff, and that doesn't necessarily have to be work or career stuff. It doesn't have to be long hours at the office. It doesn't have to be building a business in their free time. Just like Jackson said, it could be building a half pipe in their backyard or, you know, depending on the age, building a toothpick sculpture of the Eiffel Tower. But you want the people that you spend all your time with to be doing cool things because you wanna do cool things.

Right? And when you get together, you don't wanna talk about the latest TV shows and, pop culture trivia that's gonna fade away in a day or 2. You wanna be talking about the cool things, the the lasting things that you're building and that you're working on. Eleanor Roosevelt said small minds talk about people. Average minds talk about events.

Great minds talk about ideas. So if you want to be building cool stuff, when you get together with your closest friends, the people you spend the most time with, you don't wanna be talking about The Bachelor or celebrities or what happened on this show or what happened on that show. You'll be talking about bigger things, better things, ideas, projects, things you're working on. And, of course, I think there's room for entertainment. There's room to talk about these things sometimes.

But you don't want to always be talking about celebrities. You don't want to be talking about other people all the time. You want to be the one that's doing the cool things. I was watching an interview with Richard Branson because I think Richard Branson does a ton of cool stuff. And he said, would I rather be doing things or would I rather be sitting in front of the television watching other people do things?

Would would you rather just watch people do things on TV and then talk with your friends about how the people on TV are doing cool things? Or do you wanna go out and do something? Do you wanna go out and start a blog or a podcast or build a business or I don't know. What is it that you what is it that you wanna do? What is it that you want to get done?

I've got lots of stuff that I wanna do. And you know what helps? Well, my friends are doing things too. I hang out in a Slack chat room. It's basically just an instant message room with a bunch of people I've met at different bootstrapping conferences.

You know, 1 to 2 person business conferences. And these guys and girls get stuff done. Compared to them, I'm way behind. That's just how I want it to be. I want to be the one that's kind of behind because that pushes me on.

That spurs me to do more and more stuff because they're moving so quickly. I don't want to be the smartest guy in the room, and most of the time I'm not. So do you hang around people to get stuff done or all your friends lazy couch potatoes? And are they holding you back? Do you and your friends just get together and talk about other people?

Or do you talk about ideas? Do you talk about things you're doing? Things you want to build? Things you want to create? And if you are currently the only one of your friends who's actually doing something, who doesn't just sit around and watch TV, you should think about trying to seek out more people like you who are doing things, who are getting stuff done.

You'll be amazed at how much energy it gives you. You can see the show notes for this episode or leave a comment by going to musicmakers.fm/7. You can subscribe