Collaboration as Result for Success

Collaboration is huge. If you’re doing it right, you can almost always find success through collaboration. An important principle for anyone to follow is to surround yourself with smarter people than you. I can’t remember who said the quote, but they said that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you better find another room. If you’re the smartest person in the room, there’s no way to push or stretch yourself at that point.

I always tell the story of when I was in my second year playing hockey in college. I went to a training camp in Minnesota where there were junior players, some semi-pro players, and a couple of NHL players. Just being on the ice with them and playing with them made my game explode. Because I was on the ice with those players, I was pushed and stretched in ways I hadn’t before.

The best way to find success through collaboration is to always make sure there are those in the group that are going to intellectually stretch you and challenge you. People are going to call you on your crap, and you need to know how to defend yourself and know how to learn and make sure that you’re as open as possible. If not, you are not going to learn any lessons. I think surrounding yourself with the right people is going to be very important because it helps a lot with accountability.

If you look at somebody that has not done much their whole lives, are you going to accept their feedback the same way as you would from an entrepreneur like Bill Gates or Donald Trump? I know some people don’t like him, I’m just throwing out names of people that have achieved amazing things. Who’s advice are you going to value more? And so it’s one of those things where you need a peer group that’s going to push you, that is going to create accountability so that if you do set goals, you have somebody holding you accountable to that.

There are individuals that haven’t grown or moved forward and don’t read books. They probably don’t have anything that is relevant to discuss right now because they don’t have the vision to explain something. The entrepreneur, however, has faced failures numerous times in a row. They recognize that if you’re not moving, you’re dying. So they’re always pushing themselves and by just having a conversation with that type of person, it get’s you moving. If you look at their accomplishments you realize that if they can do it, you can do it.

It is also important to be consistent and to meet face-to-face. I’ve been in mastermind groups where they’ve met over a video conference. You can’t do it over a phone call, there has to be a face-to-face element. It’s very easy to create those groups because the whole world is networked. When you do meet in these groups, if you have intentional purposes behind it it’s powerful.

So if your intention is to build wealth and your intention is to really optimize who you are as an individual, then really understanding the mastermind principle is paramount. It’s one of those staple principles that’s going to be a part of your success. I don’t know anybody that has achieved massive success that has not been part of one or multiple of these types of groups, and have always sought to find success through collaboration.

This blog was created based on our podcast The Wealth Standard. Click here to listen to it now!