Who you hang out with and what you listen to has more of an impact on your performance than you think. Check out this episode where we break down how the circle of friends you keep and either elevate you or hold you back.

[email protected]

www.successbeyondgameday.com

Ryan: Welcome back to Shift happens. Here's another episode of Athlete Mindset Hacks. I'm Ryan, this is Cheney. And today we're looking at a study that we picked up on. Right. And this is talking about the circle or the company you keep. But the amount of data that they collected on the performance and who you hang out with is really remarkable. So the study that we looked at that we found there was 48,000 plus hours of work that was monitored.

Cheney: Right.

Ryan: So 48,000 and then some hours of just observing people working. Okay. And what they identified was that if you sat within 25 of a top performer, you had 15% boost in performance simply by sitting within 25ft of this performer. Right. But on the flip side, then you had, if you sat within 25ft of a poor performer, your productivity decreased by 30%. Right. 48,000 plus hours of work monitored.

Speaker C: Right.

Ryan: Different companies all over the place. So put that in perspective. That's over 13 years. If you're working ten hour days, working 365 days a year. Right. Over 13 years of hours monitored. And if you sat with 25ft of a top performer, your performance increased 15%. Within 25ft of a poor performer, yours went down 30%.

Cheney: Right.

Ryan: Your skill level stayed the same. All that stayed the same. But your output, your performance either went up or went down. Right. And so I thought this was really remarkable.

Cheney: Right.

Ryan: Because. Especially because your skill level didn't necessarily increase.

Cheney: Yeah.

Ryan: So when I tell you about the study, Cheney, what are your, what are your thoughts on that?

Cheney: I was blown away by this.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: You know, obviously we want to surround ourselves with the top performers.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: My, my brother, three years younger, always played with my age group.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: So he was surrounded by bigger, stronger, faster, older athletes. And there's only one thing you can do there. You either get better or you don't. You don't get to participate.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: So it improved his performance and his productivity. His output.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: What blows me away is that it doubled. On the negative side, if you were not, if you were playing, let's say you're playing with lesser competition, you're competing against lesser competition. But you could see that too. Even as a. I was thinking back as my high school basketball team, if we played against a superior team, our level of play ramped up. Now, if we were playing a lesser quality team, they were all good teams, then we just weren't quite as focused and we just kind of kicked it around a little bit. But again, it blows me away that it doubles the productivity doubles on the negative side, just being within 25ft of a poor, poorer performer.

Ryan: Yeah, I think there's really good examples of this, right? I think so. One thing I did, because I was like, let me put some math to this. Let me put some numbers to this, is I went back and I looked at the Bulls, right, with Michael Jordan and all that, and he's not known for being the warmest or friendliest teammate, but performance was this thing, right? He could perform. And so I was, I was thinking, all right, there. There at that time, was not a better performer on the basketball court. So let's look at what his teammates, how they produced, right? So with, with Michael Jordan. Scottie Pippen. Right? So arguably number two in that average 17.1 points per game, right? And without Michael Jordan, he averaged 15 points. Steve Kerr averaged with Michael Jordan, 8.1 points per game. Without Michael Jordan, 5.3 points per game. Kuko was probably the closest to maintaining performance, right. 13.2 with and 13 without John Paxson. 8.2 with, 5.2 without. Right. So it was seen, right. It was there.

Cheney: Right.

Ryan: The data played out that, hey, this was pretty, pretty just being in proximity to them. And then I go to an interview. I heard, this is an old interview, but it was after Tom Brady Washington retired, right? So he sat down and it was one of the last questions he gave that he answered in the interview. And it was about what type of relationship he had. Did he have friends that were on other teams in the league? And he said, now I do, right? But I had to create something in my head where it. I had to hate them for something, right? And even if I had to make it up. Right? And what he didn't understand was all these players now are all buddies and. And they're all friends on and off the field and all that sort of thing. And he was saying he didn't understand that.

Cheney: Right?

Ryan: And so I went and I looked at who I consider the top athletes. They all kind of maintained that Siloede lifestyle, right. They created and helped elevate those around them that were on their team. But the second they weren't on the team, the mindset was, I need to be the best I can be so for my teammates so they can get the next contract, so that they can. And I can't be buddy buddy with everyone. And so I just, you know, the math backed it up and I just did one sport. But I think if you look at any sport and you look at the great that it played with, it's going to be across the board.

Cheney: Yeah. No, no. I saw something a couple weeks ago interview, and they were talking about Roger Clemens, and they were talking about an all star weekend, all star game, and Clemens is in the locker room. And basically what they, they were alluding to was exactly what you said. Like, even at an all star game in the locker room, Roger was still siloed because he understood, hey, this is two days, right? I don't need to be buddy buddy with these guys in two days because come Tuesday or Wednesday, you know, if I need to throw at you, I don't want anything getting in the way of that. Now with him, nothing get in the way of that because he would throw at you if you looked at him wrong. But that was exactly what you're talking about. It was. I don't, I'm not, I'm not. I don't have time to be buddy buddy. I've got a job I've got to do. And just because we're in the locker room for a ball game doesn't mean, you know, it's not as important as getting ready in September for making a run in October.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, for me, it was easier to do that inside, inside the locker room on the team. Right. But where, where I slipped at times, and I think a lot of athletes slipped, a lot of the pro athletes we worked with. I mean, this was one of the main things we addressed with the guys that went to through the combine this year that we worked with. Washington, your biggest threat is your tolerance of others and who you let in your circle. And I think that's a lot of times the hardest one to overcome, to process of. I've had, these guys have been my boys, or this has been my circle for so long. But now you're getting ready to enter a different world, and you're faced with that decision of, how do I cut some of these people out of my life, right. And that's how the lens that they look through it in. And I just think that that's just probably the wrong perspective on how to view that. Right. I think, you know, you've heard the. We're both baseball guys, so you can't steal second with your foot on first. Well, you can't. You can't elevate and get where you need to get to as you enter different arenas by hanging on and pulling people, you know, from. From the past with you. It just can't. It can't. Both cannot be done. But what that doesn't mean is you all of a sudden, one day, stop talking to them. Right?

Cheney: Yeah.

Ryan: It's. It's. You need to mirror what the people that you look up to are doing right. You need to start operating in those circles in order to learn how to operate right at that next level and excel at the next level. Because, again, the goal isn't to make it to the pros or to make it to college. That the goal is to excel and play and stay there as long as you can.

Cheney: That's right. And that's when that's, you know, again, you talked about us being baseball guys. I had a decent freshman year in college, right. But coaches are recruiting. They're trying to replace me coming in, you know, my sophomore year, they're trying to bring somebody in underneath me who's better, and they should be doing that. It's my job to make sure that I'm not replaceable, that I keep a spot.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: And I think that's where it speaks to just expectations for self and having that understanding of, hey, this is what I have higher and much more. I expect more out of myself than anybody else will.

Ryan: Yeah, Jeff. Yeah, I've got a good. Got a good example. And I know we give a lot of sports examples, but this one was from, you know, I started in the. In the personal finance financial advising industry, and I moved to a city where I knew zero people. And I started at a firm, and there were, you know, a handful, probably three or four of the, you know, 40 or 50 people that were there that were just elite in their production and their staff and all that sort of stuff. Right. And there was one of them that was difficult to get along with, didn't have many friends inside the firm, and I just kind of started attaching myself to him. Right. I would say, hey, I would ask questions, and then I would take the information that he gave me and implement it right to the point where there was a day I didn't have any appointments, and I knew he had a full calendar because I met his assistant, and she had said, hey, he's got, like, eight appointments today. They're all over the place. And I asked him, hey, can I drive you to your appointments today? And it was because I needed to see how he operated throughout the day to get to that level. And so I chauffeured him. Right. And from there, we started to build a friendship, and I started implementing, and the stuff started working. But as it started working, I noticed that the other people in the firm were trying to come and get a piece of my time. And if I gave everybody a piece of my time, then I couldn't get the job done that I needed to get done. And so it was that cutting, being able to cut people out or at least put them in a time slot on when I can deal with them and setting boundaries around that, but at the same time, hanging out with people that I had no business hanging out with. I mean, these guys were in the seven figures of earners and I had like $500 in my bank account and I was wondering how I was going to pay rent because it was, you know, $900 the next month. Right. And so that's where I was. Right. But so it was, it was almost forcing myself into those circles to where then I started to elevate and become better and better, but at the same time, not ignoring everyone else, but putting proper boundaries on when and how I was going to deal with them so that I could get that job done.

Cheney: Well, it speaks exactly to what we're talking about. And the study that we found is, you know, close knit circle.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: There's only, there's not many. It doesn't take long to call roll before that circle.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: But it's also, it's, it's, it speaks to modeling. Like you needed to see it.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: And that's, that's so many times. If you can show me how to do it, I mean, can I figure it out? Sure. But if we can, we can expedite this. If I see it and now, now I can make it unique to me now. And what, and what these folks need to know that are, that are listening to the podcast is your mindset, too. What can you share what the animal is that you got on your desk? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Ryan: Yeah, I've got rhinoceros. Yeah, it's a rhinoceros.

Cheney: Now, why do you, why the rhinoceros? What is, what's the, what's the meaning behind that?

Ryan: Yeah. So the book that I read early on in my career was rhinoceros success. Right. And the idea is, hey, if the rhinoceros is thirsty, he's not waiting in line at the watering hole for the giraffe to drink, for the elephant to drink. He just charging straight ahead and he's taking his drink of water and he's not letting the outside stuff affect him. So it was that, you know, straightforward go get what you want mindset.

Cheney: That's right. And it's not that you're a bull in a china shop, but you kind of are.

Speaker C: Right.

Cheney: I'm going to go get it.

Ryan: Yeah.

Cheney: Because in that industry, it's, you eat what you kill.

Speaker C: Right?

Cheney: You know, as. As bad as that that can be. I mean, that's just the nature of it, and it's not even bad if you got the correct mindset for it.

Ryan: Yeah, well, it's. It's like that in athletics, too, right? It's. It's. You eat what you killed. So if you. You know, here's another example of, you know, I mean, when I was playing baseball, it was the home run era, and when I got to college, I was, like, 170 pounds, and that was soaking wetland.

Cheney: Yeah.

Ryan: And one home run in my career. Right? And so I needed to gain weight, but not the typical way college students gain weight. I needed to get in the gym and, you know, not beer weight or anything like that. And so what I did is not football weight. Not football weight. No, I needed to. I needed to add muscle, and that was when there weren't trainers all over the place. Right? There weren't. Each team didn't have a specific sport specific workout and all that, so it was looking at muscle and fitness magazines, figuring out, all right, these guys are jacked, how do I get that way? And different exercises and all that. But when we would come back from games and road trips, it was me going to the gym, even though I was tired, even though, you know, injured and all those sorts of things. Everybody else was going out, hanging out, having fun, you know, party, whatever. And it's not that I didn't enjoy that stuff. I absolutely would have preferred doing that, but I knew I needed to isolate myself to be able to. To achieve the goals that I wanted to achieve. And it didn't drive a wedge in between me and my teammates. Right. I went back to, hey, in order for me to live up to the promises I make to my teammates, I need to get better and stronger, and this is the way that I can do it. And if that means sacrifice, you know, hanging out, then. Then that's what that means. But that group, it's not like they weren't bad guys, right? Oh, great. Guys still talk to them to this day. But I had to separate myself from those people that could have drugged me back from what my goals were.

Cheney: Sure. Well, I think it speaks to priorities, too. Like this. That was important, right? That's high on the list. And within priorities, there's going to be sacrifice. And you got to be willing to make the sacrifice, too, to get to where you want to go.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. All right, thank you for joining us. Another episode of Shift happens. Talking about the circles you keep, the company you keep, and how it can help propel you to the next level, or it can prevent you from getting to the next level until next time.