Wealth achievers care and protect their circles of influence and exfluence. Robert Cialdini in his phenomenal book "Influence: The Science of Persuasion," goes to the number of ways that people are influenced and people are put persuaded. And one of his main chapters was about social proof. And it was the whole concept of many of us do what we see other people doing. Now, this initially might seem like it's pretty basic, but here's what he did.
He went and did studies whereby, he would have six people in a room, and five of them were moles. Only one of them was the actual person of part of the study and he would ask a simple question, like for example, he would put two lines in there which one is the longer line? Pretty straightforward question, right? When you answer that, when you're asked that question on your own, you can see it pretty clearly, you look at two lines which one's a longer one, pretty straightforward.
But what he found was that when he had five of the moles in there and those five people deliberately gave the wrong answer publicly because that's what they were there for the real person who wasn't a mole who was trying to answer the question started to doubt themselves. It was so simple, two lines which one is the longer one? And they started to go, well, maybe...and what he found, what this study proved was that something so simple, so black and white as which line is the longer line. The person struggled and a certain percentage of them actually changed their answer to fit in with the group, number one, but secondly, as important, every single person doubted themselves.
Now, what does this have to do with wealth achievement? Everything. Here is why I say that. If something is so straightforward as five people saying the wrong answer to a simple question about which line is longer, could affect you, what happens when it comes to something that isn't so black and white when it comes to creating wealth. For example, you're looking to go invest in property. But you speak to the five people around you and the people closest to you they all tell you it's crazy, they'll tell you don't have enough money for it. They'll tell you that it's risky and that there is lots of debt more blah-blah-blah.
And here you're now convinced, or initially convinced of investing in property is the right thing for you, you start to either, a, doubt yourself but more importantly, you probably won't do anything because you think your answer is wrong. There is a well-held belief out there that if you are the sum of the wealth and pretty much everything of your five closest friends. So, if you've got five close friends that are broke chances are you'll be the sixth. If you've got five close friends that are overweight chances are you'll be the sixth. If you've got five close friends who choose to party hard and go out and drink excessively and take part in and have a say, you know, chances are you'll do the same.
But what really astounded me as I went through the last 12 years of looking to study people who created wealth and helped people build a property portfolio and create wealth for themselves was number one, they either were at influence which means they were either at effect of their groups. In other words, their peer group, whether it was their family or their friends or whoever had a greater influence over them than what they wanted to do.
And when that happened, those people no matter what all the facts and figures were they would inevitably decline to move forward. Because even though they thought it was right for them and they were influenced by their group they thought that the answer to the two lines which one is the longer they started to doubt themselves and they went with the group even though the group invariably was wrong.
This is actually built into a social DNA. You can't get away from it. So the only way that I found people doing it because if you find any other books about wealth and say, "Look, change your friendship group," and it's like that's not so easy especially if you're a little bit older, for example. It's always possible but it's not easy. So what I found is that the most successful investors who I was able to help, they protected themselves from their circle of influence. But also their exfluence. And what I mean by that is they didn't tell their closest group what they were doing.
And it really blew me away because I remember some of my best clients who were scared about buying a property then went on to build million dollar plus property portfolios. I'd ask them for a testimonial. They'd always look and say, "Look, Nero, no disrespect. We love what you do. If you ever have someone who's on the fence and not sure whether to trust you are not, give them our phone number. We will talk to them, we'll tell them that we were on the fence but we trusted you and now we've achieved phenomenal results. We will do all that but we cannot give a public testimonial, and here's a reason why. We haven't told our friends what we're doing.
You know, when I first heard that I was so totally blown away. These people had realized, they just worked it out that their social group was not what was right for them in terms of creating wealth. So they actively went and found a different group or a mentor or someone different to give them the right influence in order to achieve their goals. That doesn't mean, mind you, that they stopped hanging around with their friends. I mean, their friends had no idea that these same kind...some of them were bus drivers, admin assistant, nurses, yes, doctors, pretty much every profession around. IT professionals, sales professionals had built multi-million dollar public portfolios. Their friends had no idea. And my clients chose to keep their affairs private. Because they didn't want to be dissuaded, they didn't want to be wrongly influenced by a group that wasn't achieving their goals.
Wealth achievers protect their circle of influence like you wouldn't believe. And if you want to be a wealth achiever, you need to be very very certain about who's influencing you. If you're looking to create business and you're speaking to people who either, A, have never started a business before, or B, have tried and failed and if they're the people you're listening to who say, "Don't go do it. Buying starting a business is risky. Following your dreams is risky. Play it safe. I know so and so who lost so much money. We've lost so much money." They are the wong people.
So listen to what to do what they did maybe and learn from their mistakes yes, absolutely, but don't let them dissuade you. Find other people who have succeeded and learn from them. You may have to start spending less time with your current circle of friends even your current family members as much as you might love them and they might love you. You may have to spend less time with them and more time with people who can help you achieve your goals. Protect your circle of influence.
So we used to wonder why when I first got started in the game of property investing, some won't...and I speak to the some of these people have built massive portfolios and they would have this team of people around them. They would have their legal team, their finance team, their team who are looking at properties and they had these people and it wasn't a family, it was this team of professionals around them. And as I walked this team would follow them everywhere and analyze deals and everything else. I was like, "How does this work?" And I thought it was because they're rich they can have these people around them. Then I realized the difference. It wasn't because they were rich that they had all these people around them, it was because they had the right people around them that they became rich that they achieved their wealth.
So you might be someone who has to go against the grain so be it. And when I say...when I tell people that they've been protective of their exfluence, what I mean by that is they didn't share what they were doing with their circles of influence, because they didn't think it was going to help them. Sure, some of these people, for example, who wouldn't give me their testimonials were my greatest source of referrals. They would refer their son. They'd refer maybe their parent or the particular work colleague or whatever. They were strong sources of referrals because they had the existing relationship where they were happy to help but they weren't happy just to broadcast it. Because they didn't believe that the people around there were going to help them.
And so you need to strongly consider who's influencing you. Is someone putting you off achieving wealth? Is someone convincing you that the line between the two lines the shorter one is actually longer? Be very careful of who is your circle of influence and protect it and look to change it and grow and keep asking yourself, if your vision oriented if you're mission oriented. This is your vision, do you have the right people advising you to help you achieve that vision? If not you need to go and change your circle of influence. You need to look at probably in getting a mentor. The number of successful people I've met who've got some kind of mentor or some kind of coach is phenomenal.
And you need to have yourself a wealth achievement coach whether it's in the particular strategy that they're looking for like maybe you have a business, you need someone to help you grow and scale it, or maybe you're looking to create a property portfolio. You need someone to help you to put in the right strategies and help you find the right properties, or whatever it is for you. You need to make sure you've got a mentor and a coach mentor. Someone who has walked the path before you who is going to turn around and help you. Because then you know that's the part.
Often the part of wealth achievement is like walking blindfolded. There are multiple paths that you could take you're standing there and someone blindfolds you. Now you've got to work out which way to go. And sure you might see some light and you might have a general direction, general idea, that's where I need to go, but you have no idea what the pitfalls are in front of you. The only way to help avoid them without continually falling over and getting bleeding knuckles and everything else is to have the right mentor and to have the right people saying, "Keep going, avoid that that particular obstacle, duck under that branch. Look, stay away from that, move this way" and continue staying with you and guiding along your journey.
That's how you're going to get there to wealth achievement. Your circle of influence is almost definitely the most important thing that will help you get to where you want to get to. And personally, I forgot about this many times before. As someone who I consider myself focused and determined to achieve my goals, I often would just do my own thing. And sure that's where I would stay focused but I would often be walking blindfolded. And then wondering why that, you know, the branch hit me in the head and now I've got a massive headache because I didn't realize what I didn't know.
But by having the right group of people around me by looking to having the right mentor who could guide me my wealth achievement journey, when I've implemented this habit like everybody I'm guilty of following through on these habits on certain times and forgetting about them. That's why I know these habits work because I've tried not doing them and I've got some bad results. So make sure you've got the right circle of influence around you, I couldn't stress it strongly enough. If you want to be a wealth achiever, come back and look at who's influencing your life. What are the five top influences you've got? Are they people who can help you move forward to achieve your vision or are they the people who are going to keep you where you are?