You can view part I here if you have not already read it.
I go over:
- Why you shoudn’t set resolutions (and what to do instead)
- How to figure out what you REALLY want
- How to review your year and use the lessons you’ve learned to make 2022 even better
With that out of the way, here are the 6 keys to your best year ever.
The 6 Keys to Your Best Year Ever
In the self-help world, you’ll often hear gurus and self-proclaimed experts espousing the “Secrets” to wild success and fulfillment and, frankly, most of it is a load of b.s.
It might be painful, but I’m going to go ahead and burst your bubble right now.
You cannot affirm your way to wealth, you can’t visualize your way into a happy relationship, and you cannot meditate your way to an abundant business.
Yes, all of these tactics have their merit and when used appropriately, they can be powerful weapons in your peak performance arsenal.
However… In and of themselves, they are completely and utterly useless unless you have the foundations of success and personal growth in place.
I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but after interviewing 400+ experts on the Knowledge for Men podcast, I’ve found that there are 6 major keys to lasting success shared by all high achievers.
If you do nothing else in 2022 except following these 6 steps, I promise that you will achieve results you barely dreamed possible.
Key #1: Develop Massive Self Knowledge and Awareness
The single most important factor for achieving success in any area of your life, whether it’s in your health, your finances, your career, or your relationships, is self-knowledge.
Period.
If you truly know yourself and understand how you are wired you will always be able to achieve more than you would if you didn’t fully know who you are and how you operate.
Let me share a brief story to illustrate this point. (I can’t remember where I originally heard it so if you know the names of the individuals in the story, drop me a line in the comments below.)
There was a consultant who had been hired on to work with a C-level Executive at a Fortune 500 company (I believe it was GM).
He showed up to the office around noon, assuming that his client would be available for a lunch meeting.
So you can imagine his surprise when the secretary responded by saying, “Oh, he’s not here yet. He doesn’t come into the office until 3 in the afternoon.”
What?
A C-level executive at a Fortune 500 company was sleeping the day away?
The secretary then continued and explained the entire situation in one sentence, “He works from about 3 p.m. until 4 a.m. every day.”
While this example might sound extreme, it’s a great illustration of how self-knowledge can help you optimize your lifestyle and career to achieve optimal results.
Although the general principles of success and greatness are set in stone, (e.g. You must have discipline, you must cultivate the right habits, have crystal clear clarity on your vision) how you apply those principles is an entirely different story.
For example, consider the common success habits of journaling and meditation.
For 90% of the population, sitting down with a pen and a notepad and then meditating for 10 minutes with the Headspace app is a strategy that works great.
But for the remaining 10%?
This strategy is about as much fun as banging your head against a wrought iron fence.
I know many great entrepreneurs and thought leaders who start their mornings by creating a 10-minute voice memo where they will literally talk out loud and work through their biggest problems vocally instead of journaling.
Joe Rogan, the infamous UFC presenter, podcast host, and stand-up comedian talks about how he prefers to use a sensory deprivation tank instead of traditional meditation in order to relax his mind and clear out the clutter.
I know plenty of successful entrepreneurs who wake up at 5 a.m. every single morning, and I know plenty more who prefer to sleep until 9 o’clock.
The bottom line is that there is no tactic or strategy that will universally work for every single person every time.
Personal growth and achievement are exactly that… PERSONAL. Meaning you do what works for you.
So instead of trying to tailor your lifestyle to fit the habits and rituals of other people, take the time necessary to figure out how you are really wired and how you can manipulate this wiring to achieve your desired outcomes.
Now, many of you are probably thinking, “Andrew, this sounds great… But how in the world do I actually know myself better? How do I figure out how I am wired?”
I’m glad you asked.
While there is an abundance of self-knowledge resources available on the marketplace, I’ve found that there is only a handful that truly stands out and helps you get to the core of who you are and how you operate.
I’ve included links to all of the personality quizzes and books so that you can try them out for yourself and let me know what you think in the comments below (feel free to share any self awareness techniques that have worked well for you too!).
1. Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker
The first and possibly most important self-knowledge resources that I’ve ever found is a short but powerful book by management expert Peter F. Drucker.
It costs about $7 on the Kindle store, or you can get it for free by signing up for a free trial with audible.com here.
This classic business book will take you only an hour or two to read, but once you put it down you will have a clearer understanding of your strengths, values, and possible contributions to the modern marketplace
You will uncover how you learn, how to motivate yourself, and how you can optimize your performance inside of an organization.
It’s one of the best resources I’ve ever read and I’ve continued to refer to it for years.
2. The Enneagram Test
In his interview with Tom Bilyeu on Impact Theory, my friend Tai Lopez (yes, Mr. “Here in my garage” himself) shared a powerful free personality test that has been used by top executives and entrepreneurs for years.
It’s called the Enneagram and, unlike the Meyers Briggs and other tests, the Enneagram has been scientifically validated to have a strong correlation with business success.
The Enneagram tests you on 26 facets of your personality and researchers have found that there is one quality consisting of four sub-facets that most strongly correlate with financial and business success.
Before you read any further, click here to take the free Enneagram test and get your results ready.
Ok, now that you’ve taken the test, I want to digress on the topic of self-knowledge for a moment to discuss the most important qualities that the research suggests will lead to success.
The core quality is known as Conscientiousness and it consists of four sub-qualities.
- Organization: Your ability to successfully manage your external environments and daily tasks.
- Perfectionism: Your ability to do things properly and without error.
- Diligence: A.k.a. Good old-fashioned hard work and hustle.
- Prudence: The ability to think through decisions carefully and choose the most expedient path towards your results.
Before we get back to the topic of self-knowledge, I want to point out something very important about the above qualities…
They are all learnable skills.
If you scored high on diligence and prudence, but very low on organization and perfectionism, this does not mean that you are simply a disorganized and sloppy person.
Conversely, if you scored very low on diligence but very high in all other areas, this doesn’t mean that you are lazy, it simply means that you haven’t taken the time to cultivate the character trait of diligence by finding projects and passions that excite and motivate you.
Now that you know what qualities are most strongly correlated with success and where you stand with regards to each, you should be asking yourself the question “How can I cultivate these characteristics and traits in my life, TODAY?”.
Although I strongly recommend that you take a few hours of your day to brainstorm changes that you can make to score higher on each of these qualities, here are a few ideas to get you started.
- To improve your organization abilities, Minimize your possessions and clear out the physical clutter. Then create a daily habit/ritual that helps you effectively plan and organize your days, weeks, and months. Personally, I use a large whiteboard at my office and a small moleskin journal to keep track of all upcoming tasks and activities.
- To improve your perfectionism, I recommend that you read the book The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook to develop a greater understanding of the systems and procedures you must have in place in order to achieve higher levels of perfection
- To improve your diligence, I recommend that you listen to Gary Vaynerchuk’s podcasts and YouTube videos (starting with this article) to get inside the mindset of a hustler and then find a way to slowly increase your workload over the coming year. Take on a new project at work, launch a side hustle, do whatever you need to do to be more diligent and embrace the grind.
- To improve your prudence, I recommend that you begin reading the biographies of great men and women and find high-quality mentors who can help you learn and avoid mistakes. (I’ll talk about this in detail later in the guide)
3. Power of When
One of the most often overlooked factors of self-knowledge is not simply how you do something, but when you do something.
Think about it for a moment…
Have you ever noticed how there are certain times of the day where you feel awake, alive, and bursting with energy but there are other times of the day where no matter how motivated you might be, you simply cannot get anything done?
This a result of something known as your circadian rhythm and biological clock, also known as your chronotype.
In his groundbreaking new book “The Power of When” Dr. Michael Breus draws on 20+ years of sleep medicine and research to share a simple framework for determining when you should do everything from making sales to having sex to drinking coffee to sleeping and exercising.
When I first heard of Dr. Breus and his four chronotypes I was skeptical (to say the least) and immediately assumed it was all some new b.s. fad designed to sell seminar tickets.
However, when I heard the endorsements from several of my favorite fitness experts including Dave Asprey and Ben Greenfield, I knew that I had to give it a chance.
So, almost begrudgingly I purchased a copy of the book, took his chronotype test and implemented the information over the following week.
I was shocked.
Not only did I feel better overall, but my performance in the office and in the gym had skyrocketed by making only a few simple changes.
This book is not a cure-all. Changing when you wake up and drink coffee isn’t going to turn you into a Superman or double your confidence and motivation overnight.
however, if you are willing to make a few subtle shifts in the schedule of your days, I promise that you will see dramatic results in your mood, focus, sleep, and physical performance.
If you are interested in learning more about Dr. Breus, you can click here to take his bio time quiz
4. The Four Tendencies
As I’ve already alluded to, I’m not a fan of quizzes and personality tests that group people into little boxes and say “This is who you are and this is how you will always be.”
That’s one of the reasons I’ve always steered away from using the Meyer’s Briggs tests with my 1-on-1 clients and one of the reasons that I loved the Enneagram (it doesn’t tell you what your personality is, simply how highly you score on specific controllable traits at this point in time).
So I was surprised when, after reading her book, Better than Before, I found that Gretchen Rubin’s ‘Four Tendencies’ quiz was startlingly accurate and valuable.
The quiz doesn’t make any claims about who you are or what you should do with your life, instead, it answers one simple question.
“How do I respond to internal and external expectations?”.
External expectations being defined as the expectations placed on you by society, family, and your peers. (for example turning in a project on time, going to college, getting married young etc.)
Internal expectations being defined as the expectations you place on yourself (e.g. going to the gym, waking up at a certain hour, reading nonfiction instead of watching TV).
As the name of the quiz implies there are only four major tendencies that you can fall into.
It should be noted that, while everyone can display characteristics of each tendency, every member of our society has a dominant tendency that they follow.
- The Upholder: Responds easily to both external and internal expectations
- The Questioner: Responds to internal and external expectations… if they make sense
- The Obliger: Responds readily to external expectations but struggles to meet inner expectations
- The Rebel: Struggles to respond to ANY expectations
To take the quiz and uncover your dominant tendency, click here.
So what do you do once you actually know your tendency? While I recommend that everyone grab a copy of Gretchen’s books for a more detailed discussion, you can make several changes right now based on the results of your quiz alone.
For example, if you are an Obliger (as much of the population is), then you likely struggle to meet your internal expectations.
You probably struggle to stick to workout programs, to launch companies, to wake up before your alarm, and put down the remote to pick up a book.
Now that you know how you respond to expectations, you can add external accountability to your internal goals.
If you’ve struggled to be consistent at the gym, find an athletic friend and tell them that you will work out with them every morning at a certain time.
If you’ve struggled to get your business started, plug yourself into a network of entrepreneurs and give them a definitive date that you will have a minimum viable product ready.
Another example is one of my friends who had been addicted to cigarettes for nearly two years.
The guy was like clockwork and every 50 minutes, after his block of work was completed, he would step outside to light up.
After reading this book, he realized that he is a Questioner and needs to have compelling reasons to meet an expectation.
He decided to start researching his nicotine habit a little further and quickly realized that some of the *ahem* “Performance Issues” he was having directly resulted from his pack a day addiction.
He quit cold turkey the next day and has never gone back.
Once you know how you respond to expectations, you can leverage this knowledge to instantly increase your discipline and focus on specific tasks.
Key #2: The Rule of 1% and the Philosophy of Kaizen
The second key to wild success is the simplest.
It’s also the most difficult to master.
In his book, The Compound Effect, Success magazine founder, Darren Hardy lays out a simple but incredibly unsexy framework for achieving massive success.
The basic principle of the Compound Effect is this: If you are willing to commit to small daily improvements and actions for the rest of your life, the effects will compound and you will live a life that you never imagined possible.
Let me share a simple illustration to make this point.
The two most common goals that I hear among most men today are this:
- Lose weight, gain muscle, and look great naked.
- Make more money
Simple right?
If you are anything like most guys, you would likely approach the first goal with a fiery enthusiasm.
You’d probably sign up for a new gym membership, buy a bunch of new workout swag, spend $100 on an expensive (and ridiculously inaccurate) workout program that has you in the gym for 90 minutes six days a week, and you’d start following a diet that has you eating more than a Viking king.
And, if you are anything like most guys, you will likely succeed… For a while. You’ll go to the gym for the first week, follow your diet to the “T”, and feel great doing it.
But then, you miss one workout, you cheat on your diet while you are out with your girlfriend, and you end up drinking more than you should over the weekend.
After a few more half-hearted attempts at the program, you give up and resign yourself to a permanent dad bod. At least until the next New Year rolls around.
However, if you understand the power of the Compound Effect, you will take a very different approach.
Instead of making massive shifts, you decide that you are going to start with small, manageable chunks.
You commit to going to the gym only twice a week for the next month, knowing that your work commitments will likely prevent you from following a more rigorous program.
You decide that, instead of completely changing your diet, you are simply going to start eating a nutritious breakfast each morning and drinking one protein shake when you get home from work.
Two months go by and you aren’t noticing any real results, but you know that behind the scenes, your life is moving in a much more favorable direction.
You are beginning to enjoy working out so, you increase your program to three times a week and start meal prepping your lunches.
After a few more months, you are starting to notice some gains so now, you increase your program to four times a week and begin counting your macros.
Before you know it, exercise is simply a part of who you are, eating healthy isn’t optional, and looking in the mirror puts a smile on your face every time.
It might have taken 18 months, but in the end, you got the result that you desire.
This is the power of the compound effect. The most effective but unsexy principle in the history of personal growth.
As you move into 2022, I want you to commit right now that you will take advantage of this principle.
Right now, I want you to write down one tiny action that you can commit to every single day in each major area of life.
What is one action that you can take in your health, your career, your finances, and your relationships that will propel you towards a greater future?
Write it down and share what you are committed to doing in the comments below!
Key #3: Track Your Results with Ruthless Honesty
“What gets measured gets managed”. ~Peter F. Drucker
Now that you have developed a greater level of self-knowledge and you have committed to taking small daily actions that will compound over time to create extraordinary results, we come to what I believe is the most important key to success in any endeavor.
Tracking your actions and results with ruthless honesty.
If you are serious about producing results in anything, your physical body, your relationships, your spiritual life, or your bank account, then you must commit to tracking every important action with ruthless honesty.
How often have you heard a friend or relative exclaim, “No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to lose weight!”, while knowing darn well that they’ve been demolishing donuts and pastries the entire holiday?
Or how often do you see a friend who is always struggling with money purchase a $120 pair of sneakers only to moan a few days later “I just can’t get ahead of my bills!”
What’s interesting about these situations is that most people genuinely don’t understand why they are struggling to lose weight or save money.
Because they do not track their spending and eating habits, they have no way of knowing just how many calories they consume over the course of a day or how much money they spend on pointless things.
So what’s the solution?
It’s simple. Start tracking everything.
Go buy a small moleskin notebook and stick it in your back pocket. Pick one habit (and only one to start with) that you will track for two weeks.
Whether it’s smoking, TV, food, or exercise, I want you to track your actions with ruthless honesty.
After two weeks, add in another habit, and another habit, and another habit until you are meticulously tracking every important action in your life.
If you can do this, your life will change forever.
You will be amazed at how quickly those tiny snacks add up to a day’s worth of calories or how much money you are actually spending on overpriced Starbucks lattes.
But when you remove the ambiguity and look at the facts and the data, you can no longer hide from yourself and fall back on the same old excuses.
When you look at the facts you are forced to either face the music or make a change.
Key #4: Mastering Productivity and Real Achievement
The fourth key to lasting success is also one of the most difficult to master: The art and science of productivity and real achievement.
Think about the last time that you asked someone how they were doing. Odds are good that you received one of the following responses.
“I’m fine”
And the oh-so-common
“I’m good. Just super busy”
Everyone is busy.
It seems like everyone has a million and one things on their plate and no time to tackle them all.
But the truth of the matter is this. Most people aren’t busy, they are distracted.
All day long they are bombarded by requests and advertisements and news media that takes up their mental bandwidth and makes it all but impossible to achieve anything of significance.
If you are serious about making 2022 your best year ever, then you must learn how to master productivity and the art of focusing on important things.
Luckily for you, it’s simpler than you might think.
1. Implement The 5 x 50 formula
The first tactic that I’m going to share with you comes from my mentor Brendon Burchard and has been taught to (literally) millions of people through his live training, online courses, and free video content.
It’s a simple strategy called the 5 x 50 Formula. It’s changed my life and, if you are willing to apply it, it will changes yours too.
Here’s how it all breaks down.
- Sleep 50 More Minutes Each Night: Seriously, it’s that simple. Sleep in or go to bed earlier depending on your schedule. Your body and brain will thank you for it.
- Start Your Morning Off with a 50 Minute Power Session: Move your body, read something inspiring, listen to motivational music. Do whatever you want to prepare for the day but don’t check email
- Work in 50 Minute Blocks: Set a timer every hour and work with an insane focus for 50 minutes. Once the timer is up, get up, stretch, get some water, move around and get ready for the next block.
- Take a 50 Minute Break in the Middle of the Day: You’re not a robot and (unless you’re Gary Vaynerchuk) you can’t work like one either. Give yourself 50 minutes in the middle of the day to eat, relax, and recharge your batters.
- 50 Minutes of Renewal: Each and every day, you must allocate a total of 50 minutes to activities that renew and recharge you. Meditating, taking a long bath, walking in nature, and riding your bike on the beach are all appropriate renewal activities.
That’s it.
If you take nothing else from this article other than to follow the above five steps every day for the next 364 days, I promise that you will see unbelievable results in your productivity and success.
2. Focus on Being Effective vs. Being Efficient
The second key to productivity in 2022 is very simple.
I want you to say the following statement aloud with me… “Just because you can do something well doesn’t mean that it’s work doing!”
So many people waste so much of their time on activities that don’t matter and don’t add real value to your life.
If you want to truly achieve your dream life using 2022 as the catalyst to get there, then you must commit to eradicating any task that doesn’t ultimately serve you. No matter how good at it you might be.
I know that you are great at creating beautifully formatted reports that are easy to read for all of your colleagues. But will that really help you launch your dream business and achieve the financial freedom you’ve always wanted?
I know that you love having a fully cleared inbox and want to meticulously comb through each email to see if there’s any value in it. But will this really propel you to new heights in your career?
No!
Stop focusing on unimportant minutiae and start focusing on the big picture.
If Steve Jobs could run Pixar and Apple at the same time, don’t you think that you and I can become more efficient with how we use our time?
Before you move on to the next section, I want you to write down a “Stop Doing List” of 10 things that you can stop doing (or significantly reduce the time you spend on them) today.
3. Learn to Say “No”
The most powerful word in the entire English language is the word “No”.
It has started wars, ended lives, saved lives, sent countries into political unrest, and changed the landscape of our lives forever.
And it has the power to change the productivity and joy that you experience on a daily basis.
Most men that I know are overextended for one simple reason, they say “Yes” more than they should.
Think about your own life. In 2021 did you:
- Say yes to a party or event you didn’t want to attend?
- Say yes to an extra obligation at work that didn’t increase your income and stole your free time?
- Say yes to the demands of a friend or spouse when you knew you shouldn’t have (and now you are facing the consequences)
- Say yes to anything that was not truly aligned with your core values and deepest purpose?
If so, then congratulations. You’re human.
But you also have an opportunity to improve the quality of your life in 2022 simply by saying “No” to more things. (James Altucher actually introduced me to the power of “No” and has a great article on this topic that you can check out by clicking here)
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go help your grandmother move across town even though you have tickets for the new Star Wars.
What this means is that you now have a responsibility to say “No” to the things that add no value to your life and don’t move the needle forward for you.
Quit letting people who do so little for you control so much of your life.
Go the extra mile and do the unpleasant thing when it makes sense and is for a greater cause.
But when your lazy manager wants you to work overtime so that he can go out for a Holiday bender, it’s ok to stand up for yourself and say “No”.
Say “No” to the good and the bad so that you can say “Yes!” to the great.
4. Define Your Perfect Day
Craig Ballantyne, a former podcast guest and the owner of earlytorise.com, created a simple but effective system called The Perfect Day Formula™ (and the best selling book by the same name).
In this formula, Craig helps his readers achieve their dream lives by starting with their dream days.
At the most basic level, achieving success in any endeavor is largely determined by how you spend your days.
If you can win the day, you win the week, you win the month you win the year, and if you win your years then you have won at life.
One of the most powerful exercises that you can complete RIGHT NOW is to define your perfect day for yourself.
I don’t mean your perfect day five years in the future where you wake up in a hammock on the beach with a beautiful island girl next to you and an 8-figure bank balance.
I mean a perfect day that you can start living tomorrow.
I mean a day that will “Perfectly” move you towards the ultimate life vision that you set earlier in this process.
To get started creating your own perfect day What time do you need to wake up? What sort of morning ritual should you follow? What time do you get in the office? What activities fill your day, energize you, and push you towards your ultimate vision?
Take some time before moving on to really think about your perfect day.
If you’re interested in a step by step system that will help you create your own perfect day, I recommend that you grab a copy of Craig’s book on Amazon
Now that you have learned a few simple steps to mastering your productivity, it’s time to discuss one of the single most important keys to success.
Your habits and systems.
Key #5: Assess Your Habits and Systems and Continually Optimize Them
Just as an experiment, I don’t want you to set any goals (at least for the first 90 days).
Why?
Because, in my experience, most goal-setting processes today are actually counterproductive.
When most people set goals, they set goals where the results are outside of their control, where the timeline is unrealistic (if not impossible), and where missing the goal by even a small amount makes you immediately unhappy and frustrated.
Goal setting focuses on the outcomes (which you never have direct control of) instead of the processes (which is one of the only things you have complete control of).
Instead of setting goals, I want you to think about the vision that you set and then ask yourself two questions.
- Who do I need to become and what do I need to do in order to make this vision a reality? (Habits)
- What resources will I need in place in order to achieve this vision? (Systems)
Here’s an example of what I mean.
Imagine that part of your vision is to increase your income to the point where you are no longer worried about your finances.
You know that to eliminate your concerns about money, you need to make at least an extra $100,000 a year.
Instead of saying to yourself “I want to make an extra $100,000 by December 31st by dropshipping products online!” I want you to ask yourself a very simple question.
“What habits and systems do people making $100,000 a year or more have in place that I do not?”
As soon as you ask this question, you think about your friend Steve who makes about $200,000 a year flipping real estate.
You give him a call and ask him what he does on a daily basis that helps him achieve such great results.
He tells you that he wakes up at 5 a.m. spends about 15 minutes journaling, 45 minutes reading, and then heads to the gym and follows Mike Matthew’s Bigger Leaner Stronger workout (a training program I strongly recommend).
After his morning routine, he goes into his home office and sets a timer for 50 minutes. He then picks up the phone and calls leads for 50 minutes straight while pacing around the room.
When the timer goes off, he takes a break, walks outside, and makes some coffee.
He then returns to his office and starts the process all over again until 2 p.m. when he leaves to visit rehab sites.
Now… From this one simple phone conversation, you know exactly which habits and systems you need in order to achieve the original goal.
From here, you can begin implementing these habits into your life while continually refining and optimizing the approach to fit your goals and personality.
When you devote 100% of your energy to optimizing your habits and systems, the goals take care of themselves.
But when you get focused on and caught up in an end result that you could never directly control, you set yourself up for massive failure.
Before moving on to the next question, I want you to write down the answer to these three questions.
- What habits do I need to start cultivating to achieve my ultimate vision?
- What habits do I already have in place that I need to optimize in order to achieve my ultimate vision?
- What habits are holding me back from my ultimate vision and how can I change them?
If you are curious about “Hacking” your way to better habits, I recommend that you check out my recent interview with Charles Duhigg, author of Smarter. Faster. Better.
Key #6: Find Models and Mentors to Shorten Your Learning Curve
The final key to achieving your best year ever and increasing the speed with which you can achieve your wildest dreams is to find models and mentors that you can emulate and turn to for advice.
The right coach or mentor can help you avoid huge mistakes in your business, relationships, and finances. They can teach you invaluable lessons in seconds that took them years to learn and master.
Mentors and coaches take your learning curve and they cut it in half.
No person or mentor is perfect, and no one will give you the right advice all the time.
However, if you want to accelerate your success, then you need an objective third party who can look at your life and help you figure out what’s working, what isn’t, and how you can fix it.
You’re not Superman and, unless you have completely eliminated your ego, your lack of success typically isn’t due to mere laziness but rather small, seemingly harmless actions, thoughts, and beliefs that are sabotaging your success.
The right coach can help you find your blindspots, eliminate your weaknesses, and build on your strengths.
But mentors come in all shapes and sizes and you will need different types of mentors for different periods in your life.
Most mentors will come in one of three forms, virtual, personal, or paid.
Virtual Mentors
The first type of mentor is the most accessible but the least personal.
A virtual mentor.
For example, Mr. Tony Robbins is my virtual mentor.
Although I’ve spoken with Tony on a few occasions, I don’t really know him personally and as such have consumed most of his content through books, online courses, and free content that he and his team publish to the web.
Virtual mentors serve an important role in lowering the barrier to entry in any given field.
Only a handful of people can afford to work with Tony Robbins (or any other big name) 1-on-1.
However, anyone with $2 to their name can afford a library card that allows them to check out a copy of Awaken the Giant Within.
Virtual mentors are what made it possible for people like me to have the resources and information required to succeed.
And the best part?
You don’t even have to go looking for virtual mentors because I have already compiled a list of more than 400 of the best entrepreneurs, thinkers, and influencers right here on Knowledge for Men, and you have access to all of them without paying a single dime!
After you finish reading through this article, (hang in there, we are almost done) you can start clicking on interesting interviews until you find a particular person that really resonates with you.
Once you’ve found your virtual mentor, consume and apply everything that they have to tell you to do and then watch your results accelerate.
Personal Mentors
Although virtual mentors are a fantastic resource, they likely won’t be sufficient to propel you to true greatness.
If you want to excel at your craft and achieve success at the highest levels you must find in-person mentors who can help you overcome your specific obstacles.
Let me just say this right out of the gate…
Finding a mentor who has the results that you want and is willing to take time out of their day to teach you is not an easy task.
Luckily, the simple fact that finding a high-quality mentor is such a difficult tasks makes it that much easier for you to actually achieve it.
Despite what most people think, highly successful people often struggle to find hungry and action-oriented protege.
Every successful person I’ve ever met wants to help people like you and me.
But they have so many different people vying for their attention, asking for handouts, and looking for advice that it’s all but impossible to get their attention. Unless…
You set yourself apart from the herd.
How do you actually do this? By taking massive action and proving that you won’t waste your time.
For example, let’s say that you want to dive into real estate investing and want to get advice from Grant Cardone, the real estate mogul, near billionaire, and multiple NYT Best-selling author.
Good luck, right?
Well, not entirely.
Let’s say that instead of going straight for the throat and asking for his advice directly, you decide to consume every free video and online course that he’s published (not a small task).
After nearly a year of following his every move and taking action on every word, you manage to pay off all of your debt, set aside enough money to do your first deal, and successfully generate 6-figures of income by following his advice.
At this point, you have now purchased and listened to everything he has to offer, taken action, and seen massive results.
But you still have a problem that you can’t seem to solve.
Now, you can pull out your laptop and send an email.
Although Grant probably receives thousands of emails every single day, how often do you think he gets an email with the subject line, “You helped me go from broke to $103,567 in less than 6 months.”
Probably not too often.
Instead of seeing an email that says “I want a handout” he sees an email that says “I’m a hustler and you should pay attention to me”.
Over the course of this correspondence, your only two goals are to express appreciation for the results that you’ve achieved and to ask a simple question that could quickly be answered.
Once you receive a response (and it may take several attempts), you are going to take that information and act on it immediately.
Then, you are going to send another email, thanking him for his advice, sharing the action you took and the results that you achieved, and then asking a follow-up question.
You are going to repeat this process until, eventually, you are given the keys to the kingdom and 10-digit number with the instructions “Call me if you need anything.”
This process may take a few months or even a few years (which is why so few people actually do it), but if you are willing to execute on this simple strategy, you will be able to be mentored by almost anyone that you want.
Hiring a Coach
The final type of mentor that every person should have in their life is a paid coach.
I know that many of you probably have a negative concept in your head of “Life Coaching” or peak performance consultants.
I get it… Most “Professional” coaches are anything but. They think that a 2-hour certification and a few chapters of Jack Canfield’s Success Principles are all that is necessary in order to tell people how to live their lives and get paid for doing so.
And this is a tragedy.
Because a good coach, the right coach doesn’t pretend to have all the answers and they aren’t some sort of genie in a bottle who can help you fix every problem that you have.
A professional life coach is simply someone who has a strong understanding of human psychology, peak performance science, and the process of success.
They aren’t better or worse than you, they are simply people who can step into your life, identify your greatest sticking points and opportunities, ask the right questions, and hold you accountable in a way that no friend, relative, or local mentor can.
The right coach can help give the roadmap you need to achieve your vision and more importantly, they can hold your feet to the fire and make sure that you actually do the things that you said you were going to do.
Since the industry is rife with bad coaches who have no experience and no ability to truly help you achieve your goals, you want to make sure that your coach ticks all of the following boxes before you hire him/her.
- They have an accredited certification from a reputable company.
- They have worked with at least 100 other clients.
- They have logged more than 1,000 hours of coaching calls over the course of their career.
In fact, I’m so passionate about helping men overcome their biggest obstacles and transforming the coaching industry for the better that I’ve brought together and trained some of the top men’s coaches in the world to help serve you and assist you in reaching your goals even faster.
If what I’ve shared in this article has resonated with you and you are ready to commit to your success and take the first step towards unleashing your greatness, then you can learn more about the men’s coaching services Knowledge For Men offers here.
Final Thoughts
Are you still with me?
If so, then I want to congratulate you.
I know that this article was long and that we covered a lot of information, but I am so passionate about helping you make this your best year ever that I didn’t want to hold anything back!
Now it’s your turn.
It’s your turn to take action on what you’ve learned, to implement the 6 keys to success and start on your path to success.
Knowledge is not power unless it’s applied.
So instead of being like the 99% of people who will read this content and do nothing with it, I want to challenge you to be a doer, to take action, to rise above mediocrity and make this the best damn year of your life.
This is your time and this is your year.
Now go make it happen.
Next Steps
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Do you want my help?
Then click here to join my elite community of 800+ high-performing men and get access to powerful coaching to close the gap from where you are now to where you want to be, The Secrets of the Top 1% of Men.
Not only will you get tapped into your own “band of brothers”, but you’ll also have access to the best damn content and training available for men as well as weekly group calls with my team of transformative coaches. No whiny boys, complainers or dabblers, for serious men only.
If you’re ready to push the boundaries of what’s possible in your life and become the man you’ve always wanted to be. This is the fastest way to do it.
