Choosing New Friends and Figuring Out The NGMIs
Level 1 - NGMI
Welcome Avatar! Total change of pace today due to a large number of things we’ve noticed over the years. We’re going to outline a bunch of ways to figure out who in your peer group is actually going to make it and who is not.
It took a long time but one of the things we’ve learned is general character traits. If we spend about 24 hours with someone we can figure out what their main talent is (or isn’t). Some character traits are not fixable. Others are. Here we’ll go ahead and give you some green and red flags for people.
People to Avoid
The Angry Middle Aged Guy
We’re sure all of you see these types in droves. They are less present in ultra high-end areas like a Golf Country Club or Tennis Club. If you go into the Upper Middle class range, think Gold’s Gym/Some Equinox/Some Barry Bootcamp types, you’ll find a slew of them.
The guys are around 35-48 years old (rough range). They are always ultra competitive an intense. They want to win at everything. Everything is about winning and they will play rec sports like baseball, basketball, volleyball, MMA and try to actually battle until the bitter end. They even chirp at officials and potentially get into fights during the game.
Ask yourself, if you really had your life together (tons of money, personal life in order and healthy) would you really risk all of that for a $50 gift card to the local grocery store and a ribbon? Of course not. The only real serious competition past 40s is probably World Masters Athletics (we’re sure there are at most two others).
Other than that… Lets be real. Taking these things seriously for anything beyond staying in shape is a massive 🚩🚩🚩🚩
Before you bother taking advice from these types, always ask yourself why they are mad in the first place.
Never Find a Hater Doing Better Than You
How often do you think about your neighbor during the day? That’s right. Never. Perhaps 5% of you have a close relationship with them just due to luck but 95% of the time if you move/change locations it is zero.
Now apply that to someone who spends their time being a hater. Pretty telling. They have nothing better to do.
Being a hater is basically the same thing as celebrity worship. Same energy just harvested and directed in a different way
If someone is actually doing better than you, they don’t even need to tell you. They already know. It is obvious. No one better than you cares about what you are doing. High-level politicians do not think about the average person no matter what slop they say on TV to be well liked
As many popular rappers have correctly stated, haters are just fans.
Be Indifferent to All People Who Sour on You
When you’re young, you typically want to be well liked. In the tribal days this was part of survival. If you were outcasted you were not going to live. Now? Totally reversed.
By fitting in? You are a human sardine on the Titanic. Complete disaster. In 2025 the entire way to make it is by differentiation, standing out and taking risks. Company men are just sitting ducks.
The people who sour on you as you improve? Delete their number immediately.
Don’t bother explaining yourself, don’t expect to be understood, don’t try to clear things up. Simply move on, they’ve made it clear they are unhappy you improved your life. “You changed”… well yeah “You didn’t work this hard to stay the same”
Be indifferent to their cries, just move on. They’ll try to make you look bad out of context and cherry pick the smallest thing you do that is wrong. Ever notice all those “exception to the rule guys” are always low IQ and unsuccessful? Once you see the trend you can’t unsee it
Life is long. You will have numerous people suddenly dislike you after a single bad day or week or whatever. Simply delete these people. If the fuse was that short, it was going to blow up even worse later on. Delete and move on.
Really wish we could make this as hard coded as breathing. It’s that serious. Once someone turns negative on you it’s never worth it to turn it around. There are 8 billion other people who don’t even know who you are. Better to start in neutral versus in the negative.
People Attempt to Make You Feel Bad for Success
This is another huge one. If people try to make you feel bad about improving your situation they are announcing their real feelings about you.
It is actually easier for people to try and cheer you up if you have a small loss (laid off, an investment goes sour etc.). It is *MUCH* harder to fake being your friend/supporter when you have an enormous win.
People will cheer for you, until you surpass them.
If you surpass them and they are still cheering? Those are the rare 4-5 people you should keep for life. That’s the rough number you’ll have in the end if you make it to to the top of the pyramid.
Do Not Apologize to Them. If you apologize to them? Humiliation ritual. You prefer to be liked by the masses vs. being proud of building what you've built. Apologizing for success makes their negative emotions feel like the truth. Not good. Also. Not true either.
Summary
These four general types are extremely convincing. “You changed man”, “Must be Nice”, “I’m so successful I care about Recreation League Trophies” and “I’m so much better than you I spend all my time looking for a single slip up”
All trash.
If we knew this before it would have saved a ton of time. As you move up, each level you’ll lose a chunk of people. It is the natural order of life. If you have 100 people in your rolodex on day one, in 10 years you’ll have about 5. Only the top 5% survive. In an ideal world about 15 would make it, but you’ll learn that 10 of them will reveal that they were closet haters the whole time.
In middle age range, you’ll get a lot of text messages and weird voice messages from people who regret how you “grew apart”. Don’t fall for it. They’ll just be even more jealous that you continued to improve. Better to close the chapter.
People to Attract
The claim is that it is hard to get a network of successful people. This is simply a lie. It means the person isn’t actually trying. Here is the basic summary of how to get someone to like you without even paying a ton of money for some worthless Tony Robbins Seminar.
Step 1: Research a ton. Find the 1-2 people who can answer your question
Step 2: Send a short email of 3-4 sentences asking politely for a quick answer to your question.
Step 3: Follow up later showing proof that it worked with the results.
Step 4: 99.99% shot they will help you again. The most common response back is always “you actually tried it?!”
As long as you don’t blow up their phone all the time you’ll be good. They will respond to you with any specific question you have.
With that out of the way here are ways to identify the right people who are actually living the life you want. Chances are near zero that it is your current boss since you don’t want to wake up at age 45 asking for permission to see your daughters tennis game or your sons basketball game (or whatever event it is)
Living an Off Schedule
This only applies to people who work remote or have some flex schedule. If you really want to start meeting people who are far ahead in life, show up to every place on off hours. A high-end gym or tennis club/golf club is going to be stacked with small business owners at weird hours. Weird hours are 10:00am on weekdays or 3:00-4:00pm. They don’t show up during peak hours on weekends and they design their schedule for maximum freedom and privacy
If you talk to them, they’ll be extremely hesitant to disclose their background. Usually just say “oh this and that, nothing too interesting”. Or. Some boring blanket item like “I work in sales”. This is a great tell. They are actually making tons and don’t want to disclose anything
Doesn’t Ask What You Do For Work
You’ll find that they don’t talk much. They won’t ask you what you do for work because they simply don’t care. Nothing against you, they just don’t enjoy talking about work since its on their mind 24/7 anyway (for those who want to get rich, part of the downside of being a biz owner is you’re technically on call 24/7. Just in a different way. Constantly thinking about it mentally)
Find Out Information Word of Mouth
This is the only real way to figure out if someone is secretly well off and understating their life. You’ll find out later they are good at something else and simply never talked about it. You’ll find out that they are also building project ABC and they never mentioned it. Anyone legitimate operates like this. They don’t care about telling you anything. They’ll either show results or never mention it
This is the exact opposite of how the masses work. They always talk about how they were “the man” back in the day. How they were great at XYZ activity “before”. So on and so forth. Notice it is always past tense and they got nothing to talk about in the present.
If you learn that person ABC is constantly hiding their skills/talents, that’s an enormous green flag. They are likely understating everything. This includes wealth, income, personal life stuff etc. Everything they are doing is a big lie. But in the opposite direction. They are lying down “this is my boss’s car”
Summary
It’s ultra easy to meet successful people in your area. Or on the Internet. You simply need to follow those basic steps and use the above filters in your day to day life. No one with true freedom is writing some 50 page linked-in bio about being a “leader”.
Even on the soul sucking platform of Linked-in the majority of the biggest people have next to nothing as profiles.
CEO of Procter and Gamble has a whopping 174 connections and a bio written by some admin years ago.
Now the Fun - Predictions
All of this is great for making your life easier. You can easily weed out the haters and losers. You now have a simple filter for the success clues. None of these items are “accurate 100% of the time”. The exception to the rule guy can be happy knowing his mid-wit reply is now encapsulated.
The real upside? Predicting who amongst your current list is going to make it.
Sign #1 - Self Awareness
An extremely rare trait. You can tell when someone is self aware based on their admission of faults. No one is perfect. Everyone has faults. We’re the last people on earth to reach out to for empathy. We’re not great with HR type roles. We’re never going to be people who are good for emotional support.
This is probably obvious to anyone who has read here before. The downside of this is that new people get an off putting vibe (by design). If you’ve already made it would you really care if some internet stranger doesn’t like a paragraph you wrote last month? Exactly.
Anyway. Self-Awareness can show itself in many ways. Some of it is “need to improve this area” other parts are “not good here and don’t think it is worth it to improve”. If the guy/girl is able to figure these two things out, chances of success sky rocket.
We’d say about 90% of people will fail this filter. They think whatever they are doing is the best way. No chance at fixing something if they don’t even recognize there is an issue.
Sign #2 - Get Worse to Get Better
In sports, if you learn that you’re doing something wrong do you actually fix it? This is a huge tell (believe it or not). If the person refuses to fix it, this is a horrible indicator of the future. If they are willing to fix it, this means they have long-term planning/thinking.
Reasoning is simple. If they are willing to get worse (short-term) to get a lot better (long-term). That shows… drum roll… long-term planning and thinking. In an era where the most popular content is 15 second sound bites, willingness to plan ahead is rare.
Ads Are a Great Example: If someone A/B tests ads and realizes ad B is better than Ad A… but still runs Ad A… it’s time to give up on them. Don’t even second guess it. Chances are high that he/she never turns it around. They are announcing that they would rather do something “their way” (and lose) vs. doing it the right way (and potentially win).
This is an important nuance. Notice it says “potentially” win. If you do things correctly there is still a chance of failure (usually takes about 3 years and 2-3 tries to really get it all going). If the person is purposely getting in their own way by ignoring factual information with dollar signs on it… Well they are too emotional and cooked.
The business world is cruel. Everyone is just a line item with Red/Green profit markers next to them. If you’re unwilling to choose the ad that the algorithm is telling you to run, someone else will and eat your lunch. Think of the business world as no different than the animal kingdom. No emotions, just survival.
Sign #3 - Delayed Gratification
If you’re self aware, you’ll realize that all the value is in delayed gratification for younger people. Sure. Your first year trying to make money online will be ugly. Maybe you make a meaningless $10,000 while your W-2 makes you $100,000. Does that mean you failed? Nope. A person with delayed gratification will realize those skills will compound for the next 30 years.
Hilariously, the $10,000 income you made is likely going to outpace all of your wage growth within a couple years. Once you get to $150-200K per year, they usually cap you at 3%. Your biz will be growing at 20-40% per year.
Delayed gratification has an implied ability to prioritize. People claim they don’t have time but really they lack priorities. If you plan on escaping 6-figure hell (where you’re making $150-200K gross income and unable to really save enough for a house in a tier 1 city) then you must start something to win over the long-term.
People who plan out about 5-years ahead are the typical winners in life. 10+ years is just too hard to predict (COVID was a random black swan out of no where). The 2008 financial crisis completely crushed the financial services industry (Dodd-Frank). While it is possible that your specific business gets hit, it is extremely unlikely that the internet is used less and less over time.
Sign #4 - Constantly Learning Weird Stuff
By age 25 people are usually set in their ways. If you find that a few of your friends are doing tons of weird stuff all the time, that’s a sign they will actually make it. Suddenly one is learning piano, another is learning Russian (bad move IYKYK but concept same), another is researching a weird chemical for skin care and another is reading a book about manufacturing in Asia vs. Mexico
As you can see, it doesn’t need to be related to nothing but business and money. Typically what happens. The curious people learn a bunch of random information and find a gap in the market. This is how a *ton* of successful companies are made. They find a trend in one place and bring it to a new market.
The only way to do this? You have to be constantly researching random ideas. They are never on CNBC, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal. They are found by actually living life and trying out tons of new stuff. Eventually you find a knowledge/information gap. Once you do this, you’ve found yet another way to earn money. You know something other people don’t and that’s practically every business in the world. Understanding a niche better than everyone else.
Summary
You can predict which friends will make it rather easily. Bucket them with those four items: 1) high self awareness, 2) willing to get worse to get better, 3) delayed gratification with good priorities and 4) constantly learning new weird stuff.
Never have to worry about the #1 person in each position. They unlikely quit to start their own thing. Become extremely corporate and drone like. The person who always escapes is known to be smart but always doing “weird stuff”. That guy doesn’t fit in perfectly but is known for being effective and different. That guy/girl is going to be gone and disappear with no contact. You want to be that person.
Hope that you have enjoyed this off topic overview. You’re going to see a lot of your friends differently now. Bucket them into winners, leeches and future winners. You’ll see that those simple points will save you hundreds of hours of wasted time
Sadly, we know people won’t listen but once you see the trend, you’ll avoid these pitfalls later.
PS: That old high school friend who lives in the middle of no where and suddenly wants to meet up for a beer. Yes he figured out you made it and just wants to syphon off money. Let it go to voice mail. Hope he does well. But. On his own!
The world is a simulation and if it was meant to be it will be meant to be
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.
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