Surrounding Yourself with Successful People

The other day I did a interview with Aaron Wall. In one of the questions Aaron asked about how I grew my business. I gave a pretty lengthy answer but threw in this tip also:

I also surrounded myself with successful people. If you look around your circle of friends and you are the most successful... its time to change your friends.

To which a lot of his commentators seem to take issue with... some interesting responses like:

Tom888 Yes, Jeremy is successful. But when I read this: "I also surrounded myself with successful people. If you look around your circle of friends and you are the most successful... its time to change your friends." I also thought he must be a very sad man... Unless I missed his definition of a friend.

SEO Rabit Have you ever had a friend Jeremy ? Because it seems like you didn't. Excellent interview nonetheless.

WebMarketingArt I think instead of saying "its time to change your friends", Jeremy should have said "its time to make more (richer) friends".

I feel as if my answer was a bit misunderstood. When I said " If you look around your circle of friends and you are the most successful... its time to change your friends." I was not referring to how much money someone has. That is just silly. I know a lot of rich people who are not successful.... and I know a lot of successful people who are not rich. My mom is a retired school teacher who know works as a red cross volunteer all over the world. My father is a retired factory worker who started his own fishing website a couple years ago and in the last year started having some really big fishing events. My best friend from high school - best man in my wedding - and still very good friend is a security expert for a very large national chain. ALL of them I consider VERY SUCCESSFUL people. I have had friends that are lazy and going no where in life. They don't stay my friends very long. The one commonality you will find with all my friends is they all work hard and love life. And for that I believe they are successful. So let me rephrase a bit from my original quote. If you look around to all of your closest friends and realize you are the smartest, hardest working person among the group then its time to get some new friends. My grandfather used to say... "show me your friends and I will show you your future". I have a feeling I will be quoting him a lot to my daughters =P.