Understanding the Power of Association

I’d like to say something about “associating.” Sometimes we think of this word in terms of our personal associations, the building of our relationships; but there is another way of associating. It is associating with your mind. Learn from others; study those who are successful. If you have the opportunity to attend a seminar or a lecture, that is a wonderful way of associating because you can learn the principles and concepts that the speakers and attendees use to become successful.

You need to fill your minds with the biographies of successful people, whether those people have become successful in wealth, politics, inventing, or whatever.

Study whatever you want to become good at.

I suggest you buy a bunch of biographical videos for $20 each. When I first caught on to this principle, I bought $4,000 worth of biography videos: everything from Ray Kroc and his success with McDonald’s, to Thomas Edison; and I thought “Wow!” I have watched the videos multiple times. What I get from them permeates, penetrates, and fills the space in my mind.

Now I want to talk about another way to associate. It’s called “virtual association.” I went bankrupt 33 years ago. I lost $2 million of other people’s money in one day (I have since paid it all back). My life had been turned upside down; things were not going well. But I had been reading books. I said, “Now wait a second, I have access to these wonderful minds!” I had what we now call a virtual mastermind: I had Napoleon Hill, Andrew Carnegie, and Walt Disney guarding and guiding me. I grew up loving them. I also admired John Kennedy because he said, “Let’s land a man on the moon.” I had the greatest speaker at the time, Dr. Martin Luther King. I felt as though I actually had conversations with them.

My clients would say, “Well, we need this, this, and this.” And I would think of my virtual masterminds and inquire, “What would you say to them?”

You can get access to the best minds in the world if you study them, if you do your homework.

I had the opportunity one summer of taking care of some orchards for a recluse, a brilliant man who was on the school board in our district. I would go see him inside the house from time to time, and he would teach me. One day he asked, “Roice, where are you going to go for your university?” I fired off the names of two or three Ivy League universities; I wanted to impress him. He looked at me and said, “Why are you going there?” I said, “I want to learn, and I want to have that name behind me.” He thought for a minute and then said, “Roice, I would advise you to do this: Find the university that has the finest teachers in the field that you want to be in and then suck their brains out.”

In other words, make the emphasis on the learning, the association.