If you want to get where you want to go, you have to Dump Your Duds. Your duds are clients, people and friends that are going to hinder your success or keep you from moving forward. They might be close friends, family members or even your old fraternity or sorority members. It’s anyone that does not encourage you to become more. This was something I have had to learn the hard way. I held on to for a long time to my duds thinking they were my friends. Truth be told they really weren’t. They were encouraging me not to do something worthwhile and it took me along time to realize it.
In my opinion, a true friend wants to see you succeed. They encourage you to become great. They want to see you become more. It took me a while to see that my duds didn’t want this for me. They didn’t want to see me succeed. They wanted me to stay the same or worse, fail (some even attempted to sabotage my results). Hugh Macleod puts it this way, “Great ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That’s why great ideas are initially resisted.” You will become like the people you spend the most time with. Do you want what they have? If you don’t, then you need to surround yourself with people that have what you want. Do your friends encourage you to be the best you can be? Or give you permission to stay the same? I don’t spend time with those people anymore. I surround myself with folks that want to see me become great. They encourage me to become more than I am. And I do the same for them. It has made a huge difference in my life and my results. Do this: Write down everyone you spend the most time with. Are they positive towards your goals, or negative? It’s time to dump your duds.
There are two types of people, anchors and motors. You want to lose the anchors and get with the motors because the motors are going somewhere and are having more fun. The anchors just pull you down. – Wyland
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. – Jim Rohn
I will never forget the day I started my first business, Urge Marketing. I was working as a server for a restaurant while finishing college. While my guests were happy and during my breaks, I would read business and success books. One day my boss, Dale came up to me and picked up the book I was reading (Inc and Grow Rich… great book about incorporation by the way), and said “Whose book is this?” I told him it was mine. He laughed at me and said, “You’ll never be a business owner, you are a nothing but a server, you idiot. What makes you think that you can run a business?” Due to this and a few other factors, I never went back there to work. That night with nothing but a whopping $100 in my pocket and a dream I started Urge Marketing and have been doing it ever since. 
I think there is a desire inside all of us to be accepted. We try to look, talk and think like everyone else. What happens? We become like everyone else. We hide who we are inside, in order to fit in with the herd. We lose what makes us great. Our personality, ambitions and style. We give up our originality so that we can become a carbon copy of what “we are supposed to be” in everyone else’s eyes. Frankly, we do this because we fear others will think we’re nuts. We worry that others will call us crazy. 
