Pod Insights The Quote of the Day Show | Daily Motivational Talks Bob Proctor: “It’s Easy to Be Great When You’re Around Great People.” About this episode Bob Proctor shares a powerful lesson on mentorship, asking for help, and surrounding yourself with greatness. In this inspiring message, he explains why successful people are willing to share what they know—and why growth begins the moment you ask. This episode will challenge you to seek guidance, follow proven wisdom, and raise your standards by learning from the best. Source: There is Greatness All Around You! 🥇 Bob ProctorHosted by Sean CroxtonFollow me on InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Greatness is all around us. It's easy to be great because great people will help you. I mean, that's huge. If you, if you don't know that, let that burn right into your mind. It's easy to be great because great people are all around you and they will help you. Great people will tell you their secrets. Look for them. Call them on the phone. Buy their books. Go where they are. Get around them. Talk to them. It's easy to be great when you're around great people.
0:50 Speaker 01 Welcome back to the Quote of the Day Show. I am your host, Shawn Croxton, at seancroxton.com. We've got the late, the great Bob Proctor on the show today. Today's QOD is this. It's easy to be great when you're around great people. Here's the thing. Successful people want to help you. Successful people want you to get there faster. Successful people want to share their wisdom with you. Successful people see themselves in you. So they want to help you to navigate the obstacles along your path. But here's the thing. There's this saying, it goes like this. The closed mouth does not get fed.
1:31 Speaker 01 So in this context, what that means is if you're not willing to ask for help, you're probably not going to get any help. You have to be willing to find somebody who's already done the thing that you want to do and ask them to mentor you. At the very least, ask them to meet you for coffee or for lunch or for dinner, so you can ask them some questions. And usually they'll say yes, right? Not always, but usually they will say yes. I live in Scottsdale, Arizona. Lots of wealthy, successful people here. I cannot tell you how many times I've been at a coffee shop and had a mentoring session going on at the table next to me. Like, it's more times than I can count because successful people want to help you get there faster. Here's just a little bit of etiquette, though.
2:14 Speaker 01 It's kind of mind blowing after say this and I'll tell you why in a minute. But when you take a mentor out for coffee or for lunch or for dinner, pay for their coffee, pay for their lunch, pay for their dinner. Like I used to do these and I cannot tell you how many times I had to pay for my own meal. Like the check would come, they'd be like, you want to split it? I'm sitting there like, yo, I took two hours out of my day and I gotta pay for my own meal? And so just like basic etiquette, pay for it, be grateful, send them a thank you note and you're more likely to get another session. Bob Proctor is coming up.
2:49 Speaker 00 You know, there's greatness all around you,
2:54 Speaker 00 but you're gonna have to ask for help.
2:58 Speaker 00 If you don't ask, you're not gonna get it. Yesterday morning at seven o'clock, I was on the phone with Mark Victor Hansen. He, um, he and Jack wrote the Chicken Soup books. And Mark's writing a new book on Ask, he and his wife. And he was interviewing me, I was talking to him the day before. The day before was his birthday, he was seventy-one. And I was saying, geez, how time flies, I was at his fiftieth birthday party, it was a big birthday party. I said, that was twenty-one years ago, it seemed like yesterday. But at any rate, that's when I was talking to him the day before yesterday and he was telling me about doing this book. And he said, I want to interview for an hour or so.
3:41 Speaker 00 So I said, okay, so I said, happy early, so we start at seven o'clock. And what he was doing was asking me about Ask.
3:51 Speaker 00 And I said, really, you know, it's a strange thing. He and, and Jack and somebody else, I forgot the other guy's name, had written a book one time and in it, one of them said, our problem is we don't ask for enough. And I agree with that, we don't.
4:06 Speaker 00 And we got talking about it and I'd been thinking about it since the day before. You know, what role does Ask play? And, um,
4:20 Speaker 00 you start, it takes you down some interesting paths. And I thought, when I was a young guy, I didn't ask for help.
4:30 Speaker 00 I, uh, and I started to analyze that, I had such low self-esteem,
4:36 Speaker 00 I didn't think you'd help me if I did ask probably and because I had low self-esteem, I wouldn't ask.
4:44 Speaker 00 Well, this is written by Bob Richards, this page. Bob Richards was a great pole vaulter. And he's got some interesting advice on this page. If we're going to go after what we want, and this is going to be interesting as we get into this later tonight, tomorrow, and the next couple of days, we're going to go into an interesting place. We're going to go where you've never been. He said, "There are many people who could be Olympic champions, All-Americans, who have never tried."
5:29 Speaker 00 He said, "I'd estimate 5 million people who could have beaten me in the pole vault the year I won it, at least 5 million. Men who were stronger, bigger, faster than I was could have done it, but they never picked up a pole. They never made the feeble effort to pick their legs up off the ground trying to get over a bar. They didn't try." Well, of course, there's a lot fall into that category. A lot don't ask, but a lot don't try. And we're not to point out, there's greatness all around us. There's greatness all around you.
6:11 Speaker 00 Do you know, when I made a decision that I was going to do what Ray Stanford was the man told me, everything in my life started to change. I mean, and fast. The biggest thing I learned, though, in that first situation, was to do exactly what they tell you.
6:44 Speaker 00 That's not easy to do. First of all, it probably goes counter to your paradigm. Your paradigm is trying to drive you one way, and somebody else is saying, "No, don't do that. Go the other way."
6:57 Speaker 00 All the evidence said you shouldn't do what they're telling you, but you gotta do it.
7:03 Speaker 00 Well, I learned that with Ray. I was 26. I remember back when I was probably around 30, I thought I was kind of old when I started to think. But actually, now when I look back, I realize how young I was.
7:19 Speaker 00 Well, then, I got other mentors. Earl Nightingale and Lloyd Conan. And, I mean, they were giants. They started this industry in the recorded fashion, and they became my mentors. I was working with them, one-on-one. But I always did exactly what they said.
7:44 Speaker 00 Every one of them. I would pick people
7:49 Speaker 00 who demonstrate by results they know what they're talking about, and I don't argue with them to do exactly what they say. Now, a person that's been dead for a couple of thousand years could have a greater impact on your life than somebody that's sitting beside you today. They don't have to be alive. I follow a mentor now that's been gone for quite a number of years, close to 100 years.
8:12 Speaker 00 You see? But I'm doing exactly what he says.
8:17 Speaker 00 I may read the same page, I don't know, for a year, every day. I wanna get into his energy. I wanna see the way he sees. I want my perception to be the same as his.
8:31 Speaker 00 Now, Richard says greatness is all around us. It's easy to be great because great people will help you. I mean, that's huge. If you don't know that, let that burn right into your mind. It's easy to be great because great people are all around you, and they will help you.
8:52 Speaker 00 He says, "What's fantastic about all the conventions that I go to is that the greatness in the business will come out and they share their ideas, their methods, their techniques, and everything else." He said, "I've seen the greatest salespeople open up and show young salespeople exactly how they did it. They don't hold back. I've also found it true in the world of sports." Well, when I was reading that about the salespeople, I remember being in Chicago with about 450 district agents from the Prudential. Yet, they give out a trophy to the number one anything, the number one agent, number
9:37 Speaker 00 one manager, number one VP. They had 20,000 agents, the number one was Bob's or Ron Sempertrain. Ron Sempertrain was number one out of 20,000 agents, and he was in the seminar. So, when I found out he was in the seminar, I asked him if he'd stand up, and I said, "Could I ask you a couple of questions?" I said, "Ron, how many people in the last year have called you and asked if they could take you out and buy you breakfast or lunch that had maybe a half a dozen well-prepared questions?" "Not one." "Not one?" That didn't surprise me.
10:20 Speaker 00 I'd done some research, and I said, "What Richard's talking about, they're there, but people don't ask. If you want to get good at something, go to the best, then do exactly what they tell you." He says, "I'll never forget the time that I was trying to break Dutch Warmerdom's record." I was about a foot below his record. So, I called him on the phone. I said, "Dutch, can you help me? I seem to have leveled off, and I can't get any higher." He said, "Sure, Bob. Come on up and visit, and I'll give you all I've got." He said, "I spent three days with Dutch, the greatest pole vaulter in the world.
11:04 Speaker 00 For three days, Dutch gave me everything that he'd seen. There were things that I was doing wrong, and he corrected them. To make a long story short, I went up eight inches."
11:20 Speaker 00 8 inches must seem like an enormous height.
11:27 Speaker 00 He said, "This great guy gave me the best that he had.
11:32 Speaker 00 I've found that sports champions and heroes willingly do this just to help you
11:41 Speaker 00 because you're great."
11:45 Speaker 00 I like what John Wooden, what we've got here about him. He said that he's obligated to help somebody every day who has no chance of ever reciprocating. Is that right?
12:01 Speaker 00 Wallace Waddles in The Science of Getting Rich, Chapter 14. It was "Leave everyone with the impression of increase." Doesn't matter who you come in contact with. Leave them with the impression of increase. Now, let's think for a moment. Emerson was a pretty sharp guy, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He said, "The law of cause and effect is the law of laws. Whatever you put out is going to come back. So you don't have to get it back from them. You're going to do things for people that'll never have the opportunity to do anything for you. What do you care? They're part of the universe. You put it in the universe, the universe will give it all back. It's a law. It has to come back. It's a law. These laws aren't man-made, so they can't be changed by man. Fall in love with the idea, leaving everyone with the impression of increase."
12:42 Speaker 00 Now, he said, "When in college, working on his master's thesis on scouting and defensive football, George Allen wrote up a 30-page survey and sent it out to the great coaches in the country. 85% answered it completely."
13:01 Speaker 00 That's why they're great. Great people share. That's what made George Allen one of the greatest football coaches in the world. Great people will tell you their secrets. Look for them. Call them on the phone. Buy their books. Go where they are. Get around them. Talk to them. It's easy to be great when you're around great people.
13:29 Speaker 01 That was Bob Proctor. His website is ProctorGallagherInstitute.com. You can watch today's entire talk on YouTube. It's called "There is Greatness All Around You, Bob Proctor." Bye, my friend. I will see you tomorrow with Larry Wingate. Enjoy your day. I'm out. Peace.
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