Primary and Secondary Connections
You're the average of your five — but your five are the average of theirs.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 80%
Hardy extends Jim Rohn's famous line one degree out. Your primary connections are the five people you spend the most time with; your secondary connections are who your friends' friends are. Since your friends aren't always with you, they're being influenced by other people, and that influence flows into you second-hand — so you want to think about not just who your friends are but where they're going and what's influencing them. The idea has a strategic business face too: everyone is connected within about seven degrees, so if you want access to someone hard to reach, find the person in your world who is easy to reach and connected to them. Hardy hedges the like-attracts-like assumption: sometimes you're the only positive influence in someone's life, and that's its own kind of value.
Origin
Hardy built on Jim Rohn's 'average of the five people you spend the most time with' by asking the obvious next question in Willpower Doesn't Work — if your friends shape you, who shapes your friends when you aren't there?
Core principles
- 01You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with (Jim Rohn) — those are your primary connections.
- 02Your friends aren't always with you; who influences them, influences you second-hand.
- 03Like attracts like, so positive people are usually surrounded by positive people — but verify rather than assume.
- 04Secondary connections are also the practical route to hard-to-reach people.
- 05Sometimes you're the only positive influence in someone's life — and that's a reason to stay.
How to run it
- 1
Name your primary connections
List the five people you actually spend the most time with. This is your baseline average.
- 2
Trace the secondary layer
For each of the five, ask who their friends are and what's influencing them. Your friends aren't always with you — they're absorbing influences elsewhere and carrying them back.
Pro tip Ask where your friends are going, not just who they are now — direction predicts influence.
- 3
Test the like-attracts-like assumption
Generally, positive people are surrounded by positive people — but sometimes they're not, and sometimes you're the only positive influence in their life.
Watch out Don't apply this coldly. Being someone's only positive influence is a reason to stay, not a reason to cut them.
- 4
Use the second degree for access
For someone you want to reach but can't, find the reachable person connected to them and build a genuine relationship there.
Pro tip Everyone is roughly seven degrees apart — the person you want is closer than you think.
Watch out This is a strategic approach; done transactionally it reads as exactly that.
In the wild
There's someone in business you want access to who is very hard to reach. But they have friends, or someone connected to them, who isn't hard to reach at all. The strategic question becomes: how do you become friends with that person?
→ Access via the second degree instead of a cold approach to the first.
Common mistakes
Auditing only your five
Your friends spend most of their time away from you, absorbing influences that reach you second-hand. A first-degree-only audit misses most of the input.
Assuming positive people have positive circles
Like attracts like generally, but not always — check rather than assume.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone deliberately upgrading their peer environment, or trying to reach someone otherwise inaccessible.
Not ideal for
Anyone who'd use it as license to discard people transactionally, or those with no capacity to change their social circle.
From the transcript
“You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, which is true — but that would be considered a primary connection.…”
“You may be influenced by your friends, but who are your friends influenced by? Because your friends aren't always with you.”
“Sometimes you're the only positive influence in their life — which, heck, that's amazing.”
From the episode
Benjamin Hardy: Willpower Sucks, Just Change Your Environment
Benjamin Hardy