The Three Levels of Champions
Build emotional supporters, peer collaborators, and honest mentors around your learning.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 82%
The Three Levels of Champions describes the support structure that accelerates any learning journey. Level one is your emotional support system — friends and family who may not speak the language of entrepreneurship but genuinely celebrate your wins. Level two is peers and colleagues — masterminds and networks where people doing similar work share superpowers, fill each other's gaps, and hold each other accountable. Level three is a mentor, ideally in-person, who takes you under their wing and is brutally honest because they want you to succeed. Flynn warns that if your community tears you down when you win, you're in the wrong room.
Origin
Flynn built this three-tier model in Lean Learning from his own path — leaning on family who cheered him on, mastermind peers who shared tactics, and honest mentors like Jeremy from Internet Business Mastery and Tim Ferriss who told him hard truths at key moments.
Core principles
- 01Connection with the right people fast-forwards your learning.
- 02If people tear you down when you win, you're in the wrong room.
- 03Peers let you share superpowers and fill each other's gaps.
- 04A real mentor is brutally honest because they want you to succeed.
How to run it
- 1
Secure emotional supporters
Find friends and family who get excited when you get excited, even if they don't understand your field.
Watch out If people start tearing you down when you win, you're in the wrong room.
- 2
Build a peer layer
Join masterminds, communities, and networks of people doing similar work.
Pro tip Peers let you share superpowers, fill gaps, and hold each other accountable.
- 3
Find a mentor
Seek a virtual or, better, in-person mentor who will take you under their wing and be brutally honest.
Pro tip You can find mentors in communities, pay for access, or get lucky through proximity.
- 4
Give more than you take
Leave every room better than you found it so people want to reach back out to you.
Pro tip Providing value first is how introverts build powerful relationships.
In the wild
Flynn compares learning in a community to a robotics club — being in a room, virtual or in person, with others getting their hands dirty lets teachers and students accelerate each other far beyond solo study.
→ Faster learning through peer connection, accountability, and shared experimentation.
Because Flynn had helped many people over the years and left rooms better than he found them, people he'd helped reached out unprompted to support his book launch.
→ A network that shows up for you when you need it because you invested first.
Common mistakes
Staying in a crab-bucket room
Communities that pull you back down when you rise sabotage your growth; you need people who lift you up.
Avoiding honest mentors
Seeking only comfortable praise deprives you of the brutally honest feedback that actually drives success.
Is it for you?
Best for
Entrepreneurs and creators who want to accelerate learning through relationships.
Not ideal for
Situations requiring solo deep work where social input would be a distraction.
From the transcript
“There's three levels of having what I like to call champions in your life to support you in your learning journey.”
“If you find that you're in communities where when you win, they start to tear you down. You're in the wrong room.”
From the episode
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Pat Flynn