There is a billion dollar industry telling people that the only way to get better is to surround yourself with better people.

As author and motivational speaker Jim Roth once said, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” And in that small five person group, there will be family members and friends known as “Locusts” (great song from Machine Head by the way) who sap your strength and undermine your efforts to improve.

It’s why it’s important to take the midnight train out of your small town or small circle and arrive into a bigger town or bigger circle, and find people who share your values, and push you and inspire you to be your best self. You can even do it today without leaving your bedroom, but sometimes, behind the blue screen, you don’t know what kind of person is really there.

Even “Spotify for Artists” has a whole team devoted to surrounding writers and composers with some of the best talent, so they can either write a song from scratch, have people play on their song, have people mix and master their song or just give them feedback.

And we used to get upset when our favourite bands used to lose band members, for musical differences or some other bs line. But sometimes, members left our favorite bands to surround themselves with better musicians and sometimes those band members got booted so a more talented musician could be brought in.

But talent doesn’t make a great band. We all know that talent without effort and grit and resilience and a quest of self-development means nothing.

And the glue that binds it all is trust. So surround yourselves with talented people that you trust.