Scrolling through my LinkedIn feed, I saw the same three online mentors appear over and over again. It’s amazing what your social media can teach you about yourself. The pattern of who you become is determined by your external inputs.

To change your life, you need new inputs. Your social media is unconsciously defining you and it needs a cleanup.

Delete the Kardashians.
Delete all the negative news.
Remove fake people.
Remove toxic friends.

Once you have all of that beautiful space to play with, fill some of it up with some new mentors.

Here are the ones that dominate my social newsfeeds and teach me everything I know. I have never met any of them and only see them through social media.

Tony Robbins

From a guy that was physically abused by his mother to one of the most successful leaders on the planet, Tony has a personality that’s bigger than life. He takes really complex psychology concepts, rebadges them, and dumbs them down so average people like me can understand them.

Tony was the catalyst for me changing my life back in 2011 and I owe all of my success to him. He was the one person that made me see clearly the selfish, entitled, brat I’d become. If you don’t read another word of this article, make sure you look him up. I want you to have the same experience.

Gary Vaynerchuk

He started out as an online influencer with a very loud voice and more F-bombs than you and I would probably want to hear in a single video. As you get to know him better, you realize he’s nothing more than someone who wants to inspire people.

Below his seemingly thug like New York personality, he’s actually a very kind and innocent man that means well. He started out with a social media agency and preaching about the power of social media, and now he’s become a lot like Tony Robbins.

Gary spends a lot of time talking about why he’s not perfect and you’re not either. He preaches a few key ideas:

– Ideas are nothing and execution is everything
– Social media works when it’s not all about your ego
– Hard work pays off
– The best work is something you’re passionate about
– Disruption will happen whether you like it or not
– Everyone can be successful
– It doesn’t matter where you come from

There’s a lot of you that spend too much time planning and romanticising (borrowed that word off Gary) instead of getting to work. Many of you are seeking perfection or admiration rather than the truth. The truth is that adding value is the crux of business.

“The truth is that life is about more than zeroes on your Internet Banking screen”

Richard Branson

This guy’s been around for decades and I use him mainly for thoughts on work-life balance and business culture. Richard believes that instead of trying to be the best at everything, you need to find the right people and let them do the work. Having not met him, I actually think he probably doesn’t know that much (I mean that with a lot of respect by the way).

Richard focuses on the ideas and then he rallies together people to do the execution. He’ll teach you a lot about taking calculated risks as opposed to gambling, and he’s obsessed with disrupting the way things have always been done.

This way of thinking is fundamental to your social media newsfeed reinvention.

Manu Goswami (Swish)

I met this dude via Skype. His claim to fame was becoming a 19-Year-Old award-winning entrepreneur. He has businesses with people you and I could only dream of collaborating with. Beyond all of that, he was headhunted to go and work for Gary Vaynerchuk.

The kid has swag on top of swag multiplied by five. His main channel is LinkedIn and for such a young chappy he’s taught me a lot. Swish hasn’t just curated a tremendous social media newsfeed; he’s used social media to reach out to his mentors and become their friends.

He spent hours tagging his mentors and heroes on social media. He sent them messages. When he couldn’t get to his mentors like Gary Vaynerchuk, he made friends with their inner circles instead. Swish has taught me that age means nothing. I also love the way he tells stories.

Stories are a great way to achieve your goals and influence people. Suss this kid out.

Steve Jobs

I’m so simple and minimalistic that it’s crazy stupid. This wasn’t always the case though. Thanks to Steve Jobs and his creation that is Apple, he taught me how to strip back all of the layers. He’s taught me that a phone only needs one button.

Even though he’s passed now, his legacy lives on and there are still some incredible videos of him being released.

“Steve will teach you how to be succinct and how to be obsessed with your customer if you’re in business. By no means was he a perfect man or someone that treated everyone fairly”

Like any mentor, take the lessons of simplicity and minimalism from him and ignore other parts of his personality which may be less beneficial to your success.

Tim Ferriss

We share the same first name so it’s sort of a given that I’d be attracted to his work. I never really understood the Four Hour Work Week but what got me obsessed with Tim’s work was his podcast. The way he can extract wisdom from his guests and make them share things they’ve never shared is mind-blowing.

Tim will expose you to subjects like fasting and experimenting with various substances that you’d never find yourself normally being interested in. Through Tim’s work, I’ve learned that even with all of his success, at forty years of age, he’s still looking for the answers to life’s biggest questions.

We often think that people with Tim’s success have it all. Tim has taught me that’s not the case at all and his vulnerability, and honesty has become something I’ve replicated in my own life.

Your social media newsfeed needs the Ferris Wheel that is Timbo.

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