School teaches you that A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D. And sure, that matters. But nobody tells you that the people you surround yourself with will do more for your life than any degree ever could.
College took me longer than most. And I want to be clear — the degree matters. I’m not saying skip it. I’m saying don’t stop there. Honestly, I learned more outside the classroom than inside it. That wasn’t the plan — it’s just how it went. The real world isn’t a straight line. It throws you all over the place. What shaped where I ended up wasn’t a curriculum. It was proximity to the right people.
Mentors are everywhere. But they’re not evenly distributed. The smartest thing you can do is find where they concentrate — and put yourself there.
I wasn’t looking for an opportunity. I just needed a job. I knew I didn’t want to be behind a desk, I knew I could coach, and that was about as far as the plan went.
I found it at a country club.
I started in the pro shop — not coaching yet, just checking people in, answering questions, learning names. That put me in front of everyone — members, guests, families — day after day. But without realizing it, I was building something. By the time I moved into coaching, I wasn’t a stranger to anyone. The relationships were already there. People signed up for lessons, or brought their kids to me, not because I’d marketed myself — but because they already knew me. That was my first opportunity. I just didn’t recognize it as one at the time.
Being around people who had built real things — real careers, real businesses, real lives — changes how you think. Not overnight. You just start absorbing it without realizing it. I’d always been the type to read a lot, pick up random knowledge, stay curious about whatever was in front of me. Cars, travel, food, photography, finance, sports, current events. Enough to find a thread in almost any conversation. Not because I was an expert in any of it. Just because I cared enough to pay attention.
I never went in looking for anything. I just asked questions and listened. And somewhere along the way, without me engineering any of it, the conversations started going deeper.
Nobody goes out of their way for a contact. People do that for someone they actually know.
I never asked for anything directly, especially not early on. That would have killed it. But once the foundation was there, things started coming back around on their own. I remember floating the idea of opening a car garage to a client who’s well connected in that world. He didn’t shoot it down — but he pushed back. What else could you do with it? Are you building something or just trading time for money? He started throwing out other angles I hadn’t considered. That’s not a conversation I could’ve had with most people in my life. That’s the kind of thinking you absorb when you’re around the right people.
Jim Rohn said you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I didn’t know that quote when I started, but living it for years made it obvious.
And the returns went way beyond work.
Some of my closest friendships came out of that environment. My love for cars was already there, but the people at the club fueled it — new friends, new connections, a whole community I wouldn’t have found on my own. Travel opened up in ways I never expected. I’ve visited Hong Kong with clients who became friends, stayed at someone’s home in China, had a driver to get around the city. That’s not a travel itinerary you find online. When you’re genuinely connected to a wide range of people, your whole life gets bigger. That part surprised me more than anything.
But the moment that really said it all happened after a lesson one morning.
I’d been talking with a client — casually, the way conversations go after you’ve built something real with someone — about how I’d love to get into real estate someday. He stopped me and asked why I wasn’t already doing it. Then he started listing every avenue I could take. I didn’t have an answer. I hadn’t thought it through that far.
So he gave me homework.
He wanted me to write a letter to myself within a couple of weeks. Figure out where I wanted to be in five and ten years. Aim high, be realistic, but if you don’t have a goal you’re not working toward anything. He said to take risks while I was young — that life without adventure was the biggest risk of all.
I never wrote the letter. Because before I could, he asked if I wanted to work for him.
That’s the part nobody ever teaches you.
A degree opens doors. But it doesn’t walk you through them. The people around you do that. Not through transactions or strategy — through genuine relationships built slowly over time. It’s not about who you know. It’s about how well you know them, and whether they’ve seen enough of you to want to bring you along.
Opportunity is always around you. In every job, every room, every conversation. You just have to be present enough to let it happen.
I didn’t plan any of it. I just showed up, got curious, and put myself around people worth learning from. The rest followed.
Stevie Chow 
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