I didn’t know Tom Petty personally. But, he did live in Malibu, and I live in Playa Vista.

That’s about a 25-minute drive. A lot of people who live around the world always seem to think, “Wow, David Wygant, he must mingle with some of the coolest people in L.A. He must have known Tom Petty or Hugh Hefner.”

Nope. I knew neither.

But, that doesn’t mean that they did not directly impact my life and teach me a lesson.

Both of them did.

One of my favorite Tom Petty songs has always been: “I Won’t Back Down.” I still play it when I really want to feel a certain thing, a certain emotion, I want to connect to a certain feeling.

It’s one of those pump-you-up songs — and guys who’ve bought my 7 Second Seduction program know the importance of getting pumped up and listening to certain music that puts you in the mood.

But what really Tom Petty taught me was perseverance.

If you looked at the story of Tom Petty, he fought hard to become Tom Petty.

Tom Petty took a lot of rejection.

Tom Petty had a lot of music that wasn’t well-liked at times.

Tom Petty had a lot of different stages in his career.

But the one thing Tom Petty would never do was back down. Listen to the song “I Won’t Back Down”, and tell me what you feel when you listen to it.

It’s people like him who impact our lives that we get inspiration from.

Then there’s Hugh Hefner. Was he known for posing beautiful Playboy models on pages of magazines?

Yes. But Hugh Hefner also stood up for women’s rights, civil rights, and getting us out of the war in Vietnam.

It was Playboy’s editorial that actually shaped the man that Hugh Hefner was.

He was actually one of the first guys that probably ever attended a bootcamp.

He actually created his own bootcamp.

He found a guy that was great at women, and decided that, well, he would hire him for Playboy — just to teach him how to be the ultimate playboy.

If you think about it, Hugh Hefner started the entire pick up and dating revolution back in the 50s and 60s. He was the first one who actually got a coach to teach him.

He created the character Hugh Hefner.

These are two icons who died recently: Hugh Hefner and Tom Petty. Both of them taught us many different lessons. We can look at the roots of pick up, the roots of meeting women, the roots of men learning “game,” and they all go back to Hugh Hefner.

We can look at perseverance and battling and recreating ourselves and think of Tom Petty.

It’s pretty amazing when you really look at these two men’s lives.

Hugh Hefner lived until the ripe old age of 91, loving women his entire life, because once again, Hugh Hefner learned how to connect with women, learned how to communicate with women by hiring somebody to teach him.

There’s a Netflix documentary on Hugh Hefner that I recommend you watch, and you’ll see him episode after episode emulating one of the guys who worked for him. That was the man that taught Hugh Hefner — a nerdy guy — how to become a ladies’ man, because it was something that Hugh Hefner always wanted to become.

A lot of you guys out there, well, you want to become ladies’ men.

Pick up artists.

Seducers.

But you do nothing about it.

You don’t hire somebody at all.

That’s not even a plug for myself. I mean, you don’t actually consult with an expert at all.

You might read an occasional book or order an occasional program. But in order to really, truly become something, you have to hire a role model to literally model yourself after. That’s the beauty of coaching, and it’s the beauty of success. Every successful person I know had a mentor in one way or another.

So it’s time that you figured out who your mentor is going to be.

Spend some time mentoring. Spend some time being mentored.

And realize that it’s pretty amazing to find people in your life that can teach you all the valuable lessons in life.