Your buddy
Pairs rotate monthly. Whoever is here is yours for this month.
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Why this exists
A teammate of mine, Rohit, recommended a protein bar to me. I bought it, and the bar was not really the reason. A person I knew, whose results I could see, handed me something that worked for him. What Rohit gave me was a human connection.
Today it is easy to find recommendations online, and getting harder to be sure a human being wrote them. So the thing that cannot be faked gets more valuable every year: a real person who knows you, who has been through something, and who tells you about it. I think that matters more in the future, not less.
So the buddy system is this: meet more people who give you human connection, and give your buddy yours.
One buddy a month adds up. Six months in, you have six people in this room who know you and your work well, and who you know well. Think of how much support that is. And the process itself is fun and horizon-expanding; you get to see how someone else runs a business that looks nothing like yours.
The deeper point is that this is what you are doing in your business. Nobody buys coaching for the coaching; nobody buys Reiki or happy dentistry or a writing program as a concept. What people respond to first is a person who sits down with them, asks what the problem actually is, and listens. Give people your human connection first; the work comes after. Your buddy month is practice at that, with the stakes turned down.
What a buddy is for
When you tell me in a 1:1 about something you want to build, I can see the sparkle in your eye. It would be good if more people than me got to see it. And there are things you will say to a peer that you would not say to me, and things you are not ready to say to your whole audience. Your buddy is the person you percolate ideas with: someone you can be earnest and honest with about how hard this is, and about what you learned that still feels a little exposed.
It is also how you catch up without waiting for me: "I missed last week, what did we do?" When someone in the room refers to something that happened to them, at least one other person already knows the story.
And it takes me out of the middle on purpose. If I am hard to reach, or hard to talk to, you still have somewhere to go.
What you actually do
- Meet. Trade contact details and set a time. If you are new to each other, the first call is just to get to know each other: what you do, your personal history, how you came to this program, how you know me. That first human-to-human bond is the point; you do not need an agenda. If you already know each other, skip it and start talking about the work.
- Run your ideas by each other. "I'm thinking about running this new program; can I run it by you?" Brainstorm. Give each other's ideas a new audience.
- Do the month's work together. Whatever the room is doing that month, you can do it with your buddy. If we run Launch Pad again, do missions together; if we run May You Offer, practice offering on each other. In November we are building case studies, so work on a case with each other.
- Support each other's work where it lives. Not likes and high-five emojis (those are fine too), but real, invested curiosity: when your buddy shares their work online, read it, ask a real question, engage where other people can see it. That gives their work more visible real estate. This is a suggestion, not a rule, and it goes beyond your buddy; I am going to try to do it for all of you, even though interacting online is not my natural habit.
Talk day to day between calls if you like: how is it going, what did you make of this week, what are you stuck on. Nothing formal, and none of this is a critical mission. The first message is the hard part, so send it today rather than Saturday.
The vulnerability exercise (when you need it)
This is not the main purpose; it is something you can ask your buddy for when you need it.
Many of my 1:1s come down to "I said I would do it, and I just can't get myself to." I understand that as a human being. But if you really want something, you have to be able to move forward even when every fiber says you don't want to. The doing you can do alone. When you don't do it, though, it matters that you sit down and digest why. And alone, that slides almost immediately into self-rationalizing: "I wasn't feeling well, it was probably smarter to wait." That is the move I catch you on in our calls.
So you say it out loud to your buddy instead: here is what I committed to, here is what I did instead, here is what I am doing about it. You keep a consequence with yourself for breaking your own commitments (see Accounting for failure); the buddy is where you let it out and are done with it. It is a little like confession: when something is nagging at you, you put it out so you can move on.
What it can sound like. "I want to do a vulnerability exercise today. I told myself I would organize a beach cleanup. I emailed some people, then told myself I'd wait for their replies, and when nobody replied I gave myself permission to stop. I think part of me was waiting for other people's permission. I feel a bit victimized, honestly; angry they didn't write back, and disappointed. I think I stopped because continuing meant more of that disappointment... and I still want to do the cleanup. So I want to understand why the disappointment hurts this much."
The buddy says nothing through all of it. No "don't worry, everyone feels like that." The pauses and the reaching deeper are the exercise working; it is a heart-opening done out loud. At the end the speaker decides: "Do you have anything for me?" or "Thanks; I feel complete now." Either is fine.
Doing this with me is good in one way, because I push. Not everyone wants to be pushed by Billy, and they shouldn't have to be. With a buddy it is warmer: you prompt yourself, at your own pace.
The one rule, for when you are listening
Do not add on. When your buddy tells you how they fell short, you do not say "that's wonderful that you noticed," you do not say "good job," you do not offer what works for you, and you do not reassure them that it wasn't really a failure. However kindly meant, all of those turn their account into something being judged, and that is how this becomes a shaming exercise.
Be a compassionate witness. Hold them in your space, see them as they are, witness it on their behalf. That is the whole job. If they ask you for something, answer it. Asked, not offered.
What it is not
It is not co-working, and it is not an accountability partner in the usual sense. Co-working makes your work depend on a calendar invite; once the invite is gone, so is the work. And accountability as people usually run it turns into doing things so your partner won't judge you, which is box-checking with a friendlier face. You are your own best accountability partner.