2025: the Year of Good Company

Companionship gives you superpowers

It’s Friday afternoon. The winter sun has me scrunching up half my face. I’m caffeinated, drum and bass in my headphones, sitting at my laptop writing an update for my newsletter. It’s a tricky post to write. I want to simultaneously give a personal update on my life, and I also have to make a sales pitch.

I wrote the first draft and got stuck on the ending: how do I tell a personal story, and weave in a sales pitch without making my friends feel like customers?

I asked ChatGPT. As expected, the answer is dreadful soulless slop.

Second attempt: I asked my twitter homies for advice. Here’s what we came up with together:

You haven’t heard from me in a while. I’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months dealing with a cocktail of depression, dread, and an unprecedented new flavour of self-loathing. Spicy! I spent most of 2024 grinding through the most stagnant depressive period I’ve experienced in 10 or 15 years. It’s been rough. But today I’m feeling optimistic and motivated and making big plans for the year. So uhhh… what happened?

Just looking back on the last month, it’s pretty obvious what’s changed. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

• We stopped travelling. We moved into an apartment in Barcelona. We’re committed to this place for the foreseeable future. I’m prioritising local connections ahead of digital.
  

• We’ve had a sequence of inspiring guests come to stay with us, people that push me to the edge of my thinking. It’s not just the cognitive stimulation, these companions have psychological depth too. I feel like I can open up and be real about the challenges I’m facing in my life. They give me empathy, they give me perspective, and they inspire me to reach further.
  

• Tomorrow I’m meeting up with my local friends to talk about how we’ll support each other this year. Then we’re going to goof off and play guitars.

You see what I’m getting at right, the secret ingredient that got me unstuck: good company. It’s always the same for me! I got the good company I need, and everything feels doable now.

Here’s the trigger that set me off on the initial depressive swing: I’m fundraising to buy a retreat centre, a permanent facility for Nati and me to host our work. We need 10 people to lend us $50-100k each. This fundraising mission is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s bringing up every doubt I’ve ever had about myself.

Being in good company these past few weeks has not magically resolved my challenge, but my mindset is transformed. I’m in the foothills looking up at the same mountain peak, but instead of feeling overwhelmed or worthless, I’m feeling excited. My agency is back. I feel nervous anticipation, but I’m amped. I’m up for it. I’m visualising the day we get the keys to our new place and I’m crying happy tears.

When I say “good company”, it’s not just that I’ve been spending time with lovely people, there’s more to it than that. It’s not the people exactly, it’s the quality of our interactions. The intimacy of shared presence. The clarity of our shared intention: we’re here to lift each other up.

So at last, you get to the sales pitch, the cherry on top of the personal life update. I’m looking for a handful of people to join a peer-coaching group I’m hosting with my dear collaborators Jocelyn Ames & Jonas Groener.

In Good Company is a 8-week program for ‘leaders’, meaning: anyone who is taking responsibility to mobilise collective action towards a meaningful goal. If you’re taking on big challenges this year and you feel yourself pushing up to the limits of your capacity, this group is a superorganism that will expand what you’re capable of.

If this sounds like something you’d want to be part of, check out the website for more information, or book me for a quick call to talk it through.

We’re keeping it small, so there’s just a few seats left. Applications close Jan 22.