What is The Guide System?- Ask Nathan by How to be Second

Nathan and Samantha unpack the launch of The Guide System, a one-to-one, human-first way for Seconds to stay connected, supported, and anchored as they navigate life, work and community. They explore why “going together” has become a core value at How to be Second and  along the way, they dig into owning your value, resisting isolation, and why real community means being connected to each other.

Hey, this is Nathan Young, founder and author of How to be Second, and this is Ask Nathan, where I answer questions about being and growing as a second in command + a Second by identity, and tear apart myths around those ideas and other concepts. I’m practicing communicating the value of Seconds so you can do so for yourself and others, with even more clarity.

Transcript

Nathan Young 0:00

Hey, this is Nathan Young. Founder and author of How to Be Second, and this is Ask Nathan where I answer questions about being and growing as a second in command and a second by identity and tear apart myths around those ideas and other concepts. I'm practicing communicating the value of seconds, so you can do so for yourself and others with even more clarity. If you're curious and wanna know more, listen on. If you know you're ready to invest in yourself and go together, connect with us.

0:30

All right, Nathan, I have a question for you. How to be Second just launched The Guide System. Why don't you tell me what that is? Wow. Okay. The Guide System is intended to be a way that all Seconds who find their way to, like our community, have a one-to-one real person connection who can help? First of all just be their point of connection. Like be a point of contact. Hey, you're a real other person who I can talk to about life stuff, but specifically as I navigate being a Second in the world, in my life. 'Cause if you are this thing then you're this thing forever. You're stuck this way. Right? So The Guide System is like this anchor point of having one person and that person stays aware also of the different resources and connections and relationships that we're building at How to be Second. All of the different ways that we have for you to navigate life, both personally and professionally. That person stays aware of what we're doing within the organization and the stuff that we're building bridges to from the organization to other places. And so that person stays aware and you always have a person that has your one-to-one contact. And so like that's the idea of The Guide System. And then those guides are only connected to so many people, so that we never feel this need to put automation or robots or whatever, like in the way of that. It really is a one person to one person connection, and then the guide will get assigned to more than one person, but not so many that they ever need to automate this connection. Right? It is just a person to a person. So many things in the How to be Second community that have been made or created or that we're trying to get out there kind of revolve around this idea that we are better together. Matchmaking is Firsts and Seconds are better together. Mm-hmm. Right. The meetup is, we're better when we gather and get to talk to each other. Totally. Sanity, all of that. Second's Place, we're trying to assemble for professional development. Yep. Right. What is it about this going together that is such a driving force in what we say yes to at How to be Second? That's a great question. I think learning what it means is part of a driving force. Right. Lots of people talk about the idea of core values, and so going together is like one of our core values. And what does that actually mean? It means we constantly are asking ourselves the question what does it look like to do this thing in this way? And. One of our questions all the time is what is good for Seconds? It's actually the foundational question that we ask. It's not just a core value, it's a foundational question. Everything has to pass through this filter of is this good for Seconds? So when we developed Seconds Place, which is our professional development platform. Some people call it the community. That's not what it is. It's specifically a place for professional development. The Community of Seconds is the community. It's a community. There are no barriers to that, but we have this platform and it's for professional development, and we were like, should we make this free? And we went, no, we shouldn't make it free because one of the things that Seconds really struggle with is to own their value. To not figure it out for themselves and to actually genuinely rely on other people for support in doing things. A thing that we have so much struggle with. And so we were like, it's not good for Seconds for this to be free. They don't need to pay an incredible amount for it, but they need to pay something for it. They need to in some small way get used to owning their value. And so it's $10, which is nothing, especially for what you get. Like it's completely outsized. But the point was, what is good for Seconds? So we don't know the answer to what is good for Seconds a hundred percent of the time. We just have to run against that question constantly. So that's a long-winded answer to what does going together mean? I think it is a core value. We fundamentally believe that going alone is less healthy than going together. And so constantly being like, if this is part of our core values, what does that mean in this thing? What does that mean in this thing? We believe it's better to go together. And so how are we going to put first and second in commands together? We're not gonna do recruiting, we're gonna do Matchmaking, 'cause Matchmaking is going together. It's not one person hiring another person, which is effectively doing two things alone. We're gonna do Matchmaking, which is that both people have to go together in this way. And so we believe this fundamentally, it's like a core value. How exactly it shows up every single time, i'm not always sure until we're doing the thing. But it is a fundamental belief. I believe that what is good for Seconds is to go together. You're the visionary here, and so clearly something in your lived experience has led you to feel so strongly about going together. So what's a core memory for you of going alone? And how did that change the trajectory of how you feel about going together? Going alone really specifically in, it's been a long time since I've said the phrase Turnkey. Which is not Turkey, though it was misheard that way a few times. Naming sense, not always my strongest suit. I had, I mean, you know, you were there. I had this idea. I wanted to be a business consultant. I wanted to be a consultant somehow for like my whole life. Which is honestly just led into being a generalist, sort of like second in command person. It's the same. So I had this business, I had this consulting and I called it Turnkey. And I remember reading, absorbing so much of this material that was built on the idea of like, you're a visionary, you're a first in command, you're a CEO, you're a founder. All of these things pushed in my direction, all of which were touting these ideas of like, you're the dreamer, you are the person with all the ideas. You're the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and here's how you manage all those things. And I was like, well, I'm really good at managing all of these things. It never resonated with me. It's not that I don't have ideas, clearly I have ideas. I'm the first in command here. And also those things never felt right to me. I was always like, I don't want to do this alone. I don't like this. Why would I? And it didn't make sense 'cause I wasn't going alone in any other area of my life. Like I was married. So I wasn't going alone relationship wise. I have always had brothers and sisters, so I've never even done family alone. I've always wanted to have friends, and I've always pursued friends. I've always wanted to have mentors, and I've always felt a lack in my life when I don't have those things with meaningful connections. I was like, why would I want to do any of this crap alone? And so that stands out to me. And it wasn't the last time I went alone either. It was just a really powerful time where I was like, it wasn't worth it to continue going alone. And you know, like I shut that down and I quit doing that. And then I went together with a team, I found a team to be part of. And that team ended up being not the best team in the world. With not the best leader in the world, but also it was actually so much better to go together even in a place where I was like, I don't really buy into everything here. But even that was better. It was just so much better to go together. I think that's such an interesting example because once again, you have found yourself as a consultant. Yeah. So why is today different then Turnkey days? I feel so self-conscious about saying Turnkey now because I don't wanna say Turkey. Yeah, Turkey consulting. Somebody out there doing Turkey consulting and they're doing great. I'm sure they're doing great. I feel like I finally have found the role that makes sense for what I'm doing. I'm finally not a person who's supposed to tell someone else what they're doing wrong. I'm not here to be right. I'm here to shepherd a journey, and I've learned a lot about that journey. And one of the critical things that I've learned is you can grow alone and eventually you will need to go together and then you will need to grow together. And so like I've learned that myself, and so now I shepherded that journey. The other thing too is I'm not alone. Like yes, I'm consulting and yes, I'm consulting in that particular area of like you're growing alone, you're going together, you're growing together. And at the same time, we're doing this show together. How to be Second has so many other people involved. We're a giant community. I have friends, Mondo and I do the One Second Podcast. There's really nothing even in my consulting stuff. I have other people that I'm partnering with constantly that I'm either talking with or getting guidance from, or I have coaches and mentors and like I don't do anything alone anymore. And so I don't even build the shed in our backyard alone. Almost nothing that I do is alone anymore. So I think that's the difference. At that time, it felt like I had to be showing up as an expert telling people what was right and it's not any of that anymore. And I had to have all the answers. And now most of the time I'm showing up asking questions. And you can't show up and ask questions if you're not willing to do the togetherness part. Otherwise you just need to be a talking head on a stage, and that is alone. So with this whole idea of going together, what is your biggest hope for what The Guide System sparks within the How to be Second community. I believe really good communities have known ways they move together. There are some things we do, there are some things we don't do. And there are big pockets of the community that have actually come together to like get to know each other. But there are huge portions of the community that just see me as like a figurehead and it's just like Nathan to the masses. And that's not what a community is. And so what I really hope this sparks is like so much people understanding that the role that I'm trying to play is to push out into the world. Everybody in the community is in community together, and they can put themselves wherever they want. They can be friends with other people. There are connections, resources, whatever. And like being connected to me, it means nothing. Being interconnected within community is awesome, and some of those people might even throw their weight behind what we're trying to do to push out into the world to find more people and to teach the world about who we are and how it's valuable. But, at the end of the day, we have to own that value for ourselves. And so that's what I'm hoping that The Guide System sparks is that interconnected web. Not just a bunch of like weird parasocial relationships to Nathan. That's fucked up. I don't want that. Seconds knowing Seconds. Yeah. Seconds knowing Seconds. That's awesome. I think we should end it right there.

Nathan Young 11:54

Hey, it's Nathan again. If you made it to the end, that's awesome. If you have a question, shoot it over to contact @howtobesecond.com if you're glad this work exists and want it to continue existing, you can support how to be second at howtobesecond.com /support Thanks again, i'm looking forward to your next question.