Summary
Brett and Joe explore how to intentionally build a great support system, drawing on Brett’s experience in extreme sports (base jumping) and Joe’s experience with business leadership groups, couples groups, and communities of practice. The core insight is that effective support systems require a clear shared purpose, maximum diversity of perspective, peer accountability (not hierarchical accountability), and explicit agreements about how members interact.
They identify key qualities of effective support systems: members feel accountable to each other (not to a boss), there’s diversity in stage of development and background, leadership rotates rather than being fixed, and challenge is welcomed with an open heart. Joe emphasizes that the best teacher for something you’re learning is often someone who just went through it, not the most senior expert — freshness of experience matters.
The episode also explores what makes building a support system scary: being truly seen, dissolving identity, and accepting accountability. Joe shares a powerful thought experiment — imagining 10 years on an island with 12 people who unconditionally love you and themselves — to illustrate how environment shapes who we become. The deepest gift of a support system is the recognition that “it’s not all about you” — that your growth was made possible by others, which brings humility, gratitude, and relief.
Key Concepts
- Support systems need shared purpose and diversity
- Peer accountability outperforms hierarchical accountability
- The best teacher just went through it
- Being seen is the scariest part of support
- Your support system creates you
Key Quotes
“If you look at the great support networks… it is a community of people being accountable to themselves but being supportive of one another.”
“Oftentimes the best teacher is a person who’s just gone through it.”
“I’m going to create my support group only for my support group to create me.”
“Close your eyes… imagine you’re on an island… and on this island are 12 saints… they all just know how to unconditionally love you and unconditionally love themselves… 10 years later who are you after living there?”
“I guarantee you I wouldn’t be where I am in my life without my support systems.”
Transcript
what’s scary about having a really good support system how does it help to watch somebody go through the transformation you want to go through before you go through it how do you know you’re ready to teach something in your support system what makes you think you could ever be ready to teach anything all right welcome back to the art of accomplishment everybody I here with Joe Hudson I’m Brett kler and today we’re going to talk about how to build a great support system in the world of extreme sports people live and die by who they keep around them by who they choose to have as their support system y the way you said that is awesome because I was like live and die it was like oh no he’s actually talking about living and dying yeah I mean literally yeah yeah the people who are with you when you’re about to do something extremely dangerous yeah are the ones that you’re looking to for assessing the safety of what you’re about to do for assessing risks they’re the ones whose you know fears or ego drives are going to be ping ponging off of yours and interacting with with your psychology yeah and this is true for extreme sports but I’ve also seen this in in business and in relationships a marriage having a support system is a very different experience than a marriage having no no support system or in isolation that’s right yeah so tell me what like what was your experience in extreme sports about creating a support system how did that go for you how did it start how did it end yeah the way it started was just who was near by for example I started base jumping in Northeast Ohio yeah and so there were maybe six to 10 base jumpers in maybe a 6our drive from me at that time so the support system was who was around and luckily there were there were people with a reasonable amount of experience to learn from but there were also some other uh I’d say peers who just started jumping when I started jumping and so by default it was sort of the deao support system the culture around it at that time was you know you you find somebody who’s a bass jumper you make friends with them and maybe you bring them a case of beer and in exchange for them to bring you to an object where they’re going to jump and then you do the get way driving and then you learn a little bit that way right and then over time they might show you how they’re packing their parachute and you learn a little bit about packing a Basse jumping parachute yeah and eventually I found an instructor who I flew out to Idaho and paid and got a formal instruction which at that time it was the first time there was any kind of real formal instruction it was still a very much apprenticeship based uh Journey yeah but over time you know it became about who who are my friends that I enjoy hanging around with jumping with yeah and then over time that started to transform into not just who do I enjoy being around but who do I feel like I am at my best as a jumper and who am I around who brings out the best decision making in me who can I have in my group who’s most likely to say the thing that breaks the group think and who’s most likely to challenge me and challenge me in a way that I can receive yeah yeah and who can I challenge and will receive it so that we can have the shared learning and not me have to shut my mouth to be accepted in a group when there’s something that I see that’s dangerous so everything you just said is is exactly the things that you’re looking for when you’re thinking about creating your own support system and whatever you’re doing whether it’s a support system in marriages whether it’s a support system in a business whether it’s support system in leadership whether it’s a support system in art it’s amazing how you just track each of the each of the points that are incredibly important and one of the things that’s there that is hidden for a lot of people is what you said happens naturally in sports which is you’re accountable to each other so imagine a sports team that everybody felt accountable for their performance to the team or everybody felt accountable to the performance to the coach you know the one that feels accountable to the team is going to do a lot better and yet in business for instance often times what is supposed to be our support system is just other employees and we all feel accountable to the coach right we’re just feel accountable to the boss yeah often times so it’s this amazing thing when the group dynamic is deeply empowered and that support system feels deeply empowered everybody’s responsible for themselves and yet you know that you’re there for each other the way it is in a sports team that’s when you have like an amazing support network and when it becomes that it’s about one person then the support system goes away completely it becomes more of a hierarchy or it’s more of a accountability process but the support feeling of it really goes away and so if you look at the great support networks whether they are like YPO which is Young Presidents organization or like the great art communities that spawned Goan and uh van go you look at those Comm unities it is a community of people being accountable to themselves but being supportive of one another and it’s such a critical piece to creating a great support system yeah yeah and something that’s interesting about that is that everybody listening probably has some form of support system in existence right now right and you can have implicitly the support system that’s there for you or you can explicitly with intention curate and build and create navigate a support system yeah that’s and and so I’m curious to talk about how can somebody assess the support systems that are available in their world right now yeah the most important thing that I’m aware of is being conscious of the purpose mhm of the support system so is this support system all designed to help us have great careers or is this support system designed to help us all become great parents so in my world when ter and I wasn’t quite quite when we got first married but soon as we started having kids we joined a coup’s gathering that coup’s Gathering has been going on for 18 and a half 19 years now and we made every quarter or something but all of our intention is like how do we talk about being couples and talk about being parents in a way that supports each other being couples and parents needing that that purpose that sense of purpose is the first thing to be conscious about it right now most people have their support network but they don’t have a shared sense of purpose so for instance we’re creating this thing called the council which is all about leaders wanting to be great leaders but not just I want to be a great leader it’s I want to be a leader in a way that helps me transform helps me on my journey of self-development I want to be a leader in a way that empowers other people I want to be a leader that helps people be more human not less Human by telling them to put half of their self in the door and knock bring it into work I want to be a leader that people feel like they’re becoming better people because they’re in a team that I’m leading that’s the purpose of that group if you I don’t care if Elon Musk wanted to join that group unless he had that purpose he shouldn’t be in the group The Second Stage is really not just defining the purpose but making sure that is the filter for anybody who comes into the group yeah which is an interesting question to look at where where are their support systems in your life what is the implied purpose yeah you know in in jumping there were there were groups that I was with and the the implied purpose of the group was to explore to the farthest edges of the world and do the weirdest things there were other groups where the implied purpose was to get well known and be seen as the the most skilled and maybe get famous and there are others who the implied purpose was how can we be there for each other right and how can we use this this sport as a vehicle for getting into deeper relationship with one another and ourselves and the world and and cultivate love yeah that’s exactly that’s so beautifully expressed because that brought into Consciousness can change everything about your life but right now I like if I think about the support systems I’m in I have one for being a couple being a parent and I have one for for this kind of business where there’s 21 of us who come together they’re all content creators of some sort do courses of some sort where we’re vulnerable about our businesses in that one everybody wants to be of service to humanity nobody is involved in that that isn’t wanting to make people’s lives better a support system that’s all about Community a practice which is something that we do in our business all the time and and what’s amazing is a whole bunch of things that you don’t think would be true about them are true about them meaning they work better if people at different stages of development mhm somebody who’s earlier in the journey someone who’s later in the journey we learn better when that’s the case than if it’s all super experts I’ve tried to create communities of practice full of a whole bunch of people who are Awakening teachers it was a shit show so it just it seems to work better when there’s this diversity diversity and mindset like when we’re creating a community of practice even in a single course like the inperson groundbreakers that we do it’s do we have uh masculine energy feminine energy do we have emotional processors intellectual processors do we have people who understand their energetic systems do we have people who are more auditory more visual Diversified backgrounds we’re looking for the that kind of diversification because you see things differently you learn different things from each other you have different perspectives on the journey and that’s actually what’s useful as long as everybody treats each other like peers right it can’t be I’m better than you and there’s like one person who’s leading that support system there might be some leadership don’t get me wrong or the leadership is best if it changes hands oh that oh I’m taking this on and they lead for a while I’m taking this on and they lead for a while but it’s it that hierarchy being gone very effective so some that’s really interesting here is we’re we’ve talked about having like a unified purpose yeah but also having maximum diversity yes and that’s fascinating to me cuz when I started skydiving my very first coach gave me a really good advice he was like if you want to get really good at jumping find the best skydivers that you can and jump with them all the time that’s that’s it yeah but also that might not get me really good at dealing with the grief of a friend’s death right and there there might be a lot of overlap there right but so if I if I’m looking at where I want to go in life yeah I can I can build a support system around a particular purpose but where I want to go in life is ultimately in the direction of some form of rounded human individual rounded life right right and so I want to build a support system that has people who represent and and can reflect and mirror different aspects of myself that I want to develop and challenge me in those different ways yeah so what’s really interesting in about that is let’s say you were completely dedicated to BEC the best sky diver and so that was the support system was just great skydivers and you had nobody in there who knew how to grieve nobody who’ handled death well and occasionally in your sport people died I mean I remember when I met you and you were mourning like this long list of people who had died well if you’re not mourning the death of those people you it’s going to be really hard to become the best you’re going to have all sorts of psychological blocks when you get up on that thing there’s all sorts of fears unknown and known that are messing with your psyche when you’re about to take your jump so it’s really interesting you have the purpose but then within that you really want that diversification because that diversification of perspective is what’s going to catch all the things that you don’t see yeah and the other thing that you said which I think is just so critical is that challenge can you challenge and be challenged in a way that you take it not personally in that support group and and and is there explicit understanding of when challenge is welcome and when it is not so for instance I was in a men’s group for 15E support group and we just didn’t give advice unless asked for if asked for boom you would get it otherwise you did not get it you know I assume it was somewhat explicit also when you’re jumping off of a tower it’s like yeah it’s explicit if you some don’t feel safe you say it at least in the group you were involved in you don’t say something to somebody right as they’re about to jump like oh be careful sometimes you do that just to mess with them watch out for your Bridal sometimes an appropriate amount of needling is actually a really good uh aspect of a support group anybody who’s been taught by me knows that I agree with that yeah so it so that kind of expli how are we giving feedback and that agreement whether it’s implicit or explicit but that it’s known I think is really important for any kind of support group yeah and I can imagine a pitfall can occur especially when you don’t have the explicit curation of a support group yes that you can have a support group that’s an echo chamber you know you might have a business support group and no one in there is going to challenge you on your like balance of the the the time you’re energy you’re spending with your family for example maybe that’s what’s not happening in your support group and so you have a support group that is challenging you that is reflecting and mirroring and you’re growing a lot but you’re growing in a narrow Direction yeah and you’re there’s something that you’re missing yeah and so that might not mean that that entire support group needs to change let’s say you have a a council of leaders yeah but you might also have like you said a men’s group I have a men’s group you might have a couple’s group you can have more than one support group each of them having a purpose that is important in your life yeah it it interesting you say that so last night I was hanging out with a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and they had just been accepted to this very prestigious entrepreneur hacking house thing and they got money and they were all doing their thing and the whole setup was creating quite a bit of anxiety in all of them and it was making them very inefficient which is often something that you see in Venture capitals like a lot of anxiety to make the deadline and to rush and to get it done quickly which can be productive and can be very counterproductive they were all there supporting each other on many many things supporting each other on the tech supporting each other on leadership but they were not supporting each other on dealing with the anxiety and it was amazing because as soon as it got brought off you just saw everybody and and and as soon as they got that support it was like water on a dry sponge they was like who this is what I need to look up and believe this false sense of urgency yeah and and so it’s it’s a very interesting thing to have different communities of support so that you can get a a well-rounded perspective in your own life it’s not just one thing so you mentioned how important it is that the people in your support group are peers yeah and obviously that’s not always the case some people have more experience than you in some aspects and others have less and there’s something important about being able to receive teachings give teachings share your experience see someone go through what you’re about to go through shortly before you go through it yeah and along the lines of find the best person that you could skydive with and skydive with them yeah building a support group can become a form of social climbing like I want to find who’s going to be the famous artists in Florence in the enlightenment era and become friends with them and that’s a strategy that works I’ve used it and also there’s a way that that can create a sense of hierarchy and so I’m curious how do you build a support system in your world without making it into a some sort of social climb or creating an implicit hierarchy where I’m only going to get support from people that I admire in certain ways yeah and find myself in in an imbalance we just realize how a support system works and you won’t do it meaning um so if you look at little kids hang out and one of them learn something the first thing they’re going to do is teach some other kid that thing so and by teaching them they integrate and they learn it better as a matter of fact everybody listening to this podcast has learned something and immediately wants to go teach somebody the thing that they just learned everybody has done it yeah so great you have a support system where you never get to teach anybody anything how’s that going to work for you right that doesn’t make any damn sense right and so that’s one perspective on it the other perspective on it is that I did this thing called l12 which was about different um leaders getting together so there was CEOs of very young companies there was VPS of very big companies there were CEOs of very big companies all in this group of 12 people and the young CEO had perspective that the old CEO of the bigger company needed the vice president of a massive Fortune 100 company had perspective that was really useful for the young CEO the common purpose is important but the span of experience is what really is useful yeah and the span of role in that case too exactly yeah yeah yeah imagine that in your in your like parenting and couples group there’s also a lot that comes out about like being Sons and Daughters of parents you know a lot of a lot of your own parent stuff comes out I’m sure correct and we also were oddly very Diversified as well just as far as um where we live what kind of Lifestyle we’re living what kind of sexual lifestyle we’re living and that was luck that was conscious but it’s been so useful to see oh they they raised their kid very different they had one kid we had two kids they had four kids you know they have an open relationship we have a closed relationship like what does that do this allows you to see what’s really important right they’ve been around for 25 years with an open relationship holy crap like that and they’re and they’re happily married yeah okay so what’s really important it just gives you that perspective yeah questions all the assumptions you see you see examples that are total counter examples to your own hypothesis and you’re like okay there’s definitely something that I’ve been missing yeah in my view exactly yeah yeah and it it allows you to really focus on the the key leverage points of of what’s working I remember this moment um I was teaching one of my first courses and and we were doing anger release and I was just having a hard time with this very stuck angry like angry but very stuck in their anger and I was just failing and this person who had just leared it from me walked over and helped them get to their anger in like 10 seconds I was like what the like I just taught you and and and you’re teaching them better than I can teach them and and it’s something I learned is oftentimes the best teacher is a person who’s just gone through it mhm I had gone through something very similar but it was whatever it was 10 15 years before that so I it wasn’t fresh in my system I hadn’t just made the mistake I hadn’t just overcome something and so that’s also just a really really useful thing about having diversification and and not have it be a hierarchy and that’s the thing is if you are social climbing you’re really not getting the support system that is most useful for you yeah yeah there’s something resonant with a concept of like a multi-generational family living together yeah where you have people who have been there people who are going to be there people who are in the midst of it and on on different levels in different ways yeah exactly and there’s also just a particular reward meaning I think it was Eric Ericson he was a learned from Freud and he talks about how when somebody hits about 50 or 60 one of the things that they do for fulfillment is to give back and so there’s something very very useful it’s like your legacy or it’s your that mentorship is an incredibly useful thing for your own sense of fulfillment and you’re not going to get it if there’s nobody in the group yeah that allows that so I want to get a little bit concrete on how how somebody who’s listening right now can build their support system and one one critical piece is how how do you approach somebody how do you take something that is implicit in your world like I have this support from these people and I’ve noticed that I’m missing this what maybe this person in my life might enter this support system what are what are some ways that you might approach such a person or structure that support in a way that is not creating a hierarchy or a sense of obligation yeah but is an invitation yeah I mean there’s the direct way and there’s the indirect way like right now my my support system in being a just being a man is hiking with this group of guys every Friday or so we do this night hike and that one is do we like you do you have the right Consciousness like it and then the implied thing is that we’re going to laugh and and and express our truth on the on this hike like it’s going to be ridiculous and fun and and that all that requires is hey you want to hike with us and then if it’s somebody that ends up fitting and great but if it’s something like a business if it’s something like creating your own personal board of directors if it’s something that is uh a Community Practice a sonha if you will then I think it’s really important to be explicit directly with what you want I want a group of people who can support each other like this I want a group of people who can be there for each other and challenge each other but do it with an open heart I want people who know how to get back to unconditional love and and they know that that’s their responsibility they’re not holding each other responsible for their capacity to be in unconditional love I want people who who know that leadership is a way that they can work on themselves that leadership is something that is a gift to the world and a gift to yourself and it doesn’t require you to burn out so some some sort of vision of what it is that you want I think is really critical to be very explicit about it’s going to feel awkward that’s because you’re not completely okay with it yet right so the more you’re okay with it the easier it is to say it the easier it is to say it the more likely you’re going to find the people who want you to who want to join you in that and so I think that’s a really important thing and then the next important thing is to have a really clear set of rules or boundaries or ways of engaging so that everybody can teach everybody can learn everybody can feel supported it doesn’t feel like resentment is building there’s givers and takers you that whole thing that it’s a very flat experience instead of a hierarchical experience all those things are critical and just having the agreements of how you interact with each other yeah something that’s really interesting you there’s a little snippet you said like you might not be okay with it yet so I’m curious how like what is what is the scary thing what are the things that get in the way of us allowing a support system to be there for us or seeing what’s available to us yeah and and how can we bring those to the surface and work through those so that we can actually welcome a support system before we even and create it one of the scariest things is you’re going to be seen if you’re really going to get support system you’re going to be seen and we might want that on one level but it scares us on another level because the way we judge oursel is going to be seen the way that we criticize ourselves is going to be seen so the way that we we have shortcomings it’s all going to be seen so that’s one of the things that can be really scary about it the other thing that can be scary about it is the identity dissolves in groups in a way that you might identify as a person who wants to become a great artist but it’s very hard to shift that identity to the one who is the great artist it’s might be very easy to have the identity of I don’t really care that much and be scary to get to the identity of no I really I really care I want to be one of the best whatever recording artists in the world so that change of perspective and and the way that people challenge you to change that perspective in a support group can be incredibly scary yeah and then the accountability can also be scary right because I’m the person who wants to be this but I’m actually the person who criticizes myself for not getting there now I’m in a support group and it’s everyone’s like hey no we get there this is what we do we don’t we don’t make excuses or whatever that is and so that it can all of that can be incredibly challenging yeah another one that occurs to me now is the the challenge of letting go of hierarchy like if we’re used to putting somebody on a pedestal or putting somebody else below us and it’s going to be really hard for us to really create a support structure yeah because those relationships are going to be some form of transactional or some form of one-sided or a particular shape that won’t really allow for the full breadth of a a peer support relationship yeah also power struggles will ensue and a whole bunch of other things which is why the Agreements are so important so if you don’t have a series of principles or agreements of this is how we interact in the support group what happens is that somebody will feel uncomfortable because there who the heck in charge and then somebody will try to be in charge and that won’t work so if you have these are our agreements and then you don’t have to worry about who’s in charge anymore and so yeah there’s a that there’s that part of it also that’s really critical in my mind anyways the last thing to say about it is that I guarantee you I wouldn’t be where I am in my life without my support systems right so I you might be dead without yours yeah yeah definitely right um I know that like it was the men’s group and the tussle that happened in the men’s group and it was it’s that coup’s group that I’m still a part of and it’s the community of practice that allowed me to have the life that I had that allowed this like level of happiness that I get to exist in and then there’s something about that which like there’s a humility and a gratitude which is nice but what’s even nicer about it is to realize that like it’s not about you you know like you’re part of something that’s greater and it’s a gift and it’s a blessing and and rather than I have done this thing right so it’s kind of an interesting juxtaposition of I’m going to create my support group only for my support group to create me and that second part there’s a relief because what I noticed most people are doing in the world and what I used to do is like what do I have to do to fix it what do I by i i i i i and then when there’s this support group and you look up and you’re still thinking I I I I but you’re looking around and you go yeah except it never would have happened without them and there’s some sort of ease and oh it’s like it’s not all dependent on me that there’s a gift to this to me that’s the biggest blessing yeah in the way that we are a product of our environment you know it’s it’s been said that you become the some something like the average of the five people you’re closest to yeah and there’s something self-compassionate in that recognition where whatever it is that I could have an ego about about myself is actually a product of my environment as much as it is a product of any intention myself and so when I’m deciding where I want to go in life when I’m considering who I’m who I want to be or what qualities I want to explore in myself I can try to create those qualities fromin me and fight the world until I’m like sharpened that skill or I can just create the environment that will naturally bring that aspect further into the light for me so I have this great experiment that I run with people that exactly touches on this so I’ll do it with the whole audience right now so close your eyes for a minute and imagine you’re on an island and you’re stuck on that island you got all the food everything you need to be comfortable but you don’t get to leave that island and on this island are 12 Saints and these 12 Saints they’re fully human but they all just know how to unconditionally love you and Unconditionally Love themselves they have boundaries they they say what they want Etc but there’s just that unconditional love 10 years later who are you after living there right as soon as you see that you’re like oh I would I would be like that I would be like them and that it tells you how important it is this community of practice yeah I thought you were going to run me through the Lord of the Flies miss the opportunity awesome BR thank you thanks for a great podcast yeah thanks Joe yeah thanks everybody