Success Circles: How Peers Propel You Forward
In this solo episode, the host makes a compelling case for one of the most undervalued assets in any professional's career: a strong peer group. While mentorship gets most of the attention, it's your peers — the people who are in the trenches alongside you — who challenge your thinking, push you to grow, and give you a space to work through your toughest decisions. Drawing from his own inner circle of trusted peers, the host breaks down exactly what makes a peer relationship real, why they become harder to find as you advance, and the specific qualities to look for — and watch out for — when building your own success circle.
Key Insights You'll Learn
· Peers and Mentors Are Both Essential — But Different: Mentors guide you from experience above. Peers walk beside you. Both are critical to long-term success, but the peer relationship offers something a mentor cannot: mutual accountability, equal exchange, and a space where nobody has positional power over the other.
· Finding Real Peers Gets Harder as You Advance: The more senior you become, the smaller the pool of people who can truly meet you where you are. This is one of the most significant — and least talked about — challenges of career growth. Start building your peer network now.
· A True Peer Relationship Is Never One-Sided: Both parties must contribute. If one person is always leaning on the other, always extracting value without reciprocating, it's not a peer relationship — it's a drain. Equal investment over time is non-negotiable.
· Eliminate Ulterior Motives Immediately: Real peer relationships have no hidden agendas. The moment someone wants to recruit you, use you for access, or leverage the relationship for personal gain, the dynamic is corrupted. Recognizing this early saves years of misplaced trust.
· Power Imbalance Kills the Relationship: If one person holds influence, authority, or leverage over the other, genuine conversation becomes impossible. True peers must be able to speak freely, share ideas openly, and trust that nothing will be used against them.
· Mutual Respect Is the Foundation — Not Optional: There must be warmth, not friction, between real peers. Mocking, condescension, or subtle disrespect — even in small doses — erodes the relationship. Respect is the minimum requirement, not a bonus.
· Look for Curiosity, Not Just Expertise: The best peer relationships aren't built on who knows the most — they're built on who is actively engaged with the world. A curious peer who researches, asks questions, and challenges their own conclusions is worth more than an expert who stopped learning.
· Safe to Be Wrong — That's Where Trust Lives: Real peers let you make mistakes. They don't hold past statements over you or weaponize what you said in a vulnerable moment. The ability to think out loud, float wild ideas, and work through messy thoughts without judgment is what makes the relationship transformational.
· Competitive With the World, Not With Each Other: Great peers want to win — but they want you to win too. Even when you're going after the same opportunity, a true peer competes hard and fairly, never sabotages, and celebrates your success as genuinely as their own.
· When You Find the Right Peer — Protect It: Real peer alignment is rare. Not every person you meet will mesh with you across every area of life and work. But when you find someone who does — who energizes you, challenges you, and has your back — that is golden. Invest in it.
You will spend much of your career searching for true peers — and that search is worth every effort. When you find the right people, everything accelerates: your thinking sharpens, your confidence grows, and the path forward becomes clearer. Keep searching. Keep showing up. Your success circle is out there.
🌐 Official Podcast Title
Success Circles: How Peers Propel You Forward
TRANSCRIPTION
Episode: Success Circles – How Peers Propel You Forward
Podcast: Art of Consulting Podcast (AOCP)
Duration: ~21 minutes
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[00:00 - 01:00]
Today I want to talk about the difference between peers and mentors. We've talked about mentors in a previous episode — mentorship is a really critical part of being successful in the consulting world, and honestly in any endeavor. Having some sort of mentor, somebody who has been down the road before you, who has a bit more experience or wisdom in an area that you can leverage — that's really important. But the other critical part of being successful is having a strong peer group. When we talk about a strong peer group — peers you can rely on — this might be one of the biggest challenges you'll face for the rest of your career. I'm not exaggerating. As we advance in our careers, finding a strong set of peers we can meet with, rely on, and share ideas with becomes harder and harder.
[01:00 - 02:00]
I know for myself — I've got a small, close group of peers I rely on. For those I specifically lean on around work and projects, there are three that I really rely on. I can talk to them, share ideas, and go back and forth. We've worked on projects together, we bounce ideas off each other across many different areas — not just consulting, but other observations and critiques we're noticing. One is a close friend I call with every Sunday morning — a standing call where we get together and talk about all sorts of topics: finance, politics, religion, whatever's on our minds. I usually leave those calls with two or three pages of notes of different things I need to research and investigate.
[02:00 - 03:00]
Another peer is someone I talk to multiple times a week — really anything goes, anything that comes to mind. What I find is that having people in my life that I can call and bounce ideas off of is really critical. Knowing that you have a group of people you can go to and throw ideas at is invaluable. Now — there are some specific characteristics and common threads in a real peer relationship. The first one: it cannot be a one-sided relationship. That's number one. It cannot be one-sided — where one party is always going to the other to get information, share information, or dominate the conversation. It has to be equal.
[03:00 - 04:00]
Now, it may not be perfectly equal at a particular point in time or in a particular conversation. There will be periods when someone is going through a more difficult situation in their life and they lean on the other person more heavily. That's okay. But over time, as things settle down, it should become more equal again. What it cannot be is consistently one-sided. Number two: there can be no ulterior motives. There should be no situation where one person loves being around the other purely because they want to recruit them or hire them into their company. One person might always be interested in what the other is doing, but in an impersonal, self-serving way.
[04:00 - 05:00]
It could be that someone wants something from the other individual — a job, a referral, or they feel obligated because the other person is in a position of strength or influence. That's not a peer relationship. It really needs to be equal. There should be no meaningful power imbalance — where one person's higher rank or influence becomes a motivator within the relationship. If it is, it's not a peer relationship and it will fall apart. Because what we want in a peer relationship is for two individuals to be able to speak freely, share ideas, and share things without that information coming back to be used against them. If there is some sort of ulterior motive, that information likely will be used against them.
[05:00 - 06:00]
So you want to eliminate that risk entirely. Respect is another really important part of all peer relationships. There has to be mutual respect between the two individuals. There cannot be friction — it has to be warm between them. And I will tell you: you will search for good peers for the rest of your life. You will think you've found one, and then you'll realize, as time goes on, that they're selling you something — or there's an agenda. After two or three months, or maybe a year down the road, you'll see that the relationship starts to feel more transactional than foundational. What you'll find is that good peer relationships also don't discriminate on gender, age, or background.
[06:00 - 07:00]
Gender doesn't matter. Age doesn't matter. Race doesn't matter. Religion doesn't matter. Those things really don't matter in a peer relationship. It really comes down to: do these two individuals respect each other? And are they there for each other, to support each other through what each other needs? That's essentially what it is. There are some other characteristics I look for. One is awareness — awareness of the world around them. Now, there's no way anyone can know everything going on everywhere. But when you're trying to make sense of the world, bouncing ideas, putting observations on the table — you want someone who is curious and actively engaged with what's happening around them.
[07:00 - 08:00]
At a basic level as a human being, and in their community, and at a macro level — what's going on around the world, the country, the state or province you live in, the geopolitical landscape. A really good peer will be someone who takes the time to observe, search, draw conclusions, and try to make sense of what's happening. They're not always right, but they take the time to do it. Curiosity is what I'm searching for in a peer. Not that they know everything — just that they're curious enough to go and investigate. They're interested in ideas that are different from what they were taught or what they've concluded on their own. Getting curious across different areas is really critical.
[08:00 - 09:00]
Now, of course, the time factor matters too. If the person only connects with you once every nine months, they're probably not going to function as a true peer — you can't bounce a lot of ideas off of someone you speak with once every nine months. That doesn't mean you should cut them out of your life. There are friends I haven't spoken to in years who I deeply respect — and I know I can call them up at any moment, ask them questions, or bounce an idea off them. I value those relationships. But here, when I'm talking about peers, I mean someone who you spend consistent time with, who you can bounce ideas off regularly.
[09:00 - 10:00]
You need to be pushing your time with them — and again, all of this falls apart if it becomes one-sided. You have to put in the effort too. Now, sometimes the timing just isn't right. If someone is going through a very difficult time in their life, they're preoccupied, and it's hard to have a real peer-level conversation. That doesn't mean the relationship is gone — it means you support them in other ways, and you circle back to a deeper peer dynamic when the timing is better. If you're looking for a peer you can have real, substantive conversations on multiple topics, you need someone who has put effort into themselves too.
[10:00 - 11:00]
They need to look at you as a whole person — not just as a consultant, a tech person, a finance person. They see you as a whole individual. That's what makes it work: you can have conversations around really difficult topics, and they continue to respect you and continue to share information with you. Even if you say something that's a little off the rails — a crazy idea — they can still respect you and engage with it. But it's someone who genuinely sees you as a whole person and is willing to share ideas with you. That's what you're looking for in a true peer.
[11:00 - 12:00]
One more thing I look for: they let you make mistakes. They're not the kind of person who takes what you said three months ago and throws it back in your face. They let you run through ideas and topics and work things out without holding those moments against you. This is really important because that's where the trust and respect really lives. If someone is always going to bring up something from your past and put it in your face, that's not a real peer relationship — it's not going to have value or build the kind of support and camaraderie you need. You want to be able to say things, think things out loud, possibly say things you might regret, in an open space without the fear of those things being used against you.
[12:00 - 13:00]
Now — even within a peer relationship, you still want to be respectful. You can absolutely throw out a really wild idea and say, "Hey, I'm going to throw something out here that's really out there — let's work with it and see what it sounds like." That's different from just going completely off the rails. Using exploration and creativity to work through a problem makes sense. But if someone just goes completely willy-nilly with no structure or thought, it's disrespecting the other person's time and their thought process. So we want to be open to making mistakes — but make respectful, thoughtful mistakes.
[13:00 - 14:00]
The last thing I look for is this: the person I'm in a peer relationship with should be competitive — but not competitive with me. That doesn't mean we can't be in the same space or going for the same opportunities. It means that when we are, they are not going to try to beat me down so that they can win and I can lose. They must be competitive in life because I am too — I want someone who wants to win, who has that drive. But I've learned over many years that winning isn't everything. We're more likely to lose than win in most cases, and the real winning comes from doing the work, putting in the effort, and working through the process. The results take care of themselves.
[14:00 - 15:00]
I like when I win. I like when I do well. But I don't want a peer who is comfortable with losing or accepting less — that's not acceptable either. And I also don't want competition to come between us when we're supporting each other. There are situations where you and your peer might be going after the same consulting role. In that case, I want to put my best foot forward, understand that the result is largely outside my control, and do everything I possibly can — and I expect them to do the same. I've played sports against really close friends.
[15:00 - 16:00]
I've played baseball and gone up against pitchers who were my friends. And I would go up against them trying to score, because I would never want to find out later that they went easy on me. And I would be insulted by that. When we played, we held nothing back. We went hard at each other, and we respected each other for it. When the game was over, we went out together. But during the competition, we competed — we wanted the other person to go just as hard at us as we went at them. That's respect.
[16:00 - 17:00]
So when those situations happen in our professional lives — when you're operating in stark competition with your peer — you don't want someone who is jealous of you, or who is sabotaging you, or giving you false information so you fail. That's not a peer. When you find the right peer, you are genuinely happy when they succeed — as happy as when you succeed yourself. That's what you're looking for.
[17:00 - 18:00]
And I'll tell you again: you will spend much of the rest of your life searching for people who are true peers. You won't find them on every corner. You won't find them in every meeting. Especially in a professional sense — finding a peer who you truly mesh with, align with, and vibe with is rare. Be aware of it when it happens. Be aware of the ones who are just trying to take your time without adding value, and be aware of the ones that simply don't fit.
[18:00 - 21:20]
A peer who works with you — who you work with naturally — who your personality connects with and who relates to others the way you do — that's rare. So start looking. You're going to have to search. You may find someone you can have a relationship with in one particular area but not others. But when you find that person you truly mesh with — it is golden. It works on both sides. It's invigorating and energizing. So keep searching for that. Keep being you. Keep being awesome.
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