Hi Arcadians -

Your plan is flawed.

I say that with love and experience.

Because if you’re anything like me, your best-intentioned plans are probably the very thing holding you back.

High achievers are great at this. We plan, we run the numbers, we analyze the trajectory, we play devil’s advocate, and we ask everyone and their mom’s opinion before we even take the first step.

And then, we’ve already failed. Not because the idea wasn’t good, but because we never actually started.

I’ve gotten a little better at this over time. But like most things, it’s still a practice.

Two years ago, Jason and I were still talking about starting a podcast. It was late one night after the kids went to bed. I had already showered and was in my bathrobe when I finally said, “If we’re going to do this, we just have to do it.”

So we went upstairs, turned on the mic, and literally hummed what would become the intro to the Friends with Benefits podcast.

We laughed so hard. You can even hear some of it in the recording. It was dumb. It’s still dumb. Somehow Jason had these pics stored on his phone:

And somehow, it stuck.

Since then, people have come up to us at conferences humming it back or sent messages saying “Best intro ever.” And while it makes me laugh every time, this isn’t a story about theme music.

It’s a story about getting started.

When we hit record that night, I had no idea how to run a podcast. I had no idea how to interview people. We had no audience, no strategy, no clear path forward.

But we had friends, and they had benefits.

NOT THAT KIND, OKAY?!

The kind of benefits worth sharing. Stories about what people have learned and what they are still learning. The programs they have built from scratch and the lessons that came from failure. Leaders growing in real time, not pretending to have it all figured out. People trying to be great, not just at work but in life too.

So we started.

And somehow, nearly 10,000 of you have joined us along the way.

Today, we’re launching Season 3.

It’s more of what you’ve loved and a little bit of a stretch. This season is about how leaders are finding their Arcadia.

How they are finding harmony between life and work.
How they are leading themselves, their communities, their families, and their teams.
How they are choosing to raise their own bar of average.

The conversations are honest, sometimes messy, sometimes funny and always worth it.

Because life isn’t about perfect plans. It’s about the courage to begin.

If you’ve been with us since the bathrobe days or are just finding your way here, thank you for being part of it.

Be great. Be Arcadia.

Sam

Season 3 of the Friends with Benefits podcast is live. You can listen and subscribe here: Apple, Spotify, YouTube

P.S. Huge thanks to PartnerStack, our first-ever podcast sponsor, for building the kind of platform that doesn’t just track partners but actually helps you grow with them. Seriously, they’re changing the game. Their new AI features are making doing more with less actually possible.