H2B2 State of the Year Q1, 2025

Hey, it’s Nathan.

Today I’ll be talking about:

How did Q1 go?
Quarterly Themes, What and Why
Introducing the H2B2 Tree

I write these yearly and quarterly updates for a bunch of reasons, but namely as the “First in Command” of How to be Second (still feels weird) I’m holding myself accountable in public to those investing themselves into what H2B2 is doing, and to the Second community overall.

Cause part of what is good for Seconds is knowing the plan.

There are a lot of places now to get involved with How to be Second, and if after you read this you’re inspired to, reach out and we’ll get you plugged in to the right place with the right person.

The State of the year and Quarterly updates are here:

HOW DID Q1 OF 2025 GO?

Frankly it’s hard to imagine it going much better.

In January I declared my hope for finding “Heads of” this year for every major area of How to be Second, which would mean about 22 Roles filled. That’s an incredible ask, ESPECIALLY considering we’re still figuring out how best to monetize and don’t have ‘salaries’ for any of them yet. (Literally the first accountability of a “Head of” is “Make the 1 year plan for your area, must include how to get you paid.”

Well, we now have 8 of those roles filled by people who are NOT Nathan, and 1 year and quarterly plans for EACH of those areas.. (…HOW? A Miracle…. Or just, Secondness, I guess.)

We’re building partnerships. We’ve identified 20 organizations to make “official” partners and we’re in active conversations with 9 of them.

We’re building internship pathways. We’re developing a plan for how to structure that and we’ve had 5 leaders, each representing a different business, say “Yes, I’ll discuss that with you.”

We’re building a professional development portal, that we expect will be the first actual thing to ‘subscribe’ to, and there will be real, actual content in there, and it will host our Mastermind groups, and courses, and workshop materials, and other stuff we don’t even have totally baked yet.

We’re building towards the next finance workshops, with the next one in June 2025, with more time for hands-on, tactical experience.

We’re getting more inbound opportunities for Second in Commands, whether that means working directly with us and Matchmaking or just being told first about open roles.

We’re building that assessment we keep talking about.
But for real, the spreadsheet draft of the assessment is alive)
We’re improving the Second’s Nature experience.
We sent the first survey.
We moved the Meetup time.
We started the Youtube channel.
We came up with the H2B2 Tree.

… and yeah, also, of course, there are things that I wish went well. I said it was HARD to imagine going better, but I mean, I been flexin’ my imaginin’ muscles pretty intensely the last couple years. I’ve ALWAYS been someone who focused on “the gap”. I’m learning to focus on “the gain.”

Is there a gap? Yeah, we have ~320 million Seconds to take care of, and we’re not there yet.

And, we made some incredible gains – and that’s what matters.

Quarterly Themes, What and Why

We have 4 quarterly themes for How to be Second:

The Second in Command Role
Secondness, the identity in many roles
Personality &/Vs Identity
Costs of owning our value

This quarter, the theme is “Secondness, the identity in many roles.”

I’ve been saying that a lot for the last couple emails, since the meetup in April is with Chris Blaisdell, who will be talking about her own identity of Secondness, and how that’s played out in the MANY roles, both personally and professionally, that she’s held (and holds) in her life.

And the question has come up a few times:

Why do we have quarterly themes, and how did we decide on these?

The original why is pretty simplistic, as you might imagine. Originally it was to answer a question. The question at the time was, “How do we do the writing and meetup, more playfully?”

The “have a calendar and spreadsheet” answer was so glaringly obvious, and felt so simplistic, that I actually stopped and just waited for a while after this question. I’ve actually developed a tendency of moving fast, then slow, then fast. Fast to talk about something, slow to consider the inputs, and then fast to act once it’s decided.

We quickly arrived at the idea of a calendar, and I quickly had a bunch of conversations around topics that would be good for Seconds. There were SO MANY topics that it was overwhelming, honestly.

Then I slowed down, and thought about a lot of things. I let the idea sink in. For months.

There were so many potential things we COULD do, but what was it that Seconds… need?

What was “Good for Seconds”?

How do we keep the conversation relevant in 2050 for people who have spent 25 years with the word “Second” as an identity, when they’re in the room together with people who are weeks into finding this for themselves? What are the pressures we’re going to face again, and again, and again, every year, for our whole lives? Somehow always relevant?

As Humans, and then uniquely, as Seconds?

Inspired by the seasons, by religious teachings, by the cycles of my own body and what we observe in the natural world, of traveling the circle through spring to winter, day to night, seed to tree, we tried to make a calendar that honored that set of recurring pressures – as humans, and as Seconds.

So, why THESE themes?

Q1 theme: The role of the second in command.

As humans, we face the every day need to be valuable in a global marketplace; We must eat, we must help others eat. Uniquely for Seconds, that means we’re going to be accidentally ending up in, or brushing against, the “second in command” role, CONSTANTLY, from childhood to death.

Let’s face that head on.

Q2 theme: Secondness, the identity in many roles.

As humans, we struggle to define and understand and communicate ourselves – wanting both to be special, and also part of a group and not alone. Most Humans struggle with their “being” outside their “doing.” Aka, their work defines them. Uniquely for Seconds, EVERYONE struggles to define us, especially ourselves; there’s a strong chameleon element in us which we value, and also drives us mad in search of being able to communicate our value. And, we’re NOT our roles – those are jackets we can take off… and there seem to be parts of us we’re stuck with, that we can’t.

So, let’s face that head on.

Q3 theme: Identity and/vs personality.

As Humans, we are complex. I’ve taken tests that say there are 16 personalities, 6 geniuses, 4 colors, 4 dimensions, 9 numbers, 5 strengths, wings, languages, energy, nurture, aptitudes, the list goes on and on and on. And, what if a BUNCH of those things are true, all at once?!? Uniquely for Seconds, we ALL seem to share an “immutable core”, as if no matter what personality and nurture and wtf else you layer on, we move to a particular rhythm that only we can hear, that we can ALL hear.

…so, let’s face that head on.

Q4 theme: The costs of owning our value.

As Humans, we all face choices, risk, and cost. Some real, many (most?) imagined, and a few severe. Owning your value means wildly different things to every person, and also there is a basic value in the human existence, the human life, the human hour, the human effort. Uniquely, as Seconds, we tend to be inspired by the ideas or needs of others and we’re absolutely incredible at it. And, we tend to forget ourselves in the pursuit of that. Owning our value may mean that we have to give up incredible promise and safety, to not support an unhealthy leader, or their unhealthy ideas. We often are the deciders of what becomes REAL in the world. A potentially horrifying burden, if faced.

… well…ugh…let’s face that. (with extra coffee)

And that makes a year, or, one cycle.

How to be Second will continue to move through these themes, again and again, because we think that’s how often they’re relevant, for people who are old hat at this, and for newcomers alike.

And don’t get me wrong – this wasn’t some lightning bolt to the head moment. I verified this through several conversations with a bunch of other Seconds.

Special thank you to Samantha, Chris, and Summer, for listening to me never stop talking about this stuff and helping choose them.

The H2B2 Tree

Why a Tree?

People are like Trees: Growing, always themselves, investing intensely in different parts of themselves in different seasons, always changing, and also never changing. And being a Second is like being a particular kind of tree.

How did we get here?

I once wrote about how Seconds are like Tomatoes.

The idea was straightforward enough: We are a whole thing on our own, even if the details of our identity can be confusing to explain (a tomato is a fruit?!?) And, we’re often found valuable in collaboration; we seem to level up everything we’re part of. Sure, a tomato by itself is good, but it becomes legendary in a salsa, in a sauce.

This metaphor is something that stuck with me and I kept using, because I kept finding MORE in the metaphor the longer I stuck with it. The ideas of cycles, of being similar at the core but often looking different on the outside, of growing over time and having shared experiences, and of being able to seem healthy above ground but withering without connected roots…

Navigating seamlessly between “Plants” and “People” didn’t even strike me as odd. Perhaps that’s my faith background. What DID strike me as odd was not making the connection before. So, a tree.

While that was happening, we were also talking a lot about the “Second’s Journey”, which is all of the experiences that we as Seconds seem to have, AND discussing H2B2 as an Organization that needed developed with structure.

WHO a Second is, and the lives that we live in our particular way, is what guides WHAT MUST BE for H2B2; how the org is shaped and what “Stuff” we need to make available through connection or creation. A traditional hierarchy is helpful in managing what work needs done and who does that work, but not what the organization must focus on providing overall… and again, I returned to the tree.

Someone asked me not long ago “what if someone leaves your “Second” community and joins our community? And I laughed and said “that’s not how being a Second works.” Being a Second is something we’re stuck with and interacts with everything we do. It’s not something you can leave, in the same way that a tree that becomes a table never stops being wood. It was(is) that way, the whole time.

And, , it’s also not something that is necessarily in our minds all the time or the thing we’re focused on right then.

The idea behind H2B2 is that maybe you’re not even opening the weekly email for a year or two… and then suddenly, that part of you wakes up, and you need to touch base with other Seconds, or find something meaningful to do work in, or need help… and there we are, still growing and supporting Seconds.

Like a tree.

Finding a Job as a Second

At any point, you may find yourself in need of new work. If you do, here are some tactical resources to get you accelerated in doing that.