Blog · Company You Keep
Surround yourself with the right people at work
"You are the average of the five people around you," Jim Rohn used to say. If that's even partly true, the practical consequence is that your calendar is a strategic decision — and almost no one treats it as one.
Published 26 May 2022 · revised 16 August 2026
What happens
When you sit down with the right people
On the work
Put a group of entrepreneurs together and they'll end up talking about work, the market, clients. It's inevitable: anyone who has chosen to work for themselves loves what they do and talks about it with passion.
Talking through your own challenges brings into focus what you're spending, and reveals that in some cases the costs can be shared.
On the mind
More minds thinking together produce more than the same minds thinking apart. And every meeting always starts with an account of what went well: positive emotions are a source of energy not to be underestimated.
Every day someone asks you "how are you" without actually wanting to know. A table where someone asks it for real is rare, and it's worth something.
Why it works
You're each lacking in different places
If two people sit down at the same table by choice, they have a shared goal: to improve. But it's almost impossible for them to be at the same level on the same things.
You need a hand with how to invest; the other person is excellent at that and needs to manage their time better, which is something you're good at. Each of you takes home something you would have paid for elsewhere.
There is a condition, though
Complementarity opens up the possibility, it doesn't guarantee it. It becomes real collaboration only if there's a shared foundation of values and respect underneath.
Without it, the fit stays a functional exchange: useful as long as it's convenient, and over the moment it stops being convenient.
One word at a time
That condition is a law, and it's the Third
The statement
Generative connections are born more often from a difference that completes than from a similarity that adds up. But complementarity opens up the possibility and doesn't guarantee it: it becomes genuine collaboration only when it meets a shared foundation of values, respect and integrity. It's the Third Law, the Law of Completion.
It's exactly this article's reasoning, with the caveat the article didn't make.
Who chooses the table
In 2022 the answer was: choose your company well. True, and hard work, because it requires already knowing the right people.
Today there's an alternative: in the Connector Network you don't pay an entry fee — you share your own profile, and the table is put together by the calculation, based on who completes whom. The two parties sit down only after both have said yes: it's a match.
Five people around you. The question is who chooses them.
The first step
Where your company stands, as a number
AIRA-SCAN© measures the relational capital your company already has: ten questions, three minutes, no registration. Your browser calculates the score and it shows immediately, with the areas where you lose the most points.
The extended report then arrives by email, and within one working day a person calls you: you look at the result together and assess whether the Stoic Analysis AIRA-DX© makes sense for your company. It is free and limited to twelve a week, so it is not owed to whoever does the check-up: it is decided by both of you.
Prefer just talking about it? The number is 0549 888808.