Victoria called me on a Tuesday. It was not a good Tuesday.
We had just lost a client we’d been nurturing for two years. Not a small client. A client that represented a good enough sized chunk of our revenue forecast for the year. She didn’t want advice. She didn’t want a strategy session. She wanted someone to tell her that she wasn’t an idiot, that the business wasn’t going to implode, and that she was allowed to be furious about it for at least the next twenty-four hours.
I let her go. All of it. The venting, the second-guessing, the “maybe we should have done this differently” spiral. I didn’t fix it. I didn’t pivot to solutions. I just stayed on the phone and let her feel the whole thing.
And then, about forty-five minutes in, I said: “Okay. You good? Because tomorrow we’re figuring out what’s next.”
She laughed. And then we got to work. (And the next month, we did the exact same thing, only I called her.)
That is what a Champion does.
This is the third in our series on building your Kitchen Cabinet, the handpicked, unofficial advisory network that sits behind every serious entrepreneur. We’ve talked about the Compensators, the seasoned pros who fill your knowledge gaps, and the Connectors, the human switchboards who open doors you didn’t know existed. But neither of those people can do what a Champion does, because a Champion’s job isn’t about industry expertise or network reach.
A Champion’s job is to keep you in the game when you want to walk off the field. (Or into the bar at 11:00 a.m.)
These are the ride-or-die people. The ones you call at 11 p.m. when the numbers look like a sad joke. The ones who remind you that you’re not an impostor, even when your inner voice is making a pretty compelling case that you are. They separate the real problems from the imaginary ones (because not everything is a crisis, even when it feels like one), and they deliver the pep talk that gets you back in the ring.
Our Champions begin and end with a few incredibly tight best friends who cannot help but support us in every possible way. They stem from high school relationships, they have seen us at our best, and worst, and they understand our particular brand of chaos. They keep us focused when we want to chase every shiny object. They cheer loudly. They are brutally honest when we need honest. And yes, we share cute Amazon dupes and funny cat memes often too.
Here’s what makes Champions different from every other person in your orbit: they have no financial stake in your decision. They’re not your investor. They’re not your accountant. They’re not your co-founder who stands to gain or lose based on what you choose. They are simply, stubbornly, unreservedly in your corner.
And that is exactly why you need them.
Now here’s where most entrepreneurs push back. “I have friends. I have family. I don’t need to formalize that into some kind of advisory structure.” And honestly? We get it. It feels a little strange to think of your best friend as a seat in your Cabinet. It can feel clinical. Transactional. Like you’re turning a real relationship into a business asset.
But here’s why it matters to make it intentional anyway: your Champions can only be as useful to you as the context you give them.
Think about it. Your best friend loves you unconditionally. She will show up at 11 p.m. with wine and an opinion. But if she has no real understanding of your business — your pricing model, your client mix, your growth strategy, your biggest competitive threat — then her pep talk, however heartfelt, is essentially cheerleading in the dark. She’s rooting for the team without knowing the score.
The difference between a Champion who helps you feel better and a Champion who helps you think better is education. Your job is to bring them in enough. Not all the way in; they’re not your board, and they don’t need a quarterly briefing deck. But enough that when you call them mid-spiral, they can ask you a question that actually reframes the problem. Enough that when they push back on your thinking, they’re pushing back on something real rather than a vague impression of what you do.
This doesn’t have to be formal. It can be as simple as keeping your Champions updated on the major wins, the pivots, the deals you’re chasing, the ones that fell apart. Let them accumulate context over time. Have the occasional dinner where the conversation goes deeper than kids and weekend plans. Send them the article that explains the market shift you’re navigating. Let them in incrementally so that when you need them, they’re already oriented.
When Victoria and I were in the thick of negotiating our acquisition, the Champions in our Cabinet weren’t useful just because they loved us. They were useful because they understood our business well enough to ask the hard questions, the ones we were too close to ask ourselves. They knew enough to say “wait, have you thought about what happens to the earnout if they restructure the team in year one?” That’s not generic cheerleading. That’s informed advocacy. And it only happens when you’ve done the work to educate them over time.
So yes, your Champions are probably already in your life. The people who show up without being asked. The ones who stayed on the phone through your worst Tuesday. You don’t have to recruit them the way you’d recruit a Compensator or cultivate a Connector.
But you do have to invest in them. Not financially. Not with formal asks or structured meetings. Just with honesty, context, and the willingness to let them actually know what’s going on in your business — not just how you’re feeling about it.
Because a Champion who understands your world isn’t just someone who won’t let you quit. They’re someone who can help you figure out what to do next.
That combination, emotional ballast and just enough business fluency to ask a smart question, is what separates a Cabinet Champion from a great friend who happens to mean well.
Build that. Tend to it. And then call her on your worst Tuesday.
The balance — wallowing partner and reality check — is the whole game.
Build your Kitchen Cabinet with all three. Compensators for the knowledge gaps. Connectors for the network multiplier. And Champions for the moments when you need someone to remind you who you are — and who’s smart enough about your business to help you figure out what comes next.
They’re probably already in your life. You just need to let them do their job.
