Badfriend.com

Posted on by Carl Weber

badfriend

Have you ever had that friend that just drifted away? You stopped calling. They stopped calling. Weeks pass and evolve into months. The next thing you know, years pass. When you reflect on the relationship, there were no major fights or arguments, but time creates this sort of distance between you. That distance becomes a larger and larger incentive not to pick up that phone, or send that text. Even worse, when you mount the courage to send that message, it is not returned and your efforts are in vain.

While reconnecting with a close friend recently (it had been years without calling or connecting) we talked about ways to prevent this in the future. Both of us need to commit to calling, texting or emailing each other. It makes it harder that this particular friend is 1,824 miles away so the odds of bumping into each other at the local market is pretty slight.

In order to ensure that we stay connected, we came up with an idea for a website and service for anyone who needs a little help being a better friend.

In the spirit of creating funny domain names, we called it badfriend.com (it is not a real site…yet).

Here is how it would work.

You sign up on the website and identify your friends. Your friends are either already members or you can invite them to the service. There are various levels of connection services that help remind you to send that email or text. You can initiate that conversation through the website or app, and automatic reminders are sent to remind you to connect with your friends. You would have your own email address @badfriend.com and the system would send your friends notice when you were not meeting your requirements as a friend.

If you do not connect regularly you are charged a penalty.  However, if you do connect with your friends you earn points. These points enter you into a lottery for cash prizes, similar to the experiment that VW did with speed camera in Sweden.

Relationships are not always easy. Being a good friend takes work. Imagine how amazing it would be to have a website and app managing it all for you and creating the right incentives and penalty.

Until then, it is up to us to make the decision to stay connected, pick up that phone, or send that message.

If it has been a while since you called or connected, you can always start how I initiated my conversation with this friend:

“Hi, this is Carl@badfriend.com, I am sorry for not connecting, lets start again.”

Pick one friend, the one that was once close but time has created distance. It won’t be easy, but pick a day within the next week and connect, it may just be worth it.

Published by Carl Weber

Carl Weber, is the owner and founder of Carl Weber Consulting, a consulting group that helps businesses, non-profits, and individuals understand themselves, hire and manage well, and become great leaders. Carl worked in local government for more than ten years, as the Town Administrator of a few towns in NH. Once upon a time he was a search and rescue swimmer for the US Navy. Carl holds Bachelors’ Degrees in Political Science & Community Development and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy. Carl is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Motivators Analyst (CPMA). Carl regularly teaches on human factors and the relationship of behavior and leadership styles, as well as motivation, coaching, leadership challenges, and failing as a leader. His passion is to help leaders in their lifelong journey to finish well, to combat and work with their inner voice, and to live a meaningful story worth reading. Carl lives in Southern New Hampshire with his wife Amanda and together they are raising a small tribe of four young (somewhat crazy) women with the goal of unleashing them on the world to change it for the better.

7 thoughts on “Badfriend.com”

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  4. Wow. This goes to a place I had long forgotten. Thank you for the reminder to care-take and take care. Thank you for the challenge. And I love the website. Stellar.

    1. Yeah, I figured if I had to pay I would become a much better friend! Let me know how it goes, we are all in this together.

  5. wow you hit it on the head. I have many friends (and family) that are a distance away. As I age, even an hour seems so much further than it use to, so it just seems so hard to connect. I just had a long time friend, email me. Her one sentence was “how are things?” Two emails later, we were caught up as if there had been no time distance. It’s hard, but worth it.

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