In The Thick of It

Most small, medium-sized business owners are so busy

working in the business that they can't imagine how

they would take time outside of it to do

something like a peer advisory board.

They're struggling with a lack of time, but

they're not making any changes to facilitate it's.

Welcome to In the Thick of It Toolbox,

the special series where inspiration meets implementation.

Here, we don't just share success stories.

We equip you with proven tools

and strategies from seasoned founders turning

entrepreneurial dreams into actionable plans.

Prepare to be enabled and empowered on your journey.

You're not just listening to a

podcast, you're gaining access to an

essential toolbox for your business success.

Let's dive in.

You on our very first episode of our Toolbox series.

We sit down with a guest who's very special to me.

Shortly after I started my business, I

began working with Jim Woodward as my

business coach and chair of my owner's

peer group through an organization called Convene.

In this interview, Jim talks about five things

to consider when looking for a group and

a coach that's right for you.

One of the things that our founder guests have said with

consistency is that it is critical to have a mentor.

My experiencing with coaching and

peer groups further underscores that.

Welcome to In the Thick of It Toolbox.

Today's episode of in the Thick of It

is very special for a couple of reasons.

This is the first of what we're calling

our Toolbox series, and the idea behind this

is that we want to equip founders in

ways beyond just sharing stories of other founders.

And when we find things that have been successful

either for us in our business or for things

that other founders have talked about, we want to

expose these things in a different way.

And so today I am very, very

excited and humbled to welcome Jim Woodward.

Jim and I have known each other for almost 20

years now and known each other in different capacities.

Jim has been a mentor, a coach, and a group facilitator

that I've been a part of for about six years now.

And so I owe a lot to Jim in

terms of things that I've learned directly from him,

learned being a part of the group.

And today we're going to talk about coaching

and peer groups, and that's something that Jim

has a lot of expertise in.

So, Jim, welcome to in the thick of it. Thanks, Scott.

Delight to be here with you and to

have this opportunity to have that kind of

conversation that might be helpful to other founders.

That's the whole heart behind this.

So why don't you give us a little bit

of background, talk about what you did in your

earlier career and then maybe kind of how that

led you to what it is you do today.

Well, I started out as a programmer, so I was in

the technology business down in the details when I got out

of school, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do,

and there was an opportunity to do that.

And about a year into it, I was working

for Sears as a programmer and got recruited by

a consulting company that wound up becoming Capgemini, which

is one of the biggest of its kind.

And I spent 25 years there.

So I went from being a programmer to being a

manager of a team of people and then running the

branch that Capgem and I had in Chicago.

And while we were there doing that, my wife and

I were living in Mount Prospect outside of Chicago and

so moved from one big city to another.

Bigger city and had a great

experience there over a significant period.

Of time and wound up in there becoming not

only the guy who did that, but also someone

who ran one of the divisions which included a

number of the branches and wound up building a

business, a national business, across all the capgemini branches.

That was $100 million.

I had responsibility for sales and marketing and collections

and service and all the pieces of a business

that a founder does, except I didn't have to

raise capital like you all do.

That came from the mothership, so to speak.

So I had a broad functional

understanding of leading a business.

And then I also had a pretty broad

experience with different kinds of industries because we

consulted to the whole Fortune 500, we also

not only did It services, but we also

did strategic consulting and business process reengineering and

outsourcing of different forms, pretty broad exposure to

a lot of different kinds of businesses.

So I was actually able to retire from there

with some options that I'd earned in 2002 at

age 48 and spent some time working in my

church doing some other things until a couple of

investments I made didn't work out so good.

Had to go back to work.

And a friend from the consulting business was

starting up a completely different kind of thing,

a full service ice machine leasing business.

And so he needed somebody in Dallas, and I was the

guy he wanted, and I worked with him to create that

company, found that company back from 2009 to 2014.

It was a great experience, completely different than

consulting to Fortune 500 companies, providing an ice

machine, to restaurants mostly, and bars even, and

anybody who needed it for whatever reason.

And when that ended, I thought,

well, what will I do now?

Maybe I'll do something of service to people.

And I looked for different ways of doing that.

Sometimes the doors weren't open.

Sometimes they wanted me to raise support

to fund it, and that didn't work.

And I finally met this guy who asked me

what I feel called to do, and I said,

I feel called to help people get unstuck, achieve

their potential and grow closer to Jesus.

He said, well, how about you ever heard

of Convene and I had never heard of

anything like a peer advisory board before.

And so when I looked into it, it was really great fit.

I had a lot of experience

facilitating conversations of different kinds.

I had designed a lot of learning experiences,

sales, project management, that kind of thing.

I'm based on adult learning principles.

When I saw that opportunity, it was

the step toward what I'm doing now.

So you got to build a business within a larger

business and you kind of essentially co founded another one.

So you've got all kinds of

experience working with massive, massive organizations

as well as really small organizations.

And I think that that has uniquely equipped you

to be able to speak into other people's businesses.

So why don't you dive a little bit more into Convene?

And there are all kinds of groups out there like this.

Convene is the group that you're leading a group for

and that I've been a part of, but there's Vistage

and there's all kinds of others out there generally paint

the picture of what this concept is.

For those that might not know, the

idea is that business owners are unique.

They represent a really small part of the population

and they can't really talk to their people to

get wise advice, wise counsel, and especially when they're

smaller, they really can't afford to have a board.

And you can only talk to your spouse so

much about what you're doing before they get sick

of it and you wind up getting isolated sometimes.

So there's a dimension of isolation or

even loneliness that business owners experience.

And the other side of it is a

lot of people get involved in business and

building a business without ever having studied business.

So one of the pitfalls you see with small businesses is

they get to a certain size and they don't know how

to grow beyond that, they get stuck at a plateau.

They do need some training to help them, new ideas

to help them get through that kind of threshold.

And so the idea of a peer advisory board

was to bring together people sharing similar lives, facing

similar challenges and be of counsel to one another

at the same time as learning with one another.

So the classic example of a peer advisory

board is there's some form of training, there's

some form of issue processing where a person

shares an issue and the others provide ideas

and counsel from their experience on that issue.

And one of the other benefits of that kind

of issue processing is it's almost like Ricochet learning.

So Scott, if you have an issue and

you present it, it's a good chance somebody

else in that room has that same issue.

And while you're getting advice, there's high

probability everyone else is getting advice on

that at the same time.

That's the core of what happens.

The community that gets built helps

deal with some of the isolation.

I think people come for the ideas, but they

stay for the community to have somebody to be

aware of who they are, what they do, what

their challenges are, someone to talk with.

And then the other part of it is most peer

advisory board programs also include some dimension of coaching.

And coaching is a one to one activity as opposed

to the group activity, which sometimes prepares for the group

activity and sometimes is just a confidential conversation with the

owner and the leader of the group.

There were a number of things that

you said that really resonated with me.

One, you talked about kind of the

Ricochet learning and chances are that other

people are going through something similar.

And in my experience, I may

not be going through that now.

I may have gone through it in the past, and

if I haven't, I probably will in the future.

There's so much that's been learned that way.

You talked about loneliness.

And it's funny, as I was driving over

this morning, I was listening to another podcast

where another owner founder was being interviewed and

he talked about that very thing.

It's lonely, and it really is lonely when you're on

your own when you're at the top of the organization.

And I think that's true whether or not you're

an owner founder or you're the head of another

organization, you don't get the praise and the encouragement.

You have to be the one that

gives the praise and gives the encouragement.

And in my own experience, one of the things that

I found is that your good days are even better

than when you were working for somebody else.

Man, your bad days are so much worse.

And the other thing too, and going back to

the idea of it is lonely at the top.

Whether you're the owner founder or

you're running somebody else's business, there

is really something different.

When you've got your own capital

at risk, there's a different mentality.

And for me, it's been so incredibly valuable to

have regular cadence with other people that are in

the same boat and there's just a lot that

others in the same spot can relate to.

So the advice and the counsel that

you get from everybody is great.

But also, just like you said, having

that community that knows and has the

same kinds of feelings is incredibly helpful.

What does a typical peer group session look like?

So there's a period of kind of setting, getting

gathering, getting everybody in the room warmed up.

And usually after that there's some form

of check in with one another.

You haven't seen each other for a month.

You have things you've been working on that

maybe even were issues that got processed.

And so we start by having a conversation where each

person shares what's good going on in their world, some

progress they've made, a challenge they face, and then areas

where they ask each other for support so that's the

first part to kind of get warmed up.

Then usually there's two other major

parts to a peer advisory meeting.

One is around learning and the

other is around that issue processing.

I was describing to you the learning is important because,

like I said, most CEOs or founders are not MBAs.

They may not have you never studied

business or even taken a business class.

So peer advisory board experience involves it's kind

of an MBA for entrepreneurs as a group.

Decide together what is going to be

important to study in the coming year.

And then the organization usually will provide, in some

cases speakers, in some cases content, in some cases,

like what we do, multiple formats, learning formats.

So speakers sometimes learning material other times, and

then sometimes even videos that make sense to

discuss and dig into in a deeper way.

You talked about a lot of owner

founders don't have a business background.

They don't have an MBA.

I did get a business degree.

I've got a marketing degree.

And with that there were

obviously many marketing specific courses.

But to have a well rounded business

background, you've got to have your accounting

and finance and management and so forth.

But that was also 20 years ago.

And one of the things that I

have personally really appreciated is getting some

refreshers on some of these things.

And one of the areas that you've helped

me tremendously in is the finance area.

And yeah, I had to take managerial and financial accounting

and I had to take my basic finance class.

But really understanding how to read a PNL and balance

sheet, I remember sitting down with you one day and

just walking through, and I look at the bottom line

and I know whether we're making money or not.

But understanding some of those things in between

and being able to be more conversant, having

an understanding of that has been incredibly helpful.

Whether it's talking to the bank or

talking to other business owners and even

setting internal targets has been huge.

And not just on the finance side.

I mean, we've brought in speakers that have

talked about HR kinds of things and compliance

kinds of things and technology and so forth.

So having that kind of well rounded set

of topics and going through different things, it's

not the same thing every time.

So I like what you said about

most people don't have that background.

And even if you do, I would

say it helps you to go deeper.

Scott the other thing about it is I remember what

school was like, and I did study business, and a

lot of it was pretty theoretical and not that applicable

to what I wound up doing in the business world.

When we tackle a business topic as a group of

CEOs and founders, we're digging into it from a practical,

how do I implement it level with other people that

have the same desire and need to implement it.

So it winds up being more of a discussion about what

could be done, how that could be done, than it winds

up being a lecture like we received in school.

Adding to that the practical application

is such a good point.

When I graduated from undergrad, I considered going

and getting an MBA right out of school.

And if I'm being honest, I did that because

I didn't know what I wanted to do and

I wanted to buy myself two more years.

Didn't end up doing it.

And most business schools require at least

two years work experience before they will

even let you apply for the program.

And back then there were a handful of schools that

were opening it up to people straight out of undergrad.

And at the time I didn't really understand why they

had this rule that you had to wait two years.

And I totally get it now.

You have to have some real world experience in

order to really be able to apply the concepts

and the things that are being taught.

And having a group like this gives you that here's

the learning, but here's how you can apply it.

Not maybe someday, but now, today.

So that first part of the meeting is usually

for a peer advisory board, is learning oriented.

The issue processing is really important.

In my experience, sometimes people like the learning

best, sometimes they like the issue processing best

and sometimes they like the coaching best.

And in my groups it's about a

third, a third and a third.

But the issue processing involves having the member

do some thinking about that issue in advance.

Many people find that's the best part to just have

thought through it in an orderly way in advance.

And then what we do is we send that information

out that they've collected about the issue so that the

others can weigh in on it, maybe ask some clarifying

questions in advance and think about it ahead of time.

Not everyone is a shoot from the hip kind of person.

Some people need to think about things in

advance before they form an opinion and are

ready to say what they think about it.

So sending out the information

in advance is really important.

And then when we get together, the

member summarizes it, the team asks clarifying

questions, we then get involved in council.

And during the council portion of the discussion,

the team is engaging with ideas while the

member who presented is kind of listening.

They're trying to figure out the

ideas that really seem like winners.

They're dumping the not rejecting the

losers and the ones in between.

They're trying to figure out, well, what could

I add to that idea to turn it

into something I could really use?

And then at the end we ask them

to summarize what they got out of it.

And at the next meeting we'll follow up on

that and see how they're doing with the progress.

That's part of the check in is that

loop back to whatever progress is happening.

And to have not just one time like that, to

have ten people or twelve people, or in our case,

14 people, provide input on your issue in your corner.

Coming from a broad set of experiences

and different kind of business models, just

doing it once would be pretty good.

But you get to do that multiple times a year.

That's really the kind of framework of

a typical meeting, the check in, the

learning, and the issue processing.

So that's the group aspect.

What does a coaching session look like?

You talked about that being one on one versus kind

of a one to many or many to many.

Yeah, one to one.

Coaching is a powerful part of the process.

The convene the group I work with

raised that to a different level.

We're the only group that requires the coaches

to be trained as coaches and certified as

coaches through the International Coaching Federation.

And when I signed up to do this, to recruit

and lead a group of people in a peer advisory

board format, I thought the coaching no big deal.

And then when I dove into the training,

I realized coaching is a discipline in and

of itself and there's great value.

Having spent 25 years in the consulting business, I

know many, many times we would make a recommendation

to a client to do something that would help

them, and they would say, that's interesting, and they

wouldn't do it, they wouldn't implement it.

And I believe a big part of

that was because it wasn't their idea.

And the nice thing about coaching is coaching is

aimed at it's a process that tries to help

the coachee, so to speak, think about something more

broadly, look at it from different perspectives so that

they come up with their own answers.

Instead of the consultant giving the answer,

the client comes up with the answer.

And there's a whole set of ways that a coach

does that to help them find the action they want

to take on whatever topic is the focus of that.

Coaching.

Again, you know, it's way more likely to be implemented

if it's your idea, Scott, than if it's mine.

I just had a light bulb moment.

I can think about conversations we've had where

you do a great job asking leading questions

and you don't come straight out with the,

hey, here's what I think you should do.

But there are times where you do say,

here's what I think you should do.

And I sincerely appreciate those.

And one of the things that I think

is really important, that makes those conversations valuable

is you don't have the emotional attachment to

the business, to the problem, to the person,

to the partner, or whatever the situation involves.

And you can be completely objective, but at the same

time, for the owner that now needs to go do

something about it, trying to break away from that emotional

attachment to whatever the situation is, is really hard.

But you need the nudge, you

need that person to push you.

And I could think of several things like that

we've worked on, generally speaking, what would somebody expect

to gain or how would they benefit from being

a part of a group or a coaching arrangement?

Well, there's a learning dimension.

There's the community dimension we talked about.

There's working through difficult issues.

But there's some others I think I mentioned already

the idea of how can I be more profitable?

How can I grow faster?

Those are things we talk about regularly, I think.

Also, most smaller businesses don't have the

means to have their own HR department.

One thing about leading, and I know you said

some of the bad things are really bad things.

I would guess a good portion

of those are people things.

And so when you're in a difficult situation with a person

and you don't know what to do, it's really valuable to

have some other people to run that issue by.

They tend to be one off and it's invaluable to be

able to have someone that can help you through those issues.

So I think those are the

big things in terms of performance.

We're trying to help people

grow high performing businesses.

We do it on a biblical foundation.

Others do it on a more secular basis.

But 85% of the people who are

convened, members across the country outperform the

other businesses in their industries.

We know that from benchmarking data.

It wasn't survey based, so I think

you could expect to have that.

Another thing we did, and this was

survey oriented, 97% of the people found

transformation either in their business or their

life or their leadership or some dimension.

What should somebody look for

if they're thinking about this?

Hopefully this message is resonating.

What would you tell somebody they need

to look for in a group?

Yeah, you mentioned Vistage, which is a non

Christian version of a peer advisory board.

And Convene is an example of a Christian one.

So first thing, I think you decide, what values

do you share with the organization you're considering?

It's important, I think, to have shared values

in these kind of conversations because you get

close to the people in the groups and

you want advice that's consistent with your values.

That's one thing.

I think it's worthwhile considering multiple formats.

Not all groups have multiple formats, but like our

group that you're in is an online format.

We're one of the few that have this kind

of CEO peer advisory board in an online format.

So the nice thing about it, I think one of the

reasons you signed up for it was that it's more streamlined.

You can do two two hour meetings a month

instead of taking six and a half hours like

we do in my in person team.

So figuring out the format is important.

The learning I think is important.

Some groups just do speakers, some just do content.

And I think it's useful

to have multiple learning formats.

Different people learn different ways,

learn best different ways.

I think it's important to have some input

into what the learning is going to be.

Some groups, they do the exact same learning content

for every group across the whole country in a

given week or in a given month.

I mean, what we do is we ask the members, as you

know, what do you all want to learn this coming year?

And there's a bunch of possibilities and we pick some

major themes and then we figure out which speakers and

which content we're going to use based on the input

from the members about what they want to learn together.

And then I really do believe

that the coaching is really important.

And to get good coaching, you

need to have training on coaching.

So that part is important.

And then the last is the material.

And the speakers that are going to come

from the organization that you're going to work

with are important, but the chair that you're

going to work with is really important.

That person's going to share life with you.

So pick somebody that's got the right kind of experience,

experiences like what you have, but also somebody you feel

you can connect with and be comfortable with.

I think those are five key factors

in deciding which path to take.

Yeah, a couple of comments on that.

As you mentioned, there's different formats.

There's an in person format

and there's a virtual format.

And for me, the virtual format gives me flexibility.

Instead of having to dedicate a whole day every

month, I can break it up into smaller pieces.

And it's also allowed that in my travels, which I

travel a fair amount, it gives me at least the

potential of being able to make a meeting.

Whereas if it was the, hey, it's the third Tuesday

of the month and if you got to be at

a conference or you got to know at a client,

like, sorry, you're completely out of know.

This gives me that flexibility.

The other thing about the virtual aspect that

I have appreciated is that I've got this

network that's spread around the country.

And just a few weeks back I was in Denver and was able

to go grab drinks with one of the guys in the group.

And two weeks ago, one of the people in our

group was actually in Dallas for something and they came

and we actually had our meeting in our conference room.

And so it's been really cool to, again have this network

of people around the country that when you're in another city,

you can reach out to and that when they're in your

city, they can reach out to you as well.

One of the other things that I was thinking

about, I'm sure that there are peer groups that

are really oriented around a particular industry, and I

think that that can be very, very valuable.

I'm looking at something like a Y Combinator

or one of probably dozens of other types

that are really focused on tech founders.

We've got attorneys, we've got marketing people, we've

got other software people, we've got healthcare.

It's really, really broad.

And talking on my own advice for somebody that's

looking for a peer group, I would tell you

consider whether you want to be completely focused on

your industry or if there would be value to

you in having diverse perspectives from people that are

operating in other industries.

That's a really good point, Scott.

Peer advisory boards are trying to get people

to be authentic in the conversations they're going

to have in the group to be transparent.

And it's hard for that to happen

if they're people from the same industry.

Industry groups are great to go deeper on

specifics in an industry, but there's only so

many of the trade secrets you're going to

share with other people in that same industry.

So in a peer advisory board,

you approach it a little differently.

Like you said, you have people from different market

segments, none in the same one, so that the

transparency and authenticity is high and you get a

perspective on a business issue from different business models,

which I think is really helpful.

Sometimes a manufacturing idea is just what

a software company needs to hear about.

You built a business within a business.

You co founded this Ice business.

Starting a convened practice is also

kind of like starting a business.

And as a result, you really have to source

a lot of your clients and group members.

I know you talk with lots of prospective members.

What are the common objections you get from people who

decide that they don't want to move forward with it?

Well, the biggest one usually is time.

Most small, medium sized business owners are so busy

working in the business that they can't imagine how

they would take time outside of it to do

something like a peer advisory board.

And yet they aren't doing

anything to change those circumstances.

Typically they're struggling with a lack of time, but

they're not making any changes to facilitate it.

So one of the very first things that happens

with the business owners I work with is to

help them figure out how they can move more

of their time from tactical activities to strategic ones

without doing that, without making some time for that

shift, real progress can't get started.

The very reason that they're saying they can't join is

probably the number one reason they need to join.

So that's the first one.

Sometimes they'll say, well, yeah, I want to be in

a specialized group, and I think there's some really good

reasons to consider this kind of group for learning.

Sometimes they'll say a different version

of I don't have time.

Well, not now, I got.

To finish this or I got to finish that.

And the very thing they're working on is what

they could get help with from the team.

And even if it winds up being not the peer

advisory board because it's hard to fit into their life

at that time, coaching is a lot more time efficient.

A coaching session can be moved

if something gets in the way.

We can't really move the peer advisory board meetings.

And you're very patient with me

because I move ours regularly, right?

And so some of the people that are kind of

not sure they want to be in a peer advisory

form can really benefit from the coaching we use, have

access to the same materials, have access to the same

conversation skills that are involved in coaching, and it's easy

to fit into your schedule.

In our online team, we have two two hour

meetings a month and an hour of coaching.

With coaching, you really only need

two 1 hour meetings a month.

And that's how we started,

actually, was in that format.

So sometimes it's about money.

They look at the cost of being a member

and they say, well, that's a lot of money.

And the truth is, it's some significant money.

And yet the goal of a peer advisory board is

to get people ten X return on their money.

The chair's job is really to make sure that

we get the right people on the team, because

the chemistry of the team is important.

So it's an invitation only kind of a group.

It needs to be a fit from both perspectives.

But the other key thing the chair does is to help

everyone get a return like a five x, a ten x,

a 20 X return on their investment in time and money.

So when you're thinking about 20 X, the

money we're talking about is incidental compared to

the track record of people like you who've

had significant impact financial benefit on their business

from being a part of a team.

Somebody once told me that when you think

of something as expensive, you don't see the

value for what it is you're getting.

And so I would challenge people to

really think about what expensive is.

And I will say that when I was a two

or three person shop and looking at the cost, I

was kind of like, oh, how do I do this?

Six years into this, I look back and there are

multiple instances that I can look at and go, that

one thing has more than paid for all of this.

And I'll give a brief example.

There was some small business funding that was available

that came out a couple of years ago.

And I remember you emailing me and saying,

hey, have you submitted your application for this?

And I was like, no, I don't want to do that.

I don't want to take on loans. I don't need it.

And you're like, Scott, this is long term dirt cheap.

Even if you don't know what you're going

to use it for, just get it.

That has enabled us to do things that there is

no way we would have been able to do.

So that one little thing, that one thing

has more than paid for all of it.

It has an impact on your family and the

kind of life you want to be living.

And so if you want to release from that, one

of the things we do is we have six essentials

to make the most of your time in your life.

And we talk about how to make

those better and better over time.

And that has an impact not just for the business, but

it has a peripheral impact on the family as well.

The other factor is that most CEOs understand the

idea of assets like a piece of equipment that

they need or a facility that they need.

But usually the most important asset

in every business is the CEO.

And when the CEO gets smarter and

gets better, the whole business benefits.

So if someone is saying, well, I'm already investing

in my development in some other way, great.

But most times people aren't investing at all in

their development and they're neglecting their most important asset,

which is the leader at the top of or

the founder at the top of the organization.

To make a small investment in time and money

to improve that asset pays back in amazing ways.

When you were talking about how oftentimes the family of

the owner founder kind of suffers, something that came to

mind is that when you get involved in a peer

group, or even just in coaching, you're doing it because

you want to get better and you're surrounding yourself with

other people who also want to get better.

And scripture talks about how iron sharpens iron.

And when you're surrounding yourself with other people, I

would submit that even from a secular perspective, if

you're surrounding yourself with other people who are wanting

to get better, it makes you better.

And there's a compounding effect of that.

How would somebody go about finding a

coach or finding a peer group?

Usually there's a website that facilitates it.

Convene has a website where usually

the chairs have web pages there.

But there's someone that will talk to them about what

might be a good fit for them based on their

location, if they're willing to consider an online team.

We've got people from all four time zones, so

that works pretty much for anybody in any city.

It doesn't have to be a big city

where most peer advisory boards are formed.

That's a key step, I think another is to

talk to other people that might know someone who's

in a peer advisory board and ask them what

their impression and what their experience has been.

That's really helpful.

And then eventually it's to sit down with the

chair who's going to lead the group that you're

considering and get to know them, ask them questions,

figure out if it's a good fit. That's great.

Any final closing thoughts?

Well, this work is a blessing to me.

I really think about it as a self funded ministry

in a lot of ways, because the people who run

the businesses of the world are providing service that makes

a difference to the overall culture of the world and

to have a chance to impact the people who lead

those businesses and provide income for those families and to

assist them in growing a high performing business on a

biblical foundation so that the people thrive and even the

kingdom grows.

That's been the best work I've ever had a chance to do.

And being a consultant was great, but this is better.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk about it.

I was thinking a minute ago about the number

of business owners that you have been able to

work with, and dozens, maybe even the hundreds now.

And I think about the impact that you've

had on that group of people, but then

I think about the compounding effect of the

impact that you've had on those people's families,

on those people's employees, on those employees families.

And that has to reach into the tens, if not

hundreds, of thousands of people that benefit from it.

And so, again, I want to thank you for

the work that you're doing in general, and in

particular, the work that you've done for me.

And I'll close with this.

One of the most consistent things that we have

heard from founders that we've interviewed as guests is

that they either have a mentor and they encourage

everyone to go find a mentor.

And the handful that haven't had a mentor have almost all

said, I wish I had found a mentor early on.

Mentoring can look very different.

It can be formal, like what we're doing with

our convene group, but it can also be informal,

too, just having somebody a little bit older, a

little bit wiser, a little bit further ahead that

you can call and bounce ideas around.

And so whether it is something formal, like a

convene or something, that it's just finding that person

that's a little bit ahead of you.

I encourage you, founder, go

find somebody.

That was Convene

Chair, Jim Woodward.

From my personal experience, I cannot stress enough

how important it is to have a mentor.

One place you might consider looking for one is

at convenenow.com.

If you or a founder, you know, would like to be

a guest on in the Thick of It,

mmail us at intro at intro@founderstory.us.