How business made me twenty best friends

How business made me twenty best friends.

In 1938, the Harvard Grant Study began following over 700 men. They came from a variety of walks of life. Some would go on to become successful leaders, including John F. Kennedy, who would later become the 35th President of the United States. Others faced hardships, becoming homeless, or struggling with mental health issues.

For eighty-six years, researchers have been following this cohort, interviewing them extensively. Doing medical examinations. Tracking things like physical health, mental well-being, and career progression. Even interviewing their wives, children, and grandchildren.

The findings are fascinating:

• Good relationships make us healthier and happier.
• Loneliness is as deadly as smoking or alcoholism.
• Wealth and fame don't buy happiness—relationships do.
• Drugs and alcohol derail lives, ruin health, and strain relationships.

To summarize: it's all about relationships. Marriage. Friends. Community.

And maybe stop drinking too.

This summer, I read The Good Life, a new book by Robert Waldinger, the study's current director, and it drove this home. As I sat on the dock of my lakeside cabin, listening to my kids play on the beach, I pondered my relationships.

I had a wonderful girlfriend. A great relationship with my two boys. A core group of close friends, and a huge extended network of acquaintances. But oddly, some of my deepest friendships had come from...business?

Why? Because I'd stumbled into group therapy, without ever intending to.

Fifteen years ago, I joined the Entrepreneur's Organization. As part of joining it, you are inducted into a "Forum".

Every month, you spend 3-4 hours in a conference room with six entrepreneurs. In it, you share your personal, family, and business problems. Highs and lows. What's going well, and what's not. It's the same group every time, and it's 100% confidential.

In my group, everyone was initially quite guarded, sticking to business topics and mostly purporting to be doing great. But as trust grew over many months, conversations went deeper. People began sharing not just business challenges, but also the struggles and triumphs in their personal and family lives.

Initially, I wasn't sure what I could learn from this group. We all ran such different businesses. Most weren't even in tech. In my first group, the other entrepreneurs ran businesses completely different from my own: a puzzle company, a woodworking shop, a popsicle company, and a mapping company. But, as my friend Brent Beshores says, it turned out, "in business, everything tastes like chicken".

Our problems were strangely universal. Over the years, we helped each other navigate:

• Failed partnerships
• Bankruptcies
• Divorces
• Fraud
• Health scares
• Toxic employees
• Mental health struggles
• Family deaths
• Challenges raising children

Some of these forum mates have become my closest friends—so close that when I needed executors for my will, I chose them without hesitation.

For the past decade, I've run multiple groups, meeting nearly every week. I no longer do it through EO—I run them myself. I have four forums, dedicating one evening a week to each. It's a rhythm that keeps me sane. Like a small, secular church group—a weekly space for real connection. A guarantee that I'll get a chance to socialize, laugh, and get some stuff off my chest.

There's something profound about sitting in a room, tackling shared struggles, and building trust over a decade. Forum has forged deeper friendships than any other part of my life—deeper than high school, college, sports, or meeting parents at my kids' school. In 15 years, it's given me over 20 incredible friendships I never expected.

If you're an entrepreneur—or even if you're not—I can't recommend starting a forum enough. I've written a guide to help you get started. According to The Harvard Grant study, it could improve your life immensely.

Originally published in the My new favorite possession: a shotgun. issue of Never Enough.