Where did successful founders go to talk about what they couldn't say at work or home?

Often somewhere unexpected. Kris Kluver, in The Dysfunctional Family Office, has Robert Mitchell describe his own peer group of seven business owners who met monthly through a church connection. During the last financial crash, with the business in real trouble, Robert didn't feel comfortable talking to his leadership team about how scared he was. He didn't want to dump it on his wife. He leaned on the seven men instead. The group saved him. The pattern is more common than founders admit. The right peer group can be a formal Peer Circle, a long-running poker night, a church men's group, or a group of friends who started meeting in their twenties and never stopped. What matters is the trust, the confidentiality, and the willingness to be real. Most founders build something like this informally over decades. The ones who don't usually wish they had.