Creating Trust and Belonging Through Peer Groups - A Conversation with Aiko Thurlow of InFounders

Speaker A: This is leadership beyond your community of conversation.

Speaker B: Joining us today is Eiko Thurlow. She's the CEO of infounders. When she was little, her parents had a small business. It gave her a front row seat at understanding how difficult entrepreneurship was. Over the years, she started a number of businesses, all with the mission of better supporting entrepreneurs. Coming across Masterminds was a revelation. She witnessed such growth from founders who participated in them, and she absolutely loved that. Masterminds brought out meaningful values like trust, empathy and courage, while bravely tackling big taboos. Imposter syndrome, anyone? And most importantly, creating stellar communities by creating infounders. She hoped many more entrepreneurs would benefit from their incredible power and within founders, expanding beyond entrepreneurship, Iko is thrilled to expand the benefits of peer networks to as many people as possible. Welcome, Iko Thurlow.

Speaker C: Good afternoon, Iko. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker A: Good afternoon, Tom. Such a pleasure being here.

Speaker C: Can you start with just giving the audience a little bit of your background and how you came to this moment at infounders?

Speaker A: Yes. Uh, well, so my background, I'm originally from Montreal. I originally studied economics. Um, but eventually, after a few years into the corporate world, kind of discovered a true passion for entrepreneurship and starting a number of different businesses by myself and kind of being at the forefront of this, I also saw how lonely of a process it was until I was part of a mastermind. And a mastermind is an incredible opportunity to be with a group of peers where you collaborate. So everyone's working on their own challenges, their own businesses in this case. But it's a group that confidentially comes together, shares best practices, inside support. And once I tapped into this, I thought, oh, there ought to be more of this into the world. Where has this been my whole life, all these years, where I've been an entrepreneur without this? And I loved it so much. It changed me so much that I started Founders.

Speaker C: Wow. Well, I'm going to start with some negative thinking. We're positive people and we're going to talk about your secret sauce and all of the ways you do what you do. But I'm going to start with some negative thinking, which is many companies have tried peer groups, and I've worked with companies that had business resource groups that they got all excited about, but they have a tendency to fizzle, or worse, they continue because they encourage employees to participate in them, but they're not getting the value. So what goes wrong with some corporate attempts at doing peer groups and even mentoring falls into that? We know mentoring is important, but if it's Done wrong. I feel like they stuck me with Iko and now she's got gotta mentor me. So talk a little bit about what can go wrong and then we'll talk about your secret.

Speaker A: I love that you bring this up because the quality is everything, right? If we are able to deliver a quality experience, we'll completely change the outcome. And so usually the two components I look at for a really strong peer group, a really strong might be called. You know, I mentioned a term, mastermind before. Some people call them forums. Um, it comes down to two things. Usually what I look for is a, to have a really deep component of substance that's there. So people need to walk away every single time with new insight, new knowledge, new next steps, inspiration, all of that. And the other part is also to say that the relations within the group should have grown deeper and fonder so that people, um, don't look around the room and just see a bunch of strangers that they've been put in, but they start hearing the stories, they start having empathy for one another. They just are pulled into each other's world in the most beautiful of ways. And when these two things are there, that's when there's a really strong ROI in a group. And for these two things to happen, a number of things need to happen in a group. It needs to be well facilitated, time needs to be kept incredibly well. All of these small components, the group needs to be well curated. But once the foundational elements are there, as long as we can make sure that both of these outcomes are delivered, you're going to have an amazing group.

Speaker C: Mhm. As I heard, not the resource part of it, but the interaction part of it. You mentioned on your website about creating trust building space within these groups. Say a little bit more about the secret sauce there.

Speaker A: Yeah. So trust is something that's so beautiful because it's something that's acquired. And usually people think that we need very long amount of time to acquire trust. What we've discovered in our group is that, yes, that's one way definitely of going right. So a friendship that you had for years and all of that, you will have built trust over time. There's also a shorter way of building trust and that's going deep very quickly. It's not to force anyone into depth, but it's to invite everyone to a depth level that they feel comfortable with. And by creating a moment like this where everyone is able to take a leap of faith into one another, to just really embrace at a deeper level what it can mean to be seen if everyone does this, you will build trust incredibly quickly. And that's part of our methodology. A lot of the time with our clients, we have a very short amount of time for a group to bond because again, as quickly as possible we want them to, you know, start having that ROI of uh, deep substance from one another and the deep relationship building from the, you know, from connecting with one another. For that to happen, we need trust as a foundational layer. And embedding this in the methodology, not just hoping that's going to happen, makes a whole difference in how people show up and the amount of debt that they feel comfortable in sharing with.

Speaker C: Yeah, it would happen by accident with some of the people, but you're making it very intentional.

Speaker A: That's right, yeah. And the other part in building trust is also being clear on what the ground rules are. Right. So for any new group, any new gathering that comes together, uh, at first people are kind of uncertain of knowing how should I function in this group? And they're kind of like open to, I would say open to, kind of option, seeing where this is going to lead them. And uh, as you know, if, if a group is being facilitated, the beginning is the only time where we kind of have the opportunity to set the ground rules of what this trusted space is going to look like. So we need to champion the values, state out loud what the values are, curb any type of behavior that we don't want to see, um, and make sure that, and honestly celebrate anyone who's acting the right way. But making sure that we do this really creates a place where people understand what's expected of them, that clarity is so important and that becomes also the space where people understand that showing up with deep trust is understood, expected, welcome, protected, uh, confidential, all of these things. And that allows for much different bonding and relationship and therefore collaborations and outcomes. Right.

Speaker C: See it, you do this primarily within corporations. Right.

Speaker A: So uh, yeah, well, so a lot of the time it's going to be, my clients are going to be on the B2B side. So it's going to be uh, yes, industry association, uh, any type of programming for entrepreneurs a lot of the time because we still work with them closely and sometimes corporations around culture building.

Speaker C: Yes. So it's a, it's a community within a community.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker C: And on this, on the process side are these, once you form them and do the clear expectations, they're ongoing or do you have it in phases like a phase one or how do you structure it?

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah. So usually what we're going to have is that. Well, first it's going to be important to curate the people that are in the group together. We want to make sure that there's no one that is so a competitor to one another. No one that's a direct report to one another. Because again, for trust to be there, we need to ensure that there's that level of understanding and safety that's set. So if, let's say it's within a corporation, it's going to be great. If it's people at a similar level, if the company is large enough, amazing. Also if they don't know one another. Right. So it could be, let's say all d, you know, senior managers, uh, of different divisions that usually work in silos but now have the opportunity to collaborate with one another again, each working on their own issues and being there to tackle their own hurdles, but not needing to do this in their own echo chamber and.

Speaker C: No, go ahead.

Speaker A: Well, so I was just going to say. So curation is the first part. That's. Yeah, that's kind of like the, uh, the foundation to this. And then afterwards what's going to happen is that we keep the group small. Usually six to seven people is like, is our sweet spot. And the group is going to have a kickoff where we do activities to go deeper, to talk, you know, to take again, kind of that leap of faith altogether, to share more and to build that trust very quickly. Uh, we will give them a sense of what they can expect, do a demo. And then every other session is going to have a very similar agenda where one person's going to be. There are more elements to that than the agenda, but the core of it is that one person is on the hot seat and the rest of the group is supporting this person. So that's going to be the kind of the ongoing sessions. And every single one of these sessions is facilitated afterwards. Usually a group has a clear start date, end date that is facilitated. Then depending on the organization, sometimes that gets renewed. Or if not, the group is then in a solid enough situation to be able to continue on their own because by then they've actually learned the language to how to support one another. And there are so many methodologies, again, around supporting and problem solving in a group. But we kind of make sure that we infuse this and help people practice all of these skills with these first sessions that we do with them. So a lot of the time we're going to be looking at maybe, uh, you know, four to six months at least that is facilitated.

Speaker C: The advantage of Having an end date is you can choose to continue and change, but it makes measurement and expectations and feedback much clearer. If it isn't just open ended, you absolutely get it.

Speaker A: And it's, and obviously changes happen in people's lives, in people's jobs, all of that. It also leaves room for that flexibility to say, all right, we're at a point of reset. Uh, and sometimes it is because these people have spent, you know, we've had groups that have renewed a few times and then maybe they're at a point where they're, they've kind of like squeezed a lot of the insights and the knowledge that they would have to share from one another. And then it might be good to kind of mix the group and also give the opportunity within the corporation for, for different people to get to know one another. But there are so many reasons why. Yeah, absolutely. Having kind of a set time is good first of all for expectations. Just so that it gives kind of everyone a clear, clear understanding of what's expected of them from the start.

Speaker C: Mhm. Well, you mentioned on your website about roi, what is it you measure from a peer group?

Speaker A: Yeah. So uh, it's so interesting because every single session when we have a person that's going to be on that hot seat, what this means is that this person is coming in and bringing their most pressing challenge or what keeps them up at night. That can be anything. Usually we keep it on the professional side because these are professional groups. Sometimes it will also tie into their personal life. We're kind of welcoming obviously both sides of the conversation. Again, this is a confidential group. Um, and really the ROI on this is to say are these people able to be by the end of the conversation at a significantly different place than when they started at the beginning? So are they able to have, you know, to have untangle their thoughts? Are they able to think about it differently based on all the questions that happen within the groups, on all the insights that were shared within the group, the stories, the experiences of others. Were they able to come up with a new plan and clear next steps? And then afterwards it's to say let's have accountability for you. Right? You've had an amazing hot seat. What are your takeaways? And let's check in with you. And for us, our greatest measurement is to say when we are able to see these people completely transform their positioning from when they started their mastermind to by the time the mastermind ends. And obviously we have surveys and we're going to ask for a number of different KPIs but it's really kind of the evaluation of where are you at? Uh, by the end of this. And hopefully you've had this value from your own hot seat and the accountability afterwards, but also from every single challenge that gets shared by a peer throughout this time. Because every single time a challenge gets shared, a lot of the time it's very relatable and people learn from, you know, the insights that their peers, their peers will share. And a lot of the time there's a massive amount of learning that comes just by listening to other people's stories on similar topics.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So, yeah, all of that kind of turns into that, that ROI of progress, really.

Speaker C: And you need to separate out the part that's confidential and the part that they would want to brag about to their peers.

Speaker A: Um, yes, we have a number of values within our groups. And you know, obviously we make sure that it is a place like humility is one of the values that we have. It's a place to leave the Superman suit at the door, to show up authentically to have the conversations that we can't have elsewhere. And it's really rare to have a group like this where people will likely feel very similar things than you feel about your problems. Because you are all at very similar stages at this point, experiencing this often all alone. Right. It's a lot of time. You, you are so busy at work, you finally come back home. And I'm not sure that your spouse feels like having you dump. Right. Everything that's going on internally at work, all your emotions about it, how to process it. But we can intentionally create a space like that for people not only to, you know, to kind of have an outlet, but to have clear next steps that can come out from this and to help them untangle the messy and to help them clarify the unclear. Right. And at the same time, everyone gets to learn from it. Why not?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I go, I'm so inspired. Because we're seeing people say a sense of belonging is the most important thing. And yet our business culture is anti belonging and sometimes not blaming corporate culture. Sometimes we are figuring slack or some, uh, other tool will take care of this. And so we become increasingly transactional. We do, we do and complain about it when certainly not as expertly, uh, as ah, you do it. But everybody could have the opportunity to create space for conversations not directly related to today's to do list. So that's inspiring in and of itself. We've got to fight for space.

Speaker A: Thank you. Absolutely. And that sense of belonging happens a lot of the time when we finally get to hear what's going on behind, right behind that veil that we're all, you know, that we're all kind of like covering up. Uh, there's a messy side to each and every one of us. And I think a lot of the time corporate means let's cover this up and show up professionally. And that's great. That's, you know, kind of how our society is civilized and all of these lovely things. But at the same time, it's also important to first know that the behind the scenes is something that everyone experiences. Having a group where everyone kind of opens up on this and reveals what's really going on in their life is, is, is incredible. For a lot of people, it's an immense sense of relief to know that they're not alone. You know, struggling with these things and all of that so creates such deep belonging. But at the same time also again, knowing that you're not alone, needing to solve all of your problems because a, you're not as weird as you thought because everyone's also dealing with them. It's kind of the belonging, the learning together, the like encouraging and cheering one another, all of these things. I'm like, it's bringing the humanity back into relationships. And there used to be water cooler conversations before my, you know, and to a certain extent these don't happen anymore. Let's re engineer conversations, but also let's re engineer better conversations. Water cooler conversations were small talk. Right. How was your weekend? How are you doing? And that's also.

Speaker C: And that's important, but it's missing. What are you going to do and come back and tell me. So if I said to at the water cooler, I'm really struggling with Schmedley, you might say things that are helpful and I might say thank you and it's all sincere. But a month later, ah, I see with the water cooler on, um, bagel day, it's very unlikely that you're going to say you agreed to have a conversation with Mr. Schmedley and the accountability part and just the community part.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. So that's absolutely, absolutely. And that's the, um, uh, you're absolutely right. I think just having that depth, having, you know, it's, it's relationships that are so deep that get form. Uh, you know, it's people, you know, being invited to each other's wedding and like, that's, that's the level at which, um, complete strangers become incredibly close friends who have each other's back and who can talk shop because that's the original purpose of the meet and, you know, of these gatherings. But it's to again, have that depth and also have that efficiency because we are all more and more busy. And with that, you know, increased stress on our time comes that evaluation in everyone's mind of, uh, is this productive or not? Because if not, I don't have time for it. And this is where I'm like, yes, people don't have time just for. People have less time for just, you know, mingling. And however, they do have time for things that are highly productive like that. But the layer behind this is that it offers deep community, deep culture.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that increases engagement and it is productive. It's not the most productive thing you can do this week because the dividends take a while and the routes to go down take a while, but then the tree keeps regenerating and it's much more productive.

Speaker A: One thing that I'll say is that one of the beauty of, uh, having a peer group like this is that a lot of time we're so stuck in the weeds that we're looking at problem solving. At problem solving in the weeds. The beauty of talking to a peer group is that all our peers have a big picture view. Right. We are so stuck in the weeds that we kind of like don't really see whether we're headed in the right direction or not. But our peers, by asking us questions, understanding our problem, and looking at this kind of emotionally detached because they're not living the situation and also having kind of the freedom and flexibility of their own external perspective, a lot of the time will give the type of advice that have saved people hundreds of hours of time because they were so stuck in the weeds that they were going in the wrong direction. And that big picture view a lot of the time is what's going to make the whole difference in productivity. So for folks who have told us before, uh, I'm not sure I have the time to show up. And then eventually they do. A lot of the time they've come back and said, this was by far the best, you know, time management tool that I've had because it allowed me to refocus on my 80 20. And I was losing that sense of perspective because I was so busy executing.

Speaker C: And you've already said what your big picture is to the peer group. So somebody else can gently say, how is that really helping you with this? And something you already said so they didn't make it up. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: That's powerful.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Invite you to tell one success Story, obviously protect, protect any confidentiality, but just enough to get the idea in story form of impact.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, we had someone that was really struggling from a marketing standpoint. So that was. She was in charge of marketing a product. She was struggling to kind of make, you know, waves into her space. And so even though she was keeping busy, we were not seeing as much impact and traction from what she was doing in her group. And so her peers kind of, you know, first started with accountability and saying, you know, amazing, maybe it's a productivity thing, so what if we were to hold you accountable for certain things? And obviously this was kind of based on a much larger conversation. She said, yes, yes, yes, this is exactly what I mean. So accountability happened and the progress was still not there. So eventually a little bit more digging happened to really understand what's going on, what's in the way, what's. And in the end, uh, people got to understand. And this is also how we encourage our group to kind of problem solve, um, to understand what the real root cause of the issue is. After many, you know, after a few months of accountability, not kind of turning into anything, these bigger questions happen to understand why, why, why? And eventually it got into self worth and understanding that that person's self worth was not there enough for her to show up confidently talking about what she needed to talk about for her to be, you know, the spokesperson and the face and the, you know, to put herself out there to represent this product that she has had. And they told her, well, if that's there, you've got two options, right? Either you can try to work on it or try to find someone else to be pushing your marketing. Which one of these options would you, you know, would work best for you? She took a really deep breath. There was kind of this long moment of silence, but you could just feel that the group had really kind of like touched a really, really deep, um, deep and meaningful part for her. And she said, you know what? It's likely my only chance to work on my self esteem that I'll ever have as well supported as this.

Speaker C: Uh, that's a beautiful story.

Speaker A: And she did. And it was like, I'm getting emotional thinking back of this, but it was absolutely revolutionary to see how she was able to show up afterwards, how she was able to have the impact that she wanted to have. And within not very long, it just took off and she was so stuck deep in, you know, deep in, like, how could I say her, her patterns before, um, but her being able to kind of really change and this Change, you know, took many months. Obviously, don't get me wrong, this was kind of work in progress. But her peers, you know, There was a WhatsApp group around, around this team. They were constantly on. I'm just, you know, facilitating, so I'm kind of looking from the sideline. They were cheering her on, encouraging her, making sure that, you know, she stayed committed. And within a few months, the changes that we saw were extraordinary. Uh, her product got onto the biggest shelves nationally.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It was pure success. Right.

Speaker C: And so if we don't have space for trust, then we don't have the vulnerability. Then we keep playing whack a mole with surface problems that keep recurring because we can't get to the root without owning that there's something in us that needs to change. And that is very difficult to do without support.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And so, uh, that's a wonderful story.

Speaker A: Yeah. And there's so many, uh, it's truly life changing to have, I think, a group that has time for you and believes in you. And to me that's, you know, some of the saddest statistics that I see around are to say, and I don't remember exactly what the numbers were, but it was to say, you know, who, who and you know, who has someone who really has their back. Um, and I believe it was something as like even 50 of people who were married said, no one.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: I'm, I'm just thinking this is the type of thing that should not happen. Like we should have each other's back. And also it's again, time is so precious and important and fleeting. But there are some things that are so worth it because it's kind of, it is what nourishes our soul. And also it is what genuinely creates change. Not, you know, not microscopic change. I mean transformative change. That is part of it. Yeah.

Speaker C: Well, that's a spiritual crisis that you just defined and the symptoms of it are everywhere. Depression and suicide. And is it just what profit a woman if she gained the whole world and lose her soul? You use the word soul nourishing and it makes business sense because with our prefrontal cortexes we can probably have business impact based just on that up to a point. But if we really want human flourishing, it's got to be body, mind and spirit, whole self. And uh, your work is very important for that. Uh, I'm going to leave it with an open ended question. Anything you'd like to leave our audience with. I thank you so much for joining us. This will be helpful to our community of conversation. But leave them with anything you'd like to leave them.

Speaker A: One thing that I would say is that a lot of the time when we're looking at supporting someone and this kind of goes into our methodology. But for me that's kind of one of the most pivotal things that I've learned in this whole process. At times our heart is really kind of leaning in to help someone. But the way in which we support is also really important. What I mean by this is that I used to be, and I still am. Sometimes I really need to correct myself and I'm. It's work in progress. Even though I teach this and I preach this, it's still work in progress. Someone comes to us with um, a struggle, a pain point, a challenge. And our first, our first reaction is often to give advice.

Speaker C: Problem solving mode right away. As a coach I have to continuously remind myself, did I learn it 15 years ago? Yes. Did I learn it 15 years ago? No. I have to continuously pause and say, my intention is to support and draw from you.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And challenge you to get real with yourself. And it isn't that kind of knowledge. If you gave me a test, I would get an A in it. And then sometimes I can't believe how quickly I went into problem solving. And men are worse than women usually, you know, especially talk about houses. They don't want you to get out of flip chart and start solving them. Um, they want some listening. Let's get out of the, it's the

Speaker A: listening and the other, you know, if I was to kind of simplify, like very, very simplify, um, part of the methodology that we use for problem solving, it's to first ask a lot of questions. So be really curious to understand, you know, what is this person living through. Give them space to just think it through. Because a lot of time that space is so useful. So um, you know, will feel like a pressure valve that kind of is, you know, finally having its steam let off. And the other part is that genuinely allows us to understand without judging, without anything, just kind of leaning in curiously to understand where they're at. And the other part, instead of coming in with advice because we obviously want to feel useful and think of a, ah, story maybe of a similar time that you've had and what you have done about this and let that person take what they want from it. But a lot of the times just these two simple things can completely change how we come in and support people. Um, and I'm just hoping that anyone that's listening might be able to take advantage of this, for me, it has been transformative. It's definitely how we teacher group to come together. Um, at times we have people saying, like, what about the conflicts in the groups? Right? Like if someone says this and then someone else is something else and we're like, no, actually if someone comes in with a problem, yes, question asking. And then after supporting with our own shared experience, our own experience, sharing this generously but not expecting anything in return, that I find is such a beautiful way to stand with people. And hopefully I'm just hoping for more collaboration, more. I call this peership, peer peers coming together, having each other's back. But I just hope that more space is given for that because it's, it's exactly what both business and humans need.

Speaker C: So your hope is vibrant and observable. How can people reach you? This will also be in the show notes and any links you want, you can put in the show notes. But tell people how to reach you.

Speaker A: Yes, LinkedIn would be the best place to reach me. Please reach me there. Uh, you know, tell me what you like, how I can connect anything at all. I'm more than happy to help and I, I want to be there. And also, if you have listened all the way through here, it sounds like you are a community builder. It sounds like you are a leader with thoughts around, um, yeah, how to bring fellow humans together. And I think that's absolutely wonderful. So, yeah, I would love to support anyone who's, uh, who's out there trying to do this type of work.

Speaker C: Eiko, thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, Tom. Such a pleasure.