Entrepreneurial CEOs or founders of scalable, growth mode businesses face a different set of business and personal challenges than those facing CEOs of other types of businesses. If you are one and can pause for a moment and reflect on this statement, you experientially know exactly what I mean.
At its most basic level, we are dealing with a much faster pace of decision-making, broader set of challenges, different cash flow management challenges, additional corporate culture development and training challenges, and higher level of risk to our business, team, and personal lives if we don’t create certain outcomes, and create them faster than other CEOs must.
The Peer Support, Mastermind Groups I lead are designed specifically to support members in this category. And, I chose to put both of those words together quite intentionally. My groups are facilitated to draw from the structures of both Peer Support Groups and Mastermind Groups.
If a CEO’s number one job is making decisions, an entrepreneurial CEO of a growth stage company’s number one required resource is the ability to make a large amount of good decisions, with resilience, under time pressure (while evolving his or her capacity to learn faster from mistakes to make even better decisions the next day). My groups are designed to support that outcome.
I have chosen to align with Growth10 because I believe the speakers and supplemental resources they add in addition to the executive session meetings also support the needs of our groups’ members. Those familiar with Vistage know that their groups and support resources are geared toward executives that face different types of challenges. I have been a member of a Vistage group led by a Vistage Master Chair, and the tremendous value I received came from the Chair’s approach to how the group challenged and supported the growth and decision-making of the group’s members. Yet, I did not find the experience to incorporate the principles of a Mastermind Group. And, neither the CEOs reporting to large outside Boards nor the key executives who did not have to deal with the ultimate responsibility for the growth and fate of the business fully understood or empathized with what was involved in the decisions I was making as the CEO of an early stage business in the process of scaling up. From my sense of (EO entrepreneurs’ organization), their members tend to either be in a pre-growth stage of development or in a local business, rather than a scalable business. Again, their members face different challenges. I believe Growth10 groups are designed to serve high growth potential CEOs in growth mode.
For those not yet familiar with my background, you will quickly find in your interactions with me that my experience, my mindset, my way of thinking, and my way of supporting entrepreneurs and CEOs are all exactly on point to supporting genuine entrepreneurial CEOs and guiding us in supporting each other.
Chip Conley wrote the book “Wisdom At Work: The Making of A Modern Elder” after his over three and a half years as Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at Airbnb. For those unfamiliar with his history, he moved into that role surrounded by young technologists at age 52 after 24 years of founding and running a boutique hotel chain, and moved out of that role into writing this book and founding the Modern Elder Academy. He boiled down the definition of Wisdom in an NPR interview I heard.
He defined Wisdom in business environments as essentially advanced pattern recognition.
My advanced pattern recognition on what decisions lead to successful outcomes and what growth stage businesses succeed or fail comes not just from my own entrepreneurial executive experience (which has been centered mostly on disruptive or industry changing businesses, complimented by a series of local cash flow centered businesses with the different types of brick and mortar operational requirements they bring). Moreover, it comes from the patterns of success and failure I have seen through my twenty-year association with The Keiretsu Forum.
As the author of The Keiretsu Forum’s Due Diligence Process Handbook that members of the world’s largest angel investor group use to make investment decisions, and as leader of the small group that initially built the foundation for scalable due diligence processes for that group, I have had a chance to analyze what works and what doesn’t work as businesses go from concept through liquidity event or failure … and why.
Knowing the right questions to ask is even more important than knowing the right answers to give. A few of the things that make me uniquely gifted at what I do include making sure teams are asking the right questions, making sure visionaries and operational executives are working together, making sure executive and consulting resources are being deployed wisely because the right questions have been asked and the right directions given, and facilitating messaging that makes it clear to customers and investors alike that a business at one level can methodically navigate risk and get to the next level.
There is one other important thing to know about my ability to empathize with other CEOs. I am a husband and a father of three young children with an age spread of just over three years, one of which has a rare medical disorder. I promise you that I understand the time and emotional balance of navigating being an entrepreneur and a parent concurrently.
In terms of the logistics and timing, I structure the size and timing of our groups to maximize the potential benefit. My U.S. focused groups meet virtually and monthly via Zoom for our monthly deep dive mastermind meetings during the second week of the month on the day of the week on which your specific group is scheduled at 11:00 a.m. Pacific / 2:00 p.m. Eastern for three hours. The supplemental and optional, one-hour weekly peer support solution mastermind meetings meet virtually via Zoom on the 1 st , 3 rd , and 4 th Mondays of the month (at a different time for different groups). The choice of the second week of the month is intended to allow for consistency with minimal variance from holidays. The choice of Mondays for the shorter, one hour meetings is intended to provide extra problem solving from our peers at the start of the business week. And, the specific start time for the longer, three hour, deep dive meetings is meant to achieve better focus and an increased willingness to “turn off” communications during the session. This start time allows a CEO to have several hours before the start time to complete objectives and delegate communications before the full, deep dive mastermind meeting begins.
Please note that most all facilitated CEO peer support groups meet monthly. I provide and lead the additional, weekly, one-hour virtual meetings as a supplement. You can think of it as two distinct types of Mastermind sessions that support and enhance the results produced in each.
I look forward to being of service to you and welcoming you into a compatible group designed to support your personal development, business development, and societal contribution through the growth of your business. I encourage you to live by my motto. That is, however big you currently think and however big the outcomes you are now producing are, I want you through your participation in my groups to … be more than you think you can be.
If you would prefer to connect with me personally,
please click here to schedule a time to speak. After scheduling, you will receive a Zoom link to your email. If you would like to reach out to me by email, please click here
Our Process for becoming a member
Upon receipt and review of said application, we will follow-up by email with a Calendly online calendar link to enable you to schedule a 15-30 minute Zoom meeting to assess your compatibility with the members of one of my groups.