For most business owners running a company with real employees and real payroll, yes — a CEO peer group is worth it, because the alternative is making consequential decisions alone with no one qualified to tell you you’re wrong. The value shows up in decisions you didn’t make: the bad hire you avoided, the acquisition you walked away from, the partner you finally confronted. It is not worth it for anyone who wants applause instead of honesty.
Here’s what nobody tells you about the corner office. The higher you climb, the less truth reaches you. Your team edits themselves before they speak. Your spouse loves you too much to be objective. Your board has an agenda. Your friends don’t understand the business well enough to help. So you end up doing the hardest job in the company with the worst information in the building.
I spend more than 500 hours a year in rooms with CEOs and business owners in San Diego. The pattern is remarkably consistent. A leader walks in carrying a problem he’s been chewing on alone for four months. Within twenty minutes, twelve peers who have nothing to sell him have reframed it entirely — usually because someone in the room solved the same problem three years ago and remembers exactly what it cost.
That’s the mechanism. Not inspiration. Not a framework on a whiteboard. Just experienced people who have no stake in your ego telling you what they actually see.
The math is simpler than people expect. For example one member really embraced the AI speaker we had at the monthly meeting. He could see the potential could change his business–and it did! He enrolled half of his team in the AI Bootcamp the speaker offered and they embraced the process of integrating AI tools into the workflow. A year later they increased per employees productivity by nearly 2x and increased revenue by 60%. One decision like that pays for years of membership. The rest is compounding.
But I’ll tell you who shouldn’t join. If you want validation, don’t. If you’re not willing to be challenged in front of peers, don’t. If you can’t commit to showing up every month — and I mean every month — don’t waste the money. The people who get the most out of a peer group are the ones who bring their hardest problem, not their best quarter.
