One of the things I’m working on for the new accountability group I put together for entrepreneurs is the process for onboarding new members. I’m adding a few new members to an existing group, and I need them to come to the next meeting ready to contribute and knowing what to expect.

I set up a mini onboarding and workshop meeting with the new members. I went through what makes the group work, what tools we all use, and what’s expected of them as group members. We then did a hands-on workshop where I explained the prework they need to do before each meeting and how to use certain tools to complete the prework. We then completed part of it as a group. I gave feedback and helped them understand how to complete the prework to the standard of the existing group members.

That meeting went well. They said they have a better understanding of what they need to do and how they should go about doing it. But the real test will be the next meeting with the full group. If I did a good job, it won’t be noticeable that we have new members. If I didn’t, I’ll need to refine the onboarding process a bit.

When I was part of an EO forum, one of the hardest things for our group to do was coordinate calendars. We had several busy CEOs with packed schedules. Finding an open time for a four-hour meeting was a challenge. With the accountability group for entrepreneurs I’m spinning up, I’m booking six months of meetings during our first meeting. Everyone opens their laptop at the end of the meeting, and we confirm dates then and there. I send calendar invites that day, and the meetings are locked in.

This worked well until this month, when several group members had conflicts. We needed to reschedule. One of the group members owned coordinating the change, but it dragged on without everyone settling on a date. I jumped in and will pick a date. Likely everyone won’t make the meeting, but a decision needs to be made soon; otherwise, we won’t meet in October.

Coordinating with several CEOs is hard. My biggest takeaway is that inside of 30 days, it becomes many times harder. If a meeting date must be changed, it’s best to do it 45–60+ days out and have everyone agree to the date in person during an accountability meeting.

Today I met with an entrepreneur interested in joining one of the pilot accountability peer groups that I’m starting. He’s five years into his business, and it’s beginning to grow rapidly. He wants to learn from other entrepreneurs who are also running high-growth businesses, but it hasn’t been easy for him to find and connect with such peers. Therefore, what the peer accountability groups offer immediately resonated with him.

My takeaway from this conversation is that people like this entrepreneur want to connect with and learn from peers. The demand is there for these types of groups.

I’m creating the next set of accountability peer groups for entrepreneurs and have spoken with several strong entrepreneurs. I’m using revenue as a proxy for product–market fit. Basically, if you have over $1M in revenue, you likely have product–market fit. It’s not perfect, but it’s a simple and easy filter everyone can understand.

I’m seeing a difference within the group of entrepreneurs who have product–market fit. Two companies can each have $2M in revenue but be at different stages. For example, one might have had $1M in revenue last year; the other, $2.25M. They will be dealing with different challenges. And they might have different objectives. One may be focused on rapid growth and the other on maintenance and profit harvesting.  

Given this difference, I’m now thinking that my initial conversations with entrepreneurs should include understanding their revenue for the last few years so I can determine their growth rate. I can then ask questions about how they feel about that growth rate and what help they want from their peers (if any) in changing it.

I’ll think about this more and discuss it with others, but understanding historical growth rate might help as a filter and in matching like-minded entrepreneurs.

I’ve been working to create accountability groups for entrepreneurs in Atlanta. Two have gotten off the ground and are serving as great pilots to learn from. I’m looking to launch a third, but I’m starting to think that coordinating three-plus groups might require me to change how I handle the things I need to do between meetings. Email and text reminders need to go out to founders, and other tasks include agenda prep, scheduling one-on-one meetings with group members, and researching topics that came up and sharing that information with the group.

I don’t love this kind of work, but I’ve noticed that the more organized I am (or appear to be) and the more smoothly run the meetings are, the more prepared and engaged the members are before and during each meeting. I need to find a scalable way to handle all this stuff. If I don’t, the quality of the meetings could be affected.

I don’t want to hire anyone because I don’t want to manage anyone. Instead, I’m thinking about using AI agents to do these tasks or make it easier for me to do them. I’m going to do some digging. I think this could be a great excuse to test some of the newer tools: Grok Bot, Muse, Instinct, etc. I’ve been wanting to play with these, and this use case might be the perfect way to learn how to use them.

A few months ago, I shared that I was going to start more accountability groups for entrepreneurs. I’ve now inaugurated the second one with a friend who’s also an entrepreneur. (He’s running one group, and I’m running the other.) This week we had the first meeting.

One of the things I did differently this go-around was make the first meeting more geared toward onboarding. I focused on explaining what the group is, how it will operate, and why it will be effective. I also used this meeting as an opportunity for the entrepreneurs to give elevator pitches about themselves and their companies.

This approach went over better than I’d expected, and the entrepreneurs got a lot out of it. There’s still more work to do, but this project seems to be off to a good start.

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, I’ve been working with several entrepreneurs and moderating a monthly accountability group for them. We had our third meeting this week, and it went well (lessons learned coming in another post). I’m considering working with another entrepreneur on this project. I had a good conversation with him this week. He recognizes the value in these groups and has been in one himself. The idea is that together we could moderate additional accountability groups. I’m not sure what will come of our conversation, but it’s encouraging that other entrepreneurs are open to moderating these groups alongside me.

As I shared last month (see here), I’ve been working with Atlanta entrepreneurs and moderating an accountability group. The group meets once a month for a few hours. I’m aiming for the group to be highly engaged and open to sharing so they’ll learn from peers' experiences and can solve their own problems faster. My goal is to make each meeting a better experience for the entrepreneurs than the last.

We had our second meeting this week. The members rated the meeting highly (this is at the end of each agenda), but the meeting didn’t meet my expectations. “High engagement” means everyone is showing up, being prepared to share, and learning from their peers. During our first meeting, we had 100% attendance. I also had everyone go through their calendar month by month for the next six months. We found dates that worked for everyone and committed to those dates as a group. I sent meeting invites out for the next six months. Stuff happens, but as much as possible, I wanted to mitigate scheduling issues that would prevent a busy, type-A entrepreneur from attending.

This month, two members couldn’t make it. Another member was late. I’ve realized that I didn’t fully set expectations with the group. The expectation related to being late had been set (no admittance after the meeting starts), but I hadn’t crystallized what happens if someone misses a meeting (whether that’s planned or because of tardiness).

My thinking is that A players want to be around other A players. They get annoyed when they’re forced to work alongside less-than-A players and often remove themselves from such situations. I think everyone in this group is an A player, but this week, not everyone gave A-level effort. Three members missed. To maintain the high-engagement, high-effort culture required to make this group a success, I need everyone to give A-level effort every meeting. That means showing up on time and prepared.

Last month, everyone gave A-level effort. The challenge this month is that some members gave A-level effort and others didn’t. I’m pretty sure (though this is an assumption; no one said anything to me) that attendees who did give A-level effort noticed the difference. I need to address this and have the members who missed demonstrate to their peers that they can and will put forth A-level effort going forward.

I’m not 100% sure how I’ll do this, but I’m thinking about having each member who missed explain, in two minutes, why they want to continue being part of the group and what they’ll do to avoid missing future meetings. The members can then vote on whether that person can continue as a member (i.e., do we think this person will give A-level effort going forward?).

Regardless, the second meeting is in the books, and the members got value from it. I’m looking forward to tweaking this format to make the rest of the meetings better than the first two.

I’m following up on yesterday’s post (see here). A credible person I respect read that post and proposed an alternative solution to the problem I described. Instead of deciding between one 60-minute presentation (in a 2-hour meeting) or two 60-minute presentations (in a 3-hour meeting), they suggested making the presentation for urgent problems 30 minutes and the scheduled presentation 60 minutes, extending the total meeting time to 2.5 hours, which may not feel like as drastic a change. I like this and will share it with the entrepreneurs to see what they think.

The other takeaway is that as moderator, I have lots of follow-up to do and action items to take care of before the next meeting. Founders need assistance, preparation for the next meeting, etc. Meetings are held monthly, so in theory I could wait until closer to the next meeting to start working on action items. However, I find it more helpful to attack them immediately after a meeting while everyone’s memory is fresh and the momentum with the entrepreneurs is strong. For example, immediately after the meeting adjourned, I scheduled meetings with the entrepreneurs who said they wanted help, and next week I’ll help them work through roadblocks. I also immediately reflected on people’s feedback and created the agenda for the next meeting, incorporating the feedback and learnings while they were fresh in my mind. I feel better prepared for the next meeting and have a plan to keep founders engaged by helping them before the next meeting.

I’m very pleased with the first meeting, but I’m not satisfied. I want to improve it so the value founders get from participating trumps anything else they’re a part of and makes them excitedly look forward to every meeting.

As I shared last week (see here), for the past few weeks I’ve been working with Atlanta entrepreneurs to set up an accountability group. The group meets once a month for a few hours. My expectation for the group is high engagement and open sharing so they’ll learn from one another and solve their problems faster. I want them to get value similar to what entrepreneurs get from EO and YPO forums.

We had our first meeting this week, which I moderated. It was a success, but I learned several valuable lessons. Meeting length is the first. We aimed for two hours, which included one sixty-minute presentation. The presentation was selected based on which entrepreneur had the most urgent problem to solve. This worked, and the presentation was great. But the feedback from the group was that allowing only the entrepreneur with the most urgent problem to present likely isn’t sustainable. Entrepreneurs said they didn’t like the idea of having to pick from urgent house fires at every meeting. Some want to know they’ll have a guaranteed opportunity to present, even if they don’t have a burning problem. And last, some entrepreneurs want more time to think about and prepare a presentation and to know with certainty that their presentation will happen.

The challenge is that the meeting agendas are currently built around a two-hour meeting length: one hour of discussing the most important updates from each entrepreneur, with the idea of finding one worth presenting to the group, and a one-hour presentation.

To address the group’s concerns, we will likely need to add a second presentation slot. One would be the most burning problem selected on the spot from the updates. The other would be a scheduled presentation. We’ll either have to add another hour to the meeting, making it three hours long, or cut the presentation time in half. Each option has pros and cons.

I’m not sure what change, if any, we’ll make. The group will make the final decision via a democratic process. But it stood out to me that several entrepreneurs pointed out the challenges of having a single presentation slot for each meeting.

Regardless, the first meeting went well, and I’m looking forward to continually improving the meeting format to maximize the value to the entrepreneurs.