Should I Join a CEO Peer Group?
The benefits and drawbacks of joining a professional mastermind.
Peer groups and mastermind groups seem to be popping up everywhere. A few months ago, I was talking to a Series B founder CEO who told me he had been “reached out to three times [that] week” about joining a peer group. I’ve put together and facilitated a few such groups, and was actually talking to him about joining my own CEO peer group (which is full and on a waitlist as of now, no pitch here!). A few years ago, it seemed nobody had heard of a peer group. Today, I notice that most people I talk to have either joined or thought about joining something similar.
Similar communities are being tailored for content creators, influencers, and side-hustlers alike. So what’s the big deal? Why is it becoming a more common part of professional development (and a more popular business model for service providers)? How does it help and where does it fall short?
A peer group is just what it sounds like
First, some definitions and a lay of the land. A peer group or mastermind (they might be slightly different but I’ll use the terms interchangeably) is a community of similar individuals who get together regularly to support each other. Sometimes, it’s a big, broad group; sometimes, it’s a…