I am on the selling side of this question, so this page sticks to the purchase: what a fee pays for, what sits outside it, how to test the price against your own year, and how to decide at renewal. Whether the format works at all is a separate question, and do CEO peer groups work? answers it.
What does a peer group fee pay for?
Much of what a facilitated group's fee pays for happens outside the meeting. In my groups the monthly meeting is the part members see. Before it come recruiting and selecting members, preparing the agenda, and a one-to-one session with each member. After it comes the follow-up on what members said they would do.
When two quotes differ, start by comparing what each package includes. A paid chair is a cost that a forum moderated by its own members does not carry. Group size changes how a fixed amount of facilitation is shared among the members. Member organizations add a local chapter and a global organization with dues for each, and EO and YPO charge both. Where a package includes speakers, retreats or a wider network, you pay for them whether or not you use them.
The table sets out each part of the package against the question that tests it.
| Cost driver | What it buys you | Worth paying for when | Question to ask |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facilitator time | Someone accountable for the meeting, its preparation and the follow-up between meetings | You want someone other than the members holding the group to its commitments | What does the facilitator do between meetings, and how often? |
| One-to-one sessions | Private time to work a decision through before it goes to the group | You expect to use them every month | How many are included, and what happens to the ones I miss? |
| Member selection | Someone screening applicants for stage and conflicts before they join | Comparable members matter more to you than a quick start | Who decides who joins, and are applicants ever turned down? |
| Group size | Your share of the facilitation, and the range of experience around you | The size gives each member enough time on their own issues | How many members does the group have now, and what is the ceiling? |
| Speakers and workshops | Programmed learning alongside the advisory session | The subjects match decisions you face this year | Which sessions are included, and which cost extra? |
| Events, retreats and network | Gatherings and contacts beyond your own group | You have a specific use for them and will attend | Which events are billed separately, and what will travel add? |
| Chapter and global dues | The member organization's local and global operations | You value what each level runs for you | Which charges are local and which are global? |
Member selection is the line I would look at hardest. When I turn down an applicant whose company is far from the stage of the others, the members already paying are the reason. A group that admits anyone who can pay has lowered its own costs and passed the result on to you. What paid facilitation adds compared with a member-run forum is covered in member-led forum or chair-led peer board.
What is not on the invoice?
The first figure a founder hears is usually the recurring fee. A full year can include more:
- A one-time joining or initiation fee, which some organizations charge.
- Chapter dues on top of global dues, in member organizations such as EO and YPO.
- Events and retreats billed separately, with travel and accommodation on top.
- The commitment term: how long you are committed for, the notice needed to leave, and whether anything is owed once you stop attending.
- Fee increases at renewal, and how much notice you get of them.
Build two budgets from the written terms. The first year includes any joining fee and tells you whether you can afford to start. A renewal year without it tells you what staying costs.
Then add your time, valued at your own rate, because it never appears on an invoice. A Vistage group, for example, asks members to set aside one day a month for the meeting, before preparation and the one-to-one. What membership asks of you beyond the hours is set out in can a founder belong to more than one peer group?
How do you judge whether the price is worth it for you?
Do this before the sales conversation, so you have something written to compare with what you hear, including from me.
- List the decisions ahead. Write down three to five decisions you expect to make in the next twelve months: a key hire, a price change, an expansion, a partner problem, a sale. Use decisions you can see coming. Hypothetical disasters inflate the case.
- Put a cost on getting each one wrong. Use your own figures. For a senior hire, that means the search, the salary paid before the problem became clear, the replacement search and the work that did not get done meanwhile. Write the assumptions down and count each consequence once.
- Write what you would want tested. For each decision, write the specific thing a group could question before you commit, such as the demand assumption behind a second location or the terms of a partner buyout. If you cannot write it, a group has little to add to that decision.
- Compare with the full annual cost. Ask whether a better-tested version of one or two of those decisions would cover the year, including your time. Be cautious about how much better. A group can improve a decision, and you still make it and your team still carries it out.
This is your arithmetic, and it has a limit. You will never see what would have happened without the group. The cost of a bad decision measures the size of the risk, and a group that helped you think it through can claim only part of a good outcome. So decide now what you will look at in twelve months: the decisions you wrote down, what you changed after the group questioned them, and how those changes turned out.
Are CEO peer groups overpriced?
Some memberships are, for the founder holding them. The criticism is fair in these cases:
- You pay for programming you do not use. Network events, retreats and speaker series cost money to run, and they are worth nothing to a member who never attends.
- The other members are at a different stage. You can enjoy their company and still take away little that applies to your decisions.
- Nothing happens between meetings. If the sale described ongoing support and the facilitator appears once a month, ask what the fee covers.
- The content is available free. A speaker series is easy to compare with what you could read or watch at no cost.
- You stay out of habit. Renewing because cancelling feels awkward is how a fair price turns into a poor one.
The criticism misjudges the purchase when it prices a group as content per hour. In a well-run group a founder pays for two things: a decision questioned before the money is spent, by people with no stake in the answer, and a group that remembers what that founder committed to last month. More presentations would add to neither. Whether a particular group delivers them depends on conditions you can check before joining, and the guide to whether peer groups work lists them.
What should you ask before you pay?
These are purchasing questions. Ask for the answers in writing, from any provider, me included.
- What does the recurring fee include, and what is charged separately?
- Is there a joining or initiation fee, or an additional chapter charge?
- What is the commitment term, and what notice or payment is required to leave?
- What happens to my fee if the group dissolves, the chair leaves or the group changes shape?
- How many one-to-one sessions are included, and what happens to unused ones?
- Can I attend or observe a meeting before I pay?
- How is the chair or moderator paid, and does their income depend on recruiting and renewals?
- Can I speak with a member who left?
The question about how the chair is paid matters more than it looks. My own income depends on members joining and renewing, which gives me an interest in your decision to join and in your decision to stay. Weigh my advice, and any chair's, with that in mind.
If an answer changes whether you would pay, ask for it in the agreement. A reassuring answer about flexibility is hard to rely on when the written terms say something different.
How do you decide at renewal?
Set two dates when you join. The first is an early check after your first few meetings: are the other members working on decisions like yours, and is the support you were sold arriving? The second is the renewal review, set before the renewal notice deadline. Before it, ask a current member and a former one what disappointed them and whether they would join again. Then work through four questions.
- Which decisions changed? Go back to the list you wrote before joining. Note which decisions changed after the group questioned them and whether the changes held up. Count decisions you delayed or dropped as well.
- How much did you use? Missed meetings and unused one-to-ones are paid for too. A membership can be fair value for an active member and poor value at your level of use.
- Would you notice if it stopped? Write down what you would have to replace, and what you would pay to replace it.
- Does it fit next year's decisions? A different group, or a different kind of help, may suit the year ahead better.
Renewing from habit repeats a cost nobody examined. Leaving cleanly is a sound result of the review as well.
When is the money better spent elsewhere?
A specialist can build what you need. If you can describe the deliverable, such as a financial model or a compensation plan, get a specialist's quote for that work and compare it with the full membership commitment.
The fee competes with payroll. Protect payroll. A possible improvement in decisions next quarter does not meet a cash obligation this month.
The issue is your own behavior. If what needs work is how you lead, and you want private, individual attention on it, compare a peer group with an executive coach before you spend the budget.
The wider list of cases where a peer group is the wrong purchase, including a business in acute crisis and a group with the wrong composition, is in do CEO peer groups work?
Where does 305Founders fit?
305Founders is a Miami founder community. Carolina and I chair Vistage groups as one of its three pathways, alongside the Founder Blueprint operating system and Performance Edge sales systems.
We do not publish our pricing. We discuss price openly in a private conversation, before any commitment, and how 305Founders membership works explains why. Every question on this page is welcome in that conversation.
Outside South Florida, take the same questions to the groups where you live. Vistage vs EO vs YPO compares how each organization is run and who it accepts.
- A CEO peer group is worth the money when the improvement it makes to this year's decisions is worth more than the full annual cost, including your time.
- Price the whole year from written terms: any joining fee, the recurring dues, chapter charges, events billed separately, travel and the terms for leaving.
- Judge each part of the package by whether you will use it.
- Write your decisions and assumptions down before joining, so the renewal review has something to measure.
- Ask how the chair is paid. Mine depends on joining and renewals, and you should weigh my advice with that in mind.
Not sure which decisions belong on your list? Ten minutes on the Leadership Scorecard shows where the pressure sits in your company and in your own week. Take that answer with you when you speak to any group.