The geography question is a pathway question
Founders in Broward usually ask this as a distance question, and distance is the part that matters least. Everything we do sits at a different place on the travel scale, and the gap between the ends of that scale is much wider than the gap between Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
One full day a month with the group is the heaviest commitment we ask for. A coaching relationship is the lightest, because the session is scheduled between the two people in it. The company engagements sit outside that comparison, since what they ask of your calendar depends on how the engagement itself is built.
So start by settling which of those you are shopping for. That answer moves the cost more than the county line does.
What the monthly day asks of you
The peer advisory group spends one full day together each month, which is twelve days a year. Before you weigh the drive, ask for the calendar and the meeting location, because those are what the arithmetic rests on and both are reasonable things to ask for during an application.
It is easy to read "Miami-based" as a standing weekly obligation. What it involves is a small number of days that are hard to move. That shape suits some calendars well and suits others badly, and it is worth knowing which one you have before you apply.
The full day deserves as much of your attention as the trip does. You are giving up a working day, and for a Broward founder the drive sits on either end of it. My admission standard is that a member arrives able to hold the whole day, and a founder planning to slip out at two o'clock has not taken that commitment.
What a Broward founder travels for
The table below is the honest version of the geography question. It is the one I would walk a candidate through on a first call.
| Pathway | The cadence | What you travel for | When local is the better call |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peer advisory day | One full day each month | The session itself. This is the pathway where your attendance is the whole product, so the date and the location are the first things to ask about. | You want weekly or biweekly contact, the total cost is better spent closer to home, or another chair is the better fit for you. |
| Founder Blueprint | Set around the engagement with your company | Less than the monthly day asks, because the work is done with you and your leadership team. Confirm where the sessions will be held before you estimate anything. | Judge this one on scope, method, references and cost rather than on distance. A Broward advisor who fits better on those is the better choice. |
| Performance Edge | Set around the engagement with your sales organization | Less than the monthly day asks, for the same reason. Building a sales organization means working with the people who run it. | The work needs frequent on-site sessions, or faster in-person access than a provider in another county can give you. |
| One-to-one coaching | Scheduled sessions at an agreed rhythm | The session, on a date you helped choose. Of the three this is the easiest to fit around a Broward calendar. | Compare on fit, relevant experience, language, format and fees. A coach in your own market wins if you value meeting on short notice. |
| Founder Breakfasts | Monthly and private, ten seats, in Miami | A morning in Miami. It is the smallest commitment we have and a way to see how we work before deciding anything. | An event closer to home will get more consistent attendance from you, which is worth more than a better guest list you rarely see. |
A founder weighing the monthly day and a founder weighing a Blueprint engagement are asking two different questions that happen to share a word. Answering both with a single statement about the service area would be useless to either of them.
What crossing the county line buys
There has to be something on the other side of the trip. Here is what it is.
A peer advisory table gets assembled seat by seat. Every seat has to clear the same conditions: a founder at a comparable stage, carrying comparable weight, who does not compete with anyone already there and has no commercial relationship that would stop either of them speaking freely. I apply those conditions to every candidate.
Selecting against that list is arithmetic as much as judgment, and the arithmetic is kinder with a wider catchment. Drawing from two counties leaves more candidates who can clear the conditions than drawing from one. That is the structural argument for the drive, and it is worth asking any group you are considering how they handle the same problem, because a good local chair may have solved it another way.
The argument has a limit, and the limit decides the cases at the edge. If what you are mainly after is a local referral network or peers who share your hiring market, then a wider catchment works against you. Say that early and we will tell you so.
The attendance question I ask, and why it decides this
When a candidate would be travelling to us, attendance is what I screen for hardest, well ahead of anything about the company.
I ask four things:
- Can you hold one full day a month, twelve months out, against the things that usually take days like that?
- Will you make the trip without resenting it by month four?
- Do you want perspective from founders outside your immediate market, or do you want people inside it?
- Will you be there for the sessions where someone else brings the hard decision, as well as the ones where you do?
The fourth is the one that matters most and the one candidates prepare for least. A table works because the other members show up for you, which obliges you to show up for them. A member who attends when it suits them takes value from people who are keeping their side of it.
Where the honest answer to any of those is soft, I point the founder to something closer to home instead of selling a membership I can see going half-used. That costs me the membership, and it costs me less than seating an unreliable member among members who kept their commitment.
When a Broward founder should stay local
I would point a founder to a local option in three situations.
The first is frequency. Wanting contact every week or two changes the arithmetic, because the trip stops being a monthly event and starts shaping your week. Proximity is worth a great deal at that cadence.
The second is market. A founder whose customers and hiring sit in Broward or Palm Beach, and who mainly wants people who know that market, is describing a local table.
The third is the honest reading of your own calendar. If you can already picture yourself cancelling in month five, believe it. A good local group you attend fully beats a better table you attend halfway, and it is not close.
We are Miami-centered and we stay that way. We work with Broward founders without describing the monthly day or the breakfasts as Broward offerings, because they are not, and a founder who learns that after joining has been sold something.
If what you want is a coach rather than a table
Someone searching for an executive coach in Fort Lauderdale may not be shopping for a peer group at all. Where the need is individual, it is usually a delegation problem, a relationship with a senior executive, a decision that has been sitting too long, or the move into a different role at the top of the company.
That work is scheduled directly between the two people doing it, which makes the geography easier. Carolina Duran is a certified executive coach and fully bilingual, and she and I are both based in Miami. If you need someone who can be in your office at short notice, that is a fair requirement, and we would rather hear it in the first conversation than in month three.
Our guide to choosing an executive coach in Miami sets out the criteria worth using on us or on anyone else you are considering. If you are still deciding between the formats themselves, peer board, mentor, or executive coach compares them side by side.
- We work with founders based in Fort Lauderdale and across Broward County, from a Miami base.
- The peer advisory pathway meets one full day a month, which is twelve days a year. Ask for the calendar and location before you weigh the drive.
- Founder Blueprint and Performance Edge are run with your company and its leadership team, so confirm where those sessions sit before estimating travel.
- One-to-one coaching is scheduled between the two people in it, and the Founder Breakfast is the smallest first look.
- Stay local if you want weekly contact, if you mainly want peers inside the Broward market, or if you can already picture yourself cancelling.
Work out which pathway you are considering before you weigh the drive, because the travel cost differs more between them than it does between the two counties. For the monthly day, the question is whether you will protect twelve days a year and use them properly, and the calendar and location are fair things to ask for before you decide. For the company engagements, ask where the sessions will be held. Answer the attendance question honestly first and the geography tends to decide itself.
Not sure whether the constraint is you, the operating system, or the growth engine? Ten minutes on the Leadership Scorecard will point you to the work that matters first, wherever you end up doing it.