Growth is a key focus for us here at Front Burner Marketing, whether it’s growing our own business or figuring out a path for growth for our consulting clients. Whether you’re working to grow your business past the $1 million mark or you’re striving to take a much larger company even higher, your growth still depends upon your ability to hire and retain the right people, nail down your growing operations, keep cash flowing, and sharpen your long-term vision to chart a strategy for sustained growth.
In my experience leading this company over the past 23 years, I’ve come to believe strongly that connecting with structured coaching programs and peer groups of fellow entrepreneurs can be a game-changer, helping you push through the inevitable issues every business experiences with people, execution, cash, and strategy.
There are some strong data points to back up this belief:
- Member Confidence & Satisfaction
A Harvard Business Review study found 70 % of CEOs belong to a formal peer-to-peer advisory group—and those participants report higher job satisfaction and are more likely to hit their growth goals.
- Measurable ROI
Vendor supported peer/accountability groups show returns on investment ranging from 25 % to 224 %—demonstrating that even modest improvements in focus and accountability can pay off substantially. Biz Advisory Board.
- Accelerated Learning & Retention
Action-learning in peer groups (real-time problem solving with fellow leaders) can boost retention of key concepts by over 6x compared to traditional training.
Taken together, these figures underscore that joining a structured peer-to-peer coaching or advisory program isn’t just “nice to have”—it’s a proven pathway to stronger revenue growth, sharper leadership, and tangible ROI.
Why Peer-to-Peer Business Coaching Matters to Us
Through our consulting services, Front Burner Marketing serves as a key leadership team “supporting cast member” for most of our clients. We listen to their goals, issues, and problems, peer-to-peer. Then we work with them to create a strategy to address them, setting up tasks and deadlines that will provide a constant cadence toward making them happen. Always with a mind to the strategy – people – cash – and execution required to help our clients meet their goals. It’s a nice life here, full of meaningful work that makes dreams come true.
In particular, three key resources I’ve found (each built around peer support, practical tools, and accountability) have helped to propel our own growth as a digital marketing consulting agency. No doubt they could do the same for you if you’re a business owner, at any stage of your growth. These resources are all available on an international chapter scale, so I encourage you to click through to find one near you if you want to try out their peer-to-peer coaching services!
1) Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses:
Free, Focused, and Fiercely Practical
I was lucky enough to be recommended to our local program chapter here in Cleveland, Ohio by another business owner, and once I looked into it, I was hooked:
- A curriculum designed by Babson College, the nation’s top-ranked entrepreneurship school
- Focus on a growth plan
- Required attendance where you must step out of your business and work ON your business during program days
- 67% of graduates increase revenue within six months of graduation
- 44% of graduates hire additional employees within six months of graduation
- 99% of 10KSB graduates are likely to recommend the program
- 88% agree their 10KSB Business Advisor helped them grow
- The program has a +90 Net Promoter Score.
Despite having undergraduate majors in Finance and Business Economics, an MBA, and being a non-practicing CPA, I still remember stepping into my first classroom at the 10,000 Small Businesses (“10KSB”) program, binder in hand and nerves on edge but ready to go with Cohort 18. This wasn’t a “textbook” experience – this was practical guidance on something exceptionally real and important to me. What I found was a group of business owners with all levels of education and background, focused solely on growing their own businesses and helping others to do the same. In this warm and uplifting environment, business leaders are encouraged to share their struggles with their cohort group and a deeply experienced faculty, all of whom are there eager to help. At last, I’d found my tribe!
This multiweek, hands-on curriculum walks you through practical business skills that you can immediately apply to your own environment:
- People: Crafting core values, an employer brand, and hiring and retention strategies that actually work.
- Operations: Identifying your core processes and figuring out how to streamline them so your organization runs reliably, freeing up time and giving you peace of mind.
- Cash: Learning not just to read your financials, but how to apply them by becoming “bankable” with the tools to pitch to mission driven lenders.
- Strategy: Setting a growth plan and building a roadmap to help you make it happen.
Best of all, participation in the program is completely free if you qualify - and the alumni network never lets you go it alone. Regional chapters and online groups keep the conversation alive long after graduation, I still lean on fellow 10,000 Small Businesses grads for hiring tips, cashflow hacks, and those “what if” strategic pivots.
The result? Our focus on digital marketing training here at Front Burner was born as my growth opportunity during my stint in 10KSB. Most agency pundits will tell you that to build a successful and profitable marketing agency you need to build deep expertise in just one type of business. For example, only taking on one or two verticals, like only working with manufacturers or tech companies. I just wouldn’t enjoy that “rinse and repeat” environment, and frankly neither would anyone else who works for Front Burner (picture me hanging a “closed permanently” sign on the door!). Instead, we went where our interests lie, in helping people gain knowledge and grow. So digital marketing training became our flagpole, so to speak. More on that in another post!
2) Entrepreneur’s Organization Cleveland (EO Cleveland) and EO Accelerator:
From Startup Hustle to Multi-Million Dollar Executive Peer Group Coaching
During the lunch break on the last day of my 10KSB experience, I was lamenting the end of the program with a couple other women sitting at the table. The program had become such a great resource, I dreaded losing all the momentum and enthusiasm I had going! They both lit up, telling me about another group they were both in that was the next logical step: Entrepreneur’s Organization’s Accelerator program. I went online and signed up immediately.
With over 30 years under its belt, EO Global now boasts more than 14,000 members worldwide. The average EO member runs a business generating approximately $5 million in revenue, with $1 million being the minimum revenue requirement for membership (as of this writing), and employs around 294 people. EO Cleveland is one of 196 chapters across 62 countries, with about 135 members whose businesses average $5.5 million in revenue. Its Accelerator program is one of the strongest in the world, which we’re lucky to have here in NE Ohio. It’s an incubator of sorts, where EO Members reach back to help others who are striving to hit the $1 million mark and can then become full-fledged members of the larger organization.
Once I joined the EO Cleveland’s Accelerator program (“EOA Cleveland”), I once again found a compassionate and experienced group that aligned perfectly with where I was in my journey to build Front Burner Marketing into something more. Not surprisingly, a very large number of the membership were also graduates of the Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Small Businesses program.
I was assigned to a small accountability group of other members, led by an EO Member who had “been there, done that” and was ready to help each one of us figure things out, celebrate the wins and work through the inevitable losses. Week after week, we dug into our toughest operational snags and cash management puzzles. I also was paired with a mentor who’d already hit $1 million (in my case, my mentor was actually up in the triple digits of millions, which initially terrified me!). That peer pressure (the good kind), real-time feedback, and experience shares from coaches who had seen it all before and knew it would be okay were exactly what I needed to help stabilize our growth curve.
There are four learning days during the program year taught by a professional coach who has also scaled the $1 million mountain, with content focused on those key areas of people, strategy, cash and execution. There are also eight “Lunch with a CEO events” where an EO Member who has built their business to over $1 million shares the good, bad, and ugly of their journey, plus lots of social events throughout the year.
Cross the $1 million mark, and you “graduate” into a forum of 7–10 business owners in full EO membership. Here’s where things get next level:
- You’re rubbing shoulders with founders of companies pulling in tens of millions in revenue—globally.
- Monthly forum meetings become your go-to lab for testing big strategic bets and navigating new challenges, but with a greater focus on the overall human experience of being a business owner.
- Executive education events and conferences give you a front row seat to emerging trends and high impact tactics.
In EO, you’re not just among peers—you’re among like-minded peers who’ve walked (and sometimes tripped) on the same path to scale. That kind of perspective accelerates learning in every area, making the climb a little easier when you have that kind of support.
3) EOS® (Entrepreneurial Operating System): The Discipline Behind the Magic
All the coaching in the world doesn’t stick unless you have a framework to drive action. During my early days in EOA, several members mentioned the book Traction by Gino Wickman. Enter EOS: a holistic system that breaks your business into Six Key Components™—Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process, and Traction®—and equips you with simple, repeatable tools like Level 10 Meetings, Scorecards, and quarterly “Rocks.” We brought in an EOS Implementer from Lakeland College’s Small Business Development Center to pilot a “light” rollout, and over the first twelve months our revenue graph finally started to look like the coveted hockey stick chart I’d dreamt of!
Today, our Leadership Team meetings still follow that EOS cadence, and every person on the team owns a handful of metrics that tie directly back to our vision. The result? Clarity, accountability, and an execution engine that keeps our growth fires burning.
Why These Resources Work Together
- Peer Power: You learn from entrepreneurs who’ve been there—and keep learning together.
- Practical Tools: From Babsonbuilt curricula to EOS scorecards, every lesson is immediately actionable.
- Ongoing Accountability: Alumni networks, Accountability Groups, and EOS’s “Level 10 Meetings” ensure you never slip back into old habits.
Ready to see how we’ve walked this talk? One of our core values at Front Burner is “Empower Growth,” and we’re not shy about sharing the behind the scenes. Tune in to our candid conversation—where Kendra Morvillo (Director of Operations) and Jay Kozar (Strategic Growth Director) unpack our own growing pains and discuss how continually striving fuels our climb.
Links for further information:
- Goldman Sach’s 10KSB Program
- EO Cleveland
- Traction by Gino Wickman. I also recommend Get a Grip (Gino Wickman and Mike Paton), an easy to read fable about implementing EOS in a fictional company. And if you decide to deploy EOS in your organization, have your people at least read What the Heck is EOS? (Gino Wickman and Tom Bouwer), a quick read to get them up to speed as painlessly as possible.
- EOS is the place to go if you want to see what implementing the system looks like, and would benefit from additional resources.
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