Lessons learned from my peer group 

Last month, I shared three strategies for getting more out of your peer group experience. This month, I want to round out that conversation with a few more lessons I’ve learned both as a peer member myself and from years of watching members work through challenges, make difficult decisions and transform their businesses. 

I’ve witnessed countless success stories inside peer communities, and while every business and every owner is different, some patterns show up repeatedly. The members who get the greatest return from a peer group aren’t simply the ones who attend every meeting. They’re the ones who are willing to be vulnerable, coachable, act and engage with the people around the table. 

Following these principles consistently gives you the best possible chance of achieving, and exceeding, the goals you’ve set for yourself and your business. 

Let’s dig in. 

Bring the hardest problem   

Vulnerability matters just as much as execution in a peer group. It’s easy to come into a meeting with an excuse for every problem in your business. For example:  

• Revenue missed the target, but there’s a good explanation.  

• The employee situation isn’t ideal, but you’re handling it.  

• Sales are slow, but the pipeline looks promising.  

The issue is your peer group can’t help you solve a problem you aren’t willing to show them. The greatest value of an industry peer group comes when someone puts the uncomfortable issue on the table: a number they’re embarrassed about, employee conversations they’re avoiding, decisions they struggle to make or an admission that part of the business isn’t working.   

When you’re inside your company every day, you lose perspective. Sometimes the answer to the problem you’ve wrestled with for six months is obvious to everyone else around the table in 10 minutes. But they must know the real problem first.  

Ask “What am I missing?”  

When someone challenges our decisions, our natural reaction is often to explain why we made it.  
“We tried that before.”  
“Our market is different.”  
“Our customers won’t do that.”  

Sometimes those things are true. But I’ve learned there’s a much more valuable question: What am I missing?  

That question doesn’t mean blindly accepting every piece of advice you receive. It means staying curious long enough to understand why someone sees the situation differently than you do.  

I think back to my own resistance as a peer member. I wasn’t trying to be difficult. In my mind, I was being thoughtful. I wanted to understand the methodology and make sure it applied to my business. However, what I was doing was evaluating an idea before I’d given it a fair chance to work. There’s a big difference between challenging something after you’ve tried and dismissing it before you’ve tested it, and I had to learn that difference.  

The meeting isn’t the end   

You can leave the best peer group meeting you’ve ever attended with a notebook full of ideas. But you accomplish absolutely nothing without action. Meetings don’t create results; execution does.  

A productive peer group meeting should create clarity about what happens next. You make a commitment, take it back to your business and act. Then, the next time you meet, you share what happened. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, you have something to discuss.  

That’s another reason I’ve come to appreciate the idea behind Dan Sullivan’s The 80%  Approach. He argues that learning accelerates once we engage with the work rather than continuing to prepare for it.  

MSP Success Peer works much the same way. Bring the problem to the table, get perspective, decide what you’re going to do and then go do it. When you come back, the conversation has moved forward.  

How are you showing up?  

Before your next peer group meeting, take a few minutes to think about how you’re participating.   

• Are you prepared enough that the group can spend its time helping you solve the problem rather than figuring out what the problem is?  

• Are you bringing up an issue you need help with?  

• When someone challenges you, are you listening, or preparing your response?  

• Are you as invested in the success of the other people around the table as you want them to be in yours?  

• When you leave, will you act?  

I’ve spent enough years as both a member and a facilitator to know that a peer group can be incredibly powerful. I’ve also learned that having a seat at the table isn’t enough. 

The real value comes from what you do with that seat. 

Prepare for your next meeting 

Bring the problem you’d rather not talk about. Ask the question you may not want answered. Listen when someone challenges your thinking. Invest in the success of the people sitting beside you. Then, when you leave the room, do something with what you learned. 

The best peer groups don’t succeed because everyone around the table has all the answers. They succeed because everyone is committed to helping each other and holding one another accountable for putting those answers into action. 

Before your next meeting, ask yourself one final question: 

Am I showing up in a way that gives peer the chance to change my business? 

Learn what other MSP owners have to say about Getting the most out of your peer group.