CEO peer advisory

CEO peer advisory should give you what your own company cannot: a room that tells the truth, spots the pattern and forces a decision. CEO2 Roundtable^TM is built for UK tech founders who want practical implementation, not a large networking group or another speaker-led business event.

Are you still the operating system for your own company?

You have customers, revenue and a team. The business is real. But every serious issue still finds its way back to you: sales, hiring, cash, delivery, priorities, people and the decisions everyone else hesitates to make.

That is not a motivation problem. It is what happens when the company grows faster than its operating rhythm. You become the glue, the escalation point and the unofficial operating system. Useful for a while. Then it becomes the ceiling.

CEO2 Roundtable^TM exists for exactly this stage.

What is CEO peer advisory?

CEO peer advisory is a confidential group of non-competing leaders who meet regularly to pressure-test decisions, share experience and challenge each other’s thinking. At its best, it gives you the room you cannot get inside your own company: people who understand the weight of the job, but do not need to keep you comfortable.

A lot of peer groups stop at discussion. You hear something useful, make notes, go back to the office, and the week eats the work. The problem is not a lack of ideas. It is the gap between insight and implementation.

The CEO2 Roundtable^TM is built to close that gap. The peer room matters, but it is not the product on its own. The product is the pressure to turn the conversation into an operating tool before you go home.

The model underneath CEO2 Roundtable^TM

CEO2 Roundtable^TM is the peer-group implementation of Dominic’s Two-Day-Week CEO Blueprint^TM. The aim is simple: get business-as-usual down to two days a week, so you can spend three days on the work only the CEO can do.

That means vision, capital, senior hiring, executive coaching and the decisions that compound. It is not a productivity trick. It only works when the business has leaders and systems strong enough to run without you in every room.

How is CEO2 Roundtable^TM different from Vistage, Helm, EO or TAB?

Vistage, Helm, EO, TAB and Business Leader all have a place. If you want a large network, a long-running membership body, a broader events calendar, or a room built mainly around peer discussion, compare them properly.

The CEO2 Roundtable^TM is a different bet. We are not building the biggest network. We are not trying to win on guest speakers. We are not trying to be the cheapest route into a business-owner group. The bet is simple: the right small room, using the right tool, beats another month of thinking about the same constraint.

When do you need a CEO peer advisory group?

You need CEO peer advisory when the business is no longer simple enough to run from your head, but not yet senior enough to run cleanly without you.

That phase often shows up around 70 people. The management team that got you here has to become a leadership team: people who own outcomes, make decisions and stop routing every hard call back through you.

• Sales still comes back to you. The team can sell, but your judgement still closes the hard calls.
• Hiring still relies on your instinct. You are the final filter for role clarity, senior hires and whether someone is really good enough.
• The cash picture is clearer in your head than in the business. You know the real constraints, but the operating rhythm does not surface them early enough.
• You want practical tools, not another list of books to read. Ideas are not the constraint. Implementation is.
• You want challenge from people at a similar stage. Advice from someone playing a completely different game is often too easy to ignore.

If you are pre-revenue, this is too early. If you are already beyond roughly £10m revenue or 100 people, you may be better suited to CEO+, CEO mentoring, or a leadership-team programme. CEO2 Roundtable^TM is for founders with enough people in the business, usually 30 to 100 employees, for the operating gaps to hurt before a full senior team is in place.

The job is to help you get through no man’s land without the business plateauing and without you burning out.

How does the CEO2 Roundtable^TM work?

Each quarterly day has two jobs. First, you learn a framework that matters at this stage. Second, you put it to work on your actual business before you leave.

1. Quarterly working day. A full in-person day in the New Forest, around 90 minutes from London. Morning taught. Afternoon structured mastermind.
2. Live tool implementation. You do not just discuss the framework. You build with it while you are in the room.
3. Office hours every two weeks. 90-minute small-group sessions where members bring the live problem and the group works through it.
4. A deliberately small room. Each group has 14 people, enough variety for challenge without becoming a crowd.

The workbook is where the work lands. You use it to turn the morning’s framework into decisions, owners and next actions for your own company. Previous sessions have covered the Power of One, Target Operating Model, Talent Assessment, Job Scorecard, 6-Week Fast-Start Card, Objective Setter^TM, Extra Workday Advantage^TM, and the Value of a Day framework.

What should you look for in a CEO peer advisory group?

Look for fit, not fame. A famous room is not always the right room. The room should match the decisions you are actually facing, the stage of business you are in, and the kind of pressure that will make you act.

• Stage relevance. The room should understand £1m to £10m founder-led tech and tech-enabled companies.
• Specificity. The room should not be so broad that every conversation becomes generic business advice.
• Implementation. You should leave with work done, not merely better notes.
• Confidential challenge. The group should be able to say the thing your team cannot say and your board may say too late.

For founder-specific private advice, see CEO mentoring. For leadership-team scale work, CEO+ or a leadership-team programme may be the better route.

Frequently asked questions about CEO peer advisory

Is this a Vistage alternative?

Yes, if your real question is: “I want a serious peer group, but I do not want the standard Vistage model.” The CEO2 Roundtable^TM gives you peer challenge, confidentiality and founder-to-founder pressure. But the structure is different.

Vistage is larger, broader and chair-led. CEO2 Roundtable^TM is smaller, taught, tool-led and built for a narrower stage. If you want a large peer advisory institution, choose Vistage. If you want a small room where you build the operating tools into your business during the session, CEO2 Roundtable^TM is closer to the problem.

How big is the group?

The room is deliberately small. Each group has 14 people. That is enough variety for useful challenge, but not so many people that your business disappears into the room.

The size matters because the work is specific. You need enough different founders in the room to see patterns you would miss on your own, but not so many that the session turns into performance, networking or vague advice.

Do I need a leadership team already?

No. In fact, this is usually better before you have a fully formed leadership team. CEO2 Roundtable^TM is for the founder who has enough people in the business for the operating gaps to hurt, but before a full senior team and operating rhythm are in place.

The question is whether your management team now needs to step up. This phase often shows up between 30 and 70 people, when the old model starts to break: managers who were brilliant at doing the work have to become leaders who own outcomes, build capability and make decisions without waiting for you.

What if I mainly want networking?

Then this probably is not the first place to start. Helm, EO, YPO, Business Leader or Vistage may give you a wider network, more events and a broader membership base.

CEO2 Roundtable^TM is for implementation. You will meet useful people, and the peer relationships matter, but the point is not to collect contacts. The point is to fix the operating constraints that keep pulling you back into the business.

How do I know if I am ready?

You are ready if you are past product-market fit. In practice, that usually means at least £1m of recurring revenue, a business model that is working, and enough people for management to become a real constraint.

If you are VC-backed, you may be younger as a company, but you will usually have raised roughly £4m or more and be moving fast enough that informal management is starting to hurt. If you are not VC-backed, the signal is usually different: 30+ employees, often five years or more in business, and a management team that now needs to step up.

The sign is not just size. It is the combination of plateau risk and founder burnout. If growth is slowing because the business has outgrown the way it is managed, and you are still the person holding the awkward decisions together, you are probably in no man’s land.

What does CEO peer advisory cost?

Fees are discussed after there is a clear fit. The better commercial question is what founder dependency, slow decisions and weak operating rhythm are already costing you.

If the business is sitting in no man’s land, the cost is rarely just the fee for a peer group. It is the cost of another quarter where the management team does not step up, growth flattens and you keep absorbing the pressure personally.