A lesson for every business owner: never stop learning.

Our company recently sponsored a conference that consisted of CEO group leadership. These individuals lead CEO groups around the world. It is one thing to be at a conference with other business owners and CEOs who are looking for any nugget that can help us make a breakthrough in our company. It is an entirely other experience to be surrounded by the individuals who help guide, advise, and provide resources to those CEOs and business owners. Wow!

I have never known another group that was so engaged to learn and grow in order to help others learn and grow. In turn, it is their hope that those they serve will do the same for every person who works inside or outside their member companies.

With interim management and interim executives still somewhat young in the United States, one of our biggest challenges is being able to quickly and easily explain the impact an interim executive can have on a company. Since we must educate first about what an interim executive is, we end up providing several examples of how they can be best leveraged. To simplify the conversation, this time we put together a few (101 to be exact) of them into a book to give away.

The book was simple. It had one example on each page consisting of 1-2 sentences. The group was so engaged and interested in finding resources to help their member companies that we ran out of books part way through the conference. A few of them took the book and read it at the break. They genuinely care about their members and their member company’s success that their passion for learning is never-ending.

Our favorite comment from the conference, “Finally, someone wrote a book for CEOs – less than 20 words per page.”

Lesson Learned #1 – Never underestimate the power of going back to the basics. Educate your audience first.

Lesson Learned #2 – We highly recommend a CEO group any business owner, CEO, or President is looking to have a group of individuals to talk to and learn from every month. Even though it probably feels like it daily, it doesn’t have to be lonely at the top.