A program for entrepreneurs.

Core strategy

What we’re about.

• Core Values. We keep EO’s Core Values. See them at eochicago.org/core-values.
• Mission & Purpose. We help entrepreneurs discover the fork in the road.
• What we do. An intensive journey through practical business experience from seasoned entrepreneurs.
• Who it’s for. EO Chicago Members.

Philosophy

The craft of business, not the theory of it.

Most business education builds an MBA and folds your five percent into it. We do it the other way around. We start from the five-percent conversations EO members already have, and we build eight weeks of structured work around them, with seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve done the work, on real cases that the cohort is actively navigating.

Home turf. Applied. Confidential. Small enough to be honest.

How it differs from EO events and Forum

Designed to fill the gap between inspiration and application.

EO already runs a strong calendar. Forum already provides depth. The Compass is neither. It is a single annual, high-touch cohort experience for members who want to go deeper than one-off programming and do work alongside their peers on a single theme, for eight weeks, in the same room.

This is a quality-over-quantity initiative. One edition per year. Ten seats. Designed to grow slowly and sustainably.

Vocabulary

Who is in the room.

• The Class. A cohort of ten, selected by lottery for Year 1. They commit to all eight weeks and are expected to bring five-percent conversations.
• Community. Open to EO members and Chicagoland business owners. Community access during Instruction weeks. RSVP per session, no entry required. Seating limited by EO House capacity.
• The Speakers. Seasoned entrepreneurs who lead one Instruction week each — bringing lived experience and answering real questions from the room. They do not lecture, and they do not attend Cohort weeks.
• The Facilitator. An EO Forum facilitator who runs every Cohort week. Their job is depth: keeping the conversation honest, keeping it on the topic of the prior week, and keeping it in the five-percent.
• Instruction weeks. Speaker leads. Open to Community and the Class.
• Cohort weeks. Cohort members only. EO Forum format, run by the Facilitator. The Class works the previous week’s topic against their real situations.

Governance

Who runs it.

The Compass is led by an EO Chicago working group of long time members. We are working with the executive board to ensure EO holds approval.