EO vs The ShareHolders Society

At a glance

EO publishes its dues on its membership page at eonetwork.org.

What Entrepreneurs' Organization is

Entrepreneurs' Organization is a global peer network founded in 1987, by entrepreneurs and for entrepreneurs. Today it counts more than 20,000 members across 220-plus chapters in over 100 countries. To join, you must be a founder, owner or controlling shareholder of a business grossing at least US$1 million a year, and you apply through the chapter where you live, which reviews the application and interviews you.

The heart of EO is the Forum: a confidential group of peers who meet monthly, follow a trained protocol, and speak from experience rather than giving advice. Around the Forum sit chapter learning events, global conferences and programs like EO Accelerator for founders still scaling toward the revenue threshold. It is a well-built system, and for a lot of owners it is the first room where they could be honest about the business.

Source: eonetwork.org

What The ShareHolders Society is

The ShareHolders Society is a private society of accomplished, curious entrepreneurs who gather around rare bourbon and unusual experiences. It was co-founded by Chris Voss and built on one conviction: put the right people in the right place, give them something worth sharing, and get out of the way.

There are no chapters, no forums and no agenda. Members gather twice a year at Socials hosted by Voss, travel together on Adventures in each Social's host city and Expeditions abroad, and receive a quarterly case of The Difference, a bourbon made only for this room and never sold. Every member is interviewed before any of it, because the room is the product.

It is a society in the older sense of the word: successful entrepreneurs who choose one another's company. What happens between them is deliberately unprescribed.

Co-founded by Chris Voss

Chris Voss spent 24 years with the FBI and served as its lead international kidnapping negotiator. His book, Never Split the Difference, turned that experience into the negotiation playbook most entrepreneurs have on their shelf. He co-founded The ShareHolders Society with Nick Nanton and Roy Milner, and he hosts the Socials. This is not a name on a letterhead; he is in the room.

Members describe the same pattern again and again. Voss is often what gets them in the door. The room is what keeps them.

The actual difference: a process versus an experience

Nearly every organization for successful entrepreneurs justifies its place by adding structure. Forums, hot seats, moderators, accountability partners, learning objectives. EO's Forum is one of the best versions of that idea, and it shares a premise with all of them: put the right people in a room and give them a process.

The Society's premise is different. Put the right people in the right experience and get out of the way. You go to Kentucky. You eat together, travel together, and see something unusual together. Nobody says "back in the conference room at eight with your biggest challenge on an index card." The experience is not bait for the meeting. The experience is the meeting.

It works because of what happens when nobody is forcing an outcome. Relationships happen sideways. The conversation that matters starts over a glass at eleven at night, not in a structured share at nine in the morning, and it starts because nobody in the room needs anything from you.

Removing the process has one consequence the Society takes seriously. A mediocre room needs programming. A remarkable room needs time. With nothing to hide behind, the quality of the people has to carry the whole thing, which is why every member is interviewed, why the gate is character rather than revenue, and why the room is allowed to get smaller before it is allowed to get worse.

"The experience is the meeting."

The ritual: why there's a bottle in the room

EO has a method. The Society has a ritual. The Difference is a Business Bourbon made only for this room: Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Best of Class in Los Angeles, never sold at retail and never at any price. Each quarter's expression is made once and never repeated, so every bottle is a record of a room and the people who were in it.

The bourbon is not the reason members join. It is what gives strangers somewhere to begin. A bottle on the table turns a gathering of accomplished, curious entrepreneurs into something real, instead of a networking event with drinks. It is the shared thing nobody has to explain.

The ritual travels, too. A quarterly case keeps it alive at home between Socials. Shareables, a 200ml format sized for handing to someone, let a member carry it to a person outside the room. But the bottle only ever comes from one place. The only way to the glass is to be in the room.

Why many successful entrepreneurs are in both

EO is Tuesday nights in your city. The Society is twice a year, somewhere worth traveling to, with people from every zip code. One is where you work on the business with peers who understand it. The other is where nobody needs anything from you. They don't compete for the same evening, the same purpose, or the same part of your life.

EO gives you a process. The Society gives you a pour and a place. Plenty of members hold both and would describe them in the same breath without confusion: the Forum is where they bring a problem; the Society is where problems come loose on their own.

There is also the matter of the host. Most entrepreneurs have heard Chris Voss from a stage. Spending a couple of days in a room where he is pouring, listening and telling stories is a different thing entirely.

For the entrepreneurs who have had enough forums

Some of the people in the Society came from EO, YPO or Vistage, and left on good terms. Some sold the company and no longer fit the gate. Some simply reached a point where they had enough forums, enough hot seats, and enough resource presentations, and what they wanted was interesting people somewhere interesting.

That is who the Society was built for. Nothing about it depends on the stage of your business, because the gate is who you are rather than what you bill. If you have outgrown the structure but not the appetite for remarkable company, this is the room.

Who the Society is not for

If you want a forum, keep EO. It does that job well and the Society does not do it at all. If you want coaching, a mastermind or someone to critique your portfolio, there are extraordinary options for each, and the Society is not one of them. If you walk into rooms with a mask on and a pitch ready, you will not enjoy it here, and neither will anyone else.

And if you don't care for bourbon, this may not be the one for you. That's all right. The bourbon is the ritual the whole thing gathers around, and the members who love it get the most from it.

One connection, one reinvention

James Kennedy came to his first Social in March 2025 having spent more than thirty years solving hard problems in manufacturing. On the Louisville Adventure he ended up next to Mark Mills, the President of a packaging company that makes boxes by the hundreds of millions. There was no agenda. There was a distillery tour, a long table, and a bottle. Kennedy later described the conversation as "tie after tie after tie."

Nobody assigned them to each other. Nobody asked either of them to bring a challenge. Somewhere in that conversation Kennedy saw his own business differently: a services firm that could be replaced became a brand that couldn't. Within the year he had launched a new offering built on that idea.

The Society did not plan any of that. It made the conditions and got out of the way. We tell the story because it happened, not because it will happen to you. What happens in the room is up to the people in it.

Read the full story in the Bourbon Brief →

How membership in the Society works

Membership is month to month, with no annual commitment. Nobody stays who doesn't want to be in the room, which is the only reason that holds.

It includes two Socials a year hosted by Chris Voss, a quarterly case of six bottles of The Difference, and the Bourbon Brief, the Society's quarterly magazine. Adventures and Expeditions run throughout the year and are open to members as add-ons, priced per trip. Members whose business runs on relationships can choose a Gifting Allocation, which adds more bourbon to each quarterly shipment.

Every applicant is interviewed before any of it. There is no revenue requirement and no title requirement. The gate is character: curiosity, generosity, and the kind of person other members would want at the table.

Frequently asked questions