Members of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) take part in regular Forums. These confidential meetings with seven to 10 peers are a highly rated benefit of membership. Moderator-trained EO members guide the sessions, which emphasize personal responsibility and lessons learned. Fellow Forum members don’t give advice; they speak from prior experience, letting you draw your own conclusions on how to best proceed. As part of his Forum accountability goals, Dave Bacon committed to lead a charity climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro. Dave Bacon is the founder of the BW Bacon Group and an EO member in Colorado. 

In 2017, I decided to make one of my accountability goals leading a charity climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro. This big, audacious goal would meet a number of my objectives for personal, community, leadership and family development. Most importantly, the funds raised would benefit our school in Tanzania, the O’Brien School for the Maasai. 

We started the school soon after my first summit of Kilimanjaro. My wife and her mother had met an eye doctor in a Maasai village, who explained that the community needed a school. My mother-in-law, Kellie, figured, “how hard can that be?” She literally drew a sketch on the back of a used envelope.