Real Lessons from the Session Room
This is Issue 01 of Escape Velocity, a monthly newsletter for business leaders who want more from their business and their life. Join the list to get the next issue in your inbox.
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while. So here it is.
Every month I’m going to send you something worth reading. Lessons from the session room. Patterns I keep seeing across leadership teams. The stuff nobody tells you about scaling a business, running a leadership team, or figuring out when to let go and when to hold the line.
Here’s what you can expect every month: honest takes on EOS and how it actually works in the real world. Leadership team dynamics, the messy, human, sometimes uncomfortable reality of them. Short videos recorded as patterns emerge from the session room. Blog posts that go deeper when a topic earns it. Podcasts, events, and anything else worth your time.
The goal is simple. Help you get more of what you want out of your business while actually getting to enjoy your life. Every issue is one step toward that.
Glad you’re here. Let’s get into it.
From the Blog: From Startup to Company
I published a three-part series this spring. It’s the map I wish someone had handed me earlier.
Part 1: The Moment Your Startup Has to Grow Up — Every founder hits a point where the thing they built starts running them instead of the other way around. This is the full arc, from ideation to expansion, and why most people miss the transition until they’re already in trouble.
Part 2: The Triggers and Tells: How to Know When Product Mode Is Over — There are real signals that tell you the game has changed. Most founders blow past them. Includes a self-assessment you can run right now.
Part 3: Building the Machine Without Killing the Magic — What you actually do once you can see it. The EOS story. The Integrator I wouldn’t have made it without. The Discovery Day where I sat down and watched someone else do my job better than I ever had.
On the Podcast Circuit
I joined Candus Hinderer and Carrie Ferroukhi on the Arcus Arena podcast to talk through the full Pinot’s Palette story. How we built 150+ locations from a single Houston studio, what nearly broke us on the way there, and what I’d tell a founder who’s scaling fast right now. An honest conversation. I think you’ll find something in it.
Coming Up
ENRG HTX — June 19, 2026 The Ion · 4201 Main St, Downstairs Room 028, Houston · 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM · Free
ENRG is a free community for entrepreneurs with 10 to 250 employees running on EOS or EOS Curious. Erick Garcia, Lesa Skipper, and I are building the Houston chapter. This is the very first meeting. Practical EOS training, peer-to-peer issue solving, real networking. No sales pitches.
A Moment of Gratitude
May was a full month. We held an EOS Workshop and then, a few weeks later, cut the ribbon on my new EOS session room with the Central Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce. That ribbon cutting was a first for me. Fifteen years of serial entrepreneurship and it had never happened before. The Chamber made it real, and I’m still grateful for that.
The room itself is Alexis’s work. She took something I could barely describe and turned it into a place where leadership teams can come in, get out of the noise, get aligned, and do real work. I could not have pulled it off without her.
To everyone who showed up, Jay, Al, Josh, Alfredo, Abbey, Danny, Hami, Stephen, Bo, Trey, Maggie, Vanessa, Melissa, Khori, Marc, and everyone else who has shown up in the hard moments and the good ones: thank you. That room exists because of people like you.
Cheers,
Craig Ceccanti
EOS Implementer
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