Put the Phone Down: When AI Has No Place in Your EO Forum

I want to tell you about a moment I have seen hundreds of times.

Someone in the room starts to speak. They pause. Look down at the table. Then look back up — and what comes out is not what they rehearsed. It is something rawer. Something they did not even know they needed to say until the room held them long enough for it to surface.

I have been in EO since 1996. I have facilitated more than 500 Forums across more than 30 countries. I have trained more than 11,000 members. And I can tell you this without any uncertainty: that moment — the real one — never happens when technology is in the room.

I am not afraid of AI. I run RetailCare, an Australian-based retail technology company. We are an AI-first business with more than 20 AI developers on our team. I use AI every single day and I think if you are not doing the same right now, you are falling behind. I mean that.

And I also know this completely:

"AI cannot see into our hearts. AI cannot see into our brains. The human being has to do their own thinking and their own feeling. And if we outsource that, we stop growing."

— Carlo Santoro

There are spaces where AI has no place. EO Forum is one of them. Not out of nostalgia. Not because of tradition. But because thirty years in that room, in every culture on earth, has shown me something that no technology can replicate — and that every piece of technology in the room quietly destroys.

What Forum Actually Is

EO Forum is a confidential monthly peer group of six to ten entrepreneurs, facilitated by a trained peer Moderator. That is the structural description. Here is what it actually is.

Forum is not a business meeting. Not a mastermind. Not coaching. Not therapy. Those are all important things — and Forum is none of them. It is something much more specific. It is built around a single principle that cuts against almost every instinct a driven entrepreneur carries into a room: you are here to share your experience, not give or receive advice. No fixing. No solving. No "have you tried this." Just witnessing one another. And being witnessed.

There is a simple NLP idea that explains exactly why. In NLP we say the map is not the territory — meaning your view of the world is yours alone. When you give someone advice, you are handing them your map. In Forum, we share experience instead. Your honest experience gives another member something real. Your advice just gives them directions that belong to you.

I want to be direct about the therapy comparison because I think it matters, especially now. Forum is not a therapy session. The Moderator is a trained peer, not a licensed clinician. Nobody in the room is qualified to diagnose, treat, or professionally support another person's mental health. We do not fix. We do not solve. We do not save. We share experiences and we learn from them. We witness. We reflect back. Sometimes someone in the room is carrying something that genuinely needs professional support — and when that is true, the best thing Forum can do is say so gently. That is not a failure of Forum. That is Forum knowing its place.

"Forum is not therapy. We are not trained in that and we should never pretend to be. What we are is present, honest, and human. We do not fix, solve, or save. We witness. We learn. We grow together."

— Carlo Santoro

I have seen Forum save businesses. I have seen it save marriages. I have seen it change the trajectory of people's lives. And every single time, the mechanism was the same: a person walked into a room, told the truth about what was actually happening, and was genuinely heard by people who carried the same weight. That is it. That is the whole thing.

EO exists to move the world forward by unlocking the full potential of entrepreneurs. Its ambition is transformational growth in the lives of members. I believe that. And I believe Forum is where both of those things actually happen — not at events, not in workshops, but in that room, in those four hours, in that specific moment when someone finally says the thing they could not say anywhere else.

Best practice: eleven times a year, first two weeks of the month, afternoon on an early weekday. And one absolute rule — complete technology silence for all four hours. No phone. No smartwatch. No iPad. No laptop. Nothing in the room. Gone.

"Train everyone around you to understand you are not available for four hours. Not for emergencies, not for updates, not for anything. Four hours of complete disconnection. That is what makes Forum work."

— Carlo Santoro

This is not arbitrary. The presence of technology consistently diminishes what happens in the room. I have seen it. Sharings become shallower. The room stays safer than it should. The breakthroughs that were possible do not occur. AI is not an exception to this rule. It is its most urgent current application.

Why Entrepreneurs Need Forum

Here is something that does not get said enough. At the top, it is lonely in a way that almost nobody around you can fully understand.

Your team needs you to project confidence. Your family needs you to be present. Your board needs you to have answers. There is almost nobody in your life to whom you can say plainly, without consequence: I do not know what to do. I am scared. I am struggling. I am carrying more than I can manage right now.

Research confirms what every long-serving Forum member already knows in their bones. Half of all CEOs report significant loneliness in their role. Entrepreneurs are several times more likely to experience it than the general population. And that loneliness is not just uncomfortable — it measurably reduces the quality of decision-making, erodes passion, and increases the likelihood of walking away from everything you built.

Forum was built for exactly this. Not as a therapy session. Not as a support group. But as a structured, protected, monthly space where the loneliness of leadership becomes something you carry together rather than alone. When every EO value — trust and respect, thirst for learning, think big and be bold, together we grow — is at stake in that room, anything that diminishes the depth of what happens there works directly against the very thing EO exists to create.

The Technology Tax

The science on devices in the room is now unambiguous and I want you to understand it clearly because it explains why the rule is the way it is.

Studies from the University of Texas at Austin found that the mere presence of a smartphone on a desk reduces available cognitive capacity — even when the phone is off, face down, and nobody is thinking about it. The brain devotes a portion of its resources to actively not engaging with the device. The researchers called it brain drain.

Then there is what happens when someone actually looks at it.

The research tells a consistent story. A glance fires an orienting response in the first few seconds — cognitive resources split immediately. Most people are technically back within three to eleven minutes, but their attention during that window is degraded: more errors, shallower comprehension, reduced emotional attunement. Full restoration — the depth of presence you had before — takes an average of twenty-three minutes. Twenty-three minutes. From one glance.

Forum runs for four hours. One phone check costs up to ten per cent of the entire session in recovery time alone. But the real cost is never the minutes. It is the depth. The moment when someone is sharing the thing they have been carrying for months — the thing they finally found the courage to say aloud — is exactly the moment that demands the fullest possible presence from everyone in the room. Attention residue from a watch glance three minutes ago means the person beside them is not fully there. The sharer feels it, even when nobody can name it.

"One glance at a phone in Forum does not cost three seconds. It costs up to 23 minutes of full presence — and it costs every person in the room a piece of the safety they came there to find."

— Carlo Santoro

There is something else I have noticed over three decades that the research is only now catching up to. When technology leaves the room completely, vulnerability increases on its own. The room opens faster. Sharings go deeper sooner. Silences become productive. I have seen Forum groups transform within two or three sessions of truly enforcing the no-technology norm. The only thing that changed was removing the devices.

"When there is no technology in the room, vulnerability takes care of itself. Remove the devices and the doors open. It is that simple and that reliable."

— Carlo Santoro

Think about this: when you are working at your desk and someone walks up to speak with you, what do you do instinctively? You close the screen. Every time. You close it because you know, without anyone telling you, that the open screen is a wall. In Forum, an open laptop on the table sends exactly that message to every person in the room, including the person sharing from the most vulnerable place they know. The screen is a barrier. Close it. Put it away.

And to members who bring their 5% reflection or their notes on their phone, intending to read them in the session — I understand the thinking. But it does not work. Your mind knows what a phone is. The moment it is in your hand, part of your brain is already waiting for it to do what phones do. The habit of distraction does not care that you are only reading notes. Write your reflections by hand before Forum, fold the paper, put it in your pocket. Then you are reaching for paper. Not a device your nervous system has been conditioned to respond to.

"Reading your 5% reflection off your phone does not bring your preparation into Forum. It brings your phone into Forum. And your brain cannot tell the difference — nor can the person sitting across from you."

— Carlo Santoro

To be completely clear: I am not asking you to give up your technology or your AI tools. EO does not control your time outside Forum. Use every tool available to you. Use AI, your phone, every platform that makes you sharper. Just not here. Not these four hours. That is the only ask, and it is a small one compared to what the room will give you in return.

"Use technology everywhere else. Let Forum be the one place you do not. Four hours a month of full human presence in exchange for a lifetime of deeper leadership — that is the best return on investment I know."

— Carlo Santoro

The Basket

Here is the most practical thing I give every Forum group I train.

During the soft start — before the session formally opens — every member places their phone, smartwatch, iPad, laptop, and any other device into a basket on a side table. Out of reach. Out of sight. This is not the Moderator's job to police. It should never become a moment of awkwardness. The basket is simply there, visible when people arrive, and the group norm — established together — is that devices go in it.

The Moderator's role is simply to model it. Arrive first. Put your own devices in the basket. When members walk in and see the Moderator's phone already in the basket, the expectation is set without a word being said.

In NLP, an anchor is a physical action, sound, or touch that your nervous system learns to associate with a specific state. Think about how a song can instantly take you back to a moment fifteen years ago — that song is an anchor. The basket works the same way. The act of dropping your phone in creates a repeatable, physical signal that tells your mind and body: this is different now. I am crossing into a different kind of time. Over several sessions it becomes automatic — the moment your hand releases the phone into the basket, something shifts. You are already more present before you have even sat down.

And here is where NLP reframing comes in — and it is one of the most powerful tools I know. Reframing means changing how you see something by giving it a different meaning. Most members experience the no-technology rule as a restriction. Reframe it and it becomes a gift. You are not being asked to give something up. You are being given permission to put it down. There is a difference. One feels like a loss. The other feels like relief. The basket does not take your phone away from you. It takes the weight of availability away from you — for four hours. That is not a sacrifice. That is an extraordinary luxury in the life of an entrepreneur who is never not available to someone.

I have seen this single practice transform the energy of a Forum room within a few sessions. There is something about the collective, visible act of putting devices away together that shifts the atmosphere in a way that asking people to silence their phones never does. The room feels different. Sharings go deeper. The group moves into its work faster.

For groups that want to go further — some Forums use a timed lockable case where devices go in, the timer is set for the session duration, and the case does not open until Forum is done. This is not about distrust. It is about removing the option entirely.

"The basket is not about rules. It is about respect — for your group, for the work, and for yourself. When you put your phone in the basket, you are making a physical commitment to the four hours ahead. And that commitment, made visibly, in community, changes the room."

— Carlo Santoro

Every EO value lives in that basket. Trust and respect is what every member offers every other member the moment their phone goes in. Thirst for learning is what drives the member who arrives raw and open rather than pre-processed and protected. Think big, be bold is what it takes to bring the 5% topic you have been avoiding and say it aloud in front of people whose respect you value. And together we grow is not a slogan in Forum. It is the literal mechanism. You grow because they are in the room. They grow because you are.

"Every EO value comes to life in Forum. Trust and respect. Thirst for learning. Think big, be bold. Together we grow. When technology enters the room — in any form — it puts every single one of them at risk."

— Carlo Santoro

Forum, ADHD, and the Neurodivergent Entrepreneur

Here is something the EO community does not talk about enough, and it has a direct bearing on why the no-technology rule matters more than many members realise.

Research finds that around twenty-nine per cent of entrepreneurs have ADHD, compared to four or five per cent of the general adult population. And eighty-five per cent of people with ADHD are undiagnosed. It is common for highly capable adults to receive their first diagnosis in their thirties and forties, often only after years of wondering why certain environments felt effortless and others felt impossible.

What this means practically: in a Forum group of eight people, statistically two or three are living with ADHD or significant ADHD-like traits, most without ever having named it. They have built real businesses. They are successful and capable. And they carry a neurological profile that makes the presence of a device in a vulnerable setting significantly more disruptive than it would be for the person beside them.

A phone on the table is not simply a distraction for someone with ADHD traits. It is a neurological pull of a completely different magnitude. Asking someone with ADHD traits to resist that pull while also doing the most emotionally demanding work of their month is asking them to perform a feat the no-technology rule was specifically designed to make unnecessary. Take the device away and the pull disappears. Leave it in the room and it competes with everything.

The powerful flip side: Forum is genuinely one of the few professional environments that works with ADHD traits rather than against them. The format is intense. The stakes are real. The content is personal, human, emotionally complex, and stimulating in exactly the way ADHD brains engage well. I have had members tell me Forum is the only meeting in their entire month where they are fully present for every minute — not because Forum suppresses their ADHD, but because the environment feeds the kind of attention their brain naturally brings. That is a gift. Technology destroys it.

"The no-technology rule is not just about confidentiality or respect. For a significant proportion of every Forum group, it is about basic neurological fairness — ensuring that every member, regardless of their cognitive profile, has a genuine chance to be fully present and fully heard."

— Carlo Santoro

Let me say the core of this as directly as I can.

AI is brilliant at many things. Processing information, organising complexity, responding to almost any question fluently. I use it every day and genuinely admire what it can do. But there is a category of human experience it cannot enter — not because the technology is not advanced enough, but because the work requires something AI structurally does not have.

AI cannot feel what you feel. It cannot be genuinely moved by your story. It can describe empathy. It cannot practise it. Research differentiates between cognitive empathy — understanding another's perspective — and affective empathy — actually sharing in another's feelings. AI may achieve something like the first. It is permanently excluded from the second. A chatbot can identify sadness. It cannot feel sorrow. It can generate comfort. It cannot care.

Sherry Turkle, who has spent decades researching technology and human connection, draws the line cleanly: simulated intelligence may be intelligence. But simulated emotion cannot be emotion.

I have sat in Forum rooms on every continent. I have watched what happens when a person is truly witnessed by other human beings — not analysed, not responded to efficiently, but genuinely seen. Something settles in them. Their nervous system changes. The truth that was sitting just beneath the surface finds its way out. This is biology. It is what happens when one human nervous system meets another in a state of genuine attunement. It is something AI will never produce.

In NLP, this connection is called rapport — and it is the foundation of all genuine communication. When rapport is present in a Forum room, trust arrives without being asked for and sharing deepens without being pushed. AI cannot create rapport. It can only simulate the language of it.

Here is another reframe I give to Forum members who are nervous about vulnerability: most people think of being vulnerable as a risk — what if I say the wrong thing, what if they judge me, what if I fall apart? Reframe it. Vulnerability in Forum is not weakness. It is the most courageous and effective leadership act in the room. The person who tells the real truth — who names the actual fear, who says the thing they never say — is the person the whole room leans toward. They do not lose credibility. They create connection. That is what NLP calls a context reframe: the same behaviour, seen in a different context, means something completely different. In a board meeting, showing uncertainty is a liability. In Forum, it is the whole point.

Dr. Brené Brown, whose research on vulnerability gave language to what Forum practitioners have always known:

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity."

— Dr. Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Here is the specific place AI creeps in, always with good intentions. You have Forum this week. Something significant is happening. You open your AI tool and talk it through. The AI reflects your thinking, asks sharp questions, helps you structure what you want to share. You close the laptop feeling clearer. More prepared. Ready.

That is precisely the problem.

Forum's value is not in arriving with answers. It is in arriving with the living, unresolved question and letting the room hold it with you. The stumbling, the unfinished sentence, the emotion that catches you mid-thought and surprises even you — these are not failures of preparation. They are the point. When you arrive pre-processed by AI, you have already done the work alone. What you deliver is a performance of vulnerability rather than vulnerability itself. The room senses the difference every time, even when nobody can name it.

"If it doesn't feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive."

— Dr. Brené Brown

I always say this to Forum members and I believe it completely: use your brain for thinking and reflecting, and your heart for all your feelings. Yes, it is hard. But exercising that muscle is the whole point. How do we grow if we outsource all our thinking and feeling? What makes us different as leaders — as human beings — if we outsource the very things that make us human?

I have asked those questions in Forum training sessions across Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Turkey, England, Europe, Canada, the USA, Costa Rica, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia. The cultural differences across those rooms are vast. And yet in every country, in every Forum room I have ever sat in, the moment when someone is truly heard by another human being looks and feels exactly the same. Culture changes the way people enter a Forum room. It does not change what they need from it.

"How do we learn if we outsource all our thinking and feeling?"

— Carlo Santoro

The 5% — And Why It Is Disappearing

Here is something I am hearing increasingly in Forum rooms and I need to name it directly.

Members are arriving and saying things they never said before.

I don't know my feeling word.

I have no 5% topics this month — everything feels fine.

I don't have a deep dive. Life is good. AI has been helping me work through everything.

To anyone who has been in Forum long enough, these statements should set off alarm bells.

Let me explain what a 5% topic actually is, because understanding it properly changes everything.

The 5% is not the hard business problem you already know how to solve. It is not the update on what you have been doing. The 5% topics are the things that take up only 5% of your time but consume 95% of your emotional energy. They have five qualities. Your inside voice — not good or bad, just honest. The thought that keeps you awake at night. The thing you never share — the part you edit out before it leaves your mouth. Something you are ready to explore, even if you do not know where it leads. And it stirs something — excitement, fear, discomfort, anxiety, or all of them at once. If it does not stir a feeling, it is not your 5%.

In NLP, your feelings are not problems to be managed — they are information. Most entrepreneurs have been trained to process everything cognitively: analyse, decide, move on. The feeling word in Forum asks you to access a different kind of intelligence — the body's knowing. Not what happened, but what it meant to you. That is a reframe of enormous value: what you have been treating as weakness — the uncertain feeling, the quiet dread, the thing you cannot explain rationally — is actually the most important signal in the room. Forum is designed to receive it.

Here are three real examples — one in each domain.

Business: I have been telling my board and my investors that we are six months from profitability. The truth is I do not believe that anymore. I have been saying it so long I am not sure I believe any of the numbers I am presenting. And I do not know if I am the right person to take this company through what comes next.

Family: My relationship with my eldest child has been breaking down for two years and I keep telling myself it is just a phase. But last month something happened that made me realise it might not be. I am scared that the years I spent building the business came at a cost I did not fully understand until now.

Personal: I have been performing a version of confidence and certainty for so long that I am not sure I know who I am outside of the business anymore. When I try to answer the question of what I actually want — not for the company, for me — I go blank. And that blankness frightens me more than any financial pressure I have ever faced.

Those are 5% topics. Not problems for the room to solve. Things to be shared, witnessed, and held — so that the person carrying them no longer has to carry them alone.

"If you can share it easily, it is not your 5%. Your real 5% is the thing you just decided not to say. Start there."

— Carlo Santoro

And here is the warning I need to give directly: if you are sharing your 5% topics freely outside of Forum — with colleagues, on social media, with your AI tool — they are no longer 5% topics. They have become comfortable. Which means you need to go deeper. Your real 5% is still in there, underneath the layer you have already processed. Forum asks you to find that deeper layer.

When members tell me AI has helped them work through everything and they have nothing to bring — what I am actually hearing is this: they have pre-processed everything. AI has given them resolution, and they have mistaken that resolution for wellbeing.

"When a member tells me they have no 5% topics because AI helped them work through everything — I do not hear someone who has healed. I hear someone who has been given answers before they had the chance to truly feel the questions."

— Carlo Santoro

AI numbs through competence. It takes difficult, unresolved human experience and organises it into something manageable. The discomfort — the doorway to growth — disappears before you had the chance to walk through it. And the Forum member who would have shared something real, something that might have cracked the room open, arrives smooth, prepared, and empty.

Writing the 5% Reflection

The best practice for the 5% reflection is something I have refined over many years, and it matters more than most members realise.

You write it the night before — ideally around 9pm, after the day is done and the noise has settled. Not in the morning. Not on the way there. The night before, when the accumulated honesty of the past thirty days is sitting right at the surface, before you have had the chance to rationalise it away with a fresh start. It takes most members thirty to forty-five minutes to do it properly. And it is a reflection on the last thirty days — not an update on what you have been doing, not a business report. A genuine reflection on what has been happening in your life, including the parts that were hard.

Work and Business. Family. Personal. Three domains. And for each one, bring two things: your Head and your Heart. Your IQ and your EQ. The Head knows what happened. The Heart knows what it meant. The Head version of a reflection is a report. The Heart version is a Forum sharing. You need both — but it is the Heart that opens the room.

"When you write your 5% reflection, bring your Head first — it gives you the facts. Then bring your Heart — it gives you the truth. Forum only works with the truth."

— Carlo Santoro

Once done, type it up as a final version and email the PDF to your Moderator that same night. The Moderator prints the reflections in the morning and brings them to Forum. At the moment it is your turn to share, the Moderator hands you your own printed page.

This process exists for one reason: to make sure nobody changes their reflection in the morning after a hard night's sleep. The reflection you write at 9pm on Tuesday — after a day that did not go to plan, after a conversation with your partner that left something unresolved — contains the truth. The reflection you might revise at 7am Wednesday, refreshed, in control, having slept on it — that is often a more comfortable version of the truth. Forum needs the 9pm version.

"The 5% reflection written at 9pm the night before is the most honest version of you. By morning you will have found a way to make it more comfortable. Send it to your Moderator before you sleep. Lock it in. That is the version the room needs to hear."

— Carlo Santoro

A few things help me write a better reflection. I take around a thousand photos a month. My camera roll is a diary. When I sit down at 9pm the night before Forum, I scroll back through the last thirty days of photos before I write a single word. The images pull things back to the surface that the busy week had buried. They restore the full emotional texture of the month, not just what I happen to remember in the moment of writing.

"I take a thousand photos a month. Not for social media. For memory. For honesty. When I sit down to write my 5% reflection, I let my photos show me who I actually was for the last thirty days — not who I thought I was."

— Carlo Santoro

If you do not journal, start. Even a few sentences at the end of a significant day builds the raw material your 5% reflection draws from. A journal is not a record of what you did. It is a record of what you felt and what it meant. And always be thinking about your 5% topics and your deep dive. The month between Forums is not waiting time. It is collection time. The members who arrive with the richest sharings are the ones who were paying close attention all month.

And if you use an AI tool to support your preparation — I cannot stop you, and I would not want to. But use it as a questioner, not an answerer. Ask it to probe you. To reflect back what you said and push you deeper. To ask: what was the hardest part of that? What are you not saying? An AI that asks you real questions in service of your own reflection is very different from an AI that generates answers on your behalf. One builds the capacity. The other replaces it.

"If you use AI to prepare your 5% reflection, use it as a questioner not an answerer. Let it ask you things you have not asked yourself. Then close the laptop and write your answers by hand."

— Carlo Santoro

Confidentiality — And the Question About EO GPTs

Forum runs on one sacred commitment: what is shared in the room stays in the room. Without that, trust collapses. Without trust, depth collapses. Without depth, you have a well-catered meeting.

The things I have heard in Forum rooms across three decades would cause genuine harm if they left. The marriage on the line because of the business. The inability to make payroll and nobody on the team knows. The lie told to the board that has been carried for a year. These are shared because the room is sealed. AI breaks that seal — not out of malice, but simply by being used. The moment anyone processes Forum content through an AI system, even with good intentions, your prompt contains other people's stories. Something that was never supposed to leave the room has just entered a third-party platform, been stored on servers you do not control, and potentially used in ways you have never read about in the terms of service.

Courts in the United States have ruled that information entered into publicly available AI platforms carries no reasonable expectation of confidentiality. The US Federal Trade Commission has warned that AI companies' appetite for data can be at odds with their obligations to protect user information. Data security researchers are unambiguous: trade secrets lose their legal protections when disclosed through generative AI systems.

Now let me address a question I am hearing more often in EO circles: what about EO GPTs? The custom AI tools that some chapters and facilitators are building, trained on EO content?

I want to ask the questions that are not being asked loudly enough.

Who builds these GPTs? Usually a well-intentioned member who thinks it would be helpful. How are they built? By uploading EO documents — training guides, Forum protocols, facilitation notes, experience materials — into a platform like ChatGPT's custom builder. The thinking is that loading EO content makes the GPT smarter about EO. And technically, in a narrow sense, it does.

But what actually happens? Every document uploaded sits inside a platform you do not own, on servers you do not control, governed by terms of service you probably have not read, accessible to the company building the platform, potentially used to further train their models, and in some configurations accessible to other users. The intellectual property EO spent decades developing has just been handed to a third-party technology company.

Does it make the GPT smarter? It makes it capable of producing text that sounds like Forum guidance. But sounding like Forum guidance and being Forum guidance are not the same thing. A well-loaded GPT can reproduce the language of Forum without the lived wisdom behind it. For a new member or Moderator trying to understand what Forum actually is, that distinction could not matter more.

How safe are these GPTs? Honestly — not very. Content inside a custom GPT is not truly private. Platform vulnerabilities and the terms under which data is stored mean that what you load in may leave in ways you never intended.

"Before you use an EO GPT, ask yourself three questions. Who built it? What did they upload to make it? And where does what I put into it actually go? If you cannot answer all three with confidence, close the tab."

— Carlo Santoro

Stories Stay. Learnings Leave. And Then Use AI Everywhere.

There is a phrase I have used in Forum training for years, and it is the clearest description of how Forum learning actually works:

"Stories stay in Forum. Learnings Leave."

— Carlo Santoro

The story — the specific details, the names, the personal circumstances — belongs only to the people in that room. It does not leave in any form. The learning — the wisdom you gain from hearing another person's experience, the insight that shifted your thinking — belongs to you. You earned it by being present.

Forum has one core deliverable: learning. Not advice. Not networking. Not problem-solving. Learning. I encourage every member I train to approach the entire session with one mindset — just madly listen for any learning. From every sharing, every reflection, every silence. A learning can arrive from anywhere. If you are listening for them, you will find them everywhere.

But a learning that is not written down is not a learning. It is an opinion. A thought that passed through your mind and felt important in the moment. Thoughts that are not captured disappear. They do not change your behaviour, your decisions, or your leadership. Only written learnings do that. The moment you write it down — clearly, in your own words, in language specific enough to act on — it becomes something real.

"A learning is a learning only when it is written. Until then it is just a thought passing through. Write it down and it becomes something you can act on. Leave it unwritten and it will be gone before you reach the car park."

— Carlo Santoro

After Forum, write your learnings by hand — in a notebook, in your own words, within twenty-four hours. Research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that handwriting activates far more interconnected regions of the brain than typing, especially those linked to memory formation. Writing by hand requires you to paraphrase, to choose, to make meaning rather than transcribe. And handwritten notes are private by nature — they capture what shifted in you, not what was shared by others.

Then — and this is where I want to be completely clear — use every tool available to you.

Here is how I do it. I come out of Forum with my handwritten learnings. I review them, usually that same evening. Then I bring AI into the process with full force. I research the ideas that came up. I use AI to ask me deeper questions about what I am trying to change. I build projects around my learnings — actual tools, actual code, actual systems that embed the insight into my daily life and my business. I am doing this right now and it is changing my life.

That is AI in its rightful place. Not inside Forum. Not replacing the human work of reflection, feeling, and honesty. But amplifying what comes out of it. The learning you earn by being fully present in Forum becomes the raw material for everything AI can help you do with it. Forum first. Human work first. Then AI — as much as you want, as powerfully as you can.

"Forum is where I do the human work. Everything outside Forum is where AI helps me act on it. I madly write my learnings in the room. I review them after. Then I use AI to research, build, and change things. That is the sequence. Protect the first part and the second part becomes extraordinary."

— Carlo Santoro

The Work Is Yours

After 30 years in Forum rooms across more than 30 countries, after 11,000 members trained, here is the most important thing I know.

You have to do the work on yourself. Nobody else can do it for you. Not your coach. Not your therapist. Not your Moderator. And not your AI.

The entrepreneur who has an advisor do all their strategic thinking does not develop strategic thinking. The Forum member who has AI process their emotional experience before the session does not develop the capacity to access, name, and share what is actually happening inside them. The struggle is not the price of admission. It is the learning itself.

Cal Newport, in his book Deep Work, argues that the ability to perform focused, distraction-free work is becoming increasingly rare and increasingly valuable. What Forum demands is harder than professional deep work. It is emotional deep work. The sustained, undistracted, fully present engagement with the most complex subject there is — your own interior life, and the interior lives of the people sitting with you. That work cannot be outsourced. The doing is the development.

"Doing the work on yourself in Forum is the deepest work there is. It is four hours of sustained, distraction-free engagement with the most important subject in your life — you. That work cannot be outsourced. It demands deep protection."

— Carlo Santoro

I have watched it happen in Forum rooms. Members who used to bring their hardest, most honest sharings arrive now smooth and prepared. The room has shifted — slightly shallower, slightly less alive. These are good people. They are not trying to avoid the work. They have simply found a tool that makes the work feel less necessary. And that is the most dangerous kind of numbing there is — the kind that feels like progress.

AI cannot be embarrassed. AI cannot be courageous. AI cannot be broken open. AI cannot grow. You can. That is not a limitation of the technology. That is the entire point of being you.

I have given thirty years to EO because I believe in what it stands for. Forum is where every EO value is tested and made real. Trust and respect is in the basket. Thirst for learning is in the listening. Think big, be bold is in the 5% topic you finally say aloud. And together we grow is the whole thing — the accumulated growth of a group of people who have shown up for each other, month after month, year after year, in full presence and full commitment.

So here is what I ask of you. Not as a Forum trainer. Not as a technologist. As a fellow entrepreneur who has been broken open by this work and changed by it in ways I could not have engineered or predicted or prompted.

Show up to Forum with nothing prepared and everything available. Find the feeling word — even when "fine" would be easier. Locate the 5% topic you have been avoiding. Go deep when deep is offered. Listen to other people's stories and let them land. Write down what shifted — by hand, in ink, in your own words — review it after Forum, and then use every tool you have to act on it.

That chain — show up, feel it, share it, hear it, write it, act on it — is the entire mechanism of Forum growth. AI interrupts that chain at every single link inside Forum. Outside Forum, it amplifies every single link. Know the difference. Protect the line.

Do the maths.

There are roughly 720 hours in a month. Forum is four of them. That means you spend approximately 716 hours — twenty-nine days and twenty hours — living your life outside Forum. Working, leading, building, struggling, parenting, deciding, succeeding, failing, feeling everything you feel. You have 716 hours to be the version of yourself you already know how to be.

And then you have four.

Four hours where you get to do something completely, radically different. Where the rules of the outside world do not apply. Where you are not the CEO, not the operator, not the one with all the answers. Where you stop performing and start being honest. Where you stop giving advice and start giving attention. Where you stop processing everything and start feeling it.

"Stop spending your energy making Forum feel like the other 716 hours of your month. Spend it doing the opposite. Do something completely different in that room — feel instead of perform, listen instead of advise, be honest instead of polished — and something completely different will happen. That is not a theory. That is thirty years of evidence."

— Carlo Santoro

"Forum works because human beings work on themselves. Not because someone processes their experience for them. But because a person walks into a room, puts away everything that could protect them from being real, and chooses — deliberately, courageously, and repeatedly — to do the hardest and most important work there is: the work of becoming."

— Carlo Santoro

Put the phone down. Leave the watch. Leave the AI at the door.

Walk into the room as a person.

Do the work.

The person you are capable of becoming is waiting for you in those four hours. And AI will never be able to get you there. But you can. You always could.

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About the Author

Carlo Santoro is the founder and CEO of RetailCare, an Australian-based retail technology company, and author of two best-selling books on modern retailing. A founding member of EO Melbourne since 1996, Carlo has served as Chapter President, Area Director, Region Council Chairman, Global Board Director, and Chairman of the Leadership Academy. Over 30 years he has facilitated more than 500 EO Forums, trained over 11,000 EO members in Forum since 2000, and worked across more than 30 countries. He has facilitated over 100 Strategy Summits globally. Known as "The How To Guy" and #CoachCarlo, he works with entrepreneurs and EO chapters worldwide on Forum excellence, leadership, and business growth. Learn more at carlosantoro.com.

Who is EO?

The Entrepreneurs' Organization is a global peer-to-peer network of more than 20,000 business owners and entrepreneurs across 220 chapters in 61 countries. Founded in 1987, EO exists to help entrepreneurs learn and grow from each other. Its most transformative benefit, consistently rated highest by members worldwide, is Forum. Learn more at eonetwork.org.

Key Research References

On vulnerability and connection: Dr. Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability (TED Talk, 2010); Daring Greatly (2012); Atlas of the Heart (2021).

On entrepreneurial loneliness: Cardon et al. (2023), Personnel Psychology, Wiley. Harvard Business Review — 50% of CEOs report significant loneliness. Shopify (2024) — entrepreneurs 5.5 times more likely to experience loneliness than the general population.

On technology and attention: Ward, A.F. et al. (2017), "Brain Drain," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Texas at Austin. Skowronek et al. (2023), Scientific Reports, Paderborn University. Mark, G. (2008), UC Irvine — 23 minutes 15 seconds average recovery time. Leroy, S. (2009), Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, University of Washington — attention residue.

On ADHD and entrepreneurship: Wiklund et al. (2018), Small Business Economics, Springer. Freeman, M.A., UCSF — 29% of entrepreneurs report ADHD.

On AI and empathy: "The Compassion Illusion," Frontiers in Psychology (2025). Cornell, Stanford, Olin (CHI '24). PMC (2025), "Digitalized Therapy and the Unresolved Gap Between Artificial and Human Empathy."

On handwriting and memory: van der Meer and van der Weel (2024), Frontiers in Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

On deep work: Newport, C. (2016), Deep Work, Grand Central Publishing.

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The views expressed in this article are the personal opinions of Carlo Santoro and do not represent the official position of the Entrepreneurs' Organization, EO Melbourne, or any EO chapter or body globally. The question of whether to use AI in the context of your Forum is ultimately a decision for each Forum group and its individual members. This article is one experienced voice, shaped by 30 years in Forum rooms across more than 30 countries. Take it, challenge it, discuss it in your Forum — that is exactly what Forum is for.