Other women were involved in peer working groups. Lessons learned from this intervention include:

1. The power of peer pressure – A group prize helps members take on responsibility for their attendance.

2. The power of habits – Groups need to meet at regular intervals to generate habit and ease scheduling.

3. Consider other obligations – Selection of day and time of class (whether in the morning or afternoon) is very important for retention rates. To combat attrition, ask entrepreneurs what days they absolutely cannot attend class.

4. Plan ahead – Provide all dates for trainings and meetings as early as possible to participants.

5. Importance of academic homogeneity – Each group should be homogeneous in terms of business background so that the entrepreneurs can advance at the same pace.

6. Mixed industry groups do work – Our initial hypothesis was that women of different industries may not relate to each other and would have a hard time engaging, but the opposite is true: Women entrepreneurs learned from other industries and were able apply those lessons to their own businesses.

7. Avoid direct competition – When women in the same industry are in the same group, they do not feel like “competitors” unless they work in the exact same industrial “cluster.” Even women from the same industry (but who operate in different markets or geographic areas) were not hesitant to share information.

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