#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards

#241 - Reinventing Success After Catastrophe

• Jordan Edwards • Season 5 • Episode 241

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What happens when everything you've built crumbles overnight? For Leo Popik, founder and CEO of Leading Peers, this wasn't a hypothetical question but a devastating reality that forced him to completely reinvent his life and career.

Leo's story begins with an already challenging situation—moving his family from Brazil to the US in 2017 and battling through a grueling immigration process that cost $70,000 in legal fees while putting immense strain on his successful international events company. Just when things seemed to stabilize with his green card approval on December 31, 2019, the pandemic hit, instantly decimating his eight-figure business that operated across ten countries. 

The emotional toll was crushing. Sleepless nights, vendors demanding payment, employees across the globe depending on him, and a once-thriving business worth millions suddenly worthless. "I realized that a lot of my identity had been tied to the busyness of business," Leo reflects, capturing the existential crisis many entrepreneurs face when their companies falter. Through deep soul-searching conversations with his wife (a leadership coach), Leo identified four core passions that would guide his reinvention: entrepreneurship, leadership, personal development, and community building.

This clarity became the blueprint for Leading Peers, an innovative CEO peer advisory organization designed to make high-quality peer groups accessible at $340/month (versus competitors' $10,000+ price tags). Leo built a model where CEOs with at least $250,000 in revenue join boards of 8 peers with expert facilitator-advisors, creating intimate communities focused on mutual growth through monthly meetings, workshops, networking events, and specialized interest groups.

Five years later, Leading Peers continues to thrive with its distinctive approach summed up in its mission: "to help CEOs grow so their people and businesses prosper." Leo's journey teaches us that resilience isn't just enduring hardship—it's finding purpose within it and creating something meaningful from the ashes of what once was.

Ready to connect with other growth-minded CEOs? Visit leadingpeers.com to learn more about joining this dynamic community of leaders.

To Learn more about Leo Popik: 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leandropopik

To Reach Jordan:

Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting

Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93Zw

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.edwards.7503

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanfedwards/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/



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Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call

Speaker 1:

Hey, what's going on, guys? I've got a special guest here today. We have Leo Poppock. He's the founder and CEO of Leading Peers. We're excited to have you on the Hashtag Clocked In podcast today. Leo, how has resilience shown up in your life?

Speaker 2:

I've had to reinvent my career several times, and the most recent one was when I started Leading Peers. The backstory for what is my passion project, my job building this organization and the story I'll take you back to 2014. Ok, so my wife and I are living in Brazil. We fly to the States for a vacation. She tells me at some point that she wants to move to the US and I said, okay, great, if it's for the kids. You know, it made a lot of sense, right? They had never lived here and I had lived in the US growing up. And then I went back to South America, which is where my family's from, so we moved here at the beginning of 2017.

Speaker 2:

We come here with our travel company that we owned. I was a full-time CEO. My wife didn't work in the business, so I'm busy as can be. I'm traveling. We had 45 full-time employees in 10 different countries, hundreds of contractors, and it was busy. It was an eight-digit revenue business. It was super busy going to trade shows, visiting clients, going to their big events. Sometimes these events were like half a million dollar tickets for us, so it was like one week of hosting 300 people in, I don't know, rio de janeiro or buenos aires, or mexico city it was intense people flying in from the us or from all over the world, you know, for corporate events and conventions and stuff.

Speaker 2:

So, um, my green card, which is what you need to be able to stay in the United States yeah, you don't have to be renewing. I needed that because otherwise, a year after I arrived, I needed to renew my visa. My green card became like this super lengthy process I mean, this is the beginning of 2017. And people focus on what was happening with the border wall with Mexico right after the Trump administration's first term started but it affected all of immigration. So even people that came here lawfully were seen like really backed up, to the point that when we introduced the renewal petition for my L1, it was rejected because I hadn't like hired enough Americans. And I didn't realize like what I was up against. Like I'd hired a few people. I had like four Americans in the team. They wanted to see like a big company that I was like hiring, like there's no tomorrow and my business was doing events in Latin America, so I really didn't need all these hired charging job.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it didn't make sense business-wise at all.

Speaker 2:

I mean even for sales, like I could bring in people from Latin America way cheaper, you know, and they would actually be more authentic in selling the destinations of Latin America. So, anyway, so I start hiring all these people and so now I'm paying 70 grand to immigration lawyers to get me to stay here, because I had 35 days to leave the country. I'd be, you know, oversending my welcome and that's bad and I didn't want to do that. So I'm going doing everything. I hired two different legal firms, one for the green card, one to renew my visa. I'm like, hiring all these people and my business starts to really take a hit and it's bottom line I mean significant hit. And this was a point where I needed a really sizable income, because my whole life savings I had put into rental properties in Brazil and the Brazilian economy was tanking too. So like-.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, I can feel it, I can feel it.

Speaker 2:

The rental income coming in from those properties was very, very low in comparison to what we had budgeted. So things are just getting worse and worse by the day. And you know, the business had a great team and had a great culture, great clients. But little by little, like I'm seeing money just kind of leave, leave, leave. And I'm starting to ask vendors hey, can you like take 30 days? And then it was 45 days and then it was like three months. And our vendors are like what in the world is happening? Are you guys going under? We're like what in the world is happening? Are you guys going under? We're like no, you know, this is a temporary phase we're going through and in my mind I'm like if I could just get the green card, I could get some type of funding from banks. You know, I needed a lender.

Speaker 1:

I didn't want to say you're not even getting that, you're not even do working Wow.

Speaker 2:

When you come here and you're you know you don't have citizenship or a permanent residence. Banks are not going to open their wallet at all. Like the most they'll give you is a credit card for like a small low limit.

Speaker 1:

You know, and so even though you had this huge business going and everything, oh yeah, filing tax returns in the U?

Speaker 2:

S since 2013. And this is now like, say, say, five, six years later, didn't matter. It was like we don't lend the foreigners that come in. Uh, we don't know what's going to happen to them. They can leave the country, right, if you put yourself in their shoes. They're like how do I get my money back if you disappear?

Speaker 2:

And so it was getting crazy. I mean to the point that, like so many times, I had to put myself together. Um, my wife goes into a depression, I'm not kidding. She lost her grandma and couldn't travel abroad. Because that's part of the process is they tell you, don't go abroad until you get your green card. So, like she couldn't see the person that was like the most important person in her life, aside from our children. And it was just like the everything was falling down on me. Like I thought, like we'll do an event where it's a flop because our vendors don't show up, thought, like we'll do an event where it's a flop because our, our vendors don't show up. Well, yeah, luckily that didn't happen, but the number of times I had to, like ask somebody for a loan, like a bridge loan, and like people in my family and friends and be like I'll pay you right back and like how terrible it felt and like, um, just the emotions of it. Like I would wake up at three or four in the morning. I would not be able to go back to sleep. Like I would have sleep nights constantly.

Speaker 2:

Finally, we get the green card on the last day of the decade. It comes in December 31st 2019. And we celebrate that night as 2020 has started New decade, fresh start after years of this grueling process. And I'm like, no, we're going to kill it. We're going to get that funding, we're going to be able to start after years of this grueling process. And I'm like now we're gonna kill it. We're gonna get that funding. We're gonna be able to like improve our terms. I'm gonna be able to sleep again. This is gonna be great.

Speaker 2:

I'm about to implode. Like I'm literally in this. Yeah, like hoping that I don't get sick. And here's what happens. Or you know what happened at the beginning of 2020 and how it affected the international global, uh, corporate event industry. Is it started out of Asia? Like the Asian delegates can't come, so we're going to like postpone the event. Then it was a month later. The Europeans can't either, so we're not even sure we're going to do it in the next couple of years. By early March the industry had been decimated. Like companies are going under, the ones that stick around are shedding 90% of the workforce.

Speaker 1:

Because they can't support them. And with international travel, it's an international travel events company, and now we're moving to this place where no one can travel, no one can do anything, yeah, it's like selling ice cubes in the North Pole.

Speaker 2:

No, that doesn't sell around here. Nobody wanted to buy what we were offering. It was like give us a couple of years and we'll talk if we're still around. I mean, that was, that was the situation. So now, not only am I dealing with I can't sleep at night, I'm dealing with I don't have anything to provide for my family. This had been the only business that we had put everything into. Remember, the business was in 10 countries, so it was 10 different legal entities. That was hard enough to manage. That's why I didn't want to start another business in another industry. So I had all my eggs in the basket of this one industry, thinking that the worst that could happen was something like the global financial crisis.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, one country can go down. You'll be able to do the other countries. You're already diversified through countries, which is way better than most people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but now you're dealing with like zero coming in and all these people saying I'm out of a job if you don't pay me, and so I'm feeling terrible with the 45 full-time employees. I'm feeling horrible with the vendors that have given us 30, 60, 90 days to pay them that we didn't have money coming in to pay. I'm feeling bad about clients that had events in 2020 that had to cancel and they're saying give me my money back, Like they're trying to stay alive. Many of them were events companies based in the US or Europe.

Speaker 2:

And like well, this is a force majeure thing. Like our vendors aren't giving us our money back either. So I'm in the middle of all that and I'm like, what do I do? Like I go out and get a job. I guess I'd never gone out and gotten an employment because I'd always been a self-made kind of entrepreneur. How in the world do I do that? And like, even if I put together a resume, which I hadn't done in like 30 years I'm 46 at that point how do I position an industry that you know nobody's interested in? Like I don't. I didn't have like a tech background or finance background, something like health that was actually in demand. So going through that was really a heart, you know, gut wrenching and it was heartbreaking in so many ways and it really took me to the depths of my being, of like who I am and for the place and you had to close that like there was no other option, right?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'll tell you what many days I was like I'm going to close it today. Many days I was like if somebody comes in here with $10,000, I'll give it to them. I had been offered millions of dollars for that business and all of a sudden I'm saying I'll give it away for 10 grand just to walk away with something. And then and my wife's like no, don't close it in exchange for nothing. Right, because we were stressed out. I mean, think about it. I had started that year two months before, thinking now I'm scaling this thing to nine digit revenue so I can sell it for like a nine digit type exit. And now I'm thinking I'll give it away two months later. I just want my peace of mind. That's how quickly things change for me in my life.

Speaker 1:

What did that make you realize you value? Because I feel like going through that is so traumatizing. Like most people are like I have a job, I lost a job. You lost a little income. Not, I had to restart my entire existence, which is so challenging, especially when you have a. Like most of the audience will understand this it's like you have a certain amount in your bank account and you're like I'm this type of person and then the account goes down and they're like whoa, whoa, I got to go get the money back. You're like I identify as an eight figure entrepreneur. I identify as helping out with these 45 employees, hundreds of contractors, all of these people, and now it's a what's the most important. It really becomes a very interesting dynamic. So I appreciate you sharing all that.

Speaker 2:

It made me realize that I valued family greatly, because, all of a sudden, in lockdowns, and I'm realizing that people that didn't have a family are on their own. Yes, it made me realize that I valued my health greatly, because people were dying and people were getting sick and worried and my family had health and that was a huge blessing. I didn't take that lightly at all. And it made me realize how much I valued entrepreneurship. And you might think, well, that's kind of ironic, like why would you value entrepreneurship when you've just been hit, you know, in the head as hard as anybody can be? And I think the reason is I was looking at the employees of my industry Because, remember, I'd been in this industry for 17 years. So so many of the people I knew were employees employees of my own company some of them, but, like, I had friends in like hundreds of companies that were our clients or were vendors. And I'm thinking about these people, like what do they do? I mean, I know that they're not dealing with, that they're not going to have an exit. You know, know, like I was dealing with because they weren't counting on an exit, but they were out of a job and they were having to like reinvent themselves at a time where it was super hard. I mean, not only this industry was decimated, but the unemployment rate just shot up everywhere, not just in the us. All the people I knew around the world from the industry were dealing with I can't get a job in the healthcare industry. I've never worked there and like they're backed up, and so it's like entrepreneurship allowed me to have at least the hope that I could start something completely new where somebody that's like dependent on getting a job. They can't do that, they can't be self-starters, they depend on somebody else. Now, of course, as an entrepreneur, you depend on clients like you, right but at the end of the day, you know if you come up with enough value in something that you can do, you'll find a client. You know, because you have a better solution or a less pricey solution or a quicker solution. And when the government had these plans like the PPP and the IDL, I'm like, okay, there's something for entrepreneurs. But for people who aren't, what are they hoping for? A handout from the government, like a subsidy to sort of like get through this, or food stamps? I mean, it really made me value entrepreneurship, and being an entrepreneur in the US. It made me value the United States greatly, yes, and at that point I realized what a blessing that I got my green card two months before this whole thing happened.

Speaker 2:

Had that not happened, I can't now like do whatever I want in another industry and then I have to like go back, if I want to, to Latin America to to start my next company, and they're in lockdowns that are way more strict. You know they're having way less help from government and labor regulations. You know you couldn't fire people. So, like my employees in Argentina, I couldn't even fire. It was horrendous, like they had to leave. We had to come to like informal agreements. So, yeah, family health, entrepreneurship and the freedoms of support in the US system, the United States.

Speaker 1:

I love it. Yeah, no, I think it's really awesome because a lot of us are missing that with the United States and we don't realize that it's the pursuit of happiness and success and all of that. It's not promised, but it gives you the opportunity to pursue and a lot of us miss that. So that provides such an opportunity to just reflect back and realize how grateful we are because, especially you're going from one life where it's probably 200 miles an hour to another life where it's like five miles an hour and you're like whoa, I can actually see it was like it was like 200 to one, like all of a sudden I looked at my days and I was like nobody's emailing me, nobody is texting, nobody is calling me, and it was tough.

Speaker 2:

I realized that a lot of my identity had been tied to the busyness of business.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And I didn't want that.

Speaker 1:

I realized that whatever comes next has to be more meaningful and less task-driven frame of identity and changing your identity is so important because, especially in America, where a lot of the audience can be, you start to realize that it's work, work, work, work, work. What do you do? That's everyone's first question. It's like, oh hey, leo, what do you do? And it's like, don't categorize me, don't like I'm a nice person, like, just take it at that. It's very hard for people to do that because they're always looking for an angle, because everyone's always trying to create. So when you start realizing this purpose and this new identity, what did you end up leaning towards and how did you kind of come out of that and think about that? Great question.

Speaker 2:

So I start really digging into. I want to continue being an entrepreneur. I do not want to go out and get a job. It wasn't that I didn't see the dignity in work All work is super dignified when it's honest and it's done for the right reasons but it just wasn't what I enjoyed. And again I had valued entrepreneurship coming out of this so much more. I'm like I'm never going to be dependent. If I thought I had diversified everything and then, you know, god or fate or the universe throws this pandemic in me and leaves me with nothing. I want more than ever to rely on myself as much as I can to pull myself out of a hole.

Speaker 2:

So it was okay Entreprene, entrepreneurship, let's find a new business. So different industry cannot be in the travel or events industry. So what am I passionate about? And right away I identified that there was something in education that had always been calling at me and I didn't really know what it was. I realized also that there was something in technology and like fast growth companies that I found really compelling, that I'd never allowed myself to explore. And I know I was kind of old for that I was 46, but I was like, in some way I want to employ a lot of technology in what I do, and so I knew that education technology was a possibility. But then I did an exercise of soul searching. I would actually go on walks with my wife. My wife is a life coach. She's trained as a leadership coach, so she started asking me some questions. I encourage that for anybody going through an exercise of having to like transform their life to pivot in a very significant way with their whole life, as opposed to just like a small thing to have somebody asking them questions, to have powerful conversations with somebody because, yeah, it's that outside perspective, yeah you start getting someone being like yeah you can't have the conversations by yourself

Speaker 2:

you can't like if you'll just say I, whatever. And then. And then when somebody is asking you why and they're interested, you can't dismiss it. You're like, well, at least out of respect to this person, I'm going to answer the question. And then you answer with something that's still sort of a how or what, and so they're like, but why?

Speaker 2:

And then finally, I got to the bottom of it all in the soul, searching that I wasn't just passionate about entrepreneurship, I was also very passionate about leadership, and that's something I hadn't allowed myself to be involved in. Yes, I had been a leader of my companies. I'd owned three companies. At this point as an adult, I'd been a leader for about 17 years of these three companies in a row. So yeah, there was a lot of I need to learn to be a leader.

Speaker 2:

I would read books on leadership, I would listen to stuff on leadership, I would be drawn to leaders. But I had never allowed myself to work on leadership in my adult life. As a child, you know, I was in student council. I read stuff on leadership. I started a nonprofit when I moved back to Argentina in 1989, at the age of 15, to promote leadership in the youth of the country and so I was very invested in leadership and I studied leaders. I got into a PhD in political science. I went to Harvard to study a PhD in political science. I got a master's because I didn't want to finish the PhD but I was always drawn into leadership. So the soul searching led me to entrepreneurship, and leadership are important to me, and this education piece comes from a love for personal development.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't like educating the kids of the world. It was. I'd always loved to develop myself and my knowledge and and and and my habits, my, my ways of thinking. So I was always drawn to self-help books and, uh, you know great speakers on on on um, you know success and and and what it means to be, uh, thriving and like. Yeah, I would just say, like, what was that? What's that? What do you call those speakers that really motivate you to become a better version?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the motivational speakers.

Speaker 2:

Motivational speakers, there you go, I was always drawn into that like trying to be the best version of yourself, and and and then the final piece is I realized I had been doing a lot of events throughout my whole life. So I'm like what's? What's in that? Why did I have an events company? Why was I always doing events when I was a student council or with this nonprofit, or every time?

Speaker 2:

Everywhere in my life I was bringing people together and I realized I'd always been somebody drawn into making the world a better place through more dialogue, through more community, helping people understand one another better, bridge cultural gaps. Right, I majored in international relations and what mainly drew me was like I grew up in Brazil, argentina, the US I had kind of studied a while in France. I'd always been drawn into like, how do we make the world function better? By bringing people together? I studied the United Nations. I wanted to work there.

Speaker 2:

So what all of that gave me is that my fourth passion was community building, or, you know, bringing people together to put it in layman's terms. So now I had my four passions. I just needed to find the business opportunity that would align with that and with the lifestyle that I wanted. I'd realized that lifestyle was also going to be important to me. I was now a dad, at the age of 46, of three little kids. My wife was a foreigner in this country, didn't have much of a social network here. They needed me a lot more than people that don't have it.

Speaker 1:

I love that because it's a drastic reframe from the hey, I'm good at travel and I'm good at hosting events. I'm just going to do that. When, in reality, you step back and you go what is the purpose that I actually want, what do I want this business for and how do I want this to work for me? Because when you start asking those questions in the beginning now it's hey, I do remote business, I do maybe in person here and there, but we're not traveling 100 days a year. And you start to reframe this all so that you're able to create the life you want. And so, for you, what did that end up being for you? What was that? What was that opportunity you created?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So the opportunity is the organization I've been leading for the last five years. Leading Peers is the name of the organization. So I've been leading an organization that is called Leading Peers and it starts with the day that I left a CEO peer group that I was in an organization called Vistage. That's been around forever, for like seven decades, and I had to leave because I had to cut my expenses and you know, on the personal side and the business side too, and as I'm leaving and I'm thinking, gosh, these people could have really helped me figure out my next venture. You know what I'm going to do next and so I really realized how much I value them now more than ever, you know. So I was like it is such a paradox, and when I need them the most, I can't afford them, and that was tugging at my heartstrings and I was like, oh, I have to find another organization.

Speaker 2:

And I had all this trust with this group. It's a bummer. And as I go out, I realized that the other well-known organizations in the space were just way too expensive at the time for me. Even having had that eight-digit revenue business, I'm like, well, I mean, I'm not going to fork up more than $10,000 before I even see what value I'm going to get. So that killed EO as an option for me. And then YPO, the other option. I was too old. Believe it or not, at the age of 45, you're already too old to be able to join and I was 46. So that one was out the window.

Speaker 2:

And then I'm looking at all these smaller organizations and I'm like I'm not drawn into an organization that's super small because, like, I can create one. And then that got me thinking like, well, if I can create one, what would it look like? And so I started tinkering with what would I charge? What would I offer? What would make it different? What's the unique selling proposition?

Speaker 2:

And the more I start to do this work on my free time this is May, june 2020, the more I start getting like super excited.

Speaker 2:

I'm like something's happening here and I couldn't really connect it with the soul searching thing that I was doing on the side.

Speaker 2:

And then finally, one day I'm like now I know I'm so excited because those four things entrepreneurship, leadership, community building and personal development are at the heart of the organization that I'm now building and that's I knew like I'm doing it for all the right reasons.

Speaker 2:

I am passionate about the things that this organization is going to provide because I know how valuable they are and I also am good at it because I remember, like when I was in Vistage, people in my group even people that were doing more revenue than me, like five times more, like 60 million when I was doing 12 million a year were like you're good man, your advice is really serving, serving. There's something in there that I'm really good at and I knew I was really good at events and bringing people together because I had an events company for 17 years that was number one in Latin American corporate events. So I'm like I know I'm great at it, I know I'm passionate about it. Now comes the question can I make money? And that was what needed to be validated and you know, over time it wasn't an overnight success but after, you know, a couple of years of laying the groundwork, the thing, just, you know, took off.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I mean, the biggest thing about coaching that I've seen through my clients and just going to your leading peers event, is realizing that we have to work on our business. You know what I mean Not in the business, but on the business, and even if it's personal development, it's work on yourself. And what I mean by that is we have planning time and we have action time. So action time is what most people spend their time on. They're always doing the actions. The planning time is when you step back and you sit there and you start to think maybe I can do this better, maybe there's a different way. And most people don't spend time in the planning time and that's what a group like Leading Peers does, or the coaching I do. It's that planning time where you step up and go wait a second. Am I just inherently doing all these things that I don't need to do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, inherently doing all these things that I don't need to do. Yeah, it's funny because, like you, think that being at the top of a company, a lot of people, I would say, think that it's about like being the guy that puts in the most hours at work, or the one that puts in, does the most tasks and has the most meetings or phone calls, and that's the image of the leader that they project on TV. Like when you see movies, you're like, oh, the guy in Wall Street. He's like doing trades and he like gets off a call and he's screaming. You know, that's what it's like to be up there and in reality, it's so much more like being a philosopher. You know, you've spent a lot of time thinking, you've spent a lot of time reading. You've spent a lot of time in deep conversation. That's really what it's like to be the CEO of a company like Microsoft or Apple today that are so successful.

Speaker 1:

You know, we don't look at those guys who are doing those things right now too much, because they're not as flamboyant as maybe Elon Musk is or Jeff Bezos, who are like but the funny thing is about Elon and Jeff people don't realize is they're having those deep thought conversation and Trump even, and all of them, they all have very deep conversations and thoughts, but they have a completely different personality. That's so much more out there and that's why they've relieved, because there is no way people can learn that much by talking that much Like. A lot of these guys do not talk like.

Speaker 1:

I've listened to interviews where people were around Trump and they're like dude, all the guy does is ask questions. He's just learning and he does that every single. But he has so many people around him but all we see is the speeches. So you sit there and go. He just talks all the time and it's like that's what you see. You don't actually know what he does. So it's a little bit different dynamic. So what makes leading peers unique? I know, I know we got to finish up in a couple of minutes, but what makes leading peers unique and different?

Speaker 2:

Well, first of all, we provide everybody with a uh a membership that includes five programs, one of them being a peer board.

Speaker 2:

This is where peers that are on your board are able to help you and you're able to help them, through a process which involves a monthly half-day meeting where no more than eight members are going to be collaborating to help each other figure out their challenges that they themselves are choosing to bring to the meeting and are preparing for.

Speaker 2:

Second of all, we provide a facilitator for that, and that facilitator is somebody who is just there to facilitate and to advise, but not really somebody but not there to get advice. Yes, so that level of expertise and facilitation and advisory is an extra element, because we hire people for this position that are business owners, that are usually consultants, that are usually top level entrepreneurs, who are now at a different stage of their life, further along, where they want to give back, they want to continue learning, they enjoy the adrenaline of the modern business world without necessarily wanting to lead a company themselves, and some of them are still leading a company on the side, so they're very much up to date with what's working for them, the things that they're trying, and they're like trying to soak up the knowledge of the group so you feel their energy and that's super unique to us and you won't find that in another CEO peer group organization period. There just isn't another one that gives you.

Speaker 1:

The facilitation and the under eight people is drastic because then you actually have someone driving the meeting. The amount of meetings I've gone into where I go we are getting nothing done because no one knows how to drive A lot of corporate they don't know how to drive so but when you're driving you're getting everyone to speak for their amount of time and maybe if they go too short they ask an additional question, or maybe if they go too long you try to steer them in the right direction without it being rude or off-putting. But the facilitation allows you to actually keep it moving and every group needs a facilitator. So whether it's leading peers or the coaching group, I do. You need someone who facilitates the meetings because otherwise it's just going to be this person said this, this person said it's nothing's getting done.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. We need leadership in every type of social environment period.

Speaker 1:

Even family dynamics, yeah, even families, groups, friends, like there's always a leader somewhere who's guiding and setting expectations and setting. It's all the same.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent. I firmly believe that leadership is crucial and you don't have to be a leader everywhere, right, like sometimes if a cop pulls you over, it's clear that the cop is leading the conversation. Right, your job is to answer the questions.

Speaker 1:

A leader knows their role too.

Speaker 2:

A leader knows their role.

Speaker 2:

But in every social interaction there has to be. So we provide that leadership. We provide a peer-to-peer meeting every month for our members with one another, people in their board that they know well, that they have a lot of trust, with a lot of meaningful relationships, so they feel very supported at a deep level by their board. And then we have all these other trainings, like expert workshops. We have all these community aspects to us, like our networking events that you attended. Then we have all these networks within Leading Peers that you can join. If you're passionate about, for instance, artificial intelligence, you can join a network that's only there to discuss what's happening with that. We have so many of them. As a member, you get one peer board, but you can also be in many networks, and networks don't have an in-person meeting or live meeting, even online, but they do have their own communication thread and a lot of interactions are formed there that then are taken offline and one-on-one conversations are sparked. So the collective value of all of this is it's just incredible and it's only 340 bucks a month. You know, and I'm putting that out there because that was a big part of what motivated me to start this and it's a part of what I want to continue have guiding us, which is I don't want the barriers of entry to be too high. And so if you have $250,000 of revenue in the last 12 months as CEO of a company, that qualifies you to join. So it's not for the person that's a solopreneur that's doing $50,000, $100,000. But once you get over that $250,000 mark in revenue top line revenue is what I'm talking about you are already eligible to join. And for that entrepreneur that currently doesn't have something because they sold a business that was doing over a million, that also qualifies them. If they were a CEO of a company that did over a million in the past but currently don't have one or do, but they're not yet at 250, they can join.

Speaker 2:

And here's the other beauty Once you qualify to join, even if you no longer qualify, you lose that Because, let's say, you sell your business, you now don't have another one, you are grandfathered in, so you're not removed.

Speaker 2:

So this is a community for life and you can stay in here as long as you want, because you're always going to be working on your personal growth and our mission is to help CEOs grow so their people and businesses prosper. So at the core it's. We're not here to help your business grow. We're here to help you grow, and then you translate that into prosperity for your business and for the people that matter most to you, surely starting with family, friends, you know, and then employees, community, everything. So there's no reason to retire from leading peers, and that's going to that's creating a lot of of of committed long term members. We're now finishing our fifth year. We still have members that joined five years ago. Yes, and that's telling us that the lifetime value of what we provide is really, really, you know, could be 10, 20, 30 years on average, once we ride this out a little longer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, instead of the normal groups that are. So, hey, are you going to pay me this month or are you going to pay for this yearly? Because it becomes a big. It's a large expense. And then they host a big luxurious event and then there's like thousands of members and it sounds great. There's like thousands of members and it sounds great, but the real meat and potatoes happens in an eight person meeting. Eight to 10 people really small, unique, even sometimes smaller for people is really where you get good movement.

Speaker 2:

In a group of eight. Sometimes a couple of people won't be at the meeting, so on average you're dealing with meetings of six members and a facilitator, even in a full board.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so. Everyone gets to talk pretty frequently. So, leo, where can people learn more about you and learn more about Leading Peers?

Speaker 2:

Our website leadingpeerscom. That's the best place, and from there you can send a contact form. You can read the Become a Member section. You can sign up for our newsletter. We've got all sorts of free resources for people that don't yet qualify to join but they want to improve their preparation to join someday. We have our master classes there that you can watch. These are like TED Talks type presentations done by experts that train CEOs on different aspects of leading. And then, of course, I mean once that email comes into us, somebody in our team will process it to me or to the right person. We're here to help. I'm super excited. My LinkedIn profile you'll find it If you type in Leo Popic on LinkedIn. There isn't another person with my name, fortunately, so you'll be able to spot me right there.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. We'll throw it all in the show notes. Thank you.

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Jordan Edwards

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