Most founders barely scratch the surface of what Collective 54 offers. This session unpacks the exact behaviors that turn membership into a growth engine—weekly rhythms, one-on-one outreach, leadership board engagement, and a give-to-get mindset. Learn how high-performing members build trust, accelerate referrals, and stay top of mind without chasing it. If you’re ready to turn passive membership into active ROI, this is your playbook.
What you’ll get from this session:
• The weekly and monthly habits that compound into real value
• How to lead (not just attend) for outsized impact and return
• Tactics for peer networking that generate business without “selling”
• The overlooked ROI of leadership boards and one-on-one outreach
• The mindset shift from passive participation to intentional engagement
Why it matters:
• Most members use less than half of what Collective 54 offers
• Relationships built here often convert into referrals, insights, and clients
• High-return behavior is simple—but only if done consistently
• Peer-led communities reward contribution, not consumption
TRANSCRIPT
Greg Alexander: Alright. Hey everybody, this is Greg Alexander. You’re listening to the ProServ Podcast, brought to you by Collective 54. If you’re new to this show, it is for people that are in the expertise business. So if you market, sell, and deliver expertise in some way, shape, or form, this show is for you. We aim to do 3 things on this show. We try to help you make more money, make scaling easier, and make an exit achievable. And we have a very special episode here. We’re recording this on December 17th, 2025. And our guest this year is the Collective 54 Member of the Year for 2025. He has been a long-time member of Collective 54. His name is Randell Mauricio. In a second, I’m going to ask him to introduce himself to you. But the objective of today’s call is to hear directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, on how to become a member of the year. And what that means, really, is how to get the most out of the membership, not just for yourself, but also for your peers in the community. This award is the most prestigious award that we offer, and the reason for that is that it is voted on by your peers. It’s not as if I, the owner of the firm, came down off my throne and anointed Randell- King for a day. This came bottoms up from his peers, and that’s why it’s so powerful. So, I’ve got a series of questions that I’m going to ask Randell. My objective for all of you is to listen to Randell and say to yourself, I’m a member of Collective 54, someday, I want to be Member of the year, and here’s what I’m going to do in pursuit of that objective. So, Randell, with that, it’s good to see you. Happy holidays. Please reintroduce yourself to the few people in the community who don’t know who you are.
Randell Mauricio: Appreciate you, and thank you for the healthy introduction. Randell Mauricio, and like Greg had mentioned, I’ve been a member of Collective 54 since March 2020. I can remember the month, and so I think I was, like, wave number 2, wave number 3 of your membership. I enjoyed it, and when I was originally a member… when I started off as a member of Collective 54, I was flying under a different banner. I was a partner of a firm that I helped build for the last 15 years. Last year, as I was turning 40, I said to myself, it’s time to spread my wings, and so I partnered up with another member of Collective 54, Brian Albers, and so we got started earlier this year, January of 2025. Initially, we started off as fractional COOs, and so we’ve been doing some fine-tuning, thankfully, with the help of other members of Collective 54 to refine our positioning, and so we are embedded leadership partners. We’re basically helping founders grow, scale, and exit their firms a lot faster and a lot smoother.
Greg Alexander: And Randell, what is the name of the firm?
Randell Mauricio: Yes, Pemerations, and there’s a story here that I love to tell, Greg, because a lot of people ask us, where does that name, Pemerations come from? I love telling this story because it’s deeply personal to my partner, Brian. He asked himself, what are the two things I love the most? Number one, operations. Number two, his daughter, Pema. Pema + operations.
Greg Alexander: That’s a great name. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure everybody knew the name, because they know your name, but the firm name, because if they’re interested in reaching out to you guys, because they need some help, I wanted to know how to reach you. Okay, so let’s jump into it. So my first question, against the objective of modeling our behavior after you, Member of the Year: tell me about your weekly and monthly engagement rhythm within Collective 54, and maybe, since you’ve been with us for 5 years, how that has changed over time.
Randell Mauricio: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll go back to the very first year, and I thought it was a privilege and an honor to be a part of this membership, because I personally, from a personal standpoint, I did not have the formal training. The training and experience that I did have was latching on and working directly with the founder of my previous company, who had been there, done that before. He had bought, built, sold since he was in his 30s, 40s. And so that was my source of training and education. So, when Collective 54 was birthed, thanks to you, Greg, I jumped at the opportunity. And my mindset was simply this: I gotta get into every single meeting that I can because of my deficiencies. And it was great. It was highly, highly validating, because I was learning things that I was already putting into practice. How that’s evolved over time is I recognize that, you know, if I go back to year one, I suffered from what you often refer to as imposter syndrome. And I recognize that the members, we’re all going through it—different stages, but it’s the same journey. And so, I’ve become more open to one-on-one connections, to dialogue, to exchange of ideas and perspective, and really just recognizing that the best way to be a community is to support one another, and so that’s the mindset that I try to lead with every single time I engage with Collective 54. When I’m there on a weekly meeting, what is the one thing that I can learn from this member? And here’s the thing, Greg: there’s a lot of members I connect with, and I’m sure you hear it, I’m sure your team tells you about this all the time. The members will look at the topic of the session and say, well, that’s for me or it’s not for me. My mentality is a bit different. Right or wrong, this is my—both my brilliance and my kryptonite—I believe I can learn something from every single member who you’re interviewing in your session. And that’s just always going to be me. That’s my tendency, and if I stay true to that philosophy, then it just boils down to the 1% rule. I’m just improving every single week.
Greg Alexander: You know, I have noticed that about you, and I’ve actually learned from you on that, because I’m a busy guy, like all the members, and sometimes when I look at time requests on my calendar, I make snap judgments as to whether this is gonna be relevant, am I gonna learn something, am I gonna enjoy this person I’m gonna meet? And it’s a mistake, because almost every time I say yes when I’m not 100% sure, I’m glad I did, because some unexpected lucky break transpires, and I make a new friend, a new connection, I learn something new, what have you. So, I think that’s really the first kind of big lesson for members to take from Randall: understand we don’t know what we don’t know, and the default should be yes, not no. The yes to meeting with a member, or attending a session, or trying a new approach—whatever the yes is—just try to keep that beginner’s mind. Okay, so that was really helpful.
Greg Alexander: One other thing that you did, which was a tremendous help to us, and even though I didn’t get a vote, if I did have a vote, I would have voted for you because of this reason. And that is, you know, we have as a feature of membership this thing called leadership boards. And this is where you meet with a smaller group, virtually for 90 minutes, typically once a month, about 10 to 15 people. And for years, we tried to get this off the ground, and to save members time, we facilitate it— and all the logistics and everything—and then it didn’t go great, because it was facilitated by Collective 54, so we made a decision to have members be the leaders of these leadership boards. And we reached out to a few people—you were one of them—and said, hey, would you take on leading these leadership boards. And as a result of that, they’re way better. I think at last count, it was like two-thirds or maybe even three-quarters of our members are now in them. Attendance is up, satisfaction is up, etc. Because it’s really member-led, peer-to-peer, and we’re kind of out of the way. It has been awesome. Now, that’s a fairly new thing for you. I think you’ve been doing it for, like, a year, year and a half, or something like that, but you’ve got quite a few of them. So tell us, A, why you decided to volunteer for that, and then what has your experience been?
Randell Mauricio: The first one was actually… the very first leadership board that I hosted and facilitated is actually coming up to 3 years, if not already 3 years.
Greg Alexander: Oh, wow, I didn’t know.
Randell Mauricio: So that is… it’s amazing. And here’s the answer to your question, Greg. It goes back to what you just said. The default should be yes. And that is a mindset, that is an attitude that I developed over the last 15 years of building that company that I mentioned earlier. The founder of that company is somebody who I hold near and dear as a friend and supporter of mine to this very day, even though we’re no longer working together. But this was an individual who built, bought, and sold in his past life, went on to be an international chair of EO, and he gave me access to his sphere of influence. Well, guess what? I met other entrepreneurs who had exited. In every single one of them said the exact same thing you just said, Greg: yes should be the default. The value of the relationship. And actually, I learned from you too, Greg. The few times that you and I have had one-on-one office hours, I remember one of the first times you said, Randall, if I could go back in history, I would try to maintain as many relationships as I can. So that was my mindset. And if nothing else, I get to learn from others who are further along in the journey, and I get to help other people. So how has that changed now? Well, I’m busy as ever. But you know what? When I look at this thing, Greg—and for the viewers who are not looking at it, I’m holding up the Member of the Year belt that I took home with me back when we were in Fort Worth—I keep that in my office because I look at it every day, and I say, no matter how difficult today’s gonna be, or how busy I think I am, there’s somebody on the other end who might be needing some help. And over the course of leading these leadership boards, there’s been numerous times where people have communicated back to me and said, thank you for just listening and being there and sharing perspective.
Greg Alexander: Yeah. And there’s something special about the peer exchange. I mean, you’re their peer, right? And I remember when I was in your seat as a founder of a boutique.
Greg Alexander: There were just certain things that I couldn’t share with my employees. I couldn’t share with my co-founders. Heck, sometimes I probably couldn’t even share with my wife. To be able to share those things in a confidential setting with peers who were not judgmental, because, like you said, we’re all on the same journey together. I don’t know, it’s tough to put a value on that, like, quantify it, but I can tell you it’s been incredibly powerful, and I’m still a member of YPO, probably for that reason. And I don’t think a lot of times, especially new members—and this takes me to my next question—when somebody comes into Collective, and they’ve never been part of a community like this before, they have to learn what it means to be in a community and be able to draw the distinction between learning from peers versus learning from an expert, or a consultant, or a trainer, or a client. It’s very different learning from peers, at least that’s been my experience. Has that been your experience? And if you were to advise new members how to learn how to behave in a community, what advice would you give them?
Randell Mauricio: I would 100% agree with you, Greg, and because of my past life, I used to be a journalist. And as I was helping to build my last company in media, I found myself going to the GLC events for EO and YPO Global. So I’ve literally been able to interview hundreds of entrepreneurs just like you and the members of Collective 54. Every single one of them told me the same thing: Randall, you will get out way more than you put in. So as I became a member of Collective 54, I said, who am I to challenge that? These are people who’ve done it. And so, that is my advice to the newer and existing members of Collective 54. Keep engaging, keep asking questions. You never know. The question that you think might be a dumb question, I guarantee you there’s somebody else on the other end wishing that they had the courage to ask it, so ask it.
Greg Alexander: Yeah. You know, what I would add to that is, if you’re somebody in the product business, you have a customer, and the customer buys your product for the features of the product. They don’t buy the product because of the relationship they have with the salesperson of the product—it’s the product. When you get into the services business, you don’t have a customer, you have a client. And the client hires a team, so the relationship of the people matters tremendously. But it’s a one-directional relationship, because I, the client, am paying you, the service provider, a fee, and you’re delivering a service. When you join a community, you don’t have a customer, and you don’t have a client. You have a member. You have a peer. And the structure of that relationship is bi-directional. You have to give to get. That distinction is the distinction. And Randall, I think the reason why you’re so well respected by the members is because you always give a lot. And you don’t necessarily keep score and ask for anything in return, and the irony of that is you’ve gotten a lot out of it. You haven’t had to ask, it just comes your way because of the nature of who you are. Would you agree with that?
Randell Mauricio: I do wholeheartedly, and I fought with that when, you know, I think back to the event in Fort Worth. I was unbelievably surprised. For whatever reason, I did not even know this was even happening. And so there were some people who asked me afterwards, no, were you really surprised, or were you just putting on a show? I had no clue. So my mind immediately went to what you just said, Greg, and it just—you know—here I am reflecting back on my year as 2025 closes.
Randell Mauricio: It is precisely that. My ultimate goal is just give more than I get, because that’s what a true gentleman is.
Greg Alexander: Yeah. Or a tribe ascribe to them. Yeah, well, and you clearly have been validated that that has worked, and again, voted on by your peers, this is quite a thing. All right, let’s shift gears a little bit and go to the glasses-half-empty version. We’re not perfect. Our members are not perfect. There are always obstacles that come. Relative to some of the groups you’ve mentioned, YPO and EO, who’ve been around for decades, you know, we’re in year 5, so we’re very much figuring things out as we go, and thankfully, we’re co-creating this community with our members. What do you think the obstacles are? Like, what doesn’t go so well at times? And then how have you solutioned against those challenges?
Randell Mauricio: That’s a great question. I’ve typically found myself starting with the Resource Center first in your Collective 54 portal. That’s always been my go-to place, because there’s just loads of information there, and as you know, as we all know, you’re applying AI against it. But my next go-to is the organic one-on-ones, and I think that is something—if I’m a new member to Collective 54—do not sleep on that. There’s a membership list for a reason. Use it. And to your point, Greg, we’re all starved for time. We’re all expecting ourselves to do more with less. Sometimes it feels difficult to just reach out to a member and ask for some time. I got over that real quick. I welcome it when somebody emails me or sends me a message, hey, do you want to just do a meet and greet? You and I have not met. The first thing I say is, hell yeah. Yes first. And guess what? If every single member of Collective 54 did that—just made a goal to meet one new person every week or every second week—this membership is humming, and we’re exchanging ideas and perspective. And I go to that, Greg, because the number of times that I’ve walked away with a life lesson or a golden nugget just from an organic meet and greet… I did one earlier this week. And I did not know that this person, that this other organization, delivers a certain service that one of my clients can benefit from. So either way, my mentality is, if I connect with you with no expectation on the table, one of a few things is gonna happen. You’re either gonna become a client, I’m gonna become a client, or we’re gonna be a supporter, or we’re gonna be friends. Why wouldn’t that be enough?
Greg Alexander: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, and in the industry that we’re in—professional services, particularly the boutique segment—we rely on referral generation a lot. And even though those one-on-ones, that’s not the intent, very often it’s a meet and greet. It oftentimes organically evolves from that. You meet somebody, you tell them what you do. Three months later, you get a call, and they say, I got a new client, and they need help in this area, and I thought of you. Like, that’s kind of how it happens. You know, something that you mentioned to me that was a really great add is the one-on-ones. Usually what happens with new members is they reach out to their account manager and say, hey, do you know somebody who does XYZ? And they ask for us to go to the member directory ourselves and find somebody and make an intro. And we’re certainly happy to do that, and we do that all the time. When you get to advanced use of Collective 54, as Randall has after five years and being Member of the Year, you don’t need to go to us. You go directly to the directory, and you start doing it on your own. And then you start getting familiar as to who’s who. You know, if you go to the directory enough, you can see who are the new names that were added this week, and you can reach out to those people. That’s an advanced tip. I’m so glad that you brought that up, because when we look at our analytics, the resource section—where all our content is, and recordings and things like that—that’s used the most by far. The directory is not used a lot unless we use it. Like, Joe Blow might say, Greg, do you know someone that does blah blah blah? And then I go to the directory and look, which is slow and unnecessary. They could just go there themselves, right?
Randell Mauricio: So, that’s a really, really good tip.
Greg Alexander: Okay. All right, well listen, I don’t want to steal all of your thunder, because you’re going to be a role model in one of our sessions coming up, and we’re going to give members the opportunity to ask you directly their questions. So let’s end our conversation here. But on behalf of the members, again, congratulations on this prestigious honor that you got. I have thoroughly enjoyed knowing you. Whenever I get a request from you, I default to yes all the time, because you’ve earned my respect and trust. So I appreciate you personally being in my network and everything that you do for our members, who I am committed to. So thank you very much, Randall.
Randell Mauricio: Greg, when you started Collective 54, you cast a ripple that is appreciated and being felt today, so thank you.
Greg Alexander: All right, very good. Okay, so a couple calls to action for listeners. If you’re not a member of Collective, and you bumped into this, and after listening to Randall you want to become one, go to Collective54.com and fill out a form, we’ll get in contact with you. If you are a member, and you have as a New Year’s resolution that you want to get more value from the membership, attend Randall’s private Q&A session. And you’ll be able to ask him questions directly, or heck, take his advice and just reach out to him directly one-on-one through the portal and look for that meeting invitation. But until next time, I appreciate your attention and for tuning in to our podcast, and I wish you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale, and someday exit your firm.