How do you build personal trust communities, to catapult your growth in life and career? Mike Thorne, the brain behind and CEO of Trust Inside, shares his journey and how these communities have become his rock. Mike's mantra of 'belong, build, believe', acts as a compass guiding him through life's different stages, as a valuable workbook underscoring these concepts and their pivotal role in personal and professional development.
Self-awareness plays a key role in achieving success, both personally and professionally. Our past experiences and challenges often unveil our superpowers. Authenticity and genuine connections become vital cogs in the wheel, pushing us beyond mere transactional benefits. Self-awareness helps us to forge meaningful relationships.
Mike walks us through his six-page workbook designed to assist individuals and couples in understanding their present perspectives and outlining future aspirations. He brings to life the benefits of self-reflection and setting clear intentions for your journey, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and networking in your growth journey. Join us, and unlock your potential to keep growing!
How do you build personal trust communities, to catapult your growth in life and career? Mike Thorne, the brain behind and CEO of Trust Inside, shares his journey and how these communities have become his rock. Mike's mantra of 'belong, build, believe', acts as a compass guiding him through life's different stages, as a valuable workbook underscoring these concepts and their pivotal role in personal and professional development.
Self-awareness plays a key role in achieving success, both personally and professionally. Our past experiences and challenges often unveil our superpowers. Authenticity and genuine connections become vital cogs in the wheel, pushing us beyond mere transactional benefits. Self-awareness helps us to forge meaningful relationships.
Mike walks us through his six-page workbook designed to assist individuals and couples in understanding their present perspectives and outlining future aspirations. He brings to life the benefits of self-reflection and setting clear intentions for your journey, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and networking in your growth journey. Join us, and unlock your potential to keep growing!
Welcome to the third growth option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernal Dunkespuller, chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Bernal, your host, talking today with Mike Thorne, founder and CEO of Trust Inside. Mike is also a Vistage Chair, something you and I actually have in common. I'm not a Vistage Chair, but I've been a Vistage Member for 15 or so years. For the last 20 plus years, mike Thorne has also been president or CEO where you led or expanded mid-sized companies at $30 million to $300 million revenue range, companies with a focus on building a trusted culture and leading teams of dozens or a few hundred. Is that a pretty good introduction, mike?
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You're doing a lot of thinking and leading and helping around this idea of building personal trust communities and you talk about the power of peers. How have you come to value personal trust communities, why are they so important to you and how you think about maybe both your professional and your personal life?
Speaker 3:It starts when I was a nine-year-old kid and my parents told me that I was adopted. It was like a bombshell went off and I felt like I had no bearings. I didn't know who I was and where I came from. Out of that experience, I always had these trust and abandonment challenges. I started getting into sports because I thought that was a place where I could actually start to be who I want to be.
Speaker 3:I had a coach. He was Coach Hutchinson. He was about 6'3", smoked a pipe, big, burly guy. He had such a wonderful personality and he was someone that I was observing as well.
Speaker 3:If you have someone like this in your life, obviously in sports you've got to be accountable. He also supported me versus being command and control, which I was kind of used to at home At a very, very young age. That's where it began. As I started growing my life and my career, I started to realize how valuable it can be to have people around you that both hold you accountable but support you and don't judge you. It reared its ugly head when I was 40 and I got fired from a job as president for Athletic. Again, I was blessed with people that were CEOs and presidents who knew me. They gave me the kind of feedback and perspectives I didn't have myself, having never been through it before. That then catapulted me over the last 20 years to really learn how to leverage the value of having these people around you. Again, you can trust them, they hold you accountable, they support you, but they don't judge you. That's really been something I've been harnessing the last 20 years.
Speaker 2:You shared a wonderful workbook with me that I want to talk about in a little bit, but in it you talk about three words belong, build, believe. I was struck by the order. I mean, there are religious leaders in the world which I am definitely not one of them. There are religious leaders in the world that would probably put the word believe first, but you put belong, build, believe. Talk a little bit about those three words and maybe also the order.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so belonging is something interesting. I mean, bernay Brown talks a lot about this, but what I've experienced every stage that you go through, think about your own kids if you're a listener or a podcast. But when you have kids go through elementary school to middle school, that's a big jump and you're like, do I really belong here? And kids are trying to figure out if they belong, high school, college and then onto your professional life. I've seen this even in the Vistage community, where there were 50 of us on a Zoom getting trained and they asked us a simple question what was it like the first day of the training? I would tell you. I think it was all 50 people actually said. Now these are people that have run companies, sold companies, some of them are worth a lot of money and so on. They all said the same thing I wasn't sure if I belonged, because, again, every new experience we go into, we have this feeling of can I really make?
Speaker 3:Do I fit in? Probably a bad word, but belong. That's why you always start with belong and I think in life you have to start. Because get married, can I really do this? Am I going to be a good husband? Then you have a child. I'll never forget our first daughter. My wife left for the first time and she's screaming and screaming, and screaming. I'm like, oh my God, can I be a father? I don't know. Can I do this? So that's the belonging that I feel is really, really important.
Speaker 3:And then, as you go to the building pieces, how do you build courage and the confidence to be successful, at whatever stage you're going through? You're a salesperson, sales manager, vp of sales, night around the company, what have you? Or you're married sort of children. Then you become a grandparent. What have you done? The line and in every phase of that, the building pieces, to have those people around you, as I describe in there, that can help you deal with things physically, spiritually, socially, emotionally, intellectually. And then eventually you'll believe. I believe, the sooner you start thinking about this idea each stage you go through, you'll go through faster because you'll have more confidence already through. So, in other words, you'll spend less time in do I belong? Less time in the build and less time to believe. But you'll always have to go through that juncture, each of those junctures.
Speaker 2:When I think of community and peers and the power of peers, I think of the concept of giving and taking. You can't be a good peer if you only take right. I mean, obviously it's giving and taking. And I also find that you can't really give without knowing yourself, and I would imagine that you find yourself encouraging others to get to know their own superpowers in order for them to help others, in order for them to be in a trust community. Does that ring true?
Speaker 3:Yes, the first step is you got to know yourself before you can help others. And I had a lady, dora Nexford, back when I just took over as president of Yankee Candle. She said to me many, many years later and she helped me develop a lot of the things I do today and understand about communities. She said, mike, I think at that time when you came to the company, I thought I bet this guy has a question in his head which is if people really knew me, would they like me? And I've had several CEOs and business people say that same thing to me because most people, if not all, have had some lived experience that impacts how they show up in the world. Some were dramatic than others. Mine was adoption. Someone else I work with parents were alcoholics. Someone else they were in foster care or their parent was abusive.
Speaker 3:Whatever it might be, something happened A dad lost a job and the family, whatever, it is something and it impacts how you think about yourself and how you actually show up in the world. And until you get to the root of that, understand what it is and instead of using as a crutch, which a lot of people do, they deflect, you know, sort of blame, defend and complain. The BCD behavior is a very common thing and they try to avoid everything and they don't really get to the bottom line of why they're avoiding it all. It's 90, almost every time something took place it's not allowing them to get ahead and it can be holding them back. Once they get unlocked from that and they get comfortable with who they are, they can be a powerhouse and then, once you've declared we're going in life, people will just start showing up and I'm talking to the kind of people that you want to be around, that can help you grow professionally and personally and get out of the toxicity of the people you've been probably hanging around.
Speaker 2:When you think about helping others get to know themselves and you rightfully say you have to know yourself first before you can help anybody else, right, it's interesting. You talk about getting to know something that holds a person back right, sort of a traumatic event of some sort. What about and that rings very true to me that we all have those consciously or unconsciously, and the more conscious we can become of them, the more we can deal with them. What about, sort of on the flip side of you know, a traumatic thing holding us back, there's also each of our own superpowers, right? Sort of the things that we're really really good at, where you know we're sort of in the zone we're firing on all eight cylinders. I have found for myself that I was not conscious enough about the things I do really well until my 50s.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And I look back at my young adult life and think that I've missed opportunities, sort of in some ways maybe bumbling about, because I was not, I did not see a certain value that maybe others saw on me but I wasn't really aware of it. Do you think it's important for people to understand their own superpower, and can this trust community help in that regard?
Speaker 3:I would say the majority of people. And, by the way, trauma it may not be trauma. I have a CEO that I work with that it's interesting. He had everything in his mind given to him. He actually has a fear of messing up because he's been given everything, so it impacts his ability to make decisions. So it could be. I don't want people leaving and thinking, okay, I didn't have trauma, I'm not involved, or I did have trauma so I get it.
Speaker 2:It's not that it's everybody, that just something Hang ups, of sorts right.
Speaker 3:There's something. Yeah, so to answer your question, I think the most important thing is that, more often than not, whatever you have been challenged with tends to be your superpower. They work in concert. So, again, in my case, abandonment and trust has turned into.
Speaker 3:I'm very discerning and I also build trust with people, because I certainly think about it that way, and so people tend to share a lot with me, and I always ask people one question just tell me a story. And when you listen to them, tell you a story, you'll learn so, so much about them and what's going on. So I think, even though that's always been my worry, I had this gift, which is getting people to feel comfortable and share things that maybe they won't share anywhere else, and yet it's the thing that's always held me back until I wrestled with it. So I think for anybody who's thinking this is my superpower and you look at it that way because you're familiar with it, you say, boy, I'm really good at this, or people tell you are, it may help inform you about where you're whenever you bump into those things where you know you should do something.
Speaker 3:You don't do it. It's not a regret. It's either a regret or you like. Why did you not take the step you should have? Why didn't you have the conversation? Why did you avoid the conflict? Why didn't you take advantage of the opportunity or whatever it is? I think that's when you pause and say, well, what could that be? But knowing your superpower can sometimes help you that a lot of times it's the opposite of what it is and once you get that locked in, you become so genuine when you speak to people because you're more authentic, and then people will really really open up to you and they'll start committing To you both that your personal professional success versus sort of just having a transactional Networking relationship is.
Speaker 2:I would refer to it many years ago I wrote a blog about Networking and I hate the word, the concept and I. I actually talked about net playing, which is you know networking is. It's one of those things you read about. You know, in business books or magazines are unlinked in. Then you supposed to network and blah, blah, blah. And it's such a one-sided Transactional show up to as many rubber chicken dinners as possible to get as many clients and financial benefits as possible. It's kind of growth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think when you mentioned the people, that if you say to someone let's go to a networking event, half society it really cringes because they have a perception of what that word is worth. You said, hey, there's an opportunity to meet some really cool people, or community event, I think be fun.
Speaker 2:I'm just funny how you, what you're describing so true, you're describing what everyone feels like it's absolutely right in my life, certainly in the last, you know, in my 50s, which I'm very close to leaving, I've thought a lot about this Saying we become the average of the five closest people to us. So pick them wisely, and to me that that Requires, and you know, an intentionality of who to spend time with, who to nurture, who to Open up to and who to sort of be more of a drive-by Situation. Do you find that part of the power of peers is sort of that concept that we become the average of the five closest people? I?
Speaker 3:I agree with the concept because I do find when you start to surround yourself with people that you feel like the relationship is a two-way street and you feel like they're there to support you, hold your accountable, as I said, and help you grow.
Speaker 3:You suddenly feel like, okay, I want to keep growing because I'm around these kind of people and I think of it this way If you're in a house and the temperature of the house is 70 and you bring 50 people to them that are really growth oriented people, I mean naturally the house gets warmer just because all the people in the room. But you're gonna suddenly feel like I really can't wait to keep growing. So just the natural nature of being around people Like that because in essence, it's always this nature nurtured thing and I heard Ed my let I think it was on his podcast Talked about our job is to nurture People's nature and if you're around the right times of people that all think that way, yeah, I think you can elevate the room and yourself and that means your relationships, your business, your community work. I mean I think it has huge power to do that.
Speaker 2:That's a really interesting phrase to nurture people's nature. Talk a little bit more about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I didn't make this up, I did, but it really got me thinking about. We're all like, for example, I, I am a certain personality. Some of that's how you're hardwired, that's just how you're born and built and the rest is based on your experiences. But they're just certain things I'm not gonna be comfortable doing, those things I'm gonna be really good at and things I'm gonna struggle with or whatever, and there's superpowers that I have and some things I don't. So why continue banging the things? You don't Nurture someone's nature and who they normally are it. It has an incredible Like.
Speaker 3:I talked a lot of business owners and CEOs and I say, well, mike, you know I really stink at people management, or I know I'm always told I'm always told work on the business and not in the business. And I said to them I said, well, let's talk about why my nature is to. I love the technical part of the business, I love working the trenches on this or that, and so the question is, why don't we nurture that? That's where your gifts are, that's where you get lifted up, that's what gives you energy every day. In fact, the employees in that part of the business probably love when you're there peri-arkana. You don't go there every day, obviously.
Speaker 3:Or a lady owns a construction company. She goes out for the job site because she loves the whole construction aspect, right, and guess what? Her employees love seeing the CEO there. So instead of saying, well, I'm the CEO, I don't have to do this stuff, it's that's a, it's your nature is to get into that stuff. You love it. Don't, don't avoid it. Like nurture that, like that's important. So I think that's that's why I interpret it. When I heard, I was like, okay, I get the nature nurtured, little of both were all born with certain things. But no, nurture people where they're really gifted and You'll watch them get lifted up and add more valuable to their personal life, the company and relationships. This kind of how I interpret what he said.
Speaker 2:I Remember when I came to the US in 1980 as a 16 year old, you know, reagan was in the White House and there was this saying around that came out of the White House circles Just let Reagan be Reagan, which is. You know, the guy was loved or not loved, but he was best when he was just being himself.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I think we all need to allow ourselves to be ourselves and encourage others to be themselves. I think there's so much pressure to conform and pretend to fit in, which is why I like your term belong. You kind of cringe, you use the word fit in and then you corrected yourself earlier Right, because there is a difference between the two.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when you're fitting in, you feel like you have to try to be someone you're not or do whatever the norms are. In that situation, I think the one thing we have to be careful about is so interesting and obviously in today's world it's so polarizing. But it's one thing to be who you are and let people, but you also have to be, which is why I go back to self-awareness. I mean self-awareness and emotional intelligence and intellectual curiosity are three things that I think every human being especially if you're going to be in a business and leading people, you've got to really be strong in those areas. And your ability to understand who you are means that if you're in an environment and you have a tendency to use four-letter words or you have a tendency to yell and scream, it doesn't mean you just keep doing that, because it can be detrimental to the business, but the fact that you're aware of it and you're working on it is super important. I'll give you a little example.
Speaker 3:In my Vistage group I tend to I grew up in a house that had a lot of swear words I was wearing and one of the members said to me in a group meeting we were kind of talking about things we can get better at. And they, in a very nice way, said hey, I think the swear and we ought to address the short story was. They got down to it and said we think the word, when you use it, is extremely powerful. We're just going to limit you to four in a meeting, that's it. It was a legitimate conversation. It's something that's in my nature. I just I get passionate and emotional and sometimes when I do that I'll use a four-letter word. And Benno, I was fast saying there's a meeting where I wouldn't use it because I didn't feel like it was necessary. And all of a sudden the group would be hey, Mike, you haven't used all your F-bombs yet. And I'll be like what do you mean? They go. No, you get four. So we get energy when you use them. So you got to use them and I said wow. And one of them said it's become part of the culture of the company.
Speaker 3:So again, I had to course correct because it's, even though it's in my nature, and you think, oh, just be who you are and it's okay. You swear is law because he's the boss, it was harmful to some people and so I think that's the key is the balancing of okay, nurture that, nurture it, but also be aware, as a human being, that sometimes you got to be able to apologize, because in today's world there's a lot of people that get triggered by some of things going on and if your intentions are good and you're self-aware, sometimes you're still going to make a mistake and you say look, that's on me, I apologize, let's talk about it. So I think that's what. That's what brings the trust and people buying it and trying to take go on a journey with you. You're running a business for company.
Speaker 2:I mentioned earlier this six page workbook which you put together, you shared with me. I thought it was a very, very thoughtful. I found it helpful, especially the simplicity of this one exercise today's, where you encourage the reader or user of the workbook to jot down today's perspective and tomorrow's North Star, as a kind of an exercise. Why did you put this workbook together and how would you love for it to be shared in the world?
Speaker 3:Thank you for asking that. It's one of the things that I'm probably most passionate about. I had a lot of 30, 50 year old people that were connecting with me based on the work I do on social media, whatever, and they were asking me the same questions. They were working like I'm worried about how I teach leadership in this country. This idea that it's black and white, it's wind lose, stop it on. People climb the ladder. I just think it's really caused a lot of issues in this country. But until people sit down and really say you know, here's where I am today, here's what's happening with me personally, professionally, my health and so on, you really can't even begin to think about what that future is going to look like. So, as I had these conversations, I got a phone call from these two guys, 29 and 21,. They run this company and they said Mike, I love the way you describe the stuff, but how could I actually do it? And I said well, it's just so natural. I don't understand what's so hard. They said they're credit, they're called Arkbombs, their company. They forced me to put it in writing like this, and the idea is tell me what's going on today so you get grounded in where you are and then where is it you want to get to? And it's that place where you're really, really super excited, which scares the daylights out of you, but it's not dangerous. And I left the middle open on this form, because the head trash is what we refer to as in the middle there's always these obstacles that people put in their own way and it's like you have these tabs in your brain that are open all the time, but all the things and all the reasons why things won't work. So I just try to say close those tabs. You know it's most expensive. Rent is in our brain. Start thinking about what this North Star is. I'll give you one example.
Speaker 3:Ladies 56, 46, sorry, talk about this. And she has this dream of owning an inn and she's always dreamed about owning it. And her doesn't think her husband's really involved in it, but she'll do whatever. Blah, blah, blah. We go to this exercise for her. It took almost two years. She just couldn't get out of her head that she wasn't worthy of being able to accomplish this.
Speaker 3:She ultimately went to go visit a site. She calls me and says Mike, most unbelievable thing happened to me. I switch that she was my North Star, as you know. And I said yeah. She said we got down here and we're not fans of the state. We thought we'd like it, but we came to realization. I, she said, I did. She said but I felt horrible and I said why she goes. I felt bad.
Speaker 3:My husband's been sort of coming along with me and was sort of she's 45, 46. I think he is also. And she said I looked at him and I said Dan, I just want to apologize to I dragged you all the way down. I this whole idea was super excited about it and I really blew it. I really feel terrible. And she said he looked at me and said what do you mean? This has been my dream to. And she said she said might I really? Probably we should done this together. Like I didn't think about that. She was now, will they finally found a place in Virginia? They moved and they're super excited to a couple years.
Speaker 3:But again, people don't sit down and really have these conversations about their own dreams and hopes and I've got people you know fifty, six is how is that? She did the same thing and they go well, I need to retire in seven years. I didn't know. My husband want to travel like he does? I have no idea. So we have to go sit with our financial advisor and it's just change the whole perspective of life. So I don't think people have or take the time to really get comfortable. And this is where we are today. It is, we are, we are. The question is where we really want to be. Or do I really want to be in the store for a? Because we live in our past, live in our experiences versus dreams and wishes. You can separate these two. Leave the middle open. Then the idea is ok, you got a clarity. Then you go find the people around you to help you get there.
Speaker 2:Sounds to me like the little workbook that you shared with me Is your way of helping really Anybody who wants to be more intentional about Building it, being part of it. Trust, community, being growing your personal growth for themselves, as a, as a married couple, maybe as a team, you really would like as many people as possible to use your wisdom that you have, that you sharing in that work is. Am I seeing that right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it's not. It's not about me, that just about. I. Look at the world today and this I, like I said, I deal with a lot of people probably twenty eight to say fifty building a family, start in the, become leaders in their field and they're all feeling lost because they look up people above them who are command and control and they just like how do I Live the life I want to live in the stock and they've read every book under the sun. They've gone to mentors of, gone to seminars and they get these really flashes of brilliant excitement. They get overwhelmed. When I had a twenty nine year old and twenty one year old Force me to do this exercise and they saw the value of the. Okay, maybe I'm not thinking about this in the right way, so this In the people that have done it, when talking to people that do it, say this is really as simple as you can get this.
Speaker 3:Even this stage Set me because I look at this, for you are taking something that is everyone's mind. What is my legacy? What I'm gonna leave? You give us a simple blueprint now what you do with this. I have people do powerpoint presentations, napkins. It's not one way to do. It just opens up all this, what this really does. It opens up your mind about what's possible. Once you do that, you then have to do the hard work which is to go find the people. Can that trust me, that I talk about here. That will help you along the way to can't do it yourself.
Speaker 2:I think that's a good place to wrap up this conversation and also give you An opportunity, or give the listeners really an opportunity, to reach out to you if they would like to talk to you one on one About your work around the power of peers and the personal trust community. Maybe there curious about this workbook that I've become a fan of and spreading the news here and the podcast. How could people reach, reach out to you or find you?
Speaker 3:Why? First of all, I appreciate you taking the time, as the person in the podcast, to do a little homework, so I appreciate that very much. All the work that I do is either on my link in profile, like so, on my website, which is trust inside dot com, where you can go on youtube and watch some of the videos. That way, whatever is your place, that you do find work. And I would just ask the style that I have, the way I think about things, I believe we pretty obvious on there and it's gonna be just like we vote for presidents.
Speaker 3:We don't always vote One hundred percent. People don't vote for the person who's in charge. We always have a split. So you may not all enjoy, but I think if you go there, if you listen to the work I do and some of the thoughts I have on leadership and life and appeals to you, please feel free to reach out. My website has a place to get the workbook for free, as my email address on the other, linked and happy to challenge people, see if I can be a resource for them.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, mike. I really appreciate you taking the time. You taught me a few things in the lead up, over the last couple weeks to the lead up to this recording session, and I've learned a few more things doing In the last thirty minutes, so thank you very much thank you for having a pretty shit the opportunity and if folks want to explore other growth topics, you can find me on our website realign for results dot com or just email me. Beno b e n n o Add realign for results dot com.
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