Hugo Sanchez 0:00

Hugo Sanchez 0:38

that's 29 years. Like only one in 10 companies make it this far. People tech clients include Merrill, Warmblood bank, united, the Sinclair broadcast group, and AmEx. That's impressive. So how did Mike do it? In this podcast, Mike tells us the story of people tech from the very beginning, and he doesn't hold back when it comes to sharing his best advice for us in the professional service industry. Welcome to episode number three of the business of trust podcast. I'm your host. Hugo Sanchez, let's tune in.

Mike Kublin 1:15

Mike, welcome to the business of trust Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today. Hugo, thank you so so much for inviting me, and it's a great topic. Trust is the key foundation to every relationship, and I believe that that's the number one most important skill in the world faces relationship. So you hit a core component of it. Absolutely, I think we're in the same page. You're you are a pioneer in leadership and relationship building. I mean, we'll talk a lot about it, but before we get there, can you tell us a little bit about how did you get into this line of business? That's that's a great question. Thank you, Hugo. I so you know, sometimes something bad creates something good. So it depends on how you look at it. I I was in the technology realm. That's where I started my career in in the tech world, I worked for electronic data systems Ross pros company for for a while, and then I got I left there and went to a large financial institution, and I was working in the tech industry. I always wanted to get into sales, and went into sales for three years, and then the tech people, one of the one of the leaders, asked me to come back into the technology world. And I said, Why do you want me to come back? He goes, Well, we're moving to distributed data processing, and we'd like all you to come back in and help all the tech people get people oriented. And I said, What do you mean people oriented? And he said, Well, you know, they're great with their engineering skills. They're great with their technical skills. They're good, really good, with computers, but at the end of the day, their interpersonal skills really lack. And Mike, you're good with that. Can you come back in and help us? So I came back in and I was running a project that was for big part of the company in several locations, and

Mike Kublin 3:14

I was also leading a team that ran computer operations and production control as they were moving the hardware out to Arizona, so I got some feedback that kind of hit me hard. They said, Mike, you're a visionary, you're motivating, you're inspiring, you're good with relationships, but you're wishy washy. You don't hold people accountable to anything. And I'm like, What? What does this mean? And I didn't think anything of it. And he said, but you know, you'd want to be a Senior VP and this and that and all kinds of stuff in your career. And he goes, unless you take care of this with so I said, What do I do? He goes, I don't know. So I, I ended up going around on a search and found someone that had a specialist. She was specialized, working with doctors and nurses in hospitals, and she had her a nursing degree, but she also had her PhD in leadership. This is going way, way, way back. And I asked her, could she come in and help me with the tech unit that I was leading, the internal tech unit, that's where I got the feedback. The project was going great. The project to help people be people or interview. We were doing a great thing on that. But this other part, you know, I had to add to look at. So she showed me where my behavior was creating those perceptions, and it actually came from my strengths, and I was overusing this strength of trying to be, you know, well liked and everything, and I sometimes wasn't as direct as I needed to be. So that kind of punched me hard. But at the same time I brought her in, we were able to change the value survey from one of the worst to one of the best. We did that in a period of about a year. I was asked to come to relocate. I did out to Arizona. I relocated. Did, and I was able to, you know, continue with those process. But I said, You know what, I want to start my own leadership company on the side. And I started a another company before this one, I would, I would say that we had some trust issues because nobody was full time except one person out of the five of us, everybody else had other jobs, because they were totally in fear how they going to make this company run and this so that company broke up, and I started people tech, and it was going to be people working in the tech with the tech industry, te CH, because it was already successful doing that. So instead, my buddy said, Mike, make it a TEK, not a te CH, because you're going to be working with all kinds of people. And that's how I got the name people tech. It's people with a T, K, and we work a lot with the tech industry still, but we work with all kinds of industries as well, helping them to build their leadership skill abilities and ultimately, the business relationship that they have inside first and then they have with everyone else, and we've been doing that for a long time.

Hugo Sanchez 6:03

What I love about the name people tech is that it implies that there are that leadership it can is a skill, right? That it's not you're not born with it, but there's like a an operating system that you can implement and adopt. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But something that I'm interested at this stage of your story is you've launched people tech. You've have learned from your past experiences something that didn't work, and now you're here. How did you get your first client?

Mike Kublin 6:34

That's another great question. It comes from relationships. Yeah, I had started to get certified in a bunch of tools while I was working for that large company, and I started to run around. And I was known as Myers Briggs Mike. Mike's gonna come over, he's gonna get to help us with Myers Briggs. He's gonna come here, he's gonna come there, he's gonna go here. And I was going everywhere, okay? And so I put in my review. You had to do your review every year. I put in my review and my development plan that I was going to start my own company, and so said I had already started people tech. So what ended up happening is I was allowed to go part time first, then jump off full time, which was even another great thing, and my first client actually, was someone that I had run into years before that I had stayed in contact with and had a relationship with. I was living in Arizona, but this particular person ran a tech company in Florida and asked me to come in and run a process of team development and trust building with their tech company. And that was our first that was my first client, but it was somebody I had already built the role. And actually that person came from the large financial institution that I was still working on.

Hugo Sanchez 7:56

But something the morale of the story is that I give this advice to people a lot that you don't want a relationship based on need, meaning you don't want to have a relationship at that only, where you only reach out to people when you need them. You want to have relationships based on values, and you stay connected when you don't need them. So by the time that some synergy happens and the stars align that time that the timing is right and the relationship is already there,

Mike Kublin 8:25

no doubt about it. You keep in contact with people because it's not because you need something from them. I love how you put that, yeah. It's really because you care for them. They care for you. You keep in contact, you keep checking it, and then all of a sudden, oh, we have a need. Yeah, Mike, does this

Hugo Sanchez 8:44

Absolutely. That's this brilliant. So, Mike, you got your first client that must have failed, that must have felt very exciting. But one client is not enough as you are. Of course, you need to work the room and get more clients, something that I have learned in this relationship based marketing is the power that that referrals have. And I have a name for some of them, like champions. The champions are people who love your brand, who love what you do, and they can bring your business to a whole other league. You and I met through one of my champions, akin who is also in this podcast on Episode One. And so champions can totally bring our business to a whole new level, and that puts into evidence that power that one relationship can have. So can you think of any champion that you have had in your life? Can you tell us the story of how did you meet? How what impact did they have in your relationship and any lessons for us there?

Mike Kublin 9:45

Well, I can tell you about many, but I'm going to pick out one because we asked for one. We're still best friends today, okay, and still extremely great friends. When I had moved out to Arizona, i. Was driving down the street, and we were, you know, there was a beautiful little Adobe Church on the left hand side of the road, right next to a Dairy Queen. I said, Wow, I'm a Jewish guy, and you know that it was an Episcopal Church. And I said, you know, that's where we're going to go to we're going to go to church there and see what it's all about. So we went to that church, and we met a set of families, and I met Steve and Paula Pruitt, and it's, it was a family service for just, you know, people with families, and there was about 10 of us, and we're still a lot of us are good friends, but Steve and I became very good friends, so I went in there and ran it. And they didn't have everything disc, but I ran a disc session. It was when it was still paper. I ran it for the group. And Steve said, Wow, this would be good. And he brought me, he brought me into his company that he was at. It was like an investment banking company. They were buying radio stations and such. He goes, everybody needs this. And so I did the session with them, and they loved it. And then Steve went to another company, a bigger company, and brought Mike Hugo, okay, and I did speeches for them, and I did processes and different things, team development. Then he went to another company, and he says, I gotta bring my good one and his team. I gotta bring people tech in to help us. He happens to not be a tech person. He's a media, media person. But he and I, I've been together with him for 30 years, even, actually, you know, right at that point was people. Tech was just launching, and he always tells the story that I made somebody cry in the class. He tells this story Mike was experimenting at that time.

Mike, what I love about this story is that I can imagine, I can imagine you in this, in this, like place in Arizona, and how you were, like, so excited about what you do, and so genuinely passionate that you would just like do it for fun with your friends. And I think that really comes across and and you provided an experience that really, like, held the relationship go deeper with this person, to the point that they wanted more of it, and you were one of the concepts of relationship based marketing is reciprocity and being given and like sharing. So you didn't charge him for the this, and you'd run it for fun for the group, in a spirit of giving and and give them something, let them learn something about themselves. And that paid back massively for you.

Oh my gosh, I can't begin to tell you how beneficial he has been to my career. He just wrote a book. He just recently wrote a book, and we're both good, you know, both doing things together and now, and it's just so exciting because he's still the head of a large company, and at the end of the day, though, he brings me everywhere he goes, and that's the best time. Yeah,

talking about books, you recently launched a book leadership lessons of Howard Stein, and I read this book. It's amazing. Thank you for sending a copy my way. In this book, you detail the leadership journey compass, and it's a system to learn how to be a better leader. And in the context of growing a consultant firm, and I mean that requires leadership, and it requires a clear vision. It requires you good relationships, require you to be accountable. And on top of this, you also run a program called relationeering, and so in a big way, you and I are very much aligned in the way things should work and relationship oriented businesses. Any lessons that you can tell us from your experience in leadership development and relationship building around building a successful firm,

that's, yeah, I mean, the compass, that's the heart of everything. And as you know, I wrote the leadership lessons of Howard Stern because I wanted to give people an opportunity that may not get a chance to go to the leadership journey, which is our flagship program. The leadership journey is made from the compass is the leadership journey, 12 sessions done over six months, and it's two hours every other week, led by an executive coach. And I wanted to give people that may not get a chance to go to that process, a chance to go to a process, because I believe that leadership development is a process, not an event, meaning it's just like going to a gym. You build your muscles over time in a gym, your physical muscle, but these are leadership muscles. I have a philosophy, every person on the planet is a leader. I don't care who you are. And I use Howard Stern, because, number one, I wanted to get back to Howard. He's made me very happy over the years. Number two. I love how his behavior demonstrate the points of the compass in a clear fashion. And he does a lot of awareness, and he talks about it publicly on the radio. So he's very authentic in what's going on with himself on the radio. You may like him not. I've had people say, Oh my god. I love the journey. I love you, Mike, I love the compass. I don't like Howard. And then I've had other people I love Howard. Mike, thank you so so much for writing about him. So it's kind of so interesting. It goes both ways. But at the end of the day, his behavior is so authentic, if you will, within himself and the way he demonstrates the points of the compass. The first point of the compass is awareness. Howard admits on the radio that at times he wasn't aware as much as he could have been about how he was coming across. He could still get the same results and not be so piercing. So what I call his skill, ability and talent, every person on the planet has what's called magic dust. You have it. You go, I have it. We all have it. The issue is, it's all different for each one of us. And the issue is, if we don't know what it is, how are we going to how are we going to sell it? How are we going to brand it? How are we going to use it in our career? So the key that the compass helps people, where am I in my magic dust? How do I start looking at it? How do I start making it come alive? Howard made it come alive on the radio. And he and when you overuse it, it prevents other people from being, from being their totally authentic self in a healthy, honoring, respectful manner, and every person on the planet that has it has a tendency to overuse it at times, because it comes so naturally. And if we don't, and if we don't have a motivation that's totally pure, sometimes it tends to overpower others. So that means they can't use theirs so they don't feel very good because they're not using their special skill, ability and talent. And I could pick anybody and do this same thing, but I picked Howard because his vision, mission, goals of running that radio show was so clear. It's a comedy show to make everybody laugh, okay, and he has everything connecting to it, so I show how their behavior links to the vision, and use Howard's team, himself, his leadership of how that all comes together. And then use the compass so that people, individuals out there reading it, can start the process, if you will, of building their leadership muscles. They already are a leader. Just by being born. You're a leader. The issue is is, how do you start building those muscles that may lay dormant until they're they're activated?

Mike, what you just said reminded me of my favorite definition of leadership. This is by Posner and kausner and Kosis, and they say leadership is the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspiration. So leadership doesn't happen alone. It happens in relationship with other people. I have a question for you, for those people who are who are listening, and they say, Oh, this whole building through a business, through relationships, sounds pretty good, but like, I'm not really a relational driven person, more processes, systems, tech, if you will. But people, it's not really my strength. You teach us at people. Tech, what advice would you have for these individuals?

I would recommend that they surround themselves with people that it comes naturally too, and that means going out, meeting these people, getting out into you're still going to have to go out. And what's so cool about it is, when we do the journey leadership, Journey people that a lot of them are engineers, but if they don't go out and network, and if they don't go out and start communicating to other people and surrounding himself with people that they be good network, that that's their magic dust, right? So while they're out, they are meeting people. They're putting themselves out there for their magic stuff, just enough. They don't have to suddenly become Mike Goodman in doing it. They don't have to become u of us, and what they have to be is the best version of themselves, and they have to be the most authentic themselves. Come out a little bit. I remember this guy, Barry. Barry said, Mike, I was typed out in Myers, Briggs. He's an int Jen. He goes, I hate doing speeches, but I know I have to do them. And he was a phenomenal speaker, phenomenal. But he didn't like it, but he still knew he had to come out a little bit, and he did so well with it, he didn't even realize how well he was doing with it, because it was such, such a great fear. My thinking is you have to empower yourself to go where you've never gone before. That's people text definition of leadership. Empower yourself and others. To go where you've never gone before. So you so you have to have conflict, and without conflict, there is no leadership, and that conflict starts inside you, yes, so make yourself uncomfortable. Do the first meeting. Surround yourself with other people that will do it.

I love what you're sharing, Mike, because I mean for me, like just launching this podcast, has been an internal struggle because I had to be on camera. I have to reach out to people, and it's been in my mind for like, a year. And I do podcasts for, like, for my clients at Moon desk, but, but it really took a great deal of inner work to put myself out there and manage that internal conflict. So I love that you shared that Mike, for those listeners who are starting and want to grow a successful firm, I mean, people take is very successful. It's been going on for many years now. What advice? What's the best advice that you would give these folks who are

starting? Well, there's several, and I'm going to be selfish for a second. Get the compass. It's free. It's on the website. So you get it free. Start. There's a there's an assessment on the back. Just measure yourself. I would start by setting your vision, your mission, your goals and your measures. What is your dream? What is your aspiration? What is it that you're looking to accomplish? Start piecing together that formula and it's it's written there on the compass with what the formula is. There's books that explain it. I can have people get the one page business plan by Jim Moran, H, O, R, a n, fabulous templates that will help you create your business plan. Start there. Start looking at being aware of how they come across. Okay, so, how do you handle conflict? How do you handle change? Do some free assessments that are out there, like the disc Myers Briggs. Start reading those Positive Intelligence the attachment styles. Do it as many of them as you can. Enneagram, and start to piece together patterns that you see, okay? And remember that this leadership is a process, not an event. The other thing is, get yourself a mentor, preferably an executive coach, a coach. We're a coaching company. Get yourself one. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to ask for help. I even sometimes forget, oh my God, why didn't I ask for help somebody? But ask for help because there are people out there that want to help you. There are people out there that so pleased because they've gone a little bit ahead, a little call people tech call you do, do not feel you're alone, right? And just pursue your dreams every day, one step at a time. Anybody that's read atomic habits, a newer book by James clear, I guess, been out for several years now, but you do one thing towards it every day, you're going to get there.

Beautifully said, Mike. And to wrap it up, if someone wants to learn more about people tech, about Mike kublin, and the next books you're going to publish, because I'm sure this is not your last one. Where would you like to direct them?

Well, they could go to people, tech coaching.com it's P, E, O, P, L, E, T, E, K, coaching, C, O, A, C, H, I, N, g.com, print the compass. Reach out to me at info, at people, tech coaching.com and I'll be glad to talk with anybody and help anybody along. I thank you so so much, Hugo, for helping me come through. You know, helping me come to your podcast, I think it's awesome.

Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it so much, and I appreciate the generosity of advice that you share with us in our audience today. Thank you. Thank

you. Thank you so much, Hugo. I look forward to speaking to you soon. Bye.

Bye. I started this podcast to interview people who have succeeded in the professional service world and to put into evidence that your best clients will come from relationships, referrals and reputation, not from ads, automated funnels or webinar like you've been told. If you want to learn more about how to implement a relationship based marketing strategy for your business, check out our work at moondesk media.com Please rate us and subscribe in whatever platform you're listening on. I'll see you in our next episode.