WHY NOT Wednesday! with Doug Thorpe

These last few years have made us question everything.

Our relationships.

Our jobs.

What constitutes an office.

And who we are.

In a.

World filled with chaos, confusion and uncertainty. It's time for some clarity. It's time to start understanding one another.

It's time to start understanding ourselves.

We envision a world where everyone knows their why. But even more, we envision a world where everyone knows their why. O s, their why, their how, and their what.

The operating system that drives you, that lets the world know where you stand.

What your unique gift is, and most importantly, who you are.

Yos.

Are you ready?

Hey, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to why Not Wednesday. I am delighted to bring our guest to you today. We're going to be talking today to Doug Thorpe, the founder, president and CEO of Headway Exec llc. He works closely with executive clients around the globe to help them develop advanced leadership skills. Doug has leveraged his own executive coaching training to create and implement effective leadership development programs and advisory services for business owners and senior leadership teams all around the world. So since 2008, Doug has helped hundreds of leaders in all types of industries find ways to be more effective running a business. He wants you to have a greater influence and build stronger teams so that you can reap the benefits of a healthy business. And, and, you know, just a little aside, he's also a fellow former army captain who, by the way, was a logistics officer. So he and I have that in common. And we're glad to welcome Doug Thorpe. So we're, you know, we're going to play a little, a little music for, for Doug before we bring him on.

This is your song, Doug.

That saddle up your horses, huh? That's a great, that's a new walk up song. So I love, love that you, that you shared that with us. Welcome to the show, Doug.

Thanks, Dan. Pleasure to be here.

It's good, it's good to see, you know, and I was looking through your bio. One of the things, you know, where there's very few of us that are going to have similar exact army experience. Right. There's so many military occupational specialists. And I literally saw that as I was introducing, hey, Doug was in the army and he was a quartermaster. Did you do your training at Fort Lee, Virginia?

I did, I did, yeah.

Good old Fort Fort Lee, Virginia. Yeah, that's, that's a fun, fun, fun place to go, especially when you're brand new to the army. Did you do ROTC or did you do one of the military academies?

No, I was in ROTC in college. I'm a, I'M a graduate of the Cadet corps at Texas A and M.

Oh, man, that is. That is a. An impressive cadet corps. I remember when I was a cadet at the University of New Mexico and I was a senior, and we had, I think, 30 people in. In our entire program, and we met the. The cadet commander for Texas A and M. I think he had like, 3,000 ROTC cadets. That is. Was it just as impressive when you were going through?

Yeah, we. Yeah, we were not quite at 3000. I think we were 2800 during my time there. I was there post Vietnam, so there was a. There was a strange transition in the military going on while I was there. But, no, it was a great experience and wonderful training and. And just. I mean, to this day, I still have quarterly meetings with my classmates, and we. We have a. We drive halfway across the state of Texas to have lunch, and we do that every religiously, every quarter.

That is so. That is so good, Doug. Well, you know, I happened to meet you because you had me on your show, and I had such a great experience on your show. We've gotten to know each other. You're also a YOS certified coach in training. So, you know, we've had a few conversations, but I definitely wanted to share you with Y Nation. Your. Your. Your podcast is really cool, and as you guys hear Doug's voice, he makes. He made you made me feel so comfortable, and it was so great to. To be just. Next thing I knew that our time time was done. Tell us about your podcast.

Yeah. The title of the show is Leadership Powered by Common Sense. I chose that as my mantra and my tagline, and now my show title, it represents a core belief I've got that if you're in a position of leadership, and this goes back to some army training that those of you who had it remember. You know, we like to keep it simple. We. We want the direction to be clear. We want it to be concise, and the more you can do that, the less you are challenged by ambiguity and confusion. So I think common sense is a lost art for many, and I try to champion that cause and bring it out in our discussions with all my guests.

You know, you do, and you do a great job of it. You know, one of the things that. That's interesting is you talk about keeping it simple about common sense and your why is better way. So that's. That's definitely a better way to do things. Right? Keep it simple. Make sure it makes sense. Make sure you're using common sense.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And one of the things that. So I'm going to share more with the audience. So to a lot of, a lot of the folks listening are our fellow coaches or people in the Y. In the Y world. Doug's yos is better way mastery contributes. So Doug, you're always looking for a better way. You're an innovator. You take things that exist, make them better, find a way to make them better, and then you share that with others. How you do that is by digging deep, learning things at a deep level and seeking mastery in order to find better ways. And ultimately what people can count on from you is that you're going to contribute to their success. You're going to contribute to the greater cause and make a positive impact.

You know, we went. It's been a while since we did that. How, how did that resonate with you and how does it still resonate with you?

Well, it, it is a very meaningful.

Part of framing up and, and being succinct and being clear about my values and things. The, perhaps the other way to say that is finding the better way has to do with being curious. Yeah, I think curiosity can be a lost art. And some would argue that.

Our modern day school experience kind of squeezes that out of us. It programs us to not be curious, sit down, be quiet, shut up, you know, that sort of thing. Stay in line, stay in line, follow the rules, you know, paint inside the lines, all that if you're genuinely curious and always wanting to learn more. And I guess my evidence of being that showed up as an early, in my early childhood. Actually wrote a LinkedIn post about it a week or so ago. You know, my, my mom was frustrated. She could not trust me. She, she had come home from work and I would have some appliance in her house taken apart, spread out on the floor. And my high water mark was taking apart our washing machine. But I always got it back together. I always, it still operated when I got done with it, but, but I was just curious. I wanted to know how he worked and what they did and how, you know, how can I understand that?

And that's, you know what that is? That is a great example because I, I don't know how many of us got in trouble. I was always taking stuff apart. And as a better way person, you can't find better ways unless you take them apart. You got to look at what exists and how it works and figure out a different way to do it. You, you've got so much experience. I mean, we talked about the military, but that since then You've done so much. You've worked with some really high level companies. I was looking through, through, through the information that we have on you. Your mission is to work with executive clients around the world to help them develop advanced leadership skills. But you also spend time with small business owners helping them navigate the growth of their companies. Out of those two, which, which is your, which do you prefer to do or what, what do you like about both of those things? Working with, with leaders around the globe and then also working with small business owners. I, I imagine they're different.

They're very different. And I betray some coaching that I've tried to subscribe to in, in my own business development as I've reached out to others that are, who are coaches and they advise. Of course the general guidance is find your niche, find your swim lane, zero in, narrow down. And I just, I'm a contrarian in that regard. I, I find excitement in being able to go into the big corporate environments and work with them. But I also love the excitement and the passion in the entrepreneurial world and I feel very comfortable in both. I, you know, I, I've served in boardrooms of large businesses and I've been in the trenches watching a guy get his small company out of the ground. And I love both of it. But it is different. I will say that.

Yeah. And you know what, what I like is, as you said, you, you put together an easy common sense approach to help you navigate the, the business challenges of today. And I love your game changer blueprint, Doug. So let's talk a little bit about people, processes, products and performance. And you talk about you master all four and you'll have a great business. So, so what's, what's the most important part in the, in the people portion?

The. If I may, before we get into the four real quick, let me sum up in a real quick backstory where that came from. In my 20 years in banking, I watched a lot of businesses of various type, sizes and shapes. And I was always frustrated when a business that was one of our customers started to falter and perhaps go under. And I was always sad for the owners. It was like, you know, something's going on here. But I found some common denominators that inevitably drove those privately held independent businesses over the edge if there was going to be an over the edge moment. And it boiled down to these four areas as I started to study it. So the first one is the people. Any viable business has to have a team. You won't scale, you won't Grow. You won't expand if you're doing it on your own.

So as you start thinking about bringing people into the mix, you immediately, first time you hire your first employee, you've now begun the creation of a culture.

Right.

So you, you have to be sensitive to that. And you know, best practice is not to necessarily hire everybody that looks, acts and thinks just like you do. The, you know, the more informed owners will actually find some diversity not just of ethnicity or gender, but of thinking and experience and they'll, they'll mold a much bigger team together. People. Processes is, or people is one of the things. Process is the next area. In order for a business to be scalable and repeatable, you have to have a process. And I don't care what you're doing or how you're doing it, you, you have to think long game and think about the process you're developing. I, I worked once with a technology company and the, the sad part was they were code slingers, so to speak. And when I really got to know him and got to working with them, I kept asking them, well, how do you onboard a project, a new client, how do you take them through design and quality control and all that. And they didn't have a process. It was, every project was really shot from the hip.

Yeah.

Sadly.

They'Re still doing work but they're not growing like they could if they had had more of a process to do it.

I love the thought of code slinger so pro. You got, you got to have process, right. You got to create a process, you got to make it repeatable so you can do it. You can bring that genius to life. So what's the next one, people? Process.

Yeah. Process is number two. The third one is the product. Product slash, service, whatever it is you're doing, you know, what are you producing, what value are you creating in the world where people get stuck on this part, you may have created the company with a great idea, some, maybe it even is a disruptive idea. That's word now. Right. But everything like that has a shelf life. Pretty soon the market's going to catch up, it's going to leapfrog what you're doing. And if you don't stay tuned in and think about the sensitivity to the market, your going to lose your opportunity and you're going to fall behind the curve. So you kind of constantly have to think about product development, product expansion, product modernization as you go. So that's the real heart of that element. And the last pillar is performance. This is where we get into Measurement of all your numbers, what the company's doing financially, operationally.

Volumes, margins, KPIs, OKRs. However, people learn to think about that if as, as the old military saying said, you have to inspect what you expect.

That's right.

If you're not monitoring, if you're not checking the margin on things and the performance, your, your profitability can erode quickly.

Yeah. And so which, which is the most important?

You know, that's, that's a tough one.

Probably a lot of people migrate ultimately to the people side of it. Products can come and go. Products can have their own life and their own veracity. But the, the people element is often the wild card. Yeah.

I was talking to a business leader yesterday and he, he works in the contractor segment. He's got people, they do insulation installing, they do construction. And you know, for him, one of the things he said that really struck me, he says, you know, Dan, these people do work that can't be offshored. You, when, when a building needs to be built, you need construction workers, you can't, you can't send that offshore. You can't outsource that. So it was really interesting for him. The people just make all the difference. Right. And I think that's the case in a lot of businesses. You know, it's why, you know, the, our, our focus at Y Institute is in, under understanding people and helping people connect with each other so they can work together. But I think it leads to, to the processes, right? And, and, and if the people have it right, they're going to create great products and they're going to perform. So I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tend to agree with you there.

By far. You worked, you know, with some, some big brands, you know, corporate giants, ExxonMobil, Coca Cola, Raytheon. So what's it, you know, what, what kind of work have you done? And, and what's, what's the difference between working with the big Exxon Mobil versus that, that small business that's local and maybe 10, 20 employees?

Well, I think one of the biggest things is that in the larger corporate setting, there's a bit of a. Talked about this a lot on my show, and that is that when we look out on the front line and we feel like we need a new supervisor, there's been turnover or an expansion or something, and we want to put a supervisor in charge of a team. We go to the team and we look for the best producer, right? And we say, poof, you're the now the supervisor. And then that poor Soul gets on the management track. If they slog through that first assignment and have some degrees of success, they get rewarded with what? A promotion to another management role. And it's not uncommon for people to go through two, three or four of these promotions up the organization without any kind of management training, leadership training, none of that. They've just done what they've done by some sort of osmosis or some sort of assimilation. Occasionally they've, They've got a reference point, some prior boss that was a good model that they could use those behaviors and, and be successful. But they've never been challenged to identify the truth of their own beliefs, their own why, their. Their own how. And.

So when I start working with them, that's usually what we do. We start asking the question. I always start with a very fundamental question. Do you think there's a difference between management and leadership?

Yes, of course there's a difference. And then they'll shut up and I'll go, okay, that's good. But so explain, tell me why you think there's a difference. Where does it come in? And that's usually where we begin our work of handling that.

That's a great question to ask. Or let me ask you what, what is, what is the difference between leadership and in management?

Well, I love a phrase, I want to give full credit. A good friend of mine who's also a coach and an advisor, his name is Dave Guerra. He, through a bunch of research, he came up with a phrase that says, management is about process and leadership is about people.

And what I always tell my clients, when you think about it, you've probably known somebody that made a career out of, quote, good management. They ran a team, they hit the numbers, they produced revenues, they produced margin, they were numerically successful in what they did.

But also when you really peel the onion and look at their body of work, there was a lot of turnover turmoil, not a lot of loyalty, not a lot of camaraderie.

Right.

Hard work. It was, it was what once was called salt mine kind of work. But a leader, on the other hand, can be a good manager of the process, but has the ability to think about the people side of everything and do work to grow the people, let them develop, let them expand, and let them feel appreciated for the effort they're putting in.

Yeah. Leaders create leaders.

That's right.

You know, managers don't. They're. They're worried about their job. Right, right. That guy gets too good, he'll take your job. Right. I love that. That's a great Great definition. Thank you so much for that. So let me, let me ask you this.

What we, the, the title of the show and we forgot to do this last week, Doug. So I'm glad we're getting to it. Now, what's your biggest why not moment? You know, you've been in, been doing this work for a while. What's the time in your life when you said why not to something and it's made a positive impact in your life?

You know, Dan, when we were prepping and talking about that, what flashed through my mind is for me, there's actually been so many, it's hard to, hard to point to one in particular. I guess I will go ahead and pick one that, that pops out about 25 years ago. I was in some career and life change transitions and I looked at my bucket list and I said I, I wanted to go get a private pilot's license. And I, I looked at everything that was going on and there was a degree of uncertainty in my life at that moment. But I said nonetheless, I said, why not? Let's just sign up, let's go get that done. So I signed up for flight school, went through all the hours, got my license and thoroughly enjoyed all of that. I am not an active pilot now. I'm in the official, what the pilot association calls the rusty pilot category.

Haven't been behind the stick for a while, but still remember the training, love, all the process and the fellowship that I got there. But it was a blast. It was everything I hoped it would be.

So how much flying did you actually do?

I think my logbook says I've got about 500 hours and something like.

350 landings or something like that. So, you know, it was a respectable number. Wouldn't call qualify me for the airlines yet, but.

Right. You know what, you mentioned something that I've heard this, you know, you don't get paid. Pilots don't get paid to fly the plane, they get paid to, to land it. Right. That's the most important part.

Well, in, in my army time, I was at the, my permanent duty station was Fort Rucker, Alabama, which is the Army's flight school. That's where all the helicopter training happens and a little bit of fixed wing training. And I actually have some hours behind the stick on a Huey, but it's not official and I think the statute of limitations has expired, so I can talk about it without being in trouble. But.

It was a great experience and my boss at that was a highly decorated and well rated aviator, highly respected in the game.

He introduced me to the concept that flying is hours and hours of sheer boredom interrupted by moments of terror and chaos.

Yeah, I can imagine. I've had only a couple of times in.

In.

In my career flying commercial, where we've had some bad turbulence. We had once left the airport in Denver flying to Albuquerque, and a bird hit the windshield and cracked the windshield. And I noticed we weren't getting above like a thousand feet. We were flying really low. Ended up landing in Colorado Springs with one pane left on the window before we lost all. All pressure, you know, and the pilots did a great job just keeping everybody calm and just. We just say, hey, we're going to have to find land in Colorado Springs, flying real low. And we got down there and had to get a rental car to drive to. From Colorado Springs to Albuquerque that evening.

Well, for me, it was a reminder of the power of very good training and what that can mean to you in times of trouble and chaos. And I had learned that early in the military because, you know, we did a lot of training and that's what it was there for. But with.

Flying my own planes and doing things, you know, I had a couple of moments. I got myself into situations that weren't ideal, so I had to execute some emergency procedures and things. But you feel the training kick in, and it's amazing how. How effective that can be.

We talk about that. And as people, you know, as we work with people who are new at doing the. The yos with clients, right, we talk about reps. I can imagine that it's so important to get reps, learn and, and do it. Because then when something comes up, you remember, hey, I've done that before. But with, with the why, you know, we've got a lot of better way people listening with the why of better way. How did that work out for you in the military? Because as. As someone who was always looking for a better way to do things. Now, granted, you were an officer, but you were a junior officer. Did it get you in trouble?

Yes, it did. The. I'll tell you the quick story. When I got promoted to first lieutenant from second lieutenant, of course, the second lieutenant duration is about two years. And then there was a somewhat automatic promotion to first lieutenant at that point. When the day I was getting promoted, my bars pinned on, my brigade commander came to the ceremony, and there's a little bit of a reception line. We're going through shaking hands and everything. And he grabbed my hand and I kind of. It was one of those handshakes. It was really firm and he kind of pulled me in, you know, and we were kind of pretty close. And he said, all right, Thorpe, the game is over. And I said, excuse me, sir. And he said, you have obviously had the mentoring that says a second lieutenant can get away with anything they want to get away with because nobody fundamentally cares. He said, I've observed you, I've watched you, and I appreciate your enthusiasm. But now it's getting serious. You're a first lieutenant. We are going to be expecting more. And I said, sir, I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. And he said, I told you, you got to knock that off. That's a classic answer. And he said, no, you can't do that anymore. And I said, all right, all right, I get it. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Yeah. You know, people say, how do you survive in the military with the why of better way or challenge, challenging the status quo? It's just where you're going to thrive, right? You're going to look for better ways to do things. And I'm sure there were times when your innovation was appreciated, where you. You thought of a better way. What about growing up? Did. Did it show up in. In your. In your teen years looking for better ways to do things? You talked about, you know, taking apart radios and things like that. How about in your teen years?

It did. And I always gravitated toward opportunities that involve building something or creating something or starting something, like starting a new organization, starting a new project or new enterprise. And that became a very recurring theme for me.

Honestly, I'm not a good guy to get in a role where I've got to just operate day over day over day over day. I get really bored with that. And I talk about that a lot, even here at home. And my wife always teases me. She said, when are you going to get bored of me? You know, going to change?

There's always a better way, right? But you're not looking for a better wife.

I said, no, honey, that's a different, different situation. I said, I'm very happy with what we've got. And, and I said, living with you is different every day. And that keeps me in the game. So it's all good.

Yeah, I love that. Love, love, love that. So you've written quite a few books, Doug. I wanted to talk. The Exit Strategy Handbook. Essential Advice for Business Owners to Trust at Work. Tactics and Tools for Building High Performing Teams. The Common Sense Guide for New Managers. Of those books, which would you say we go out there and get?

Well, I think it Certainly depends on your situation. But the latest one, the exit strategy handbook, is one that is a bit of a new pivot for me.

Data is telling us that in the next few years we're going to have one of the greatest transfers of wealth in the history of the economy. And that being some 80 million baby boomers are going to exit some businesses that they've built and it'll either get handed off to next generation or sold and merged and consolidated. So I have a colleague that we're working together and he is an expert in the deep dive of valuation calculation. And that's not my thing, it's his. But I look at it in terms of what an owner needs to think about as the possibilities of the exit. And what this handbook does. It maps out nine possibilities of exit scenario.

Exit is not necessarily about simply selling your business. There are many other. There are eight other avenues that you might go. But the real message in the book is the idea that whichever one you pick and whichever one you think you need to go for, there's certain things you need to do now to optimize and maximize the value of your business when you do make that trade.

I love that. And I can imagine this is a better way to exit your business. Right? You figured out a better way. There's some depth in there. Nine different strategies. So we're seeing your mastery and obviously you're contributing to the success. What was that number in terms of millions of dollars or billions?

Well, it wasn't dollars. It was 80 million people. Boomers, baby boomers that are getting ready. They're at that stage of life. They want to, you know, they want to shut it down, go to the farm or whatever. And they're looking to get out of the day to day of whatever business they've created.

Tremendous, tremendous. One piece of advice you would give to someone that is looking, looking to hire a coach. What should they be looking for in an executive coach? What's the, what's the number one thing that, that you think is the most important thing for somebody that's either a small business owner or somebody looking for an exit strategy? Looking for a coach, what's the one thing you recommend they look at?

Well, I would argue that you need to find somebody that's got experience in the game. There's a lot of wonderful people that are doing great work, helping people with, and they're carrying the title of coach.

But they haven't necessarily been on the front lines. And I told somebody on a show earlier today, it's a different ball game when you are the one that had to sweat the ability to make a paycheck and and have it clear the bank.

Right.

Until you run a business at that level and know the pain and challenge that that may be, you, you don't yet understand the full breadth of the dynamics of being a business leader.

I love that. You know, that's a great answer. Why don't we, why don't we end on that note, Doug?

Why not?

Thank you so much for being on. I have really enjoyed our conversation why Nation? Thank you for your comments. Thank you for, for tuning in. This is going to be on YouTube, it's going to be replayed on our LinkedIn and it's going to be on our Facebook. So if you want to get a hold of Doug, we put his contact information in the show notes and we'll I'm sure we'll post a nugget or two from today in LinkedIn as we move throughout the week. Have a great rest of the week and we'll see you guys next week at on why not Wednesday.