Liz Moorehead
Have you ever heard the saying that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with?
It doesn't matter whether or not you agree, to this degree of specificity, on the math of how our relationships impact us, no one can deny how important the relationships we cultivate are to how we act and perceive the quality of our lives.
The relationships we choose (yes, choose) dramatically influence both our personal and professional lives — from family connections to career-based networks, the people who surround us often shape our destiny ... and our ability to move beyond our default.
Sometimes the most profound connections begin with a spark, as George points out in this thoughtful conversation.
⚡ Related: Cultivating a Relationship with Ourselves to Unlock Our Inner Power
A subtle feeling, a shared moment, or an unexpected encounter. These sparks can potentially ignite fires of opportunity, growth, and connection that we might not have foreseen. On the other hand, sometimes we can cultivate the wrong types of relationships, hang on to connections long past their expiration dates, or lapse into periods of self-imposed isolation.
How do we cultivate the right types of relationships in our lives, and when do we know when it's time to walk away? These are just two of the life-shifting questions we explore in this week's episode.
Questions We Explore
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Why are the relationships in our lives so important to this idea of living beyond your default? Aren't we in control of our own destiny?
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How do we effectively evaluate the quality of relationships we have today?
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What do we know when we know it's time to walk away from a connection? (George shares his own powerful experiences with this challenge.)
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What are the time-tested methods for nurturing meaningful connections that foster personal and professional growth?
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What are the mindset shifts we need to make to navigate relationships with clarity and purpose?
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What are core communities and why do they matter?
Research + Resources
Creating Good Relationships: Responsiveness, Relationship Quality, and Interpersonal Goals (NIH)
"Perceived partner responsiveness is a core feature of close, satisfying relationships. But how does responsiveness originate? Can people create relationships characterized by high responsiveness, and consequently, higher quality relationships? We suggest that goals contribute to cycles of responsiveness between people, improving both people’s relationship quality. The present studies examine 1) how interpersonal goals initiate responsiveness processes in close relationships, 2) the self-perpetuating nature of these processes, and 3) how responsiveness evolves dynamically over time through both intrapersonal projection and reciprocal interpersonal relationship processes.
In a semester-long study of 115 roommate dyads, actors’ compassionate and self-image goals predicted a cycle of responsiveness between roommates, occurring within weeks and across the semester. In a 3-week study of 65 roommate dyads, actors’ goals again predicted cycles of responsiveness between roommates, which then contributed to both actors’ and partners’ relationship quality. Results suggest that both projection and reciprocation of responsiveness associated with compassionate goals create upward spirals of responsiveness that ultimately enhance relationship quality for both people."
The Science of Why Friendships Keep Us Healthy (APA)
"American culture places a high premium on romantic love. In fact, relationship woes—or the lack thereof—are among the top reasons people seek therapy. And while romance can be a meaningful part of life, the benefits of friendships should not be overlooked.
Psychological research suggests that stable, healthy friendships are crucial for our well-being and longevity."
9 Signs It's Time to End a Friendship (Psychology Today)
"It’s no secret that the quality of your friendships has an impact on your well-being. Research has shown that the quality of your friendships can influence your level of stress, physical health, and the way in which you cope. A good friendship can have positive effects on your well-being and your health, whereas a friendship with a lot of ups and downs can negatively impact your stress level and health.
If you have been friends with someone for a long time, you may feel obligated to continue to maintain the friendship despite a growing discomfort or knowledge that you no longer feel aligned with this friend. What can make ending a friendship even more complicated is that there is no protocol for ending a friendship. Unlike a romantic relationship, a friendship breakup is something you never think will happen to you until it does."
George B. Thomas (00:03):
We had to have this massive group to survive. We had to have this massive party group, if you will, to survive so that we came out of it with what we call the core. And the core is where you want to get the core, where you find those conversations that matter. The core is where you find the roadmaps or the person that you can lean into and say that you're having a hard time. The core is where you find lack of judgment. The core is where you find love. The core is where you can just be uncomfortable but feel safe and you can't get that out of a big group. You can't get that out of a party group, if you will. You can only get that when you shrink it down, and what's interesting is you actually, especially with relationships, many times, you'll get something larger If it's smaller,
Liz Moorehead (01:01):
Welcome back to Beyond Your Default. As always, I am your host, Liz Morehead, and I am joined by George B. Thomas. How are you this morning,
George B. Thomas (01:09):
Liz? I'm doing absolutely amazing. My voice is going to be a little bit deeper, maybe a little bit more. Barry White. I just got back from Inbound 23. I talked way too much and I can tell my vocal chords are, dude, chill out, but I'm here and I'm ready to rock and roll. It's
Liz Moorehead (01:26):
Kind of perfect given what we're talking about this morning. For those who are listening, George and I, whenever we hop on to record, this is how we spend our Monday mornings first thing together. We always like to spend a little catch up. How was your weekend? What were you up to? And you were just sharing with me that you've just come back from what, 20 some odd thousand of your closest HubSpot and inbound friends in Boston at HubSpot's annual inbound conference and here we are today talking about the power of human connection and relationships.
George B. Thomas (01:57):
Yeah, it was literally like a family or a reunion. I don't know how many folks were online watching the streaming, but I do know there was about a total of 12,000 real breathing, walking, learning humans at the BCEC and man, the energy, the buzz, the connections, the magic moments, I mean relationships as we'll talk, Liz, in this episode, relationships are so key and might be the fundamental piece to a lot of buzzwords that people hear through their life, actually.
Liz Moorehead (02:32):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. In fact, one of my favorite things about this topic is that I have a small story to share, but it's actually one of our own joint ones, but let's talk about why we're talking about the power of relationships in human connection, because we've spent a lot of time over these first few episodes talking about some pretty meaty things. We've talked about hustle, we've talked about consistency. We've talked about getting what you deserve and being a blessing bomber. We've talked about understanding what is possible as a human, but also learning to understand what our boundaries and limitations are. And now here we are seemingly taking a step back and saying, let's talk about relationships. Let's talk about friendship, and before people start running for their stereos, this isn't going to be an inbound recap. We're here to talk about relationships and the power of human connection.
George B. Thomas (03:25):
It's interesting, Liz. First of all, if you're listening to this on your stereo, hit me up because I'm super curious if it's your favorite podcast app or if you actually have an eight track in your car and you're listening to what episodes are.
Liz Moorehead (03:38):
When I grew up at my mom's house and do you remember when we had stereos that basically they'd be on a bookshelf? They took up multiple shelf, many boxes.
George B. Thomas (03:46):
We had one of those. I brought
Liz Moorehead (03:47):
That out of my head.
George B. Thomas (03:48):
We had one of those. But here's what I want to do too because Liz, you said something and I think it's very, very important. You just said that they're worried about, we might be taking a step back and see that right there is the problem with most people is they think when we're talking about principles, when we're talking about foundational elements of life that, oh, let's take a step back for a second. I would beg you to position your brain differently, especially today, and it's less about back and more about deeper. It's a layer deeper in your life. It's a layer deeper in the way that you think. It's a layer deeper of importance, so just think less back, more deeper.
Liz Moorehead (04:32):
I think that's true though of a lot of people. I was having a conversation with somebody over the weekend about the idea of intake versus integration, right? We go through periods of learning. We go through like you just did, right? Or our listeners, whenever you go into a meeting, go to a conference anytime where you are actively participating in a situation by which you are meant to extract information, learn, educate, maybe shift your perception in some way. You always have to stop and integrate. You always have to stop and slow down, and I think people sometimes they hear that word, whoa, slow down. Slow down as an impediment to progress. But I want to hear from you, even though maybe the concept of taking a moment to talk about human connection and relationships may seem like not a detour, but hey, let's take a pause. Let's take a beat. Why is this important to you? Why are we having this conversation as it pertains to beyond your default? Because don't we all have human relationships anyway? Aren't we already all doing this?
George B. Thomas (05:34):
Well, no. To be honest with you, the answer is no. We're not all doing this, and if we're doing this, we're doing a crappy job most times, and this topic really is directly tied to hustle and the hustle culture and just like we took an episode where we talked about being healthy, that healthy hustle, paying attention to yourself as a holistic human. There are so many of us out there that when we're on this journey of going beyond our fault, when we're trying to go from a zero at something to a hero at something, we think to ourself by any means necessary, and so many times this, by any means necessary is the erosion of relationships. I can't tell you how many, and I'm in the room with high performing men. I'd love to have a statistic on high performing women, but I'm just not sure, but I'm in rooms with high performing men, and I can't tell you the amount of degraded marriages, degraded friendships, just work life and employees or other co-founders that they just make due.
(06:39):
They are just getting by. It's not these rich, full, robust, Hey, I've got your back. And what I want people to realize when I'm talking about relationships here I am talking about would die on the sword. I'm talking about the Dominic Toto familia, this rich, robust, no matter what, if you've got a problem, I'm there to help you solve it in so many relationships, and I want, as a listener, I want you to think and start to put your friendships or your relationships in buckets, and the buckets are simple too. High level friendship. Yeah, we communicate, we coexist, we see each other in the home or at work or at church or wherever it is, or deep level meaning you see each other on a spiritual, emotional, I get you when you walk in the door, I know something's right or I know something's, I'm getting goosebumps thinking about this.
(07:44):
When you walk in the door, I know something's right or I know something's wrong, like connected, physically, emotionally connected. I want you to put your relationships in those two buckets and start to be like, oh, I'm doing awesome, or, huh, wow, how did I end up here? Pertaining to the connections, the relationships, the community, and we'll talk about hopefully before this podcast is over, the 10 people that you surround yourself with because that's kind of a thing on the internet, and I think it's important that we pay attention. Not many people pay attention to that, but again, two buckets. Start to think all of the relationships you have and divide them into high level or deep relationships and see what you come up with.
Liz Moorehead (08:28):
A few things just went flying through my mind. First of all, I can't believe it's taken this long for us to bring up fast and furious in any sort of deep and meaningful way. I feel like it is our way, it is our thing, but I think one of the things you and I have always bonded over that as much as people cheese on us for enjoying that is that the thing that always gravitates me toward it is the fact that they are literal ride or dies, and those are not relationships that are typically celebrated in pop culture. The concept of family being celebrated in that way, and particularly as someone who has more chosen family, just the way I was raised, I think that's something to keep in mind. But you said something there that I really want to sink my teeth into, George, because you mentioned people should take an audit of the relationships that they have in their lives and put people into one of two buckets.
(09:14):
We've got the high level communication, those deep soul bond relationships, but what is the measuring stick? Because I'm sitting here thinking about the fact that I'm 40, I'm turning 41 next month. One of the great lessons I've learned is that you're a human bank account. There's only so much energy money you can take out. There's only so much time you can devote to other people, so I've actually found that my relationships are more meaningful, more that I've cultivated a smaller group of close friendships. So my question to you is that when people do this audit, how do they know if they're killing the game at it or if things are not going as well as they should be? Because I feel like it's not going to be a quantity issue. Somebody shouldn't be walking away with 25 soul bond relationships outside of their family.
George B. Thomas (09:59):
Yeah, no. If you're focused on quantity of friends, get off of Facebook, get off of LinkedIn, get off of Twitter in the real world, that's not that that's fake. That's just not reality. You want a few core friends, and so listen, I hear you ask that question. It's like, well, what's the measurement? Is what I heard you say. I think the first measurement is just what I gave was this idea, is it a deeper relationship or is it surface level? The other part of this that I layer in here, is it growth oriented? Meaning do you push each other to the next level? Are you striving to be better together or is it a toxic energy suck? Because we all have those relationships that are in our life that are toxic. Energy sucks, but for some reason we aren't willing to kill them and they need to be killed.
(10:50):
The other layer that I would put on this is before I go into this next section, what I want you to realize is, or what I don't want people to take away from this is George says, find 10 of your best friends that make you your best you and be selfish and only focus on yourself. That's not what I'm saying. So yes, should you find five, seven, just deep rooted ICU, let's grow 1% better each and every day, high performers maybe better than you, so they're pushing you to strive for something else. Yes, that should be a piece of your relationship. Friend, family group. The other side of this that I think sometimes gets forgotten, but I'm very, very adamant about this, is finding somebody that you feel is special, that has the makings of being and then bring them along for the ride, and you being the person that have brought them into your core, you being the person that's pushing them to the 1% better, you being the person that is driving that relationship. Again, where we all kind of fall apart is with relationships. We don't know who's in the driver's seat or who's in the passenger seat speaking of ride or dies by the way, and so therefore, if we're both in the passenger seat, that's funky, how do you even know? And so taking ownership of your relationships, being the person that's in the driver's seat of those, and maybe it's because some of your friends are, Ooh, ooh, maybe it's because some of your friends are your GPS, and maybe it's because you're the Uber to others.
Liz Moorehead (12:33):
Wow, I cannot tell you how many moments in my, because I've never been able to articulate it in just that way and listening at home. I want you to go back and replay what you just heard because I think that is the key right there to what you were just talking about, George, this idea of what some call the energy vampire, the outmoded relationships that we clinging onto and we're not suddenly saying, go through this list of people, treat it like survivor, kick them off the island. We're not talking about that, but it reminds me of this conversation I had back in an old life when I used to be the beer writer for the Capital Gazette and the Baltimore Sun, and I interviewed a guy named Hugh Sisson, and he had run one of the most prevalent and groundbreaking breweries in Maryland responsible for changing lots of legislation, and I had a chance to interview him, not for the 20th anniversary.
(13:23):
When everybody was interviewing him, I said, let's wait till that brewery is legal. I'll interview on the 21st. I said, what is one thing you wish you could go back and tell yourself as a business owner and an entrepreneur 21 years ago? And he said, I wish I could go back and tell myself that the people you start with are not always the people you grow with, and that's okay because what you said there about the GPS versus the Uber is that sometimes it doesn't start as you being the Uber. Sometimes it starts with you totally on the same page. You're lifting each other up and sometimes you just the path diverges.
George B. Thomas (13:56):
Yeah, sometimes you got to lighten your ride. I'm going to stick with this Dominic Reto, fast and furious familiar. You might start the race and it's like in a 1969 station wagon, three seater with wood paneling on the side, but by the time you get to the point where you're really chugging along, it has to be stripped down, torn apart, where it's just like it's a shell of the car that it used to be, but man, it is high performing. It has a big old engine in it, and everything that is of excess has been removed. If you think about how light they try to get these race cars to be so that they can go, the speed that they go, some people in your life are weighing you down. Some people in your life are your engine, and you have to figure out who, and you have to keep what you need and listen, I know this sounds difficult, but I'm going to say it for maybe the second or third time on this podcast.
(14:55):
You've got to remove people in your life that aren't serving any type of valuable positioning. And listen, I know I could get backlash, but I'm talking about family in this as well. I had a talk with a lady, it was after I did my first keynote speech, and when I started my first keynote speech, I had been told by Marcus Sheridan, which by the way, great relationship, love the man to death. Is he with me today? No. We had to lighten the car. We had to go in a different direction, as you'd say, but love the man to death. He said, Hey, you got to start your keynote with the fact that your high school dropout. I told him he was crazy. I'd been hiding from that for 25 years. I wasn't going to lead with that, and he said, until you're willing to be vulnerable in life, you're going to miss out on the magic moments. So I started this keynote black slide white text. I'm a high school dropout. The audience actually started to laugh, which for me was a real hot moment, but I didn't let us. That's great. You're
Liz Moorehead (15:52):
Standing on stage and everybody's up there, so Marcus, thanks for telling me to be vulnerable. This is great,
George B. Thomas (15:56):
Bud. Yeah, well, I kept a great outer shell, but the inside of me was like, oh, geez, this feels great. And so I said it verbally because I didn't say it the first time. I just put the slide on and I said, no, I'm a high school dropout, and I went to tell the story of my math teacher and how he told me I would never amount to anything, and I believed him and I was a high school dropout. The rest of the doc was all about marketing, sales, measurement, the typical things that you would get from a guy on stage talking about marketing, got to the end of the session, and this is where I'm saying even if it's family, sometimes you got to let it go, and if it's family, sometimes you got to do extra work in your brain. I get done with this talk and this lady comes up to me and she's like, Hey, I really get your math teacher conversation.
(16:44):
I was like, oh, thanks. I appreciate that. She goes, no. She could tell I didn't understand the level of conversation she was trying to have with me, the connection she was trying to have with me, the we are bonded in a way that you don't understand until the words that come out of my mouth way. She said, no, I don't think you understand. For me, that was my mother, and we sat there and we talked for 15, 20 minutes about forgiveness and poison and toxic relationships, and she knew as hard as it was at some point, she had to remove that from her life so that she could be a happy person so that she could be a healthy mental person so that she could move forward and be the human that she was actually called to be and wanted to be. And see, that's the thing. When I say this as a layer deeper when I want you to think not back but deeper in this, it's because somebody in your life right now as you're listening to these words, are holding you back from being the happy, helpful, humble human that you need to be on this earth. They're holding you back from having the ring or core of friends that you need to get to where you have to go and you've got to remove it.
Liz Moorehead (17:51):
I love that story that you told, and I'm glad you brought up the family piece of it as well, because that was something I actually went through a few years ago before Covid, I made the decision to remove my mother from my life, and that was a challenging moment because I remember talking to some people and they're like, well, you only have one mother, and part of me says, I understand that, and also this is my personal relationship, but I'm really glad you're bringing this up because often it is not the popular thing to do to step away from relationships. I just went through a season of this myself, which because walked with me through this path and it was really challenging. A lot of people did not understand why I was making some of the decisions I was making, why I was choosing to take a step back from certain relationships, and the thing I would posit to some of our listeners is who are the people who are triggering you into states that you no longer exist in?
(18:46):
For example, if you've been trying to pull yourself out of people's pleasing cycles, right? If you're trying to bring yourself out of those spaces, but you find you're triggered into those spaces if they're relationships that just don't feel good anymore. I love that you brought that up because George, the question I have for you now is that when you and I went into this conversation initially, we were really focused on cultivating the right relationships, but what I'm hearing from you, George, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that when you think about the value of human connection and relationships in your life, it's not just about the ones you choose to cultivate, it's the ones you choose to keep out of your circle, and that's equally important.
George B. Thomas (19:24):
I would say cultivate or kill, right? My brain likes to, I
Liz Moorehead (19:28):
Was going to say kill, but I
George B. Thomas (19:29):
Think it's
Liz Moorehead (19:30):
That dark, that
George B. Thomas (19:30):
Early. No, no, and see, that's the thing. I don't think it's dark. I think simplifying what could be complex is always a winner, and so it's what relationships do I want to cultivate? What relationships do I want to kill? Liz, it's funny you said in norms, it's not like this. It might be difficult to do. It's funny because Les Brown, the reason I'm bringing this up is there's so many times in my life that I harken this quote back to my brain. Whenever life gets hard, whenever I have to kill a relationship, whenever I need to push through an extra hour or two in the day, whenever I feel like I'm not at my best, but I know it's because I've been laying it out all on the field, I always bring this quote, so hopefully somebody listening to this, they might be able to attach this quote to their brain and move forward, and that is, if you do what is easy, your life will be hard, but if you do what is hard, your life will be easy, and that's from Les Brown, and when you think about killing relationships and you apply that quote to it, if you do what is hard, kill that toxic relationship, your life will be easy.
Liz Moorehead (20:37):
I love that. Another one I heard recently that has really stood me in good stead is if you learn how to sit with uncomfortable emotions, your life will become exponentially easier than you could have possibly imagined. I think that's often, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts around this topic recently because mindset is something I've really been focusing on a lot, and it's this idea of the uncomfortable emotions around who should be in your life versus who shouldn't be in your life. Often no one is attacking you in those moments. You just need to sit there and feel comfortable about the choices that you're making and understand that while you can have empathy for other people's emotions, you don't necessarily have to be responsible for them.
George B. Thomas (21:19):
It's funny, my brain just did a hard right turn when I heard you say that because I think the relationship that we're not talking about is also the relationship that we have to cultivate with ourself, because when you were talking there, I was like, oh my gosh, they're not attacking you, by the way, that's what fourth gear, right turn. Let's drift a little bit, if you will. I was like, yeah, they're not attacking you, but you are. You're your worst critic. You're the enemy in your brain. You're the one that doesn't take time to sit in uncomfort, doesn't actually sleuth or become the detective of what just happened verbally, spatially, whatever, with those people around you. You're walking through this world with blinders on, if you will, and we have to make sure that we're working on the relationship with the thing that is in ourselves.
(22:15):
And one of the things that has gotten me to the point where I am today, and again, I have these people are quickly going to realize to these podcast episodes, I have these short little things that I put in my brain as these programmable binary blips, right? These blips that I put in my brain and for years and years and years, Liz, I would tell myself, you've got to love yourself before you love others. You've got to love yourself before you love others, because there is a time in my life where I don't necessarily know that I loved anybody else. I know I definitely didn't love myself. I had to cultivate that relationship within myself of like, okay, love yourself, love yourself, be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Pay attention to the you are strong, you are smart, you are whatever these things that you need to plug into your life.
(23:06):
Which by the way, if you're listening to this and you haven't done the I ams of your life, the things that you think you suck at, but you want to be great at, and therefore you say, I am this, I am this, I am this. But there's a whole YouTube culture by the way, that you can go look up and they'll literally say it for you, but you have to feed into yourself. You have to build the relationship with yourself. You have to be self-aware, hear the small voice, all the things that you've heard around being a whole human or as my friend Liz likes to say, a whole ass human. You've got to pay attention to that almost in order to do anything that we've talked about up until this point in the podcast of now paying attention to the exterior, right? So when you think of relationships, I would need you to think internal relationship, and I need you to think external relationships.
Liz Moorehead (23:57):
So clearly I think what we're going to have to do is a follow-up to this episode. We're going to have to do a relationship with the self episode. I think we're a hundred percent going to have to do that. I want to pivot us back here briefly to the external relationships, because you brought something up earlier in the conversation that I think is really important because it ties directly into what we were just talking about. We've been talking about cultivating and killing. Now I want us to start thinking about that idea of you are who you surround yourself with. Talk to me about that. What exactly does that mean? And I'm sure some listeners who have heard this know exactly where we're going, but I would encourage you to stick with this. George always takes us on some interesting side quests.
George B. Thomas (24:36):
Yeah, it's interesting because I actually, how this happened in my own life, 20 20, 20 19, we all know it was happening, and I don't need to name it, but we had a thing going on. The world was like, the sky is falling. It was literally a chicken little moment. I'm just going to throw that out there, but the sky really was falling, so maybe it wasn't a chicken little moment, but we had a really big group of friends. And to survive the time, we would go to a friend's pool, we would have some beverages.
Liz Moorehead (25:04):
And this was during the pandemic?
George B. Thomas (25:06):
Yeah, I was trying not to say that, but yes, it was during the pandemic. We're
Liz Moorehead (25:10):
Getting a little bit, we just got to say it out loud.
George B. Thomas (25:13):
Yeah, I hate that word. I hate that word. Anyway, we were trying to survive, and through spending so much time with people who historically we would have called friends, you could start to see a divide happening amongst the friend group and some people you could look and say, I don't want to be that, and if I'm around that I am actually that I can feel myself going in that direction. And so here's the very interesting part is there were relationships that started to filter off or were killed in some situations. Like, Hey, yo, you just can't come back. You just can't come back. That's unacceptable behavior. You can't come back. And while it was difficult, and by the way, I can literally look at the friends that I had and have today and the level of difficultness, I know that's not a word. Maybe its for us.
(26:14):
It's for us today. You could see where somebody was really, really struggling with killing the relationship. You could see where somebody was like, eh, whatever. It's all good. Hey, we'll move on. And so we went from this idea of we had to have this massive group to survive. We had to have this massive party group, if you will, to survive so that we came out of it with what we call the core. And the core is where you want to get the core is where you actually find those conversations that matter. The core is where you find the roadmaps or the person that you can lean into and say that you're having a hard time. The core is where you find lack of judgment. The core is where you find love. The core is where you can just be uncomfortable, but feel safe, and you can't get that out of a big group. You can't get that out of a party group, if you will. You can only get that when you shrink it down. And what's interesting is you actually, especially with relationships, many times you'll get something larger if it's smaller.
Liz Moorehead (27:24):
Oh, yeah. Because you're able to invest more.
George B. Thomas (27:26):
Exactly. You're
Liz Moorehead (27:27):
Not spreading yourself as thinly.
George B. Thomas (27:29):
Now that you said that word, we've got to challenge the listeners because you said that real quick. Yeah, because you invest more. Of course, you invest more. One of the things, Liz, the reason I'm doing this podcast is because everything that I have done is indexing off of that. You're a good human and you just get it. We're doing this podcast. I think that everybody has the potential to be a good human, and I think everybody has the potential to get it. But you said, of course, you invest more. As you're listening to this podcast episode, I want you to think to yourself, when's the last time you made a deposit? When's the last time you invested in a relationship? When's the last time you reached out and called your mom a fool? I'm kind of joking there, but when have you taken action to build a relationship up or to tighten a relationship? When's the last time you made a deposit?
Liz Moorehead (28:21):
It's funny to me because now my brain is going in three different directions. It reminds me of a conversation you and I were having earlier this summer where you and I are both walking the same kind of entrepreneurial journey, but you're a few months ahead of me than I am. And I remember having a conversation with you because this replies both to work and personal, and I think that's something that people forget is that I came to you and said, Hey, I've made X, Y, and Z choices to streamline so I can stay more focused. And I think people are hesitant that people are more likely to do that in their business than they are to do in their personal. Maybe it's because there's a financial piece to it, or maybe it's just a matter of I physically only have a certain number of hours in the day to work, but I think it's something worth noting is that energetically, you only have the capacity to deposit and withdraw so much, but if you're clearing the space to make people in your life who you want to keep rather than send off on their next journey, you have to make sure you're cultivating those relationships.
(29:22):
Now, the other piece of it though is that you told me a story about the inverse of this happening, right? We've talked about oof. I'm now seeing this is not a relationship I want to cultivate anymore. But you once told me about your relationship with the church and how there was a time when you had actually decided, I never want to go to church again. You guys are hypocrites. Just no, thank you. And it sounds like the inverse has happened with that particular relationship.
George B. Thomas (29:49):
Yeah, it's interesting. There's a couple things with this, and by the way, before you stop or turn it off because you feel like this is going to turn into a religious podcast, let me just warn you, we're not turning into a religious podcast, but it is a part of my life. It is a part of my relationships that I cultivate relationship with Jesus. But there's some things that I think that are going to come out of my mouth that are actually going to help you with your personal relationships and your professional relationships because both of these things tie to the way that we sometimes think. So Liz, you alluded to that there was a point in my life where I felt like Christians were the most hypocritical people that I had ever met in my life. And without a doubt, I had reached that point, and I didn't really think that I was ever going to go back to church because there was just some pains and there were humans there, and it was messy.
(30:40):
And I was talking to an old gentleman, he was owner of a camp in Jew, Ohio. There's a time in my life where I worked for three years as a camp counselor, taught kids how to ride horses, certified lifeguard, repelling instructor, archery instructor. It's a whole different, it feels like a different life. But we were sitting around the fire and there was a nice hot bed of Cole's. It was him, me and a couple other folks. And he asked me why I didn't go to church on Sundays, why? I just kind of hung around the camp. And I said, bill, I got to be honest with you. Christians are the most hypocritical people I've ever met in my life. I don't think I'll ever go back to church just because of some things that have happened. And he said, do me a favor. He said, you see the coals in the fire?
(31:23):
I said, yeah. He goes, I want you to pull one of those coals out of the fire and just set it to the side. Of course, we had some tongs I didn't like. I'm not a manly man, Liz. I didn't reach in and just grab a cold. I had a pair of tongs. I grabbed a coal and I set it out there, and of course, being 20 something, I'm like, and what's your point? He goes, just sit quietly for a little bit and in this red coal in a matter of seconds, turned dark black. And he just looked at me and he said, you're the coal sitting out of church. He said, now, do me a favor. I want you to put that back in the fire and see what happens. And Liz, immediately it turned bright orange and he said, and that's how quickly you can be on fire for Jesus.
(32:09):
Here's the thing, the separation, it isn't about everything that makes it about right. It's not about the politics of church. It's not about dressing up and showing up. It's just about the ability to say, I'm going to go here and be, I'm going to go here and deposit in a relationship that is important. I'm going to go here and withdraw the energy that I need to move forward. I'm going to go there and get on fire so that I can have that fire to take me through the rest of the week. And it's funny, right after that, it was probably like a week later, I was still battling with this. And there was an old farmer who actually worked at the camp too, and he knew that this had happened. And he said, George, let me ask you a question. I said, yes. He goes, are you waiting for the perfect church?
(33:01):
And then you'll go. And I was like, yeah, as soon as I find the perfect church, I'll go. He goes, do me a favor and please don't go. And I was like, Arden, what do you mean? He goes, because as soon as you go, it won't be perfect. Now, ladies and gentlemen, those are two by four moments in life. The fact that we have this perception of what church should be, we have this perception of what Christians should be, and when we realize that it's actually about energy, and we realize that it's coming at it as imperfect humans, we realize it's more of a hospital, less of a sanctuary. I'm just going to throw that out there. By the way, the main place where you do church is called a sanctuary. It is less of a sanctuary. It is more of a hospital. It's about showing up and getting healed. And so for me, I had to just do almost an about face and be like, well, shoot. Everything that I thought I had as a arsenal to not need to not have to work on a relationship has been completely demolished. And so for me, this is why a lot of how I navigate the world now has to do with these fundamental things of imperfect, imperfect humans, energy flowing out, energy coming in. They feel very woo-hoo, but they're all actually directly correlate with my relationship or journey back into the church.
Liz Moorehead (34:32):
What's fascinating about that too, because I don't know if anybody could see that, but literally when you were telling that story, I was having a two by four moment because there's the obvious thread there talking about your relationship with Christ, your relationship with the church. But if you were to take a step back from that as a listener, that is an important lesson regardless as to whether you're looking at it from a spiritual perspective or a secular perspective. So let's take it from a secular perspective for a moment. The idea that you pick up a coal, and when you think about coals, right? There isn't one single coal with that fire that is igniting such fire that is creating such radiance. It's the power of the community coming together. But when you as a coal decide to remove yourself from the pack for whatever reason, you will start to feel the coldness.
(35:20):
You will start to feel the anguish. You will start to feel that disconnectedness. And for me personally, I'm thinking about this journey that I just went through. I went through a pretty intense divorce earlier this year. As a result, I cut a lot of relationships out of my life. I decided, how did I get here? I need to go inward. Some people might call it a hermit mode. And I've noticed over the past couple of months, I started feeling a lot of anguish and a lot of pain. And that's because I was a coal who had started staying out of the fire for too long. And so as I started to reintegrate myself back into community spaces, but with more purpose now, sometimes we do need to take a step back from everything in order to evaluate, Hey, how did I get here? But at some point, you have to make the point, purpose, or the choice to go back and do so with the right connections in the right fires, in the right communities.
George B. Thomas (36:16):
Yeah, and here's funny, I'm glad that you ended with the word communities. I'm going to talk personal, but I'm also going to talk to those professionals that might be listening to this, those coals didn't say or don't think, let's build a community of coals. They're just coals. And so many humans right now are like, I need to be part of this community. Or if we go to the professional side, I need to build a community. No, you just need to show up where you want to show up and be human around the rest of the humans. And that's by being human, which we'll probably have to do a whole episode on. What the heck do I mean when I say human, but by just showing up and being human. That's how relationships are built. That's how you can start to diagnose what relationships fit and what don't. That's how you can actually start to build your core. Just show up and be human. Don't overthink it. Just show up and be human.
Liz Moorehead (37:21):
So George, what's been interesting about this conversation is, I mean, every conversation we have is deep, but this one has gotten very personal in a number of ways to the point where not once have you made a reference to our default state or living beyond it. So here's my question to you. What the heck does any of this have to do with moving from my default state to beyond my default? Why does this matter?
George B. Thomas (37:45):
Listen, you're trying to go somewhere, and if you haven't taken the time to cultivate relationships, you got no ride, you got no gas, it's going to be a lot more difficult. Listen, we started this episode, and I purposely was trying to stay away from inbound and the professional side of what I do, but everything that has happened over the past decade has been predicated on relationships, relationships with employees at the HubSpot Academy, as I was educating myself, relationships with people like Brian Halligan and Dan Tyre, as I was educating other humans inside the space, relationships with all the friends, and yes, they're bucketed deep relationships, surface level relationships, but they're friends, not the core, but they're friends. All of these people, the network, the networking, the relationship building, the being human with others, the ability to stop and listen and stop and help, all of that has driven me to where I am today, which is a person who is a high school dropout, who has started a company that has multiple employees, multiple contracts, and is helping hundreds, if not thousands of humans, be better at HubSpot, but also just be better humans in general.
(39:11):
If I try to do this alone, I mean, listen, hub Heroes podcast, do I do it alone? No. This podcast, do I do it alone? No. Any piece of interview content? Am I doing it alone? No. Here's the thing. If people would just stop and watch, it's all about collaboration. I want to do a rap song, but I'm not going to because I'm trying to have a moment here. It's all about collaboration, and it's all about creating something special together and having the energy that the group will bring, having the ideas that a group will bring. Listen, if I didn't have the ability to start this company, hire my family, my daughters would've never had the idea of hiding superheroes throughout the BCEC that people could take pictures of and tag and have a layer or level of relationship, even if unseen with us and our brand amongst 12,000 people.
(40:16):
So that's the other piece that I would beg you to pay attention to as you build these relationships, cultivate or as you kill these relationships, think about or watch the dominoes that fall on each side of that. Well, I got rid of this, so this became easier. I added this person and it pushed me to this, and this measuring the effectiveness or the importance of every relationship, I think we're really bad at that. We just have relationships very often. We do not sit down and actually stop or slow down long enough to think or measure, even if it's positive or negative, let alone the layers of positivity or negativity in how far they go both ways.
Liz Moorehead (40:59):
George, I've spent so much time around you. I can't help but say it. Here's where my brain, when you were talking about that, I know. Here's where my brain goes. Honestly, it goes back to the start of our relationship because sometimes you don't know what a relationship is going to become, but you have to find a way to listen to your intuition or as I like to call it, an inner cupcake, because if it's not named after something I can eat or I baked good, I'm not listening. So I think about that though. You and I met in 2017 when Impact acquired the Sales Lion after it acquired my agency, and you and I had this very interesting moment. It was one of those things where we were kind of in a big crowd of people. I think we both felt equally alone, but we were somehow sitting next to each other and we looked at each other and went, this isn't the end of this.
(41:47):
Because you were about to go off and work with Remington and Rachel and Impulses, creative, and then Kismet. You and I ended up speaking at the same conference last year, if you can believe it, last spring, it feels like a thousand years ago, I happened to get an earlier flight because I was very nervous about missing my Delta connection from Charlotte to Michigan. And I was sitting there and I had hours to go, and who comes walking up? But George B. Thomas at the exact moment, I fundamentally believe we were supposed to see each other again. And it's not like we hadn't spoken, but it had been very kind of surface level, and all of a sudden it was, we were both at this exact same moment in our lives, and now let's think about what this year would've looked like on either side of our fences without this relationship
George B. Thomas (42:35):
Completely different, completely,
Liz Moorehead (42:36):
Completely different, and not a different type of thing that I would ever want to consider. So the one thing I would encourage people who are listening to think about is that as you evaluate relationships, sometimes you think you know everything and you don't. Sometimes you have to allow events to unfold as they naturally are. But listen to that intuition, that inner cupcake. It is very rarely wrong. Usually the person you're feeling in your life is when you're not listening to it. But that's a whole different episode
George B. Thomas (43:05):
For me. It's my still small voice. It's that voice in my brain that sometimes will whisper to me and sometimes will yell at me. But here's what I'll say. How do you unpack what Liz just said and use it? And again, I like to simplify the complex I heard in my brain. There's something here. There's something here. I don't know what I don't know when, but there's something here. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you go back to our Kohl's analogy, there was a spark. I would beg that you would pay attention to the sparks in your life because the sparks are what will ignite the fire. The fire is what will create the coals, the bed of hot, warm coals of humans that you end up being part of. See, that's the thing. We are always looking for this grandiose moment. We're always looking for the big sign of life when it comes to relationships. Pay attention to the spark.
We had to have this massive group to survive. We had to have this massive party group, if you will, to survive so that we came out of it with what we call the core. And the core is where you want to get the core, where you find those conversations that matter. The core is where you find the roadmaps or the person that you can lean into and say that you're having a hard time. The core is where you find lack of judgment. The core is where you find love. The core is where you can just be uncomfortable but feel safe and you can't get that out of a big group. You can't get that out of a party group, if you will. You can only get that when you shrink it down, and what's interesting is you actually, especially with relationships, many times, you'll get something larger If it's smaller,
Liz Moorehead (01:01):
Welcome back to Beyond Your Default. As always, I am your host, Liz Morehead, and I am joined by George B. Thomas. How are you this morning,
George B. Thomas (01:09):
Liz? I'm doing absolutely amazing. My voice is going to be a little bit deeper, maybe a little bit more. Barry White. I just got back from Inbound 23. I talked way too much and I can tell my vocal chords are, dude, chill out, but I'm here and I'm ready to rock and roll. It's
Liz Moorehead (01:26):
Kind of perfect given what we're talking about this morning. For those who are listening, George and I, whenever we hop on to record, this is how we spend our Monday mornings first thing together. We always like to spend a little catch up. How was your weekend? What were you up to? And you were just sharing with me that you've just come back from what, 20 some odd thousand of your closest HubSpot and inbound friends in Boston at HubSpot's annual inbound conference and here we are today talking about the power of human connection and relationships.
George B. Thomas (01:57):
Yeah, it was literally like a family or a reunion. I don't know how many folks were online watching the streaming, but I do know there was about a total of 12,000 real breathing, walking, learning humans at the BCEC and man, the energy, the buzz, the connections, the magic moments, I mean relationships as we'll talk, Liz, in this episode, relationships are so key and might be the fundamental piece to a lot of buzzwords that people hear through their life, actually.
Liz Moorehead (02:32):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. In fact, one of my favorite things about this topic is that I have a small story to share, but it's actually one of our own joint ones, but let's talk about why we're talking about the power of relationships in human connection, because we've spent a lot of time over these first few episodes talking about some pretty meaty things. We've talked about hustle, we've talked about consistency. We've talked about getting what you deserve and being a blessing bomber. We've talked about understanding what is possible as a human, but also learning to understand what our boundaries and limitations are. And now here we are seemingly taking a step back and saying, let's talk about relationships. Let's talk about friendship, and before people start running for their stereos, this isn't going to be an inbound recap. We're here to talk about relationships and the power of human connection.
George B. Thomas (03:25):
It's interesting, Liz. First of all, if you're listening to this on your stereo, hit me up because I'm super curious if it's your favorite podcast app or if you actually have an eight track in your car and you're listening to what episodes are.
Liz Moorehead (03:38):
When I grew up at my mom's house and do you remember when we had stereos that basically they'd be on a bookshelf? They took up multiple shelf, many boxes.
George B. Thomas (03:46):
We had one of those. I brought
Liz Moorehead (03:47):
That out of my head.
George B. Thomas (03:48):
We had one of those. But here's what I want to do too because Liz, you said something and I think it's very, very important. You just said that they're worried about, we might be taking a step back and see that right there is the problem with most people is they think when we're talking about principles, when we're talking about foundational elements of life that, oh, let's take a step back for a second. I would beg you to position your brain differently, especially today, and it's less about back and more about deeper. It's a layer deeper in your life. It's a layer deeper in the way that you think. It's a layer deeper of importance, so just think less back, more deeper.
Liz Moorehead (04:32):
I think that's true though of a lot of people. I was having a conversation with somebody over the weekend about the idea of intake versus integration, right? We go through periods of learning. We go through like you just did, right? Or our listeners, whenever you go into a meeting, go to a conference anytime where you are actively participating in a situation by which you are meant to extract information, learn, educate, maybe shift your perception in some way. You always have to stop and integrate. You always have to stop and slow down, and I think people sometimes they hear that word, whoa, slow down. Slow down as an impediment to progress. But I want to hear from you, even though maybe the concept of taking a moment to talk about human connection and relationships may seem like not a detour, but hey, let's take a pause. Let's take a beat. Why is this important to you? Why are we having this conversation as it pertains to beyond your default? Because don't we all have human relationships anyway? Aren't we already all doing this?
George B. Thomas (05:34):
Well, no. To be honest with you, the answer is no. We're not all doing this, and if we're doing this, we're doing a crappy job most times, and this topic really is directly tied to hustle and the hustle culture and just like we took an episode where we talked about being healthy, that healthy hustle, paying attention to yourself as a holistic human. There are so many of us out there that when we're on this journey of going beyond our fault, when we're trying to go from a zero at something to a hero at something, we think to ourself by any means necessary, and so many times this, by any means necessary is the erosion of relationships. I can't tell you how many, and I'm in the room with high performing men. I'd love to have a statistic on high performing women, but I'm just not sure, but I'm in rooms with high performing men, and I can't tell you the amount of degraded marriages, degraded friendships, just work life and employees or other co-founders that they just make due.
(06:39):
They are just getting by. It's not these rich, full, robust, Hey, I've got your back. And what I want people to realize when I'm talking about relationships here I am talking about would die on the sword. I'm talking about the Dominic Toto familia, this rich, robust, no matter what, if you've got a problem, I'm there to help you solve it in so many relationships, and I want, as a listener, I want you to think and start to put your friendships or your relationships in buckets, and the buckets are simple too. High level friendship. Yeah, we communicate, we coexist, we see each other in the home or at work or at church or wherever it is, or deep level meaning you see each other on a spiritual, emotional, I get you when you walk in the door, I know something's right or I know something's, I'm getting goosebumps thinking about this.
(07:44):
When you walk in the door, I know something's right or I know something's wrong, like connected, physically, emotionally connected. I want you to put your relationships in those two buckets and start to be like, oh, I'm doing awesome, or, huh, wow, how did I end up here? Pertaining to the connections, the relationships, the community, and we'll talk about hopefully before this podcast is over, the 10 people that you surround yourself with because that's kind of a thing on the internet, and I think it's important that we pay attention. Not many people pay attention to that, but again, two buckets. Start to think all of the relationships you have and divide them into high level or deep relationships and see what you come up with.
Liz Moorehead (08:28):
A few things just went flying through my mind. First of all, I can't believe it's taken this long for us to bring up fast and furious in any sort of deep and meaningful way. I feel like it is our way, it is our thing, but I think one of the things you and I have always bonded over that as much as people cheese on us for enjoying that is that the thing that always gravitates me toward it is the fact that they are literal ride or dies, and those are not relationships that are typically celebrated in pop culture. The concept of family being celebrated in that way, and particularly as someone who has more chosen family, just the way I was raised, I think that's something to keep in mind. But you said something there that I really want to sink my teeth into, George, because you mentioned people should take an audit of the relationships that they have in their lives and put people into one of two buckets.
(09:14):
We've got the high level communication, those deep soul bond relationships, but what is the measuring stick? Because I'm sitting here thinking about the fact that I'm 40, I'm turning 41 next month. One of the great lessons I've learned is that you're a human bank account. There's only so much energy money you can take out. There's only so much time you can devote to other people, so I've actually found that my relationships are more meaningful, more that I've cultivated a smaller group of close friendships. So my question to you is that when people do this audit, how do they know if they're killing the game at it or if things are not going as well as they should be? Because I feel like it's not going to be a quantity issue. Somebody shouldn't be walking away with 25 soul bond relationships outside of their family.
George B. Thomas (09:59):
Yeah, no. If you're focused on quantity of friends, get off of Facebook, get off of LinkedIn, get off of Twitter in the real world, that's not that that's fake. That's just not reality. You want a few core friends, and so listen, I hear you ask that question. It's like, well, what's the measurement? Is what I heard you say. I think the first measurement is just what I gave was this idea, is it a deeper relationship or is it surface level? The other part of this that I layer in here, is it growth oriented? Meaning do you push each other to the next level? Are you striving to be better together or is it a toxic energy suck? Because we all have those relationships that are in our life that are toxic. Energy sucks, but for some reason we aren't willing to kill them and they need to be killed.
(10:50):
The other layer that I would put on this is before I go into this next section, what I want you to realize is, or what I don't want people to take away from this is George says, find 10 of your best friends that make you your best you and be selfish and only focus on yourself. That's not what I'm saying. So yes, should you find five, seven, just deep rooted ICU, let's grow 1% better each and every day, high performers maybe better than you, so they're pushing you to strive for something else. Yes, that should be a piece of your relationship. Friend, family group. The other side of this that I think sometimes gets forgotten, but I'm very, very adamant about this, is finding somebody that you feel is special, that has the makings of being and then bring them along for the ride, and you being the person that have brought them into your core, you being the person that's pushing them to the 1% better, you being the person that is driving that relationship. Again, where we all kind of fall apart is with relationships. We don't know who's in the driver's seat or who's in the passenger seat speaking of ride or dies by the way, and so therefore, if we're both in the passenger seat, that's funky, how do you even know? And so taking ownership of your relationships, being the person that's in the driver's seat of those, and maybe it's because some of your friends are, Ooh, ooh, maybe it's because some of your friends are your GPS, and maybe it's because you're the Uber to others.
Liz Moorehead (12:33):
Wow, I cannot tell you how many moments in my, because I've never been able to articulate it in just that way and listening at home. I want you to go back and replay what you just heard because I think that is the key right there to what you were just talking about, George, this idea of what some call the energy vampire, the outmoded relationships that we clinging onto and we're not suddenly saying, go through this list of people, treat it like survivor, kick them off the island. We're not talking about that, but it reminds me of this conversation I had back in an old life when I used to be the beer writer for the Capital Gazette and the Baltimore Sun, and I interviewed a guy named Hugh Sisson, and he had run one of the most prevalent and groundbreaking breweries in Maryland responsible for changing lots of legislation, and I had a chance to interview him, not for the 20th anniversary.
(13:23):
When everybody was interviewing him, I said, let's wait till that brewery is legal. I'll interview on the 21st. I said, what is one thing you wish you could go back and tell yourself as a business owner and an entrepreneur 21 years ago? And he said, I wish I could go back and tell myself that the people you start with are not always the people you grow with, and that's okay because what you said there about the GPS versus the Uber is that sometimes it doesn't start as you being the Uber. Sometimes it starts with you totally on the same page. You're lifting each other up and sometimes you just the path diverges.
George B. Thomas (13:56):
Yeah, sometimes you got to lighten your ride. I'm going to stick with this Dominic Reto, fast and furious familiar. You might start the race and it's like in a 1969 station wagon, three seater with wood paneling on the side, but by the time you get to the point where you're really chugging along, it has to be stripped down, torn apart, where it's just like it's a shell of the car that it used to be, but man, it is high performing. It has a big old engine in it, and everything that is of excess has been removed. If you think about how light they try to get these race cars to be so that they can go, the speed that they go, some people in your life are weighing you down. Some people in your life are your engine, and you have to figure out who, and you have to keep what you need and listen, I know this sounds difficult, but I'm going to say it for maybe the second or third time on this podcast.
(14:55):
You've got to remove people in your life that aren't serving any type of valuable positioning. And listen, I know I could get backlash, but I'm talking about family in this as well. I had a talk with a lady, it was after I did my first keynote speech, and when I started my first keynote speech, I had been told by Marcus Sheridan, which by the way, great relationship, love the man to death. Is he with me today? No. We had to lighten the car. We had to go in a different direction, as you'd say, but love the man to death. He said, Hey, you got to start your keynote with the fact that your high school dropout. I told him he was crazy. I'd been hiding from that for 25 years. I wasn't going to lead with that, and he said, until you're willing to be vulnerable in life, you're going to miss out on the magic moments. So I started this keynote black slide white text. I'm a high school dropout. The audience actually started to laugh, which for me was a real hot moment, but I didn't let us. That's great. You're
Liz Moorehead (15:52):
Standing on stage and everybody's up there, so Marcus, thanks for telling me to be vulnerable. This is great,
George B. Thomas (15:56):
Bud. Yeah, well, I kept a great outer shell, but the inside of me was like, oh, geez, this feels great. And so I said it verbally because I didn't say it the first time. I just put the slide on and I said, no, I'm a high school dropout, and I went to tell the story of my math teacher and how he told me I would never amount to anything, and I believed him and I was a high school dropout. The rest of the doc was all about marketing, sales, measurement, the typical things that you would get from a guy on stage talking about marketing, got to the end of the session, and this is where I'm saying even if it's family, sometimes you got to let it go, and if it's family, sometimes you got to do extra work in your brain. I get done with this talk and this lady comes up to me and she's like, Hey, I really get your math teacher conversation.
(16:44):
I was like, oh, thanks. I appreciate that. She goes, no. She could tell I didn't understand the level of conversation she was trying to have with me, the connection she was trying to have with me, the we are bonded in a way that you don't understand until the words that come out of my mouth way. She said, no, I don't think you understand. For me, that was my mother, and we sat there and we talked for 15, 20 minutes about forgiveness and poison and toxic relationships, and she knew as hard as it was at some point, she had to remove that from her life so that she could be a happy person so that she could be a healthy mental person so that she could move forward and be the human that she was actually called to be and wanted to be. And see, that's the thing. When I say this as a layer deeper when I want you to think not back but deeper in this, it's because somebody in your life right now as you're listening to these words, are holding you back from being the happy, helpful, humble human that you need to be on this earth. They're holding you back from having the ring or core of friends that you need to get to where you have to go and you've got to remove it.
Liz Moorehead (17:51):
I love that story that you told, and I'm glad you brought up the family piece of it as well, because that was something I actually went through a few years ago before Covid, I made the decision to remove my mother from my life, and that was a challenging moment because I remember talking to some people and they're like, well, you only have one mother, and part of me says, I understand that, and also this is my personal relationship, but I'm really glad you're bringing this up because often it is not the popular thing to do to step away from relationships. I just went through a season of this myself, which because walked with me through this path and it was really challenging. A lot of people did not understand why I was making some of the decisions I was making, why I was choosing to take a step back from certain relationships, and the thing I would posit to some of our listeners is who are the people who are triggering you into states that you no longer exist in?
(18:46):
For example, if you've been trying to pull yourself out of people's pleasing cycles, right? If you're trying to bring yourself out of those spaces, but you find you're triggered into those spaces if they're relationships that just don't feel good anymore. I love that you brought that up because George, the question I have for you now is that when you and I went into this conversation initially, we were really focused on cultivating the right relationships, but what I'm hearing from you, George, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that when you think about the value of human connection and relationships in your life, it's not just about the ones you choose to cultivate, it's the ones you choose to keep out of your circle, and that's equally important.
George B. Thomas (19:24):
I would say cultivate or kill, right? My brain likes to, I
Liz Moorehead (19:28):
Was going to say kill, but I
George B. Thomas (19:29):
Think it's
Liz Moorehead (19:30):
That dark, that
George B. Thomas (19:30):
Early. No, no, and see, that's the thing. I don't think it's dark. I think simplifying what could be complex is always a winner, and so it's what relationships do I want to cultivate? What relationships do I want to kill? Liz, it's funny you said in norms, it's not like this. It might be difficult to do. It's funny because Les Brown, the reason I'm bringing this up is there's so many times in my life that I harken this quote back to my brain. Whenever life gets hard, whenever I have to kill a relationship, whenever I need to push through an extra hour or two in the day, whenever I feel like I'm not at my best, but I know it's because I've been laying it out all on the field, I always bring this quote, so hopefully somebody listening to this, they might be able to attach this quote to their brain and move forward, and that is, if you do what is easy, your life will be hard, but if you do what is hard, your life will be easy, and that's from Les Brown, and when you think about killing relationships and you apply that quote to it, if you do what is hard, kill that toxic relationship, your life will be easy.
Liz Moorehead (20:37):
I love that. Another one I heard recently that has really stood me in good stead is if you learn how to sit with uncomfortable emotions, your life will become exponentially easier than you could have possibly imagined. I think that's often, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts around this topic recently because mindset is something I've really been focusing on a lot, and it's this idea of the uncomfortable emotions around who should be in your life versus who shouldn't be in your life. Often no one is attacking you in those moments. You just need to sit there and feel comfortable about the choices that you're making and understand that while you can have empathy for other people's emotions, you don't necessarily have to be responsible for them.
George B. Thomas (21:19):
It's funny, my brain just did a hard right turn when I heard you say that because I think the relationship that we're not talking about is also the relationship that we have to cultivate with ourself, because when you were talking there, I was like, oh my gosh, they're not attacking you, by the way, that's what fourth gear, right turn. Let's drift a little bit, if you will. I was like, yeah, they're not attacking you, but you are. You're your worst critic. You're the enemy in your brain. You're the one that doesn't take time to sit in uncomfort, doesn't actually sleuth or become the detective of what just happened verbally, spatially, whatever, with those people around you. You're walking through this world with blinders on, if you will, and we have to make sure that we're working on the relationship with the thing that is in ourselves.
(22:15):
And one of the things that has gotten me to the point where I am today, and again, I have these people are quickly going to realize to these podcast episodes, I have these short little things that I put in my brain as these programmable binary blips, right? These blips that I put in my brain and for years and years and years, Liz, I would tell myself, you've got to love yourself before you love others. You've got to love yourself before you love others, because there is a time in my life where I don't necessarily know that I loved anybody else. I know I definitely didn't love myself. I had to cultivate that relationship within myself of like, okay, love yourself, love yourself, be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Pay attention to the you are strong, you are smart, you are whatever these things that you need to plug into your life.
(23:06):
Which by the way, if you're listening to this and you haven't done the I ams of your life, the things that you think you suck at, but you want to be great at, and therefore you say, I am this, I am this, I am this. But there's a whole YouTube culture by the way, that you can go look up and they'll literally say it for you, but you have to feed into yourself. You have to build the relationship with yourself. You have to be self-aware, hear the small voice, all the things that you've heard around being a whole human or as my friend Liz likes to say, a whole ass human. You've got to pay attention to that almost in order to do anything that we've talked about up until this point in the podcast of now paying attention to the exterior, right? So when you think of relationships, I would need you to think internal relationship, and I need you to think external relationships.
Liz Moorehead (23:57):
So clearly I think what we're going to have to do is a follow-up to this episode. We're going to have to do a relationship with the self episode. I think we're a hundred percent going to have to do that. I want to pivot us back here briefly to the external relationships, because you brought something up earlier in the conversation that I think is really important because it ties directly into what we were just talking about. We've been talking about cultivating and killing. Now I want us to start thinking about that idea of you are who you surround yourself with. Talk to me about that. What exactly does that mean? And I'm sure some listeners who have heard this know exactly where we're going, but I would encourage you to stick with this. George always takes us on some interesting side quests.
George B. Thomas (24:36):
Yeah, it's interesting because I actually, how this happened in my own life, 20 20, 20 19, we all know it was happening, and I don't need to name it, but we had a thing going on. The world was like, the sky is falling. It was literally a chicken little moment. I'm just going to throw that out there, but the sky really was falling, so maybe it wasn't a chicken little moment, but we had a really big group of friends. And to survive the time, we would go to a friend's pool, we would have some beverages.
Liz Moorehead (25:04):
And this was during the pandemic?
George B. Thomas (25:06):
Yeah, I was trying not to say that, but yes, it was during the pandemic. We're
Liz Moorehead (25:10):
Getting a little bit, we just got to say it out loud.
George B. Thomas (25:13):
Yeah, I hate that word. I hate that word. Anyway, we were trying to survive, and through spending so much time with people who historically we would have called friends, you could start to see a divide happening amongst the friend group and some people you could look and say, I don't want to be that, and if I'm around that I am actually that I can feel myself going in that direction. And so here's the very interesting part is there were relationships that started to filter off or were killed in some situations. Like, Hey, yo, you just can't come back. You just can't come back. That's unacceptable behavior. You can't come back. And while it was difficult, and by the way, I can literally look at the friends that I had and have today and the level of difficultness, I know that's not a word. Maybe its for us.
(26:14):
It's for us today. You could see where somebody was really, really struggling with killing the relationship. You could see where somebody was like, eh, whatever. It's all good. Hey, we'll move on. And so we went from this idea of we had to have this massive group to survive. We had to have this massive party group, if you will, to survive so that we came out of it with what we call the core. And the core is where you want to get the core is where you actually find those conversations that matter. The core is where you find the roadmaps or the person that you can lean into and say that you're having a hard time. The core is where you find lack of judgment. The core is where you find love. The core is where you can just be uncomfortable, but feel safe, and you can't get that out of a big group. You can't get that out of a party group, if you will. You can only get that when you shrink it down. And what's interesting is you actually, especially with relationships, many times you'll get something larger if it's smaller.
Liz Moorehead (27:24):
Oh, yeah. Because you're able to invest more.
George B. Thomas (27:26):
Exactly. You're
Liz Moorehead (27:27):
Not spreading yourself as thinly.
George B. Thomas (27:29):
Now that you said that word, we've got to challenge the listeners because you said that real quick. Yeah, because you invest more. Of course, you invest more. One of the things, Liz, the reason I'm doing this podcast is because everything that I have done is indexing off of that. You're a good human and you just get it. We're doing this podcast. I think that everybody has the potential to be a good human, and I think everybody has the potential to get it. But you said, of course, you invest more. As you're listening to this podcast episode, I want you to think to yourself, when's the last time you made a deposit? When's the last time you invested in a relationship? When's the last time you reached out and called your mom a fool? I'm kind of joking there, but when have you taken action to build a relationship up or to tighten a relationship? When's the last time you made a deposit?
Liz Moorehead (28:21):
It's funny to me because now my brain is going in three different directions. It reminds me of a conversation you and I were having earlier this summer where you and I are both walking the same kind of entrepreneurial journey, but you're a few months ahead of me than I am. And I remember having a conversation with you because this replies both to work and personal, and I think that's something that people forget is that I came to you and said, Hey, I've made X, Y, and Z choices to streamline so I can stay more focused. And I think people are hesitant that people are more likely to do that in their business than they are to do in their personal. Maybe it's because there's a financial piece to it, or maybe it's just a matter of I physically only have a certain number of hours in the day to work, but I think it's something worth noting is that energetically, you only have the capacity to deposit and withdraw so much, but if you're clearing the space to make people in your life who you want to keep rather than send off on their next journey, you have to make sure you're cultivating those relationships.
(29:22):
Now, the other piece of it though is that you told me a story about the inverse of this happening, right? We've talked about oof. I'm now seeing this is not a relationship I want to cultivate anymore. But you once told me about your relationship with the church and how there was a time when you had actually decided, I never want to go to church again. You guys are hypocrites. Just no, thank you. And it sounds like the inverse has happened with that particular relationship.
George B. Thomas (29:49):
Yeah, it's interesting. There's a couple things with this, and by the way, before you stop or turn it off because you feel like this is going to turn into a religious podcast, let me just warn you, we're not turning into a religious podcast, but it is a part of my life. It is a part of my relationships that I cultivate relationship with Jesus. But there's some things that I think that are going to come out of my mouth that are actually going to help you with your personal relationships and your professional relationships because both of these things tie to the way that we sometimes think. So Liz, you alluded to that there was a point in my life where I felt like Christians were the most hypocritical people that I had ever met in my life. And without a doubt, I had reached that point, and I didn't really think that I was ever going to go back to church because there was just some pains and there were humans there, and it was messy.
(30:40):
And I was talking to an old gentleman, he was owner of a camp in Jew, Ohio. There's a time in my life where I worked for three years as a camp counselor, taught kids how to ride horses, certified lifeguard, repelling instructor, archery instructor. It's a whole different, it feels like a different life. But we were sitting around the fire and there was a nice hot bed of Cole's. It was him, me and a couple other folks. And he asked me why I didn't go to church on Sundays, why? I just kind of hung around the camp. And I said, bill, I got to be honest with you. Christians are the most hypocritical people I've ever met in my life. I don't think I'll ever go back to church just because of some things that have happened. And he said, do me a favor. He said, you see the coals in the fire?
(31:23):
I said, yeah. He goes, I want you to pull one of those coals out of the fire and just set it to the side. Of course, we had some tongs I didn't like. I'm not a manly man, Liz. I didn't reach in and just grab a cold. I had a pair of tongs. I grabbed a coal and I set it out there, and of course, being 20 something, I'm like, and what's your point? He goes, just sit quietly for a little bit and in this red coal in a matter of seconds, turned dark black. And he just looked at me and he said, you're the coal sitting out of church. He said, now, do me a favor. I want you to put that back in the fire and see what happens. And Liz, immediately it turned bright orange and he said, and that's how quickly you can be on fire for Jesus.
(32:09):
Here's the thing, the separation, it isn't about everything that makes it about right. It's not about the politics of church. It's not about dressing up and showing up. It's just about the ability to say, I'm going to go here and be, I'm going to go here and deposit in a relationship that is important. I'm going to go here and withdraw the energy that I need to move forward. I'm going to go there and get on fire so that I can have that fire to take me through the rest of the week. And it's funny, right after that, it was probably like a week later, I was still battling with this. And there was an old farmer who actually worked at the camp too, and he knew that this had happened. And he said, George, let me ask you a question. I said, yes. He goes, are you waiting for the perfect church?
(33:01):
And then you'll go. And I was like, yeah, as soon as I find the perfect church, I'll go. He goes, do me a favor and please don't go. And I was like, Arden, what do you mean? He goes, because as soon as you go, it won't be perfect. Now, ladies and gentlemen, those are two by four moments in life. The fact that we have this perception of what church should be, we have this perception of what Christians should be, and when we realize that it's actually about energy, and we realize that it's coming at it as imperfect humans, we realize it's more of a hospital, less of a sanctuary. I'm just going to throw that out there. By the way, the main place where you do church is called a sanctuary. It is less of a sanctuary. It is more of a hospital. It's about showing up and getting healed. And so for me, I had to just do almost an about face and be like, well, shoot. Everything that I thought I had as a arsenal to not need to not have to work on a relationship has been completely demolished. And so for me, this is why a lot of how I navigate the world now has to do with these fundamental things of imperfect, imperfect humans, energy flowing out, energy coming in. They feel very woo-hoo, but they're all actually directly correlate with my relationship or journey back into the church.
Liz Moorehead (34:32):
What's fascinating about that too, because I don't know if anybody could see that, but literally when you were telling that story, I was having a two by four moment because there's the obvious thread there talking about your relationship with Christ, your relationship with the church. But if you were to take a step back from that as a listener, that is an important lesson regardless as to whether you're looking at it from a spiritual perspective or a secular perspective. So let's take it from a secular perspective for a moment. The idea that you pick up a coal, and when you think about coals, right? There isn't one single coal with that fire that is igniting such fire that is creating such radiance. It's the power of the community coming together. But when you as a coal decide to remove yourself from the pack for whatever reason, you will start to feel the coldness.
(35:20):
You will start to feel the anguish. You will start to feel that disconnectedness. And for me personally, I'm thinking about this journey that I just went through. I went through a pretty intense divorce earlier this year. As a result, I cut a lot of relationships out of my life. I decided, how did I get here? I need to go inward. Some people might call it a hermit mode. And I've noticed over the past couple of months, I started feeling a lot of anguish and a lot of pain. And that's because I was a coal who had started staying out of the fire for too long. And so as I started to reintegrate myself back into community spaces, but with more purpose now, sometimes we do need to take a step back from everything in order to evaluate, Hey, how did I get here? But at some point, you have to make the point, purpose, or the choice to go back and do so with the right connections in the right fires, in the right communities.
George B. Thomas (36:16):
Yeah, and here's funny, I'm glad that you ended with the word communities. I'm going to talk personal, but I'm also going to talk to those professionals that might be listening to this, those coals didn't say or don't think, let's build a community of coals. They're just coals. And so many humans right now are like, I need to be part of this community. Or if we go to the professional side, I need to build a community. No, you just need to show up where you want to show up and be human around the rest of the humans. And that's by being human, which we'll probably have to do a whole episode on. What the heck do I mean when I say human, but by just showing up and being human. That's how relationships are built. That's how you can start to diagnose what relationships fit and what don't. That's how you can actually start to build your core. Just show up and be human. Don't overthink it. Just show up and be human.
Liz Moorehead (37:21):
So George, what's been interesting about this conversation is, I mean, every conversation we have is deep, but this one has gotten very personal in a number of ways to the point where not once have you made a reference to our default state or living beyond it. So here's my question to you. What the heck does any of this have to do with moving from my default state to beyond my default? Why does this matter?
George B. Thomas (37:45):
Listen, you're trying to go somewhere, and if you haven't taken the time to cultivate relationships, you got no ride, you got no gas, it's going to be a lot more difficult. Listen, we started this episode, and I purposely was trying to stay away from inbound and the professional side of what I do, but everything that has happened over the past decade has been predicated on relationships, relationships with employees at the HubSpot Academy, as I was educating myself, relationships with people like Brian Halligan and Dan Tyre, as I was educating other humans inside the space, relationships with all the friends, and yes, they're bucketed deep relationships, surface level relationships, but they're friends, not the core, but they're friends. All of these people, the network, the networking, the relationship building, the being human with others, the ability to stop and listen and stop and help, all of that has driven me to where I am today, which is a person who is a high school dropout, who has started a company that has multiple employees, multiple contracts, and is helping hundreds, if not thousands of humans, be better at HubSpot, but also just be better humans in general.
(39:11):
If I try to do this alone, I mean, listen, hub Heroes podcast, do I do it alone? No. This podcast, do I do it alone? No. Any piece of interview content? Am I doing it alone? No. Here's the thing. If people would just stop and watch, it's all about collaboration. I want to do a rap song, but I'm not going to because I'm trying to have a moment here. It's all about collaboration, and it's all about creating something special together and having the energy that the group will bring, having the ideas that a group will bring. Listen, if I didn't have the ability to start this company, hire my family, my daughters would've never had the idea of hiding superheroes throughout the BCEC that people could take pictures of and tag and have a layer or level of relationship, even if unseen with us and our brand amongst 12,000 people.
(40:16):
So that's the other piece that I would beg you to pay attention to as you build these relationships, cultivate or as you kill these relationships, think about or watch the dominoes that fall on each side of that. Well, I got rid of this, so this became easier. I added this person and it pushed me to this, and this measuring the effectiveness or the importance of every relationship, I think we're really bad at that. We just have relationships very often. We do not sit down and actually stop or slow down long enough to think or measure, even if it's positive or negative, let alone the layers of positivity or negativity in how far they go both ways.
Liz Moorehead (40:59):
George, I've spent so much time around you. I can't help but say it. Here's where my brain, when you were talking about that, I know. Here's where my brain goes. Honestly, it goes back to the start of our relationship because sometimes you don't know what a relationship is going to become, but you have to find a way to listen to your intuition or as I like to call it, an inner cupcake, because if it's not named after something I can eat or I baked good, I'm not listening. So I think about that though. You and I met in 2017 when Impact acquired the Sales Lion after it acquired my agency, and you and I had this very interesting moment. It was one of those things where we were kind of in a big crowd of people. I think we both felt equally alone, but we were somehow sitting next to each other and we looked at each other and went, this isn't the end of this.
(41:47):
Because you were about to go off and work with Remington and Rachel and Impulses, creative, and then Kismet. You and I ended up speaking at the same conference last year, if you can believe it, last spring, it feels like a thousand years ago, I happened to get an earlier flight because I was very nervous about missing my Delta connection from Charlotte to Michigan. And I was sitting there and I had hours to go, and who comes walking up? But George B. Thomas at the exact moment, I fundamentally believe we were supposed to see each other again. And it's not like we hadn't spoken, but it had been very kind of surface level, and all of a sudden it was, we were both at this exact same moment in our lives, and now let's think about what this year would've looked like on either side of our fences without this relationship
George B. Thomas (42:35):
Completely different, completely,
Liz Moorehead (42:36):
Completely different, and not a different type of thing that I would ever want to consider. So the one thing I would encourage people who are listening to think about is that as you evaluate relationships, sometimes you think you know everything and you don't. Sometimes you have to allow events to unfold as they naturally are. But listen to that intuition, that inner cupcake. It is very rarely wrong. Usually the person you're feeling in your life is when you're not listening to it. But that's a whole different episode
George B. Thomas (43:05):
For me. It's my still small voice. It's that voice in my brain that sometimes will whisper to me and sometimes will yell at me. But here's what I'll say. How do you unpack what Liz just said and use it? And again, I like to simplify the complex I heard in my brain. There's something here. There's something here. I don't know what I don't know when, but there's something here. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you go back to our Kohl's analogy, there was a spark. I would beg that you would pay attention to the sparks in your life because the sparks are what will ignite the fire. The fire is what will create the coals, the bed of hot, warm coals of humans that you end up being part of. See, that's the thing. We are always looking for this grandiose moment. We're always looking for the big sign of life when it comes to relationships. Pay attention to the spark.