Follower Of One With Mike Henry, Sr.
What do you do when life becomes challenging? Who do you turn to? For many Christians, the answer is of course, turning to God. Chad Burmeister is today’s host as he talks to our guest, the founder of Follower of One, Mike Henry, Sr. Mike talks about the early challenges he faced in the workplace and his professional life, and he shares whet happened when he found God. Mike talks about living a life full of value and what he is aiming for with Follower of One.
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Follower Of One With Mike Henry, Sr.
I am with Mike Henry, who has a company that I’m extremely intrigued by. I love that he’s created a company and gets to stick with his passion. A lot of us go through life from company to company. Both me and Mike have done that over the years. His company is called Follower of One. He’s been doing this for a few years. We’re going to dive deep, get to know Mike Henry, share some of his story and some of the lessons that he’s learned over time. Mike, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
What an exciting time. It turns out you know Deb Brown Maher who came to our first Living a Better Story retreat, what a small world. Let’s dig in to start. I heard a couple of numbers, 31 and 16. What do those numbers mean to you?
Follower of One: The goal of Follower of One is to build an online community that connects marketplace Christians all around the globe and helps them integrate their faith into their daily life.
I counted up that I’ve worked for 31 different people at 16 different companies in my career. Four different industries and in 4 or 5 different areas of the businesses, depending upon how you count it. I used to tell people that I was career-challenged that if you looked up that term in the dictionary, it would say, “See Mike Henry.” I felt like it was one of those things. I was a bad picker. Some people were bad at hiring me. Many of those companies were good companies but they weren’t good fits for me.
Many of us go through life trying to please other people when once we figure out what our fingerprint is built for, then life becomes so much easier. You’ve been there for a few years. I’ve been here at ScaleX and now Living a Better Story for many years. That’s the longest run I’ve ever had and it's doing the work that I love. That's the end destination. You're running your own company for the last few years. If you go back to when you're younger, what I've found is a lot of times, our God-given talents are exposed to us at a young age because there are no blinders and filters put on yet that the world puts on. To get to know you as a six-year-old, what did you love to do? What was your passion when you walked out of the house? What was the thing that you loved at age six or so?
Mostly it was putting together pickup games of different kinds. Whatever season it was, if it’s football season, we were playing football. If it was baseball season, we were playing baseball. If it was basketball season, we’d be playing basketball. That’s what I remember. It’s hanging out with a bunch of other kids. We played whatever sport and whoever brought the ball played.
What did you enjoy most about that experience playing those sports with teammates?
The opportunity to get to be with them. Your questions prompted me to think about this a little bit more, but it’s the ability for us all to enjoy doing something together. That’s always been part of my story. My best jobs were places where we put together great teams and we accomplished something that people didn’t expect necessarily to be accomplished, whether it was a software development project or getting an office profitable.
Looking at those jobs that were amazing, you said there was a handful of experiences where it came together. What do you think the common DNA thread was that made it an interesting opportunity for you and your team?
It was always that we shared a common goal. Our goal was not the pursuit of our own state or status. We were all aimed at something that was outside of each of us but we were also equally invested in it.
I wish the country had that attitude again. It seems like there’s not a common goal right now. It needs to get back to a common goal.
Unfortunately, we tend to only do that anymore when we’re under attack. I even wrote a blog post years ago titled Remembering 9-13. It was about what we were all thinking a couple of days after 9/11. We were all united in pursuing something for the United States of America that was outside of each of us.
Robert White is part of Living a Better Story. He was one of the early human potential movement people in the world. He did work with Mind Dynamics and EST, which is now Landmark. He calls it the third thing. In a marriage, there's him and her. Often, if it's a company or a country, if there’s a third thing that everybody needs to set their sight on, then amazing things can be accomplished. This is an interesting time in human history where the third thing now can again be back to the creator. We were all made by somebody. We didn’t just get this fingerprint, the ability to breathe and the mountains. It didn't just show up in a magic pop but was created. I believe that a lot of what's going on ultimately leads us back to the truth, which is the way, the truth and the life conversation.
All the other third things are bad substitutes, even if it’s your nation, a particular idea, a church or a political party. All those other third things are substitutes that come short of. We were designed to have that third thing be God.
That’s the quote of the conversation here and 2021 so far. Thank you for that. One thing that’s been common in all of these conversations is we all face mountains in our pathways. At the time, they could feel like the biggest mountain you’ve ever seen. You and I, and everybody figured out a way around, above and under. If you think of one of those mountains that you’re comfortable sharing, what would it be and what was your way that you got around or over the mountain?
When I first tried to leave commission sales, my father was in the freight business. I grew up working around truck lines because that was easier than giving me an allowance. As someone who’s graduated from college, trying to get a salaried sales job at a trucking company in Memphis, Tennessee where my father worked. He managed to arrange a number of interviews and connections for me. I counted up that I interviewed over 40 different places for jobs and was turned down in all those places. I hated looking for work. I always felt like looking for a job was trying to figure out what not to tell them so they would hire me because if I talked long enough, I would talk myself out of a job. If they asked me enough questions or talk to me long enough, I would say something that would give them some reason not to hire me. I hate it. What I disliked was I had to take my focus off of my dream of being about something that’s the third thing and putting that focus on me being the first thing. It was a miserable time and effort. It was a very frustrating experience. I’m feeling my heart rate going up talking about it now.
What kept you going one foot in front of the other? I’m sure there are people out there, even though the news is saying, “There are more jobs than people right now.” I have a stinking feeling that there are other people who are looking for 40 and told no every time also. What do you tell those people?
I even do some volunteering along these lines now. Know what you're good at and get to know fast. I always try and encourage people to know what you're good at. If that's not going to be of any help to the person you're talking to, help them come to that conclusion. Help them find the right person, then you find your right spot. Often, that right spot is a value exchange where we create some kind of value. Our best value is the stuff that we're energized and passionate about doing anyway. I'll be more valuable if I'm working for somebody who wants the real me.
It's interesting because I feel like when I interviewed for jobs, I did get most of them. However, my challenge was once I got the first sales job, I was fired out of. That was the same level of devastation that you shared looking for jobs was the other side of that coin. I remember feeling devastated like it was a gut punch, “Mom, Dad, I’m 22. What’s unemployment? Do I file for that?” I did because I was like, “It’s available. I might as well.” I probably got one check for two weeks or something and then landed the next job.
Follower of One: The Holy Spirit buys us the split second where we can take every thought captive. Even if we take our bad thoughts and give them to Jesus, then he can give us joy out of them.
The second miserable experience was the first time I ever applied for unemployment, it’s like, “I don’t need money this bad.” It used to be a lot harder. You used to have to go stand in line and fill out paperwork. They made it a lot easier now.
Now you just wave a wand and say, “I need my extra $300 a week.” “No problem. Can we wire it to you?” Times are changing. I’ve always thought of flow as frictionless like you find the right job and it’s easy. In the book, it says that flow is the intersection of you’re good at it, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy. It means you can do the work and it’s fulfilling. Looking back at the stuff that was hard like doing cold calls and being fired from that first sales job, if I didn’t earn those stripes over a twenty-year period, then I would have been held at a level of success that wouldn’t have come. Being in alignment with your purpose and doing hard things, how do you figure that out?
It’s hard. It’s trying not to make the same mistake twice. Now is a mistake. Some of those jobs I took were miserable fits for me. After some time, I could no longer manage the gap between what they wanted me to do and what I needed to do to survive. I quit one job without having another job. I quit working for my dad’s company the first time and I did not have another job. I said, “I can’t do this anymore.” He wanted me to sit there and do what I was told. I couldn’t be that guy. For many of the companies that I worked for, it was discouraging because the passion to be about a third thing drove me.
Most business owners are only worried about their thing. If we’re making money, then that’s the right thing. The business becomes the third thing. I always wanted to aim higher than that. I came up with a little motto for myself. My purpose is to elevate purpose and mobilize people. An elevated purpose pulls us into the future. A purpose that’s aimed lower like the success of a business or an individual, I don’t have as much motivation to help a company or an individual be successful as I do about helping a group of us achieve what I would consider to be an ultimate success.
I could remember I met with a guy named Townsend Wardlaw. He was my business coach for about 1.5 years, an early life coach. We were in a Zoom meeting, it was 1.5 hours. He got to the point where he goes, “What do you want to do after ScaleX?” I’m like, “I want to go on a cruise with my wife for one year.” “After that.” He kept going to the afters. I was like, “Hang on.” I have the shirt on that said Elevation Church on it because I went to Elevation in North Carolina for 3 or 4 years. I was like, “What I wanted to do is open an Elevation here in Colorado at some point once I was resettled back into the Colorado area.” I happened to be wearing that shirt that day and I hadn’t worn it in years. It was under the other shirt. I’m like, “Are you serious?”
He said, “Chad, if you can connect to that vision, then hiring a CRO, management, and checking the box on all the other stuff you need to do for your company will become crystal clear and easier.” He was right. Now, Living a Better Story has been born. I’m building an app and we’re focused on kingdom-focused stuff that will make a ripple through eternity and not just through the dozens of years here on planet Earth. It’s amazing when you put God in the front seat and you go in the passenger seat. That’s pretty fun. The next question is accomplishment-related. What would change everything for you if you could wave the proverbial magic wand?
I'm working towards that right now. The goal of Follower Of One is to build an online community that connects the marketplace and Christians all around the globe and helps them integrate their faith into their daily life. I wanted it to be donor/participant-funded. It doesn’t have a sales model associated with it, except that it is a sale. Every time a Christian reads some of our content or does anything with anything related to Follower Of One, if they then choose to pray for their coworkers or to invest in the lives of the people that they work with, making their third thing their relationship with God instead of their job and their retirement. Every time they make that decision, that’s a sale for us. That’s a transaction that I’m looking for. One of these days, I’d love to count the number of times people say, “I prayed for my coworkers today.”
That's the unit of measure. That's the brick. I heard a speech in New York where they said, "New Jersey and New York were built around the same time." His thought was that they both had similar visions but it was in the execution. New York City focused more on brick by brick, then they built up and beat New Jersey in the long haul. It's focusing on what is your brick. If you could have that in a counter where it was, "I prayed for someone," that's pretty neat. Rick Warren’s, from The Purpose Driven Life, Saddleback Church in SoCal, was one more for Jesus. I want one more. Yours is even moving upstream from that. The activity leads to the end destination just like in sales. It’s how many calls did you make? How many conversations did you have? I liked that as an idea for a brick. That’s neat. If we go fast forward three years from now, this probably relates to the bricks we talked about. You look back and we’re on episode number two. You said, “Chad, this was the most amazing three years.” What happened during those three years?
What we’re trying to do right now is creating support elements for different groups of people. We created a lot of content for individuals. We’re working now on creating it for churches and spawn groups. Three years from now, the most amazing thing would be if we had 100,000 people in an online community who were counting bricks and taking part in through their church or their business doing what we call a marketplace mission trip, that’s one of our activities, doing that a couple of times a year and praying for their coworkers more often. Enough of them are donating that we can have a support staff. Our goal is to be the support organization for workplace missionaries.
I attended a Christian-based leadership organization meeting once. It's maybe $800, $1,200 a month or something. There are a couple that are out there, I said, "How long have you been around?" It was twenty years or something. "How many members do you have?" "We're really proud, 2,000 or something.” I’m like, “Twenty years and 2,000 members.” That’s cool but how do we get to a level where millions of people get impacted? I’m always thinking bigger ripple. What do you think is the blocker of people that have Christian values bringing them into their workplace or being open enough to go to a men’s group like this once a month? What is it that keeps that group at 2,000 or 3,000? How do we change that?
The way I’m praying to do it is by helping people see that there is something they can do Monday through Saturday. There were times in my Christian career, my Christian life and my business career when I thought that the only thing for me to do was to stay out of trouble until Sunday. There was nothing the church could do for me where I worked. If I could get back to the church, they could do something else for me, but where I work, they couldn’t do a whole lot. Some of that is loosening up through Zoom and things like that. Still, there’s this consumer model that exists. I either put myself in that market or I take myself out of that market by how much demand there is on the rest of my time.
Part of the reason we’ve designed Follower of One the way we have is we want it to work in your non-discretionary time. You ought to be able to work on a production line and still be a full-time minister for Jesus or work in a call center, taking a call and every time you hang up the phone, another one rings in. You still have time to pray for the people that you’re talking to. There’s got to be a way wherein my non-discretionary time I can start to take some action. The problem is we all have these habits. I do my church thing when I’m in that bucket. I do my other things when I’m in that bucket. As long as I don’t hit the newspaper or make it on TMZ or something like that, then I’m okay.
I did a podcast in person. It’s called The Chair of Joy. They bring this white chair around that looks like a king or queen’s chair. You sit in it. They have cameras and spotlights. It’s a twenty-minute conversation. A couple of minutes of meditation and interview conversation. Her ask at the end of this session was, “Can you commit to three times a day, focusing on connecting the dots with something that made you joyful in life?” There were 2 or 3 moments that I envisioned during this. What I think of it is there are 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts that a normal person has in a day. Of those, more than half or up to 90% for some people are negative. Think of this roaring river in Colorado with stage four rapids and you put your raft on. There’s no turning that river.
That's like your thoughts. The only way to do it is to purposefully have something that triggers you to go, "I can't do my Facebook. I'm going to get off my phone for one minute right now and think about that joyous moment in life." For me, it'd be my grandfather's retirement at the top of Mobil Oil tower in Dallas. It was one of those magic moments. You go to that and go, "All those memories and great stuff or your kids being born." You can shift what goes down the river of your mind every day. People who are living in depression, if you try that simple little thing, three times a day, pick a positive thought, it feels like those simplistic algorithmic things could change everything.
That’s similar to what Shawn Achor wrote about in The Happiness Advantage. I also believe that as Christians, we always have that opportunity. The Holy Spirit buys us the split second where we can take every thought captive. Even if we take our bad thoughts and give them to Jesus, then He can give us joy out of them. Some of the things we talk about are questions about Living a Better Story. Now I can look back at all the frustration of my career and see how it’s gone into what Follower of One became. I couldn’t do any of that in the short term back in the day because I had no idea what Follower of One would be, but I see how God’s managed to fit me together for this thing. If I pray for my coworkers and then I hear about something they did, I can take my joy right out of that because I was a participant in that. They don’t know because I prayed for them on my own. God has this ability to put us right where he wants us to be in the lives of every person we work with.
I had a conversation with Carlos Hidalgo, the cofounder of ANNUITAS, a big marketing agency. They were one of the top three. He was there for several years. He chased everything except his marriage and his kids. He's now written a book about it. He's now sold his house. He's separated from his wife for one year. It was a painful experience but he’s back and they’re remarried. He’s a follower. Here’s the quote that he gave, which fully aligns with what you said. “Even the ugliest part of your story is not your story because it’s still being written.” It’s a chapter of the story but the book is yet to be finished. Let’s flip the page and let’s get to the next chapter. It’s still part of the book. You can’t change that but you can change the next chapter and the chapter you’re on now. That’s a white page that you’re writing on right now.
I have another friend who talks about stewarding your story that even our story is part of God’s plan, “God, what do you want me to do with this ugly chapter in my story?”
Usually, the ugly chapter becomes the chapter that’s the most important chapter of your life. Usually, most people would ask, what would you tell your twenty-year-old self? We could do that one first. What would you tell your younger self?
“You haven't seen anything yet.” I was so smart. I tell people that my handicap is arrogance. I knew everything when I was twenty. I would tell me to shut up longer.
We had two pastors when we got married, mine and my wife’s. Both pastors had incredible feedback. My wife said, “You can do anything for any amount of time as long as you know why.” That one I’ve used a lot of times in life. During the live ceremony, my pastor looked at me and shook his head. He said, “He is not through with you yet.” He used it twice. I was like, “What do you mean by that?” All of the things that happen in life you’re like, “Now I see what you’re talking about.” It gives you opportunities to be a witness over your whole life. Here’s the advanced question. This is a vision exercise that I had. It took an hour one time. I’m going to give you the two-minute condensed version. You walk outside of your house. You go into this big open field and there’s this bird. Think of the joust bird that people would get on when you played as a kid.
You jump on this bird and it’s very safe. The bird takes you up into the clouds. You’re not buckled in and it’s fine. You’re just flying. It takes you twenty years into the future and then takes you down to where you’re living at that time, twenty years from now. You come down out of the clouds. You park wherever that is. You get off the bird, you knock on the door and you meet your future self. You take inventory of what you see, what's the house look like, shake your hand and look around. What do you see there? You exchange pleasantries. You're about to leave and you go, "What's one tip that you would give me?" The same twenty-year ago question, but now it’s your future self telling you what you are right now. You get back on the stork, you come back and you’re here. What did that future you tell yourself that you can learn from? What did you notice in the room in that environment?
Twenty years from now, I’d be about the same age as both my parents were when they passed away. I’m getting old. I don’t want to admit that but there’s nothing you can do about it. I hope that his comment would be, “It was a good thing you didn’t quit and you stuck with it,” because what we’re trying to do is difficult and it’s hard. I had a friend go, “If that’s not being successful, why are we doing it?” We’re not doing it to be successful. We’re doing it because it’s what we want to do. You would say, “You thought you were shutting up longer but you probably will still need to shut up longer.”
Try it sometime when you have a half-hour of meditation. It's amazing what you see. The takeaway for me was I can still picture that. I went somewhere in Greece. I was looking down on a cliff. It was simple. There wasn't a lot of stuff, but the thing is that doesn't have to be where it ends up in twenty years. The fun part is you can look forward and go, “That could happen.” That’s a cool outcome that my subconscious took me to, but maybe I want to be living in Vail or moving to somewhere other than Greece. Who knows? It’s fun when you can go talk to yourself in the future and then give yourself advice. There’s so much happening under the hood. It was an interesting thought.
I hope I’m enjoying the fact that I haven’t been actively involved in Follower of One from a responsibility standpoint for several years and that it’s going without me.
We’re here for a reason. Our app is coming out. Robert White is part of Living a Better Story. He’s transformed 1.3 million people from a mindset perspective. My job in all of it is to inject the Christianity belief in a higher power. He’s a believer but it wasn’t necessarily on the packaging of the mindset courses. There’s only been a handful that had ventured out into, "If you do all that mindset stuff and you connect with the straight telephone wire into your creator, look out what is possible." We're meant to be in this conversation. Deb was putting my pathway. Anything I can do to be helpful of Follower of One, count me as all in.
I’m grateful. The same goes for me. There are no accidents. I can’t define the ultimate success. I hope that we’re all pursuing it because if we’re pursuing the success that exists here on this planet, it won’t go with us.
What role does faith play in your journey? Sometimes people say, “It hit me at age 37.” Sometimes it was given to them by their parents. I’d be curious about when did faith come into your life and what role does it play?
I became a Christian at age 30 through frustration at work. We were already married. My wife was a believer. I was a born-in-America Christian. I wasn’t Jewish and I hadn’t killed anybody. I was born in America so I thought I was a Christian. I acknowledged God. I acknowledged Jesus. If they’d leave me alone, I’d leave them alone. That’s how I lived. My career being screwed up, frustrating and miserable. My wife was also challenging me to get more involved in church. She realized that I was not a true Christian. She was pushing me to get more involved in church. My employer wanted me to do what I was told. I decided to go to church because I couldn’t tell my wife no. I couldn’t tell my employer no.
I spent 2 or 3 months involved in church. That's when I became a Christian on a Saturday at a workshop when I first learned about salvation being by grace alone. I was blown away but then on Sunday afternoon, I got this pit in my stomach. I had to go back to the same frustrating job. I started begging God to get me out of there. I tell people that I've been in The Faith at Work Movement for 33 years. The day after I became a Christian, I was miserable in my job trying to figure out how to integrate my faith into my daily life. That’s what we’re trying to do with Follower of One.
In attending that session with this company that’s been around for twenty years, it turns out there are legal cases that you can bring Christianity into work. A lot of people think, "How dare you? That's your faith. Keep it outside the doors." It's not true. If you are a Christian or whatever your religion is and you believe strongly in your faith, you have the right to form a group inside of your company. I'd encourage you if you have been working at home during Zoom meetings for 1.5 years, look at it and say, “You’re in my house,” and realize that legally in the United States of America, at least in the world we live in now, you're still allowed to bring your faith to work." There are certain rules and requirements of how you may do that. You can't force people to pray but you can say, “Is it okay if I pray for you?” That’s an okay statement to make it work. I love the fact that so many people like you are out there to make a difference for the one that matters.
Follower of One: Every time they make that decision, that's a sale for us. That's a transaction that we’re looking for.
Thanks for that. There are five things that we talk about that we can all do every day. Four of those require no speech whatsoever. We pray for others. If we appreciate people, if we are prepared to talk about what we believe, if we serve others, if we live this life that Jesus called us to live, then other people will ask us about it. Even if we’re in an environment where it’s not accepted, when somebody asks you the question, they’re opening the door for you to give them the answer. We talk about our fifth daily activity being “speak for yourself.” I don’t want to tell them how to live. I tell them how my faith changed me.
I’ve seen miracles in 2021. I’ve seen miracles over the last several years. When you open your eyes and be open to the miracles that are happening around you every day, there’s no other way to explain what’s going on in the universe. That’s awesome. Mike, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you for being on the show. I look forward to meeting you live at one point here and let’s see where these lines interject. I’ll pray for you. I know we’ll both be praying for Deb and her positive outcome.
Thanks very much, Jeff. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for joining the show. Mike Henry Sr. with the company, FollowerOfOne.org, that’s how you get them. It’s Mike@FollowerOfOne.org. I’m so excited to continue the conversation.
Important links:
FollowerOfOne.org – Mike’s company website
