Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
What happens when a corporate turnaround specialist walks away from the C-suite to run a town of 60,000 people? Michael Tetro spent 8 years as first selectman, mayor of Fairfield, Connecticut, and discovered that leading a town looks less like politics and more like running 14 different companies at once. Today, He’s a Vistage Chair, and his story traces through one through line from a football field to a mayor’s office. And that is the drive to give back and make a difference. On this episode, we’re going to discuss why being a small-town mayor felt more like running 14 different companies, but importantly, what that taught Mike about leading experts who know their jobs better than he does. How watching his father coach high school football planted the give back and make a difference instinct that has shaped his entire career. What it means to lead in a fishbowl where every decision and even your family life plays out in public. And why Mike became a Vistage chair and how he’s helping other CEOs grow their companies Mike, welcome to the Life Fulfilled Podcast.
Mike Tetreau [00:01:23]:
Bernie, thank you. And I’m looking forward to our conversation.
Bernie Borges [00:01:34]:
I am looking forward to our conversation as well. Let’s get into it. Your career is really interesting. It spans engineering, consulting, international sales. You ran a wholesale distribution company and then a lock manufacturer’s global sales division. And then, Mike, you did something that few executives do. You stepped away from the private sector for 8 years specifically to serve as first selectman, mayor of Fairfield, Connecticut, which is the town that you grew up in. And you led it through some challenging times.
Bernie Borges [00:02:08]:
I’m sure we’ll hear something about that. And Mike, today you’re a Vistage chair in Fairfield, Connecticut, and you help business owners grow their companies. And in your words, I like what you say, help them create jobs that support the whole community. So, Mike, I always like to begin with the backstory, your backstory. And I think for you, you said your backstory began in high school under the leadership of your father as a football coach. So why don’t we start there?
Mike Tetreau [00:02:35]:
Simply put, my dad was a coach, so I grew up reading football books, standing on the sideline with him, sitting in locker room talks, and watching him lead. That had a great impact on me because your model leaders back then were sports heroes and specifically football heroes for going through that. It was an interesting dynamic because when I got to high school, my dad coached at one school and I played quarterback for the other. So, we actually played against each other, so to speak.
Bernie Borges [00:03:05]:
Really? Wow. Okay. And your dad instilled this sense of making a difference in you, right? What was the impact behind that? Wow.
Mike Tetreau [00:03:14]:
I saw as people who had played for my dad would come back and greet him as the coach and talk about the impact he had on them and how he helped them in life. I saw how hard my dad worked to get his players, sometimes not the top players, into college so they’d have an education. And I saw how he gave back around the community helping out with Special Olympics and that type of thing so that he modeled what it meant to give back to the community.
Bernie Borges [00:03:49]:
So you took that with you into your career, and your career really began, if I’m not mistaken, in engineering. You spent some time at Andersen Consulting and then went on to lead software companies. So give us a sense for how that background impacted your career all the way back into those early days, beginning with your 5 years at Andersen Consulting?
Mike Tetreau [00:04:15]:
I think one of the themes that comes through is being on a team and contributing to the team and putting the team’s output first. That started in school because in many of our engineering projects that we did for grades, we worked as teams. So your grade depended on how 3 or 4 students got together, worked, and developed the project, divided up the work, and committed to helping each other out. In consulting projects— and we were doing a lot of IT development work— you were either one of the programmers, and then as you moved on, one of the supervisors, one of the team leaders, and one of the project leaders overall. And at each point, your quality of your work was all based on how the team did. The client wanted the whole program to work, not just your little subprogram to work. Either everything worked or it didn’t, so you had to cooperate, work together, and it really reinforced what I’d learned playing football, which is the team wins or loses, not the individual.
Bernie Borges [00:05:24]:
I never played football, Mike, but I’ve always looked at football as a metaphor for life. for so many reasons. And I don’t want to get too far down that rabbit hole because you’ve really already touched on it. But I couldn’t agree with you more. It really is that team mindset. Now, as your career progressed, you went from consulting to leading a software company’s business in Europe. What was that experience like in terms of the culture and just The overall experience?
Mike Tetreau [00:05:59]:
It was amazing from a standpoint of learning about other cultures. My New York friends, New York being a big mixing bowl, of course, I grew up in a suburb of Fairfield, and my New York friends used to joke that they treated me like, Mike, you are like mayo on white bread, bland. Going to Europe, you became very conscious of the different cultures. You had to be aware when you got off a plane, Different currency, different language, different culture, and you acted differently, communicated differently based on the culture you were in. So, an amazing experience of raising awareness to something I didn’t have exposure to growing up. It changed how you led. And I was selling project management software. So, I was selling, training, and talking to different cultures, how they led, and how to use this software to help them be more effective, more efficient, and achieve their goals of on-time performance and coming in under budget.
Mike Tetreau [00:07:04]:
So, just an amazing awareness-raising on my part.
Bernie Borges [00:07:08]:
I know that self-awareness is something that you pride yourself in. It’s something that I talk a lot about as well. So, maybe staying with that theme, from there, if I’m not mistaken, You went from Europe to San Diego, California, and as someone—
Mike Tetreau [00:07:26]:
Which is a whole nother culture, I should point out.
Bernie Borges [00:07:28]:
Well, that’s exactly— you read my mind, Mike. That’s exactly because I, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I grew up in New York City, so which is not too far from Connecticut. And, and so I, I moved to California in my 20s after, you know, born and raised in New York City. So to your point, it is a whole different culture. You You went there and you were running, I believe, a 4-location wholesale distribution company out there, and you doubled the business. How did you do that? Most AI initiatives don’t fail because of the technology. They fail because leaders don’t plan the human side. There’s a fear tax and a meaning gap that’s draining your team’s performance right now, and most leaders Don’t even know it.
Bernie Borges [00:08:15]:
Our Human Dividend assessment measures both across 4 dimensions: reducing fear, creating clarity, preserving meaning, and building adaptability. It’s a structured diagnostic that you take online, alone or with your team. It includes a debrief call, a custom report that’s built around your team, and specific next actions that turn insight into ROI. for your business and your people. To learn more about the Human Dividend Assessment, visit the link in the show notes.
Mike Tetreau [00:08:53]:
Just an amazing story in terms of getting in and focusing on what’s important to your customers. We were selling to locksmiths, independent locksmiths, kind of folks that have shops that say, we cut keys. Now, some of these were real businesses that might have multiple locations. And up to 20 vans and might be $1 million or $2 million in revenue in doing that. So our focus was not on what the product, the lock in the box that we were selling them, because we sold the same Kwikset, Schlage, Master Locks that our competition did, but on how we could help them grow their business, be more profitable. And our goal was to help them sell more locks, not just buy a lock cheaper. Part of that was focusing on what we call total procurement cost, which are 11 components. There was a nice education component that went to us helping our customers understand that.
Mike Tetreau [00:09:50]:
And of those 11 components, price was just one, the easiest and most measurable. So that’s what people focused on, but the other 10 cost real dollars. And part of our mantra was you can Eliminate the distributor, but you can’t eliminate the cost of distribution. And so we wanted to show our customers how, because we were good at what we did, they could focus on being good at what they do.
Bernie Borges [00:10:16]:
And that approach has had a positive impact on the business. You went from being an engineer to doubling a company’s revenue that you were leading. That’s quite a feat.
Mike Tetreau [00:10:28]:
It was an amazing connection. I would argue that locksmiths, for the most part, are just non-degreed engineers. Very mechanical, very logical, very rational, very smart. So I could relate easily to that, or they could relate to me, however you want to look at that transaction. The other side was that we focused on being measurably better than our competition. So we talked about same-day shipping, which frankly all of our competitors would say. Our mantra was same-day shipping. If your order comes in by 5 o’clock, it will go out tonight.
Mike Tetreau [00:11:01]:
Nobody else could say that.
Bernie Borges [00:11:03]:
Wow.
Mike Tetreau [00:11:03]:
When we missed a night, we actually promoted it and said, on this night, we didn’t get every order out. But for 220 days before that, we did. And that let us emphasize to our customers how consistent we were and how good we were at doing that. And our competition couldn’t match that. If we gave a 10% off on a price for a lock, they could match that in 2 seconds. But if we said we shipped every product out that came in by 5 o’clock the same day, they couldn’t say that. So it made me very focused on how to measure service, not just say we have good service, but focus on what that means. And what does it mean to the customer? What value do they get? Why is it good for them? How does that help them service their clients better? How does it help them grow their business? And it’s that focus on the customer that I’ve carried through in each of the positions I’ve been in.
Bernie Borges [00:12:02]:
And if I put my marketing hat on as I listen to your story, Mike, what I’m hearing is authenticity in your marketing, the way that you marketed that, that feature, that aspect, that commitment that you had. It sounds like it was a value. It was ingrained into the value of the company. And from a marketing standpoint, you communicated that with authenticity. So, I love that. I can’t resist the marketing side because that is my background. Okay. So, where I want to go next, Mike, is you know that this is the Life Fulfilled Podcast and my platform is based on the fact that we All, all of us, we want to be fulfilled across 5 life pillars: health, fitness, career, relationships, and legacy.
Bernie Borges [00:12:48]:
And to simplify that, it’s just a holistic perspective. And you reached a point in your story where you left California and you went back to your hometown of Fairfield, Connecticut. So give us some insight into why you did that and what that transition was like for you.
Mike Tetreau [00:13:08]:
Well, I did it in 2 steps. I first went back to Virginia, which got me closer, but still traveling all around and not really having much work-life balance. My friends would typically ask me, are you dating anybody? Is she in this time zone? I found that because I was an engineer, I love solving problems, and if it was a business problem, understanding how to fix a business, get it back on track. I thoroughly enjoyed doing that and was very happy, fulfilled in some respects. But at some point, I realized that I needed kind of more life in all of that. And I did come back to Connecticut. And the goal was to get involved in the community. I initially got involved in working with my dad in real estate.
Mike Tetreau [00:13:57]:
So, he was the coach who’d retired from teaching, and we got together as a team in residential real estate. And I got involved in things like the Red Cross and coaching youth football with my dad. So we got to work on the same team and in, you know, kind of literally on the same field together in doing that. Also got involved in some public service components like town planning and zoning and the Board of Finance, and it kind of balanced out my life to a great degree that way. I was the poster child for most of my career of what not to do. And I share that a lot with my clients today is I can tell you what not to do on some of that. Don’t follow my lead.
Bernie Borges [00:14:42]:
Okay. I respect your humility on that. But some of those roles, those volunteer roles, and they were volunteer roles, if I’m not mistaken.
Mike Tetreau [00:14:51]:
Correct.
Bernie Borges [00:14:52]:
Did eventually lead to an invitation, if you will. To become first selectman, the mayor of the town. Share that story.
Mike Tetreau [00:15:02]:
Yes. As I was finishing up my term on the Board of Finance, our first selectman left with about 6 months to go in his term. He had to be replaced by somebody of the same party. So I got selected from our party to replace him for that balance of that term. At the same time, I was— I ran for office for a continuing term and won election. So I ended up serving as mayor for 8 years through some interesting times. Storm Sandy hit our town. We were one of the most impacted towns by Storm Sandy.
Mike Tetreau [00:15:39]:
We had Storm Irene, which was a smaller storm that came in a year before Storm Sandy. So we had like a scrimmage before the big game. We had a Metro-North train crash. The Newtown kids Sandy Hook, I think, is a term most folks know it by. School tragedy happened a couple towns over, but about a year later, we had a swatting incident in our town, which is where some bad actors, they have guns and bombs and are coming after your schools. And then we had some challenges with the state of Connecticut’s budget, so that during that time, there were some very significant challenges. From my standpoint, that gave me a purpose. That gave me a chance to show how I could really help the people of the town.
Mike Tetreau [00:16:22]:
It was more than just cutting ribbons and smiling for the camera.
Bernie Borges [00:16:28]:
That’s an understatement, Mike. Some of those challenges— well, all those challenges that you, you just mentioned, all of them are really significant. So to your point, a whole lot more than just cutting ribbons and, and, and town halls. Now, you served for 8 years, and I mentioned in the introduction that A lesson that you took away from those 8 years is that you said it was like managing 14 different companies and understanding that the heads of those companies, and I used that metaphorically, really knew their jobs. So why don’t you elaborate on what you mean by that?
Mike Tetreau [00:17:06]:
Let’s take a look at— you’re the elected official in town government. you’re the temp. You’re serving for a term, and you may get elected or you may not going forward. The department head you’re supervising has been there for 20 years. He grew up through the department, is now head of the department. They know their job. They’re more secure in it than you are, and they can, if you will, outlast you if they don’t like what you’re doing or don’t understand it. So it’s very much like a coaching role in that you have to look at where you can add value.
Mike Tetreau [00:17:44]:
So, if I’m working with the police chief, a couple of dynamics. I can’t say, hey, Chief, we’re having trouble in the library. Can you go over and run that for a couple years? That flexibility that you might have in a private company doesn’t work. Second, the chief really is great at public service. That’s how he got to be the chief, and that’s how he’s there. So, I was learning as much from him about public service, especially as we went through some of these crises and storms as he was for me. So I looked at where I could add value in communication, in budgeting and planning, in how to work with the residents in terms of what’s needed from the, if you will, from the outside looking and being a customer voice in talking to the chief and police and how they are perceived and how that works and helping them with their neighborhood image. And relationships.
Mike Tetreau [00:18:37]:
So, you really focused on the gaps and where the value added was. And each department head had a different background, different set of skills, often not trained in what I’ll call some of the business leadership points that you need or in some of the business management points that you need that I could bring in from my background and help them do their job better. But the whole focal point is on helping them be better. And in that way serve our residents better.
Bernie Borges [00:19:08]:
That makes sense. I want to ask you to elaborate. What do you mean by that experience was leading like leading in a fishbowl? What do you mean by that?
Mike Tetreau [00:19:18]:
Being mayor of a town is like having— Fairfield had 60,000 residents, 40,000 voters. So in a sense, I had 40,000 Bosses. You also realize that every decision is gonna be played out in front of different government boards, different neighborhood groups, played out in the paper. So you need to have a certain amount of thicker skin in terms of hearing criticism and other sides, ’cause there is another side. In the private sector, if you think people are out to get you, I would suggest maybe you’re paranoid. In the public sector, if you think people are out to get you, it’s called the other party, and it’s a normal rule of the day. It really helped playing football because you got used to being yelled at by the other team’s fans. They didn’t know you.
Mike Tetreau [00:20:11]:
They didn’t know if they liked you. They didn’t know how good you were. They knew you had a different color uniform on, and they didn’t want you to win. So you had— you learned not to take it personally.
Bernie Borges [00:20:22]:
Interesting.
Mike Tetreau [00:20:22]:
And you learn to work in that environment.
Bernie Borges [00:20:25]:
Now, you also said that that whole experience, that 8-year experience as mayor of Fairfield, Connecticut, is almost like akin to what you’re doing today in your role as a Vistage Group chair. So let’s go there. Let’s unpack that. And if you would, let’s begin with, for maybe the listener who doesn’t know what a Vistage Group is. If you could give that an explanation and then what your responsibility is as a Vistage chair. But I’d love that comparison between what you were doing as mayor and what you’re doing today as a Vistage chair, beginning with what is Vistage?
Mike Tetreau [00:21:05]:
Okay. Thank you. Vistage is a group that’s been around for about 60 years. It’s focused on helping CEOs of small and mid-sized businesses become better leaders. The mantra is better leaders, better decisions, better results. One of the ways that that Vistage Group comes together and is effective is the business model is based on bringing 12 to 14 non-competing CEOs together one full day a month. We would typically have a speaker on a different topic in the morning and in the afternoon focused on going into depth on one or two issues that different members are facing. So that the member with an issue gets the benefit of the other members and their experience, their thoughts, their suggestions on how to help accomplish and resolve that issue.
Mike Tetreau [00:21:58]:
The day is managed or facilitated by a chair, which is my role, and think coach or facilitator as part of that. In addition, I’ll meet with each of the members during the month in a private coaching session. And the members get access to our online community. And today, there are about 19,000 Vistage members in the country. There are about 700 chairs like myself that go through that. One of the things you learn is that these are each successful CEOs. So the goal is to help them be more successful, to scale their company. They realize that if their goal is to scale their company, they need need to be a different leader tomorrow than they are today.
Mike Tetreau [00:22:43]:
They need to develop different skills to grow the company and to help their team grow. Part of my role with them is to help them do that. The phrase we use that I love is that we’re not here to give them the answers. We’re here to question their answers so that my role is very often Asking questions, sometimes about areas I’m very familiar with and sometimes about areas I’m not familiar with at all. When I equate that to town hall, I didn’t grow up in public service and police. I didn’t grow up in the fire department. I didn’t grow up in public works, though engineering helps a little bit. I didn’t grow up in the library.
Mike Tetreau [00:23:29]:
So I’m talking to department heads who grew up in those departments. That have years of experience in being very good at what they do. That’s how they got there. My goal is to help them be better. My goal is to help them be more effective. My goal is to help them manage their budgets both in capital spending and in the P&L side more effectively. That’s where I could add value. And I did a lot of that by learning to ask questions.
Mike Tetreau [00:23:57]:
Again, not because I had the answer. But because I could help them get to the right answer on how to be more effective.
Bernie Borges [00:24:04]:
I am going to go out on a limb here and assume/ask about your fulfillment. It seems to me that given the story you’ve shared— and isn’t it interesting, Mike, when you’re asked to share 40 or more years of career in a 30-minute conversation, right? And that’s what we’re doing. But The story that I’m capturing in your story, Mike, is the fulfillment that you are driving for yourself and for the members of your Vistage Group and how that has all become possible because of the story that we’ve encapsulated here about how starting with high school football under your dad’s leadership. As a coach and through that whole business career, then through 8 years in town hall and public service, and now serving as Vistage Chair, I would think that there’s a tremendous amount of fulfillment for you as well as your members.
Mike Tetreau [00:25:11]:
No question. I mean, one of the things that I’ve come to appreciate as a Vistage Chair and working closely with the members of my group I get to take a success story or success journey with each of them. I get to enjoy their story. It’s more success than I could ever have on my own. I learn from each of my members. I learn from the speakers that we have in. You know, I’m sitting here saying that I would be a much better CEO today than I was back in the day for everything I’ve learned and from everything I’ve learned from my members. We have Literally fun working together because of that.
Mike Tetreau [00:25:51]:
It’s a situation of mutual respect and mutual learning. I learn from them. They learn from me. But it’s also then being aware of everything else that’s taking place out there in the economy, in the world, and the challenges that are coming up. These are CEOs that have gone through the pandemic, that have gone through tariffs, have gone through supply chain issues with wars. It’s every time they turn around, there’s a new challenge. So they have to be very forward-looking, very adaptable, and learn to develop those same traits in their team and in their company. And it’s just a marvel, an education, an amazing journey watching them go through.
Mike Tetreau [00:26:34]:
And to your point, my goal is to help them grow both personally, professionally, And if I look at the bigger picture, the more they grow, the more jobs they add. And if you look at the history of our company, it’s always been small business that has generated the job growth. And if that’s the case, if I can have an impact on that in some small way, I’m helping create value in a way that I couldn’t individually.
Bernie Borges [00:27:01]:
Now, you earlier in your career, you were a member of a Vistage group, right?
Mike Tetreau [00:27:06]:
I was.
Bernie Borges [00:27:07]:
Okay. Did you ever imagine when you were a member, when you were sitting in the chair as a member, did you ever imagine that you would be a Vistage chair yourself?
Mike Tetreau [00:27:18]:
Not at all. I was, you know, a new CEO. I was thrilled to be part of that. I looked at a Vistage group in my football framework as being a way to scout 10 other teams. and find their best practices and bring those back to my company. I knew there was a lot I didn’t know. And I knew that we were trying to grow our company. And I knew I had to be better.
Mike Tetreau [00:27:43]:
As much as I expected my team to be better, I knew I had to be better. So, it was an opportunity that I just jumped at at the time.
Bernie Borges [00:27:51]:
Closing thought/question, Mike. How has your experience, both your business career, your 8 years in public service, All of which really encompass leadership. Your experience as a Vistage member back when you were a CEO and you were attending or a member of a Vistage group, and now as a Vistage chair, how has all of that shaped your perspective on leadership?
Mike Tetreau [00:28:21]:
I think each piece of that— I’m going to suggest that each of the experiences you mentioned are like building blocks. They all kind of provide a foundation to build on. It’s as you get a better understanding of leadership, you get a better understanding of how to deal with uncertainty. And you realize that you can’t wait for things to be certain. You have to decide that you have enough information to move in the right direction. You realize the importance of clarity. For you, but also for your team. That what holds businesses back more than anything else is what holds teams back.
Mike Tetreau [00:29:02]:
You have to have absolute clarity on what each person’s role is and the direction you’re going in. When you call a play in a huddle in a football team, you cannot have everybody say, I kind of know what I need to do. They’ve got to know who they block, what their role is, where they’re going, and where the play is going. So they can do their part. I find that in business, the greater the clarity, the greater the growth. Clarity accelerates that growth. Without that, too many people are not moving as quickly as they could, as well as they could in the same direction. We talk a lot of times about rowing in the same direction, but I could argue it’s also equivalent to a football team moving in the same direction, knowing where they’re trying to go with this play.
Mike Tetreau [00:29:49]:
If I had to pick one key word for a leader, it’s got to be kind of providing the clarity the team needs.
Bernie Borges [00:29:57]:
I’ve heard you say that before, Mike, and I couldn’t agree with you more. I think clarity is just a huge component of leadership. And I just love your story because it really does begin on the football field and all the lessons learned there, not just in terms of playing the game and how that requires teamwork, but the leadership that you got from your dad, the coach, as well as the coach that you played for on a different team, I’m sure. And then how throughout your career you evolved that, it matured, you matured, and you’ve taken all that experience even through public service into what you’re doing today, leading a Vistage group. And so, I have no doubt that the members in your group get tremendous value from your leadership as well as from their membership. And interacting with each other. Mike, I want to thank you for joining me for this episode of the Life Fulfilled Podcast. Please let my listeners know where they can go online to connect with you and just maybe keep the conversation going.
Mike Tetreau [00:31:03]:
Thank you, Bernie. I’ve really enjoyed it. I’d say the simplest way to reach out to me is probably on LinkedIn. I’ve got a LinkedIn page where you can message me directly or Take a look at my background and learn a little bit more about some of the experiences I’ve had.
Bernie Borges [00:31:18]:
Fantastic. Well, Mike, my listener knows that that is linked up in the show notes so they don’t have to go very far. So, Mike, again, I want to thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation here today and look forward to continuing as well.
Mike Tetreau [00:31:31]:
All right, Bernie, thank you. And I really enjoyed being here. Thank you for the opportunity to share some thoughts.
