Episode #29: Your Tribe Is Your Strategy: Brie Temple on Leadership, Loss, and What Really Matters
Before he became CEO of Foothill Credit Union, Mike Terzian helped run one of the most unusual financial institutions in the country: Partners Federal Credit Union, built exclusively to serve Disney's cast members, Imagineers, and employees worldwide. In this episode of Make Minutes Matter, I sit down with Terzian to unpack how a marketing career led him into credit unions, what he learned building culture inside "the happiest place on earth," and why the best leaders ask more questions than they answer.
Terzian traces his path into financial services: an MBA in marketing, consulting stints at AC Nielsen and Mercer, and client relationships that pulled him into credit unions full time. That path led to Partners Federal, serving roughly 120,000 Disney cast members and employees globally. We demystify credit unions themselves — nonprofit, member-owned institutions that reinvest profits into lower fees and better rates instead of shareholder returns — then dig into what made Disney's ecosystem so distinct. Terzian describes a company as varied as "50 states," where park cast members, Imagineers, and corporate teams each needed different messaging and support.
Storytelling runs through the episode as a leadership discipline, not just a marketing tactic. Terzian argues Disney's real edge was narrative craft, and that authentic, transparent stories that build trust are what made his marketing team indispensable internally. He ties this to a leadership philosophy shaped by Simon Sinek's "Power of Why": the best leaders lead with curiosity rather than answers. He compares his role to a conductor who trusts specialists to play their instruments instead of trying to be the smartest person in the room.
The episode's centerpiece is culture — what Terzian calls "how you get stuff done." He walks through a multi-year culture initiative at Foothill: an "iceberg exercise" that surfaced 139 distinct cultural traits, later distilled into eight core pillars, plus a three-tier leadership academy that's already graduated multiple cohorts. He and Gilhooly reach for sports and music metaphors: an orchestra needs one of each instrument, and a baseball team needs trust and tough feedback. Leaders should treat individual differences as a force multiplier, they argue, rather than sanding everyone down to sameness.
We close on culture's fragility — it takes years of intentional work to build, but can collapse far faster than it took to create if leaders coast after early wins.
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Dive deeper and check out Karen Gilhooly's book, The Three Bucket Leader: https://a.co/d/08vuNA9
For real-time conversations about today’s leadership, watch The Relevance Reckoning.
This show is produced by Rainbow Creative (https://www.rainbowcreative.co) with Matthew "MoJo" Jones as Executive Producer and Nathan Wheatley as Editor. For sponsorship opportunities, email podcasts@rainbowcreative.co
