Few things are tougher when moving beyond a crucible experience than forgiving others, or even yourself, for the pain you’ve experienced from a failure or setback. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax explains why it’s essential to muster the character and courage to extend forgiveness — or risk being emotionally and practically held back from pursuing a life of significance. How does forgiveness help you and those you forgive? Is it possible or even necessary to “forgive and forget?” Why was it so hard for him to forgive himself after his failed $2.25 billion takeover of his family’s 150-year-old media dynasty? Warwick discusses this and more with co-host Gary Schneeberger in this enlightening new episode.
Few things are tougher when moving beyond a crucible experience than forgiving others, or even yourself, for the pain you’ve experienced from a failure or setback. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax explains why it’s essential to muster the character and courage to extend forgiveness — or risk being emotionally and practically held back from pursuing a life of significance. How does forgiveness help you and those you forgive? Is it possible or even necessary to “forgive and forget?” Why was it so hard for him to forgive himself after his failed $2.25 billion takeover of his family’s 150-year-old media dynasty? Warwick discusses this and more with co-host Gary Schneeberger in this enlightening new episode.
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Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to Beyond the Crucible, the podcast that focuses on what we call crucible experiences. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the show and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. And as I said, we talk about crucible experiences here, not because we want to kind of camp out there, not because we want to wallow in them, but because we believe that those experiences, those difficult trying, painful failures and setbacks in your life can be the launchpad for a new chapter in your life, a life of significance. In fact the subtitle of this podcast is Live and Lead with Significance, and that’s what we hope to encourage you to do as we go through the conversations and interviews that we go through.
Gary S:
And today we have a conversation on a subject that can be very difficult for folks. It’s on forgiveness. Joining me as always is the host of the show, the founder of Crucible Leadership, Warwick Fairfax, and he and I are going to talk about forgiveness in just a little bit. Warwick, it’s great to be back.
Warwick F:
Absolutely Gary, great topic and look forward to it.
Gary S:
The interesting thing about forgiveness… You know, Warwick and I talk a little bit before every episode, and we don’t talk too much about what we’re going to say because we want to keep the spontaneity and we want to catch each other by surprise. We want to have a true conversation and not kind of a rehearsed conversation. So we talked a little bit about forgiveness yesterday.
Gary S:
One of the things that we thought we needed to really start at was to define, right, what is forgiveness? What does it look like? And one of the things I like to do… Noah Webster’s very first dictionary he wrote in 1828, and in that dictionary he defined words in a much different way than they’re defined today for certain. He was a Christian man. He defined a lot of the terms in terms of how they were defined in the Bible. And this is the very short definition of forgiveness that Noah Webster in 1828 gave his readers: “Forgiveness is the pardon of an offender.” That’s the way he described it. Warwick, what’s your reaction to that and how does that apply to how forgiveness works in our lives today?
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean that’s certainly a starting point, is if somebody’s done something to you, they’ve committed an offense. It could be something with legal consequence or not. Yes, forgiveness is forgiving the person that has, I guess, speaking of the Bible almost, has sinned against you.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
It’s not a word we tend to use, but it’s certainly when somebody does something to you, you kind of feel that what they’ve done is a sin from your perspective.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
You feel like it’s bad, which makes forgiving them a challenge.
Gary S:
And it’s not all the time just forgiveness. We hear this phrase a lot when forgiveness comes up. We hear the phrase forgive and forget. And there are different points of view on whether you truly can forget, if you should forget, how do you forget? How do you approach that idea of forgiving and forgetting? Are they always separate? Can they be together? How does that work?
Warwick F:
You know, it’s a complex question. There’s different elements. So when we talk about forgiveness, one of the hangups people have is, I don’t want to forget or condone the horrendous thing somebody has done to me.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
So often extreme cases make the case easier to see, so let’s say somebody’s been abused. I don’t want to forget what they did. And I understand that. So in one sense, just because you forgive somebody doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences. There could be legal-
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
Or again, in the case of abuse, it could be a safety issue. Maybe separation may be warranted. I mean there are consequences that just because you forgive them doesn’t mean you condone the behavior. Nor does it mean that you don’t take actions to safeguard yourself and your family. If you’d been in business with somebody and somebody’s ripped you off, because of it, you would be foolish to go into business with them again-
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
To let them rip you off again. I mean, why would you do that? I mean that just says let’s just keep hurting myself. I mean that’s just stupid. So it doesn’t mean that you aren’t smart about it.
Warwick F:
So where it gets complicated is if you say, “Well, I can forgive them. But every night I spend a couple hours just thinking about how awful they were, and you know, I just keep constantly thinking and thinking and thinking. Oh, I’ve forgiven them, but I think about them 24-7.”
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
You know, when you’ve had somebody that’s truly betrayed you or let you down, the annoying thing is they’re often oblivious to what they did to you. And often they don’t really care.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
You know? But it’s, if you just have this compulsiveness that you cannot stop thinking about them or the offense, that part of not forgetting, I don’t know. I’m not sure how that’s that healthy.
Gary S:
You know, this is first and foremost a podcast for leaders. And we’ve talked about it among ourselves as kind of leading from the board room to the living room. And on this subject in particular, forgiveness, I think family relationships, and especially marriage relationships, really come into play. What you just described, right? I do something in relationship with my wife that, I’m frustrated, I’m short of temper, whatever. That’s easy for her in the love relationship to forgive. But if that behavior manifests itself over and over again, she hasn’t forgotten it. She’s not hitting me with it every day. But it is something that you do remember. So you can recognize those things and you can shield yourself from being victimized over and over again. I think that’s certainly a truism.
Gary S:
Now because this is a podcast about leadership, and this is a podcast that lots of business leaders listen to, and it’s the Crucible Leadership podcast, it’s Beyond the Crucible. We have to ask and tell our listeners, why are we talking about forgiveness in the context of Crucible Leadership? Why is, Warwick, as the creator of Crucible Leadership, why is this idea of forgiving somebody else, being forgiven, why is this so important in the context of Crucible Leadership?
Warwick F:
It’s an interesting question and at first sight you might think, “Well, what does this have to do with leadership?” But typically as a leader, you’re going to hit speed bumps, you’re going to hit crucibles. Sometimes, as we say, it can be setbacks or failures. It can be your fault or not your fault.
Warwick F:
So let’s say you’re in a business and you got fired. And maybe you got fired because you made the boss insecure. Sometimes people get fired for not particularly good reasons.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
Maybe you spoke up too much. You’re not willing to go with the country club mentality and just go along with what the senior executives and the board says, even though you think it’s wrong or ill conceived. So when that happens, even if you can say, you know what, I was fired. I lost my business because I was let down by a investor, or a partner, or… There’s all sorts of different failures and setbacks.
Warwick F:
If you hold on to that and don’t let it go, it will damage and inhibit your ability to move on to the next venture, the next rung. It holds you back. And so as a leader, you need to forgive because you won’t be able to lead well without forgiving. Again, doesn’t mean to say that you don’t learn from that. So if you were in business with somebody that ripped you off, be a bit more careful next time about who you go into business with.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
It’s not foolproof. You know, just try to safeguard that next time around. Or if you take a job, make sure the company that you are going to work with is one that you respect and the person you’re going to work for is somebody that you think you can trust and won’t let you down. I mean, you can’t… It’s not foolproof, but there are things you can do.
Warwick F:
But if, without forgiving, you can’t move on, and you can’t really get beyond that crucible. So forgiveness is, forget the morality from a faith-based perspective, we’re called to forgive, but from a common sense perspective. If you want to move on and be successful in life, whatever that means to you, you can’t do it without forgiving.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
You just cannot. It will hold you back. It will be like having a millstone around your neck. I mean, why would you want to do that to yourself?
Gary S:
And this is one of those subjects, Warwick, that I know from knowing you, from talking with you, that this one hits close to home for you. There are stories both from your experience in having to forgive yourself. And that’s one of the… Many times the people we have to forgive is ourselves, and you’ve grappled with that., But in your family, in your own experience, in your own story, there were several crossroads where forgiveness was critical, of yourself or others to kind of move on. Can you unpack those a little bit for our listeners to help them understand how that does hold you back or can hold you back?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. You know, when I think of John Fairfax who, I think these listeners will know, is the founder of Fairfax Media in Australia and my great, great grandfather. He founded this business in 1841 that would grow to be a huge media company. But he really had some lessons in forgiveness.
Warwick F:
When he had a small newspaper in England, he wrote a story about a local magistrate, a local lawyer, that said the local lawyer was corrupt. The lawyer sued him, twice. The judge found in favor of John Fairfax. In other words, the story was accurate. But the court costs bankrupted him. So he was proven correct, but yet he was bankrupt. And so obviously a lot to be bitter about there. He was so frustrated he left England and went to Australia, which at the time was a four to six month journey. Not an easy thing to do with a young family.
Warwick F:
What’s remarkable is years later he went back to England and he did some remarkable things. He paid back his creditors who he wasn’t able to pay. Now recognize in bankruptcy, old creditors are wiped clean. He had no legal reason-
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
To repay those debts, but he did. He even, and this is kind of crazy, he actually paid the legal costs of the guy that was suing him. Now, he had long since died, and so he was paying his widow. But I mean, who does that? I mean, I’m not advocating that necessarily, paying the court costs of the person who sued you, but he did. And so that was a remarkable story of forgiveness.
Warwick F:
Then in the case of my father, again these listeners will know, in 1976 some other family members basically forced my father out as chairman of the company. Which, I was age 15 at the time, pretty dramatic thing for me, to see my father who I dearly loved treated that way by other family members. And so over the next few years, as best he could, he said, “You know, I need to forgive them because that’s what God would call us to do.” And also for the family, for my sake, as the next generation. As best he could, he really tried to forgive them for what, certainly from my perspective and his, was an unjust move.
Warwick F:
And then in my own case, when you grow up with power and money, people are going to let you down. It just, it attracts betrayal. I almost think of that image in middle school where, as if somebody put a sign on my back saying, betray me, like kick me.
Gary S:
Right. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Warwick F:
You know? That’s kind of what it felt. Whether it was, from my perspective anyway, other family members, advisers, time and time again, there were people I trusted that let me down. And so I guess I’ve had a lot of practice, unfortunately. And I guess I wanted to get beyond the whole Fairfax Media debacle, part of which was my fault. Which, instead of another strand, which we’ll get to in a moment. But for my own mental health I just had to forgive.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
And one of the things that I’ve really thought a lot about, about forgiveness, is… Like with family members is a good example. If you understand the way they are, it sometimes can make it easier to forgive. So maybe whether it’s abuse or alcoholism, you often hear that people who were abused were in so many cases abused as a child themselves. It’s a generational thing. It doesn’t condone the behavior at all. But to understand it, for me, has always made it easier to forgive. And so that’s been a huge help.
Warwick F:
But just for my own sanity, forgiveness is important. I mean, I know sometimes I sort of jokingly say, it’s often manifested in close relationships, whether it’s parents, siblings, children, spouse. Often there’s behavior that keeps manifesting itself over and over again. And so I would say to myself, okay, I just forgave the last one. And then a new event happens. I mean can you just give me a breather, because I’m, I can’t quite catch up.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
You know, it’s like a treadmill. It’s like it’s not just one and done, because the behavior typically continues. But-
Gary S:
And if…
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think… Go ahead.
Gary S:
And it’s interesting what you were just saying in all three of those stories, that none of those experiences, certainly for your great-great-grandfather, certainly for your dad. I’ve heard you talk about both of those situations. And I know what you went through in your own life. Let’s acknowledge for listeners who are hearing this, what we know to be true: forgiveness is not easy. I’ve heard it described as the hardest responsibility you’ll ever have. To forgive another person is a very, very… It can be a very, very difficult thing to do. Fair?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And I think, I mean the biggest reason you hear, as we’ve talked about before, I don’t want to forgive because I don’t want to condone the behavior. I don’t want to forget. But to me, when I look at forgiveness, the person it hurts most is ourselves. And so to me, you know we are worth forgiveness. We owe it to ourselves to forgive. Because by that pain really having a searing experience for us, in a sense we let the other person’s actions win.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
They win if we don’t forgive.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
Because it hurts us so much. So we’re worth it. And certainly a big part of it is just about ourselves. You know, that kind of pain we shouldn’t live with. You know, the anger.
Gary S:
Think about, and maybe you can muse about it. You go back to your great-great-grandfather who founded Fairfax Media. If he had not been able to forgive that lawyer, twice, if he had not been able to do that, how would that have changed the course of the river that was the Fairfax family? Forget about the Fairfax family business and the media dynasty. If John Fairfax had not mustered that, had not understood that forgiveness freed him as much as it freed the lawyer, can you even imagine what your life might’ve been like? What your family’s…
Warwick F:
No, I mean… Yeah, I mean, anger, it tends to hold us back. Maybe if he had had some setbacks, it was like, yeah, you know, I’m here in this young colony of Australia. I’m trying to put bread on the table for the family. And hey, it’s not easy in those first few years. Yeah, maybe I should’ve stayed in England. Well I could’ve stayed in England if that wasn’t for that unscrupulous lawyers suing me. Right?
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
Every time something went wrong, it’s like, why am I here? It’s all this guy’s fault. And you just almost use it as a blame game. Everything that goes wrong, it’s that person’s fault. Even if it’s very indirect. I mean one way or another, it will hold you back in your life. It’s almost inevitable.
Gary S:
And that is a perfect segue to talk about your story. And as I’ve heard you talk about it before in podcasts and privately, is it fair to say that the person you had to forgive in the failure of your takeover, the Fairfax Media, the person who was hardest to forgive or took the longest to forgive, was Warwick Fairfax, was you. Is that fair?
Warwick F:
That is. I mean, yes, I had to forgive other close family members who threw my father out as chairman in 1976, and I felt like weren’t running the company along the ideas of the founder and letting management do what I thought was not very sensible things. And so, yeah, I mean, I could say, well, if it hadn’t been for all of that, I wouldn’t have needed to do the takeover. Whether that’s fair or not, that’s my perception.
Warwick F:
So yeah, I had to do that. But you’re right. I mean, harder than that, with myself it’s like, well, why did I do that? Maybe I could have talked to these other family members and rather than ambush them with the takeover. And we’ll never know if that would’ve worked. I’m skeptical. But it’s like my goal in life was to preserve this 150 year old family business for future generations and make sure it was better run.
Warwick F:
And by doing this takeover, the company went under. Yes, it still went on, and is a public company, other people’s hands. But I ended 150 years of family history. So there were years when it’s like, how could I’ve been that stupid. How could I have used the wrong advisors, listen to the wrong people, made so many mistakes. I mean, how could I have been that stupid? And there are probably others like me, that I jokingly say, if there’s a problem in the world, my default is to assume it’s my fault.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
You know?
Gary S:
Yep.
Warwick F:
So, yeah, I mean, I was just very hard on myself, and just sort of crucified myself a bit, and it’s just, how could I have been so dumb? I mean, I have an Oxford degree, a Harvard Business School degree. How could I have made so many stupid assumptions?
Warwick F:
I mean just like assuming, Oh, I’ll do this takeover and the rest of my family will want to stay in a privatized company controlled by 26 year old. What sane person is going to agree to that?
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
How could I possibly have assumed that they would agree? I mean, I have a Harvard MBA. I mean, how could I been such an idiot?
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
You know? And so those sorts of things. Yeah, I was very hard on myself and that took a while to get over. And look at me. Everything I touch I screw up. And it took years to kind of reclaim my self-image. And yeah, in a sense, forgive myself for being young, naive, idealistic, and stupid as many of us once were.
Gary S:
Right. And how did you do it? I mean, this is where the rubber is going to meet the road in this conversation for our listeners. How do you get to forgiveness, whether it’s of yourself or of others? How do you know you’ve done it? How did you feel differently when you forgave those family members? How did you feel differently when you finally came to terms with that, with yourself and you, to quote Webster from 1828 you “pardoned the offender” that was yourself. What did that feel like? What did that look like? So our listeners will know when they’ve truly done it.
Warwick F:
Well for other family members, part of it was, I think as I mentioned, when you understand their perspective, which over the years I think I began to. You know, maybe they had some reasons that my father, they thought needed to move on. And I don’t maybe agree with it all, but understanding certainly helps. You don’t have to agree with another person’s perspective, but if you understand it, it can help in the forgiveness process. So that wasn’t as hard as some close family members. Again, wasn’t as hard, but in one sense it’s myself, but though there were moments.
Warwick F:
I think there’s several different ways. As I said, one is to understand. Another is from a faith perspective, from the Christian perspective, because we are forgiven, we should forgive others. So you know, if you’re serious about your faith then you have to live that. I think with myself, which was probably the hardest thing to forgive, it’s like over the years it’s like, look, I was young, 26, naive, idealistic, meant well, but I just made a lot of silly mistakes. I wasn’t wired to be a Rupert Murdoch, take-no-prisoners kind of executive. That just wasn’t me.
Warwick F:
So as I understood more about who I was, and realized I was really out of my depth, again, that helped. It helped me move on. As I found other things that I actually was good at, that probably helped. It’s like, okay, I guess there are some things I can do without screwing up.
Warwick F:
So it’s really a combination. I think for me it started with understanding who other people were and who I am. A faith perspective that, because we are forgiven, we should forgive. And as we find things that we can actually do constructively. It’s several elements.
Warwick F:
I think probably at the bottom of it all, forgiveness is a decision of the will.
Gary S:
Yep.
Warwick F:
It’s not about feelings. Oh I don’t feel that way. Well forget how you feel. That’s not as relevant as you just got to make a decision. You know what, I’m going to do this. And then as feelings would come up of anger or frustration, I would say oh, I’m not going to let that take fruit. I’m not going to pour kerosene on it. Let the flame goes. I might pray for a moment. Okay Lord, you got to help me here. I mean I would just be very diligent about if I saw a weed poking its head up, plucking it out, not letting it take roots. And that’s a practical day to day thing. It’s several things, acceptance, faith perspective, and when you feel that feeling come up, don’t let it take root.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
Get it out.
Gary S:
And that idea of it being, of forgiveness being a decision of the will. I have often described love as the same thing. Love is not an emotion. Love is a commitment of the will to somebody else. And in some ways the two are kind of the, sort of, not mirror images, but there is a connection. To love someone you overlook faults, you kind of think the best of them. And to forgive someone you have to come to that place where you’re able to let go of the hurt that you felt, whether it’s caused by you or it’s caused by somebody else.
Gary S:
I found a quote, I told you I found a quote yesterday, but I didn’t tell you who it was so I could get your reaction to it when I gave it to you. But of all the people who I looked and found quotes about forgiveness on, I was surprised that this individual said this, because you associate him… It’s Mark Twain, who you associate with being kind of funny. And he’s a satirist a little bit. But Mark Twain said this and I want to get your reaction to it: “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Warwick F:
Can you read that one more time?
Gary S:
Sure. “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Warwick F:
Wow. That’s an amazing picture. It’s forgiveness almost sounds irrational. You’ve been crushed by somebody’s heel-
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
But yet it can bless you. It can bless others. Like I think of probably the best example relevant to that Mark Twain quote would be John Fairfax, when these other creditors, years later he’s paying them back and wrote them a note. They were just overwhelmed. They said, you didn’t have to do this. I can’t believe you’re doing it. They were just blessed, overwhelmed. They had such admiration for him.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
It was just, then that sense repaying a debt that he didn’t have to repay, that active, I mean in some sense, part of the whole forgiveness aspect. They were so blessed.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
So good can come of forgiveness. That’s not always the case, that the people who hurt us and we forgive them, will say, “Thank you. Wow, I don’t deserve this.”
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
More often than not, they won’t admit they did anything wrong. But some blessing will happen. Maybe it’s friends or family members of them. But yeah, good and great blessing can come out of forgiving.
Gary S:
And that is a great place to land the plane on this conversation on forgiveness. And your story, what you just said about how when he forgave his creditors, your great-great-grandfather received something back. Something good came back to him. That is something we can’t lose sight of as we talk about forgiveness. It’s first and foremost for us, but it does indeed… It frees us of being a prisoner to those negative feelings. But it also, blessings can come back to us from doing that. And certainly I think in the case of John Fairfax, the blessings of the family business and his success in life, in his family, all that being true, I think is a good example.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean just as you talk about being a prison, I mean that is such a great word picture. Lack of being able to forgive, it keeps you in prison. Why do you want to stay in prison? By forgiving, it lets you out of jail. For listeners who may be listening right now that are struggling to forgive, aren’t you worth forgiveness? Even if it’s somebody else’s fault. Isn’t it time to get out of jail? Isn’t it time you’re out there in the meadows and smelling the violets and what have you? Isn’t it time to get out of prison? You are worth it. And so you may not think they are, but you are, so forgive.
Gary S:
That. I’m smart enough to know when the last good word has been said. So we’re going to wrap right now on this and I’m going to thank all of you listeners for joining us on Beyond the Crucible. And if you found this discussion insightful and helpful as you pursue your life of significance, we have a favor to ask of you that will help us help even more people just like you who are seeking a way to move beyond their crucible experiences.
Gary S:
Here’s the favor. Please subscribe to Beyond the Crucible on the app that you’re listening to it on right now. If you do that, you will never miss an episode, and it will make it easier for others to find us, listen to us, and share the podcasts with their friends and their coworkers.
Gary S:
Now, if you’ve heard something today that you’d like to learn more about, we encourage you to visit us on the web at crucibleleadership.com. Warwick writes a regular blog and you can find that there as well as all kinds of other assets that will help you as you’re walking out your life of significance, including you can sign up for regular emails that come out from Warwick where he tackles the latest issues and tips that he’s discussing.
Gary S:
So until next time, please remember that crucible experiences can be awfully painful, can be awfully upsetting, can change the course of your life. But the truth is they can become, if you learn the lessons of those crucibles, they can become not thew end of your story, but a chapter in a new story that can be the best story of your life because it leads to a life of significance.
She battled bulimia all through her teens and later survived an armed robbery and a miscarriage. But Margie Warrell refused to let these crucible experiences define her. She fought her way to a life of significance helping women in particular live authentic lives of unshakable bravery, not battling against external forces but against internal ones. In this interview with Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host (and fellow Aussie) Warwick Fairfax, Warrell describes how she has learned to silence the nagging voice of self-doubt in her head, responding to its taunts of “Who are you to try something like that?” by answering boldly back: “Who am I NOT to try something like that?” Challenging herself, and her self-doubts, so bravely have led her to become a member of the Advisory Board of Forbes School of Business & Technology, an honoree of the Women’s Economic Forum and a sought-after leadership consultant to such organizations as NASA, Johnson & Johnson and Google. Her empowering insights to women, and indeed all people, continue with her latest book, You’ve Got This! The Life-Changing Power of Trusting Yourself, coming from Wiley in March.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to Beyond the Crucible, the podcast that’s all about living and leading with significance. I’m your co-host, Gary Schneeberger, the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And the focus of our podcast, really the purpose of it is to visit crucible experiences, those events that occur in our lives that could be failures, things that we’re involved in that maybe we caused to some extent, and they can be tragedies, and traumas, and setbacks that just happen to us in day to day life.
Gary S:
What makes them all kind of combined together is that they are life changing, and the purpose that we talk about them is that there’ll be life changing in positive ways. That they will become the fuel that will help us all live a life of significance and our guide on this journey as always is the founder of Crucible Leadership and the host of Beyond the Crucible, Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, it’s great to be here. We’re going to have a good show today I think.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Thanks Gary, and it’s wonderful to welcome Margie Warrell. She is a fellow Australian, so you will notice that. I have unfortunately lived in the U.S. a long time, so mine has got toned down a bit unfortunately, but we do speak the same language, so that is fun.
Warwick F:
And so, just by way of introduction, Margie and I have actually known each other for a while maybe about 10 years. I think we met on a coaching conference in Washington, DC a while ago, and noticed that we might be from the same country. So, we struck up a friendship, and Margie’s been so supportive and helpful, and had me on her a wonderful podcast, Live Brave, and a column she wrote for Forbes.
Warwick F:
And so we’ve known each other for a while and it’s just wonderful Margie to have you on on the podcast.
Margie W:
Well, I am just delighted to be here with you Warwick, and I’m so delighted you’ve launched a podcast too.
Warwick F:
Well, thank you so much.
Gary S:
And for listeners, just so you know in addition to being Warwick’s friend and professional connection, this is what Margie has also done, and I think we’ll all agree that she’s living a life of significance, but here’s her biography. Margie Warrell has walked the path of courage many times since growing up. The big sister of seven on a small dairy farm in rural Victoria, Australia.
Gary S:
From backpacking solo around the world in her early 20s to starting a business with four young children in a new country, Margie’s gained valuable insights about defying self-doubt, building resilience, and embracing life’s challenges with faith instead of fear. The titles of her previous bestselling books, Find Your Courage, Stop Playing Safe, Train the Brave, and Make Your Mark reflect her passion for emboldening people to realize their potential and lead braver lives. A member of the advisory board of Forbes School of Business and Technology, honoree of the Women’s Economic Forum, and a sought after international speaker, Margie draws on her global experiences, background in psychology, business and coaching to speak and facilitate leadership programs with diverse organizations.
Gary S:
They include NASA, Salesforce, Morgan Stanley, SAP, Marriott, United Health, Mars, Johnson and Johnson, MetLife, Berkshire Hathaway, and Google. Margie’s ability to distill complex issues into accessible insights has also made her a sought after media commentator on outlets such as The Today Show, CNN, CNBC, Fox and Friends, and Bloomberg. Her Courage Works column with Forbes has been read by millions.
Gary S:
In her spare time, it does not sound like she has much spare time, but it says right here in the bio, in her spare time, Margie enjoys adventure travel and long hikes in beautiful places. Most recently she summited Mount Kilimanjaro with her husband Andrew and their four teenage children. I’m looking forward to being part of this conversation as you guys have a chat.
Warwick F:
Well, Margie again, so great to have you and we’ll obviously talk a lot about what you’re doing now. Love the new book, You’ve Got This, which I’ve read about half of and it’s so exciting. I love all the work you do on courage, but I’d like to start by way of sort of highlighting that is just some of your crucible experiences.
Warwick F:
Because at least from my perspective, crucible experiences mold who we are and help give us a passion for helping others or at least it can do. And so, I would just love to hear a bit more about your story and crucible experiences before we get to all the fantastic work you do on courage.
Margie W:
Yeah, thank you Warwick. I sometimes struggle to nail it down to one experience because I feel like I’ve had quite a few. Each has shaped me in different ways, and it’s funny when I look back and think what was maybe one of the earlier tough experiences before I really hit out into the … Got at the gates in my adult life, and actually it was probably dealing with an eating disorder to be honest in my teens and 20s.
Margie W:
And something people sometimes have a lot of shame around, and don’t like to talk around a lot, but I think that the journey for me, the inward journey of coming out the other side of that, I had bulimia for 13 years. From being about 13 years of age. And while I was quite high functioning, it wasn’t that, I went through college, and did well and everything else. But for me, the journey of really looking inwardly and going, “What’s underneath all of this?” was actually quite a crucible experience.
Margie W:
And I actually think I came out the other side of that through actually a 12-step program, believe it or not. And we really a journey of faith to “God, I got to get your help on this. I’m struggling to do this alone.” So, I think that also took me into the readings and learning about why we humans do what we do, and why we sometimes do the very things that we know aren’t serving us?
Margie W:
Why do we and sometimes fail to do the things that will serve us? And so, that took me down on a new pathway in many ways that ultimately ended up shaping a whole professional pathway as well. And then of course, as you know in Papua New Guinea I ended up in an armed robbery, which was pretty violent, and then 20 weeks pregnant, finding out 10 days later that I’d lost my first child, that was obviously a much more dramatic crucible experience.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean everybody’s journey is different. I mean, one of the things it’s interesting is you have an interesting story kind of growing up in, was it Western Victoria in-
Margie W:
Southeast actually.
Warwick F:
Oh sorry. Southeast. So, close. Well, at least I didn’t say Northwest, but anyway on a dairy farm, and I think one of the things you write about in your books a bit about and in You’ve Got This! is that maybe there were expectations, and traditional role models from mother and grandmother.
Warwick F:
And so, I don’t know. You’ve had a number of experiences that you’ve had to try to discern who am I? You go through something like bulimia or armed robbery or losing a child. It all tends to make you introspective.
Warwick F:
So, it may not be a traditional crucible experience, but I have a feeling that part of the way you grew up is shaped or it led you to make certain decisions and say, “Well, who am I? Do I want to follow this traditional role?”
Margie W:
Yeah, and to that point, well my father milked cows for 50 years. He dropped out of school at 15, 16. I’d say he probably had dyslexia or a learning challenge that he never got support with, and so he just did very manual sort of work in many ways for his whole working life.
Margie W:
And my mom, she actually left school at 16 to become a nun and joined the convent for nine years, and was nearly making her final vows for anyone who is familiar with Catholicism. Nearly making her final vows, and decided to leave, and then met my father not long after, and had seven children. And I’m actually Margaret Mary, so very Catholic.
Margie W:
But I share that because my parents were very much filled traditional roles, and for me growing up my dad used to say, “Oh, I see you being a sister Margaret Mary one day.” But no one in my family had ever gone to university. It was sort of seen in my parents’ world only really smart people, like really smart people would go to university. It just wasn’t something that people did was to go to university.
Margie W:
And so, even to say, “Well, actually I really want to go to university.” My older brother didn’t or until much later. And so, my parents’ actually expectations was probably quite low.
Margie W:
If I’d left school at 16 and trained as a hairdresser or worked in a local shop, I don’t think they’d have really thought much about it to be honest with you. So, it’s interesting in sort of what it is having parent expectations. I knew that they thought I was wonderful, but I just think they didn’t have very big ambitions for me because they didn’t see a world. Their whole world context themselves was very small.
Margie W:
And so, yeah that definitely shaped me, and for me over the years having the little voice in my head how many times that it’s whispered, “Who do you think you are to do that? Who do you think you are at 18 to move to a foreign city and go to university or to go traveling?” And I remember thinking about writing my first book after I’d started down this new pathway of coaching, and a few people said, “Oh you should write a book.”
Margie W:
And the voice in my head was, “Who do I think I am to write a book?” I mean, I’m just this not overly well educated girl from rural Australia, and didn’t ever study literature. I don’t know where the apostrophes go, I went to a very small school.
Margie W:
The only kid in my grade, my entire elementary school years. So, yes that little voice of who am I to do that is one that honestly in so much of my work and including my latest book is really in the words of Marianne Williamson, “Who are you not to do that?”
Warwick F:
Right, right.
Margie W:
“Who are you not to play big?” And playing small doesn’t serve the world, but that’s been a real act of courage on my part.
Warwick F:
No, absolutely. So, I mean, for some of us like me the expectations were pretty high. We had our huge Fairfax Media dynasty, and the benchmark was through the roof. They’ve taken me to be one of the great Fairfax’s, and I don’t know, do something incredible for the nation of Australia or that was sort of the benchmark.
Warwick F:
But I don’t know if it’s good or bad. It almost feels like the benchmark was set kind of low. It’s like do you feel like, “Hey mom, dad, you could’ve had a little bit higher expectations or maybe you found it freeing.” I don’t know. It showed on the other end of the spectrum.
Margie W:
You know what’s funny? And I’m going to chime in here, Warwick. When I realized who you were once we’d met, we’d had lunch together that day and I was like, “Oh, you’re Australian.”
Margie W:
And we had this lunch, and you said, “Oh my family’s in media.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, whatever.” I don’t know. Whatever. And then you gave me your card, and I got home that day, and I got it out, and I looked at your last name.
Margie W:
I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s Warwick Fairfax.” I was actually stunned, astonished, stunned because we’d had such a lovely time and everything. I grew up knowing your name.
Margie W:
I mean I grew up knowing your family name, and certainly in my late teens and 20s when your face was plastered all over Australia’s newspapers-
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Margie W:
… and all through the media, your name was … You couldn’t turn on the TV at night and your name would be on the television for a period there.
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
And our worlds, our social worlds were literally opposite. I mean, I was sort of from a tiny little rural think for … Any Americans listening, I’m like from rural Mississippi, West Virginia or somewhere, and you are the Murdoch or the-
Warwick F:
Right. Exactly.
Margie W:
You’re just so big. And I was like, “Oh my God, I just met …” Our lives, that our paths even crossed.
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
And so, yes, we grew up with different expectations.
Gary S:
And there’s something that’s interesting that you both said that does relate, I think, to crucible experiences, and I think our listeners can understand this. Margie, you talked about how you’ve heard or you heard that voice in your head say, “Who are you to do X, Y or Z?” And Warwick you had … I don’t know if it was a voice in your head, but it was a voice on the television saying, “You did this wrong.”
Gary S:
For listeners that have those voices in their heads telling them, “You can’t do this.” Or telling them, “You should do that instead of this.” What’s your advice to them to ensure that those voices don’t become crucible experiences in and of themselves?
Margie W:
Well, I would say and actually I’ve been writing about this in my new book that’s coming out next year is you’ve got to challenge those voices in your head, and do not treat the voices in your head as though they’re the truth. I believe they are really coming from that place of fear, which is wired into all of us to keep us safe, to protect us from failure, and humiliation, and rejection, and being exposed as unworthy, which I think a lot of people have a deep seated fear of being exposed, found out, is not good enough in some way. And I think it really requires really that mindfulness muscle of what these voices in my head, these self-doubts, that inner critic is what they’re saying isn’t the truth.
Margie W:
It’s not the truth. Don’t buy into this as the truth. And to challenge that, and to turn it on its head instead of, “Who am I to do this?” Yeah. “Who am I not to do this?”
Margie W:
Or you know what if you fail and what would people say? It’s like, “What would open up for me if I didn’t believe this? If I actually bought into the opposite of this?” And having the courage to defy that voice, I think is what is so crucial into avoiding a crucible experience in and of itself, of living our lives and not living the lives of significance we have it within us to live, because we’ve let that voice sit in the driver’s seat of our life, dictate our decisions, dictate our actions, and keep us living a much smaller life than honors us or serves the world.
Warwick F:
It maybe in your book, I seem to recall the phrase people living lives of quiet desperation. I don’t know. I could have sworn I read it there, maybe I’m thinking of somewhere else.
Margie W:
That’s a Thoreau line-
Warwick F:
Okay.
Margie W:
… I believe. And so, I think I paraphrased him-
Warwick F:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Margie W:
… and I was just paraphrasing Thoreau. Some of us end up living our lives of quiet desperation, and Eleanor Roosevelt has a wonderful quote, and she said, “Most people tiptoe through life only to make it safely to death.” And as they tiptoed, they’re living lives of quiet desperation because they’re going to the grave with the song still in them. And-
Warwick F:
I mean, what’s amazing to me is you grew up in just this quiet life. It’s not like you had role models of your parents who were, “Let’s just bet it all. Let’s take big risks.” So, you’ve taken a very different path than you grew up in one sense, and everybody makes different choices, not to say that other people’s choices or your parents choices were wrong choices.
Warwick F:
I mean, everybody has to live their own lives, but what made you live a life of courage just ever since you grew up, going to college in Melbourne, and you just took a very different path your whole life?
Margie W:
Yeah. I have, and my mum and dad, I’m so blessed they’re still alive, 80 and 84, and still living in the little rural area I grew up, and I’m going to have Christmas with them, which will be beautiful. But one thing that I think, which is a deep value that’s guided me a lot is that Christian value actually. “To he who much is given, much is expected.”
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
Now, you could say I wasn’t given much. I mean, we never had any money, but I was given gifts, not that I even knew what my gifts were, but also this sense of mum and dad have always donated the tiny little bits of money they had. They always donate heavily, whether it’s to the church or some charity or helping people in parts of the world that are far less privileged than even I was.
Margie W:
And so, this idea that we should live our lives for others, and do something good with our life that helps other people, and so that’s been guiding for me. How do I do something that I get a sense of purpose from that helps other people? And it’s interesting.
Margie W:
I have a sister who’s a doctor, I have a sister who is a physio, who’s now with the World Health Organization. A lot of us have actually done things that we’ve felt are in contributing to the world in some way. So I think that has been definitely a guiding force for me, not to be self centered.
Warwick F:
That’s interesting. It almost seems like rather than professionally how they live their life, it’s the values that your parents lived that perhaps most influenced you.
Margie W:
Yeah. Very much part of their community. My dad would always do lots of favors for everyone, and if they couldn’t afford it, “That’s fine. Don’t pay me.” That’s sort of who he is.
Margie W:
So, I think that definitely had an impact on me. I guess we all have different personalities too, Warwick, and I have an adventurous spirit. I love experiencing new places. I think I knew that I’d probably get easily bored if I stayed where I’ve grown up, and just by virtue of probably my personality, I’ve enjoyed living and experiencing a lot more of the world than I would have had I not left.
Margie W:
And I go back there, and I love going back there. So, it’s a very beautiful little place. It’s called Nungurner, where I grew up, which doesn’t even have a shop, and it still only has a … Actually, the school’s doubled in size.
Margie W:
It used to be one room and now it’s two. And I love going back there, but I think I knew that there was a whole lot of world out there that I was feeling called to go and live in, and explore, and experience, and be part of that I wasn’t going have that if I’d stayed in there. And I felt that again and again over my life. But I think about my second career.
Margie W:
My first one I studied business, and I worked in marketing, and then I decided that just wasn’t feeding me, and maybe that psychology, and then coaching, et cetera. But over my second career where I’m speaking, and writing, and coaching and everything, I love seeing the impact that using the tools that we learn can have on the lives of other people. That lights me up. It’s soul satisfyingly rewarding. And so, yeah.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I almost feel … Obviously you have a business and what have you, but it almost feels like it’s more of maybe a mission that you’re not doing this to build some empire. You’re doing this to help people, and in particular women who often, I think as you’ve written, maybe don’t always have … Sell themselves short, maybe don’t have the courage, don’t always stand up for themselves.
Warwick F:
It almost feels the word mission just comes to mind that-
Margie W:
Yeah, yeah. You’re right. And absolutely. I think that you’re correct. And it’s funny, even this latest book I’ve written, which isn’t just for women. And a lot of this, while I do a lot with women, I do a lot in general audiences and speaking at a lot of big conferences for big companies with often 70% men sometimes.
Margie W:
But I will say that even my latest book, it’s called, You’ve Got This!, And it’s the power of trusting ourselves. And I think about how, “Well, strategically I probably should have written a leadership book that would lead to higher speaking opportunities, and I probably should have a lot of people working under me, and then be leveraging my business for a lot more passive income.” All of these things.
Margie W:
I’m like, “Oh, I know I should from a profit maximization.” Or if I’m looking at through a commercial lens, there’s a whole lot of things I probably should’ve been doing that I haven’t been. But then I go, “Does that light me up? Do I want to do that?” I’m like, “No, it’s not lighting me up.”
Warwick F:
I’m sure people like with a lot of folks who have a coaching philosophy, it’s like you can have a whole Train The Brave coaching program in which you would license people as Margie Warrell licensed. I mean, I’m sure people have suggested that, and maybe that would work. It probably would.
Warwick F:
But do you want to have a thousand people trained in the certification program, and is that really what you want to do? It’s not wrong, but it may not be what you want to do.
Margie W:
And you know what? It’s funny. I was talking to someone about this yesterday who said that, “Oh, I could be doing that.” And I said, “I’m an empty nester in 12 months time, and maybe once I’m an empty nester, I’ll go.”
Margie W:
You know what? I have capacity for things that I haven’t had for 22 years as a mom where I really want to be around the kids more. But yeah, up until now when I’ve thought about that, it just hasn’t lit me up.
Margie W:
So, who knows what the future holds. Maybe that will be in the future, but it certainly just hasn’t been what I felt called to do up until now.
Warwick F:
I mean, I think this is important for the listeners to understand. I mean, there’s a few themes here, which is your motivation isn’t about building an empire or money. It’s about using the gifts and the passion that you have to help other people to help them not lead quiet lives of desperation, to live their life to the fullest, so that on their death bed they can say, “You know what? I’ve made mistakes, but I gave it my all, and I lived as full a life as I could possibly live.” Right?
Margie W:
Mm-hmm (Affirmative). Yeah.
Warwick F:
And that would be, and yeah, I mean we grew up obviously very differently, but that sense as I’ve mentioned in other podcasts, that sense of altruism. Fairfax Media was founded by a person of great faith. He built a huge empire, but he wanted to really have a newspaper that would be serve the colony as then was of Australia, and succeeding generations.
Warwick F:
There was a sense of altruism. I remember, I think my grandmother is reputed to have said, “When you have wealth and blessings like this, it’s almost like you’ve got dessert, but you have this obligation to serve other people.” So, that sense of serving others, that was certainly ingrained in my family. And so, yeah. I mean, I think your whole life you’ve been about helping other people.
Warwick F:
It’s just hard wired in you, which I think is, to me if you want to live a life of significance, a life that’s filled with joy, joy doesn’t come from building an empire, it comes from using your gifts to serve others. You clearly live a life of significance, I would have thought you probably a live a fairly joyful in the holistic sense of the word, if that makes sense.
Margie W:
Yeah. I’d like to think I have joyful moments. I have plenty where I’m like, “Ah.” As well.
Warwick F:
But in terms of the overall direction of what you’re doing with your life, it’s not like you said, “Oh, why am I doing this? Oh I should have just-”
Margie W:
And I think it’s such a tragedy when people just spend such a big part of their adult lives doing something that just brings them no joy. I mean, as you know, I don’t think it’s realistic that all of us are feeling joyful every moment of every day. But for some people, it’s like … Their work is just this dread, and I’m like, “That’s a really sad state to be in.”
Gary S:
Right. I want to grab something Warwick said a few minutes back when he pointed out that really the focus of a lot of your work, Margie, is women. And when I look back at the … We have all guests fill out a sheet that sort of identifies their crucible moments, and you talked about your crucible experiences.
Gary S:
And it’s interesting to me as I read the first couple of those that they are those that perhaps are most associated with women. Dealing with bulimia in your teens and 20s, men have bulimia as well, but I think we hear more about it with women. An armed robbery in Papua New Guinea, everybody is susceptible to that, but I think the bad guys will target women perhaps more than they’ll target men.
Gary S:
And then obviously losing your first child at 20 weeks being pregnant, do you think those crucible experiences, the fact that you are a woman who went through those things, is that maybe why you drifted in some way to really focusing your altruism and you’re wanting to help people to women?
Margie W:
Look, partly yes, but not entirely. I think I do a lot with women because as a woman and having now worked with thousands of women around the world, and thousands of men too. However, my experience is women are much more likely to underestimate themselves, and doubt themselves, and hold themselves back from putting themselves forward for things than men, and I know so much that.
Margie W:
I mean, our biology is slightly different, but how we socialize is different. And while we were in a stage now obviously, the world is changing, and I think girls today are growing up in a different environment that I grew up in. But that said, I think those social norms, and the penalty that we pay when we break out of the norms, and the expectations on women, and we want to be caregivers, and we hit this thing when we’re trying to have a career.
Margie W:
We go, “Oh it’s all too hard.” And I get that. I left the corporate space too. But I so often see women who really struggle with self belief, and worthiness, and I actually ran a program in Singapore yesterday with Oracle. 300 women from across Asia Pacific, and as I went around and I was talking to people, how many of those women kind of go, “Oh I don’t know if I’m ready for this bigger role.” And I find that less so in men who would go, “Oh I’m not sure I’m ready for a bigger leadership role.”
Margie W:
They’d be more likely to go, “Yeah. Bring it on. In fact, I was ready a year ago.” So, just these patterns and these tendencies. With that said, I will say Gary, I think all of us can be held back by fear in different shapes and forms, and I think sometimes for men it can show up differently too.
Margie W:
And Warwick, as you having read my book that’s coming out, I have a chapter in this on men because I think men can struggle with revealing their vulnerability. And sometimes where women have shame triggers around our bodies and how we look, men it can be around appearing weak, and not being strong-
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
… and the pressure they feel. And so, I think that fear can show up in different ways.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I think that’s very astute. I think I’m sure your right from a woman’s perspective if a woman says, “Hey, I think I deserve a raise.” It’s like, “Oh you’re being kind of pushy.” Whereas if a man says that, it’s like, “Hey, good for you. You’re being bold.”
Warwick F:
And so, how do you navigate that I’m sure is challenging in a way that gets the job done. There’s no point pushing a trigger that gets the answer no. So, how do you do it in a way that gets the answer yes? Which is probably another whole conversation.
Warwick F:
But for men, admitting that you fail, admitting that you don’t have the answers, admitting that you’re clueless is a taboo. And so, you’ve got these male managers to pretend that they know everything, and that they have all the answers when they’re scared puppy dogs. I mean, that’s sort of the reality.
Warwick F:
I mean, you’re obviously married, you’ve got at least … How many sons do you have?
Margie W:
Three.
Warwick F:
Three.
Margie W:
Three sons.
Warwick F:
Okay.
Margie W:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
So, you’ve go a lot of experience. So, there are social norms for each, but I’d like to talk a bit about courage because I love your passion for that. It’s easy to say, “Be brave.” But we’re all-
Margie W:
It’s harder to do it.
Warwick F:
We’re all scared or just so many questions. It’s such a broad subject. I know for me, it’s knowing there are some areas where I don’t have to be brave in everything.
Warwick F:
I don’t know if this is on point or not, but it just occurred to me. I’m a reflective advisor type, I grew up in an intellectual family, but I’m not particularly athletic. And so, the stereotype for boys is you’ve got to be athletic.
Warwick F:
Well, I’m kind of not. You’ve got to be competitive. Well, I’m kind of not. I don’t really want to pulverize the next guy to the ground. It doesn’t excite me. It doesn’t turn me on.
Warwick F:
I mean, I’d rather have a conversation than stick their head in the mud. It just doesn’t really do it for me. And so, playing a round in golf or batting or being competitive, it’s the last thing I want to do.
Warwick F:
And so, I’ve had to come to terms with it’s okay not to be brave in the sense of playing a sport that I don’t enjoy and being competitive. I mean, it’s just what’s the point? Now, being brave in terms of Crucible Leadership, I don’t know if that makes sense, but part of it is avoiding stereotypes, and part of it is just picking your battles.
Warwick F:
Things that may be difficult, it’s okay not to take on things you don’t want to do just because. Like, “Oh I’m going to do bungee jumping just because it scares me.” Okay, great. But if you don’t want to do it, that’s okay, right?
Margie W:
Yeah. Well, I have something to say on that, and that is actually when the expectation is that you should be doing sport and whatever, then actually that can be an act of courage to go, “I don’t want to do this.” And risk the disapproval of those around you.
Margie W:
Like, “Really son? I always thought you’d become a star footballer like me.”
Warwick F:
Right. Exactly.
Margie W:
That’s an act of courage.
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
And so, being who we really are and true to ourselves, that is courageous in itself. And the question I often ask people when we talk about being brave, and bold, and taking a risk or whatever it is, for the sake of what are you willing to do this or do you want to do this? Do you need to do this?
Margie W:
And for the sake of bungee jumping for instance like, “Wow, it really excites me and I think it’d be so much fun.” Great. Go out there and do it. Well, for the sake of, I don’t know. There’s got to be a compelling reason. There’s got to be a big why. Why would you do that?
Margie W:
And things that I did in my 20s that were brave, I don’t want to do them. I mean, I jumped out of a plane. I mean, I don’t want to do it anymore. It just don’t interest me, but at that time it was exciting when I was 19, 20 years old or whatever to do one jump, and then I decided that it was enough.
Margie W:
But I do think, for instance, building a business. If you want to build a business because that really calls to you and lights you up, fantastic because I really want to run a multi-million dollar empire. Great. Be brave and bold.
Margie W:
I don’t really want to do that, so why would I take those risks? It’s just not calling to me.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I love that phrase you said. Be brave for the sake of what? At least from my perspective, and I think we both share this is in some sense, helping other people. Making the world a better place.
Warwick F:
I mean, not everybody defines for the sake of what that way, but I think probably you and I do. Yeah.
Margie W:
Whatever is met, and I think this is where we’re all different, right? Some people want to sail a boat around the world, and some people want to create beautiful art, and some people want to build a big business, and that lights them up, and they want to come up with a better way of people communicating or traveling or whatever it is, and that uses their skills. They’re entrepreneurial, they love to create, they love to innovate, they love to … Or whatever.
Margie W:
And you think of Warren Buffett, he loves looking at the spreadsheets, and the P&L statements. He loves examining the books and going, “How can I make money out of this?” He’s gifted at that. He loves making the money.
Margie W:
He didn’t really know what to do with it all when he got it, so he’s given it away, that’s great, but that’s what he loved to do and he was good at it. I’m not actually that good at that. So, some people have gifts that will allow them to make a lot of money, and other people’s gifts maybe don’t make them so much money.
Margie W:
But I think the point is what is meaningful to you, and what’s meaningful for you and what you’re doing with Crucible Leadership has some similarities with what’s meaningful to me, but I also bring different strengths to bear, and different life experiences. So, what I’m doing is going to be different than what you’re doing or what the other 10,000 coaches are doing.
Warwick F:
And what I like about what you’re talking about is it’s got to be meaningful for you, but I think you said just a minute ago, it’s got to be linked to how you’re wired. I mean, there’s an intersection in there between being brave, feeling like it lights you up, but also feeling like it’s an area that you have some gifting, and passion, and experience. Does that make sense that there’s a linkage there?
Margie W:
Yeah. Absolutely. And to your point. I have three sons, and my youngest son absolutely loves football, rugby, in the mud, put their face in the dirt, and he’s good at it, and he loves it.
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
My third child, my son Ben, not his thing at all, like you. Why? I just couldn’t think of anything much worse.
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
And I’d like to think as a parent I’m like, “That’s great.” But-
Warwick F:
Exactly. They’re both fine.
Margie W:
That’s totally fine. The world doesn’t need everyone wanting to put people’s face in the mud.
Warwick F:
Right, right.
Margie W:
But we also need a world where not everyone is just sitting back and writing poetry. We need people to be out there … tails. And I remember Richard Branson a few years ago, I got invited to interview him on Necker Island down in the British Virgin Islands, and spending three days with him, and he’s a guy who obviously loves making things better, building businesses, making things better that lights him up. He’s really good at that, but there’s lot of things he’s not good at too.
Margie W:
And just recognizing the world doesn’t need a million Richard Bransons. Just like it doesn’t need a million of me. It needs each of us. It needs each of us to really use our own strengths in the best way, and whatever that is.
Margie W:
And so, I don’t ever kind of cast, “Well, you want to run a banking business that’s all about money?” There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what your strength is, that’s what you’re good at.
Margie W:
Then the question is what do you do with that?
Warwick F:
Right, right. I think that’s well said. So, let’s talk a bit about your new book, You’ve Got This! I love this idea. You talk a lot about fear. Well, you have to talk about fear if you talk about courage, and I think you probably talk about fear in every book you’ve ever written, which make abundant sense listening to those naysayers or so-called friends that want to hold you back.
Warwick F:
But just this notion that I think you talked about you’ve got a lot of the gifts and the answers within us, within you if you’d only listen. Talk a bit about kind of what some of the core themes in your new book You’ve Got This! is.
Margie W:
Yeah. Well, the subtitle is The Life-Changing Power Of Trusting Yourself. So, I really dive into this concept of what it is to trust ourselves and to trust our innate capacity? To deal with each moment of life as it arrives.
Margie W:
And so much of the anxiety people feel particularly when they’re dealing with change, and uncertainty, and disruption is brought on because we are scared. We’re not going to have what it takes to deal with what’s coming at us, and a lack of trust also keeps us from pursuing the challenges, going after the challenges, starting the business, writing a book, whatever. The lack of self trust that we’re like, “I don’t know if I have what it takes to do what it is I really want to do.”
Margie W:
And so, there is an act of courage to go, to trust yourself, and to trust your capacity to handle things, and to rise above the challenges, and to figure it out even though right now you’re not sure how. And I know for me even having my fourth child, it was like, “Will I? Won’t I?” And I just was really like, “Margie, if you didn’t let fear that you wouldn’t have what it would take get in the way of you having a fourth child, what would you do?”
Margie W:
I’m like, “I would at least be open to the idea of having a fourth child.” And so, then a year later we had our fourth child, and it was busy, it was crazy, it was bedlam, it was different. But each day, and each hour, and each moment I’ve been able to figure out how to raise my four children and pursue my vocation outside of the home as well, which was actually often inside the home in those early days anyway.
Margie W:
But my point being that a lot of people don’t do what they feel called to do because they’re afraid they don’t have what it takes, and they’re afraid that they won’t be able to deal with the challenges that they think are coming.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. It could be listening to the naysayers within you or maybe the naysayers around you-
Margie W:
Around you.
Warwick F:
… is obviously you and I would know, and listeners in the US, maybe not. There’s this phrase ,”Tall Poppy Syndrome”, which is basically in Australia from my perspective. If you want to succeed in any area of life other than sports, you’re going to be cut down by your mates, and your family and friends, and there are other cultures that are a little bit like that, but it’s easy to have people say, “Oh come on, Margie. Really? You want to do this?”
Warwick F:
Or, “I don’t really see that.” And I’ve had that in my own life after the whole Fairfax Media thing went under. I was not in good shape. I mean, in the ’90s I was pretty despondent, miserable, and if you ask people, “What do you think Warwick is going to do with his life as well?” I don’t know. Probably not much.
Warwick F:
I’ve listened to, and these are well meaning people, but sometimes the voices within us and the voices around us, they don’t really serve our higher selves if you will.
Margie W:
Yeah. And I think that’s true. So, one is we’ve got to manage the internal critic, but we also have to be able to deal with the external critics or even those well meaning people who just say, “Oh you can’t do that.” And I wrote about that in my book where I really wanted to be a journalist, a TV journalist, and mum was like, “Oh but darling, you don’t read the paper.”
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
You own the papers, Warwick, and we didn’t even get a paper. Literally. We’ve got a weekly paper for farmers and one for Catholics monthly.
Warwick F:
Right.
Margie W:
And so, we weren’t a family that sat around talking about what was going on on the news, and I mean mum was speaking from the very best of intentions. She just didn’t think I was someone who was into what was going on in the world enough, and I wasn’t an avid reader and all that stuff. So, I think we’ve got to be so careful about giving other people’s opinions more power than they deserve, and listen to other people’s opinions.
Margie W:
Just listen to the advice, see what resonates, but in the end trust yourself. Trust your own inner instinct, that inner sage, that inner voice that’s like, “You know what? This does feel right for me even if someone else is saying, “Really?””
Warwick F:
And to me, one of the things I’ve learned is there’s two aspects of that trust. One is trust the inner voice, and you’re so right. In scripture, it talks about that still small voice, which is really talking about the Lord, but in more general sense there is that quiet voice within you.
Warwick F:
Wherever it comes from that you need to trust, but also the way you approach things will be different than others. I mean, you’re probably, my guess is a bit more spontaneous and risk taking than I am, and that’s good. I mean, I think that’s great, but it’s like I can’t be that person.
Warwick F:
I’m more, other than when I do a billion dollar takeovers, other than that I’m normally fairly cautious. So, that one exception.
Margie W:
I’ve never done one of those myself.
Warwick F:
Well, it’s okay. You don’t add that to your Christmas list.
Gary S:
So, we’ve talked about how you guys are different here at the end, and Margie I’m going to introduce you to a phrase I use all the time with Warwick, “We got to know when to land the plane.” When it’s time to kind of come in for a landing, and we’re getting to that point. But I wanted to stress one thing for our listeners that if they were to listen to this from the beginning and just jot the words that came up the most, I think we’ve heard from Warwick significance a lot and we’ve heard from you, Margie, courage a lot.
Gary S:
And I think that’s a great place to end because it seems to me, and I’d love to hear your perspective on this, both of you, is it really possible to live a life of significance without courage? And is courage a noble goal to go after in pursuit of a life of significance?
Margie W:
I would say courage isn’t the goal, but it would be required at points along the journey. I don’t think that every day we may go, “Oh I have to do something bold and brave today.” However, I think as we pursue whatever it is that is meaningful and calls to us, there will be moments that we have to take the brave path over the comfortable one, and that will be required on our journey of forging a life of significance.
Margie W:
And sometimes that will be easier and sometimes that will be really hard, but I think there will be many moments in our journey that we have to choose that path of safe over fear, and courage over comfort.
Warwick F:
That’s absolutely well said. I’d say to live a life of significance, you have to have courage. You cannot get there without it, certainly for me and I’ve talked about this in earlier podcasts, there would be inflection points where I was working in some aviation services company doing finance and business analysis, and I started exploring coaching.
Warwick F:
Well, it took courage to then want to be certified and start coaching. Well, it took courage to want to write a book about something that was so painful that I avoided it for years. But then gee, if it can help other people, so I started it.
Warwick F:
It took courage to start Crucible Leadership or even a podcast because I’m a basically reasonably shy, reserved person. But you feel called to do something and you get the strength, but I guess the bottom line is that inflection points in your life in particular, that’s when you need the courage the most. Does that make sense? Is that your experience, Margie?
Margie W:
Oh absolutely. And that term inflection points I think absolutely. There’s those moments I was referring to, and sometimes we don’t know when they’re going to come. But there’s a part of us that goes, “Oh this is hard. This is scary, this is uncomfortable, and I risk falling short here.”
Margie W:
And it’s that moment of choice to go, “I will move forward and advance towards this for the sake of something that’s bigger than myself, and for the sake of whatever it is that’s calling me forward.”
Warwick F:
And that’s probably a good point to maybe wind this up is that for me, what motivates me is courage has to have fuel, and the fuel for me is the why, which I think you talk about. And for me, it’s life of significance, helping others. It’s whatever it is.
Warwick F:
If you find the fuel, you’ll have the courage, or at least you’ll have much greater possibility of having the courage. Does that kind of-
Margie W:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
… feel right?
Margie W:
And the why, and the why-
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Margie W:
… which is really synonymous for the sake of what.
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Margie W:
To really stick with the question and anyone listening to this, to stick with that question, how will I feel a year, five years, 10 years or in the twilight of my life from now, if I don’t do this? What am I putting at risk? What am I missing out on? And what might I one day regret if I don’t heed that voice, that call to courage? And I think that’s-
Warwick F:
And as you said in the words of Thoreau, you don’t want to live a life of quiet desperation. You don’t want to be that person.
Margie W:
And go to grave with the song still in you.
Warwick F:
Exactly right.
Gary S:
That is a very resonant note to land the plane on. Margie, where can listeners find out more about your book, about you, about your speaking, all of those things?
Margie W:
Oh thank you. Yes. Look, the best go-to place is just my website, MargieWarrell.com. M-A-R-G-I-E, because the way I pronounce my name and the way it’s spelled, for American listeners it could be different, but I’m sure you’ll provide a link.
Gary S:
And that is true for Warwick as well. I always tell people if you want to engage Crucible Leadership in LinkedIn, you go to @WarwickFairfax, and it’s with the W in the middle. W-A-R-W-I-C-K Fairfax. You can find us in LinkedIn. If you want to engage us at Crucible Leadership on Facebook, it’s at Crucible Leadership. And you can also visit us on the web at CrucibleLeadership.com.
Gary S:
Warwick, I’m usually the one that says goodbye, but I’m going to let you say goodbye to your good friend Margie. Margie, it was great spending time with you. Thank you for sharing your insights and work. Take it away.
Warwick F:
Well, Margie, thanks so much for being here. Your journey of courage is something I’ve always admired. It’s actually been inspirational to me and in my own journey, so yeah. Just helping women and men have courage, to be bold, you can’t preach it enough if you will because you might be brave today, but tomorrow the voices come back.
Warwick F:
So, every day you got to wake up again and say, “Okay. I’ve got to be courageous again.” So, thank you for your life’s work. It’s so important. So, we appreciate you being here.
Margie W:
Well, I’m just delighted our lives, our paths have also crossed, so thank you again. It’s been an honor.
It is hard enough to find your mission, your purpose in life. But our mission, our purpose in life, can drift if left to its own devices. Years down the track, we might be a long way from where we started. But not by choice, by drift. Mission drift. For anyone passionate about devoting their life to a higher purpose, a cause that is focused on helping others — a life of significance — that is a sobering reminder. Mission drift can happen. To anyone. It’s a bit like an ocean liner: A slight shift in the rudder by a few degrees can lead to a significant change in course. You might have been heading to France, but you ended up in Iceland.
I am reminded of a book I read a while back called “Mission Drift” by Peter Greer and Chris Horst. This book dealt with the tendency of faith-based institutions to drift from their original missions. The authors refer to the original mission statement of Harvard University, founded in 1636, which, in part, says, “the main end of your life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ.” Eighty years after Harvard’s founding, some New England pastors felt that Harvard had drifted too far from its original purpose. They ended up founding Yale University.
The point of this story is not whether you think Harvard and then Yale’s drifting from its original missional statements is a good or a bad thing. It is that if your mission is going to change, or the mission of the organization or business you founded is going to change, you want it to happen on purpose, not by accident. Typically, those who start a business or organization that is based on a compelling vision that seeks to make the world a better place, do not want their mission to change. The way they help people may change. Their products and services may change. But their mission does not change. Southwest Airlines’ purpose is to “Connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost travel.” Connecting families and friends through affordable, friendly, and reliable travel is still Southwest’s purpose. As their many customers would attest, they live their mission pretty well. The Walt Disney Company says that, “The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform, and inspire around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling…” You sense that Walt Disney himself would completely agree with that mission.
How do you stop mission drift? How do you ensure that the organization or business you founded stays true to its roots? Perhaps you have a mission that governs the choices you make in your career and your life. How do you stay true to your own personal mission?
It starts with having a mission that you have written down. It is something that you can recite off the top of your head without thinking when people ask you. For Crucible Leadership, for instance, the essence of our mission is to help people overcome failures and setbacks (their crucible moments) to lead lives of significance. Our goal is that everything we do should help to fulfill that mission. Whether it is an organizational mission or a personal mission, you need to review it regularly, at least once a year. You need to ask yourself and your team, “How does everything we do contribute to that mission?” Every person in your organization, when asked how their particular area contributes to the overall mission, should be able to give you a clear answer. If they don’t know, that is the wrong answer. Either they are the wrong person for the position, or their leaders have not helped them understand their role in the organization. It is also helpful to ask yourself and your team, “Why does the mission matter? Should we change it? What’s the point?” For instance, Southwest Airlines’ CEO could ask their senior team, indeed anyone at Southwest, does connecting people through friendly, reliable, and low-cost travel still matter? Is that what Southwest should still be about? I am sure everyone at Southwest would resoundingly say yes and be able to give reasons why that mission is still important.
When you have that conversation with yourself, your team, or with your friends in the case of a personal mission, it should become apparent if you have drifted from it. When you ask your team how does every area, every initiative line up with the mission, it should soon become clear if you have a problem. If there are some blank stares and several people say they are not sure, you have a problem. Or you may listen to your team justify why their areas line up with the mission, and you may be thinking, “I am not buying it!”
In most cases, certainly if you have the right team, if you are off course you won’t be the only person who sees that there is a problem. Perhaps it’s that your original vision may be a little fuzzy or perhaps outdated. If that’s the case, get together with your team and figure out a mission that you all can be off-the-charts passionate about. It should, from a Crucible Leadership perspective, be one that has an altruistic component that desires to make the world a better place. The missions of both Southwest and The Walt Disney Company both have that sense of altruism about their mission statements. These kind of mission statements last: they motivate, and you are less likely to drift from them. They are engraved on people’s hearts.
Then you need to ask yourself and your team why you have drifted from the original mission. Perhaps you had some large customers that wanted a product or service that was outside of the mission. Perhaps investors have influenced that decision. Some might say to forget the altruism — it is all about the bottom line. In most cases, unless you have a compelling motivating mission, it will be harder to get great employees on board who will stay, or indeed to motivate customers that you are selling more than a product or service, that you are indeed helping to make the world a better place. Both Southwest and The Walt Disney Company have been financially very successful. There is a reason for this. They have stayed true to their hope-affirming mission.
Then together with your team, create a plan that, over time (it could take a year or more), helps your organization get back on mission. If you have team members who don’t buy into that mission, it is better to let them go. You are not doing your organization, your team, yourself, or them any favors by keeping them.
An often-overlooked facet of ensuring that your organization stays on mission is to look at the structures you have in place. For instance, what type of board members and senior leaders do you have in your organization? It does not matter how capable they are or how impressive their resumes are. If they are not fully invested in the mission of your organization, they should not be there. That is as true for the CEO or executive director and their teams. They have to be fully onboard. To the degree that an important constituency is outside investors, don’t assume that they won’t understand the importance of having an altruistic motivating mission. You just have to make the business case of why it makes sense.
In summary, examine your mission. Is it still relevant today? Is every area of your organization in line with that mission? Does every person in the organization fully embrace the mission? Do you have the right board and key employees in place who believe in the mission? If there has been mission drift, have you crafted a plan to get the organization back on track; or in the case of a personal mission, have you come up with a plan to get your career and life back in line with your mission? Just remember: Mission drift is rarely a good thing. It doesn’t often happen on purpose.
Reflection
Have you or your organization drifted from your original mission?
Do you have the right team around you who are fully committed to that mission?
Have you crafted a plan to get your organization or your own life and career back on track?
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Devastating crucible experiences robbed him of his lifelong dream to be a Top Gun Navy fighter pilot and bankrupted the multi-million-dollar business he created years later. Then, just when John Ramstead thought he had his life back on track, a freak horseback-riding accident left him with crushed ribs, broken bones in his neck, a punctured lung, and a torturous 23 surgeries during a a 20-month stay in a traumatic brain-injury hospital. In this interview with Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax, Ramstead shares that as physically and financially shattering as those moments were, the emotional toll was even more painful. It was only after finding hope through his reinvigorated faith that Ramstead was able to find his life’s calling: not striving to raise his profile, but working to raise the profiles of others. He now helps other leaders find their purpose through his coaching practice Eternal Leadership, hailed by Inc. as one of the top leadership voices in the country.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Gary S:
Well, welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, your cohost and the communications’ director of Crucible Leadership, and we’re really thrilled that you’re here with us today for what’s going to be, we think, a very enlightening, very inspiring conversation. With me as always is the founder of Crucible Leadership and the host of Beyond the Crucible, Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, we’ve got a good episode today.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Very much looking forward to it and thanks John so much for being here.
John R:
Yeah. My pleasure Warwick.
Gary S:
The John that Warwick referred to is John Ramstead, and I’m going to introduce him in a minute, give him the introduction that he deserves, but we have a little form that we use here at Beyond the Crucible to ask people their background and experience and one of the questions we ask is what has been the crucible experience that has most shaped your life? That’s one of the questions we ask, is we focus on crucible experiences and overcoming those. Learning to leverage the lessons of those who live a life of significance. We asked John like we ask everyone what has been the one crucible experience that has most shaped your life? And John’s first answer was, “There are many.” With a smiley face emoji.
Gary S:
So, that will give you a just a little bit of taste, listener, for what we’re going to hear today. John’s had some robust crucible experiences and we’re going to unpack those and talk about those and I think you’ll find some great insight there for your own efforts to move beyond crucibles, to live a life of significance. So, let me tell you who John Ramstead is. John has been married for 30 years to his best friend, Donna and has three incredible boys. It has been eight years since a near fatal accident changed the trajectory of his life. Without the incredible support of God, his family, and amazing friends he would not be the person he is today. As he recovered, John sought discernment as to why God saved him and what he now wants him to do. God gave John a clear new calling, pour the life he’s been given into others, leaders to equip and inspire them for work in his kingdom.
Gary S:
John’s deep faith in his many years as a Navy fighter pilot, entrepreneur, Fortune 500 leader and board chair have been redirected into an amazingly successful coaching practice and popular leadership podcast. He has been named by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 12 leaders to listen to. That is very impressive, John. So Warwick, take the reins and let’s dive into John’s story.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean that really is impressive from what you’re doing now with the Eternal Leadership and Navy fighter pilot, software company. I mean, you’ve done a lot and you’ve had a number of crucible experiences. You’ve almost run the gamut from business challenge to challenges in the Navy and then more recently horse riding accident. I mean, you get the whole concept of crucible experience. You probably understand it more than you’d like to, I’m guessing.
John R:
Yeah. Warwick, I’m a lifelong learner. So, I need to create opportunities to learn.
Warwick F:
I think you’re probably saying, “If there’s somebody out there, I’ve got it now. Okay. No more lessons, please.” But, yeah. Have you wanted to start… Tell us a bit about your story in particular, your crucible experience/experiences.
John R:
Why don’t we start back at the beginning?
Warwick F:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
John R:
I just remember, growing up it was really interesting. I guess one of the big things I’ve learned, if I actually would look at this thread that runs through everything and how I’ve been able to keep moving forward I guess is really these three areas. The first one is always being able to have worthwhile goal or dream, a destination that I’m striving toward. The other one was trying to really understand who I truly was, not who everybody else thought I should be or even the person I saw in the mirror relative to maybe who God saw there often was a big gap. I really think the bigger the gap in our life between our real self and our ideal self, the more stress and anxiety that we feel. In aviation also it is impossible to navigate or even make course corrections unless you have a True North.
John R:
You have to have something that allows you to either set a course or make a correction if you get off course, and there’s been times in my life where I’ve been in touch with all three or I’ve let them go, and I think that’s where I’ve gotten off in challenges, but just early on Warwick, it was absolute dream of mine when I was a little kid to be a fighter pilot, but I’ll never forget it. As I was four years old, I was crawling up the stairs of… My folks had just bought a new house. It was under construction. I’m halfway up the stairs to the second floor and I can see through the stairs all the way down into the basement, and I was convinced I was going to fall through the gap in the stairs and crash into the basement. I absolutely froze, my dad sitting there encouraging me, and I started shaking.
John R:
He comes down and carries me to the top of the stairs. That made such an impact. Even when I was in middle school, when the house was finished and they’re closed in and carpeted, I’d have to run up those stairs two at a time to get to my room. I had this crazy fear of heights to the point where I didn’t even want to play with any of the kids in the neighborhood. They even just stopped coming to play with me and so how I internalized all that is, I’m just this loaner, this outcast. Nobody likes me, and so that’s where I started and I have this dream of being a fighter pilot. I’ll never forget. It was my senior year in high school, I didn’t have a lot of friends because how I saw myself and our class trip we decided we’re going to go cliff jumping. I’m like, “Oh my God. No.”
Warwick F:
Oh, no. That’s awful.
John R:
I’m like, “That’s the last thing I want to do, but this is going to be the last thing I do in high school.” So I get to this Taylors Falls, Minnesota. Gary might be familiar with it on the other side of the State.
Gary S:
Yep. Yep.
John R:
And I’m at the top of this 100 foot cliff. My fear is keeping me totally away from the edge. Nobody is going to jump off this thing. I’m like, “Okay, good. I’m not alone.” I look at my one good friend and I said, “Dude…” I was kidding by the way. I said, “Dude, we should jump off the cliff.” He goes, “Great idea.” Grabs my wrist and runs toward the edge, dragging me all the way. The next thing I know, I am airborne, I am weightless, I’m terrified. It was two and a half seconds till I hit the water. It felt like eternity.
Warwick F:
How high do you think those falls were? I mean, it was-
John R:
It was 100 feet.
Warwick F:
100 feet. Right. Right.
John R:
It was 100 feet. There was a plaque there.
Warwick F:
Oh, no.
John R:
So when I hit the water, because I went back and calculated it was 52.7 miles per hour, and here’s what happened. What started to shatter this identity that I had built that I can’t make big choices, I can’t do cool things, it just started to change things. So, when I was in college on a ROTC scholarship, I took a huge bet on myself to be able to go and apply for Navy flight school. I was on a ROTC scholarship. You’re there outside of Annapolis with the Naval Academy as I got into the Naval Academy, but what I found out is they don’t have beer there Warwick. So I went to college on a ROTC scholarship.
John R:
I ended up getting into flight school and it was a very long process, put in a ton of work, but I ended up getting orders to fly the F-14. You can see the picture up here behind me and went and flew in Desert Storm. It was the end of my cruise, we’re coming back toward where I was stationed in Japan. We pulled into Australia, Sydney, and Perth a number of times. I’m walking out of my commanding officer state room. I’m absolutely on cloud 9. I’ve never been more fired up my life because he told me that, “You John, are getting the orders to go to Top Gun. You’re the guy.”
Warwick F:
Wow.
John R:
I couldn’t even sleep that night.
Warwick F:
I imagine.
John R:
Now the next weekend I’m playing softball and I hear somebody yell, “Watch out.” I turned, and a line drive was coming screaming straight at my head. I couldn’t get out of the way and it hits me in the right eye. I have a blowout fracture to my eye and nerve damage gives me double vision. I lose my medical clearance and within 12 months the Navy had processed me out and here I am. This is my first real big crucible moment. I can’t find a job anywhere. I’m a pilot who can’t fly. I’m an engineer, I have electrical engineering degree and I don’t know how to engineer. So I got a job selling cell phones.
John R:
So I’m knocking on doors in the neighborhood near the Navy base hoping somebody’s at home to sell them a cell phone and the sounds of my dreams are roaring overhead and I’m looking up there going, “That’s where I should be.” I think that was one of the lowest points in my life. When your dreams are ripped away, your identity, because being a fighter pilot was my identity. That was ripped away. I didn’t know who I was. I had no idea how to set even a next goal. I was functionally depressed. I wouldn’t say I was suicidal, but man, I was probably about as close to that depth as you can get and I had to rebuild my entire life and I didn’t know how to do it at that point. That was my entry into my first crucible moment.
Warwick F:
What were you feeling? I mean, were you angry, depressed? Like, “How could this happen?” Were you thinking to that guy that said, “Hey, watch out.” “If he hadn’t said watch out, the ball might have hit me on the side of the head. Maybe it would’ve had a concussion, but it wouldn’t have hit my eye.” I mean, what were the thoughts that were going through your mind when this happened?
John R:
Oh yeah, I blamed him, but then he actually perished in an accident. It was a very dangerous profession, but I did realize that, that’s not his fault, but let me tell you, so this is the power of just being in community, I think even a podcast like this because I know a lot of people might feel like, “Man, I’m in the middle of the storm right now.” There was a gentleman who reached out to me during this time who didn’t know me and just took an interest in me and he started mentoring me. He introduced me to some of his friends that had mentored him, so now I have these three amazing guys that are all successful. One is a doctor, one is a lawyer and one is an education and they just on their own started spending time with me. What am I good at? What do I want to do next? Starting to connect to who I am.
John R:
You know what? These guys were all Christians, they’re all believers, because at the time I’ll tell you this, I would have never stepped foot in a church. I was mad at God. I was mad at life. I was mad at the Navy. I mean, what do you do? You’re in denial and I had no idea what was next, but they started getting me help just to get some clarity on what are some of those things that I’m passionate about because you can’t fly anymore. What are those things that you’re good at? What would be fulfilling? I couldn’t think long term at the time but just in the short term other than making a paycheck and these three guys helped me absolutely reconnect at the time to the best I could to who I was, and that’s when I moved back to Minnesota from San Diego because I was in the Navy in San Diego, to start a company with my friend, and it was these three guys because they had helped me so much that actually led me to my faith and I got to tell you, they are still in my life, Warwick.
John R:
My wife and I a few months ago, because this was, oh my goodness, this was in ’94. So what’s that? 25 years ago. We flew back to San Diego just a couple months ago and me and the three guys, their wives and my wife. So the eight of us all spent a weekend together and I just wanted to celebrate with them that the fact they took their eyes off themselves and focused on me when I needed the most, they changed the entire trajectory of my marriage, my faith, how I parented my kids, how I started to get a sense of self worth. So, I’ll tell you this, at the time I didn’t realize it, but two of those guys at the time were going through some pretty hard stuff. That’s also something I’ve learned is when you’re in a crucible moment helping others that are in that moment too helps you focus outside of being in your head, and I got to tell you, that has been a big deal for me.
Warwick F:
I mean, what you’re saying is so profound because I’ve certainly found as I’ve used my own crucible experience of losing 150 year old billion dollar family business, which was really more than the money, just losing a business that was founded by a strong believer. I mean it was just devastating, and it took me years, probably a lot longer than it did you, but to think of it that way and begin to help people, but when you think about those three other guys, it feels almost like a miracle. You should probably ask yourself, “What would have happened to my life if those three guys hadn’t come in to my life?” I’m sure you’ve probably thought about that, right? I mean, what would the trajectory of your life have looked like without them?
John R:
That’s a tough question. Well I’ll tell you this though Warwick, because it definitely still took years. I mean there was times even 10, 15 years later, that question that people love to say, “Hey, if you could change one thing…” And I hate the question because guess what? You can’t.
Warwick F:
No.
John R:
I might be able to go back and say, “Okay. Did I learn something different?”
Warwick F:
Right.
John R:
But I got to tell you that decision to get out of the Navy because they did tell me if you stay in and it gets better, here’s insult to injury. So take the crucible moment and go out of the frying pan into the fire.
Warwick F:
Yeah.
John R:
They said, “If you stay in the Navy, you can’t go back into a flying job right now because you have double vision, but you can stay in and we would put you as part of a ship’s crew for a year. Now, if the day you got those orders your vision came back, you’d still have to finish up the year.” Okay. So I chose to get out. I actually made the choice instead of giving it a go. Six months after I get out, what do you think happens?
Warwick F:
Your eyesight’s okay.
John R:
The double vision goes away.
Warwick F:
Oh, no.
John R:
So if I had stayed in, I would’ve had a career as a fighter pilot. I’d probably be an Admiral today, and that was just always haunting me. What I realized as I got older, I had to start looking at, I guess life circumstances, right? And realize that it’s not a success or failure. I didn’t fail in making that decision. I had to start saying everything has a context. Everything has a reason. Everything is actually preparing me. This is how a lot of growth and maturing you can tell, is preparing me to do today. If some of those experiences had not happened, I hadn’t had to work them through, I know for a fact, there’s people that I’m coaching and working with today, I would not be able to serve as well had I not gone through something like that.
John R:
Now it’s a lot easier to look at some of those things in hindsight versus when you’re going through them, but when you’re going through them and even makes it like harder, but I got to tell you those three guys reaching out to me, you know what? And if you don’t know anybody who’s out there listening, nobody’s ever reached out to me and said, “Hey, let’s grab coffee.” How about this? Because I’ve had to do this in some other moments is go find somebody at church, somebody who might be in your rotary group, an old friend and just say, “I need to talk. I need somebody to help me just process through some of these things.” Because what I’ve found is going through crucible moments, it is a team sport and if you don’t have somebody there with you, I don’t know how I would’ve done it, trying to do it alone, if that makes sense.
Gary S:
And this is an interesting point that you both just brought up in the anecdotes that you were sharing. Warwick, you said that your crucible experience and you had an aside, you said it probably took longer than you John. John, you then said that this happened a couple of decades ago and you’re still going through it. It’s important for listeners to hear that when you’ve had a crucible experience, as Warwick says, it changes the trajectory of your life and that is often, maybe frequently, maybe most of the time, not a quick, easy, it’s over and done after a little bit of a process. One of the things that we talk about at Crucible Leadership is a refining cycle. Something that you go through as you assess what your vision is, how to make your vision a reality. Those are things that are constantly in churn as you’re going through experience, and it sounds John, like that is exactly what happened to you. It was not, “Okay. My health has been restored, guys who helped me out, let’s go do something different.” You’re still in some ways walking in that aren’t you?
John R:
Yeah. Warwick, wouldn’t you say it’s almost like a grieving process because you lost-
Warwick F:
Yes.
John R:
… that opportunity, that part of your life, that piece of your identity and I don’t know, maybe others can, but I’ve never been able to just flip a switch and go, “Okay. Well, next.”
Warwick F:
No. I mean-
John R:
I’d like to be able to do that, but I don’t think that’s the way it works.
Warwick F:
I think what you’re saying is so profoundly true. I mean, we’re very different. I’ve never been in the Navy, but that sense of, my whole life I was groomed to go into the family business, I did my undergrad at Oxford like my dad and other relatives, worked on Wall Street, went to Harvard Business School. It was all about preparing myself. It’s funny, I’ve never been in the military, but the whole duty, honor, country thing, I mean I’m wired that way. My life may be over in the process, but I will give it up for the cause. I mean, I don’t know if that’s a healthy or unhealthy way of thinking, but I’m certainly wired that way. So yeah, when I came to faith in Christ when I was at Oxford, the whole idea well clearly there’s a plan is to resurrect the company in the ideals that the founder who was a strong businessman for Christ, elder of his church, you could ever find.
Warwick F:
So when that went under, it was a bit like you with the Navy. It was a grieving process, and one of the things you said, I think will be very helpful for listeners to reflect on is I’ve thought, because I’m a very reflective person, what if I’d handled things differently, hadn’t done the sort of ambushed take over, I talked to my family members, here’s what I’m thinking. I don’t know that it would have worked, but you never get to play out the what ifs. I think that for me, I’m not really wired to run a huge company. It was probably good that I wasn’t involved, but you never get to play out the what ifs. If I’d made different decisions, the person I am now would have handled things a lot differently than when I was 26 years old would have made different decisions, but you don’t know if it would have made things better or worse because there were inherent challenges there.
Warwick F:
So, the first thing I think is really, you never get to redo all of this. So it’s important to reflect, but you can’t reflect in the sense of what could have happened. It’s unknowable. The other thing you said which is so profound is being willing to get advice. I know a lot of people, especially when I was that age, that don’t like to listen to older people. I never was like that. I had older folks who were mentors and over the course of my life, it’s so helpful. Input is so good. So, yeah. That’s so helpful what you said, John.
John R:
Thank you.
Gary S:
So, among the crucible moments that you listed John, when you said that there are many, first one was obviously your Navy experience and it’s fascinating to me because Crucible Leadership talks about overcoming crucible moments that are both failures and traumas, tragedies, things that happened to you. Clearly this accident was something that happened to you, it was a physical thing, but you go on to list some failure type situations that are more related to your business experience. You say that your first entrepreneurial venture with a friend imploded. That you started a software company working 80 hours a week to have it wiped out when the economy crashed. Listeners who have had either one of those experiences, you’ve had both of those kinds of experiences in your life. You’ve had failures-
John R:
Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up Gary.
Gary S:
… and you’ve had…. Well, but we bring it up only because it can help the folks who are listening in. So, you get beyond the accidents, you get beyond your career in the Navy, you launch into a career in business and crucibles find you there. What was that like?
John R:
That was a really challenging time. My eyesight had come back. I could have gone and flown for the airline. So I actually decided to go do that and my first year as an airline pilot, I made $16,000. Think about that.
Gary S:
Wow.
John R:
Okay. That’s the guy flying you around and we had two kids and my wife wanted to be a stay at home mom. So, I moved back to Minnesota. My friend said, “Hey, help me start this company.” And what I decided to do is I didn’t know which one I wanted to do, fly or entrepreneur. I bid to fly only on weekends and I would work every week day at this company. So, literally for two years I did not have one day off because as a junior airline pilot, you get all the holidays. Now I started making more at this company. I was still healing even though I had this great mentorship. Warwick, you said it takes time. I was still not in a good place. I mean, I was still bitter, resentful. I would argue. I had my approach on how I thought things should go. He had things that he wanted to do. They were often at odds. Going into a partnership it’s like going into a marriage. I didn’t know any of this.
Warwick F:
Right.
John R:
And through that we ended up, just because there was this constant tension between he and I not only driving the company into the ground, but it ended up destroying that friendship, and by the way, that was the guy that I jumped off the cliff with back in high school.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
John R:
So I mean, this was a close friendship. It was hard. I blamed him 100%. It was all his fault. How dare he, I’ll guarantee that he felt the same way. Now coming out of that train wreck because I was like, “Okay. What’s next?” Now there was a gentleman who saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself and he wanted me to come on to a startup data mining software company to be head of sales and operations for North America. I felt like I had completely out kicked my coverage. Right? But I got to tell you what. So I figured, you know what? I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I have my electrical engineering degree. I know how to learn and I can outwork anybody around me. So yeah, I put in 60, 70, 80 hours a week. For two and a half years, we took this from an idea to a million dollars a month in sales.
John R:
My personal net worth on paper was $17 million. My wife and I were doing the happy dance. We have our golden parachute. We’re already planning this amazing future, what we were going to do, what we were going to give away, and then the internet bubble popped and within 90 days we closed the doors on that company. So everything I’d put in, all my own personal money gone, starting over again, and I’m like, “What the heck?” I mean, come on, fighter pilot, my first attempt, my second attempt, it’s like, man, I just didn’t get the entrepreneur gene, but I got to tell you it was in that moment as I’m really picking up the pieces, I’m like, “You know what? I’m not going to be an entrepreneur anymore. I’m just going to get a job.” But that’s when that understanding of really connecting to having a worthwhile destination, that goal to really understanding not only who I was, but who Christ sees when he looks at me. What is my true identity? Because there was a gap.
John R:
There was a huge gap between who I was, who I wanted to be and who others saw me as, but I also had a connect to that True North, and for me that was really reconnecting to my faith, and what happened is I ended up getting a job at a Fortune 100 technology company just as a sales rep. I did not want to have people reporting to me. I wanted to show up, punch in because I was hurting. I was licking my wounds, but what happened was, I think when you’re kind of wired to leadership and you have some good people skills, I kept getting promoted into district management, area management on and on and on, and it was in that period of time I also was seeking out mentorship. In the beginning, I was really connected to these concepts of keeping my goals and dreams focused in front of me. What’s important, that True North and who I was. Over time as I started getting promotions and more pay and accolades and things like this, I started giving myself the credit instead of giving God the credit and I drifted away from these.
John R:
Instead of being the person I wanted to be that was my true self, I started adapting to who I thought they wanted me to be, who I thought I should be, right? My True North became the priorities of the company versus my own and the goals were honestly just to get more recognition and make more money, and you can imagine that was a place instead of getting slammed off course, like kind of happened earlier in my career, that set myself up to just slowly drift because I went from this technology company to take a promotion, to go to a Wall Street. I worked on Wall Street Warwick, for a number of years, but I would tell you that during this period of time I drifted so much. Instead of taking my plane off to land in LA, I was ending up somewhere over Antarctica, just drifting aimlessly and I didn’t know how to get back.
Warwick F:
And this is again such an important point for listeners to realize there’s a book you may have come across called Mission Drift. It’s more of a faith based perspective, but just here, sometimes we get slammed in the face so to speak, or at least he literally did, but sometimes a bit like the analogy of a lobster boiling, it’s slowly dying. It doesn’t realize it and that’s very often what happens in life. Sometimes people believe that it’s a battle between good and evil and you can look at it that way more generally. It’s just easy to get off track. You have this goal, an ideal, and you get promoted and get more money and typically, you don’t wake up one morning and say, “Yep. The True North is going to go in the garbage can.” Right? “I’m going to ditch all that.” And you never consciously said that bit by bit, and so that’s all of us. We can all be that. We have to really on a regular basis, get in touch with what is our True North? What is our overall vision? Have people around us that’ll shoot straight with us.
Warwick F:
For me if I had those people, sometimes I ask, well if you could ask yourself all those tough questions because like you, I do a lot of executive coaching, back in my newspaper days, would that have helped? And I said, “Well, back then I don’t know that I would have listened frankly. Probably wouldn’t have.” But you never know. But anyway, that’s such an important point. I know, we want to focus a bit on just what you’re doing now and just some of what you’ve mentioned that last crucible experience, which is a huge one, was it 2010, 2011? You had a-
John R:
Yeah. 2011. So, I had drifted to this place over Antarctica, I call that the land of smoldering discontent.
Warwick F:
That’s well said.
John R:
Right? I think I was in a crucible moment, yet I didn’t realize it Warwick, right? Because everything from the outside looked great but I was so disconnected. I mean, I recently saw a survey, there was 83% I think of the Americans that on Sunday night before going to work have a mental or physical negative reaction just thinking about work. That’s where I was at, and so I was stuck. I actually just left the Wall Street firm to start another company with some amazing people. I figured this is what was going to fix my discontent, starting another company, amazing team. I’d been there for five months and I get invited to go to a business retreat up in Montana. I’m in Colorado up at this ranch and I get saddled on a horse.
John R:
We’re going to go for a docile trail ride to the back to have lunch and all of a sudden my horse had other plans. He started trotting away from the fence out into this big open area and all of a sudden he bolts and he takes off and I’m laying flat on my back and his rump is pounded me in the shoulder blade and I was scared to death. I was going to flip off the back of the horse and get kicked in the head. So, the only thing I could think of, and that was to squeeze with my legs as hard as I can. Now all the horse people in the audience know exactly what I just did. Are you horse people?
Warwick F:
No.
Gary S:
I’m not. I have a-
John R:
Okay. So when you squeeze a horse with your legs, you are telling him to go faster.
Warwick F:
Oh, no.
Gary S:
Ooh. I hadn’t known that.
John R:
I’m a guy, I didn’t read the owner’s manual, I’m just telling you right now. So-
Warwick F:
That’s so funny.
John R:
… so, he responded, man. He hit full afterburners. He launched and I’m just hanging on. I get my weight back up in the saddle and I’m looking straight ahead and there’s a steel corral fence about 60 yards in front of me and we’re heading straight at it. So I reached down and it’s clear to my left, I grabbed the reins and I pull him to turn. I’m like, “No big deal. I don’t like going this fast on a horse, but we’ll get him to turn.” And he pulled his head straight back and didn’t even break stride. I was like, “Oh. Oh.” So I grabbed the rein, I pulled even harder and he snaps his head back and goes even faster. I didn’t even know he had another gear. He did not break his direction. He was still at the fence. I literally started panicking like, “I got to jump off this horse. If I don’t jump off this horse, I’m going to break my neck. I don’t want to break my neck.” Literally. I mean, I’ve been in combat, I’ve raised three teenagers.
John R:
I mean, nothing has prepared me for this moment and all of a sudden I had this moment of clarity. Everything slows down. Full speed. Wind in my hair, hooves thundering 20 yards in front of the fence, and I remember thinking very clearly, this is not going to end well and that’s the last thing I remember. The horse goes into the fence and he drops his butt, he bucks so hard, he flips over and he slams into the fence. Rump first, hurts himself, but when he does that, he launches me Superman face first into a three inch steel beam that hits me across my skull from my teeth up through my left eye socket and I lost eight teeth.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
John R:
I broke every bone in my skull virtually except for my jaw and my right cheekbone. I broke my neck, I shattered my shoulder and then the second bar down hit me in the rib cage. I crushed the entire left side of my rib cage. I broke four ribs and punctured my left lung and we found out later from multiple doctors at Level 1 trauma center, “That what happened to you is not survivable and even if you had survived, the best case scenario you should have been like Christopher Reeves for the rest of your life.” In their estimation.
Warwick F:
So they thought that you-
John R:
So what happened was-
Warwick F:
… should either be dead or a quadriplegic?
John R:
Dead or quadriplegic. Absolutely. Just the damage that was in my head, neck, skull, everywhere. I woke up on the ground in more pain that I can even put into words. The people around me were holding down my head, my shoulders, my hips. I could feel their hands. I could hear them talking, praying, event with Dr. James Dobson from Focus on the Family. I didn’t know that I was just screaming and yelling and riling around. I was trying to get away from the pain. You know that saying, God won’t give you more than you can handle?
Warwick F:
Yeah.
John R:
It’s not true. That’s my opinion.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I hear you there.
John R:
That’s where I was and all of a sudden in that moment of being beyond what I even could conceive, that I could endure, I was in God’s presence and it was the most intense and unconditional personal between father God and me, John love. It was almost like the fabric of the universe was made out of this love and I got to touch it. I didn’t even know how bad my body was crushed. When I felt God’s presence, the first thing I thought was, “I am not worthy of somebody loving me like this.” That was the first thought I had and then I felt this peace, you know that peace that passes all understanding that you hear about?
Warwick F:
Yeah.
John R:
It was washing over me like being at the edge of the beach and you’re right there at the edge of the sand and the waves are coming in. It had a weight to it, it almost had a color to it. I almost want to say purple, but that’s not right, but as this washed over me, all that pain and panic and fear was completely gone. It wasn’t even a memory. I mean it was just gone and then God spoke to me, but one thing I do want to share with you in that moment, one of the things reflecting back on it was that relationship that he already had with me, that he was inviting me into, everything I’ve ever done in my life, good, bad, ugly, whatever, was not even relevant to his love for me and the relationship he has for me. That was a profound revelation for me was that this isn’t something I could have earned or had a better relationship if I had done things maybe differently in my life.
Warwick F:
Oh.
John R:
The other thing that was profound for me too was understanding in that moment the true nature of God, because somebody asked me, “How would you have described him in this moment?” And I said, “The first word that pops into my head is a friend.” And my whole life I always thought of God like the commanding general, right?
Warwick F:
Sure.
John R:
He’s got your back, he’s got your best interest in mind, he sets everything in order, but you don’t go up to him and say, “Hey sir, I’m having a bad day. Can I have a hug?” It just doesn’t work that way in the military. That was how I viewed him. Anyway, so then all of a sudden he spoke to me and it was words that came from everywhere and nowhere, and it wasn’t to my ears. It was just flowing through me, and what he said was, “All things work together for good for those that love the Lord.” Which comes from Romans 8, and then he said, “John, I’m going to heal you and use this for my glory. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
John R:
As soon as he said that, I knew my left eye was permanently blinded. It still is today. All the bones behind the eye sockets shattered and severed the optic nerve, and then I woke up and I just said calmly to everybody there, I said, “God’s here. You don’t have to worry. It’s going to be okay.” And they’re like, “Ah. Wah.”
Warwick F:
“How can you possibly say that?” That’s what they were thinking.
John R:
The EMT didn’t think I was going to survive till life flight showed up.
Warwick F:
Wow.
John R:
But here’s what I learned through that was I’ll never forget, I ended up spending five weeks in ICU and then 20 months at a specialty hospital here in Denver with a severe traumatic brain injury. I had 23 surgeries. I had my skull taken off a couple of times for some craniotomies. I mean, it was a mess. My wife was my caregiver. I mean, there’s so many things we could probably talk about, but here’s one thing that really was transformative for me was laying in the hospital bed, the neurosurgeon walks in and says, “We need to do an emergency craniotomy. All right. John’s just not going to make it.” He’s explaining all the reasons. Here’s what I heard, even though I just been in God’s presence, what I heard was, “The chances of John making it are very low.” What he told my wife is also, “The chances of him being the person you remember are not very good.”
John R:
And then he asked my wife if I had a current will and living will and we had just redone it. I was supposed to sign it literally after I got back home from this trip from Montana, she explained that to the neurosurgeon. He goes, “Well, we can wait. It’s important. We can put off the surgery till the morning. Can you go call your attorney and see if we can have it FedEx up here.” Which is what they did. I actually signed it. I don’t even know if it had been legal. So they leave the room. I’m laying in my bed, even though God had just told me he’s got a plan for me. What I’m convinced in that moment is next weekend’s my funeral.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
John R:
And I started playing the whole movie. I’m 45 years old. I’m like, “Hey, everything they say at the front of the church…” I mean, people say nice things. That’s what you do.
Warwick F:
Right.
John R:
I started, “Well, what would they say at the back of the church when they’re all rooting around for the roast beef sandwiches and potato salad?” Right? “What would they say a year later or two years later.” And I started thinking of inheritance. That’s what I would leave to my kids. Would they be okay financially? Would they be taken care of? And I figured from that perspective, we’re in good shape but now I started thinking of legacy Warwick.
Warwick F:
Right.
John R:
I started thinking, “What have I left in my wife, in my boys, in my friends? Have I lived a life? So the use of my life, what I’ll live my life?” I mean, think about, Jesus said the number one commandment, if I boil everything down is love God with all your heart and love others, that’s not how I’d been operating. That is why I had drifted into that land of smoldering discontent and that’s when I’m laying there, I resolved, I’m going to live my life according to that in service of others and here’s what I’ve found because when I’m coming out of this accident, because of this brain injury was so severe, eight years later I still cannot do what I used to be able to do before the accident. Cognitively, I’ve recovered, but my energy, ability to communicate when I’m tired, things are very different.
Warwick F:
Right.
John R:
But before as an entrepreneur, right? I told you my edict was, I’m just going to outwork people and I’m like, “I cannot operate that way anymore. That lit physically, I can’t do it.” When I came out of the hospital after two and a half years to start what I’m doing now, I could literally work eight to 10 hours per week.
Warwick F:
Wow.
John R:
And here was my whole attitude is, you know what I’m eight to 10 hours per week, God said he has a plan, he’s going to use it for his glory, in partnership with the father, trusting him for each small step versus making my grand plan. I bet I can do more with him on a few hours a week than I ever did on my own 80 hours a week and it was with that mindset that I moved into this future and that’s what’s happened.
Warwick F:
So, but before just touching on that, as that horrific experience happened, do you feel like from your perspective and I guess mine, that God had a purpose in that? What would you say the purpose was with that accident, because it seemed like it changed the trajectory of your life at least in some sense?
John R:
It’s an interesting question to ponder. These things that happen to us, these crucible moments, does God create and engineer them or does it happen because it happens but he is there to walk with us? I’ve thought about this a lot. I’ve been in prayer about it a lot because I felt it was important for me to come to an understanding. What I understood for myself was I don’t believe he caused the accident. He could have prevented it, there’s no doubt about that. Right?
Warwick F:
Right. Sure.
John R:
He could have had the horse turn. He didn’t prevent it. I don’t believe he caused it and I got to tell you just reading through the scripture, what I’ve come to understand is he does not promise us an explanation, but he does promise that he will walk with us through everything we go through in life, every step of the way. In that, honestly for me is what I had to lean into, is that I might never understand the purpose behind it. I think I can see it now because it’s brought me into… I got to tell you, if somebody said, “On a scale of one to 10 are you living life fully alive? Do you experience joy and peace?” Before the accident I probably would have told you if I was being honest, a two or three, if you’d told me that networking meeting, maybe I would have told you a nine because that’s what I wanted you to believe, but today it truly is a nine plus. I would have never gotten here had it not been for the accident.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean from my perspective, God doesn’t cause bad things to happen. Maybe he allows it and at least we’ll never know the true purpose, but sometimes we give little glimpses and for me, because duty, loyalty is such a big thing, I never voluntarily would have gotten out of the family company. It would have felt like I was betraying my father, John Fairfax, my great, great grandfather. There’s no way I would’ve left. It wouldn’t have happened. But because it happened, it really allowed me to pursue who I was, not have my identity all in Fairfax media. So, in some weird way the tragedy that happened was almost grace. As painful as it was, things like that always leave a scar. Now for you, you’ve got both physical, emotional, you’ve got the gamut of scars, I’m afraid.
Warwick F:
For me it was more just emotional, but as I look back on that, for me it was grace. I’m not glad I had to go through it, but it led me on a trajectory whereas like you, I feel like I’m living a legacy more that’s on purpose, a life of significance, focus on others. Yeah. So, I think there can be a grace in that. I mean, I don’t mean to say tragedy should be seen as grace. It’s not, but somehow it can be used for good even when it was so painful.
John R:
No. I agree grace, and I think the other thing that thread that, because you guys asked me what’s that one big takeaway for you through all this and only one word came to my mind and that was hope because when I was there in God’s presence, think about it. The first thing he said to me directly, right? He said, “All things work together for good for those that love the Lord.” And then he told me he was going to heal me for his glory. What that said to me was even though I figured, honestly Warwick, I was going to be healed. I was in the hospital bed in ICU telling my business, that new startup company, I’m like, “Guys, God told me I was going to healed. I’ll be back at work in a week.”
John R:
Like no, I was back and two years later, I could not work enough to even go back. I couldn’t go back, but what I saw at Craig Hospital with all of these people that had severe head injuries and spinal cord injuries, the difference between the people that really improved and I think got back to whatever their new life was going to be and the people that spiraled down into a place that really scared me. The place where I was right after I got out of the Navy, that dark place before I met those three gentlemen was having hope. Even if it’s the tiniest smallest little ember that guess what, tomorrow might be better.
John R:
There’s no guarantee it might be better than today. The next month is going to probably be better than this month. The next year will be better, and then over time I will get through this and just even holding onto the idea that maybe there is a purpose in this and this could serve as something in the future I look back on and be grateful for, even though I couldn’t even conceive of gratitude personally. Right. I’m just not that mature while I was there recovering from all these surgeries, but honestly, that is what got me through, that little bit of hope, each day trying to move forward mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally through that crucible time. As I looked back, because you guys asked me that question, the thread in each of these I think that allowed me to not only move through it, but to almost learn from it versus be defined by it or have a victim mentality because of it, which allowed me to shift into something that over time became beneficial.
Warwick F:
So talk about, I mean, you mentioned purpose and hope being the threads through these crucible experiences. Talk a bit about where that’s led you in your current vision and mission and just the amazing things you’re doing with Eternal Leadership and your coaching. Talk about the purpose you feel you’ve been given now and the hope that you want to impart to others.
John R:
Oh, well thank you for asking. I’ll tell you, I’m laying in my hospital bed, this is two years into it and I’m totally like, “All right Lord, I’m not the person I was.” Right? “I can’t do what I used to do. What’s next?” And I’m praying there in my quiet time. This wasn’t an audible voice like at the accident, but I just felt that my inner spirit, like this inner voice speaking. It just said, “John, I want you to use this life I’ve given you to equip and inspire leaders to work in my kingdom.” I’m like, “Okay. Awesome. That’s really broad. Is there a page two? Can I get the rest of the memo?” But here’s how he sent it to me, which I think is how God works like the three guys who brought into my life 25 years ago, this was on a Saturday.
John R:
On a Monday, I was meeting with a friend of mine, a CEO of a big company here in town, really going through some challenges and he goes, “Man, here’s what’s going on in my life, my family, what I’m trying to do in the community, my business. I have these three pillars. Whatever I focus on works and the other one’s just languish.” And he goes, “I feel like I’m just so close to pulling them all together.” He goes, “I’ve decided to hire a coach.” And he goes, “John, you would be an amazing coach and if you decide to become a coach, I want to be your first client.” I’m like, “Dude, that’s awesome. What’s a coach?”
Warwick F:
Exactly.
John R:
But anyway, through that I said, “You know what? I have all this experience building companies from scratch, being part of huge organizations…” Starting now, I’ve started two nonprofits before the accident happened, being in the military. So what happened was I started coaching leaders and that led to, at the end of my first year, I had 16 clients and I was still literally working eight maybe at that point, 10 to 15 hours a week. That was all I could do. That was maxed out and then now out of that with my podcast, we’ve been named in Inc. Magazine as Gary mentioned at the top. We’ve been named the preferred leadership trainer to the U.S. Air Force. I could not have done all this on my own, but I think those three things we talked about before, when you really put the work to close the gap on who you are and you become the best version of yourself, you set a worthwhile goal and dream, and for me that is to live a life so that life outlives my life. Right?
John R:
So, I guess my personal mission statement, right, is to equip and inspire leaders to accomplish what’s been inspired in them, to help them live on purpose, with a purpose and give them the exact tools that they need in order to do that. I mean, that’s what defines me. That’s my filter. I’ve been offered to do certain things, maybe work for a company, come on staff. I’m like, “Well, that’s not in alignment.” Even though that would be really nice to have that paycheck. It was a very easy decision for me now to say no and out of that, everything that we’ve done that my book is going to be coming out soon, I’m doing a lot more speaking to both Christian audiences and also business audiences. I just did the kickoff speech at the huge Silicon Valley tech company, how do we incorporate this into how we’re just creating a leadership culture so that organization can only do great business but also do good through doing business.
John R:
That’s a huge part about what I meant. That’s my litmus test for the clients that I do let into my world, is that they need to not only want to create an amazing organization that serves their people, but it’s also serving a purpose either in their community, for a cause in this world, because I want to marry those two together and I got to tell you I wake up every day of the week excited. This morning I got to work with a group of six different amazing leaders down in Rwanda that are helping, trying to reshape how business is being done. They’re all in their late twenties they’re amazing people and I’m just taking my time to sow into them so they can carry out what they’re excited to do and accelerate the results that they’re passionate about.
Warwick F:
That’s awesome.
John R:
Or in a week from now I’ll be doing some work with the United States Air Force. So, I would have never envisioned any of this when I started four and a half years ago when I got my first client who was a friend of mine, I think he hired me out of pure sympathy as my first coaching client and what happened was his company ended up growing massively and he became my best referral source to his peer group and that’s how it all started.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Gary S:
It’s very interesting to hear you both talk about your experiences and also talk about what you’re doing now because you both use the same word. Warwick, you talk about living a life of significance and inspiring people to do that. John, you talk about it’s a not about success, it’s about significance. As we wrap up John, let me ask you this question. What is it about significance that is the worthy aim? Why is that the destination you hope to chart people on a path toward?
John R:
I think the simple answer, this is just me and my lens. Okay, so just take that into account. I think the way that I’ve always defined success is me focused, arrows kind of in. Right? Significance to me is how many other people can I help be successful. If I’m the person that just succeeds on my own and then I would have died at 45 years old, would that have been significant? It might’ve been to my family who got a big inheritance, right? But what if I died at 45 years old, but hundreds of people at my funeral said, “You know what? I am where I am today, my marriage is solid, I have amazing relationship with my kids, my company’s thriving, and we’re doing this to help change my community because of John’s friendship, his mentorship, his coaching.” So, that’s for me what I see as significant.
John R:
So, that’s what I want to move toward. I guess I’ve shifted my role Gary, from wanting to be king, right? That was the quest I was on to want to be in the role of kingmaker and if I can be the guy in the background and I’m that catalyst for other people’s success, even if they don’t even give me credit, because that’s not why I’m doing it, I feel like I’m so in sync and in partnership with the Father, right? I am part of the plan that he might have for somebody else’s life, and I got to tell you, that was also kind of a maturing and the transition for me is being comfortable in that role in the background, and I got to tell you is I’ve moved closer and closer to just not only accepting it, but relishing that.
Gary S:
Yeah.
John R:
I got to tell you, it’s just unleashed joy for me, but that’s-
Gary S:
So for listeners who want to be made a king, who want to learn more about Eternal Leadership and learn more about your coaching practice, where can they find that information?
John R:
You can just go to eternalleadership.com or just reach out to me personally. I’ll give you my personal email address. It’s John, J-O-H-N, @eternalleadership.com. I answer all those personally. I will get back to you because I keep appointments on my calendar Gary, every single week, even with my schedule to just have conversations with people that reach out. So, that’s what I’m here to do.
Gary S:
This has been a very enlightening conversation. Warwick, let’s let you have the last word and then we’ll be done.
Warwick F:
John, that’s just amazing to listen to you and all of the crucible experiences you’ve been through. I feel like you have, I don’t know, 10 lifetimes worth of wisdom. It’s been harder. If it would’ve been your choice clearly to, you would have preferred an easier way than you’ve gone through, but I have the sense that maybe there are times when you were knocked off your purpose from your perspective. My sense is there’s a lot less chance of that happening now that you are laser like, clearly focused and we’re all frail and human but you seem to have a very clear purpose and much less chance of you getting knocked off these days. That would be my sense and I just commend you for your life, for your service to lead is really that phrase of being a king maker, being other focused, understanding what a life of significance is. I mean you’re a great role model for really what a life of significance looks like. It’s a great example. So, thank you for sharing what you’ve shared. It’s just, it’s an amazing story, really is.
John R:
Well, thank you guys so much and thank you for what you guys are doing with your lives and also this podcast because my story might help one person and somebody else might not relate at all and then you’re going to bring somebody else on who’s having a very different, but you know moving through these challenging times, we all have them and they are hard. I don’t want to make light of the fact that when you’re in it, it might be one of the most difficult things you’ve ever been faced with in your life and you’re creating a format and a platform and a podcast and the work that you guys both do to help people move through that, it is so critical, especially in today’s world.
John R:
To me, just as an observer, it just feels like there’s more that people are going through and I really think also some of the, I don’t know whether it’s culturally or what’s going on, but also the ability to go through it, I don’t know, it just feels harder, right? So having stuff like this is just, it’s a gift and I thank you guys for putting the time and energy to do it.
Warwick F:
Well, thank you.
Gary S:
Well. Thank you listeners for spending time with us at Beyond the Crucible today. When you have a guest like John who comes on and says, “Well, what has been your crucible experience?” And he writes, there are many with a smiley face emoji, you’re going to have a very action packed episode with a lot of information that we hope you will glean to John’s work. You will glean hope from this conversation. To find more hope through what Crucible Leadership is doing, you can find us on the web at www.crucibleleadership.com. You can also engage with us in social media. On Facebook, we’re at crucible leadership and on LinkedIn we’re at Warwick Fairfax. Warwick’s name is spelled with that silent W in the middle. It’s W-A-R-W-I-C-K @warwickfairfax. You can find us on LinkedIn. So until next time, thank you for spending time with us and remember that your crucible experiences are not the end of your story. They are in fact, they can be the beginning of a new chapter in your story that will lead to a true life of significance.
