We’ve just finished an entertaining and insightful series on our Beyond the Crucible podcast called BURN THE SHIPS. We interviewed seven guests from wildly diverse backgrounds who had one critical thing in common: They made bold, dramatic pivots in their lives, leaving one direction behind — even a lucrative or rewarding direction — to pursue something that to them is more fulfilling/daring.

From each one of those guests, we learned the very real stakes that accompany a “burn the ships” moment. Consider the meaning of the idiom, as defined in the Cambridge Dictionary: “If you are in a situation and you burn your boats/bridges, you destroy all possible ways of going back to that situation.”

That takes courage. Belief in your vision. Trust in your abilities. All three of those statements apply to the guests we interviewed.

From their journeys (and our own) we learned five crucial truths necessary to achieving a life of satisfaction and significance when determining to take a match to your ships:

1. Beware of “toxic persistence.”

That’s the counsel of Mike Beckham, who left behind a fulfilling executive career at a nonprofit ministry to apply his skills to the corporate world. He would go on to found the uber successful bottle, tumbler and accessories company Simple Modern – but not before an earlier effort fell short of gaining enough traction to generate a sustainable bottom line.

While the conventional wisdom in such a situation is to batten down the hatches and press on, he decided to burn another set of ships. That’s because, he told us, while mustering the pluck to stick to an idea through hard times is almost universally applauded, sometimes the wiser decision is accepting the reality that success is not in the cards.

“Persistence in the wrong context is more destructive than anything else,” he said. Having the moxie to live out that truth led directly to the multimillion-dollar success of Simple Modern.

2. Lean into your passion.

We heard this, saw evidence of it, from a few guests. One was Eryn Eddy, who was earning a nice living and building a nice career in the music industry, licensing her songs to popular TV shows, when something she did almost impulsively as a thank you to fans made clear she was even more dedicated encouraging others. After spray-painting the phrase “So Worth Loving” on TV shirts sent to her by her supporters, she saw the life-affirming hope those words gave to those who needed to embody the message. She burned her musical ships to devote herself to spreading that message more widely, establishing the apparel and accessories brand So Worth Loving.

Darwin Shaw had a similar experience when he walked away from a medical career in his native Britain. He became an E.R. doctor after years of education and training, but left it all behind for more creative pursuits like acting and filmmaking. He’s played the Apostle Peter in the record-breaking TV miniseries The Bible and been featured in two cinematic universes – James Bond and Marvel.  He offers this advice to others contemplating  similarly radical burning of their ships: “If you can hone in on what’s truthful for you and follow that, I don’t think you’re ever going to regret it.”

That’s the life our guest Joel Hungate is living today. A biomedical engineer by training, he’s been drawn to the adventure offered by the outdoors from an early age. After his mother died by suicide, he made some of her final words to him, “Just do it,” his life’s motto. That’s led to his appearance on Netflix’s survivalist reality series Outlast and prompted his pursuit of his life’s mission showing others how to live a life of “adventure readiness.” “It’s the next frontier in well-being; where health is a ‘means’ not an ‘end’ — where people are empowered with the inspiration and know-how to go places they never thought they would go, do things they never thought they could do, with a confidence and community they never imagined they would find, where adventure truly becomes a lifestyle.”

3. Do the inner work.

Finnian Kelly had accumulated his share of success – a prestigious military career, top-shelf entrepreneurship, star of a National Geographic channel documentary. But it all eventually failed him. Because he had never cared for the wounded soul he suffered as a boy, he told us, his world crashed around him in the wake of a difficult divorce. That’s when he finally did the inner work necessary to allow him to move on to a life of authentic purpose – to give him the courage to burn his ships. Today, he’s healed sufficiently to help others do the same as a speaker and coach who guides them into living with authentic intentionality.

Dan Wolgemuth also had inner work to do. For him, the shift from a corporate career that included a stint at General Electric during its heyday under the leadership of Jack Welch to leading the nonprofit ministry Youth for Christ only after he came to terms in his head and heart that he was not the author of his own life’s story. He had to hold his success with open palms to find true significance, he explained. “That burn the ship moment,” he told us, “had to happen first in my own soul.”

4. You don’t need all the details at the start if you have the direction.

The most dramatic story we heard from a guest was that of Donte Wilburn. He fell in with the wrong crowd in high school and started selling drugs, graduating to bigger deals as he worked to graduate from college. But then a sale went bad and he found himself with a gun barrel pressed against his forehead.

He survived that night, but still faced incarceration. Contemplating suicide as he awaited the outcome of his legal troubles, his mindset shifted when his mother told him repeatedly, “It’s going to be OK.” And it was. He was sentenced to work release and finished up his degree while working the only job he could find – washing cars at a detailing shop. He didn’t know where his life was going to end up after he burned the ships that got him on the wrong side of the law. But he kept sailing in the right direction.

It’s all become much clearer now. He graduated college and kept working his way up in the auto detailing business. He now owns it and mentors the teens and twentysomethings who work for him. “I know what change looks like because I had to do it myself,” he told us. “I found that my darkest time was the beginning of my best times.”

5. Little ships count, too.

It’s easy to think for a moment to qualify for burn-the-ships status, it needs to be an ocean liner you’re setting ablaze. That’s not true – at all. We learned that on our own journey, which we documented on the podcast series, when we changed our name from Crucible Leadership to Beyond the Crucible.

As we’ve explained, we realized that what we do day-in, day-out was less directed just at business leaders and less focused solely on Warwick’s personal story from setback to significance. We’ve become more about offering tools to help people turn their trials into triumphs.

That has been the inspiration for our free Life of Significance Assessment and our most ambitious undertaking to date, our Discover Your Second-Act Significance e-course. The shift in names is not a pivot from our mission and vision, but an adjustment. We sparked up some boats, but not our biggest vessels and not to sail to a completely different destination. It’s still igniting the ships, to be sure, but more of a controlled burn. And that takes its own kind of boldness.

Reflection:

Ready to create a life you love?

When you find yourself with a match in your hand, contemplating burning the ship you’re in to climb aboard another that will take you in a different direction, having the opportunity to make an impact is about the best destination you can chart a course for. And that’s exactly what Mike Beckham did.

This week, in the final interview in our special winter series BURN THE SHIPS, Warwick talks with Beckham about transitioning from rewarding work at a nonprofit ministry to the world of business – first as a member of his brother’s team at an e-commerce startup and then as a founder and the CEO of Simple Modern, one of the nation’s most successful sellers of water bottles and tumblers. But the brand’s motto – We Exist To Give Generously – is as critical to its mission as its bottom line. The company has donated more than $2 million to more than 1,100 nonprofits since being established in 2015.

“I call myself a nonprofit refugee in a for-profit world,” Beckham says… and that’s how he has found the impact he was searching for when he set his ships on fire.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.




Mike Beckham:

I was not going to be able to maintain really doing two full-time things and being the kind of father I wanted to be. So what it did is it brought to a head I needed to make a decision about falling and where did I feel like I could make the most impact. And really what swayed my wife and I was a belief that there was more opportunity for impact in the business world. That the magnitude and the scale of impact that we could potentially make with our lives was larger in the business world than it was in the ministry world. But it was hard work. I loved ministry and I had so many deep and meaningful relationships that the transition was really challenging.




Gary Schneeberger:

Opportunity for impact. When you find yourself with a match in your hand, contemplating burning the ship you're in to climb aboard another that will take you in a different direction, that's about the best destination you can chart a course for and that's exactly what Mike Beckham did.

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week in the final interview in our special winter series, Burn the Ships, Warwick talks with Beckham about transitioning away from rewarding work at a non-profit ministry to the corporate world. First as a member of his brother's team at an e-commerce startup, and then as a founder and the CEO of Simple Modern, one of the nation's most successful sellers of water bottles and tumblers. But the brand's motto, we exist to give generously, is as critical to its mission as its bottom line. The company has donated more than $2 million to more than 1100 non-profits since being established in 2015. "I call myself a non-profit refugee in a for-profit world," Beckham says, and that's how he's found the impact he was searching for when he set his ships on fire.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Mike, thanks so much for being here. Really looking forward to our conversation and just your journey, which is an unusual one, which listeners will understand here in a moment. Love what you do at Simple Modern. Just the whole ethos of generosity and relationships are as important as the product itself, and that's not normal in the corporate world. So we'll definitely get into that.

But I understand you grew up in Oklahoma. So tell us a little bit about your life growing up, and I'm guessing there might have been some signs growing up of your entrepreneurial spirit - that typically doesn't come out of nowhere. So just talk about what was life like for young Mike Beckham in Oklahoma?




Mike Beckham:

Well, thanks for having me on the show, Warwick. When I think about my childhood, I think that one of the things that stands out that's unique is both of my parents worked in the mental health profession. My mother was a social worker, my father was a psychologist. And really what I learned from that was the reason why they did their jobs is that they really deeply cared about helping people and making a positive impact.

I think I took away from my childhood part of doing life well is you're investing your life and making a positive impact in the lives of others. And as a kid, I remember them deliberately saying to me, "We did not pick the careers where we could make the most money. We picked the careers we felt like we could make the most difference." And for me; I'll talk more about this later; I tend to view success and my life being purposeful through the lens of achieving, which is not always the right way to view it, but I tend to view it that way.

And I think what happened as a child was my view of what ultimate success was, was defined as it is making a positive, tangible impact in the lives of other people. That's probably one of the great gifts that I got from my parents that, whether I've been in the non-profit world or the for-profit world, has really transcended and has been a North Star.

I did really well in school. I standardized tested really well. And so there was some thought that, hey, there might be some opportunity to do something academically. But honestly, my brother was probably the one that you would've said he's the entrepreneur. He was the one who started the businesses as a teenager and things like that. And so for me, entrepreneurship and the idea of running a business, I've been slower to come around to the idea.

It's funny because in Oklahoma, especially where I lived, a lot of people at this point would probably view me as the stereotypical example of the entrepreneur that you want to hold up. I don't think I even really viewed myself as an entrepreneur until my mid-30s. So that came later for me but I think what came first is having a lot of vision and a lot of ambition about, hey, how do I use my life to make a real impact in the lives of other people? And that's looked a lot of different ways over the course of my career.




Warwick Fairfax:

That is such a gift that you were given by your parents of just life is about impact and service and contribution. That's defining success. That is overwhelmingly powerful. You look back on that and say, "Boy, that's about as big a gift as I could have been given."




Mike Beckham:

Absolutely. And one of the things that is a huge value for me that there's often a gap between where I want to be and where I am is humility. But the way that I think about humility is just having a sober-minded view of yourself. That you actually see yourself as you are, and not just even in the eyes of other people, but in the context of the world, the universe. And that I really feel like that's one of the things that came from my childhood and the gifts that my parents gave me, is that I'm really able to accurately look at some of the success of experiences as an adult and rightly understand that even though our tendency is to want to point at ourselves for anything that's gone well in our lives and say, "Look at what I did."

I can't do that. I've certainly played a role and I'd like to think that I've worked hard, but the reality is I have all these advantages that I inherited, that I was born into. I won the genetic lottery, so to speak, by being born in this country, at this time, to this set of parents. So there is a sense of humility and also responsibility that comes with that.




Warwick Fairfax:

Mike, you would not consider yourself a better human just because you've had a successful business than you were before.




Mike Beckham:

No, not at all.




Warwick Fairfax:

You are the same person, you have good days and bad days. Does that make sense? Because I want listeners to understand just because you're successful doesn't mean that you're a better person per se.




Mike Beckham:

I think, Warwick, it's a great point. One of the ways that I would unpack it is part of to be human is to have a deep, almost heart-level desire to feel like you have value and to feel good about yourself. And unfortunately, the most destructive way that that expresses itself is that we want to compare. We want to ourselves to others and we're constantly looking for, hey, how do I stack up to other people? And really with the hopes that we feel like, hey, I stack up better.

And it's a terrible treadmill to be on because you're either basically engaged in some kind of form of pride or self-righteousness where you're looking at other people and comparing yourself and saying, "Hey, I feel better, or I feel like I've accomplished more than that person." Or you get stuck on the other side where you feel like, "I'm not worthy, that person's better than me," or whatever.

And I think health is really where we get out of comparing ourselves to other people and trying to find value and worth there. Once we abandon that pursuit, it opens up the possibility to find self-worth and identity in a different place, in a healthier place. And for me, that's probably the story of my adult life is abandoning trying to find my identity and my worth in my resume or how others perceived me and through comparison, and trying to find identity, worth, fulfillment through a comparison with myself of who can I be? What is it possible for me to strive towards with my life? And that that's the standard I really want to press against.

And I want to be the best version of myself. I want to be all that I possibly can be. And it's just been a much healthier place for me. So it's funny because I've been in out of college for 20 years. I worked for 10 years in the non-profit world, and now I've worked for 10 years in the for-profit world. And I can tell you that definitely the way that I'm situated in the world right now is the type of situation that the world claps for. That I'm the CEO of a company and it's fairly high profile. And so people want me to speak at things and I'm in the kind of position that the world claps for.

Well, 10 years ago I was in a ministry position that was the opposite to most of my friends. It seemed kind of weird. And yet I'm not a really radically different person over those last 10 years. But the way that people have responded to me is certainly different. And so it's another one of those examples where it's like, if I'm finding my worth or I'm finding my identity primarily through how other people view me and how I stack up, that's always going to be a treadmill and it's not even going to give me an accurate view of myself. And so instead it's I want to focus on am I running the race for me? Am I doing the most that I can to use my abilities and my gifts to make a positive impact on the people around me, the world around me? And if so, then however I'm situated, I feel comfortable with that.

Honestly, I call myself a non-profit refugee in the for-profit world sometimes because my heart in a lot of ways is to be that non-profit person. And so it's always a little bit comical how people respond to me now and how differently people respond to me now that I'm a CEO compared to somebody in ministry. But being on both sides has certainly been a formative experience and has really shaped a lot of my perspectives.




Warwick Fairfax:

So l let's go back a bit and cover some of the things you just said. So you're coming out of your upbringing. Were your parents, people of faith, I'm assuming?




Mike Beckham:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

So given that kind of-




Mike Beckham:

Ironically, one thing-




Warwick Fairfax:

Go ahead.




Mike Beckham:

I'll interject here.




Warwick Fairfax:

Sure. Yeah.




Mike Beckham:

Ironically, my parents were people of faith, but I don't think faith really became a part of my life until college and it wasn't really anything they did. I think what it really highlights is faith is a personal thing that even if your parents take you to church or are talking to you about, it's a personal thing that each of us have to work out for ourselves. And so for me, that did not happen until about halfway through college. That was the big turning point faith-wise in my life.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you ended up working for a large, well-known faith-based non-profit, Cru. In fact, the lead pastor of our church back in the '80s worked for Cru in Poland and headed up their ministry and part of story. But in one sense, that's an understandable shift. You come to faith and, "Hey, let me go work for a faith-based non-profit or a church," and not at all denigrating that. I think that's great, but how did that evolve?




Mike Beckham:

So it's rather shocking, actually. I think the process was, in retrospect, there's things that happened in your life that you look back on and you just laugh. Like how did that unfold that way? Even now that I know, how did it go that way? So I was a finance major and finance, it just came easier than anything I'd ever done. It was like a language that I already knew that somebody just reintroduced me to. Got engaged in college. I got married the weekend after I graduated. My wife had one more year. She was getting a master's in accounting. She had interned at very prestigious accounting firms. I had had some very good business internships and I really felt like, okay, the plan here is for us to go and work in the marketplace and hopefully one of the ways we're making an impact is by being good business people and by giving generously.

But because she had one more year of school right after we got married, I knew I was going to still be around Norman, where the University of Oklahoma is. And so as I was looking at job opportunities, it just wasn't clear what the best fit was. And an opportunity arose for me to do one year in college, full-time college ministry. And I thought I was maybe going to go get a PhD or I was going to go into the business world. And I didn't do either of those things. I signed up for the one year, but I fully expected it to be one year.

I raised my salary. It was $18,000 a year. I struggled to raise the $18,000 a year. On every level, it did not make sense on paper why I was doing this and yet when I started to really pour into lives of college students, to my surprise it was making a difference and I loved it. And so one year turned into two, which turned into 10. My wife worked in the business world for a while and then she came on full-time and we spent most of our 20s engaged in full-time ministry with college students, which I never would've predicted as a 21 or 22 year old and yet it's one of the absolute favorite parts of my story.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you're working at Cru in college ministry. I think you're doing very well. You're in a senior leadership role. You're doing that for 10 years. But there was a pivot, there was a shift.




Mike Beckham:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

What happened and why? Because it's like I'm making a difference in the lives of students. What could be better than that? That's a noble holy calling, if you will. Maybe you don't get much respect in the business world, but in the faith world, they're thinking, "This is great." There's a circle of people who think, "Mike, way to go. Keep going." But yet there was a shift.




Mike Beckham:

So when I got to 30, I was leading the ministry at the University of Oklahoma. We were seeing some really cool things happen. The ministry was probably growing 50% a year for several years in a row. So it had gotten to some pretty critical mass. I looked at my life as a 30-year-old and some of the dreams that I had had as a 21 or 22 year old seemed like they needed to be let go of. I'm probably not going to work in the business world. I'm probably never going to teach. But I felt comfortable in my own skin. I felt like what I'm doing is meaningful and I'm making an impact in people's lives and so I'm okay with letting some of these dreams go.

Now what's ironic is right around the point where I was really processing through letting go of a bunch of this stuff, the narrative was about to change. I have a younger brother who's two-and-a-half years younger than me, and he had gotten involved in the business world, had started a company of his own. He had done pretty well, but it was really like a one-person marketing company and he wanted to start a bigger company. He approached me with an idea and said, "Would you help me to start this?" And I thought, "This'll be a great side project." I can put five, seven hours a week towards this. It'll scratch the itch that I have for numbers and things.

And so I said, sure. I helped him recruit several other people to start the company, but the expectation was always Mike's just going to help out on the side. So that company started in October of 2009. By November of 2010, that company was having million dollar revenue days. And I was the oldest person even associated with the company. I'm not full-time. I'm not taking any salary. It's taking up a lot of my time, but I'm not like a full-time employee. I'm still leading this ministry and I'm the oldest person at the company at 31.

So it was really a great example of just the craziness that's possible. How quickly things can scale in an internet age. And then we got pregnant with our first, my son Carter, who's right over my shoulder here in the picture. And I just realized I'm not going to ... I was probably working 80 hours a week and it was untenable. I was not going to be able to maintain really doing two full-time things and be the kind of father I wanted to be. So what it did is it brought to a head I needed to make a decision about falling and where did I feel like I could make the most impact?

And really what swayed my wife and I was a belief that there was more opportunity for impact in the business world. That the magnitude and the scale of impact that we could potentially make with our lives was larger in the business world than it was in the ministry world. But it was hard work. I loved ministry and I had so many deep and meaningful relationships, that the transition was really challenging to make. So this would've been around 2011, 2012. I transitioned to working full-time in the business world and that's where I've been for about the past 10 years. And I definitely think I underestimated the amount of challenge that I would feel making that transition.




Gary Schneeberger:

Would you describe that then as you burn the ships moment? Had you set at least a few sails on fire or did you burn the ... Because going from ministry to business, that's a pretty big shift. Seems to me like that would qualify as a burn the ships opportunity.




Mike Beckham:

Yeah, I think there's two in my professional life and I think that's the first of the two because I really went from somewhere where I had developed expertise and where I knew that I was making a difference and I was transitioning to somewhere where I did not have as deep of expertise and where it was less clear exactly what the path was to making the kind of impact that I wanted to make. But the belief was it would be worth it because the potential magnitude of impact would be greater.

But there was no certainty in that for sure. And to be honest, even in my marriage, I think my wife would describe that as the most challenging period for us as a married couple. We've had a very happy and harmonious marriage, but that was a challenging period because we were going through all the things that come with being parents for the first time, which anybody who's done that knows that's challenging. And then we were stacking on top of that a career change and I was working with family, which there's challenging dynamics about that. So all those things stacked together to create, I think, one of the more challenging periods that really required a lot of communication and a lot of processing from us. So yeah, I would say so. It was not certain that the transition to the business world would go well or that it would be a permanent thing.




Warwick Fairfax:

Before we get to Simple Modern, it seems like that first business in 2009 was going great, but then in 2011 emboldened by the success you got in another business, that didn't work out so well. So there was a speed bump, if you will, probably more than a speed bump before you got to Simple Modern. Talk about that speed bump, if you will, that you hit.




Mike Beckham:

Yeah, so the business that we started in 2009, like I said, when I first agreed to be a part of it, I thought this will be a fun thing that I put a few hours a week in and then it turned into a much bigger animal than I expected. But I didn't leave the ministry world to go into the business world to run that business. I wasn't passionate about running that business. It was a part of my job, but what I really got passionate about was we had another e-commerce concept that involved the gamification of purchasing and buying online that I thought was really compelling.

And that was what lured me into the business world is the idea of we're going to build this new company and it has tremendous potential. When I look back on that period of my life, what I realize is that I really had had a very small amount of adversity up until that point. That pretty much everything I had worked on or put concentrated effort towards had gone pretty well. And this was the first time where I put a 100% of what I had into something and we poured millions of dollars. Who knows how many thousands of hours. And then we launched it and it just flat out did not work.

It was really, for me, a defining moment in my life where I had to emotionally process through I have made this transition, this burn the ships moment, of going into the business world and now we have launched this business and put a lot of resources and a lot of our passion into it and it just flat out hasn't worked. What do I do with that? I think there were a couple of different dimensions I had to wrestle with. The first was, I mentioned this early on, I think the fundamental problem that my personality has is I view the world as I am valuable and I'm lovable if I achieve. And that is a destructive thought process.

It's like I had learned how to root that thought process out in other parts of my life, but I think in the business world, because of the change of context, I found a whole new vector where I really hadn't rooted that out at all. And so when you take somebody who thinks, "My self-worth comes from succeeding in achieving," and then you run them into failure, then there's all kinds of insecurity and problems that bubble up from that. So I had to relearn a concept in a new area of my life that I had been learning over and over again, which was my value and my worth cannot come for my achievement. It just can't. And I would like to say I learned it quickly. I think I learned it over a series of months and years even during that period. And I'd like to say I could have learned it proactively, but I don't know that I could have. I think I had to really experience the cold, hard, bitter taste of defeat and failure to really face up to this part of managing myself and having the right internal mindset.

The other thing I had to really wrestle with, Warwick, is I had this narrative of ... We talk about the narrative of your life. I had this narrative of, okay, things I've been involved with have gone well and they've grown and now I'm going to go into the business world and I'm going to start this thing and it's going to be great. And then who knows what happens after that? And then it's like, okay, the narrative totally is broken. That is not what happened. And so it's like, okay, well was I wrong? Was I wrong about that this was the right next move for my career? Was I wrong that I thought I heard some kind of calling towards this. What does this mean about the longer term view I have of what I'm trying to accomplish in my life, going to accomplish with my life?

And I would say my spouse, my wife, Heather, was profoundly helpful here. One of the things she said; and I give this advice to everyone; and I'll tell it through the lens of faith, but I think this can work even through a non-faith lens. She said, "Just because this didn't succeed doesn't mean that God didn't call you to it." And I think I had a thought process which was the right next step or what I'm called to inevitably is going to lead to success. And that's not always true in life. That sometimes the right next step and sometimes the thing we get called to doesn't go the way we want it to, doesn't go successfully because of the learning and the possibilities that it opens up through failure, through adversity, through difficulty.

And I think that that's what happened with me in a nutshell is I think that I really had to fail to really start the rest of my life and it transformed me as a person.




Warwick Fairfax:

What you just have been saying, Mike, is so profound. One of the things you sent us in advance is this statement. It really is worth dwelling on. You said, "For the first time something that I'd put all my heart and effort into failed and I put a lot of my identity in the failed outcome of that venture." "Sometimes," and I certainly can relate to this, "failure can be a gift because it roots out identity issues." And obviously I hear where you're coming from. You're somebody that always did well in school. It's like success, I don't want to say it came easy, but to a certain degree and you did so well. And you can think to yourself if you are really bright and you work hard, anything's possible. Other people may fail.




Mike Beckham:

It's like it's manifest destiny. It's just like, hey, inevitably, if I try and I work hard and I really believe then this has to go well. And you know what? Sometimes life just doesn't work that way. We all have to learn it and in our own timing, I guess.




Warwick Fairfax:

So I think failure can be a real gift. I guess part of that I think you've talked about is one lesson was identity. You've talked a bit about that, but one of the other things you said here which I found eerily unfortunately able to understand and relate to. You talked about how persistence can be toxic and toxic persistence is pressing on when quitting would be wise. That quitting saves us from devoting our resources to efforts that are destined to fail. So one lesson with identity. Talk about this whole persistence, because it feels like these lessons set you up for Simple Modern, I would assume, but talk about that.




Mike Beckham:

It is one of my favorite things to talk about, Warwick. If I just said persistence rated on a scale one to 10, 10 being positive, one being negative, it would get very favorable marks. And then I say quitting. Rate it on a one to 10. How you feel, favorable or negative. It's like I'm giving it a two or a one. We just get a favorable impression of one word and a negative impression of the other word.

If you look at the research. The research says tenacity and persistence is the most important trait in entrepreneurs, which is true, but ... And this is the most important but you can hear. Persistence in the wrong context is more destructive than anything else. What would we call it when a woman who's in an abusive relationship persists in that relationship? Well, we would say that's not wise. That's destructive.

What would we say when an addict persists in their addiction in spite of the fact that it chews through all their money and it chews through all their relationships and it creates all this hardship. That's not helpful persistence. And so I wrote a long piece about this where I talked about basically if you think about persistence as having a light side and a dark side or a redemptive side and a destructive side, I think it's really helpful. It is not a universally good thing.

What makes persistence good or bad is what we persist in and why we persist in it. And I think what's easy to hear, especially when you're a younger person, is persistence equals good. If you just keep going, it always turns out okay. All you got to do is keep going. That's just not true. It's just not true. There's some relationships that don't ever get better. Sometimes, there's some startups that, no matter how much time or money you pour into it, it's never going to get to product market fit.

And so what I learned through the process is that a lot of successful people also are persistent people and they developed this mindset that's, by force of will, I can make things ... By just hammering away enough, I can make things go the way that I want them to go. I think the perspective that we want to have and what I learned is that wisdom is understanding where to keep pressing in and where to quit quickly. That quitting quickly is actually one of the best skills you can have in life. It's like if I'm dating, the moment I know I'm not going to marry this person or I'm not interested in a long-term relationship, the quicker I quit, the better for everybody. Because the quicker I can get on to meeting the right person or moving towards what I actually want to pursue.

And so Seth Godin has written about this in a book called The Dip, which I would recommend. But what he basically knows to paraphrase is what really successful people do is they say, "There are a few things which I will doggedly pursue no matter what, and then everything else which I am giving myself the permission to quit very quickly and to quit early on." That you pick very few things, the best things, the most important things that you say, "I will press in and I will keep going," and that everything else you give yourself permission to quit quickly.

An example is my son. He's played both cello and piano in the last year. He doesn't like cello and so it's like, "I want to quit but I want to keep playing piano." And I'm like, "That's great, because the cello is just taking time that you could funnel towards piano." I think within the context of business, what I learned was having your eyes open and really looking at the feedback that you're getting from the market is incredibly helpful in understanding when I need to keep going and when I need to pivot or change direction altogether.

And that what had happened to me is that I wanted something to be true so badly that I just ran forward with my eyes shut. I just did not want to hear any kind of narrative or data that contradicted the narrative that I wanted to be true. And we're all guilty of this where we so badly want something to be true and we want to go after it as hard as we can that we're just not willing to any kind of interpretation or feedback that says, hey, this actually isn't something that you should be continuing to chase.

So as a result, what I think I have found and developed is a real wisdom and discernment about what I'm going to be dogged in my pursuit of, and then a willingness to let other things go because I really only can be excellent at a few things in life. I can really only be truly persistent in a few things in life, and that's okay.




Warwick Fairfax:

I want to shift here to what you do with Simple Modern, but gosh, we could spend a whole podcast on this last topic. My gosh, the idea of toxic persistence and listeners would probably ... I may be able to glean from my story that this is one of the greatest challenges I've faced because I have, think it's accurate to say, extremely high perseverance. I'm one of these people that never quit ever on things. It's just ingrained in my-




Mike Beckham:

Yeah. And your entire life you've viewed that as a positive, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, right. But the-




Mike Beckham:

It's like, "Oh yeah. I'm like the Terminator. I can just keep going." But what if sometimes it flips the other way and it becomes your weakness?




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, yeah, there were moments certainly, and which is too complicated to explain here, in my family business, which was environment takeover. There's no break points. It's just we're going to make it work and ultimately we succeeded in getting control, but it didn't work in terms of being financially viable. But yes, that is something that's eerily familiar, that concept. Almost a haunting concept.

But let's move to Simple Modern because after all that experience, how did that get started? And what I love about Simple Modern, I'd love you to unpack this, this wasn't a typical business startup. You're analytical, I'm analytical, I get that. Let's do a market analysis. What product is needed in the market? What do we have unique, competitive value? All that good and analytical staff that I'm not against at all. But you didn't at all start that way. You did not do the traditional ... So talk about how did it get started? And it wasn't easy. Two full-time jobs. So talk about how it got started and that original vision, which is just so different than 99% of how other businesses get started.




Mike Beckham:

Yeah. So after a few years working with my brother, a couple of gentlemen that worked under me at that company approached me and said, "Hey, would you be willing to just do a side business with us? We love the culture in our department and we would love to work with you." And I thought this would be great. It'd be great to do something on the side with these two guys. All we knew at the beginning, Warwick, is that we had deep eCommerce skills and we wanted to do a consumer product. We wanted there to be a heavy generosity component to whatever we started and we wanted to really prioritize healthy culture and that was it.

People will ask me about the name and "Oh, the name is brilliant. How'd you come up with it?" You know what? The story is laughably mundane, how we came up with the name. And a year into the company we almost changed it because we didn't even like it and now people will just rave about the name. But it's like, no, there's no great story. They'll ask about the products and it's really like, "Hey, we looked at a lot of products and I got an insulated water bottle for the first time and thought it was great and said, 'yeah, let's try that too.'"

There just wasn't the Isaac Newton, apple falls out of the tree and hits you on the head kind of epiphany where the sky opens up and you know. But we knew principles of if we were going to build something, we knew the type of thing we wanted to build and we knew the fingerprints that it was going to have. Especially for me, really, I was torn between going back into the non-profit world and staying in the for-profit world. And so I knew that if I was going to stay in the for-profit world, it was going to be a certain way.

I think the way that I would describe what Simple Modern turned into is a fusion of the first 15 years of my career, where we took all of the things that I learned being in full-time ministry about healthy teams and about being purpose-driven in what you do. We took all the learnings from running a really big e-commerce company and the principles of a high growth startup, and we put all that together and came up with something that's a little bit of an experiment.

And I would describe Simple Modern as an experiment of what happens if you try to create a for-profit company that prioritizes every stakeholder. We're used to for-profit companies prioritize the shareholder. Everything else is subservient to that. There's a big gap from that to number two on the list. But what if instead you said, "The shareholder matters, the employee matters, the community matters, the customer matters, the partners that you work with, they all matter and we're going to try and create a for-profit company where everyone who interacts with that company's life is enriched in some way as a result. Is that possible?"

And I'm really happy to say that eight years into that experiment, the answer seems to be yes. It's a different type of company. It's not a perfect company, but it is a very purpose-driven company and our mission statement is we exist to give generously, for example. Well, that's pretty atypical for a for-profit company. So we've built something that's pretty different, but I think it stays true to all the things we've talked about up until this point.

I was really passionate about my life making as big a positive and redemptive impact in the world and the lives of others as I possibly could. We now get to serve tens of millions of customers and we get to give away millions of dollars to non-profits. And then we have all of the people that we employ and the people that we work with and the way that we're able to impact their life. And I feel like the company has provided the best vehicle I could have ever dreamed for being able to pursue that vision for my life.




Warwick Fairfax:

What I love about what you do with this company is, it's funny, I don't know how the business will ever do a case on this company, but they should because it'd blow their minds a bit because it's not the typical company. And I think even forget the faith paradigm. There is a paradigm for success here in how you did it and it's not why you did it, but from a spiritual paradigm, you do things the right way from a maybe heavenly perspective, I believe. I'm not a prosperity gospel person, but all things being equal it increases your chance of success, if I can thread that spiritual needle.

But what I love about some of the ethos; and there's a great video on your website that really talks about the founding and the story; your concept of developing deep, meaningful relationships, authentic relationships, inspiring community, giving generously, the fact that you work to be more than just paycheck. This idea that you give away 10% of your profits to a number of areas such as education, water supply, ending human trafficking, community outreach.

And one of the things you also say is a percentage of every employee's pay can be given by them to just different donations that they feel led to. I mean, who does that? It's one thing to give 10%, which is unbelievable. To give employees a chance of ... It seems like that's the core of the company. It's not so much that you make water bottles as wonderful as they are. It's the ethos and the principles and the values. That talk about that because that is not normal. What's the key to the success of Simple Modern? Who are we? You wouldn't say, "Simple Modern, we're about making really fun and cool water bottles."

My guess is that's not what you would say is, "That's who we are," right?




Mike Beckham:

No, I would say that we're a company that's about generosity and relationships and excellence and making a redemptive impact and we just so happen to sell water bottles and tumblers and backpacks. And that in a way, the things we sell fund the organization and that I think, if and when they write stories about the organization, if there are those case studies ... Some people have approached me like, "We should do an HBS case study about this organization." That if and when those get written, I think that the dominant theme is going to be that we set out to build a particular type of organization and that is really the secret sauce. And that the what you do does not matter nearly as much as why you do it and the type of organization that exists.

The entire book, Built to Last, is really built on this concept that the organizations that are really enduring and make an impact over decades and over centuries are the ones typically where the actual organization is the main point. That money and making money is not the central focus. It is a focus, but it's not the central focus. The central focus is on the building of the organization and having some kind of a transcendent thing that you're pointing towards.

And I think that I'm very specific to tell people our people are excellent at their jobs. I work with people that are very professional, very gifted, work very hard. And so you do have to go out and execute and do your job well. Just having a heart of gold is not enough to win in the marketplace. But when you get excellent people who want to do their job well and you give them a compelling vision and a healthy environment to grow in, you get exceptional results. There's a great quote that if you want your men to build ships, you don't talk to them about going to the forest and chopping down trees. You talk to them about the sea and that that's really what compels people.

What compels people is when you're able to ... I mean, everyone wants their life to have a story that matters and they are just searching for people that will help give them that context and that vision of how can I pour myself into a bigger story of something that matters? And I think that that's what we've been able to do with the company is we've been able to say, "Hey, it's just one company. We don't have any illusions that the entire world is going to be transformed by us, but we can make a significant impact and we can offer you an opportunity to invest the best working years of your life into making a real impact and something you really believe in and to be a part of a story that matters." And that's an incredibly compelling message to really gifted, really talented people.

So we've been able to have both. I think that if you came and you walked around our office, I think you would remark on a couple things. I think you'd say the culture seems exceptional, the amount of connectedness among people is really abnormal. And I think you would say, "Wow, the combination of capacity and aptitude with character here blows me away." That, "This is some of the best people I've ever met, but they're also really good at their jobs." And so we've been able to attract some of the brightest people I've ever interacted with because they're so compelled to use their giftings towards something bigger than themselves.




Gary Schneeberger:

I love the fact that you started that last anecdote talking about building ships because we're talking in a series about burning ships and you've indicated that, even though you didn't say it explicitly, starting Simple Modern, that was the second of your two burn the ships moments.

And it's interesting, you're the last guest, the final guest that we have in this series and you said something that I think is a great framework, great goalposts to aim for when people are approaching burn the ships moments as we're ending this Burn the Ship series. And you said this. We asked you what advice do you have for people who are considering burning their ships? And you say, "For those who consider their own burn the ships moment, I would advise them to reflect and ask themselves a couple of questions. First, 'Does this decision line up with my mission in life?' And second, 'Have you done enough research and experimenting to know that this is a wise risk?'" Why are those such critical questions?




Mike Beckham:

Yeah. Well, when you talk about burning the ships, what you're really saying is, "I'm about to make a decision that I can't just roll back." A good example with Simple Modern was when I made the decision to start this company, I said, "I'm going to tap every relationship I have. All of the very best people I know. I'm going to recruit them to this. I'm going to have a lot of relational risk. If this goes poorly, a lot of my closest relationships are going to be impacted. And there's probably no next time. It's going to be really difficult to ever get the kind of force and the kind of gathering of talent that I'm trying to do right now. I'm putting it all into this shot." So it felt like this is the attempt.

And so the first thing that I said, "Does this line up with your life mission?" If you're going to make a commitment that large, that cannot be rolled back, where you're investing a lot of your time, your relationships, your resources, that make sure that if it works, it was worth taking in the first place. I will see people take jobs, I'll see them pursue opportunities without thinking through. Let's say it succeeds. Are you closer? Are you fulfilling what you feel like you want your life to be about? Play it out all the way.

And so for me, it felt like if this is successful in the vision that I have in my head, then yes, I'm going to be able to impact more people than ever before and cast vision to a lot of people of you can build an organization differently. It can look different, especially in a for-profit company. And that seemed to really line up. This is an opportunity for me to make more redemptive and positive impact than any other way if it works.

The second piece goes back to this idea of persistence. You're going to burn the ships. You should have good analytical, data-backed reasons why you think this is not just a Hail Mary, but this is a wise investment because this is probably going to be the biggest investment you make in your life or one of the biggest investments you make in your life whether it's time or money or passion or effort or relationships or whatever else. So it's really important that you have found some ways to test and validate your hypothesis that this makes sense.

They would call it burning the ships, because if you wanted to go and conquer a place, the easiest way to do it was you put your army on ships, you go across the water to this territory you want to conquer, and then with all the army there, you burn the ships. And what you're saying to the army is there's only one way, and that is going through our objective, because we're not sailing back home. That's not an option that's on the table anymore.

And so you would never do that if you didn't know. If you took a bunch of ships to a strange land, you had no idea what was there, you would never burn the ships. That would be a terrible idea. You would have reconnaissance of like, "Okay, I want to know the lay of the land. I want to know where we're attacking. I want to know where we think we're going to settle. I want to know what the plan is and have reasons to believe that there's a better future on the other side."

And that's probably the combination. It's being able to marry mission and vision for your life with the tactical skills of experimentation and looking at feedback and making wise choices. When you're able to do those two things together, that's when you get the best. To the outside world, they look like Hail Marys, but they're much less risky than they appear because of the work you've done on the front end to validate that it's still a risk, but it's a wise risk.




Gary Schneeberger:

I'm going to shut up right after I ask this question or say this thing so Warwick can ask the final question because I know we're getting toward the end of our time together, but I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, Mike, how people can find out more about you and about Simple Modern online. Where can they go?




Mike Beckham:

Sure. For us, the easiest way to learn about the company and to look at our products is to go to simplemodern.com. For me personally, I'm pretty active on Twitter. It's @mikebeckhamsm. And also on LinkedIn. You can find me on both those platforms. And really, this is a great preview of the kind of things I talk about.




Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick, take us home as we end Burn the Ships, our series.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Mike, thank you so much. What you've been saying about how you evaluate whether you're going to burn the ships and shift, that's one of the most profound, simple but in-depth paradigms I think I've ever heard. Just focus on does this opportunity fit with my mission and vision in life? Yes. We're both analytical, so I get that. Do the analysis. Does it make sense? I would say, and I think we both agree, part of that doing that analysis is if this opportunity has nothing that correlates with your gifts and abilities or experience, probably not the wisest investment. Know that sounds simple, but we can get so hung up on it, but it's a great opportunity. Who cares if I don't have the skills an aptitude for the opportunity? It's irrelevant how good an opportunity ...

I know that sounds blindingly simple, but it's amazing how often we can avoid the blindingly simple. We talk about in another context. I had my own cubicle moment after the whole takeover period a decade or so later. There might be somebody sitting in their office, sitting in their cubicle saying, "Yeah, I'm getting good performance reviews and life's okay," but they're going through a "Is this all there is? Is this all there is to life? I'm doing okay, but I don't know. What could be next?"

And I guess you've answered it in so many ways, but what would be a word of wisdom or word of hope for somebody that's sitting in their cubicle or office saying, "Is this all there is?" What would a word of hope be for that person?




Mike Beckham:

What I would say, it's easy when you feel that to think, "I need to do something dramatic with my career. I need to really structurally shake things up." And sometimes that is the case. But I think what you really need to do more than anything else is become more radical in your thinking about what's possible with your life. The reality is all of us can aim for a higher vision for our life and be more radical in pursuing that. That might be in our career, but that could easily be in the way that we're involved in our church or the type of parent that we are or the way that we give resources or the way that we decide we're going to mentor other people or any number of other things that I really encourage people to dream.

I think we get the idea of dreaming and thinking big gradually ground out of us by the world. And part of the message that sometimes we hear, especially if you hear a story like mine is dreaming big is you got to go start a big company, or you got to quit the job and start the new thing. And yes, for some people that's the case, but here's the reality. Every single person, no matter where they are as they're listening to this, there's a way that they could dream bigger in an area of their life and make a bigger impact.

And that's really the question is just what is that one area of your life right now where you could be a little bit more radical, where you could dream a little bit bigger and you could make more impact? And as you develop that muscle, it becomes easier to believe that greatness is possible and that transformation is possible. And these are the people that change the world. Not everything, but they make an impact in the lives of others and other people, when they come into contact with them, they are changed.

And so you might be in an accounting job and say, "It's pretty mundane," and that can be great. Outside of your accounting job, you can be a superhero in mentoring local elementary kids, for example, and be setting an example with that or any number of other things. Or maybe it is in your professional career that there's an opportunity to burn the ships and to aim higher.

One of the most simple concepts we talk about within our company - I'll close with this. One of our core values is generosity. I'll use it as an example. My message to each of our team members is you can be a leader in each of our core values within our company. So it's easy if you hear something like generosity and say, "Well, I can't be as generous as Mike." Well, you can't probably be as financially generous as I can be, but you can be generous in so many different ways that every single person in our company can be a foremost leader in generosity. It just looks different.

Some people, it's with their words and some people, it's with their time, and some people, it's with their service and some people, it's with their coaching and teaching other skills. But every single person in our company can be a leader of generosity. It'd be the same challenge here that it is possible for everyone listening to this podcast to be a leader in making a tangible positive impact on the world or setting their sights higher. What it looks like for each of us is different. It depends on how we're situated, how we're gifted, and a lot of other things. But one of the things that people hear from me is belief. Belief that it is possible for them to make a bigger impact with their life.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communication business long enough, listener, to know when the last word has been spoken, not just on a subject, but in this series that I have co-hosted with Warwick over eight episodes, and Mike Beckham has just spoken it.

If you've enjoyed our series, Burn the Ships, Warwick and I ask you to come back next week where we're going to wrap up everything that we've learned over these last eight weeks. You won't want to miss it. And remember, if your ship begins to drift off course, if your mission begins to bump up and down in the waters, remember this: you can indeed strike a match and burn the ships. We will see you next week.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond the Crucible. Visit our website, beyondthecrucible.com, to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what's been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start: our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward.

See you next week.

This week, Warwick speaks to Dan Wolgemuth, whose burn the ships moment looks a little different on his resume than it does in his heart. After nearly three decades of working in the corporate world, he followed his faith into becoming president of a nonprofit Christian ministry. But he’d have never gotten there if the flames didn’t first get lit within.

He had to stop pursuing a career script written by and starring him and follow a new one written to focus not on what he could accomplish, but on whom he could accomplish it for.

“I burned a ship in my own soul,” he tells us … and in doing so made a forever difference in the lives of troubled youth.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible, I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible.




Dan Wolgemuth:

It's a bit of a different time to burn your ship, because you're not leaving one thing to go to another. What you're doing is you're saying, "I'm on this ship, and all of a sudden I have a different perspective." And it not only helped in my consideration of going to Youth for Christ, I think it made me a better leader at HNTB. Because I immediately realized that what matters most, even in a company that's owned by its employees is how we treat each other, how we value each other.




Gary Schneeberger:

Now, there's an entirely fresh perspective on what it means to burn the ships as we enter the final episodes of our series about that very subject.

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week Warwick speaks to Dan Wolgemuth, who's burn the ships moment looks a little different on his resume than it does in his heart. After nearly three decades of working in the corporate world, he followed his faith into becoming president of a nonprofit Christian ministry, but he'd have never gotten there if the flames didn't first get lit in his heart.

He had to stop pursuing a career script written by and starring him, and follow a new one written to focus not on what he could accomplish, but on whom he could accomplish it for.

"I burned a ship in my own soul," he tells us. And in doing so, he made a forever difference in the lives of troubled youth.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well Dan, thanks so much for being here. It's a real honor to have you. Before we get started, just to let listeners know, Dan and I know each other from our association with Taylor University.

Dan is a graduate of Taylor, it's a wonderful Christ-centered university in Indiana. He's also on the board of trustees. I have had three kids go through and graduate from Taylor, and we've got to know each other at some Taylor events.

So wonderful to have you here, and we'll get to what you've done in Youth for Christ and now mentoring, but I'd like to just start with some of the backstory and some of the threads that maybe looking back have led you to where you've been in business and Youth for Christ.

So just tell us a bit about a young Dan Wolgemuth and growing up, and maybe what some of your family and some hopes and dreams you had as you were growing up.




Dan Wolgemuth:

Thank you, Warwick. Really good to be with you and Gary today. So really excited about the opportunity to just walk through a story that reflects the heart and love and grace and mercy of God. Grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, the youngest of a family of six kids. My parents actually were missionaries in Japan with Youth for Christ. My father had been pastoring a church in Pennsylvania, felt the call through a man by the name of Bob Pierce.

Bob Pierce was the founder of World Vision, speaking of burning ships, founder of World Vision. And at that point he was a part of Youth for Christ. And my parents went to Japan for a couple of years, came back to Wheaton, and my twin sister and I were born at that point.

And so grew up in a very traditional Christian home in the suburbs of Chicago, my dad in ministry. So we didn't want for anything, but we didn't have a lot. And then ultimately, you connected those dots, ended up at Taylor University in the early 70s, graduated, and started a business career.

So I graduated from Taylor with a business and systems degree, thought business and technology was the career path for me. And for 28 years in a variety of different organizations, that was the path. So married a Taylor girl, had three kids. Sort of the classic story in many ways.




Warwick Fairfax:

Now, one thought that occurs to me is you grew up in a family of faith, your dad being a missionary and I think I read somewhere headed up Youth for Christ as president for a number of years. I think I saw 65 to 73, or some such time.




Dan Wolgemuth:

Right, exactly.




Warwick Fairfax:

Oftentimes you grow up as, what do they say, a missionary kid or it's like, well gosh, do I want to be a missionary? Which country? Which agency? Do I want to be a pastor, youth pastor, lead pastor? It's like growing up in a family of lawyers, you can pick corporate law or real estate law.

It's like, well, what part of missions do I want to be in? What part of advancing God's kingdom? But somehow that wasn't the natural path, what it would've been for many given probably incredible example of your dad and parents. So any thoughts about why not instantly into the mission field or some such thing like that rather than corporate?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Yeah, it's a really important question, and I thought you might bend that question a different direction. Because I know a lot of folks who grew up in the homes of Christian leaders who went a completely different direction out of a sense of rebellion. That was not my story at all.

My dad was a really solid entrepreneur. It's what actually put us all through college. He owned auto parts stores that he bought while he was not making any income as a pastor, so he had to have a vocational trade. He bought auto parts stores in rural Pennsylvania. And so there was always a business bent to him as well as a passion for ministry, which was Youth for Christ at the time when I was growing up.

So I never felt like I was rejecting them by moving in a business direction. As a matter of fact, in many ways I played out, lived out something that he really enjoyed, not the technology side as much as just the pure business side. So never an act of rebellion and never in a way dismissing the deep roots that I had in faith. But feeling like that was in my early career, that was what I felt very called to.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you went to Taylor, and from what I understand there was a stepping point before you got to GE. I think you worked for a business that was bought out. So just talk about some of those early business years and the GE legacy, and your experience there as you're working your way up the corporate ladder.




Dan Wolgemuth:

Yeah, the first corporate ladder I climbed was a very short one, because I worked for a small insurance company right out of college. Then ultimately ended up in the publishing business with my brother and his partner Mike Hyatt. Moved to Nashville, spent four years there, highly under capitalized. Publishing is not the business for under capitalized organizations, but it was a start of business.

Wolgemuth and Hyatt was the name of that business, and learned multiple lessons. So Mike Hyatt was editorially focused. My brother is sales and marketing, really good in that space, and virtually everything else that didn't fall into those categories I was a part of. So everything from production to accounting, it was an MBA in a crash course, for sure.

Because it was highly under capitalized and we were trying to grow rapidly, I was the one on the phone saying to vendors, "Hey, we're struggling to make payroll, let alone pay you."

And so it was in a sense, my honor and credibility that was being leveraged to tell these folks, "Hey, you have to wait another two weeks." And I'll never forget a phone call from somebody that I had said, "Hey, we'll get you another check in two weeks." And it was two and a half weeks and I hadn't sent another check.

And in my mind I had checked that box two weeks ago, and I was scrambling to the next thing. And it was really a very significant moment for me to say, "Is my word worth anything?"

I've said to these people, "Trust me," in a sense, and they can't. So I think it was a really important moment for me in this small business to embrace the fact that my word mattered. I might use words to throw off somebody or to just buy a little more time, but they were going to the bank with those words.

And I think when I think about a crucible moment for me, that was 1987 to '91, I learned a lot of lessons about my own integrity and what was I willing to do to continue to press forward. I had a business agenda, but real life relationships and people trusting me on the other end of that.




Warwick Fairfax:

And then for listeners, not everybody might know, but Michael Hyatt I think went on to be CEO of Thomas Nelson Books, and he's got very active with a lot of courses and branding, communication. I've followed, certainly participated in some of his programs. He does a phenomenal job, a lot of wisdom there.

So as you look back on that experience, obviously there was a big crucible for your age at the time, it not working out. What were maybe two or the three high points of, I think you've maybe begun to talk about it, but some key lessons you learned from that experience?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Well, certainly again, that my word matters, and that your integrity is something you trade on. Even if you don't have cash or capital, people are trusting you. And I really appreciated the fact that I had to learn that lesson, it wasn't baked into me.

I could in a sense justify almost any behavior, believing that it would ultimately buy us us more time. So I think that was one lesson. The other thing was that because it was a difficult time in my professional career, how I integrated that with a growing family, three small kids, a wife, and I didn't have good balance.

I was overwhelmed with all these aspects of leading the business, running the business, and I didn't find good balance there. And Mary and I have talked about it often. Those four years I poured myself into that business, but didn't necessarily pour myself into my family. And I learned that lesson I think during those really important years.




Warwick Fairfax:

So from there you worked for a company I think that was bought out by GE. So just talk about that period as that and the GE period, that was probably a key part of your life in the corporate world.




Dan Wolgemuth:

It was, I had worked for 16 years inside organization businesses that were predominantly owned by Christians. So values, integrity was important in all of those companies.

1993, I took a skip to a financial services business that was based out of Munich, Germany with a US presence in Kansas City. So immediate bump in compensation and corporate equity. It was a really significant step. Mary and I moved from Indiana to Kansas City at that time.

But within 18 months that business was bought by General Electric who also had a GE capital presence in Kansas City. So the good news was we didn't have to relocate. The bad news was that in a sense I was immediately on trial. GE was at, again, the height of Jack Welch, neutron Jack, we're going to buy the assets. And if the people go, it doesn't really matter. And so I felt immediately the weight of that proving myself and so on within that GE context.

And within a year they had sent us to Folkestone, Kent on the English Channel to lead an IT project that was surrounded by Germans and Frenchmen and Norwegians and Brits and some Americans. And they asked me to lead this effort, again, I think in a sense trying to figure out if I had any leadership moxie or not.

But we spent seven months in England, which was a highlight for Mary and the kids, not quite as much of a highlight for me, but it was really learning in the crucible, in the fire, if you will, what the GE culture was all about. And then at the end of that time, we went back to Kansas City.




Warwick Fairfax:

So how did you find that? So the first crucible had taught you about the importance of work-life balance and your raised values, Christian values, your kingdom perspective was important.

But now you're thrust in corporate America and Jack Welch, where I think I heard somewhere that he had two rules. You got to be what, one to three in market share, and I forget what the other one is. And if you don't hit those two principles, you're out of here or something.

It was very bottom line, and obviously he did a great job. A lot of people praise him for his work. But how did you adjust to that culture given your upbringing and your philosophy and the values of GE?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Yeah, it was very difficult. When I came back from that European experience, I was put in charge of a very large systems group, 35 people on my team. And this was the rack and stack era for Jack. So we had to literally rack and stack all 35 of those employees, and you took the bottom 10% and you had to release them immediately. You couldn't have any more than 10% of your employees in the top A bracket.

So because my natural wiring was relational and deeply committed to growing people, giving them opportunity to expand their horizons and perform at the top level, that's not the GE culture. Certainly they want high performers, but they want a culture of competition that squeezes the best juice out of each employee.

And so those years were intense, and I spent a week a month in Europe managing those teams that I had over there, and then coming back to Kansas City. So I learned a tremendous amount in that portion of my life. Some of it, don't ever repeat this, and some of it, yes, very good. And do your best to make sure that you're honoring your employer in the process.




Gary Schneeberger:

I would expect that part of the challenge that you went through, you described earlier how you had to learn to make your words your bond, and live by your values because you were maybe skating a little bit. You get that set right and then you go work for a company where that's not valued and you're doing something else. So you must have felt I would think maybe a little off balance for a few years there. You learn something, then you go apply it at GE, and it's not as valued as it was when you learned it at the other place. Is that a fair assessment?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Yeah, I think it is. It's interesting, because there was a part of what I had learned in that previous environment that GE loved. So they had four E's, Jack walked by four E's. Energy, energize, an ability to execute, and then his last E was edge.

And edge they defined as the ability to just be in somebody's face. So I was good with my own energy, I was good at energizing other people. We had a team that executed, but the GE definition of edge I did not have.

So at that moment in time, it was the ability to drop the right four letter words in the right environments, and to press people, to press vendors and so on. That was not my style.

So Gary, you're right, it was a challenge specifically in that one area based on who I was and what I believed it took to manage people.




Warwick Fairfax:

So how were you able to be successful when, getting three out of four E's is not bad, but how did you maintain your integrity and values, but yet hit the corporate performance markers that GE wanted, how'd you satisfy both?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Oh, I'm probably not the right person to ask, Warwick. You probably have to ask the folks that I worked for at the time. I think part of it would be that I motivated a team to high performance. So GE, at the end of the day is results-oriented. So if your team is performing and they're delivering on dates and projects and so on, they're going to leave you alone.

And I was part of a GE capital business, specifically in the insurance marketplace, that was making a lot of money. So there was a sense in which GE took their hands off until hurricanes started to happen and earthquakes in unusual places. And in the late 90s, GE moved in in a big way. And I stayed there for another three years, and then thought, to Gary's point earlier, this is not an environment I can stay in.

So I left GE and went to another corporate role. That role was the CIO of a very large privately held civil engineering firm, 3000 engineers. I shook the hand of the man who hired me and said, "Hey, I'm going to retire with you here." HNTB is the name of that company, great company, downtown Kansas City again. And I just simply slid the script of my life under the pen of God, and thought, He just needs to sign off one more time and I'm all good to go.

Which I believed He was doing every year. I'm not creating any problems, just sign off one more year and I'm good. And so I thought that was what my stretch into HNTB was going to be. That happened in 2002.




Warwick Fairfax:

How long were you at HNTB for?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Just two and a half years, two and a half years.




Warwick Fairfax:

Talk about that, because I know there was a shift, but did something happen while you were there?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Here's what would happened, Warwick, I started on the board of Youth for Christ, USA, in the late 90s. So loved the mission, was familiar with the mission because my father had been involved. Believed in ministry to the kids who were often marginalized and so on.

But again, at a safe distance, a picture on a refrigerator distance. And so I'd go to board meetings three times a year, come back to my career. And I think in that process, God was really working on my heart to say, "How far do you want to go? What is this script for your life that you're writing?"

And it was in 2004 that I went to a board meeting in Denver, which is where the national headquarters of Youth for Christ USA is. And the president resigned, 13 years. There were some challenges certainly in leadership there, but it was an abrupt end. Here's my resignation and I'm gone in two weeks.

And fortunately YFC hired one of the board members to be an interim CEO for nine months. And I said, "Hey, I've got the GE chops, I've been at HNTB two and a half years. I can put together a profile, I can start to help in this process."

And so they let me do that. And I created the profile, took it home, showed it to Mary. Mary had worked for Youth for Christ fresh out of college in their juvenile justice ministry. And so she read that and she said, "This is well done, but there isn't anybody in the world that can do this job. I'm just going to tell you."

And so that seemed like, all right, we'll set the bar high, and then we'll start working on this process. And the next step was, let's start to surface some names within the organization.

And I started getting some of these names, and from a few folks, my name was on the list. And instead of feeling complimented, I wanted to be offended. Because I had a great corporate job. I had two kids at Taylor University. Again, I had the script written, don't interrupt this great script that I have written.

And fortunately my wife was far more patient and prayerful, and she was like, "Are you going to pray about this or not?"

And so I sort of did the perfunctory prayer thing, believing that they'll find somebody else to do this. And time went on, and I'm still in the mix. And I am just wrestling through this. So now we're in the fall of 2004, I've got a solid income, we're putting money away. It's an ESOP, so I've got ownership in the company.

And I came to work on a fall morning. It was still dark. I can still picture my office, I had a beautiful office downtown Kansas City looking over the downtown business airport. And I look out my fourth floor window and there are squad cars outside the office, and police tape. And behind the police tape is a body laying on the curb. And what was clear was this was a young woman, and there's a stark reality to that because she's not living because nobody's paying any attention to her. They're all screwing around working on stuff, nobody's close to her.

And there were a variety of other people on the floor, folks that worked for me. And I could start to both hear and feel the angst in them as they're wondering, was this a coworker that had been murdered on the way into the office? And it took no time at all for word to spread that this was a woman who had been released from prison 24 hours before.

She was a drug addict who raised money for this drug habit by selling her body. And the first day she's out of prison, she does it again. Except this time it goes bad. She gets murdered and dumped on the curb. And what was stunning at that moment was not so much this specific act or tragedy, but the fact that everybody on the floor was relieved, that there was this great sense of relief that this was somebody in a sense, and I say this a apologetically, but that had it coming. This was a drug addict who had it coming.

And I'm standing there, arms crossed, looking out my window, feeling the relief of the people behind me and the burden on my own soul. And it was as if God pulled back the curtain and said, I don't put anybody on a trash heap. This woman was created in my image. And if I decide that you're capable of this leadership role in Youth for Christ, you had better consider it the privilege of a lifetime. Because you're going to wade into the lives of young people who believe that they have no value. And I want you to know there isn't one person I created that has no value, including that woman that died on the curb.

It was as though God himself got me by the lapel, in the days when I used to have to wear a suit and tie to work every day. Got me by the lapel and said, "pay attention. This matters to me. There isn't one living individual that I throw on the scrap heap."

Everyone has value. So that was the moment for me, and it was a moment that I didn't say yes to the job. I basically said, "I will do whatever this board thinks is the right thing for me to do."

And so from that moment on, we were in. Whether YFC knew it or not, and it would take to the next February for them to make that final decision. And it felt like in that instant, the equation shift flipped. It went from me being the answer to God being the answer, and me being without feeling like this is dismissive, but I was a means to his end. And I should be really grateful that he would consider me worthy to be a part of a mission that at that point was 70 years old.




Gary Schneeberger:

And in that experience, at that moment, for listeners who may find themselves facing that, when something becomes so clear to you, how do you not burn your ships? How do you not in that moment, say, "This script that I wrote, this boat that I built, Hey, that's not the boat I'm supposed to be in. This one over here is the boat I'm supposed to be in."

I'm sure you didn't put it in those terms, but that had to be what you were feeling, that the life you had carved out for yourself, the sailing that you were doing was not where you were intended to sail.




Dan Wolgemuth:

Yeah, the interesting thing about that was I wasn't at a decision point, because Youth for Christ hadn't offered me this job. So it's a bit of a different time to burn your ship because you're not leaving one thing to go to another, what you're doing is you're saying, I'm on this ship, and all of a sudden I have a different perspective.

And it not only helped in my consideration of going to Youth for Christ, I think it made me a better leader at HNTB. Because I immediately realized that what matters most, even in a company that's owned by its employees, is how we treat each other, how we value each other. And so when you get into executive leadership, it's easy to start to think, well, if I raise shareholder value, that's the purpose for me to be here. Even as a Christian.

And I think at that moment it was as though the Lord said to me, Hey, I'm not even sure you're qualified to be a part of this process with Youth for Christ, but I want you to be a different person from this point on.

And so the ship I burned was not deciding to move from Kansas City to Denver, the ship I burned was, this is not about me. This is about me doing my very best to elevate kingdom values, whether that's in a fourth floor office in downtown Kansas City or in a small office in Denver, Colorado. That was the ship I burned. And frankly, I'm really glad that happened before Youth for Christ ever offered me the job. Because I feel like my soul was at a different place in February when I said yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

What you've just said, Dan, is so profound. And in some strange way I can relate. As listeners would know, growing up in a large family media business, I did everything I could to make sure I was qualified. Undergrad at Oxford, worked in Wall Street, Harvard Business School. It's like, I know the mission God has for me, I'm dead set certain. And it was all very logical.

I was never trying to hurt anybody or do anything bad. I never thought of myself as arrogant. Humility is one of my highest values. But sometimes when you are so certain you know what God's plan is for you, you can get maybe an arrogant attitude to what their plan is and your role in it.

And I don't know, arrogance can seep in even when you don't realize it. So as I looked at it, when I became a believer in it through an evangelical Anglican church at Oxford, it was obvious to me what God's plan was.

I was 100% certain I knew. The company was founded by as a strong a businessman for Christ as I've ever known. Employees loved him. He was a good dad, husband, elder at his church. Founded all sorts of nonprofits. What an example to emulate. I felt like the company had drifted from the values of the founder, it was being poorly managed as my parents thought. Without going on, my dad died in early '87 as I was processed a graduate, or last few months at Harvard Business School. And things went on from there.

But as I look back, it's like, well, why was I so certain? I was so certain I knew what God's plan was, and then when I felt like I broke God's plan, that was probably the biggest crucible I faced. But looking back on it's like, some ways who God would first use, he would bring down and make humble.

And certainly that was a massive humiliation on me that's made me very wary of saying, oh, I know what God's plan is. Even if it's logical to me, like, I've prepared myself with all the skills, Oxford, Harvard Business School. Others had gone to Oxford, nobody in my family had gone to Harvard Business School. It's like this is all part of some big plan.

I understand finance, et cetera. So I think what you went through, when you feel that sense of humbling. And gosh, maybe I am arrogant, the ability of God to use you at another level was because of what you went through. You would've been probably a significantly less effective leader, and probably God could have used you significantly less without that epiphany.

So I want people to understand how that mindset meant everything to Dan Wolgemuth, and everything for Youth for Christ, if that makes sense.




Dan Wolgemuth:

I would double down on that. I love your story, and it's profound, it's powerful. But I think there are times that you look for a crucible moment or a burn the ships kind of moment. And you feel like it has to be this catastrophic decision of one big job or another big job.

And the fact is that the next morning I went back to the same office, but something had happened. And it was a burn the ship moment. It was this moment where I said, God, I'm yours. I want to do what you want me to do.

Recently I ran into, in the Denver airport, one of the women that worked for me, she was in a significant leadership role for those two and a half years. I was at HNTB two and a half years, and she saw me across a TSA line, came over to me and thanked me for those two and a half years. And I'm convinced that God was doing something in me that made me better while I was there. And again, I'm grateful that he called me into Youth for Christ, because I think what he taught me at that moment was, I'm going to keep you in the classroom from this moment on.

So yes, you're going to move to Denver. Yes, you're going to lead this wonderful mission, but you're going to continue to learn from people around you, including 17 year old kids that understand the love and grace and mercy of Christ in a way that you have never understood it.

So that started, I think, a different trajectory in my own learning process that has continued to serve me in a way that I'm deeply grateful for.




Warwick Fairfax:

Talk about what you found at Youth for Christ, obviously has a tremendous legacy, but there were some challenges you had to face. It was not easy. So just talk about what you found and how you approached those challenges.




Dan Wolgemuth:

The challenge at Youth for Christ was that the model was set up from its founding as what might be most easily understood as a franchise model. So you have a national office, but then you have 150 chapters around the country. They have their own 501(c)(3), so they're their own nonprofits in their own cities. And in a sense, what they're buying from the national office is the brand and some training material.

In 2005, when I started, there was very little influential leadership. People did their own thing in their own community, and then they'd come back and gather for an annual event. And then go back and do their own thing. So the more I pushed in, the more I realized there's no shared national mission that says... Certainly we were about young people, but even that definition, in some parts of the country, they defined young people as three and four year olds. They were working in the foster care system. In other parts, they were working with vocationally challenged 35-year olds.

And so the question was who are we, and are we better off if we really define who we are? And then align ourselves based on a common commitment to this mission? Not that somebody's mission to grade school kids isn't important, but that's not our mission.

So getting clarity around a vision was enormous, and doing it in a way that wasn't corporate. In a nonprofit world, that is the way you diminish somebody. You say, "Oh, Wolgemuth, he's so corporate." And that immediately undermines this idea that we're coming together for a shared promise, a mission, vision. And so that doesn't happen overnight.

I think naively, I thought I'd go to Denver, we'd start to talk about shared values. Everybody's going to salute, we're going to lock arms. And this is going to be wonderful. But it was only wonderful if you didn't bother what I was doing in my own local communities.

And they were doing great things, we just weren't doing it together. So the beauty of that is that when the mission started to coalesce around a shared mission, around shared definitions, around a shared curriculum that says, here's how we can help equip every chapter around the United States. We're going to work with the same kind of kids, we're going to equip in the same sorts of ways. It was powerful, and frankly, it still is.

I'm watching what God can use to do, whether it's working with incarcerated teenagers or pregnant teenagers, or suicidal high schoolers. The vision and mission is powerful, and still folks locking arms and saying, we're in this together. So it was a challenge, and maybe in different ways than I expected, but really powerful to see how folks came together.




Warwick Fairfax:

I can imagine in those early days of thinking, okay, here's this Dan Wolgemuth character. He's come from GE. Some may have known, yeah, the Jack Welch mantra, the bottom 10%'s got to go. And you got to be in the top three in each market's like, is he going to bring GE to Youth for Christ? And which are the 10% that's got to go? And what's it mean to be in the top three in my market anyway? I don't know how that works in the faith-based world. Does that mean I got to beat out Young Life or Campus Crusade or something. Is that what it means? What does that mean?

So I'm sure there were some fears. And just getting people on the same page, even with people of faith, one of the things I've found is people are human everywhere. Even people of faith, they have hopes and dreams and agendas, and we're all human. That doesn't just say, well, that's just corporate and everybody just sings kumbaya in the faith based world. It doesn't work like that.

I've as you know been on two nonprofit boards, and without getting into details, there were instances in which different groups would try to say, well, this is what we think the vision of the organization should be. Well, no offense, but it's not your job to do that. Your job is what does the vision mean to you in your area? That's the right question.

But it's not up to your wordsmithed vision, I can't tell you how often that happens. Like, gosh, this feels like the wrong answer to wordsmith the vision that the board and the president of the organization, you don't get to do that.




Dan Wolgemuth:

Right, exactly.




Warwick Fairfax:

But people try that. You don't have to get into this, but I imagine that might've happened too.

So how did you get people on the same page when, who's this Dan character coming from GE?

And, oh by the way, what makes him king? How did you get people on the same page with a shared vision when they were like, "Yeah, the shared vision's great, so long as it's my vision and you leave me alone. Because I know what I'm doing."

I like working with young people, what's wrong with helping people get back in the work world at mid 30s? What's wrong with that? Is he against helping people like that? I guess he doesn't like helping people. So how did you do all that, get people on the same page?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Well, I was probably a tad naive. You would think after 28 years in corporate life, including eight with Jack Welch, that naive would not be a word that you would use.

But I do think that I was naive in the sense that I believed that it would be an easier shift to have people move away from a picture of autonomy that said, I am in charge of my own city as it relates to Youth for Christ, and I've defined it this way.

And so as long as you, corporate, you Youth for Christ USA, as long as you facilitate this in some way and continue to send me your latest branding information, then we're all good to go. I think what you had to prove was that by coming together with a shared mission and vision that we could reach more lost young people, more kids who are inside the juvenile detention systems. That by doing this together, and doing it in a way that's both scalable and repeatable, there are two good GE words, scalable and repeatable, that by doing that, what we do is we reach more of those 40 million 11 to 19 year olds that need to know they matter.

And that's the number. So we got to the place where we said, our mission was, YFC reaches young people everywhere. And the question was, who gets to define that word, those words, young people? And so we did, we defined it. We said 11 to 19 year olds, and I wish you could have seen people recoil when I said, "If you're working with somebody outside of that, we'll give you three years to start to hand that off. Work with other like-minded partners to hand it off. But the fact is there are 40 million 11 to 19 year olds in the United States that need to know they matter."

So what we began to point out was we have a shared mission that's going to make us more effective at reaching kids in your community by doing this together and doing it in a similar way. And it took a little while.

I had some very hard phone calls, some video calls with local boards that pushed back. But the fact is that by and large, 95% of our chapters got on board. And today they're more effective than ever. We're seeing growth happen because it's repeatable and it's scalable. And it's done with excellence because we're doing it to a prescribed demographic of young people.

And that's really counterintuitive in ministry to define, here's who we're going to minister to. But when you do that, then we can equip them, then we can train, then we can hold folks accountable. It's amazing what happens when folks get on board.

And so I think we're seeing that I'm no longer the President/CEO, so I can say really good things about what's happening there. It's really exciting to see what God's doing there.




Warwick Fairfax:

How did you come up with that vision? That's very specific, 11 to 19 year olds. Where'd that vision come from?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Well, we went all the way back to Billy Graham and Tory Johnson, who were the two founders. Billy Graham was the first full-time employee. And the vision at the beginning was high school teenagers. It was teenagers focused. So we went back there and said that was the presumption at the beginning. We moved in the 60s and 70s into middle schoolers, which still falls inside of that teenager demographic.

Here's a gift God gave me that I would never have asked for, Warwick. You asked about it. We were doing a fundraising event at Torrey Pines in San Diego, and a man came up to me who had just retired from the Navy. He was a retired four-star admiral. And he said to me straight up, I think God's calling me to be a part of Youth for Christ, and I think he's calling me to be a part of your team.

This was a man that worked for Donald Rumsfeld who was the strategist behind the initial push into Afghanistan. His name is Admiral Bruce Klingen. And he was the one who could look at where we were and say, you have questions to answer. I'm not going to tell you what the answer is, but you say young people, what do you mean?

And we wrestled through this. And he did it over and over and over. He worked for us for three years. He was a gift that nobody asked for but changed the trajectory of Youth for Christ because he made us answer questions that often ministries and nonprofits don't answer. They don't answer the question, who am I and why do I exist? What promise am I making that only we can deliver to our communities?

And if you're letting every community define it, you can't make a promise that you can keep.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. Just looking at the website, I love the stuff on there that introducing young people to Jesus at pivotal moments. Give life to your story. It's just powerful, powerful words about what Youth of Christ, reaching young people everywhere, as you mentioned. Powerful words, a powerful vision.

One of the lessons for leaders is that if you try to be everything to everyone, you'll be, I don't know, nothing to no one. I think that's the aphorism.

I forget who said that, but it's something like that. So any kind of marketing, branding, and vision, you've got to be very specific and say there are things we're going to do really well, and we're going to say no to a bunch of things. Because that means we can do a defined set of things excellently. So that's impressive.

So you did that, what, 15, 16 years, quite a long time that you were head of Youth of Christ?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Yeah, I was. After 15 years, I went to the board and I said, "I think this is time." That was the beginning of 2020. They started a search and then a pandemic happened. And at the end of March, they came to me and said, "We think this is a really bad time to try to find your successor. Will you keep doing this?"

And I thought they were talking weeks or months, I guess we all probably thought that. My board chair said to me, "I want a one year commitment." And I went back to Mary, had one of those really burn the ship secondary moments. And can you burn them again? I think I did.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yes, it's a big ocean. You can burn them as many times as you want.




Dan Wolgemuth:

And here's the reality. So we said yes, and then think of all that went, whether it was some of the racial tension, the George Floyd incidents, and they needed a familiar leader to take them through those 12 months. And I often refer to myself as familiar old pair of slippers that you put on. Wolgemuth will get us through. He'll help us because he's been here 15, now 16 years. So yes, long answer to 16, 16 and a half years before we stepped out.




Warwick Fairfax:

And somewhere along the line you also, I think I read somewhere in 2006, became a board member, one of the board of trustees at Taylor, which given your association with Taylor, you and Mary met at Taylor. So that, you're still on the board of Taylor. And are you still a board member at Youth of Christ?




Dan Wolgemuth:

No, stepped all the way out.




Warwick Fairfax:

Stepped, so talk about, Taylor's obviously something you're still involved with. And from what I understand, you do a lot of mentoring. So just talk about that whole association with Taylor and how that happened.




Dan Wolgemuth:

Yeah, I mean I think it was a logical step. It felt, again, like a natural thing for me to get engaged at Taylor. And I would tell you that even with Taylor, I kept it at arm's length. I would come to the board meetings. I'd do my best to be prepared and actively participate in the discussions that were going on. What has really shifted for me at Taylor is that Taylor makes a promise. It's one thing when you look at a vision or a mission statement and you view it as a collection of sentences that just you put on your glossy brochures.

It's the Murdoch Trust in Vancouver, Washington where I'm doing some coaching that says, no, that's a promise you're making to your constituents. And at Taylor, the promise is we're going to provide the marketplace with servant leaders, whether that's in a local church or at General Electric, or name the company, we're providing servant leaders.

And so I think the language around making promises to communities, to churches, to companies has really been invigorating to me. And I love Taylor, believe that God's doing a good work there. I still am part-time with Youth for Christ because I love this mission, as you can tell.

So I'm doing some coaching there. I'm still raising some resources for Youth for Christ, and I'm still every once in a while looking into the face of a 17 year old who just got out of prison but believes that God has set his or her life on a different trajectory. And there's frankly nothing like that.

And to the extent, Warwick, that I can get that kid to go to Taylor, it's a win win.




Gary Schneeberger:

The fact that you mentioned a kid of that age, a teenager of that age you're still helping, I think is a great place for us to start our descent to land the plane. Because that moment where you had that internal burn the ships moment involved a young woman who was in that age, who, for whatever reason, nobody knows, didn't think that she was valuable. And then you dedicated your life in the pivots that you made to pour into those folks.

So one thing I want to say, and I didn't say it when you guys were talking about it, but both of your stories of that internal realization that the script that you wrote for your life maybe wasn't the script you should follow.

And to keep the metaphor going, you realized you weren't the captain of your own ship. In the last analysis, you both realized that you were not the captains of your own ships, which is another kind of burn the ships moment that happens in our lives.

I would be remiss in my job as the co-host, Dan, if I didn't give you a chance to let folks know who've been listening, how they can learn more about you and what you're up to these days. Is there a place online that they can go to find out?




Dan Wolgemuth:

I would encourage folks, even as Warwick just mentioned Youth for Christ. YFC.net. I would love for you to go there. You're going to see stories. Youth for Christ really anchors itself in the power of story, God's story, my story, their story.

These three rings that became our logo, again, a branding that brought us together. But I also write a weekly blog called Friday Fragments. So you could go to fridayfragments.com and you could sign up for that. It's about a 500 word piece that I do every week that is a journal of my own life. It is a little bit of a devotional, a little bit of a motivation or encouragement piece. It doesn't shy away from public issues and so on. But that's another way for folks to get in touch with me, certainly.




Gary Schneeberger:

And let me, before I turn it back over to Warwick, one of the things that we do with all of our guests on this series, burn the ships and in general, is ask them to fill out a form in advance so we have the ability to ask you some informed questions.

And one of the questions we always put on there, for the series we've put on there, is what advice do you have for people who are facing their own burn the ships moment? And your answer, especially as we're getting to the last couple of episodes of the series, is really instructive. And I'm going to ask you to unpack it after I read it to you.

You said, "burning the ships isn't an invitation to vacate a difficult situation. Burning the ships means following the call of something sacred, going to discover something sacred."

Unpack that a little bit for folks who are listening, both those who are Christians and those who might not be. What does that mean?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Well, I think I'd go back to that October, 2004 moment, where I realized that I burned a ship in my own soul. So I don't think anybody would've said prior to that that I was an arrogant, self-consumed kind of person. What they might have said is he's competitive and he expects a lot of his people and himself.

And in a sense it's trying to win. And it's easy to think at that moment to think that you can win at all costs. And I think the paradigm for me is that that burn the ship moment had to happen first in my own soul. God knew that I had to be willing to say, I'm yours. I'm going to learn from you. I'm going to give myself away in a sense, whether that means I continue to be a senior vice president of technology at HNTB or I become the president of Youth for Christ. That was a natural consequence of me having that internal moment.

So for somebody who is at a really difficult spot, it might feel like, boy, I'm pouring gas on this because I am ready to burn this ship. Because I am tired of this ship. That's not really an adequate description of what we're talking about. What we're talking about is coming to terms with the fact that you were created for a purpose, and that purpose isn't just your own purpose, it's to benefit the broader context. Whether that's your family, your company, your community, your church, whatever that might be, we're not meant to be autonomous beings all about ourselves.

And I think that burn the ship moment is far more important than maybe the one that feels like it's the stereotypical, I'm leaving Kansas City to go to Denver. We all know people who have done that, made a career shift, and they really haven't burned the ship. Because it's still all about them. And that's why I think the first step has to be something internal before it becomes something external.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow, Dan, that is so profound. I guess a couple closing questions is, and I think you've answered it to a degree. But tell us about what's on your heart now, what you feel led to work on in this phase of your life, post Youth for Christ.

And second question, which you've really I think given a pretty good answer, but I'll ask it anyway, is there might be somebody in a cubicle somewhere that's like, I'm doing okay, I'm getting good performance reviews in my corporate job, wherever it is. But gosh, is this all there is?

I don't hate my job, but gosh, there's got to be more to life than just this corporate day-to-day job. Something that will give me more joy and fulfillment, and a legacy I and my kids can be proud of. So really two questions. One is, what's your vision now for your life? And second, if somebody's in their cubicle with a is this all there is moment, what advice would you give them?




Dan Wolgemuth:

The first question, it's something within the last week that I have dealt with in a fresh way. Mary and I have 11 grandchildren too, the oldest is 15. Two 13 year olds, a granddaughter, grandson. So we did a special guy's retreat for the 13 year old boy, a women's retreat for the 13 year old girl. And as I'm looking into the face of Graham Wolgemuth, my grandson, the first namesake in the family, I'm realizing that this is the future.

And I realize it feels cliche, but I really think that my generation valued things like comfort and predictability, and this American dream that somehow felt like accumulation was the way that you could tell if you'd accomplished something. And I'm looking at these 13 year olds, and I'm thinking maybe their perspective is already better than my perspective at 13 years old.

So I'm going to continue to invest in this next generation, teenagers and then onto to college students, believing that they have a lot to teach the generation that preceded them about what it looks like to serve beyond their own comfort and their own accumulation.

So that's why I love still being a part of Youth for Christ. That's why I loved being a part of Taylor University. I'm committed to continuing to believe that God doesn't throw kids on a scrap heap, even if they're addicted or they're consumed with themselves, he just simply doesn't. They're made in his image. So that's the answer to the first question. Refresh my memory on the second one.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, that was a great answer. It's more, let's say you're in your cubicle thinking, is this all there is? The corporate life. Wouldn't I like a legacy people could be proud of, and be more joyful and fulfilled? So it's the is this all there is moment as they're in their corporate cubicle?




Dan Wolgemuth:

Yeah, and you know this, both of you know this.

The reality is that you can have something happen without ever having to leave that cubicle. So it isn't as though you're going to be in a spot where you think, I'm just a nobody in this cubicle, and I'm tired of making money for other people and getting these great performance reviews, but it doesn't really matter very much.

The fact is God made you for a purpose. So a verse that always stands out to me, Ephesians 2:10 says, "you are God's masterpiece." I remember saying that to teenagers who had no clue really who God or Jesus was, but the fact that the Bible says you are a masterpiece, Ephesians 2:10. And seeing something happen in the demeanor of a young person to believe that somebody thinks that they're a masterpiece.

So when you realize that, and that the back end of that verse says, "and you were designed to do good work," that's what God designed us to do. Whether it's in the cubicle or in a completely different vocation, maybe it is time to push the clutch in, shift gears, and go a completely different direction.

But I think you have to find within your own soul the fact that there's contentment you can have and purpose you can have even if you're still in that cubicle. And I think that's the pivotal moment. That is the understanding, that you are made for something more than just what you might script for your life.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough, listener, to know when the last word has been spoken on a subject, and Dan just spoke it.

And what I love about what he said and what he has said in the last several minutes, and in fact this whole show, is he's talking about what Warwick talks about all the time with Beyond the Crucible. And that is a life of significance. That's the goal. That's where we have encouraged you since we started this podcast more than 150 episodes ago, to set your GPS toward a life of significance.

Dan found it in a place that he wasn't sure he wanted to go at first. No one can fill this job at Youth for Christ, his wife said, and oops, he filled it. Warwick found it in his own life after the failure of his takeover of the family media dynasty. Now with Beyond The Crucible, both the podcast and the business.

So as we get to the end of this second to last episode of our series Burn the Ships, it's a great perspective that Dan's brought that that doesn't always mean literally taking a match and burning something. Sometimes it means figuratively taking a match and setting ablaze something in your heart that changes the orientation of your heart from focused on you and maybe your comforts to maybe your accomplishments, and focusing it on what a life of significance which Warwick talks about all the time.

Both of them here have been talking about the same thing. And as we get to the end of this, again, second to last episode of this series, we're landing in familiar territory in our new ships, and that is a life of significance. We will see you next week.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond The Crucible.

Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what's been broken into breakthrough.

A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.

In this episode of our special winter series BURN THE SHIPS, we talk to Donte Wilburn about how he wound up selling drugs in his teens and 20s – recognizing the danger but embracing the lifestyle that dealing allowed him to live. But that lifestyle, he explains, came perilously close to ending his life.

It was only after he leaned into his faith and avoided prison thanks to a judge who believed in him that he found a new ship to board – starting out washing cars for minimum wage at an auto-detailing business he now owns. His success has fueled his desire to pass along the lessons about truly succeeding that he learned the hard way to the young people who work for him – so they don’t have to learn them the hard way.

It’s wisdom he passes along in his soon-to-be released book, Born Hungry: You Were Made for More. 

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.




Donte Wilburn:

I'm sitting there and I'm contemplating suicide when my mom's sitting next to me and tears are rolling down my eyes and she can tell that I mentally am poor up because I made it past, okay, I'm going to, I'm living by this gun and I survived that. And now, I'm facing eight years in prison. And she's sitting there looking at me on this couch and she kept telling me, "Donte, it's going to be okay. I know it looks bad now, but you are going to be okay. I know it looks terrible now, but you will be okay. I know it looks bad, but I promise you, you will be okay." And what happened after she kept reiterating that, it lifted my spirits and I believed it.




Gary Schneeberger:

It would indeed turn out to be okay for our guest this week, Donte Wilburn. But after what he'd been through, what he put himself through, it's easy to understand how he could have thought otherwise. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In this episode of our special winter series, Burn the Ships, Warwick and I talked to Wilburn about how he wound up selling drugs in his teens and 20s, recognizing the danger, but embracing the lifestyle that dealing allowed him to live. But that lifestyle, he explains, came this close to ending his life. It was only after he leaned into his faith that he found a new ship to board, starting out washing cars for minimum wage at an auto detailing business he now owns.

His success has fueled his desire to pass along the lessons about truly succeeding he learned the hard way to the young people who work for him, so they don't have to learn the hard way. It's wisdom he passes along in his soon to be released book, Born Hungry, You Were Made for More.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, thank you, Donte for being here. I really appreciate it. Your story is really remarkable. It is a story of redemption in every sense of the word. And I love what you do now with your auto detailing business. In particular, just have a real heart for mentoring folks, for younger people. But let's start at the beginning a bit about your background from what I understand you were born in Gary, which for those not in Indiana or Chicago, I think is like suburban Chicago, not that far away from the city. And moving to Lafayette is probably very different. So, just talk about what it was like growing up. And it was not easy, just the challenges of poverty, racism, just growing up in a town that was very different than Gary, where your parents were. So just talk about just that upbringing and what life was like for you in Lafayette.




Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, first I want to just say thank you for having me on. I'm anxious to be able to have this conversation with you, Warwick and Gary and I very, very much appreciate every listener that's listening in. So, I just want to give kudos to what you guys are doing first.

And yeah, so my life basically, I was not born in Gary. My parents actually moved down here and birthed me here in Lafayette, Indiana. And coming from Gary, they just wanted to give us a better life. So yeah, like you said that we grew up in a trailer park. We were one of the only African-American families in that whole trailer park. I mean, in the '80s in Lafayette, there was very, very few African-Americans and I laugh now because we all knew each other. So, if there was an African-American here in Lafayette, I would know their name, who their family is, and everything.

And it's not that way anymore. We're much, much more diverse with West Lafayette and Lafayette, but that's how it was growing up. One time, coming up in the trailer park, there was a kid named Dustin, I won't give you his last name, but the kid is named Dustin. And we got off the bus together and he called me the N-word and took off running. And so, I'm chasing him, I'm chasing him, chasing him, just trying to get to him and he gets into his house before I can get to him. And he goes in and his dad comes to the door, Warwick, and he says, "What do you want?" I said, "Sir, your son just called me the N word and just ran in here."

And at that time, I had to be probably 11, 12 years old. I thought that as a parent they would tell me, "It's okay, my son's in trouble." And this guy looks at me and he says, "Well, you are one." And he tells Dustin, "Come to the front door and you better fight this kid." And so, we just go. And so, he lets his son come out and we're just scrapping in the front yard. I mean, I humbly say as a Christ servant, just a fact, I end up winning that fight in front of his dad. But I say that story to let you know at a young age, you think adults are always good people and they'll do the right thing. And so, when it didn't happen, I had to grow up quick.

And I can say as a believer now that even though those troublesome things happened coming up in a trailer park, I never held any of that animosity and hate inside my heart. I now understand it was just like a poverty mentality and we were all struggling financially. And when you have lack of resources, your mentality is just a certain way. But thank God, we got out of that location. When I got into middle school and the high school, we got into a house, I was so happy. We were in Pineview Farms, much better neighborhood. And when you get into a better neighborhood, as I'm grown now, I knew financially that my parents actually are paying more money. Your expenses go up to live in a nicer neighborhood, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Right.




Donte Wilburn:

And so, money, cash flow actually became tighter in our house. And I'm seeing this kid in the back of study hall counting all of these 20s, and I said, "How did you get that?" And he says, "Meet me after class and I'll teach you." And that's when he taught me how to sell drugs. And I had this twisted mind that me somehow selling drugs is actually helping my parents because it's relieving them from having to pay for the things that I want. And so, I was able to get them on my own. So then, that whole next segment of my life happened and I started down that road.




Warwick Fairfax:

What were you thinking at that time? Because obviously, you probably understood that your parents were doing okay, but it was not easy for them to finance living in a nice neighborhood. What was your thinking about, "Gosh, this would be a great way to get money." What was the motivation that led you down that path?




Donte Wilburn:

Great question. So, this was the motivation. And I'm going to just tell you, I hate saying it because it's so ignorant and I'm looking back on my ignorance and saying, "Wow, I can't believe I thought that way," but I just got to tell you the truth. So, my thought was they were telling me in school, "Get out of high school, go to college, get a great job, buy a house, have a happy family." And when I'm a sophomore, junior in high school and I'm seeing this guy with new shoes, I'm seeing this guy with nice clothes. I'm seeing them going out on the weekends and they're having a great time. And I'm thinking, "Man, I literally got to wait another six years just to have a halfway decent lifestyle that I want now."

And so, my thought was if I sold drugs, I can get the things that I want now, and it's so easy and quick that I don't have to actually work a job and have my education suffer. So, I still was hitting my books, still doing my schooling, but I figured if I sold drugs, then I can have the things I want. And then my goal was, after I graduate from college, I'll quit and I would have this beautiful job in the future, but had no clue that what I'm doing now can definitely affect my future. That's why I say it was so ignorant. But that was my mentality at the time.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, talk about that. You started doing that and were you, probably a terrible question, were you good at it? I mean, selling drugs? Did you do well at that profession?




Donte Wilburn:

I did, man. So, I started out super small, one ounce here, one ounce there, and so half of it would be profit. And it was just very, very small when I was in my junior year in high school. And then, I started to get better and better and started to get bigger and bigger. And then, in my senior year I was like, "Man, I can really do better." And so, I kept going, kept going. And then, so, when I graduated from my senior year and I understood that I couldn't do this forever, I still had a focus of going to college and getting a good job. And so, what I did was no matter what, when you surround yourself with people that are not doing the right things, you go down.

So, my grades started to slip in my senior year because I was in that kind of atmosphere and I had a lot of C's and different things. So, when I applied to Purdue, I didn't get right in. So, I had to go to Ivy Tech first, a small community college, and I focused hard. I got three A's and one B that catapulted me over to Purdue. I just transferred over. So, I get into Purdue freshman year. And what I realized is it's shameful, but it's true, is that all the kids on campus wanted to smoke weed. And so, I started selling even more. And then, when I got to my sophomore junior year, I said, "Man, you know what? I can do this really big."

And so, I got a connection out of California to give me a lower price amount, and I really started doing this big push up into my junior year. But I can't say, Warwick, selling drugs is just smoking cigarettes. People are always trying to quit. And so, this whole time I knew it was wrong, I would try to quit and my money would deplete and then I would sell and get something back. And so, I had this yo-yo of selling drugs until that one day I said, "This is my last drug deal I'm going to do." And that's when everything went crazy. I was going to do one more and I was going to quit. I was done. And that's when everything happened.




Warwick Fairfax:

But before we get to that moment, which is really the turning point in your life, I mean there's a couple of things. It's obviously you're an entrepreneur, you could say, "Well, where did you find out you are really good at running a business?" While selling drugs. You were really good at it. So, a tough way to learn that. But you mentioned, obviously, people can be addicted to drugs, cigarettes, gambling, I mean a lot of different things. You were maybe addicted to success, the money. If you quit selling drugs, the money's going to go down. You can't buy things, go to places.

So, talk a bit about that because people understand being addicted to drugs, they get why that's hard to get off of that. But talk about how even though you knew it was wrong, and I'm assuming obviously your parents probably had faith and values, talk about how difficult it is to stop selling drugs once you're there because that's the kind of addiction that very few people would understand.




Donte Wilburn:

Well, so the love of money is the root of all evil. And you'll see in my story when we talk about it here in a bit, I was running through all of these roads, these flashing lights saying stop, but I ignored them, I suppressed them because main two things is, I can buy and go the places I wanted to go with no problem. And when we went out, I was able to be, I've always been a connector, a connector of people. And so, the life of the party at my house when we go out, I'm the one that had more money than all my friends around me. So, I was the one paying for everything. So, there's this, I hate to say it, but there's a glory that comes with selling the drugs. And so, when you stop, what happens is that glory starts to fade, right?

You can't buy everybody drinks, you can't have the nicest clothes anymore. And when that glory would start to fade away, which was perpetuated by Satan, but when that glory would start to fade away, I would want to jump back in it. So, that was the addiction. It was the glory and the lifestyle that it provided. And to be honest, I used to smoke marijuana and, oh my goodness, I stopped smoking just because I said I could make more profit if I sold more of this and stopped smoking it. So, the exact same principles that I use now on growing businesses, bringing people together, everything was the exact same thing I was doing then, but it was twisted.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, let's get to the main event, so to speak that changed your life. So, you were doing incredibly well selling drugs. You were kind of, as they say, the big man on campus. People say, "Donte, he's got it. He's successful. He's a nice guy. He's cool. Who wouldn't want to be around Donte Wilburn? He's a terrific guy. He's successful. He buys us all stuff and hosts these big parties." I mean, who doesn't want to be that kind of person? So, let's talk about that event where you could have easily lost your life. So just talk about just that incident, what happened, and just give us a bit of background and what happened that particular day.




Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, in selling drugs, you always run into someone you're going to have beef with. And so, I end up having a guy that had owed me money that I had threatened in his life. And so, he said to me, "Well, let's make this right. Let's do a drug deal. I'll bring people up and they'll buy it from you and you'll make a great profit from me bringing these people up, buying it from you." So, I said, "That will satisfy your payment to me. Let's make this happen." So, this day, I said, "Let's do the deal at 4:00." He was going to bring his people up. They were going to buy 15 pounds of marijuana for $22,500. And I was buying it for $17,500. So, on this one exchange, I was just going to make $5,000 profit. And so, I said, "Yeah, just bring them off and we'll make this exchange and we'll be okay."

Well, we were supposed to do the deal at 4:00, 5:00 comes, 6:00 comes, 7:00 comes, 8:00 comes, 9:00 comes, and this is going to be my last deal. Okay? My girlfriend at the time, I told her, I said, "This is it. I'm going to make this and we're going to have it for a little bit, and then I am going cold turkey. I'm flying straight." So, the night comes, it is 10:00, 11:00. And 11 something, he says, "We're here." And I said, "Man, I really don't want to do this, but I have to do it." At that time, I just came off of a stint of not selling drugs and all my money went down and my phone was cut off at my brother's house and his gas was cut off. And so, I needed to pay those for him. And so, I said, "Well, I'll make this one drug deal because I had quit for a while and I said, "I'll make this last one and I'm done so I can get this gas cut back on and I can get this phone bill paid."

And 11:00 that night, my girlfriend at the time had done many, many drug deals. Well, she didn't ever do them with me, she just rode along. And so, she understood how I moved and how I acted. And she was numb to it because she was always with me. And so, she comes up and she's telling me, "Don't go, don't go." And she stands up. I'll never forget, she gets off the bed and I'm about to go. And I told her, "I'll be right back." I even told her, "Hey, you come with me. It'll only going to be 15 minutes. We'll go in. We'll make the exchange and we'll come home. Just come with me. You sit in the car." And she says, "No, I'm not going." I was like, "Why not?" And she almost has these tears in her eyes and she's looking at me and she says, "Please don't go." And I said, "I have to."

And so, I leave, get to the place, and I was supposed to make this deal with two people. It was supposed to be this one guy and another guy. And so, when we pull up, they have a white Expedition, they opened the doors, there's four people in the vehicle. And so, when I see four people get out, I'm thinking, "What in the world? It was supposed to be two." And you know what happened? So, remember the love of money is, and I'm consumed with that, I got to make this money. I was thinking that, "Oh, this is a big purchase for 22,000." And I was 22 at the time, and I'm selling to other 22-year-olds. So, I figured they just need to pony up more people to get to this dollar amount. So, I said, okay, it's four of them. Come on in. So, they came in. They go in and out, in and out, in and out.

And my friend Chris, that was my connection, he gets suspicious. He pulls out his gun and I said, "Guys, what is going on?" He says, "Well, we see you have the product." And I said, "Well, you see the product. Well, show us the money." And he says, "Well, we're afraid that if we show you the money, you're going to rob us." And I'm like, "We're not going to rob you. You see it clear as day." And so, what ended up happening is, my friend Chris was probably 35 at the time and we're like some little 20 something year olds. So, he was, you know what you call an OG. He's older than us. And so, he says, "I'm going to pack this up." He packed it up, takes it to the front door, and he looks at me standing there while he's at the front door and he looks at the four guys and he says, "Either you buy this or I'm going to take it home and put it up and go to bed."

After he said that, it was quiet. No one said a word. And I'm thinking in my mind, "Buy it, buy it, buy it." And so, he looks at them one more time. They don't say anything. He goes out the front door. After he goes out the front door, one of the guys scrunched up his face so evilly and goes out behind him. So, there's three guys remaining. And what happened at that time, I didn't know that they were here to harm us, but all of a sudden, I'm filled with this knowledge. I know that they're here to steal, kill, and destroy in a moment of a time. And so, my only reaction was I got to go warn Chris and let him know.

So, I ran to the front door, I go to open it, and I'm frozen. Literally, my hand is frozen, I can't move, and I hear all the gunshots. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They go off. I run upstairs. And guess what I was going to do when I ran upstairs? Gary, take a wild guess. What was I going to do when I ran upstairs? What would you think?




Gary Schneeberger:

You were going to were grab the drugs and get out?




Donte Wilburn:

Okay, good guess. But really what I was going to do? I was going to hide underneath the bed. That's all I wanted to do, all I knew to do. I hear the gunshots out front. I run upstairs and I just want to hide underneath the bed until this all goes over. I run upstairs. As I go to bust in the room to hide the person's house that we're at, assume that we just got shot and killed, and they were running up the stairs to come kill her. She grabs her gun and she points it at me and I bust in. She points it at me and I was like, "Whoa, whoa. It's just me." I run downstairs. I go to go out the back door, and as I go out the back door, there's a gun at my head and I don't know who it is. I'm like, "Whoa, whoa." And I look, and it's Chris. Chris got shot three times out front, comes around the back. And as I'm trying to go out, he's trying to come in. He pulls a gun on me and he comes in, collapses on me, and he says, "I'm hit. I'm hit, but I don't know where."

And he's bleeding and he gives me his gun because he's losing blood, he's losing his strength. And so, I hold him up with one hand. The girl comes down, she says, "I called 911. The police said, they'll be here in a few minutes. Take this gun. It's unregistered. You got to take it and get out of here." I take her gun, I take his gun. I got two guns in one hand. I'm holding him up with the right hand. I'm go out the back door and all I could envision was someone coming around and just finishing both of us off. I thought they were just going to come kill us both. Well, that didn't happen. I have seen them pull off in the Expedition.

I go out front, as I'm sitting Chris in my car, as I'm sitting him in, I dropped both of the guns and as they twill to the ground, boom, they go off one more time. And Chris asked me, did you get hit? I said, no, no, I'm not touched. So, I picked the guns up. We pull out. As we're pulling out, I'm driving very slow. Cops are blazing past us. I got this weird looking car, and I'm almost past the last police officer. I'm on 10 and two just trying to make it out. The last police officer looks over at me, turns on his lights and makes a U-turn. We throw the guns out, they pull us over, they take Chris to the hospital, they take me down to the station.

Now, in my junior year of college, I had an 8:00 A.M. exam in the morning. And I kept telling the cop, "Get me out of here because, I go to Purdue University, I got to exam at 8:00 in the morning," and I made this big lie up. They end up letting me go. And from there, my whole life changed forever.




Warwick Fairfax:

After that happened, what was going through your mind?




Donte Wilburn:

So, what happened was three days straight, I did not sleep, so much anxiety. I was afraid that my mom was going to get killed, my mom and my dad, because they knew where they lived. They knew where I stayed at my brother's house. I was afraid that my brother would get killed. My girlfriend going to work, would they kill her? And so, literally I slept every night with a gun under my pillow. And if there was a cat that stepped on a twig, I was at the window with a gun at the window. And after three days of being so confused, what I did was, I said, "You know what? I don't know where I heard this before, but I heard that if you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword. If I live by this gun, I'm going to die by a gun."

And I took the top slide off, I took the clip out, I went to my backyard, I scattered it. And I went into the room and I said, "God, I don't know if you're real. I don't know if you're really real. But if you are, I heard that if you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword. You're going to have to keep me." And I went to bed for the first time after three nights, and I woke up the next morning. I was so happy. I was so happy. I thought I was going to get killed that night. I didn't have no gun. That was my protection. And I woke up that night and things really, really turned after that.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that, for a series that we're calling Burn the Ships, right, Donte? That seems to me like the period, at that moment you figuratively struck a match and you burned the ships that you had known. In a sheet that you filled out for us, when we asked you what prompted you burn the ship' moment, you said this. You said, "Well, my choices were either suicide to end it all because I just made a huge mistake or dig in and pull myself out and pull myself in." I mean, there's a reason why the word recidivism is a word, because people who are in bad situations, even when their life is threatened, that's all they know and they go back to that. You did indeed put a stake in the ground. You did indeed set your ships on fire and you did indeed work a new path to a new destination.

You did finally right what you said was so hard to do, stop doing it. You quit several times. You said when you were selling drugs and then you ran out of money and you sold them again. This was the moment where you finally stuck by it where you did indeed light those ships on fire. I am no longer someone who sells drugs. You weren't really sure what that was going to be.




Donte Wilburn:

I didn't have a clue.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. Whatever it was going to be, you felt this need, you were going to follow God, you felt this calling, and you went and pursued that. And what was the next thing that happened that got you on a course to keep your back completely turned on the ships that were still burning behind you?




Donte Wilburn:

You. No, you hit the nail on the head. I appreciate that, Gary. So, the next thing that I did was I said, "Okay, I'm going to start going to church a little bit, dibbling and dabbling in church, trying to figure out what's really going on with my life. And then what happens is, after a month later, it all comes out on the news, all on WLFI. All the news channels, "Wanted: Donte Wilburn for conspiracy to deal marijuana." And they had the whole story of the shootout, who set it up, what happened. And so, my mom calls me, she comes over to the house, she says, "Donte, you're in big trouble. They have you all over the news that you're facing eight years in prison." And she's super embarrassed. My dad is super embarrassed. Going to Purdue University.

So, we had to go get a lawyer. And after we got the lawyer, I went home to my brother's house and I'm sitting there and I'm contemplating suicide when my mom's sitting next to me and tears are rolling down my eyes and she can tell that I mentally am tore up because I made it past, okay, I'm living by this gun and I survived that. And now, I'm facing eight years in prison. And she's sitting there looking at me on this couch and she kept telling me, "Donte, it's going to be okay. I know it looks bad now, but you are going to be okay. I know it looks terrible now, but you will be okay. I know it looks bad, but I promise you, you will be okay." And what happened after she kept reiterating that, it lifted my spirits and I believed it. And so, at that moment I said, okay, I'm going to be okay, but I'm still distraught.

So, the next day comes, I'm lying in bed. I didn't even want to go to school. My mom calls me and she tells me she has a job for me detailing cars. I go get this job at auto detailing. There's a deacon there that started teaching me about God, taking me to church, and helping me through what I'm going through. So, I started at minimum wage, just detailing cars. And people in my case, Gary, got 60 years in prison, 40 years in prison, 20 years in prison. I was the last to be sentenced. And in my junior year at Purdue, I got straight A's. So, from the time my mom kept telling me, I will be okay, I made an effort and she got me that job at detailing cars. I literally said, "I am going to be successful. I'm not going to let this define me."

And so, I got straight A's at Purdue and I went before the judge and he had straight A's in his hand from Purdue University, and he had this terrible past. And he told me that, "I just sentenced a 20-year old to 40 years in prison. Do you think I'm going to let you off?" And I tried to justify it about, "Hey, I was born with not much money and different things." And he got mad at me. And he looks at me and says, "Who do you think you are? Do you think that you're Robin Hood, rob from the rich and give to the poor?" And I didn't know what to say.

So, my pastor raises his hand, goes up there, talks with the judge, they start talking. He looks at me and says, "What am I going to do with you? You're going to church, you got a pastor, you're getting straight A's in school, but you did this God-awful thing?" I had looked at him in tears. I said, "Judge, just give me one chance. Please just give me one chance." And he said to me, "I'll give you your one chance. I'm going to sentence you to three years in community corrections. You got to go to jail. You only can get out to go to school and to work, and you got to live in that jail."

He says, "If you get in any trouble again, I'm going to throw the book at you." I'll never forget that. And I said, "Give me the one chance." So, he gave me the chance. I still had to go through community corrections. I had to be in that facility and only get out to go to school and to work. But I ended up graduating Purdue University while in work release.




Warwick Fairfax:

I want to sort of switch here, but I think a lot of listeners are listening and thinking for every Donte Wilburn, there's a bunch of other people that take a different course. I mean, was it that moment when you felt like I should be dead? I mean, there's many that would just keep going on and be in jail for decades or be killed by some other drug dealer. As you look back, it's like, well, how come that happened? Is there any, other than this divine intervention? Is there any reason that can explain why you made that change? Because there's a scenario where Donte doesn't make the change.




Donte Wilburn:

Right.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's easy to say, "This is my last drug deal." But how many times do people say, "This is my last drug deal," and it's not, right?




Gary Schneeberger:

They don't burn their ships like you burned your ships.




Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, here's the million dollars in burning the ships. When I realized that I should have been dead, the judge gave me grace and God gave me grace. I got a human that he clearly gave 60 years, 40 years, 20 years. But he looks at me and says, "I'll give you three years community corrections to see what you can do with it." Once I realize how big of a feat that was, I get out, I'm off of it. I'm done with everything. And I'm going to tell you what happened is my friends, my brother, all of them, they said, "Donte, you're off of everything. Come on, let's go out tonight." And I was like, "Ah." He's like, "Come on, come on." But they pressured me in.

I went to the club one night and I'm looking and I'm seeing all of these people, and literally I go out of that club and I go sit in my car all by myself and everyone's asking, "Where am I at? What are you doing? You just got off of everything." And I said, "I'm done." I went home and never again did I go to another club. All of my friends were so mad at me, I never talked to really any of them again. And I dove hard into changing my life. And so, I got really focused in this auto detailing, end up buying the business. And I can tell you this is the truth that just two years ago, it's like I was separated, focused on this drive of focusing on going forward. I had to get rid of all my friends and those bad associations.

And just two years ago, have I started going back to them because I'm in a place after 20 years where they can see the fruit of what I've done and the lifestyle I live. And they're still, some of them are still in the same place that I left them 20 years ago. So, when you say burn the ships, it's not only leaving the lifestyle, but I had to leave a lot of close family members and friends to attain the life that I wanted to live for my family. So, I got myself in this pit, and in order to get myself out, I had to come up with this plan and this ladder. And as I'm working it, I wanted to climb this and I had to cut off all ties for me to be able to climb it. And they say that you're a sum of the five closest people around you. I find that to be true.

And also, what really helped me is I found good mentors. They say success leaves tracks. All you have to do is find success and look at those tracks and get in those tracks, and you'll go to the same place that the person before you went. And so, I started to learn those things and I found good mentors and I started to, what they did, I just emulated and copied and I got in those tracks and it was very opposite of what I was taught in my previous life. But that was the big thing, man. I cut everything off. I got in these tracks of these mentors that I found, and I stayed on that over a duration of time.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, I want to talk a bit about what you do now with your auto detailing business. I mean, you grew this business, you bought it. I think you mentioned in 2011 you grew sales over 180%, purchased the company in 2018, purchased this Legacy Courts and Legacy Sports Club for 6 million to bless children. So, talk about your vision. You're not only successful, but you're successful for a purpose. You have a heart to mentor young people. Maybe other young versions of Donte Wilburn who maybe could go down one track. And you're trying to be that guy who's going to be in their life to help him not go down the track that you went. So, talk about how you are both successful, but you're successful with a purpose. So, talk about how who you are now, if you will, and what you do.




Donte Wilburn:

So, the transition came when I was sitting down and I was reading these different scriptures and I came across something that said, "Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him work with his hands so that he might have to give to those that are in need." That hit me like a ton of bricks. And I looked at it and I said, "Man, I used to steal. I'm not supposed to steal anymore, but I'm supposed to work really, really hard so that I might have to give to those that are in need." And so, it gave me the whole map, right? Work really hard to be able to bless others. And so, I just got really busy into doing it. I created a vision for Premier Auto Detailing. And we went from, I don't know, 200 and something thousand dollars in 2011. And now currently, I think this past year we did over $2.2 million at an auto detailing company.

And so, I created this vision and our purpose. And I can tell you what it is, it's servanthood and creating joy and happiness through professional auto detailing and window tinting services. So, my philosophy was how can I help as many employees that work under my umbrella? And how can I bless as many customers that we touch? And when you take employees and customers, those two things are really just people. And that's been my main focus in business is serving both sides of these people. So, we have two auto detailing businesses here in Lafayette. We do auto detailing, window tinting, remote starts, vehicle wraps, all kinds of cool stuff. And then, in 2020, we opened one in Kokomo, which is doing great.

And then, Legacy Courts came up because my kids were in basketball and they said, "Hey, do you want to buy this place before it gets turned into something else?" And so, we bought into that and I just was so happy that I can bless more kids with that in sports. And Warwick, what I'll tell you is sports, the reason why I really like it so much is because it gives you disciplines in life. Me, hiring 17 to 25-year-olds inside of Premier detailing, I realized I get a lot of them and they don't have discipline. They don't even know how to take someone yelling at them. And so, that's what I felt like sports would do if I can get as many kids in it. They understand when a coach says, "Get over here now. Run as fast as you can, go and jump." They start to get this discipline of being spoken to and actually carrying out the order and which is so much needed to be successful in business.

So, really, Warwick, I'm going to be honest, man. So yeah, I really am just speaking to my 17 to 25-year-old self when I wrote my book. And I took 10 chapters and I dumped, what was happening was everyone was asking me, "How did you do it? How did you do it?" And I could never tell them in a few minutes. And so, I wrote this book and I put all of me into it. If they obey the strategies in the book, they too will be successful. But I'm just basically talking to my younger self.




Gary Schneeberger:

This is a great time for me to jump in as the color commentator and pull some balloon strings together about what we're talking about. First of all, I have to address, not the elephant in the room, but the hoodie in the room. Donte, your hoodie says Hope Dealer. Now, what you've just described is how you're offering hope to those who work for you. But what you cannot have any idea of is that Warwick has used that phrase, we at Beyond the Crucible are dealers in hope that your worst day doesn't have to define you. He has used the phrase, we are dealers in hope, on multiple occasions.




Donte Wilburn:

Really?




Gary Schneeberger:

It's a remarkable thing. If you look right now, listener, if we've made a video clip of this, or if you're watching on YouTube watcher, you can take a look at Warwick. You can take a look at Donte and think, "These two guys got nothing in common." Guess what? They're both hope dealers. That is fabulous. That's the kind of thing that happens when you help people get past their worst day. So, that's the first point I wanted to make is that you're both hope dealers.




Donte Wilburn:

Awesome.




Gary Schneeberger:

The second thing, when you first started talking to us here, Donte, when you first started talking to us, you said this, that when you were in school, that kid who taught you how to deal drugs, people were asking him, how did you get that? He had things. How did you get that? When you and I talked about you being on the show, you said that the young people who work for you at your auto detailing shop say to you often, "How did you get here? How did you get those things?" And I think it's just poetic that the very questions...




Donte Wilburn:

Oh, my goodness.




Gary Schneeberger:

The very questions that led you down that life that you should not have gone down, that you realized jeopardized your life, those very same questions are now what you're pouring into those people to whom you deliver hope.




Donte Wilburn:

Wow.




Gary Schneeberger:

What's your response or reaction to that?




Donte Wilburn:

Wow. To be honest, I've never even thought about it. I've never thought, that's the exact question I asked him, how did you get here? And that's the exact question they ask me. But the responses and the trainings are completely different. I'm teaching them something completely different.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right, right. And the destinations...




Donte Wilburn:

Wow. Yeah, of course. Wow, man, thank you for pulling that out. That was, I'm probably going to meditate on that for days to come.




Gary Schneeberger:

And I have one more thing since you've mentioned it a couple of times. The book is still in process as we're recording this, but the book is called what? And when's it coming out so that people can know how to get their hands on it? Because you've indicated there's a lot of stuff in there that does indeed offer hope, that does indeed deal hope to folks. So, what's the title of the book and when can people expect to have it?




Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, the title of the book is Born Hungry: You were Made for More. So, the whole premise was, when I was born, everyone's born hungry for something. And then, knowing that some somehow as we grow in this life, we settle, we settle. And I settled for being a silly drug dealer. And so, we settled for things. And then, something has to shock us to realize that you were made for more. Go figure out what it is. And so, that's what my book is about, is really a jolt or a shock. Really, I wrote it to people graduating high school and people graduating college to hit the ground running to be successful. That's really, really who I wrote that to.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I mean, that is really profound what Gary has brought out, that you are at a moment in your life, sophomore in high school, and he asked, "Gosh, how did you get there?" And if somebody had given a different answer, somebody said to you, "Donte, it's about faith. It's about having a course, had of beliefs. It's about working hard. Don't take the shortcut." Maybe you would've listened, maybe you wouldn't. But the course of your life could have been radically different, right? If you'd had a Donte Wilburn in your life, somebody, let's say maybe a bit older, 10, 20 years older, it's unknowable. Would you have listened? We'll never know. You'd like to think you would have, right?




Donte Wilburn:

Yes, for sure.




Warwick Fairfax:

You'd like to think. Sometimes, we can be stubborn, and often, the only way to learn is through hard times. But I love some of the things that you write in the book because you are really a dealer of hope from a drug dealer to a hope dealer, I mean, hope is eternal. There are eternal consequences of hope. It's not something that's going to run out. And I love some of the things that you say in your book. You say, "I'm here to say that no matter how monumental the setbacks are, never give up. While there is breath inside your lungs, there is still hope." And I love this next sentence. "I found that my darkest time was the beginning of my best times."

It's hard to understand how that darkest time when you were close to being killed, and in front of the judge when you could have been in jail for 40 plus years, talk about how nobody wants to go through that again, I'm sure. You know you don't. Who would? But yet out of that, the pit of darkness, out of the ashes of the crucible as we say, something beautiful, something good came out of that. So, just help us capture that, what that means for you. What was the good that came out of that really dark moment?




Donte Wilburn:

So, it's really weird when I look back, but I'm almost happy it all happened. I'm going to be honest. I'm happy it all happened because now, when I face, my wife is so good at reminding me. But now, I'll be like, "Oh my gosh, this is happening. We've got this going on and this is going on, and everything's like, and then I stop and I remember, where did you come from? What have you overcome before that is greater than now? So, out of that dark moment, it's given me the understanding of true resilience, perseverance, motivation. If these things are possessed inside of you, no matter how bad it looks and feels, and if you possess this grit, you can overcome no matter what the darkest day is. So, I would say that was the most beautiful thing that came out of being so low is that it's possible. No matter what. It's possible.




Gary Schneeberger:

That sound you heard, listeners, is what I normally say is the sound of the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign, saying the plane is about the descent. But since we're talking to a guy who has made his bones in auto detailing, I'm going to say that sounds you heard are the vacuums going, because it's almost time to get out and your car is clean, and it's almost time to go. So, the vacuums are firing up.




Donte Wilburn:

Yeah, yeah.




Gary Schneeberger:

But before we go, there are a couple of things I want to make sure I do, Donte. One is, I want to call the listener's attention to Donte's tone of voice, Donte's demeanor as he's talked about some of the things he's talked about. He started this conversation talking about the very abject racism he felt as a young boy, but he didn't talk about it defeatedly. He talked about it oddly enough to me when I first heard it, he was laughing. Now, he wasn't laughing because it was funny. He's laughing because he's moved beyond it. He's laughing because he's found hope beyond that difficulty.




Donte Wilburn:

For sure.




Gary Schneeberger:

And throughout this conversation, from the drug dealing conversation to his life being threatened, there was a sense of humor about it that we all can experience when we put our worst times, our most challenging times behind us. That's one of the things that Beyond the Crucible endeavors to show you all the time that your worst day doesn't define you, and it doesn't have to remain your worst day in the sense of you can look back at it and go, "Okay," you can even have a sense of humor about it. So, that Donte really impressed me the way that you talked about that.

You have transformed more than just the ship you're in. You've transformed your whole demeanor in the way that you live your life, and that is a beautiful thing to behold. The other thing that I'll do before I let Warwick ask the final question, which is always his prerogative as the host of the show, is to give you the chance to let our listeners know how can they find out more about your business, about you, about your book? Where's the good place to find everything Donte Wilburn on the worldwide web?




Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, you can look me up at www.dontewilburn.com. Also, our business is called premierindiana.com. So, you can connect on both of those things. You can get a hold of me, you can email on the business site the info that comes to me, and also on dontewilburn.com. That contact all comes directly to me.




Gary Schneeberger:

And for people like me who don't always spell great, how do you spell Donte Wilburn and dontewilburn.com?




Donte Wilburn:

Oh, my goodness. You hit the nail on the head. It's D-O-N-T-E-W-I -L-B-U R N. So yes, I'm D-O-N-TE, not A.




Gary Schneeberger:

All right. Warwick, take it away.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Donte, thank you so much for being here. I mean, your story is so inspiring. I mean, one of the things we say on Beyond the Crucible a lot is your worst day doesn't have to define you. And you had, well, the worst day was almost getting killed. It could have been not quite as bad in front of the judge, but it could have gone a different direction. But one of the things we say, you don't always have a choice of what happens to you. Yes, you had a choice about some of the decisions, but growing up in a trailer park and racism, there were things that happened that were none of your doing, and horrendous setbacks and challenges.

One of the things we say is you don't always have a choice of what happened to you or you can't undo your mistakes, but you do have a choice of how you move forward. You do have a choice of is it going to define your life? Is it going to defeat your life? Or you're going to move in a more positive life-affirming direction where you live, as we say, a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others? You are both successful financially and monetarily, but you're successful from a faith or kingdom perspective. You are investing in the next generation. Successful in the full sense of that word.

So, just as we close, talk about that word choice, because there may be some people who today are in the situation you were in years ago, or maybe it's a physical challenge. Maybe it's they've failed, maybe their marriage is broken up. Maybe there's all sorts of things that are going on. Maybe today is the worst day for some. Just talk about that word choice and why that's such an empowering concept.




Donte Wilburn:

Thank you. Thank you, Warwick. So, when I think of choices and I think of people of where they are, or they could be where I was, the first thing I think of is grow where you are planted. And I want the listener to know that out of eight billion people on the planet, you're in the city that you're in, or the town that you're in, the state that you're in. Whether it's the spouse, whether it's the family, whether it's the job, out of all the world you're in, the place that you're at. And oftentimes people also think, "Oh, I got to go here. I got to go there." I'm telling you, you can grow right where you are.

It's all about, change happens when you are serious and you got to get serious. This is all in my book, but I talk about having this creative wand of what you want things to be like in your life if you can have them. And once you get really, really serious and you create this vision for where your life, where you want it to go, then you can just simply take steps back and figure out each step that you need to do to get there.

And then, you get a mentor. He's your guide to help you get there. But that's where change happens. And I often tell everybody, "I know what change looks like because I had to do it myself." The very first thing is you got to look in the mirror. You cannot be a victim of anything. You have to get serious. Look at all of your flaws, look at all of the bad, and then know that you can grow and change right where you are.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the vacuum's stopped running and it's time to drive away and when the last word has been spoken on a subject. And Donte Wilburn, our guest, has just spoken it. Always remember listener as we move forward in this series, burn the ships. If you find yourself in a place as Donte found himself, where he was drifting off course from where he wanted to be. He wanted to not sell drugs, but then it came in and he did it again, and he did it again, and he did it again.

If you find yourself in whatever situation you're in, where you're drifting from that vision Donte was just talking about, you have a vision, but you're drifting from it. Know that this is always available to you. If you're drifting from that vision, you can strike a match. You can set the ship that you're in that's not taking you where you want to go on fire, and you can then move to a better destination, a destination like what Donte's found and giving away what he has been given, that very grace. So, we'll see you again next week.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond the Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what's been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.

Go do it! That’s the counsel, the hope, the legacy the mother of our guest this week, Joel Hungate, gave her son. He’d need those words more urgently than he ever could have imagined when she died by suicide, leaving him to question everything on which he had based his life.

In this episode of our special winter series, BURN THE SHIPS, Warwick talks with Hungate about how his Mom’s death left him in an emotional spiral that he was only able to get out of by embracing his faith. And taking seriously her exhortation to “go do it.”

He’s done just that by trading his corporate career as a biomedical engineer for creating the Adventure Genome Project, in which he helps men and women not just get fit and healthy, but to do so with an eye on embracing adventure.

It’s a journey he knows firsthand, as one of 16 contestants on the new Netflix survivalist series OUTLAST, premiering on the streaming service March 10.

His tip for all of us:  Put one foot in front of the other. That’s how you get to the top.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.




Joel Hungate:

One of the last conversations that I had with Mom before we lost her, in fact, she was always my number one advocate to go on these adventures. I'd still had a love for mountaineering, for trekking, for camping, all the outdoor things. And she'd always said, "No, you got to do the big one. Go out, get on this expedition, go do these wild things. There's just incredible opportunity for you out there." And she always had a sense, this kind of prophetic sense about just when she interacted with people, she could get to the heart of what they were called to do. It was just an uncanny ability. And for me, she was the one that said, "Just go. Go do it."




Gary Schneeberger:

Go do it. That's the counsel, the hope, the legacy, the mother of our guest this week, Joel Hungate, gave her son. He'd need those words more urgently than he ever could have imagined when she died by suicide, leaving him to question everything on which he had based his life. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show.

In this episode of our special winter series, Burn the Ships, Warwick talks with Hungate about how his mom's death left him in an emotional spiral that he was only able to get out of by embracing his faith and by taking seriously her exhortation to go do it. He's done just that by trading his corporate career as a biomedical engineer for creating the Adventure Genome Project in which he helps men and women, not just get fit and healthy, but to do it with an eye on embracing adventure. It's a journey he knows firsthand as one of 16 contestants on the new Netflix survivalist series, Outlast, premiering on the streaming service March 10th. His tip for all of us, put one foot in front of the other. That's how you get to the top.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Joel, again, thank you for being here. And the week that this comes out will be the week I believe that your new Netflix show Outlast comes on. And you'll obviously tell us a bit about, it's a survival show set in Alaska. Obviously, we won't tell you who won or what happened. We will give a spoiler alert is that Joel is alive as we speak. So he did survive. So as we said off air, we hope it doesn't contravene the Netflix contract. But yeah. So Joel is here to at least tell you that he did survive. But before we get to Outlast, he grew up in Indiana. And I'd love just to hear a bit of the backstory. And I know obviously you're a person of faith, as we are, and your mother was a huge part of that foundation. So talk about what was life for Joel Hungate, growing up in Indiana, and your mom and the influence that she had on you.




Joel Hungate:

First of all, Gary, Warwick, thank you. What a pleasure it is to talk. I grew up on a hog farm in East Central Indiana. And that experience, I think really, one, predisposed me for love of the outdoors. It's just a part of life. It's what we did for fun. It was out hunting, fishing, being in the woods. That was my childhood in a nutshell, and myself, my brothers. And you mentioned my mother undergirding all of that. We grew up with the Midwestern values that a lot of people have come to know and associate with places like Indiana. It's that moral compass, that sense of who one ought to be. And that it has to transcend our reality, it has to transcend our understanding, and just who we are as people. It's got to be vested and rooted in something that goes beyond us.

And for me, she was that conduit, that catalyst for understanding faith. And how critical that was, not only to who I'd become, and to how you respond to what life throws at you. So growing up in that environment, it was baked in. The idea that faith was just a part of life. And we saw it as the underpinnings that guide, that constant, that you can count on no matter where it's going to take you, no matter where the wind blows. And for me, that was almost exclusively distilled by my mom in a very intentional way. And not only for me and my family, but for our community at large.




Warwick Fairfax:

So Joel, we'll get to kind of what you do now with adventure and just helping people be more generalist and understanding, you want them to be participants, not just watchers. As good as Netflix shows are, and I certainly watch a fair share of them, and have my favorite shows and series. You want people to be participants in life, not just observers. But when you think back to when you were growing up, are there clues back then that you look back on and say I can see some clues of who Joel Hungate is now? Were you somebody that loved adventure? Just talk about some of those threads in your growing up that may be clues to who you are now.




Joel Hungate:

Yeah, for me it was always you end up with that feeling, your heart longs for it. I say often that we were designed for adventure. And we are, right? Especially as a young man growing up in that environment, an outdoorsy person, you start to find yourself finding purpose, finding fulfillment in those settings. And it's always that those settings that challenge you. It really brings to life who you are under those trying circumstances.

For me, that challenge was exhilarating. Growing up, whether it was being out in the woods, getting to navigate for my first time. I remember going hunting with my dad. It's one of the things that, kind of those stage gates, those initiation ceremonies as a man. I get to go hunting, deer hunting in particular.

And I remember the very first time that he set me at the edge of the woods, he handed me a compass, took a bearing, and he said, "All right, here's the direction you're going to go." And this is the first time I ventured into that darkness to find my deer stand by myself. And I remember the sense of pride, feeling so alive. And I was 10 or 11 years old at this time. And you're taking the shotgun for the first time, you're going into the woods. I'm scaring everything away. I'm not being quiet whatsoever.

But I found that deer stand. I found it and I nailed it. I didn't get lost. I didn't have to back out and go back to the truck. I was able to take that challenge, that invitation into the unknown. And ever since then, you know could say it's kind of an addiction too, that concept. You're looking for that next step to challenge yourself and see can you answer it, and then who do you become in that process?

So for me, little events like that. Growing up as an athlete, I was a football, basketball, baseball player. Pre-baked challenge, the team aspect. But the other side of it, something that's also been equally exhilarating, I was introduced to the concept of leadership, which I think is a natural foray when you start to think about adventure and purpose. So that's where that childhood, growing up, being outside, accepting those challenges, started to dovetail into what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be as a professional. And ever since then we've been off to the races.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow, that's amazing. So I think from what I understand, you got a BA in science at Purdue, and that took you on a career that, at least at first, it doesn't seem like the outdoor adventurey career. I mean obviously you've got to pay the bills, I realize. And it's fun to be in the wilderness, but you've got to be able to support a family and a roof over your head and all that. So just talk about that scientific bent and some of the medical stuff you've got into at least after college. So where did that all fit into the story of Joel?




Joel Hungate:

I can almost think back to a singular point. It has to do with my dad and my uncles, all of which, I come from a long line of engineers. And I remember them asking me at one Thanksgiving that we were all gathered, not even a young man, I was a child at the time, "Hey Joel, what's your favorite subject?" And I go, "I like history." And they go, "You mean math." So ever since then, that has been kind of pre-baked into the pie, right? And also I think the natural curiosity that comes with adventure lends me really well where I continue to question and ask. And that opened my eyes to what possibilities were in science, and in particular engineering being a very practical hands-on application of the science. So it drew me in.

I remember sitting in the throes of being a young adult in middle school, early high school, what do you want to do? And not wanting to just say I want to be a doctor or a lawyer, or whatever was par for the course. I found out that Purdue, which a school that I had loved and had followed and my family had all went there, so I was very familiar with it, I found out they had a new program. It's called biomedical engineering.

And that adventure side of me was always coupled with the idea that I wanted to help people. And I thought, wow, I can go be an engineer, and I can create things that help people, or I can apply that technical aptitude to new devices or new ideas. And it just infinitely fascinated me. So I remember in my sophomore year, I started telling the career counselor, they said, "Joel, what do you want to do?" I said, "I want to be a biomedical engineer." And I don't even think it was an accredited opportunity for a career path at the time. So it's like you're making up words to folks. And they're, "Okay. Great."

But I was blown away by the burgeoning field on that front and the idea that we could be at the interface, treat the human body and the miracle that is biology as something that we can start to understand and add our insights, our ideas, those God-given inspirations that we just run across randomly, or that we innovate our way towards incrementally and make somebody's life better. I said sign me up. So that's what got me into the science space.




Warwick Fairfax:

I want to pivot here, but from what I understand you were doing well. I mean, you were VP of orthopedic programs at a company called DARI Motion Scientific Analytics. I've got it quasi right. And at a relatively young age. I mean you were doing tremendous. It seemed like a career for you in the biomedical area, sky's the limit. I mean things were great.

But then it sounds like a life event happened with your mother in 2016 that, if I'm understanding correctly, it changed the direction of your life in many ways. So just talk about, you're on this seemingly fast track at a young age in the biomedical area of engineering, and life is going well. I'm sure you were doing well at it, enjoyed it. But then just talk about what happened to your mom, and then how that seemed like it changed the direction of your life. Maybe not initially, but it did a while after.




Joel Hungate:

It absolutely did. For us at that point, my mother being one of those just anchor individuals in my life, that person that you go to when you're in the middle of the woods, when the storm's around you, and can offer that resetting, that idea that, hey, we're grounded in our faith. There's a way through this no matter what you're facing. She was that person for me, for my brothers, for our family.

And right around that time, in late 2015, shortly after my nearest brother, Nathan, was married in October of 2015, that kind of ballpark, Mom started to battle severe anxiety. And for us, we had no experience with mental health issues, behavioral health challenges. Knew nothing about it from an advocacy, or what the family should expect standpoint. And we started to be thrown headlong into what all of that entails.

And for the folks that have gone through that, I can just hear your heads shaking right now, because if you haven't been exposed to it, if you don't know what that looks like, how to help and advocate for a loved one, it's a challenging space from the standpoint of there's not a lot of involvement of the family. The way that mental health was treated at the time, and still continues to be stigmatized in a number of ways. The ability for you, as somebody suffering from mental illness, in this case, severe anxiety, eventually some form of major depression, akathisia, pacing, all these things started to compound. As the family, you're not often augmented with any of the resources to understand what's at risk, how do you help this person? Who do you talk to? What kind of support navigation exists? At the time there wasn't any.

And I'm states away. I'm in Kansas City area, I was living in Topeka at the time, working in a medical device capacity for a large corporate entity. Life was going incredibly well. Career was fantastic. My wife's career was fantastic. She's a chemical engineer. But we're living out there, and then all of a sudden I'm states away from this person in my life that means just everything to me. I don't know what to do or how to help. The family, we're confused. You're kind of left out of the loop in a lot of the care pathways there. And it goes from something's just not right to major events where ends up inpatient behavioral health that she has to seek.

The constant feedback that she would give us through this entire experience was, I don't know what's wrong, but when I go through this treatment, it makes me feel crazy. I feel like a crazy person by the way I'm treated, the way that we're all lumped together, the way that this kind of overlaps, and then just throwing medication at the problem. We weren't finding anything that worked.

And what we didn't know at the time as a family was that there are certain thresholds, and this is as a PSA to anybody that would be going through this, certain thresholds during treatment, medication changes, dosage increases, decreases, ramping on, ramping off. Where somebody like my mother who we used to joke that, she literally used to joke about this, "Hey, if you ever find me dead, it wasn't suicide." She had this zeal for life. She was a philanthropist, she was a minister. She had a Christian radio ministry. She's fed tens of thousands of people. Was one of those folks that, kid you not, we talk about it, you wake up and just looking for somebody to love on.

She was like a ricochet against every human being that she interacted with. We could be at Red Lobster, and next thing you know the waitress is coming over, we're having them over for dinner and we're talking about life stories, and she's sharing the love of Jesus with this person. They're sitting with us by the time it's all said and done. At Red Lobster eating cheddar biscuits. That was the kind of person she was. She was magnetic.

And to see that completely robbed from her personality by mental illness, and then to see that the stigma of it kept her from feeling like she wanted to pursue the type of care that was available, and it didn't feel like it was well-matched. We're going through this entire process. And we are thinking, okay, seems like it's getting better. Seems like it's getting better. She seems positive. And then just like that, one day I get a call, and we lost Mom to suicide out of the blue, out of nowhere. Didn't even think it was a remote possibility. I had no idea that during those critical thresholds, those times during treatment, that the propensity for suicide ideation to ramp or decline that we needed to be on the lookout for that sort of thing. Wasn't even on the radar.

So I'm floored. And imagine what you go through in that environment. You start to question, Lord, this is the person that instilled faith in me, and I'm robbed of them in the most gut-wrenching, impossible way. Unfathomable grief, unfathomable questioning of why. There's no good answer for this. How on earth could this happen to this person? Why on earth would that be her fate? Why on earth would this just happen out of the blue? So I'm reeling. And when all of that happened, everything that I thought I was built on, all the trappings of life, when all of that collapses and all that you have left is that foundation, I found myself firmly planting at two feet falling through the floor until I landed on it, and I got to test how sure of a foundation it actually was.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow, that is a huge amount. I mean, I've got to believe there was all these thoughts that you've described going through your head. Not only were you probably wondering are other people thinking how could a good God let that happen? We're human. We all have doubts. You're probably thinking yourself, if you're going to take anybody, Lord, how can you take my mother? I mean, she is your servant. She's on the front lines for you. Surely you could have done a miracle, done something. You can't lose somebody like this. This is as good as you've got here. At least that's what you've been thinking.

How could she have done that? Were there signs with medical care? Were there things that could have been done better? Could we have been smarter, better? Could the doctors have been? All these series of doubts from faith to medical to spiritual to emotional. What does it mean for my life? I mean, you probably had a tsunami of emotions, anger, doubts. Gosh, if I hadn't been the few states away, would it have made a difference? And I mean torturous questions of which there's no good answer. I mean what were some of those emotions? And I think you've hinted at it, how did you deal with that sea or tsunami of emotions and doubts and anger in so many different directions?




Joel Hungate:

Yeah. You hit the nail on the head, Warwick. This idea of what did I miss? Could I have done something? What was the last thing I said to her? Did I contribute to this? Did I not say enough? Where on earth did we miss? Where did healthcare miss? What were the signs? How could I have been so blind? Right? You start to go through this grief, this idea that what could I have done? What could our family have done? And oh no, by being so far away, by being aloof to the idea, did I not take it seriously enough?

On top of this kind of focusing effect that everything else felt like noise. My entire career came to a screeching halt. Paused everything I was doing. My wife and I packed up and we drove home. Worst 10 hour drive you could possibly imagine. Just silence, tears, rationalization, bargaining, the full stages of grief, it felt like I went around that mountain 40 times. It's unfathomable to think. In a way like that it's almost unconscionable. You think, oh yeah, if you lose somebody, it's always a tragedy. But this just seemed to be some sort of insult to injury on top of that because never in my wildest dreams would I have guessed that that was the tragedy that awaited our family and my mother for all the reasons that you just went through, that same thought.

And you end up at this inflection point where you say, what do I actually stand for with all of this? Where is faith in all of this, and what does it mean? Right at that deepest, weakest point, His strength is made perfect in our weakness. And I'm sitting there, and you're feeling that. You're feeling that that temptation to say, how on earth could any of that be worthwhile or true?

And I had this moment of clarity, that burn the ships moment, that the irony being the very faith and the level, and it wasn't just faith, it was a living faith that she instilled in us, a call to action on a daily basis and accountability of how one ought to be. That very thing she instilled in us was the only foundation sure enough to withstand what we were going through. That realization, it blew my mind. And it was just, one, an immediate answer to prayer, immediately clarifying moment to say, wow, what really matters here? And what are we doing, and where are we going? What does it mean?

For me, it was clarifying to say, I have family that needs me. There could be so much more than just this fast track corporate world conversation that I was on where that seemed like the biggest deal going on. Yeah, we're moving on up. Things are great. Success, success, success. But it was the world's standard. And it was this reminder that, though we were robbed of her, it wasn't the quantity of years that she gave us, it was the quality. It was the idea that we all leave a wake in life. And that wake is like a ship moving through the water, hers was like the Titanic. It was a tsunami.

And it's this idea, when you really see what that foundation is made of, it really is a put up or shut up scenario. And for me, I saw that it was sufficient, that it was the surest thing that my life could be built on. Literally in the strangest way, it was kind of the culmination of everything that she had taught me in that moment. And that this was the binary pass, fail. That if you actually believe, if you actually believed it, then what waited on the other side was the fact that there was something that transcends your circumstances.

And if I was built on anything else, I would've fallen right through that foundation, and I would've been running away from it a million miles per hour because I would've found out very, very quickly that it wasn't up to the task. When you find out and you cling and you go deeper, and you realize that this is what it was about the whole time. It's not just this moralistic deism, this therapeutic deism where God just wants us to feel good and everybody be happy. It's the fact that you have something that truly does transcend the tragedy that is often life. And out of those ashes becomes an opportunity you didn't even imagine.

And for me when that happened, I didn't know it at the time, but it was the truest inflection point. My life took a dramatic turn from that day onward. And to see that, the jet fuel that added to just the opportunity surface area for what was going to come next, it's just unfathomable. And that can only be a God thing. There's just no other explanation for it. And I will never be convinced that if I had any other foundation in my life that it would've supported me when I fell at 1,000 miles per hour and had to land on it. Was it still going to be there when you stand back up?




Warwick Fairfax:

So let's talk about that inflection point because your life shifted, and let's talk about some of the things that you did. And one of the things that occurs to me, I'm sure it occurred to you, is living your life founded on faith, following the true calling that God has for you. And it's not just about corporate career and nothing wrong with corporate career, but if it's all about money and climbing up the ladder, and my identity as being in a VP of this or senior VP or CEO, and living a life where, from your perspective and mine founded on faith, where you are taking some real adventures, which you did, to me, in a sense that's living your mother's ultimate legacy of living a life of faith and being who you believe He created you to be.

And to me, living a beloved one's legacy is there's a deep sense of satisfaction in doing that. She's smiling up above and down on you, and I'm guessing pretty happy. So talk a bit about what that inflection point was for you. What this sort of massive crucible, changed the course of your life, how did that change it and what direction happened then?




Joel Hungate:

Right at that inflection point, I had this kind of a awakening around the comfort that I was kind of just riding along. This idea that I was drawn to adventure, I had this purpose, I grew up that way, and you started to settle into the groove. That's just easy, right? It's easy. And not easy from the standpoint that it doesn't require work, but it's easy to wake up and say, you know what, it's what the day holds. You got to put the food on the table. But you don't start to ask that question. You say, is there more? Is there a purpose beyond this?

And for me, literally from that point where I was able to give the eulogy for my mother, our family, we decided right then and there, we were going to talk about mental health, the stigma around it. We weren't going to beat around the bush, or say, "Oh, we lost Mom." No, we were going to say, "No. We lost her to suicide. And here was our experience." And first and foremost, that honor to be able to carry on someone's legacy, to tell the story that could hopefully potentially save another family from the tragedy we experienced, but also honor her and who she was.

Right off the bat, I had an opportunity to speak. And that day giving the eulogy, I found a passion from the storytelling side of what I do. I've always been an odd engineer. I'm kind of a contradiction on that front. Where I'm one of those engineers, it's hard to get me to shut up. It's not as if you pull it out me to get me to talk. So then turning that into an opportunity to share this story, I started looking at my life.

And my wife and I, we felt really drawn to find our way back home to Indiana. I had a younger brother who was in high school at the time, sophomore going to be a junior. Lots of high school to go when we lost Mom. And I thought, how on earth can I get back home to be with him, support him? How on earth can I leverage this experience to rethink where I'm going from a trajectory standpoint?

And one of the things that sat in the back of my mind before, one of the last conversations that I had with Mom before we lost her, in fact, she was always my number one advocate to go on these adventures. I'd still had a love for mountaineering, for trekking, for camping, all the outdoor things. And she'd always said, "No, you got to do the big one. Go out, get on this expedition, go do these wild things. There's this incredible opportunity for you out there."

And she always had this sense, this kind of prophetic sense about just when she interacted with people, she could get to the heart of what they were called to do. It was just an uncanny ability. And for me, she was the one that said, "Just go. Go do it." So shortly after that, I decided to throw in on this crazy first ascent expedition out on a mountaineering excursion in Western Mongolia, to be the first team to summit this mountain that had been attempted multiple times. One of the most remote areas on the planet.

Paused what I was doing career-wise. I said, "I got to go do this." Part of me was doing it in honor and remembrance of her. Part of me was searching for who that person is deep inside and who I was called to be. Kind of this crucible almost experience, this extrapolation of that crucible moment to say, am I up for the task of what this next phase that the Lord is calling me to go through? And it's kind of this wilderness experience for me to go out and be tested. Kind of another rite initiation towards this next phase of life is how it ended up shaping out.

So I not only did that, this wild experience out in Western Mongolia, we had summited this mountain that no one had ever climbed. This incredible daring mountain rescue at 10,200 feet. A story in and of itself with just an incredible team wrapped around me. But we were able to be the first people to summit this mountain. Came back, revitalized, renewed. We got to name the mountain. Is just an incredible experience. Made lifelong friends. I was the only American on this team out of the UK and New Zealanders. Just an incredibly inspiring experience, and came back with this new vigor of what could be.

And I quit my corporate gig. I threw in with a startup company. Invested my entire life savings in it, literally burned the ships on that front, and started pursuing this new path that I had no idea I would ever be on. And that had opened doors into the venture space, into travel, making incredible connections that it ultimately led my adventure stories to continue to compound. And that inspiration to not only continue to have experiences and adventures, but to tell those stories, to inspire others, to share Mom's story. And that ultimately led me to an opportunity to be on this incredible first of its kind unscripted, adventure reality competition that's airing on Netflix called Outlast.




Gary Schneeberger:

I know Warwick has another question for you, but before he does, I've got to make this remark. I've got a note this. You're the only guest we've had on the show where this is true. You've just told a beautiful story, Joel, of how you burned your ships. But the matches that burned your ships were given to you by your mother. Your mother gave you those matches that you used to light those ships that were no longer sufficient for the life you wanted to live, the life she wanted you to live. She gave you those matches. She inspired you to do exactly what you did. And that is a beautiful thing. So Warwick, sorry, I'll let you ask a follow up question.




Warwick Fairfax:

No, no, no. Just that is so profound what you just said, Gary. So Joel, does that make sense? That beautiful image of your mother giving you the match in a sense, burn the ships, but really she sort of gave you the clues of the next direction in life, right? She gave you the vision in a sense.




Joel Hungate:

I could not agree with you more, Gary. That was incredibly beautiful, well stated. And it's funny, you start to look back, and this conversation, this concept of elevated sense making, self-reflection. What did all of that mean? And in retrospect, what you just articulate is exactly what happened. None of that, this cascade of things that I've been on, these experiences I've had, these life altering connections, experiences in business, in my family. And we did eventually making it back home to Indiana, I had twins in 2018. That's another one. You talk about a whole different kind of ship you're sailing on, right? My third child showed up in 2020.

To be a father, to be home, to have these adventures, these opportunities, unfathomable doors opening. And to know that that tinder, that matchbox, that spark, looking back from the moment you thought would've been the darkest in your life, that hiding in all of that was a spark for a flame that was far and above going to burn beyond any anybody's wildest imagination. That was incredibly profound.

And again, you start to look back on it and think, wow, our God truly does, He makes all things work together for our good. When you're aligned with what that plan and blessing and conversation, what He has in store. Not trying to bogart that conversation, to grab the wheel and do what we think is best. And when you're willing to let go, when you're willing to take that and run with it, and say, listen, not my will. You've got something better in store for me. How incredible it is that it's beyond anything we could ever dream of for ourselves. It was incredibly beautiful.




Warwick Fairfax:

Just a couple of things that you said I think it's important for listeners to reflect on. I mean a couple things. One is often, out of the darkest times, and we say this a lot, out of the ashes of your crucible, something beautiful can come. I mean, what could be more horrific than having a mother take her own life who was so vibrant. The last person who you would think would ever do it. Who would joke about saying, "This will never happen to me." It happens. Be it out of those ashes, out of the deep darkness, if you will, a challenging time, came something beautiful, A gift of a purpose, which we'll talk about in which you help others. Being with family back in Indiana, helping your younger brother in high school. So that's sort of one thread that occurs.

And the other is, and we talk about this a lot on vision, look, as a Harvard MBA, you know my tendency is to want the five, 10 year plan as an engineer, right? Gantt charts and metrics, you want all that mapped out. Well, life and God, or creator, whoever you believe in, it doesn't work. There is a reason they call it faith because you typically get the next step, not the next 50, right? I'm not a mountain climber. When you climb a mountain, you're not thinking, let me think of step 85. No, let's just climb the next couple because if we don't climb the next couple, the rest doesn't matter. Let's focus on the next few steps.

And so somebody could have said, "Okay, so Joel, your plan is to go to Mongolia, wherever that is," and it's north of China, I believe, for listeners. But not everybody would know that. "So you're going to goodness knows where to climb some mountain that nobody's ever done. That's your plan? You're quitting your job to do that? That makes no sense, Joel. Okay, be serious. Be responsible to your family. This is an idiotic plan." There might have been some that said that. But yet, you felt called to do that.

And that next step led to an amazing series of other steps you had no clue would've happened. So part of the lesson is whether you believe it's God or your inner voice or whatever, when you feel that still small voice that says, you know what, Joel, you need to do this, you do it. Do you know what I mean? There was a step of faith you took. You had no way of knowing where that was going to lead. And it might have sound nonsensical to many people. Probably did, if that makes sense.




Joel Hungate:

Well, it's this idea that how often and how beautiful is it when we realize that, hey, the promises that we can lay hold of, and what we are really asking is, listen, today's got enough of its own worries, right? Jesus said so himself. Why are we worrying about step 85? Why I'm on Z, when I need to be thinking about what do I need and what do you want of me today? And when we live that way, you have this kind of being present, but also being open. Creating that opportunity surface area for these kind of things to work in your life because you're willing to say yes to it. You're willing to tune yourself to that frequency, to that message, to what is in store or beyond what your plans were today.

And if you start to think about it in a multi-day tranche, just like mountaineering, it's about going that place where you can just put one foot in front of the other. That's how you get to the top. And you learn to suffer well, right? And do it one step at a time. Same thing when we think about our lives. I wake up and my prayer is, God, you have whatever I need for today. It's sufficient for what I need today. What do you want? Where do you want us to go? What do you want me to do? Can you give me the words? Because I don't have them. I'm woefully insufficient. I'll talk too much. I'll say the wrong thing. I'll be in the wrong place. Just help me make the most of what you have in store for today.

And if we do that every day, your life becomes this cascade of significance because you're choosing that on a daily basis. You're enculturating that idea. And it was the same thing with a trip. Just like you would lay siege to a mountain, that's how you have to think about life. The clear and present danger, the challenges of the day ahead, that's enough. But we have somebody that's sufficient. We have a faith that's sufficient that transcends those circumstances. Well, I don't need to dwell on what's around the corner. Of course you want to plan, of course we want to think about things, but we don't want it to define us in a way that keeps us from moving into what He has in store or keeps us from saying yes.




Gary Schneeberger:

There's something interesting that you said in the bio for you in Outlast. And that was this. It's the last line of your what makes you think you can survive in Alaska? You said this, and it goes right along with what you were just saying, "I know I can face whatever awaits me in Alaska with a heart of gratitude, no matter the circumstance." Your life is a good example for listeners should hear this. That sentence works if you take out in Alaska and place anything else in there. I know I can face whatever awaits me in a job that's fallen apart with a heart of gratitude no matter the circumstances, in a marriage that's troubled with a heart of gratitude no matter the circumstances, that's the perspective that you're presenting here, is that you can face whatever you're going to have to face with a heart of gratitude and from your perspective, in your case, from all of our perspectives, with God guiding the way. So that was a nice way to get a little bit of God into your bio on the show for Netflix.




Joel Hungate:

They let a little bit sneak in there, don't they? No. It really is. And for me, it's that what are you built on? And if you have that foundation, your perspective allows you to think gratitude first, and then you can face whatever it's going to throw at you with that gratitude, like you said. And it's so refreshing because I realize that it's not fallen on my shoulders. If I'm choosing this, if I'm choosing to face it with that heart, that mind, that gratitude, what's the worst that could happen here? There's a hope that's beyond even this life.

So all of this aligns itself, grants its own perspective, and then all of a sudden it's really, it's so much easier to think and come from a place of gratitude, no matter what you're facing, no matter how hard it gets. Because I always know, and I'll say it till I'm blue in the face that no matter what is happening with me, it's always way better than I deserve. And I think if you can start to orient that way, wow, it's so much easier for life to achieve that right perspective and you don't get hung up on the injustice and tragedy of life.




Warwick Fairfax:

So well said. So I want to just talk a little bit about the Adventure Genome Project and Outlast. And so climbing that mountain in Mongolia, that set in train a series of events, that the course of your ship, if you will, your new ship, was going in a different direction. So talk about your passion for both those things, in particular, Adventure Genome Project, but also Outlast. Just talk a bit about, it's adventure, but there's a purpose behind the adventure. What's sort of the vision behind that, would you say?




Joel Hungate:

No, I love it. It's amazing how the confluence of all the things that you're passionate about, how they have a way of just finding that middle of the Venn diagram, this improbable cross-section. For me, it was this idea, from a biomedical engineering perspective, I knew a lot about human movement, health, wellbeing, the idea of what the future of health and healthcare has to look like. And that's what I do on a day-to-day basis. I work in healthcare, health and wellbeing, and delivering that in my community.

And then I had this idea, this kind of light bulb moment, of adventure readiness. Where adventure is a means for wellbeing. This idea that if health was a sufficient motivator, like, hey, Warwick, you should be healthy because health is good, and then we'd all be a lot healthier than we are. It's not a sufficient motivator. We know we should move more. We know we should eat better. We know we should be ready and willing to do those sorts of things, but we don't do it because health is a means, not an end.

So we've crafted this idea in Adventure Genome, this adventure readiness concept, that adventure, experience, the things that make life fulfilling and worth living, health, know-how, expertise that unlocks your ability to tap into those things, as opposed to just being the reason you should be healthy for the sake of being healthy. You now have a purpose. Hey, I want to hike the Grand Canyon rim to rim, so I'm going to get healthy. I'm going to eat right. I'm going to get control of the discipline areas in my life that I need from a physical and mental standpoint so that I don't waste my time and money and effort out on the trip only to stop a quarter of the way in. Say, "Hey, pick me up on the way back. I'm tapping out."

So that this idea of adventure readiness started to resonate. That we can not only think about adventure as something that just folks are doing on Netflix's series, hanging from some foreboding peak in the Karakorum. "Well, I'll never do that. I'll just have to live vicariously through this experience." You can start to look at it, and say, well, what's adventure mean for me? And how can I scale this idea of adventure, and get that foundational building block of know-how, gear, equipment, logistics, community.

And that's what created this idea of Adventure Genome. And what we're doing is starting to amass those resources, tell that story, connect people to those things to create kind of this marketplace of experiences. So I'm really excited as that's kind of in its infancy and coming to life. It's starting to pull on the heartstrings of so many folks that are drawn to adventure. They know it, they haven't been able to articulate it, and they also have never thought of themselves as being worthy or capable of it. And we're challenging that notion.

So for anybody listening, you can do so much more than you think you can. And I come from this place of people as purpose. We are impossibly precious. We are the rarest, most infinitely precious thing. To know somebody, to be alive, to be imbued with life, to be a human being. You are infinitely precious, infinitely worthwhile. How much more so are those adventures and the things that are awaiting you in this life? So that's the whole goal is how can I empower that passion, that inspiration in others to scale adventure to whatever that means for them. But know that it's not just for me and the folks on Netflix or the folks on TV, it's not these crazy expeditions. It could eventually be there. You might eventually want to go do that.

How can I help you create those building blocks so that you unlock that type of adventure? And that's the mission, the ethos of that adventure readiness concept. And to challenge it at this interface of health and wellbeing, of faith and philosophy, and what it means to live a life of significance, of purpose and know how. And then getting out and being people of action and doing it. So again, if all of that can coalesce around that inflection point that a center of all these passions, again, that's only a God thing. To be able to take these disparate experiences and connect those dots.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, just as the last theme, because listeners are going to be curious, and the Outlast series on Netflix will come out the week that this podcast comes out. How did that happen? And to the degree you can talk about it, again, we don't need to know who wins, you'll have to watch the series, but just talk about how that happened and what that experience was like.




Joel Hungate:

So I was so drawn to the concept of Outlast. I want to continue to put myself to the test. Southeast Alaska is one of the most trying environments you could ever imagine. It's a temperate rainforest at incredible northern latitudes. What that means is 33 degrees during the day, you're getting rained on the entire time. At night, it freezes. Rinse, repeat. In an environment where you have to source all of your own food, all of your own firewood. Try to create firewood when everything is wet, everything is cold, everything is difficult. I was drawn to the challenge of that.

But conceptually, philosophically, this idea of who do you become in an environment like this where we're dropped into Southeast Alaska, lone wolf type, alpha adventure survival people that would probably prefer, and in many cases it is easier, to just do that sort of thing by yourself. You only have to feed one person. You have to worry about one person. But the leadership side of me said, wow, part of this is we have to work together on teams as a part of the concept for the show. And what a challenge to put yourself in one of the most trying environments on the planet, to get a chance to learn from some incredible people, and to put your skills to the test in that environment. Sign me up. So I was drawn to the fact and just blessed by the fact that my background qualified me to take that next step into a setting like that.

But then number two, the challenge of in that setting with those incentives, with this incredibly ambitious concept, the philosophical underpinnings. And really you'll see this as the show comes out, 50% of the challenge is the elements and the danger and the difficulty, the other 50% is human nature. It's what's happening up here, and it's what's happening in the minds of all those people that you're with, with just really unique incentives.

So what an incredible experience. One, a brilliant concept brought to life by some brilliant people. So I was drawn to that endeavor just in general. But more importantly, the meta narrative of all of this is would I still be Joel in the most trying of settings? And again, it's kind of that you start to seek out these kind of pulse check crucible moments of when I'm broken down again to whatever foundation my life is now, is it still what I think it is? Am I still sufficiently grounded in my faith to be me through the most trying of circumstances? And what does that mean in a setting like this? So to have a chance to see that pan out, that's what I think is going to make this some of the most compelling television. So yeah, could not highly encourage it more. And especially if you have a Netflix subscription, you are in for a treat come March 10th when this drops. Because it is going to be just wild, ambitious, just unlike anything I think a lot of people have seen.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that sound that you heard listener was, I'm going to say, the pilot of our sea plane since we're talking about being put out in some remote area, it's not an airliner, it's a sea plane. The pilot has indicated it's time to fasten your seat belts. And we're going to begin our descent to end this episode, but we're not there yet. And we're not there yet because I want to say one thing to you, Joel, and I want to ask you something about the show.

First of all, I want to say to you, we've done, this the 153rd episode of this show. And you, my friend, are the first guest ever to use the word bogart in a sentence that didn't refer to Humphrey when you said they didn't want to bogart all the time. I just thought that was fabulous. So bravo, you've broken new ground.

Secondly, at the very beginning of our conversation here today, in talking with Warwick, you mentioned this idea of growing up with Midwestern values, ideas of who we ought to be. I grew up in the Midwest as well, still live here in Wisconsin. We've all seen reality television. Because I've worked in Hollywood, I've worked for some of these shows that are reality shows that are survival type shows. And I know how the contestants can kind of interact with each other. I'm fascinated to hear from you how out of place can it be to have Midwestern values in what is usually viewed, often presented as a cutthroat competition show?




Joel Hungate:

Oh, well, brilliant, brilliant question because for me that was the struggle, the internal struggle for me the entire time. It's again, who ought one be and how ought one behave. And those questions, I'm big on the philosophy side of it because I think it's such an enforcement to what I believe in from a faith standpoint. That strong philosophy and theology come hand in hand, and consistency on that front is key. Now imagine you're thrust into this incredible setting where all of that is on the chopping block in terms of the incentive, in terms of where the game could go, in terms of how the competition is going to pan out.

For me, and I think that's going to be one of the most compelling aspects of this, the human nature component of this series is unimaginably interesting. Being in that setting, knowing how it works out. And I'm so excited for folks to see that interplay. To get to experience that where it's such a nuanced take on the concept. Bunch of people enter a game, we get down to some winner. The concept's everywhere. It's tried and true as it gets. But this nuanced take of really leaning into what does that really mean about who we are as people? That for me is what drew me to the game, and a chance to say, do I come out of this still being Joel? And am I proud of that? What does that mean for who I am? And what will that tell to other people? Will that be inspiring? Will it be something that I wish I could change? You'll have to watch to find out.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, I almost missed my opportunity. I was so excited to bring up the bogart thing that I forgot to ask you this question. People know pretty much the web address to find the show, netflix.com. How can they find out more about you, Joel, and about all the projects that you're doing in your new ship that you are now in?




Joel Hungate:

Yes. Now anything and everything, to see what's next for Joel Hungate and his adventures, joelhungate.com. J-O-E-L H-U-N-G-A-T-E .com. All of my social media, you can connect to everything that I'm doing outside on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, any of that. But joelhungate.com, that is your source of truth for what is next.




Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick, take us to the finish line of our reality show here.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Joel, thank you so much. I mean, it's just really inspiring, your story, and just how the terrible circumstances with your mother has just fueled this passion for adventure and wellness, and just helping so many people. There might be, I guess, a couple different questions. I know one of the things you talk about is generalists, and I'd love to hear a bit about kind of what's next for you in that whole generalist theme, which I think is fascinating. I'd love to hear a bit about that. But also there may be some people today that maybe today is their worst day, and they're going through some real challenges. What would a word of hope you would have for folks that maybe today isn't a good day? So two very different questions, I guess, but I wanted to get the generalist one in there too, as well as a word of hope.




Joel Hungate:

Well, on the word of hope front, you may need to hear it today, but you are known, you are loved, you are worth it. You have purpose. You have a plan beyond your wildest imagination because you are the only you that will ever exist. And you have a life that only you will live. In the history of all humanity, all of the known universe, you are unique and you're precious. You're worth it. And you are called to so much. And it's so much more than whatever that circumstance happened to be today. Your life transcends it, your value transcends it. And I just hope if somebody needed to hear that today, I hope they know that, regardless of what life has thrown at you, regardless of that circumstance, you are worth it. You're known, you're loved, you're important. So don't believe for a second that that doesn't apply to you just because things aren't going the right way, things are challenging, times are tough. There's so much more, and you are absolutely 100% known and loved.

And again, for the conversation on the generalist, I'm a big believer. I come from engineering. I'm an innovation background, especially in the startup space. Innovation happens when we connect dots that people haven't connected before. And I think the generalist is a dying breed. We live with our blinders on. We think I'm going to know the most about this one thing and I'm going to be hyper specialized in it. Victim of it myself. I was doing that in the corporate world for a while where I was really, really good in the orthopedic space. That's what I did. That's what I knew.

But this idea that we have more information at our fingertips than ever, it's easier to access, it's easier to digest, it's easier to know and connect these disparate dots. It's easier to bring new perspectives into whatever it's that we're doing. I would challenge everybody, especially if you're a young person thinking, how am I going to differentiate myself in this world career-wise, whatever it happens to be, start to fill in the gap of the things that...

When I became a biomedical engineer at Purdue, I looked around and I said, wow, a lot of really smart engineers in this class. I came from a little school in Indiana, and I thought, wow, I'd better find something interesting to differentiate. So I got into soft skills, business, being able to present myself, sales skills. And that confluence of technical background with all of that made me really dangerous. And it's this generalist approach that I think is going to start to help us find creative solutions to the things that are plaguing us in society.

Adventure Genome's a great example. How can I take adventure, biomedical engineering, startup innovation mentality, and this idea, this philosophy of committing to readiness, being ready to say yes to whatever life is going to throw at you, or the good Lord has planned for you and bringing it together? So that's where the power happens, that's where it manifests, is when we talk about generalist connecting dots that no one connected before. So if you're wondering what you should be and where you should go, be a generalist. I think you'll be really surprised how you can pull from these disparate buckets and create opportunity for yourself and for other people and give back. Because if you're doing something that betters the lives of others, and all the while it's fulfilling for you, you found that sweet spot.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough, listeners, to know when the last word on a subject's been spoken, and that exhortation from our guest, Joel Hungate, I think is a really good place to end our conversation. Because it doesn't end our conversation. It plants a question in your mind, a question before you that you can then explore once we hit stop record.

Before we do that though, please remember that we understand your crucible experiences are very, very difficult. They can be very painful. But we also know that sometimes your boat can feel like it's drifting off course a little bit. Sometimes you can be heading in a direction that you didn't think you wanted to head, that you don't want head, and you want to reset. When that happens, Joel's story's a great example. Get yourself a book of matches, strike one, burn your ships. We'll see you next week.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond The Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what's been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.