Burn the Ships 9: Series Wrap-Up: 5 Truths We Learned About Lighting the Match #158

Highlights

• What it means to “burn the ships” (2:58)
• Our criteria in selecting guests for the show (7:04)
• Truth No. 1: Beware of “toxic persistence” (10:32)
• Truth No. 2: Lean into your passion (18:15)
• Truth No. 3: Do the inner work (30:44)
• Truth No. 4: You don’t have to have all the details at the start if you have the direction (41:24)
• Truth No. 5: Little ships count, too (48:53)
• How an executive coach can help you … and how you can have Warwick be the one doing the helping (55:33)
• Reflection questions (1:06:12)

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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

Gary Schneeberger:

When you burn your ships, it’s a tough journey. You’re leaving behind something that you love doing or you wouldn’t have been doing it for as long as you did or you liked doing it or it was comfortable doing it. So your head and your heart really have to be aligned as you set your ships ablaze and you head for a new port, you’ve got to do the inner work, you’ve called it soul work before another context, but that is really critically important. Why is that so important?

Warwick Fairfax:

To be able to move forward, you’ve got to really first move inside, do that inner work, just really understand who you are.

Gary Schneeberger:

That, listener, is just a taste of the discussion Warwick and I have on this, the 9th and final episode of our special winter now into spring series Burn the Ships. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show. That snippet you just heard was from one of the five key truths we learned from the seven guests we interviewed during the two-month run of the series. Truths we’ve distilled into the latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com. Our goal is to help you walk away, maybe sail away is a better way to put it, from the series with critical takeaways to help you decide whether it’s time for you to burn some ships, and if it is, to give you some guidance on how and when to strike the match. And you’ll want to be sure more than ever that you stick around till the end of the show because that’s when we’ll give you all the details you need about the opportunity we’re offering for you to be personally coached by Warwick as you look to board the boat that takes you from, “Is this all there is?” to “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

This is one of those episodes, listener, that I guess I’m the host now and Warwick is the guest. So that’s kind of interesting. I’m going to be guiding us through this conversation. Here’s what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to revisit the beats of every story of every guest because those episodes are available at beyondthecrucible.com. You can find all those episodes if you’ve missed one. What we’re going to do is extract some key learnings that we can pass along to you that our guests shared with us about what it means to burn your ships, how you go about doing it, if you should do it, the circumstances under which you should do it, all of those things.

So, the place that we want to start to level set this whole conversation is, what does burn the ships mean anyway? Why did we do now a nine part series on burning the ships? What does that mean and why is that important to do? I did this on purpose because, well, it’s the Cambridge Dictionary and I know Warwick loves the Cambridge Dictionary rather than Webster, the definition from the Cambridge Dictionary about burning the ships is this, this idiom is described as this. “If you are in a situation and you burn your boats/bridges or ships, you destroy all possible ways of going back to the situation that you’ve left.” It’s a pretty fair summary of both the idiom and also the stories of the guests that we’ve talked to in the series, right?

Warwick Fairfax:

I have to confess, it really is as listeners may know I went to Oxford, so it would be easy for me to challenge the Cambridge definition, but it’s actually an all fairness a pretty decent definition even if it is from the Cambridge Dictionary. I mean, there’s this notion in history that sometimes one country, whether it’s the Vikings or what have you, would go over to another country and want to conquer them and lay siege, and as a way of motivating the troops, it’s like, “Well, we are going to burn the ships because there’s no going back, there’s no retreat. We are here for the long haul.” And that is a very interesting image, it’s the sense that, “I’ve made almost an irreversible decision to move forward, to change from one direction in my life to a fundamentally different direction. I’m burning the ships, I’m not going back. I’ve made this irrevocable line in the sand, decision that we are moving forward, we are not going back.” So it’s a graphic image, but I think it’s a very helpful and profound image too.

Gary Schneeberger:

And it’s the kind of thing that guards you against metaphorically as you change direction and you pivot in your life – and we’ll talk about our criteria for the guests that we chose here – but it helps guard against sort of fleeing back to the familiar in the context of something that you try and the very definition, and we talk about it all the time on the show, the very pursuit of a second-act, the very pursuit of moving beyond your worst day, having your tragedy become a triumph. That very process, it can be difficult, can feel overwhelming. There’s lots of points along the way where you feel like you’ve said it many times, your phrase is lying in bed with the covers over your head. Burning your ships metaphorically helps you keep moving forward and not going backward, right?

Warwick Fairfax:

You have a choice to either just stay there under the covers, or how do you move forward? How do you use your brokenness to help others? How do you find a positive way forward? And that’s really a choice. It’s a decision of the will. And so, burning the ships is akin to that choice. You’re making a decision, “I’m going to move forward in a different direction of my life. I’m not going to wallow in my cubicle.” Saying, “Look, I hate my life, hate my job, hate my boss.” One can spiral down at times and say, “Well, okay, life isn’t ideal, but how can I move forward? Maybe there’s a different direction.” So that choice, that active decision, which might entail a hundred or a thousand different steps that comes from that decision, that choice, that decision of the will is really a similar concept to burning the ships.

Gary Schneeberger:

And that’s a great segue into the criteria we used in picking guests, searching for guests for the show. And one of the things we did in the series is the title of every series was from what they did in the old ships to what they’re doing now in their new ships. And I’m just going to run through in a minute, this is the preview, wait for it, it’s coming, of what those from this to this moments are. But what we looked for in the guest to get to that place was, this is how I described it in every episode as shown on YouTube, guests who have been brave enough to make dramatic pivots leading behind safe and familiar lives to do something dramatic, new life-changing and significant, facing down and overcoming crucibles along the way. And that description fits every one of our seven guests.

The eighth guest was Warwick kind of, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But here’s the stories from/to stories. We’re not going to unpack, as I said, every beat of the stories. But here’s the dramatic pivots that we’re talking about in our episodes. From Music to Lifestyle Brand Entrepreneur. From Chasing Success to Embracing Intentionality, I love this one. From Doctor to Actor, very simple and very straightforward. From Biomedical Engineer to Reality TV Show Adventurer. From Drug Dealer to Entrepreneur and Mentor. And then these two are kind of flip sides of each other, which was fun, the last couple episodes we had. From Corporate Executive to Ministry President, and then we go From Ministry Executive to Corporate CEO. Those stories do indeed, they are all about, they’ve been brave enough to make dramatic pivots leaving behind safe things and moving on to things that aren’t quite so safe. And that’s one of the reasons – because they’re not so safe – that’s one of the reasons that burning the ships metaphorically is so important in those pursuits. Isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:

It really is. I mean, each of those people that we had made bold, brave, life-defining choices, so we could pick any one of the seven guests we had and they made bold, brave, in some cases, you could say risky, but risky with a purpose and with a belief behind it. Bold choices to shift from their formal lives to a new life. And each of them, in different ways, want to lead what we call a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others, there was some altruism in different ways, different forms, all of those guests that we had, so it was a brave and bold decision to pivot. And just the titles you read, it just makes it very clear that this wasn’t a safe choice, none of those folks made safe choices, they made very bold and brave choices. And when you’re burning your ships, that metaphor should indicate it is a bold and brave choice. It really is. It’s not for the faint of heart.

Gary Schneeberger:

Indeed. And one of the reasons that we’re doing this episode as a wrap up is that we have a blog at beyondthecrucible.com, which I wrote, which summarizes, again, not so much the stories of each guest, but the learnings from what Warwick just described as that very not safe but bold choice, sometimes risky choice, to pivot from this to that. And we’re going to unpack in just a few minutes here, we’re going to unpack five key learnings from that. The title of the blog is called Thinking of Burning Your Ships? Here Are Five Truths To Make For Smoother Sailing. So we want to empower you, listener, with the best counsel and wisdom from our guests about how they indeed pivoted, burned their ships and moved into a different adventure than the one that they were sailing on before.

The first one of those truths, I don’t know about you, for me, if I were to ask what was the biggest aha or the biggest sort of hit you upside the head, I hadn’t thought about that before, was this one, the first point, and that is to beware of toxic persistence. Just hearing the phrase maybe you go, “Huh, what does that mean?” And when our guest who said that, Mike Beckham spoke about it, it really did have an impact on me. So talk a little bit about toxic persistence, what Mike was talking about when he said it and what the value is for listeners to do exactly that, be aware of toxic persistence.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I mean, Mike Beckham was a very interesting guy. He’s an entrepreneur at heart, but for a variety of reasons, he started out working for a faith-based non-profit, Cru, and tending to just do it for a year while his wife was finishing up at University of Oklahoma and ended up being there for 10 years. And because he is a driven, highly intelligent and caring person, he rose up the ranks to various levels of leadership. And then I think with his brother, he was involved in a startup that didn’t work before getting into Simple Modern. And really what Mike was talking about, toxic persistence means you keep going no matter what. Sometimes in a business, especially startups, I mean, the vast majority of startups fail, sometimes at the point at which, “This isn’t going to work. The market is not there. I don’t know if they’re the right people, or I can’t find the right people, or I’m not the right person. The economy is tanking.”

There’s all sorts of reasons why things don’t work out. And so toxic persistence means, “I’m going to keep going no matter what.” And that was probably one of the most haunting phrases for me because there was a time for me in the takeover. As I mentioned, the $2.25 billion takeover I launched in Australia in 1987, and my family’s large media company. I felt like the company wasn’t being well run, I run along the videos that I’ve found, and my dad had died early in ’87, and I’ve talked about this obviously fairly often. But what I haven’t talked about as much is, it was very difficult family members sold out October ’87, stock market crash, hurt our asset sale program. So by later in the year of 1987, things were not looking good. We looked like we were going to have an unsustainable level of debt, and the smart play might have been to figure out a way to back out, which would’ve been obviously humiliating and financially, I’m not sure, but it wouldn’t have looked that good.

But I remember thinking at the time, maybe even saying there are no break points, “There is no quitting, we are going to move forward no matter what.” And I have very, if not, extremely high levels of persistence, which sometimes maybe often can be good. Sometimes your greatest strength can be your greatest flaw or one of my strengths I guess you’d say. Now, one could debate whether I really could have backed out, and there’s one legal advisor said, “No, you really can’t.” Was that advice good or bad? One can debate the intricacies of it, but irrespective of legal advice as to whether it was possible or not. Once I’d made that formal tender offer for the shares, there’s no question that emotionally, psychologically, quitting was not an option. It was not an option no matter what, pretty much. And there are reasons for a family legacy.

All I has to say is toxic persistence, you’ve got to know when it’s time to quit. Sometimes it’s time to say, “You know what? This isn’t working out.” And it’s not a matter of just effort, it’s just for a variety of reasons. The smart play is to quit this particular avenue and move to some other avenue. So it really was a haunting and profound discussion.

Gary Schneeberger:

I call it the Kenny Rogers rule, “You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” But all of that to say, that does not mean that your burn the ship’s effort that led you to that place is negative or is shot. There are more than one, you can burn a second set of ships, it’s not a one and done, as we say a lot at Beyond the Crucible. Things aren’t a one and done. It’s not a one and done. If you’ve burned one set of ships, if the next set of ships isn’t sailing in the right direction, isn’t doing what you want to accomplish, to stick in it is toxic, you can burn that set too and then move on. That’s what Mike Beckham did, and he’s found great success applying some of the same principles that he had used before, but in a different context.

I think that’s important to let people know that recognizing that persistence can be toxic doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea to burn the ships if you think about it in the right way. This is one of the quotes Mike said when we talked to him about this idea, Warwick. He said, “Persistence in the wrong context is more destructive than anything else.” Which is true, and you can get away from persistence, you can burn the persistence ship, if you will, as you move on to find what that next act is for you, right?

Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s very well said in the context of Mike Beckham. He’d tried a couple businesses, a couple startup ventures after he left Cru, the faith-based non-profit ministry before getting into Simple Modern. And one of them in particular just didn’t work out. He didn’t mean he didn’t want to be an entrepreneur and start of business, he did. And so he started one. It was very successful and he started it based on a set of values in particular having a spirit of generosity. They say, “We exist to give generously.” It was start with a set of principles, and then what is it we’re going to do together? In this case, producing water bottles and flasks and that kind of thing, which is a whole other discussion. But it wasn’t giving up from being an entrepreneur, it was just being an entrepreneur and that particular business didn’t work out, so let’s quit that and move to an avenue that has more chance of success. So he didn’t really stop being an entrepreneur, he just pivoted to a different business. So that’s I think the nuance it’s important to state.

Gary Schneeberger:

He took his ships into a different waterway to continue our metaphor. Another great learning and it’s one that has the greatest pool of guests around it in the blog at beyondthecrucible.com, and that is lean into your passion. Three guests that we talked to in various ways talked about how they leaned into their passion when they decided to burn their ships. Why is that so important? The word we say more than crucible, almost as much as crucible at Beyond the Crucible is passion. You talk about it all the time. Why is it so important if you’re contemplating setting fire to your ships to lean into your passion as you head off to the next set of ships?

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, when you change from one career to another, if you’re bouncing back from a crucible from your worst day, and we all talk about as you move forward, you want to lead a life of significance, which again, we talk about is a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. It’s got to be yes, as we say in line with your design and values and beliefs, but you’ve got to be off the chart’s passionate about, life is tough, there will be setbacks, life requires persistence and perseverance. And so, you’ve got to have a sense of, “You know what, this is important. I’m passionate about it. This is not just about me, it’s about helping others, helping the planet.” We’ll figure out a way to move forward. each of these guests in different ways, they lent into their passion. Passion greatly increases your chances of success, passion motivates you, it motivates others, passion fuels the very needed perseverance you’ll have to cope with the inevitable setbacks. So passion is absolutely crucial to bouncing back from a crucible and certainly pivoting to your second-act.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. And one of the guests who that’s his story is Darwin Shaw, the From Doctor to Actor. And one of the things that Darwin said about that, I mean, think about that decision, doctors, the apex of success, there’s money attached to it, there’s impact, you’re making a difference. But he felt called to this pursuit of the creative arts and he then went and enrolled in acting school and he now lives in Hollywood, and he’s not had the breakthrough role that has catapulted him to the A-list, but he’s still going after it. He’s had some great meaty roles, he’s an excellent, excellent actor and he’s still after it. But here’s what he said to encourage you, listener, as you contemplate this learning of lean into your passions, this is what Darwin Shaw said, “If you can hone in on what is truthful for you and follow that, I don’t think you’re ever going to regret it.”

Those are words that come from a man who was on track to be an orthopedic surgeon, who by now would probably have his own practice and a lot more zeros in his bank account on this very day, and yet he’s got just fulfillment and significance in his heart, not only from his acting, but he started an effort, The Antiviral Film Project, to encourage filmmakers of all stripes to make films about the pandemic and how we coped with it. That idea of, “You’re never going to regret it if you follow your passions,” that’s a huge motivator, I think, to get the matchbook out, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:

It really is. I mean, what’s fascinating about Darwin Shaw is his fundamental beliefs, values and motivation has not changed. There was no pivot from the fundamental of what drives Darwin Shaw. He always had the social consciousness. He grew up in the north of England and Britain of Middle Eastern, I believe, Pakistani heritage, which back then was not easy. But he and his family just had the sense that we are put on this earth to give back, to help our community, help our neighbors, just help those in need. And so, being a doctor, obviously that makes sense in the sense of you are helping to heal people. That definitely fulfills the sense of social consciousness, but that’s a relatively safe job, I mean, it pays well. And given the way he grew up, that certainly would’ve been different than he grew up. So that made a lot of sense.

But yet he just felt like when he learned about acting and went to a class in New York one time, that this was really what he was called to do. He just felt this overwhelming passion and that was a massive burn the ships moment. I mean, you go through medical schools for years, it’s not cheap typically, and it requires massive amounts of hours and effort, and he was on the track, he was bright, motivated, intelligent. To quit that to be an actor, which is there’s no certainty of success in acting.

Gary Schneeberger:

And there’s a lot of people who want to do it.

Warwick Fairfax:

There is. And look, he’s had some degree of success, he played Peter in The Bible Mini Series and has been in Marvel and was in James Bond, as you know better than I do, a small role there, but impactful. So it was very courageous, but his values have always been about social consciousness. And as you mentioned, The Antiviral Project, which seeks to bring filmmakers from throughout the world telling meaningful stories. His social consciousness of values and beliefs and mission, that hasn’t changed, it just pivoted from one direction, from one set of ships to another set of ships. But it was a massive burn the ships moment that took a huge amount of courage and was just driven by his passion, as you say.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, and when I think about Darwin’s story and the stories of the other two guests who fit into this category of lean into your passions, Eryn Eddy and Joel Hungate, it was funny, as I was prepping for this conversation, Warwick, I remembered something I hadn’t thought of in, gosh, 18 years. I went to a conference one time headed by an author named John Eldredge who had written a book called Wild at Heart, and it was all about getting in touch with your heart and pursuing those things. And I remember what he said, and I wrote it down on this sticky note, I wrote it down so I didn’t forget it, and I’m paraphrasing it, but I think I got it pretty close because it’s been stuck up here for 18 years. “Don’t try to figure out what the world needs, figure out what brings your heart alive, because what the world needs are people whose hearts are alive.” That is a gold-plated truth, and it’s a gold-plated truth that was lived out by Eryn Eddy, our guest, by Darwin Shaw, our guest, and by Joel Hungate, our guest, right?

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, that is incredible. I might have heard that, I’m not sure. But I think that is incredibly wise. Rather than focusing on what the world needs, figure out what lights your heart on fire because you will find a way to use that to help the world and find an area that the world does need. So that makes so much sense. Really looking for those moments when your heart begins to sing, your heart begins to soar. Each of those guests we talked about Darwin Shaw, with Eryn Eddy, she was licensing music in that whole area, and she started spray-painting some t-shirts with the words, “So Worth Loving,” and just send it out to some of her customers, supporters and just people in her network. And it just took off, she just had this sense that so many of us feel like that we’re not worth loving.

Sometimes in our worst moments, maybe we feel like we are worthless, not always, but there’s different days when we feel low to different levels, and that just took off. And she changed from a musical career to one where she’s just got this life-affirming massive message. But when she got the feedback from other people saying, “Eryn, I love that, that is helping me so much,” it made her heart soar, it made her heart sing. She knew, “This was for me.” Joel Hungate story was pretty different. He was a biomedical engineer and his mother committed suicide, who was the last person you would ever think would commit suicide because she was full of life, person of faith, even joked about it, “Hey, if you think that happens, it won’t be the reason because I’m just full of life.” So that was just devastating and mental health is complex.

Well, he ended up being on the Outlast sort of survivor type show on Netflix and doing adventure readiness. And his mother, I think her final words to him was like, “Just do it.” In other words, if there’s some adventure, I think he was thinking of climbing a mountain in Mongolia, just this sense of adventure and using adventure as a way of helping people feel motivated to lead healthy lifestyles and eating and exercise, giving them a fun goal, even if it’s a tough goal. Each of those other people, including Darwin Shaw, Eryn Eddy and Joel Hungate, they lent into their passion at critical moments in their life. And yeah, they’re tremendous examples.

Gary Schneeberger:

And when you see, you’re in the water, you see on the horizon your passions fulfilled, you see how your passions can come into reality. I mean, yeah, we’ve talked about it’s tough to burn the ships, but it makes it far, far more likely and far easier on you emotionally, circumstantially to strike that match and light those ships ablaze.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, that is so profound because one of the things I’ve found is I’m sure with Eryn Eddy, when you’ve got those first few people saying, “Eryn, this is helping to change my life.” So Worth Loving, it’s what a wonderful reminder. She created a community around that, that creates not just perseverance, but it creates a flywheel of hope, a flywheel of passion and encouragement, and it draws people in almost like a centrifuge. People are drawn in by the passion and the change in people’s lives. So passion can not just fuel perseverance, but it can fuel a flywheel of passion, hope, and encouragement that can increase your creativity and just pull people in. So yeah, that absolutely certainly happened with Eryn Eddy.

Gary Schneeberger:

I’ve just determined that if we ever get a house band like on The Tonight Show for Beyond the Crucible, that house band, we have to call it Flywheel of Hope.

Warwick Fairfax:

There you go.

Gary Schneeberger:

That’s what we talk about all the time. Your last question to guests all the time is, what’s your message of hope for listeners? And that is indeed, what we’ve just been talking about, what this whole episode is, we hope is a message of hope, a flywheel of hope for you. Third point in the blog at beyondthecrucible.com called Thinking of Burning Your Ships? Here Are Five Truths To Make For Smoother Sailing. Number three in that blog is Do the Inner Work. It’s that kind of thing Warwick, it’s a tough journey. When you burn your ships, it’s a tough journey. You’re leaving behind something that you love doing, or you wouldn’t have been doing it for as long as you did, or you liked doing it or it was comfortable doing it. So your head and your heart really have to be aligned as you set your ships ablaze and you head for a new port, you’ve got to do the inner work. You’ve called it soul work before in other contexts, but that is really critically important. Why is that so important?

Warwick Fairfax:

To be able to move forward, you’ve got to really first move inside, do that inner work, just really understand who you are. So if you don’t deal with the inner work, the inner soul, it will make it much more difficult to be successful, to accomplish your dreams, to lead a life of significance. To be able to care for others, you’ve got to care for yourself. Remember, when you’re on an airplane, if you have small kids, the flight attendants will always say, “Before putting the mask on your young children, put it on yourself first.” Because if you can’t breathe, how can you help your kids to breathe? You can’t. I mean, that’s really a life and death or can be a life and death situation under certain circumstances. So to be able to help others, you’ve got to help yourself. And one of the other sad factors of life is if there are things you’ve got inside of you that haven’t been dealt with, toxic emotions, which can be from growing up, they have a habit of leaking, and that can leak in the form of anger and negative emotions.

And typically, you take that anger and negative emotions out on the people you love the most, the people who are closest to you. That’s not fair or right, but that happens about, I wouldn’t even say 90% of the time, 100% of the time. So why should you do the inner work? Your family, your friends deserve for you to do the inner work. They’re worth it, they’re worth the effort. So yeah, I can’t stress too strongly not just for business and career and pivoting to your second-act, but just for family, your own sanity and life. That inner work is so crucial, and so often we don’t do it because it’s hard, it’s scary, and it’s often excruciatingly painful, but it’s like, “Gee, I’m not going to go get that operation because it’s going to be painful and the recovery is going to be awful.” Okay, but it’s going to be a lot worse if you don’t have the operation often. So sometimes pain can be helpful in some ways, pain sometimes is inevitable. If it’s going to have pain, let it be for the right reason. So doing inner work is so crucial.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. And two guests that we had who really explored this space for us are Finnian Kelly and Dan Wolgemuth. And Dan Wolgemuth had an interesting, very, very profound quote that he said during our episode, which sums up this point really well. He said that his burn the ship moment that burn the ship moment, he said, had to happen first in my own soul. In other words, you can’t light a match. I mean, matches get let to burn your ships first in your heart, and you’ve got to get to that place because if your heart’s along for the ride, if your heart is invested, if you are aligned properly in your insides, in your inner work, here’s from the description of the show again, that’s going to help you make dramatic pivots leaving something safe and familiar behind for something dramatic, new, life-changing, and significant. You’ve got to have the inner change before the outer change can happen. And that’s something that we learned from both Finnian and from Dan.

Warwick Fairfax:

Of all of the guests, I mean, certainly one of the most thought-provoking guests we had was Dan Wolgemuth, who went in a very successful career in the corporate world in GE, GE Capital. He rose up the ranks and became a successful, I’m sure significantly paid executive. He was on the board of a large non-profit Christian ministry, Youth for Christ. And during that time, he had a moment where outside his building, I think it was Kansas City back then, there was a woman that committed suicide and just outside the building. And everybody was like, “Who is this woman?” And people were relieved, “Oh, it’s nobody we know, it’s nobody we work with.” And Dan was like, “Well, that’s not really the point. It’s somebody’s daughter, friend, maybe a mother, she was young.” And really what happened is he talks about burning a ship in his own soul.

I mean, he was a person of faith, but he had this attitude of, “I’m going to work hard, be successful and hope God blesses my plans.” Which is obviously not the best way to look at it, but we’re all human and many of us have been there. And really he pivoted saying, “Okay, it’s really not about my agenda, it’s about a broader agenda.” In his case, “What’s God thinking? It’s not just about my agenda, it’s about who I can do it for.” And that shift in thinking was before he left the executive corporate world and before he went to this non-profit Christian ministry, but Dan had to say that, “Shift in thinking is it’s not about me, it’s about others, and about a broader faith perspective.” It changed his whole thinking and he would say, there’s no way he could be as successful he was in, what, 15, 16 years heading up Youth for Christ without that shift. So he really burnt a ship in his own psyche, own thinking. It was incredibly significant.

Gary Schneeberger:

And Finnian Kelly, different story, different details, but he also really had to work on himself, he had to work to get his head and heart in the game before he could change the game, right?

Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. Finnian is an Australian. We’ve had a few Australians on the podcast. Funny that.

Gary Schneeberger:

I mean, who would ever think of that? We’ve had one person from Wisconsin on the podcast and we’ve had 4,287 from Australia, but who’s keeping count.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, and I’m sure it’ll grow even more. But yeah, he had a challenging upbringing. He had just issues of self-worth and just had this desire to be successful. He graduated from a very prestigious military academy at Duntroon, I think it was the equivalent of West Point in the US. Became an entrepreneur, startup National Geographic Documentary, and he was doing great, but he was the classic executive, go mach three and all systems going without doing any inner work, “Let’s stuff it. Let’s not deal with the inner stuff. Let’s just keep going.” And eventually it led to a very difficult divorce and a significant business failure in his life. He just hit this brick wall that caused him to do some inner work, and now he is very focused on others, helping others live with authentic intentionality and purpose and choice, but he made this decision after that divorce saying, “I just can’t keep going like this.”

Because he realized if you don’t deal with the inner work, the chances of more business failures, we didn’t ask him this, we could have, would’ve been extremely high because he was in a bad place, understandably after a difficult divorce, maybe some of what he went through was coming bubbling up to the surface. Without doing the inner work, failure was probably in relationships and business is probably likely. So he was very courageous and said, “Okay, you know what? I’ve got to do the inner work to figure out, what’s going on there? Why am I angry, bitter? I got to deal with this stuff from my upbringing and my life. Otherwise, I can’t help anybody. I can’t move forward.” So that was a very courageous decision.

Gary Schneeberger:

We are, listener, three fifths of the way through the blog points our new blog at beyondthecrucible.com. I’ll review them now just to level set us. Point one of how some truths you can learn to apply to whether you should burn your ships, how you should burn your ships, what did that look like for you. One is beware of toxic persistence. Two is to lean into your passion. Three is to do the inner work. Before we get to four, keep listening because in a few minutes, 10 minutes or so, we’re going to talk about how you can get one-on-one coaching from Warwick to help you navigate your journey to second-act significance. And a lot of these folks here have achieved second-act significance. That’s really kind of the burning the ships moment was about achieving second-act significance. So stay tuned because we’re going to get into that.

But before we get into that, we’re going to talk about point four of these five truths, and that is you don’t need all the details at the start if you have the direction. It seems so simple, and yet a lot of people think, “If I’m going to do something as drastic as burn my ships, as make that pivot, I’ve got to have every step figured out exactly, I’ve got to have the business planned, all figured it out and all done.” And that’s not a bad thing to do, but it’s not absolutely necessary in every situation. And the guest who really sticks out for us there, Donte Wilburn, the title of his episode, is perhaps my favorite, From Drug Dealer to Entrepreneur and Mentor, that’s Donte’s burn the ships journey. And he really exemplifies this point of, “You don’t have to know all the details at the start as long as the direction you want to head.” Right?

Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. He is a fascinating guy. Donte Wilburn grew up in a setting without that much money in Indiana. And in high school, like a lot of kids, he wanted to be successful, so he asked a buddy of his, “Man, looks like you got new shoes, looks like you got more than pocket money. How’d you do this?” “Selling drugs.” “Really? You got this selling drugs? Wow, maybe I should think about that too because I’d like some nice shoes and some extra money and be able to throw some parties.” So he went down that route and he was pretty successful. He’s an entrepreneur and did his job well, in that sense. He got to a point where with some other drug dealers, it all went down and went very bad and could easily have been killed that one evening, and ended up being arrested.

And he found faith in this process and had begun to go back to Purdue, was getting straight A’s, and getting to church, so his pastor was there and he had a great transcript from college and he was in front of the judge, and the judge could have easily thrown the book at Donte Wilburn. But instead of throwing the book and giving him 20, 30, 40 years like he’d done to probably several other people, maybe even that day, he showed him grace. He saw that there was potential. He said, “I’m going to give you one shot.” And he realized if he blew that shot, he’d be back in his courtroom pretty soon and the book could get thrown at him.

So he gave him that grace and he ended up doing some auto detailing and without this big vision of, “Oh, I’m going to be this massive million-dollar business and what have you, I just want to get good grades and stay clean, if you will, and focus on my faith and getting some money, washing some cars at a detailing shop. Well, that ended up growing into a whole auto detailing business with a couple operations and different parts of Indiana and helping to buy a complex that helps kids. A sports complex, helps kids to have a place to play sports. But the original vision wasn’t to have this massive business, it was, “Let me stay out of jail, let me stay clean, let me not get before this judge again, let me focus on my faith and let me just have a job.” It was pretty simple in that sense. Very straightforward. Wasn’t this massive vision.

Gary Schneeberger:

And it’s easy to think of Donte’s story as one of, “Well, did he really burn the ships? The judge burnt the ships because the judge is the one who had him under house arrest. He had to do work release to go to school, to work that job that you pointed out he had washing cars, only job he could get.” But Donte did burn ships because he had to make the determination that he wasn’t going to go back to that old life. He wasn’t going to go back. Again, remember how we described the guests on the show before every episode, at the start of this episode, guests who’ve been brave enough to make dramatic pivots, stop there! Donte Wilburn made a dramatic pivot, he could have gone back to the old life. And he said something in that episode, Warwick, that is we say a lot Beyond the Crucible when we talk about overcoming your worst days.

Donte said this, “I know what chains looks like because I had to do it myself.” He says. He’s talking about his mentoring of the young men and women who work for him at his auto detailing business, which he now owns. “I found that my darkest time was the beginning of my best times.” That’s the second half of the pivot. You don’t want to go back to the bad thing, you stick in the challenging time and then you pivot into this place where that dark time now becomes the launchpad for your life of significance. That to me was the beautiful part of Donte’s story.

Warwick Fairfax:

One of the most important lessons, and you talked about this, for those that are pivoting from their first act to their second-act, most people in business, I’m the same way, they want a five-year plan, they want a Gantt chart with how much is each item cost, who’s going to be on the team, what’s the market analysis, competitive analysis, how’s the economy doing. All of those are good things, but you can’t typically figure out a five, 10, 15, 20, 30 year life plan and follow it and like, “Yep, I hit every benchmark like clockwork. That was awesome.” Life is not like that. And in my own case, which I talked about before, when I left the Aviation Services company, I didn’t have this big vision of Beyond the Crucible and a podcast and a book and social media and speaking, it was I want to do something different and there’s something about coaching that I’d like to explore.

I’d like to go to a coaching conference and just check it out, see what it’s like. That was the extent of my vision. I want to do something more, I want to be more who God maybe to be. I want to use my skills in some life-affirming way and let’s check out coaching. I didn’t have any big vision then, I had no clue what was to happen. I don’t have a plan, there’s no possible way I could have foreseen what was to come. I just knew that right first next step is let’s go to that coaching conference in Denver in 2003 and explore it. That was the vision at the time.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. And it proves the point that we made here, you don’t need all the details at the start, you just need to have the direction you want to go in. And that can be exciting, that can be all you need to strike the match, set those ships on fire. The fifth point is interesting because we realized this truth Warwickas we were in the midst of this, this was eight episodes prior to this one. We’re in the middle of doing that and we realized, “Hey, wait a minute. We’re going through our own Burn the Ships moment here a little bit, what was then Crucible Leadership and is now Beyond the Crucible. And that is the pivot point that we’re going to talk about here, and that is point five is that little ships count two, a little fire can keep you warm. You don’t need to destroy an armada, you can simply take a little ship. And that’s what we did, that’s what you directed with the change of the organization from Crucible Leadership to Beyond the Crucible.

Unpack that a little bit about how that small bit of ship ignition was actually a brave pivot. It was a pivot, but not a complete change of course, for sure.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, it’s an interesting point. And one of the lessons I’ve learned through that experience of changing from Crucible Leadership to Beyond the Crucible is visions can grow, they can evolve, they can reform, they can refocus, they can be refined, and that’s good. Just for me, that talk in church in 2008 that led to writing the book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. It was how can I use my story and what I went through to help others. And so originally, if you’d asked me back then and a few years ago, it’s like, “Well, I’ve got a passion for leadership, not so much that I want to be this business executive, but I had this passion that if businesses and organizations are led well, that would create a culture where people can feel affirmed, motivated, feel worthwhile, that their voices are heard, they feel seen, and that not only will that produce better products, I mean, if you have a whole bunch of employees that love where you’re going and hopefully are on the same page, all things being equal, you’ll do well.

So I had this thought, and a lot of my book or part of it anyway, is about different themes of leadership. I have chapters on organizational leadership and listening to a broader group of people and getting advice from a few, how you get vision, how you get people on the same page, a lot of leadership stuff, not all leadership, but a lot of leader leadership stuff. And so we began Crucible Leadership a number of years ago with this sense. We talked about leading at all levels from the boardroom to the living room. But a lot of leadership-

Gary Schneeberger:

Who came up with that line?

Warwick Fairfax:

A very bright fellow named Gary Schneeberger go host to the show.

Gary Schneeberger:

Shameless. Shameless, sorry.

Warwick Fairfax:

All good. All good. But then we had a pivot because as we did this podcast, we were telling stories of people who had crucibles from physical challenges, paraplegics, quadriplegics, people who had been abused, business failure. I mean, some people who’d made significant mistakes, others who terrible things were done to them. We kept coming up with this phrase that, “You’re not defined by your worst day.” And it became very personal, even when we were interviewing leaders, it became less about leadership and more about, how do you change your perspective? How do you pivot? When we talked to leaders like Dan Wolgemuth who led this large faith-based non-profit for many years, Youth for Christ or Mike Beckham who founded and leads Simple Modern, a company that makes flasks and water bottles. It became less about, so tell me the five points about how to make a business successful lead a large non-profit? It became more, how did you pivot? How did your thinking change? It became more about the story and the heart.

And so, we realized Crucible Leadership was just a name that had a place, but really Beyond the Crucible, it was more about inspirational, self-help, motivation to help inspire and equip people to go from their worst day to a life that they’ve always dreamed of, a life-affirming message that you’re not defined by your worst day, but you can lead a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So it really shifted from leadership to really more inspirational message. But just to go back for a second, the passion and the underlying values didn’t shift, we were always about helping people. We were always about helping people get beyond their worst day, we were always about helping people lead a life of significance, but it became less about organizational leadership and leaders per se, and more about helping everybody bounce back from their worst day to lead a life and significance. So it wasn’t a change exactly in mission, it was refining of the vision and what we do, it was a refocusing.

Gary Schneeberger:

The line in the blog here is 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. But the fact of the matter is we did light some vessels, it’s still igniting ships. Those small ships matter too as you’re navigating your way through life. Speaking of navigating your way through life, listener, we’ve arrived at the point that I’ve been teasing this entire episode. And that is the opportunity for you to be coached by the man over my left shoulder known not the crane over Warwick’s left shoulder, the man over my left shoulder is Warwick in Beyond the Crucible logo for the podcast.

But we’ve created this tool, this e-course several months ago that is designed to take you from, “Is this all there is in your life?” Thinking that to, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.” It’s not a painting class at Parks and Rec, I mean, there’s some real work that goes into this, there’s some real thought work that goes into this. It’s not by any means exhausting, but it is exhaustive in the sense of what you learn and what you can apply to your life moving forward in the context of this conversation, burning one ship to board a new ship. And one of the things that we have realized that Warwick has realized, and I’m going to let him speak for himself in a minute here once I set this up, is that taking that journey, going from this ship that you’ve just set on fire into this new ship and charting the course to get to that second-act of significance is a journey that can be easier to navigate with assistance.

As part of the Discover Your Second-Act Significant series, Warwick has opened up a few slots of one-on-one coaching with him to help you go through that course. And there are only a couple of those left, right, Warwick? And I’ll tell you, listener, how you can go find out more about it online, but tell them, Warwick, a little bit about why it’s important first to have a coach going through that course as they in the context of this discussion, burn one ship and board a new one. Why is it important for the Discover Your Second-Act Significance to have the help of a coach going through it?

Warwick Fairfax:

Having an executive coach come alongside you can really help you process and just be your right-hand person each step of the way to help you go through this course. So really I’ve found in my own life, coaching is critical. I had an executive coach for many years as I was starting my coaching practice, and I think she even spoke about, “Maybe you’ll write a book one day” and this is before 2008, my talk in church and said, “Ah, I can’t see that. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to write a book, because it’ll be self-serving and I was right, they were wrong. It’ll be kind of lame.” But that seed was planted. And I like to think that I’m a relatively fearful, anxious person in some ways, so I need help. I mean, it’s coaching, I have a team at work, I’ve blessed to have a wonderful wife of over 30 years.

But in the context of the second-act significance, it is extremely helpful to have a coach come alongside you to help you figure out, “Okay, what is my dream and why do I feel stuck? I know I feel stuck, I hate where I’m in this cubicle, but I’m having trouble articulating why I feel stuck. Still less, what doesnot being stuck look like and what are some inklings of a vision?” Having a coach can help you process and greatly turbocharge your ability to get there is sort of like, it’s not easy to figure out your vision. Think of making bread. I’m not much of a baker. Try making bread without yeast, it’s not going to rise very far. You need help, you need an extra ingredient to help you lead the life you’ve always wanted to lead. So coaching I think I’ve found in my own life has been critical and very invaluable. And it can greatly enhance your chance of just having this e-course take your whole life and career and business thinking to a whole other level that can really be a massive help.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, and you heard, listener, the testimony from Warwick himself about the benefits of a coach. His coach said, “Maybe someday you’ll write a book,” and he laughed, he didn’t think it was possible. That’s the benefit of having a coach alongside you can inspire you to think about the things to dream of the things that you don’t dare dream of. Warwick did not dare dream of writing a book. His coach brought it up, and somewhere a seed was planted and he walked that out. And lo and behold, the book’s a Wall Street Journal bestseller. And the other thing about this, I think, that’s going to be really helpful is work designed, the Discover Your Second-Act Significance course. So what we’re talking about here is discovering your second-act significance with a first class guide. That’s the offer being made here by having Warwick coach you one-on-one as you go through this class.

So before we ask any more questions of Warwick about it, let me tell you where you can go to find out more details about this offer. And again, there’s only a couple spots left, so act quickly as they say in the TV commercials. You can go to beyondthecrucible.com/coaching to look at that offer, find out about it. And if you want to apply for it, if you want to sign up it, do it quickly, as I said, because there’s only two spots left. And as they also say on the commercial, they’re going fast.

So as we get into landing the plane here, Warwick, why are you so passionate about coaching in general? Why are you so passionate about helping? This turbocharges you, I think, this idea of being able to coach people through the second-act significance course because you put so much of you into the course, you’ve put so much of you into Beyond the Crucible. Now here’s your chance to have your road meet the rubber of what they’re doing, and I think it’s just a perfect kind of marriage. Why are you so passionate about this stuff?

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I mean, I’d say broadly I’m passionate about Beyond the Crucible because we say this a lot, I don’t want people’s worst day to define them. I want people to lead lives of hope, of worth. I want people to feel worthy. And certainly the idea of feeling sense of self-worth is a battle for many people far more than you would think. I want people to lead lives where they’re contributing to society and the world, lives of significance, as we say, lives on purpose dedicated to serving others. And so we’ve designed an e-course here, Discover Your Second-Act Significance to really help you go from, “Is this all there is?” to “This is all I’ve ever wanted.” We want you to be able to shift from your crucible, well, in this case, your cubicle to a life that you love. And it absolutely helps to have somebody come alongside you.

In corporate America now, there are coaches in most large corporations, internal coaches, they have outside coaches often for senior executives and folks that are ahead of corporate human resources. And many companies, they know the training is very valuable. But training with coaching can take your training to a whole other level. Coaching helps to cement the knowledge, so we believe this e-course is very valuable. But coupling this e-course with coaching, the value you will get from the course is, I don’t know if it’s two, three, five, 10 times, it’s many. And the course itself is very valuable, but if you combine it with coaching, it takes that value to a whole other level because it increases your ability to learn, and importantly put the learning into action with a plan. Maybe not going to have a 20-year plan, we’re already talked about that, but with an idea of, what are those next steps? Where do I begin?

As we said earlier, once you begin those steps and you see some fruition come, you get that flywheel of hope that we talked about, and that flywheel of hope can keep you motivated, keep you moving forward. So the hardest part is often starting the starter motor, or starting those first few cranks of the engine. And that’s what really coaching is about, is understanding where you are, why you feel stuck, and how you move beyond feeling stuck, to lead a life you’ve always dreamed of, a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. Just feel a great degree of passion about Beyond the Crucible, this e-course and helping people move from, “Is this all there is?” to “This is all I’ve ever wanted.” That’s what we’re trying to do with the e-course and with the coaching. I think coaching can greatly help your ability to get there.

Gary Schneeberger:

And that’s what we tried to do, what we’ve tried to do with the series Burn the Ships, to encourage you how other people have done it, to give you the courage to do it yourself. And let me pull together all the balloon strings of what we’ve been talking about here. And that is maybe you are thinking right now about burning your ships, maybe you’re thinking about burning an oar, making a change, taking a leap. We can help you. The Discover Your Second-Act Significance e-course can help you navigate those waters. And even more so, Warwick’s coaching can help you get there much more robustly. So the offer is take Discover Your Second-Act Significance with a first class coach, the guy who helped design. It was the brainchild of Warwick. And I’ll leave all of that only to say this again. You can find out more about your opportunity to have Warwick coach you through this course by going to beyondthecrucible.com/coaching.

Warwick, we always wrap up these episodes where we talk about a blog with some reflection questions that listeners can ask themselves as they ponder what they’ve learned in this episode. Remember, these are five points that we’ve talked about. I’m going to see if I get my notes in order here so I can tell you the points again, things that can help you navigate a burning the ships moment. One is beware of toxic persistence. Two is lean into your passion. Three is do the inner work. Four is you don’t need all the details at the start, just the direction if you have it. And five is little ships count too.

And here’s the reflections to close our time here. Number one, can you think of a time when you practiced toxic persistence? What was the result, and how might it have turned out differently if you’d burned your ships at that moment? That’s question one. Question two, when have you charted a new course without having the exact destination fully formed? How did it turn out? Do you consider it looking back a wise move? Why or why not? Reflect on that as you process through your pursuit of maybe burning your own ships. And then the third point is, consider what you’re passionate about. Are you leaning into those passions, or is it time to get the matches? Warwick, I’ll give you the last word before I close us up.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. This has been a great series, Burn the Ships. Life can get overwhelming. I think really the key point is you’ve got to make that decision that, “I’m not going to take it anymore, I’m not going to just sit here in my cubicle and wallow and be frustrated saying, well, you know what? Retirement will come in the next 20, 30, 40 years, then I can be on the beach, play golf and life will be better then.” That’s one approach. It’s not approach – I’m not against retirement or enjoying life and all, but that concept of, “Life is not meant to be easy and I’m just going to suck it up, and eventually retirement will come or what have you.”

In the context of Burn the Ships and Second-Act Significance, you want to make a choice saying, “You know what? I’m not going to take it. I’m going to find and pivot to a life that I’ve always dreamed of. I want to do something that I’m passionate about. I’m not going to just sit here feeling stifled, micromanaged, controlled. Who cares what I do? I’m not using my gifting. I’m not passionate about it. It’s against my values and beliefs.” There can be a variety of ways that leads to your sense of discontent and frustration, which can be from mild frustration to immense frustration. There’s a spectrum of frustrations of feeling stuck. And so, there’s a lot of lessons from the series that we’ve had from our guests, from the e-course, and obviously we like to think the coaching around the e-course. So if today is the day that you’re feeling stuck and frustrated, make a choice to say, “I am not taking it one more day, I’m going to make a choice, a positive decision to move forward and figure out a way of getting unstuck.”

And between the resources we have and the series, the e-course, coaching, we’re here to help you get unstuck, we’re here to help you figure out, what does it mean to say I’m not taking any more? What does it mean to move out of the pit of frustration in this case to a direction that leads to a life you’ve always dreamed of? We’re here to come alongside you and help you from the e-course to coaching to the series. So if today is the day where you’re feeling immensely frustrated, today is your cubicle moment, there can be a better life. Just make a decision to say, “I’m not taking any more and I’m going to move forward in a better direction that’s going to be better for me, better for my family, and better for others.”

Gary Schneeberger:

Well, if this microphone didn’t cost a few hundred dollars, I would drop it because that was a mic drop moment that Warwick had right there. I’ll end by saying this. Join us next week as we talk again about how you can turn your tragedies into triumphs, how your worst day doesn’t have to define you, how if you learn the lessons of your crucible and you apply them as you move forward, that crucible experience can be the launching pad. It’s not the worst day of your life, it can be a launching pad to the best day of your life, the best time of your life, because where it leads is to a life of significance.

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.