Applying the Actionable Truths 6: Vision

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible. To truly move forward, you’ve got to have a vision that you’re off-the-charts passionate about, that in some ways is a life-affirming vision, which we call a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. And what’sinteresting is that as we’ll find and discuss more, that for many of our guests, and us, that vision may well come out of The Crucible.

Gary Schneeberger:
A great vision we discussed this week in the sixth episode of our series within the show on Beyond the Crucible Roadmap and its actionable truths is one so real you can almost feel it and touch it. You have this overwhelming desire to make that vision a reality. This vision may be a combination of lessons you’ve learned from your Crucible. It will typically involve people you want to help. But either way, a great vision is one that is other-focused, that in some way will help the world to be a better place.
Welcome friends, to another episode of Beyond The Crucible, and it’s special, another episode of Beyond the Crucible, because it is another episode in what we’re calling the series within the show on the actionable truths of the brand. And let me set the stage like I always do when we do this. This is our refreshed way. It’s refreshed, not entirely new, on how we help you get from your worst day to your greatest opportunity. It’s what we’ve named the Beyond the Crucible roadmap as I said. We describe it like this, and I’m going to read it right here from my sheet, because I always want to make sure I get it exactly right. We describe it as this, “how we help you turn your worst day into your greatest opportunity. We provide the essential actionable truths to inspire hope, enable and equip you to write your own life-affirming story.”
If that sounds like fun, keep listening and watching because we think it is. The roadmap has been built, just so you know, from our proprietary statistically valid research into how people experience crucibles, and what we’ve learned from guests on this very podcast and from our experience about what it takes to move from trial to triumph after a crucible. And the most revolutionary news in this whole process for us has been finding what we call the actionable truths of the brand, as I said earlier. To pass these life-changing truths along to you, our listeners and viewers, we’re going to do something similar to what we did last year with our series within the show, and we’ve been doing that. Once a month, we have been taking time to focus on the roadmap, on the actionable truths. And we’re doing it for 10 times this year.
And you may realize right now we’re a month that’s six months into the year. Wait, we’re going to … We’re going to take a break for a while. We’re taking the summer hiatus. We’re going to have a summer series that’s going to come up. We’re not going to tell you what it is yet. Keep listening, because we’ll explain what it is. You’re going to like it. But we will be back, just so you know after this episode with the next version or the next episode in the Actionable Truths series within a show on September 23rd. Okay? So you don’t have to wait that long, but that’s when we’re going to be back doing it after we finish this one.
But stay tuned, because you’re going to want to hear in the weeks to come what our summer series is about. Warwick and I are very, very, very excited about it. So what we have going on right now, Warwick … I’ve asked you this every single time we’ve done an episode on the actionable truths. And by now I think you could turn your back to the camera and just recite it like that, because so good at it. But to level set us in our discussion of the sixth of these truths, let me ask you this, why actionable truths? What do we mean by that?

Warwick Fairfax:
Beyond the Crucible, our focus is on how we get beyond our worst day to lead a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. And so we have now what we call Beyond the Crucible roadmap, how you go from trial or crucible to triumph, and that is a life of significance. And we’ve found that there are 10 actionable truths, 10 catalysts that help you move along your journey from your worst day, to where you’re living your life-affirming vision, you’re thriving. It feels like this is where you’re meant to be. You’re living out some higher purpose, maybe even God’s purpose. You feel like you’re triumphing and you’re truly living your life for significance. So these actionable truths have always been implicit in our thinking, and they’re actually chapters in many, if not most cases, in my book, Crucible Leadership.

Gary Schneeberger:
That’s pretty good symmetry, and we didn’t plan it that way, folks. That’s not the way that we planned it, that’s the way it came out through the research. This is how those things fall together. So Warwick is like a human computer. No. I’m kidding, right? He’s the creator of the branch, so it makes sense, right, his book would then dovetail nicely with what we’re talking about here? And I’ll ask you one more question before we get going. And that’s this, individually not going through each one, but each one of these actionable truths helps us move beyond setback to significance. How do they do that?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. These actionable truths, think of them as accelerators or even enablers to help us move from a crucible or our trial to a life of significance or triumph. And you could absolutely make the case that without these actionable truths that you’d go nowhere. You’d be stuck in the pit, stuck in trial, your worst day. It’s almost like rocket fuel that just helps the engine move forward. I think earlier you mentioned, what’s that special additive in Fast and the Furious that enables it to go, those cars, incredible speeds?

Gary Schneeberger:
Oh, NOS. Yeah, nitrous oxide. NOS. Yep.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So in a sense you could think of these actionable truths as nitrous oxide, that they really turbocharge your journey back. Obviously in Fast and the Furious, you should use this with care. You probably need a little less care using these actionable truths, but you get the idea. They turbocharge you to get from your worst day to, in a sense, your best day, when you’re a triumphing and leading a life to significance.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And I’ve got to ask you one more question on the tail end of that, because I’ve said this a few times in the intros to these episodes. We didn’t arrive at the name “actionable truths” for this, just like that. A lot of names for things that we do come to us very quickly. This one took a little bit of back and forth and thinking through it. And I’ll raise my hand and say, I don’t know that I was the greatest fan of it at first. But the more that we’ve done it and the more that we’ve seen it play out in our conversations, more feedback we’ve gotten on it, it really is a perfect term, actionable truths. Why do you think that is? What makes this idea of something that’s truthful, but also must be acted on … Why is that so critical to bouncing back from a crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. That’s a great question. A truth can be useful, but a truth that is not lived out isn’t helpful. And we’ve talked about this actually in earlier podcast in the series, when we talk about faith, in other words, whatever belief and value system you have? That’s helpful, but faith, your beliefs and values that are not lived out is not really accomplishing much, if anything. It really needs to be lived out, which is what we earlier described as character. Faith, beliefs and values lived out. So truths are helpful, these truths that we’ve gone over, whether it’s authenticity, faith, character, self-reflection, a number of ones we’ve discussed, those are helpful. But those truths like self-reflection, Oh, I think I need to self-reflect about my crucible. I think that’s a good idea. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next month.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, believing that self-reflection is important, but not doing it, is not going to help you at all get out of the pit. You have to get out of the pit. You have to get beyond your worst day. And so truths are only meaningful if they’re actionable. And obviously you can act on many things, but if you’re acting on things that aren’t your truth, you’re going to be running around in circles, not going anywhere. But you’ll be moving rapidly, but maybe in circles. Well, that doesn’t get you out of the pit, maybe you dig yourself in deeper. You just burrow deeper and deeper, because you keep moving, spiraling down. So it’s the combination of the two actionable and truths that really gives this whole concept path that enables it to really turbocharge you and get beyond your worst day.

Gary Schneeberger:
And so far, folks, again, to level set where we’ve been, we’ve talked about the parts of the roadmap. The first one is your trial, which is your crucible. The second one is processing. How do you process through it? Now, we’re moving to the third part. And Scott, are you there? I’m going to need you to give me a drum roll before I say where we’re at on the roadmap now. So here we go. Excellent, very well done. We are at the vision part of the roadmap. And we’re going to talk first in the vision part of the roadmap about vision. And I want to ask you this, Warwick, why is vision such a critical sixth step after a crucible to begin our journey, truly to begin our journey of getting that fast and furious roadster moving, to move beyond to recover from our crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. We’re at a point where we’re ready to move forward. It is time to move forward. We’ve been through a crucible. We’ve reflected on what happened and why. We’ve decided to be authentic, not be asked, not be some fake version, some person with a mask, but the true authentic self that we are. We’ve decided to dig down deep into our beliefs and values, our faith. And we’ve also decided that we’re not just going to have those beliefs and values on a bumper sticker, or on a plaque hanging on a wall. We’re actually going to live these beliefs and values out day to day, which is what we call character. So these are all good points to get us where we are now. But to truly move forward, you’ve got to have a vision that you’re off-the-charts passionate about, that in some ways is a life-affirming vision, which we call a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.
And what’s interesting is that as we’ll find and discuss more, that for many of our guests, and us, that vision may well come out of the crucible. But wherever it comes from, it’s a vision that you’ve got to be off-the-charts passionate about. That’s got to be focused on others in some sense. One definition I’ve come across about vision, is vision is a present picture of a future reality. So a great vision is one that seems so real that you can almost feel it, touch it, maybe even smell it, like it just feels so real that it seems more than a vision. It seems reality. And you have this overwhelming desire to make this vision a reality. It feels like a calling, maybe a holy calling, a sacred calling, a sacred mission. And this vision may be a combination of lessons you’ve learned from your crucible.
It will typically involve people you want to help. It could be people like you who went through similar crucibles, or it could be to help people avoid the crucibles that you went through. You might say, “Gosh, what I went through is horrific. If I can forewarn or forearm people to avoid some of the mistakes that I went through, at least in some senses,” that can be helpful. So either way, this great vision that’s on your heart is got to be other-focused in some way to make the world a better place. One of the things we often say too, at Beyond the Crucible, it’s not the size of the vision that’s really most important. And certainly we can get intimidated looking at other people’s vision. Maybe it’s people we’ve read about in the media, seen in documentaries.
Maybe it’s even our buddies or friends in our neighborhood, and we might feel so less than. And so yes, it could be some global vision to bring clean drinking water to developing nations. But it could also mean helping to clean up your neighborhood park or maybe setting up a soup kitchen in your city. The size of the vision isn’t so important. What matters is, is this vision important to you? Do you feel like it’s some holy or sacred calling that you feel absolutely called to pursue? That kind of vision is going to last, if you feel like it’s almost some sacred calling that you’re called and almost driven to accomplishing.

Gary Schneeberger:
It’s the ability to see beyond what you can see, I think is a good way to define it. And I say that, because we’ve come to the part and every episode when I go to Webster’s 1828, the very first dictionary that our friend Noah Webster created. And this is the first time Warwick that Noah Webster’s definition isn’t going to help us at all, because Noah Webster’s first definition of vision is this, actual sight. Thank you, Noah. There are several other ones in there that pretty much talk about the same thing. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to go to our definition that we used in our internal document about what we discovered in the research on the actionable truths, on the road map, and you used the first part of it.
But our definition of vision in this context, in the road map, is a sacred calling, you use that, that summons you to a mission beyond yourself. That seems to me to be a perfect place to continue talking about this subject. There are three stages in our research work, as you know, and our research is qualitative and quantitative. And there are three things that that research has shown us about how people experience this section of the roadmap. And the first one is this, experimenting with new conditions, trials and first failures. How do we do this?

Warwick Fairfax:
So irrespective of the size of the vision, when you’re in a pit of despair, any kind of vision seems like Mount Olympus or Mount Everest. It just seems impossible at that point, no matter how big or small, others may look at it or you may look at it. So yeah. Launching it into a new vision absolutely can seem overwhelming. We feel like hiding under the covers, because this vision, it might seem too hard, too intimidating, too big for us to accomplish. Typically, when you’ve suffered your worst day, your sense of self-confidence is zero. Whether it’s something that was done to you or mistakes you made, your feeling of self-worth seems to be non-existent, so you don’t really have any reservoirs of confidence or pretty much anything else to draw upon.
So it is tough, so any vision is going to seem almost impossible. So the key thing is to break down that vision into stages and small steps. And we may not know as we’ll get into quite what that vision is going to be. But you think of what’s one small step forward that I can take to begin that journey to accomplish your vision? Just what one positive step. You might not have it all figured out, but you might have this sixth sense, this gut instinct, “You know what? I feel like this is something maybe I could do, and what’s one small step that I can take?” That’s the key. Don’t think of the whole vision. And it could be a microscopic, baby step to you, but what’s one small step you can take to move forward?

Gary Schneeberger:
It’s the same way that you eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time.

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Gary Schneeberger:
The second point that our research shows us that people go through, is growth and new skills, preparing for major change. Again, how is that accomplished in real life as you’re bouncing back from a crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
So in addition to taking baby steps forward, we need to assess what we need to do to bring this vision to reality. And that starts with looking internally. We’ve got to assess our skills and abilities and to assess to what degree do we have those skills and abilities to make this vision real? If we feel like there’s not one area of our skills and abilities that looking at it dispassionately and logically, that really can help bring this vision to reality, it may not be no, but it may be caution. Think very carefully, because it’s going to be so much harder if you bring nothing to the party, frankly.
So that’s obviously helpful, and we need to assess if we don’t have those skills and abilities, is this a mission, a vision that we want to devote our life to? Count the cost before launching into a vision? And so having looked internally, then we need to look externally. And typically bringing a vision to reality is a team sport. Few visions, can you do it alone. And so the smart person asks themselves, “Okay. I have certain skills and abilities, but I don’t have all the skills and abilities needed to make this vision a reality.” So we need to ask for help from others. What we call a team of fellow travelers. People have skills and abilities that we might not have.
Now, typically, when we’re trying to bring this vision to reality, we’re going to encounter obstacles, difficulties. Life is not Disney World, typically there are challenges with visions that we’re trying to make become reality. So that’s normal, and we shouldn’t be afraid of this. When we have failures and setbacks without vision, we need to learn from them and assess them. Okay, what does this mean? Do we need to tweak our vision? Change it? Do we need to bring different people on board? What do we need to do? So obstacles will happen, but look at them as opportunities. Okay, so what does this say about our vision and where we’re going? Do we need to change direction a bit? But that’s inevitable, that will happen. As you move on from baby steps and it starts to grow, you’re definitely going to encounter obstacles. That’s just life.

Gary Schneeberger:
That’s interesting, because it’s important, isn’t it, in this step as you’re trying out new things, as you’re taking baby steps and you’re making those steps a little bit bigger, and you’re making them more one after the other … It’s important to not see these setbacks as true crucibles, right? They’re setbacks, they’re normal growth mile-markers as you’re moving forward. It can be easy, but we have to fight that urge or that feeling that these are going to crush us. We have to weather them and learn from them. That’s fair, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. Most athletes will tell you they learn pretty much nothing of very little about matches they’ve won, games they’ve won. But they learn a lot from failure. They learn a lot from when they’ve fallen short. Okay, what if it’s tennis? What stroke do I need to work on? If it’s football, okay, maybe I’ve got the wrong players, or maybe the game plan wasn’t the best. Maybe we need to change it up. There’s all sorts of lessons that failure can teach us. And so when we face obstacles and we feel like things aren’t going the way that we hoped, we need to just assess that. And sometimes those challenges can come because we’re growing and expanding more than we thought we would perhaps.
And so we need to assess, okay, so maybe this vision, this organization, maybe this company that we’ve started, it’s getting to a point that maybe we all don’t have the skills and abilities that we need now. Maybe some of our fellow travelers, some of our team members, maybe they were helpful at one stage, but maybe we need to supplement them with folks that have different skills. So how do we respond? How do we learn from these challenges and opportunities? As I said, maybe we need to tweak what we do and change.
And one of the other things I think we need to consider, and most organizations that start with the visionary founder, which is many, if not almost all, they typically run into this problem in which you might have the skills and abilities to start an organization, a nonprofit or a for-profit company. Maybe you don’t have the general manager skills to take the company to the next level. And that’s where often founders will just grip tightly onto that vision and they won’t let go. “Hey, I started it in my garage and this is my deal and everybody works for me. I don’t need help. Not senior level help. I’ve got the vision. Everybody else is here meant to implement. I don’t need strategic advice. I got this.”
That’s normal and understandable, but it’s really not helpful. And so what you might need to do, and many if not most organizations do this, you might need to bring on a general manager or a CEO, with you remaining as the founder and the visionary. And obviously this could end up being large, even if it’s a small organization, a small nonprofit, you’ll need people with administrative managerial skills, people that know how to hire the right people, even recruit the right volunteers. That requires at any level some degree of managerial and organizational ability, as well as an ability to relate to others. Some people, they aren’t great entrepreneurs, but they don’t always know how to motivate a team.
That’s not always in their skillset. So that’s where you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right people on board, bring a general manager or CEO, or depending on what level your organization is at, and you might even be faced with an even harder decision. You might be faced with a decision that this vision has grown beyond this. Maybe we need to hand this vision over to other people. These are all things that you need to think about when you’re at the stage when the vision is growing. It could be something big and big can mean different things, but you feel like it’s really taken off. You need to be able to get the right people on board, make sure you are in the right lane and get off the bus if you think you’re holding the vision back. That requires incredible self-reflection and incredible maturity that is not easy to have.
But if you really care about your vision, these are questions you really need to ask yourself. And maybe ask some close friends, maybe some board members, team members, those tough questions. “Am I in my right lane? Do I need to take a bit of a backseat? Maybe be founder emeritus or whatever, so I need to bring other people on?” You really need to ask these tough questions, which if it’s not about you, you’ll ask. If it’s all about you, then you probably won’t ask that. So lot of self-reflection is required when you’re trying to bring a vision to reality.

Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed. Excellent points. That must be why you’re the founder of Beyond The Crucible, is my guess. And the third point that the research told us is that, and it’s a big one, it’s preparing for big change, grand trial, revelation and insight. And you were pretty excited about all of this, and you might’ve jumped the line a little bit on that, Warwick. Anything else you want to add?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I was a bit too passionate about the vision. Maybe off-the-charts passionate about helping listeners and viewers figure out their vision, bring it to reality, that I went forward a bit too fast. But yeah, I think in summary about this, especially as that vision starts taking off, there will be challenges. Gosh, we don’t have enough people. Maybe we don’t have enough funding for this nonprofit. The needs in our town is so big and people love what we have, whether it’s our soup kitchen or whatever it is. And we just don’t want to turn people away that have need or that’s a good problem to have, obviously, if people love what you do. And you just got to see those challenges as opportunities. Okay, great. We need more people. We need to raise funding. We need to inspire some donors to give, just maybe give them a picture of just what we’re doing.
And those are all opportunities. And yeah, you’ve got to assess. “Okay, let’s make sure I’m in the right lane and bring other people on board to help take it to the next level.” But really the key with big change is you’ve got to make sure it’s not all about you, just check your ego at the door. And if you feel like, “The sole reason I’m doing this is to give my ego some strokes, you just need to leave.” You got to make it … It’s not about you.
And so just doing internal daily reflection from a faith-based point of view, scripture meditation I’ve found helps me. You’ve got to keep yourself anchored in your beliefs and values, because if you’re not careful, it can start out with good intentions, but it can morph into, “it’s all about me. It’s all about everybody praising, Ian. Look how wonderful I am.” So as the vision gets bigger and we get more plaudits and praise from people, that’s where challenges can really crop up. You’ve got to make sure it’s not about you and it’s about helping others. So keep your ego in check and be wary. As the vision grows, it’s almost inevitable that your ego will be tempted. So just watch when that happens and take steps to make sure that you keep your ego in check.

Gary Schneeberger:
Interesting that you just talked a little bit about when a vision can get a little out of control, because about to segue into my favorite part of this show. And I’ve just determined while we were sitting here Warwick, that it would be nice to get theme music for this part of the show. Maybe we should ask Scott to see if he can find some theme music that we could play, not in this episode, but maybe in future episodes. Maybe there’s some good theme music, because what we’re going to talk about now, folks, is what I like to call taking a look at Patience Zero, the founder of Beyond the Crucible, our host who lived all of this stuff before he began to write about it, and then talk about it on the podcast.
And Warwick, let me ask you this. Talk about your journey, because it’s a very interesting journey and it touches on some of the things that you talked about. Not so much about your ego taking over, but about following a vision that wasn’t yours. Talk about your journey with vision and how you were able to move beyond your crucible that was kind of … Not kind of, was wrapped up in a vision, if not your vision.

Warwick Fairfax:
My story, maybe it’s not different, it feels a bit different in that I grew up with a ready-made, pre-packaged vision, if you will. I didn’t have to think about, “Gee, what vision did I want to devote my life to?” I was born into a vision, born into a noble vision, actually. So I grew up in this 150-year-old family media business in Australia. And the vision I grew up in, it was not a small vision. It was a massive one. This was a media company that was founded by my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax in 1841. By the time I was growing up, it grew to become a very large media company with newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, magazines, newsprint mills. It had the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age in Melbourne, the Australian Financial Review. This was the equivalent in Australia of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

Gary Schneeberger:
It’s important to know it was equivalent to when they were at their heyday, right? Because newspapers, and even in the US right now, are not at their heyday. But, these are the three biggest papers in three big areas that were the biggest in the United States during their heyday. So that’s what you’re talking about-

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely.

Gary Schneeberger:
… to compare apples to apples.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Very well said. So back in the ’80s, ’70s, ’80s, they used to talk about the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne as the rivers of gold. They Were incredibly profitable, mainly through classified ads, which could be job ads, real estate. This is all pre-internet. So you wanted to find a job, you wanted to find a house, you went to the paper. You pulled up your local paper and circled places to rent or jobs. And you called them up and no serving internet didn’t exist. So we live in a different era now, but back then they were incredibly profitable. And so I was seen by my parents as the heir apparent of this very large organization.
And being the dutiful son … It’s funny, I often use this analogy, this biblical analogy, the parable of the prodigal son. I wasn’t so much the prodigal. I was the quote, unquote, “good son” that stayed at home and worked hard. And so I got good grades in school. I did my undergrad degree at Oxford University like my dad and some other relatives before me. I received my MBA from Harvard Business School. It was all to make sure I had the skills and abilities that was needed to fill my future role. For instance, there were various proposals by management for a capital raising that my parents thought didn’t make a whole lot of sense. So it’s like, “Okay. I need to learn about finance, so that if and when I’m in this position of control and influence, I’ll be able to push back if management comes up with some harebrained capital raising scheme that I don’t think makes sense.”
That was why I needed to have some knowledge of finance. In fact, after I went to Oxford and before I went to Harvard Business School, I worked on Wall Street at Chase Manhattan Bank. It was all part of the plan. It wasn’t about, what did I want to do. It wasn’t about, was I interested in finance? Irrelevant questions. So it’s like, what skills and abilities do I need? And unfortunately, in a sense, I have very high perseverance and high dedication, which … Dedication and perseverance are not bad in and of themselves. But those two together, dedication and perseverance, it’s like, “Okay. What do I need to do? And I’ll just work very hard to make sure I have those skills and abilities.”
And so this was all to help perpetuate and preserve the vision of the founder, my great, great grandfather, John Fairfax. It was his vision. He was a great business person. And as I’ve read in the last few years, this book by Stuart Johnson that should come out in the next few months, who as a PhD and a person of faith, wrote a book about John Fairfax. He was a person of great faith, great husband, great father, elder at his church. When he died, his employees loved him so much, they said, “We’ve lost a kind and valued friend.” There were no worker rights laws in the 1800s in Australia or pretty much anywhere else. So this was a noble vision, but this wasn’t my vision. And in fact, I’m not even sure it was my father’s vision. We both inherited it. But I was committed to doing my duty and to preserving the vision, and what a noble vision it was of my great-great-grandfather.
We tried to be an independent paper in which we weren’t beholden to any party. The original motto of the Sydney Morning Herald was, “May Whigs call me Tory and May Tory call me Whig,” which in modern language means, “May Liberal call me Conservative, may Conservative call me Liberal.” And that was really the ethos of the company. So if you’d asked me back then in the ’70s and ’80s as I was growing up, so to speak, how committed was I to the vision, I would say 100%. I would say I was off-the-charts passionate to that vision. It was an important vision. How could you be against preserving theideals of the founder and having quality in newspapers, quality media That served the nation of Australia? That’s a pretty big vision. That’s an important vision. How can you say that’s a worthless vision? It’s not. It was a very worthwhile vision.
And at the time in the ’80s, I mentioned to a relative that this vision was so important to me that it was burning a hole in my heart. If you have a vision that’s burning a hole in your heart, it would seem like you’re pretty much off-the-charts passionate about it. How can that be wrong? How can that be bad? How can preserving a newspaper company, a media company, with the ideals of the founder, how can that be wrong? It feels so right. So the problem as I mentioned, is it wasn’t my vision.
So in early 1987, my dad died. Early that year he was in his late eighties. I was a child of his third marriage. And so I launched this $2.25 billion takeover, essentially to bring the vision of the company back, the ideals of the founder, and to have the company well run. Three years later, with too much debt and a recession that hit Australia in 1990, we had to file for bankruptcy. So what’s interesting is once I gained control of the company in late 1987, I knew subconsciously there was a problem. While I had the high perseverance to make the takeover work, the joy and the passion when not there. Subconsciously, I didn’t want it to be there.

Gary Schneeberger:
Let me stop you there just for a second. We have a phrase that we talk about, and you’ve actually spoken about this as you’ve told your story. We have a phrase that we talk about the elevator ride, which really shines a spotlight on what you’re talking about right here of not having a passion for this vision. Explain a little bit what that elevator ride was, and how it pinpoints how uncomfortable you were, even though you were following this thing that you thought you needed to follow.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, Gary. That was a key moment in the story. By late 1987 we’d been able to obtain enough shares to take control of the company. The way you physically get control of a company is through a change in the board of directors. So here I was, I hadn’t been in the headquarters of the company for a while in these months that we were trying to get enough shares to finalize the takeover. So I went into the headquarters of John Fairfax Limited, which was headquartered in a part of Sydney called Broadway. You can’t make this up. And so I took the elevator up and it was early in the morning. And on that elevator, there were other staff members, journalists, and I remember feeling so uncomfortable. Everybody knew who I was. My face had been in the papers and on TV for months, and I didn’t want to talk to them. I’m sure they didn’t know what to say to me. Was one of the longest elevator rides of my life.
Got off the elevator, walked into this almost like mahogany-paneled boardroom with paintings of my ancestors from my dad all the way back to my great, great grandfather, John Fairfax. There was my new board on one side of the table, there was the old board on the other side of the table, including a couple of family members of mine. And they were all polite and wished me and my team well and handed over control. But I remember thinking as I looked up at those paintings, “They must’ve been wondering, what is this26-year-old kid doing?”, as I then was. That was the age I was at the time, “Does he know what he’s doing?” and in that moment, in subsequent moments, I was all about trying to preserve the company. We had to do numerous refinancing, because we had too much debt from the beginning. Other family members sold out, didn’t want to be in a company controlled by 26-year-old, which is understandable. And the October ’87 stock market crash at our asset sales. So we were in trouble from pretty much day one that we took control at the end of 1987.
So we’re doing new refinancings. I brought on a chief executive that increased operating profits 80%, which showed the company wasn’t being as well run as it could have, but it was just, we were in dire straits from day one. And so we were in survival mode, but it was pretty clear that I didn’t want to be there. I pretty much never went down to where the journalists were a few floors below and walked around and said hello to people, because I felt like, “I don’t belong here.”
I felt shy, out of my depth. By that point it was subconsciously clear that this wasn’t my vision and I so didn’t want to be there. It was just really awful. Yes, I brought in new management, but it was so clear that I didn’t want to be there. But it’s too late, I’d launched this takeover, and I’m not one fortunately or unfortunately to give up, and so I just kept going and trying to make it work. But the debt was so huge that despite what the new chief executive did, it did a phenomenal job. It was just too much debt and by late 1990, we had to file for bankruptcy.
So this whole takeover was a huge and costly lesson, obviously financially, but money has never really been a huge motivator for me. It was incredibly costly, certainly emotionally, spiritually, and it was clear that this is not my vision. So I had to ask myself, how would I move beyond this crucible? How would I ever get beyond it? I wasn’t asking myself, “Well, what’s a new vision for my life?” I was in survival mode. I was like, “How do I get out of this pit? How do I move forward? What do I do with my life?” People often grow up thinking, “Gosh.” when you’re a young kid, it’s like, “Do I want to be a fireman? An astronaut,” or whatever, “an NFL player, an NBA basketball player?” [inaudible 00:40:21] And then eventually-

Gary Schneeberger:
No baseball for me, just so you know. Baseball [inaudible 00:40:26]

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s like, “Okay, maybe I’m going to be an accountant, journalist,” whatever it ends up being. But I never had those thoughts, they were irrelevant. So I had to think at age 30, which I was at the time the company went under, “Well, now what do I do?” And so it was really just baby steps. I wasn’t really thinking so much about, “What vision should I devote my life to?” It’s, “I need to get a job.” I had some funds fortunately, but I need to get a job financially just for my own sense of self and sense of self-worth. So I got a temporary job as a financial analyst for an aviation services company in Maryland where we lived. My wife’s from America. And so after the company went under, I felt like we needed to move somewhere other than Australia where I was so well known.
So this temporary job turned into a permanent job, where I worked for a number of years. And in 2003, there was a real turning point in my life. One of the things that was key to me bouncing back from my failed takeover, as I’ve mentioned in other podcasts in the series and elsewhere is faith. And my faith in Christ is hugely important to me. So in 2003, I felt like God telling me that I was playing small. And it’s not so much that what I was doing was beneath me, but that I wasn’t using all my skills and abilities for his purposes, for the kingdom, from a spiritual perspective. So I went to a woman that was an expert in mid-career assessments, and she was an executive coach herself, and she said that I had an ideal profile to be an executive coach. So I looked into that, I became a certified international coach, federation coach, and I began to find my leadership voice. If you’d asked me in the early ’90s, do I have a leadership voice, I would’ve said I couldn’t lead my way out of a paper bag.

Gary Schneeberger:
I want to stop you there. I’ve never asked you this question, and this is a perfect point to ask you, because you just walked us through the emotional … You used the words, “it was emotionally and financially devastating, the failure of the takeover.” What did that feel like when you found your leadership voice? I don’t think I’ve ever asked you that question. What was that like? Because people who are hearing this, they’re bouncing back from a crucible. They’re trying to cast a vision, and you just got the first little bits of fairy dust that indicated that there is a vision there. What did that feel like, if you can remember that moment?

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s a good question. I spent a few years after 2003 taking courses, getting training to be a certified international coach federation coach. And so I would coach people both within my church and people I knew. And what I realized is I have some fair, if not good, degree of asking questions. I didn’t know that at the time. Now, I had a lot of management and leadership experience, obviously a lot of management leadership failure if you will. With the Harvard MBA and working in Wall Street, I knew a fair amount about organizations and the pitfalls and the challenges, certainly more than enough to ask good questions. And so I would ask a question and they’d say, “That is a great point.” It’s like, “What do you mean a great point? I’m just asking a question. How can that be a great point?”
It might be as simple, but yet in some ways profound as saying, “So you’ve mentioned to a client all these things you want to do. I think from my perspective, devoted trying to do 15 things at once is typically not a good strategy. It’s my philosophy, pick two or three and then focus on that at the moment.” And so a great point. I’d say, “So what two or three things do you want to focus on?” So questions like that that aren’t rocket science, but they’re very helpful. And so just by the questions I was asking people saw that I had leadership ability. These were drops of grace to a dying man in the desert, like an oasis. And it was because of those questions, it was because of the people I was coaching that directly led to me being an elder at my church, which is a non-denominational, evangelical church, and being on the board of my kids’ school, which is a Christian school.
It was because of the relationships with people I was coaching that people said, “Hey, I know this guy Warwick Fairfax, it’d be a great person to be on the board of our school, Annapolis Area Christian School.” Or, “Warwick would be a good elder at our church,” Bay Area Community Church in Annapolis, Maryland. But it was through coaching and people seeing something within me as somebody that had leadership advice. It was the beginnings of what I would come to see as my skill set, which is as we say on this podcast, is to be a reflective advisor. That was my skill set, that is my strength. But that came out of being an executive coach. That was a key step on the journey to me discovering my innate skills, the innate passion that I had to help people’s vision become reality, to help people … And that’s a lot of the things I coached on was about vision, helping people’s vision become reality. I was off-the-charts passionate about that, ironically. That’s part of what I love to do, being a reflective advisor.
So being an executive coach and then being on an elder at my church on this board of my kids’ school. The next step was in 2008 when the pastor of our church asked me to give a talk in church. And he was giving a sermon on the life of David who had been persecuted by King Saul. He was hiding in the cave of the Dulem, who was definitely a righteous person, falsely persecuted. He wanted a 10-minute sermon illustration. I said, “Well, look Greg. Greg St. Cyr, the lead pastor by church. “I don’t feel like I was a righteous person falsely persecuted. I brought many of the troubles on myself. But fine, I’ll do what I can.”
I certainly didn’t think back then of myself as Mr. Public Speaker. I’m more of a shy, reserved person by personality. So anyway, I gave some thoughts, and given it’s a church, I thought that maybe lessons God had taught me. What was amazing is that weeks and months after people came up to me and said, “Warwick, what you said really helped me.” And I thought to myself, “Well, how many former media moguls are there in the congregation?” It’s like if you had a former media mogul self-help group, it’d be self-help group of one. “My name is Warwick. I’ve lost $2 billion in a media company.” “Oh. Thank you, Warwick.”

Gary Schneeberger:
You have to talk to yourself to make that happen.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I’ve never met anybody like me in that sense, who made the mistakes or gone through what I’ve gone through. Anyway, so the fact that people said what I said could help them, that led me to writing my book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. That book then led to speaking, writing blogs, posting on social media, thoughts about related to Beyond The Crucible, and also led me to starting this podcast with you, Gary, Beyond The Crucible. That all happened from that moment in 2008. And what I love about what I do now is that it truly is my vision. I have a crystal clear vision that I’m off-the-charts passionate about to help people bounce back from their worst day to lead a life of significance. That’s what we do here. And it’s my vision, it’s not a vision I inherited. And I just love having a team of people, a team of fellow travelers, including yourself, that I believe are all off-the-charts passionate about this vision that we’re working, co-laboring together.
We have a fantastic team, and I feel blessed. Yes, you could say I founded it, but I believe this is our vision. I don’t look at it as my vision. It’s our vision. Yes, it’s my vision, but it’s beyond my vision, it’s our vision. Faith is important to me. Every day I read scripture, I meditate through scripture memory. I want to say, “Lord, this is about you. This is about accomplishing your vision. It’s not about me.” I really try to keep my ego in check, which is a daily thing that all of us should spent time on that inner work. So I feel blessed, I’m off-the-charts passionate about this vision, and it’s my vision. It’s not somebody else’s vision that I inherited, so I’m blessed. But it was a long journey to get here, it was not easy.

Gary Schneeberger:
And what’s interesting about you saying that, because I just wrote a note in the side of my paper here … Because you talked about at the beginning, and the research told us this at the beginning, that it’s take small steps, take baby steps. And it occurs to me your story is the truth that all of us can wrap our arms around, and that’s this. Small steps can lead to a lifelong journey, right? When you string those small steps together, suddenly your miles and miles, years and years, experiences and experiences down the road to that life of significance that you talk about. And I think that’s just a beautiful example of what Beyond the Crucible stands for and what you’ve lived through to teach through Beyond the Crucible.

Warwick Fairfax:
So well said, Gary. I think one of the lessons is that you can never really know where your life is going to go and what one small step will lead to. In my case, I didn’t even have the inklings of a vision when … One part of the story I didn’t mention I was sending out resumes. I was even dumbing my resume down. Somehow it seemed it’s not good to-

Gary Schneeberger:
I think you’re in a group of one on that front too. I think you’re in a group of one on that front too.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s not good to inflate it, but somehow dumbing it down, there might not have been any mention of launching $2.25 billion takeover. At one point my title was Proprietor, is what they called me. Proprietor, John Fairfax Limited, or Fairfax Media Holdings, whatever it was called post takeover. But eventually that sending out resumes got nowhere. Even though I knew I was analytical, I knew there were things I could do, strategic planning, marketing strategy, but I couldn’t get anywhere. So I went to a temp agency that found temporary jobs for financial analysts and accountants, and so they had me do something on Excel. Well, back in the day with my Chase Manhattan back days in New York, I was pretty good on Excel. And so-

Gary Schneeberger:
[inaudible 00:51:26] You could excel on Excel.

Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. “You do really good on Excel, you really got this stuff.” “Well, great.” So they found me a temporary job at Head Sports, which makes skis and tennis rackets, and I think it’s an Austrian company, and I believe somewhere in Europe. But their headquarters at the time was in Maryland, and so they needed help for a few months with some budget work and stuff. So, “Okay, I could do that.” And so that from there, then I pivoted to being able to get this job at this aviation services company. But at the time, it felt like a very small step. Here I am with a Harvard MBA and Oxford degree, and I’m going to this temp agency to find any kind of a job doing something using my skills. So it was very humbling, had to put my ego in check. But could I have possibly have known that first temp job for Head Sports, or even before that walking in the door of this temp agency would lead to Beyond the Crucible?
How could I possibly know? What’s the link? There are no logical links between that vision and the other like, “Oh. Well, I can see how getting that job at that temp agency gave you the skills to found Beyond the Crucible. That makes total sense.” No, it doesn’t make any sense at all, other than one step led to another, led to another, led to me becoming a coach. Now you’re beginning to see some more logical steps that led to Beyond the Crucible. But the key lesson for all of us is, what’s that next step? And it might be, “I need to get a job somewhere. I need to go to a temp agency.” It’s less about how good is that small step? But do something that you feel like is the next right step, even if you don’t quite know how that’s going to arrive at your dream job, your dream vision. Trust yourself. Trust the process. Trust your gut instinct. That I think is really critical, especially in those early days when you feel like you’re in the pit of despair.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Folks, I do this a lot with guests on the show who have gone through a crucible and then they’re the other side and they found their life in significance. I ask you to watch a clip or watch the show on YouTube, and just watch their faces as they talk about what they’re doing now. And you can see that the moving beyond their crucible is reflected in their visage. Watch the host who I’m talking to right here, as he talks about what he’s talked about. When he’s talking about the failure of the takeover, he’s not looking like the happiest guy in the room. But when he’s finishing up just now what he just said, he’s alive, he’s happy. He’s not just comfortable. He’s in his own skin doing his own thing, and that’s a beautiful thing to behold. He also is off-the-charts passionate about this subject, because you set a toe or two into the last question I’m going to ask. That’s one of the reasons I stopped you, because I didn’t want you to steal my last question.

Warwick Fairfax:
All good.

Gary Schneeberger:
Because you get too far off the charts of our run of show here. We’ve covered a lot of ground work. What’s the one takeaway that you would offer our listeners and viewers from this episode, because there’s a lot of good stuff here. Drill it down to one takeaway they can take with them.

Warwick Fairfax:
When you’ve been through a crucible, it’s easy to feel that your life is over. You might feel worthless. That might be because you feel like what you’ve done is reprehensible, maybe unforgivable. Or maybe you feel like what was done to you is reprehensible or unforgivable. Either way it’s very common when you’re in the pit of despair just to feel worthless, to feel like there’s no hope. You just want to hide. You just don’t want anybody to look at you or see you. You may feel that you have absolutely nothing to offer anyone. You just want to escape, you want nobody to see you. And you might have no real clue about what your future vision could be. You might be, as I was in a sense, not maybe so much in terms of putting a roof over the head and food on the table, but you might feel like you’re in survival mode.
It might be literally survival, or it may be emotionally, spiritually, you might feel just so down, just getting through the next day, getting through today feels like a Herculean achievement. So the key is really, and I touched on this, is to think about one small step. What one small step can I take? What’s interesting is many of the guests, if not most, that we’ve had on this podcast have had that motion, what one small step. And I’d say most if not all of the guests on this podcast have said to themselves or found that they can use the lessons they’ve learned from their crucible to help others, either help others avoid what they went through or help others who have been through what they’ve been through often. And one of the things we say on this podcast is, “Your crucible didn’t happen to you. It happened for you.”
That’s a key mindset. We talk about this a lot. How can this crucible have happened for you? What is the blessing that can come out of this crucible for others? You start asking yourself these profound questions, which you may not get answers to overnight. But, “What’s one small baby step that I can take to really helping this crucible help others? What’s the purpose amidst the pain?” to use that oft-used phrase. Because when you feel like, “I’m using what I went through to help others,” that fuels energy, momentum drops of grace that gives you energy to actually come out of the covers that gives you energy not to hide. So those small steps as you feel like, especially steps when you’re using what you’ve been through to help others. It might be just one person, a friend, a neighbor, a family member, a coworker. It’s absolutely huge.
So just think about that one small step, because that one small step can lead to another and another that eventually will lead you to a vision that you’re off-the-charts passionate about. One that truly leads to your unique life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. And I can tell you so much joy and gratitude comes when you’re using everything you are for some sacred calling that’s beyond yourself, that in some way helps others. Irrespective of the size of that vision, how others look at it. It just gives you immense joy and gratitude when you’re using what you’ve been through and everything that you are to help others. That’s a vision worth living for. That’s a vision that you will be off- the-charts passionate about. That’s a vision worth giving your life to.

Gary Schneeberger:
Folks, if you’re watching on YouTube, rewind the last minute or two of this conversation. If you need to wrap your arms around what off-the-charts passion looks like, you just saw Warwick do it. If you’re listening on a podcast app, you heard it. Rewind it and play it, that’s what it sounds like. And that’s a perfect place to end our conversation this week, Warwick. Folks, this is just the sixth actionable truth that we’ll be discussing in depth this year. Each month we’ll take a look at a new one, except next month. We will be back, as I said at the start, on September 23rd. We have a summer series coming up. You’ll like it. We’ll tell you more about it soon. But on September 23rd, we’ll pick back up and we’ll pick back up with our seventh actionable truth. And Scott, hopefully you’re still with us. You haven’t nodded off or Warwick and I bored you. I hope that didn’t happen, but I’m going to need maybe a louder drum than usual, because it has to hold folks until September.
But give me a drum roll and I’ll reveal what we’re going to talk about next time on September 23rd. Bravo, well done. We will talk about in depth what Warwick mentioned a bit today, and that is fellow travelers on September 23rd. So until the next time we’re together, folks, please remember this. We want you to believe the truths that we talk about. But just as importantly, if not a tick, more importantly, we want you to act on them, because that’s what’s going to help you move along the roadmap from trial to triumph. And we will see you next week.
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