Applying the Actionable Truths 7: Fellow Travelers

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.
So what I realized later, that I didn’t focus enough on hiring people who I trusted and had integrity, and I didn’t focus enough on making sure there were no hidden agendas and that we’re truly on the same page.

Gary Schneeberger:
People you can trust who don’t have hidden agendas, who are on the same page truly as you are, that’s who you need to look for when building a team of fellow travelers, which is what we discussed this week on the seventh episode of our series within the show on the Beyond the Crucible roadmap.
How do you find them? You can learn a lot from Frodo’s companions in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. And this is an episode that it’s been a while, Warwick, since we’ve done an episode like this, so I’m excited to get back to talking about this. And this is our Beyond the Crucible roadmap where we unpack the actionable truths of the brand. It will level set me and Warwick to talk about it, because it’s been a while since we’ve done it, and we’ll explain why.
So this is our refreshed way. It’s not entirely new, but it is refreshed. It is laser focused of how we help you get from your worst day to your greatest opportunity. And it’s what we’ve come to call, as I’ve said, our Beyond the Crucible roadmap. We describe it this way, and I’m going to read directly from the paper I have in front of me here, and that is, “This is how we help people turn their worst day into their greatest opportunity. We provide the essential actionable truths to inspire, hope, enable, and equip them to write their own life affirming story. The roadmap has been built from our proprietary statistically valid research into how people experience crucibles, and what we’ve learned from our experience and the experiences of our podcast guests for what it takes to turn trial into triumph, what it takes to move beyond those crucibles.”
And the most revolutionary news for us in all of this process is that in analyzing the roadmap, we identified what we’re calling the actionable truths of the brand. To pass these life-changing truths along to you, our listeners and viewers this year, we have been doing something since the start of the year, another one of these things that we call, The Series Within the Show. So we have been spending 2025, and we’re going to continue spending 2025 going through each of these 10 actionable truths, one per month, and exploring ways that they can help you make your way along the roadmap.
So Warwick, it’s been a minute, as they say, since we’ve been here on these actionable truths, and that’s because we took some time off from this part of the show to do our summer series, Big Screen, Big Crucibles. But we’re back now to finish our exploration of these actionable truths for the rest of 2025. And as I do in every one of these episodes, I want to ask you a couple questions up front. First one is this, to level set us for our discussion, on the seventh of these truths, let me ask you, why actionable truths? Why that phrase? What do we mean by that?

Warwick Fairfax:
So Beyond the Crucible, our focus is on helping people get beyond their worst day, which we often call the bottom of the pit, to a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. And so what we have now is what we’re calling Beyond the Crucible roadmap, how you go from trial your crucible to triumph for a life of significance. We’ve found that there are 10 actionable truths that are catalysts in helping you move along the journey from your worst day to where you’re living your life-affirming vision. In other words, you’re triumphing and living a life of significance.
So it’s interesting, these actionable truths have always been implicit in the brand. They’re actually chapters in the book, Crucible Leadership. We’ve now crystallized them as actionable truths that really point the way to going from your worst day to a life and significance.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And I’ve never really thought about it as deeply as I have thought about it since we’ve come back to it now. We call this the Beyond the Crucible roadmap, because it truly is, it’s a map that takes you from your crucible to your life of significance. Those are the two ends that we’re going to be talking about, two ends of the actionable truths that we’re going to be talking about.
But explain, Warwick, to everybody, how these truths, these things that we’re going to talk about, how do they help you go from setback to significance? How do they help you along this roadmap that we’re talking about?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, Gary, these actionable truths we view as accelerators or enablers to help us go from a crucible or trial to a life of significance or where we’re triumphing. And I think you could make the case that without these actionable truths, you cannot go from trial to triumph. You’d be stuck in the pit of despair, your worst day. So you can think of them as fuel or I guess, what is it, nitrous oxide and Fast & Furious.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Yes. Yes.

Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, you can have the greatest turbocharged car you can imagine, but without fuel it’s going nowhere.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
And so these actionable truths, the fuel, their guideposts, way points, the kind of enablers for you to get out of your pit, your worst day, to where you’re feeling like you’re really triumphing and living a life of significance.

Gary Schneeberger:
And before we move on to the truth that we’re going to talk about today, which is Truth Number Seven, I want to make sure that we give folks a little bit of a refresher course, maybe give ourselves a little bit of a refresher course of where we’ve been, what have been the paths that we’ve walked along in this discussion. So this is Truth Number Seven. Can you quickly, for everybody, just run through one through six so we know how we got here, and then we can start talking about where we are now?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So when you’re in the pit in your worst day, the first thing is understanding your crucibles. We say that your crucible didn’t happen to you, it happened for you. Your worst day is not the end of the story, but the launching point for life giving you story. So it’s try to reframe your crucible saying, “Okay, this may have felt like the worst day of my life, but is there some way I can use this crucible to serve me instead of reframing it?”
And as part of that, you go to the next step, which is self-reflection. Reflecting on your crucible can reveal important insights about yourself, your strengths, weaknesses, even vulnerabilities that you can use to forgive yourself, forgive others, and bounce forward. So self-reflection is critical, reflecting on what happened, why did it happen, what mistakes did I make, what can I learn from what happened to me? Self-reflection done right, can be a powerful tool to enable us to move forward. And then we get to the third step, which is authenticity. To move beyond your crucible, you must embrace your authentic self. And it’s time to be true to who you really are, not who others want you to be.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s often easy to hide behind a mask of inauthenticity to be who you’re not. And so part of having courage to bounce back from your worst day is saying, “I’m going to be who I am. I’m not going to put on a mask. I’m not going to try to be who others want me to be. I’m going to be me.” And then another key factor, step number four is faith. Believing in something beyond yourself that serves as the immovable anchor for your soul, no matter what’s happening around you. Now, faith may mean different things to different people. For me and indeed for Gary, it’s our faith in Christ, but it might be faith in God in a more general sense or some other philosophical construct, but whatever it is, I think we’re all people that are grounded in a belief system of some sort.
So you’ve got to dig down deep and to say to yourself or ask yourself, “What is it that I believe? How do I feel like the world is formed? What do I feel are my deepest, most innermost convictions?” To be able to move forward beyond your crucible, you really got to know what is it you believe. So that step is critical.
And then we get to the next step, step five, character. And we define character as how you live out your faith in the real world. Character is your belief system and action. So it’s fine to say you have certain belief systems, but it’s not very helpful or meaningful if you don’t live them out. None of this will be perfect, but day-to-day on average, how is it that you’re living your belief system out? How does it work itself out in your world?
And then the next step, step six, is vision. And we call that a sacred calling that summons you to a mission beyond yourself. No matter what the size of your vision, it has meaning and matters. I’d say pretty much every guest we’ve had on the podcast are people of vision, and I’d say very often that vision has come out of their worst day. They’re crucible. And so when we say that your worst day didn’t happen to you, it happened for you, the for is often having a vision to help people that maybe suffered the crucibles you suffered, or maybe to help them avoid what you went through, to learn the lessons, to make lives easier for others.
So vision is also a critical component of moving beyond your crucible, because when you get up in the morning and you’re thinking, okay, why am I getting up? As Margie Warrell says, when she talks about courage, she uses this phrase, for the sake of what? Which I think is an incredible phrase.
And so in our construct, I’d say, so to get out of bed in the morning for the sake of what? Why? What’s the point? Vision gives you a reason to get out of bed, because I’ve got people I want to help. I’ve got a difference I want to make I want to impact the world. So vision is another critical step in moving beyond your crucible.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it’s interesting, it’s funny that I tapped into this idea of it’s a roadmap, because what you just ran through, the six steps that we’ve gone so far, and we’re going to go to step seven today, is like being on the highway and you see the road sign on the side of the road that says, “I’m in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I’m driving to Annapolis, Maryland.” And it says 987 miles or whatever it is. That’s the start. That’s your crucible. You got a long way to go.
But as you get closer to your destination on the highway, it gets closer. The miles start coming down. And I think that’s what happens as we go through this road map and these actionable truths, each one brings us a little bit closer to our final destination. That’s fair, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. And life is never easy, but in some sense it does make life easier in that one of the hardest things to deal with is when you have a sense of depression, melancholy, and obviously there’s clinical depression, but there’s degrees of feeling down. If you feel down in a sense of, what’s the point, and there’s no hope, it’s really hard to keep moving forward. But when you feel like there’s hope, you feel like you have a vision, you know what you believe, you’re living out what you believe to the best degree possible, then there’s a sense of hope, there’s a sense of excitement as you get up in the morning.
And as you go to sleep in the evening, you start to feel gratitude. “Gosh, that wasn’t an easy day, but it was a good day. I made progress.” Even if it was a small baby step, I made progress. Maybe it had a small impact on one person. Maybe it was your spouse, partner, your kids, parents, friends. It’s like, “Well, I think I did something right today. Maybe I did a few things wrong, but there was at least something I got right.” And it gives you hope to keep moving forward. So yeah, these steps are very helpful. They give you hope. Life’s about hope. Hope will fuel you to really get beyond your crucible and to live your best life, to live a life of significance.

Gary Schneeberger:
Well, and speaking of hope and help to live your best life, to get to a life of significance, our actionable truth today that we’re going to unpack is fellow travelers. It’s a favorite phrase of Warwick’s to talk about, and he’ll explain why, what they are and why it’s a favorite phrase of his, but it’s the first step, this step seven, this actionable truth seven is the first step in following out the vision that he talked about from step six, from actionable truth six of vision, the first step in pursuing that vision is in putting together a team of what Warwick has called fellow travelers.
So Warwick, how would you define, for our listeners and viewers, fellow travelers, and why are they critical? Why are they a critical seven step after a crucible to begin the journey of recovering from a crucible? Or I should say not begin, but continue the journey, because now we’re getting down the road, to use my analogy, why are they critical, fellow travelers, to overcoming a crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s great to have the elements of a vision, but to fully flesh that vision out, we’re going to need help. And we’ll also need help to begin to make that vision a reality. So we’ve coined this phrase for people that come alongside us, fellow travelers, and there are different types. We say that fellow travelers can provide words of encouragement or advice, and that’s critical. And there are also fellow travelers that might be members of our team and our organization or mission, irrespective of how big or small that may be in terms of numbers of people.
So bouncing back from our worst to our crucible, it’s not easy. And to live a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others is also not easy. But one of the decisions we have to make is, do we want help? And often in the days and months after our worst day, when in the pit of despair, we feel like this leper, to coin that biblical phrase. And it’s like, “Leave me alone.” You’re in your room. You’re in your apartment or house. People ring the doorbell. You don’t answer. They call you. You don’t answer. You just don’t want to see anybody. You feel so bad about yourself, either because of what you’ve done or what was done to you. You just feel like you’re either not worthy of help or nobody can help you, or, “I’ll figure it out myself.” There can be a variety of different reactions depending on who we are in the circumstances.
But you’ve got to make a decision that we all need help. We cannot live life alone. And so we’re going to need help in those days and months after the crucible. People who can console us, encourage us, just to help us get out of bed in the morning. And once we begin to have the elements of a vision, we’re also going to need help from other people. So it’ll be critical in having people to help us frame out the vision. We might have a kernel, an ember of a vision, but other people will help mold that vision into something bigger. And these other fellow travelers, they will probably have gifts and abilities that we don’t have that will help make our vision a reality.
So fellow travelers, it’s really critical. I think it’s hard to believe that you can truly get from your worst day to a life of significance without help, without fellow travelers. Life is not meant to be lived alone. And that is certainly true in terms of getting out of your worst day. You’ve got to have help, and they come in different forms, whether it’s encouraging, consoling, helping you build your vision. You got to be willing to say, “I can’t do it all. I do need help.” That doesn’t make me weak. I’d say the strong person asks for help. The weak person says, “I can do it all and I don’t need help.” So be the strong, courageous person and say, “I know I can’t do it all. I need help.” And be willing to let others help, because you may well find there are people who have been dying to help you if only you would let them in, if only you would say yes.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And this is the point in every one of these episodes where I pull out my favorite dictionary, which I call Webster’s 1828, the very first dictionary of Noah Webster. And as you might expect, folks, Noah Webster does not have a definition for the phrase, fellow travelers. What he does have in this 1828 dictionary is fellow commoners, fellow prisoners, fellow peers, fellow… There’s a lot of fellow things that he has in here. But the one that I think sticks out for me that speaks to this idea of fellow travelers, is fellow helper. That’s one of the definitions here.
And it’s one who conquers or aids in the same business, one who conquers or aids in the same business. That really seems to speak to what you’re talking about, right? You’re aiding someone and you’re pursuing the same business/vision that they’re pursuing, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. We definitely want to succeed in our vision. We want to conquer, but if we’re smart, we’ll want people to help aid us in the making of that vision, and the making of that vision a reality. We don’t get to conquer without help. We do need people to aid us. It’s just fundamentally true.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. All right. So now there are three stages in our research, and our research is both qualitative and quantitative. Three stages that our research have shown us people experience in this section of the roadmap. The first one is experimenting with new conditions (trials, and first failures.) So how do fellow travelers work? Help us, as we go through this stage.

Warwick Fairfax:
So we might have the kernel of a vision, but it can be overwhelming to bring that vision a reality, or even just to figure it out. It’s like, “Well, I have an idea, but gosh, what does that mean and who would I serve and what does that really look like?” Maybe it’s like a painting. You’ve got a few rough pencil marks on a canvas, and there’s a vague idea of what it is, but it’s not a fully fleshed out painting with colors and trees and landscape and water, is just a few pencil sketches. So fellow travelers can help us flesh out the vision.
And one of the ways that they help us do that is, you take small tests, small trials, test markers as they say, and product marketing. Because that way you see if it has legs. And you might find, gosh, I was thinking about this year for the vision or maybe this market or this range of people that could be served, but I never thought about these other people or this other way of doing it.
So test marketing or just trialing a vision could be very helpful. Well, we need fellow travelers to both help us flesh out the vision, help us figure out how to trial it. And these small steps and experiments, as I mentioned, they can help refine the vision to one that has a much greater chance of success. So experimenting, being willing to trial with a vision’s critical, and you’ve got to have help doing that. You’ve got to have people on your team. You might have other companies, other nonprofits who will be happy to help you or partner with you, maybe doing different things. So you’ve got to be willing to partner with people both within your organization and your team and outside.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. The second area that our research tells us people go through as they’re proceeding through the roadmap is growth and new skills hat’s preparing for major change. What are the benefits of fellow travelers in this part of the roadmap?

Warwick Fairfax:
So fleshing out our vision is one thing, but we need to know what skills and capabilities we need on our team. And one way of doing that is having fellow travelers that can help us understand what are our skills. Maybe we have skills that we don’t recognize.
Maybe we think we have skills in areas that we really don’t. Hopefully they can lovelingly tell us, “You’re really good at this area that you don’t realize and you’re not so good at this area that you think you’re pretty hot stuff. So sorry about that.” A little dose of reality can be helpful.
But secondly, if we’re smart, we’ll have people around us that will have skills and abilities that we don’t have that can compliment us, that will help take the vision to a whole new level. So we need fellow travelers who are objective, who can have skills and abilities that we don’t have, and who can really compliment the skills and abilities that we have.

Gary Schneeberger:
So folks, I want you to remember what Warrick has talked about in these first two areas, because later on, here’s a teaser alert. I haven’t told you what I’m going to talk about yet either, Warrick. I have a pretty good example of a very popular story we all know in which fellow travelers are essential to it. So put a pin in this and we’ll come back to that.
The third stage here, Warwick, is preparing for big change. That’s also grand trial revelation and insight. Let’s talk a little bit about how fellow travelers help us at this part of the roadmap.

Warwick Fairfax:
So as our vision and organization, it grows and expand, the type of help we may need may change. And so we need fellow travelers who can advise us. Okay, maybe we started with a ten-person nonprofit or company, maybe we’re now at 100 or 150. So what do we do now? We need advice. And that advice can be internal, it can be external, and it may be that our role within that organization may change.
We may find, depending on the size of the organization, that we need to bring in somebody from the outside to be a general manager or CEO, or maybe just somebody to help with the books, or maybe we’re a visionary, but we’re not too great about keeping the trains running on time. Somebody that can just perform some executive role of making sure that things get done when they should be done. So there’s different levels of help, depending on where you are in the size of your organization. And you might find that if the organization grows to a certain level, that maybe the contribution you’re bringing was great, but maybe there’s somebody else that could take the vision to the next level. Maybe somebody else needs to be CEO. Maybe somebody else needs to take control of the whole organization, be it nonprofit or for-profit.
You’ve got to be willing to hand the reins of it, because if the whole idea is to help people, be it for-profit or nonprofit, again, back to what Margie Warrell says, “For the sake of what?” If it’s truly about for the sake of impacting the world in some sense, then it should not be about us. You’ve got to separate your identity from the mission, from the organization. So you’ve always got to be willing to say, “Well, this isn’t about me.” And if it’s not about me, if somebody else can do a better job, because it’s at a level where I can’t do it, or maybe other things have come up in life that have impacted your ability to be as involved as you’d like to, you’ve got to be willing to hand over to other people who maybe they were your fellow travelers and maybe they’ll be leading it one day. So yeah, you always need help and you’ve got to be willing to have your fellow travelers give you advice, and it’s not always easy.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it’s interesting, because when we were developing these, there were some that got close to making the cut for actionable truths, but didn’t. And humility is a big one of that. What you’re talking about right there is humility. It’s critically important to bouncing back from a crucible. It’s critically important to walking out your life as significance. It’s not technically an actionable truth, but it’s absolutely wound in what you just talked about, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. I mean, if you want the best and the brightest, if you will, to be your fellow travelers, humility will help. If you’re arrogant, “Hey, I know everything. I don’t need help.” That will pretty much ensure that you won’t get the right kind of fellow travelers. What you don’t want is people signing up for a paycheck saying, “I’m going to be a yes man, a yes woman. Whatever you want to hear, boss, you tell me.” Gosh, what you just said, that vision, that idea, it was just genius. It was just brilliant, fabulous. I mean, I just don’t really think you need that. So we want people that will tell us the truth. So humility is critical.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. So I won’t say here, that is the most insightful comments you’ve ever made on the podcast. I won’t do that.

Warwick Fairfax:
Thank you.

Gary Schneeberger:
Good. Good. I’m glad. Now we’re going to switch, and this is a good time to switch to this part. It’s my favorite part of these episodes, folks, and that’s where we talk about who I like to call Patient Zero, because he’s the founder of Beyond the Crucible, and that’s our host, Warwick Fairfax.
And just to talk about Warwick, about how he, in his journey from his setback to his life of significance, how he walked through whatever actionable truth we’re talking about, and today that is on fellow travelers. So Warwick, talk a bit then about your experience with fellow travelers, especially during the takeover. The takeover, as we say.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I mean, I think many of you who’ve been listening and watching the podcast know a bit about my background, but I grew up in a large family media business in Australia. It had newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations. When I was growing up it was a massive organization, a $700 million 4,000 plus employee company. In 1987 after graduating from Harvard Business School, my father died early that year, and I launched a 2.25 billion takeover at the family company. I felt like the company was straying from the vision of the founder, my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, and wasn’t being well managed.
And so to launch this takeover and then manage the company, I knew I needed help, because when I launched this takeover, believe it or not, I was 26 years old. I made a lot of mistakes, but I wasn’t stupid enough to say at 26, “I got this. I don’t need any advisors. I know everything about finance and takeover law and managing large companies, and yeah, I’m good.” I mean, so sometimes the task is so massive that it’s really hard to tell yourself you don’t need help.

Gary Schneeberger:
And that’s even with a degree from Harvard Business School, you still had that realization. So that says something.

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, hopefully, I suppose. But unfortunately, I made a lot of mistakes and I didn’t bring on the right kind of fellow travelers. So early on, in the months leading after the takeover, we had advice from a blue-chip merchant bank, which is a straight, in English-speak, for investment bank. And they said, “You know what, Warwick, the numbers don’t add up. It’s too risky. I know you’re worried about hostile takeovers from corporate raiders and what have you, but if and when there’s a hostile takeover, then gather the family round and it’ll be easier.”
Well, I didn’t want to hear that advice, because it wasn’t just, I was afraid of corporate raiders. I just felt like, as I said, the company was straying from the vision of the founder and it wasn’t being well-run. So then I basically went to other advisors, I think of the last of the three Indiana Jones movies, at least the first three, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Harrison Ford who plays, as we all know, Indiana Jones. He’s trying to find the Holy Grail and his dad’s injured. And so there’s two cups, one’s all gold and the other is wooden. And so one cup might heal, his dad has been hurt, and the other cup will kill you basically.
And so if you don’t choose well as some old might says, “You have chosen poorly.” And if you choose well it says, “You have chosen well.” In this case, I chose poorly. And so basically I ended up choosing advisors that had done some very large takeovers, but of questionable ethics, I guess you would say. And I wasn’t really focused on that. I was focused on, well, they’ve done these huge deals. So I really chose poorly. I thought that, well, they’re getting a significant fee. If everything goes well, then our interest will align, and they seem to be experts. And I just really made some poor decisions. And I guess really to crystallize it, I guess my biggest mistake was thinking that the most important thing when you hire people, is hire people with expertise.
That doesn’t mean hire people who are clueless and who are idiots. I’m not advocating that. But just to say, all I need to do is hire the experts, hire people with expertise, that’s the only criteria I need, or even that that’s the most important criteria. No. So what I realized later that I didn’t focus enough on hiring people who I trusted and had integrity, and I didn’t focus enough on making sure there were no hidden agendas and that we’re truly on the same page.
The more money, the more that there’s a possibility, if not probability, that there could be hidden agendas. Nothing like money and power to motivate people to think in ways that may be not aligned with the organization or aligned with your goals or to have their own things they want to accomplish. That will tend to happen. So the more important that the mission is, to a degree, the bigger it is, but certainly the more important it is, the more impact and notoriety it can have. Then it’s always important to work with people you trust and have integrity, but that trust and integrity will be tested severely the bigger the organization is, and certainly the bigger impact it can have. So people’s own agendas and temptations can come along.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And here’s the great thing about it, Warwick, and I know it’s hard after you’ve gone through that to think there’s any great thing about it, but here’s the great thing about it, because we talk about this all the time at Beyond the Crucible, and that is, what happened there did not happen to you. You realized it happened for you. And the next question I want to ask you is,
What’s your experience been with fellow travelers since then, especially with Beyond the Crucible? And I think what you’re going to describe is, you learned some lessons from the first round of fellow travelers, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Indeed. So after we had to file for bankruptcy three years later in 1990, I moved to the U.S. where my wife is from, and I was not in a good place. I was not clinically depressed, but I was like, “How could I been so dumb? I had a Harvard MBA.” So what I didn’t mention is that I graduated from Oxford University, and then did three years on Wall Street before I got my MBA from Harvard Business School. And I was just merciless with myself. I was like, “Gosh, I’m meant to be somewhat intelligent, how could I been so dumb? How could I made so many bad decisions and false assumptions like other members of my family who are involved in the family business that they wouldn’t sell out into a takeover to a privatized company, controlled by me, who was 26.” I mean, just a cataclysmically poor decision, using the wrong advisors.
So I was merciless with myself. My go-to psyche is, when things go wrong, I tend to blame myself, not other people. That was not an easy period in my life. I did have my wife, obviously the ultimate fellow traveler, wife, husband, or spouse. She was very helpful. It wasn’t easy to help me in those days. I did have people of faith who came alongside me and prayed for me and tried to help. And gradually, I did move forward and I did begin to find the right kind of fellow travelers, and I found them in different places and different stages of my journey back from my worst day to ultimately getting beyond my crucible to living a life of significance. So in 2003, I began my journey to becoming a Certified International Coach Federation coach. I had fellow travelers who came alongside me in that journey, including a mentor coach, which is best practice as you’re trying to figure out what it means to be a coach, how to do it well, have a coaching business.
Then I became a board member at my kid’s school, a Christian school, Annapolis Area Christian School. And there were really great board members, and I became great friends with many of them, including the board president. And that was wonderful to lock arms together and really helping Annapolis Area Christian School prosper and move forward. And I also became an elder at my church, an evangelical non-denominational church area community church. And that’s been an incredible joy as we try to serve people in Annapolis, Maryland, as well as around the world we have global partners all over the world, which is just incredible what the church has done. In both those organizations, Annapolis Area Christian School and Berry Community Church, I’ve been able to lock arms with fellow travelers who have a common heart and a common vision, who have expertise, but they have integrity. I trust them.
It’s been an incredible joy. And now with Beyond the Crucible, I have a great team. They definitely have expertise, but they have more than expertise. They’re a great team of fellow travelers. First of all, I trust them. They have integrity. They don’t tell me what I want to hear. They tell me what they believe is true and what I don’t always want to hear. It’s not just, “Oh, yes, Warwick, that was great. And so, “Gee, Warwick, tell me what advice you want me to tell you, and I will tell you that. It just helps me to have the script in advance. You just tell me what you want me to say, and I’ll say it to you,” you know?

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
They’re not like that, and they definitely don’t have the skills and the abilities that I don’t have. And what I find is an incredible blessing is that they’re 100% committed to the vision of Beyond the Crucible.
What’s amazing is, this whole podcast and blog and everything we do at Beyond the Crucible, it grew out of a book I wrote in 2022, I believe, Crucible Leadership. And the team we have is 100% committed to that vision. It grew out of that book and my life experience with growing up within a large family media business and finding my way back. So it’s just amazing that they’re really 100% committed to it. So I feel like it’s not just my vision, I truly believe it’s our vision. And I think that the team that we have, they feel the same way. It’s incredible.
So having people on the team that I trust and have integrity that have different skills, they’ll speak their truth and not always what I want to hear. I mean, it’s a very, very different group of fellow travelers than before. I’m not thinking about, “Oh, I wonder what hidden agendas they have.”

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
I never think that, because to my knowledge, they don’t have hidden agendas. I’ve seen no indications of it. They’re all about what can we do to help Beyond the Crucible flourish, and help more people get beyond their worst day to lead lives of significance. They’re all about that, which is an incredible blessing.

Gary Schneeberger:
Talking about the right kind of fellow travelers as you just did, got me thinking about something that we talk about at least every summer here on the show, and that’s movies. And what is a great, I mean, it’s a platinum example of finding the right fellow travelers and the value of them, and I’m just going to run through it quickly. It’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is all about fellow travelers. I’m going to give you just a few examples of what that looks like. So in the Fellowship of the Ring at the Council of Elrond in Rivendell, Frodo bravely volunteers to take the one ring to Mordor. Gandalf immediately steps forward and places a hand on Frodo’s shoulder and says this, “I will help you bear this burden, Frodo Baggins, as long as it is yours to bear.” That’s a fellow traveler.
Here’s another one from the same film series. It’s also at the Council of Elrond in Rivendell. And after Frodo agrees to carry the ring, Aragorn stands and pledges himself to Frodo’s protection. He says this, “If by life or death I can protect you, I will. You have my sword.” It gives me chills to read stuff like that about fellow travelers.
Here’s just one more of Frodo’s fellow travelers, and that’s Samwise Gamgee, his buddy who’s with him throughout the whole series of films, all three films. In the Fellowship of the Ring, at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo tries to depart without his fellow travelers to go alone across a river, because he’s just worried about the power of the ring, corrupting his friends. Despite not being able to swim, Sam wades in after Frodo’s boat and nearly drowns. And this is what he says to Sam after he gets there to talk to him, “I made a promise, Mr. Frodo, a promise. ‘Don’t you leave him, Samwise Gamgee.’ And I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to.”
I can’t think of a better example in the fictional realm of fellow travelers all throughout all three films in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It’s such a good example. I mean, if ever there’s somebody that needs help, it’s Frodo. He’s a hobbit. He’s not of large stature. He is not particularly strong. He is the least likely to be a hero in some adventure, but he has a true heart, which is really his super power. And to have Gandalf, Aragorn, and Samwise wanting to be his fellow travelers, is amazing. They see something in him, just his heart, the purity of his heart, and they all want to help him.
And there’s no way that Frodo could have accomplished what he did without help. You need fellow travelers. They clearly had skills that he did not have, and he had things that they didn’t have. He had this purity of heart. None of the others could be anywhere close to the ring, because it would just corrupt their souls. And they recognize that. So each of them had a role to play. But it’s a great example of we need fellow travelers. Frodo did, and we do too.

Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed. We’ve covered a lot of ground here, Warwick. As I always do at the end of these episodes on the Actionable Truths, what’s the one key takeaway that you’d like to leave listeners and viewers with as we wrap this episode today?

Warwick Fairfax:
So in picking fellow travelers, expertise can be overrated. Doesn’t mean it’s not important, but when you pick fellow travelers, that should not be the first thing you’re thinking of. And that sounds very counterintuitive. Surely the first thing you should be thinking of is, okay, what do they have to offer? What’s their expertise? No. The first thing you should be thinking of is, can I trust them? Do they have integrity? Are they going to tell me what I want to hear, or what I need to hear? Where can I see evidence in their lives and their past organizations and their family with their kids, however it works. Where can I see evidence that I can trust them, that they have integrity? That’s absolutely critical.
And of course, you want people who are experts in their field, and you want to make sure that they have skills and abilities that you don’t have, and you absolutely want them to be 100% committed to the vision, that’s critical. But picking the right fellow travelers, it all starts with trust. Can you trust them? Do they have integrity?

Gary Schneeberger:
I don’t say it often in these episodes, but I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word’s been spoken at a subject, and our host, Warwick Fairfax, just spoke it. This is, folks, the seventh actionable truth we will be discussing in depth this year.
Each month we’ll take a look at a new one and how it is connected to the previous one, to build out the roadmap. And next time we will be discussing, come on, let’s have a drum roll, Scott. Thank you. We’ll be discussing perseverance.
So until the next time we’re together, folks, please remember this; we want you to believe these truths that we talk about, but we also want you to act on them, because that’s what’s going to help you along the roadmap from trial to triumph. We’ll see you next week.
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