A new day. The sun will come up. Hope. Things will get better. These are beliefs and emotions we all long to experience when we’ve been through a crucible. It’s not easy to get there, but in this episode we aim to help you move in that direction. Warwick discusses in detail his new blog at BeyondTheCrucible.com about the four things he wishes he’d known when he went through his darkest time … to help you get through yours.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible. It would've been helpful if somebody had told me or if I'd read somewhere, grieving is a natural part of the process. Yes, the grief won't completely go away, but it'll become more manageable. There'll be a scar rather than an open wound. This whole aphorism, this too shall pass. There will be a new day. The sun will come up. I know it may be hard to believe. And that wouldn't have just stopped all the pain instantly, but it would've given me some hope that this is part of the process, that things will get better.




Gary Schneeberger:

A new day. The sun will come up. Hope. Things will get better. Those are beliefs and emotions we all want to experience when we've been through a crucible. It's not easy to get there, as you just heard Warwick say, but keep listening. He's about to guide you through the four things he wishes he'd known when he went through his darkest time to help you get through yours.

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Warwick and I talked this week about his latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com, in which he unpacks all four of those points. You'll learn that it's okay to give yourself permission to grieve, that feeling broken doesn't mean you're worthless, that you are not defined by your worst day, and that a small step can be a defining moment in your life of significance. The upshot of it all, the bottom of the pit where so many of us find ourselves after setback and failure find us, does not have to be our permanent address.

That blog at beyondthecrucible.com is, and we just titled this, this is very exciting, this is hot off the presses, as two old newspaper guys, we can say that, Warwick, Four Things I Wish I Knew in my Darkest Time. If you've listened to the show for any period of time at all that Warwick has had indeed, a dark time, some time darker than others. The takeover that didn't work out of his family media company. We'll talk about that. But we'll talk about, more importantly than the details, we have to set the details of what that trial was, but then we'll talk about how he found his way to triumph. And that's those four points that he wishes he knew when he was in that dark moment, Warwick. So let's just level set for folks, what was that dark moment? I know you love to relive this all the time.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, it's kind of like that movie, what was it, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. And I don't know if it's a late '80s, early '90s movie. And yeah, he relives the same day over and over again. If you haven't seen it, it's very funny. So we're going to be doing a version of Groundhog Day here.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. But the non-comedic version of Groundhog Day.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't funny. Yeah. Not when you're living through your own crucible. So basically just to give folks a bit of a picture of what the darkest time was, the backdrop to it was the 1987 $2.25 billion takeover of my family's 150 year old media business, founded by John Fairfax. Strong person of faith. Became a massive company with newspapers, TV, magazines, radio. As we'll get into, I prepared my whole life to be in this business. And as I was coming back from Harvard Business School in '87, my dad died earlier that year. He was in his 80s at the time. I was from his third marriage. That precipitated some instability in the stock market. Stock market price rose. Company thought the company was in play. I, like my parents, thought the company was not being well managed and wasn't being run along the ideals of the founder.

So when my youthful naivety, a few months after graduating from business school, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover. Things pretty much went wrong right from the start. Other family members sold out. They didn't really believe in me and my vision. Didn't want to be in a company controlled by a 26 year old. October '87, stock market crash hurt our asset sales. Three years later, Australia gets in a big recession. And newspapers are very cyclical. And so in late 1990, December 1990, the company had to file for bankruptcy. So that, believe it or not, is a very brief Cliff Notes version of what happened.




Gary Schneeberger:

I love, not in the sense of this makes me happy, but I love the way that you expressed all of this in the blog that we're talking about that's at beyondthecrucible.com. You end one paragraph by saying, "I was not in a good place." You just described that. I was not in a good place. You begin the next paragraph, and in fact set this one sentence aside in its own paragraph, "I was in the pit of despair." So pit of despair is not a drive-by term. That's a deeply felt term. Why did it feel like, why was it a pit of despair that you found yourself in after the takeover failed?




Warwick Fairfax:

It's funny, some people might think, oh, it's the money, right? $2.25 billion failure. That's a lot of money. It really wasn't - that wasn't the key issue. It was I felt like I'd let my parents down, my father down, who had died a few years earlier, as I mentioned, in 1987. I felt like I'd caused rifts within the family. Now, they might have sold out at the height of the takeover and got lots of money for selling their shares. But their perspective would be, yeah, but we sold because you forced us to sell. You gave us no option. And so yes, they had money, but their position would be, well, you gave us no choice. So it caused rifts in the family.

It caused fear, if you will, just uncertainty, amongst the 4,000 plus employees. They were used to working for the Fairfax family. They felt safe. They felt like we weren't going to be favoring one party versus another, one political party. They felt like John Fairfax Ltd., the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Financial Review, those are papers they were proud to work with. And so they felt like, after the company had to file for bankruptcy, who's going to own us now? Is it going to be editorial independence? What about our jobs? I mean, it caused tremendous uncertainty, and understandably.

I felt like my whole point of doing the takeover, as I mentioned, was to bring the company back to the ideals of the founder, have it be well managed. And basically what I did helped cause the company leaving family hands. I felt like I let my great-great-grandfather down. And in a sense, if all that, it's almost like a sales line, and wait, there's more. You think that's bad enough, it gets worse.

So the hardest thing for me was I was a person of faith, which happened at a evangelical Anglican church at Oxford. But the founder of the company, John Fairfax, was also a person of faith. So in my misguided naivety and theology, I thought, oh, I know what God's plan is, to resurrect the company in the image of the founder. Therefore, I let God down. Note to listeners, anytime you think you're pretty certain of what God's plan is, that tends to be a recipe for disaster because that's not always the easiest thing to discern.

So it was awful. I mean, my whole life I'd prepared myself to go into this company, undergrad degree at Oxford, like my dad and some other relatives, worked on Wall Street, MBA from Harvard Business School. My whole life, I'd prepared myself to do it. And so I was at a point where, well, what do I do now? I've failed in my purpose for being, I've failed in my purpose for living. What now? What kind of legacy? What kind of impact can I possibly have that's even close to that? So that's why this was so crushing. I let my family down, employees, God down. Yeah, it was just mind numbingly crushing. That's what led me into the pit of the despair. My reason for being on this Earth has gone. There was a plan for my life, and I just obliterated and destroyed it. So yeah, you almost think, well, what's the purpose of even asking the question what's now? Sort of a bit irrelevant, right? It's just - I was just really in the pit of despair without seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.




Gary Schneeberger:

But in the context of this show, my job is to ask another question, so we're all good. In all seriousness, let's sort of back away a little bit from sort of flogging your situation, talking about your situation, and pivot into what the blog talks about. But before we get there, one of the things that's important to understand is that what you've just described, very painful, it's your unique circumstances. But one of the things we say all the time on the show is even though your circumstances of your crucible are different, the emotions are the same. And people who've been on the show had the same kinds of emotions. They've talked about a pit of despair. They've been in that place.

And in fact, one of the things we've done at Beyond the Crucible is commissioned a study in which we surveyed now more than 11,000 people who, of those 11,000 people, 72% have said they have gone through an experience that was so devastating that it changed the trajectory of their lives. Of that group of people, 40% right now are saying that that's still holding them back in some way. These are the folks, Warwick, that you've dedicated Beyond the Crucible to, to help them move beyond their worst day, go from tragedy to triumph. And really when we talk in this blog that you wrote, Four Things I, Warwick Fairfax, Wish I Knew in My Darkest Time, you're extending that to all of our listeners who are in that 72% of people who've had crucibles, that 40% still being held back by them. This is not just your story that you're telling in this blog.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. And that's one of the crazy things is that, all the way back to 2008 when I, as listeners know, gave that talk in church about my story, and I'm thinking how could anybody identify with a kind of former media mogul, if you will, and his challenges? But so many people came up to me in the weeks and months after and said, "Your story was so helpful." And it took me while to understand, well, how could that be?

And I think the answer is part of the human condition is challenges, is tragedy, for some even trauma, more than we would think. And so with over, I don't know, 150 plus podcast episodes, we've had stories of physical challenges. Men and women have become quadriplegics or paraplegics. Victims of abuse, abandonment, business failure, loss of loved ones, divorce. And the crucibles may be different, but that sense of being at the bottom of the pit and feeling like there's no hope and how do I get out of it?

We chatted to a guest just recently, Adam Vibe Gunton. One of the things he said is he suffered from substance abuse. At the bottom of the pit, he felt like it was a bottomless pit. He couldn't see the bottom. He just kept falling and falling. I mean, it's just a horrific thought. It's nice to, okay, at least if you're at the bottom, it may be dark, but at least you have the hope that it can't get worse. But not in his case. That sense of tragedy, my life's over, what do I do now? How can I even think of just getting out of bed in the morning? There's so many people we've had on the podcast, very different stories, but as you often say, the emotions are very similar.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. And the blog that we're talking about at beyondthecrucible.com, the blog addresses four specific ways to meet those emotions. As those emotions are roiling around in the head and the heart and the spirit of those who've been through crucibles just like you, I mean, we posed the question, your team posed the question to you, Warwick, what are three or four things you wish you had known when you were going through your crucible experience? Your dark time. Almost called it Your Darkest Hour, but that's too Churchillian for us. So we didn't go there.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, there's a recent movie, I think, called My Darkest Hour or something involving Churchill and 1940 and Battle of Britain stuff. So yeah, indeed.




Gary Schneeberger:

So let's unpack now these four points in your blog that speak directly to some of the most painful emotions people are going through, some of the most painful emotions you were going through. The first one, I mean, this is the starting point of if you had to map out a life of significance after a crucible, the starting point, the starter's pistol is this point. And that's the first point of your blog, give yourself permission to grieve. I suspect that, well, you say it right here. There are all kinds of intense feelings and you didn't really know how to process those. And you wished, looking back, that you had given yourself permission to grieve. How did you process it right after the takeover failed?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I mean, I'm a reflective person, so I was just in pain. Rather than giving myself permission to grieve, I was giving myself permission to self-flagellate, to hate on myself, if you will. So my attitude in life, which is not particularly healthy, is if there's a problem in the world, it's my fault. So I could've, with some degree of justification, say a lot of it was my fault, but look, there were challenging dynamics in the family going back decades before I was born, and rifts and power and money. And yeah, I got some bad advice at certain point from some advisors that maybe weren't as helpful as they could be. Yes, I ignored some good advice. But it was a complex situation.

But rather than giving myself permission to grieve, I just was in almost self-hatred mode. I was just really beating up on myself. And how could I've been so dumb? I had a Harvard MBA. How could I think the family wouldn't sell out? What a stupid decision, mistake. And it was objectively. Why did I ignore the good advisors and get rid of them and listened to the advisors that told me what I wanted to hear? I mean, so many things. Why did I even want to go back to the family business? It would've been better off doing anything else because it was so complicated, and turmoil and friction and factions.

So that's where I was going. But what would've been healthier would've been to give myself permission to grieve, yes, to feel sorrow, maybe get some counseling. Which I had, but years later. I just did not really feel it was okay to feel angry and hurt. And it's like part of the grieving process is giving yourself permission to grieve. And I just really didn't. I just felt so bad about myself, but I didn't really know how to process that. I just didn't know what to do with all the self-anger and frustration. So no, I didn't really give myself permission to grieve. I was just self-hating, which it really wasn't helpful. I wasn't trying to process in a way saying, okay. So I wasn't following a helpful process, put it that way.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, I found a quote about grief and giving ourselves permission to grieve from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, and they say this, "The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not get over that loss. You will heal and you'll rebuild yourself around the loss you've suffered. You'll be whole again, but you'll never be the same. Nor should you be the same or should you want to be the same." That seems to be a pretty accurate assessment of what you've been through. When you did indeed finally get to that point where you were able to grieve, you were able to give yourself a little bit of, you use the word all the time on the show, Warwick, you were able to give yourself a little bit of grace, and that helped the forward momentum, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

It did. I mean, it would've been helpful if somebody had told me, or if I'd read somewhere, grieving is a natural part of the process. Yes, the grief won't completely go away, but it'll become more manageable. There'll be a scar rather than an open wound. This whole aphorism, this too shall pass. There will be a new day. The sun will come up. I know it may be hard to believe. And that wouldn't have just stopped all the pain instantly, but it would've given me some hope that this is part of the process, that things will get better.




Gary Schneeberger:

I hadn't thought about this till just now, but do you think that Beyond the Crucible, everything that you've tried to do through this podcast, through all that you've done at Beyond The Crucible, your book, all of the offerings that we have, is that a conscious decision, or maybe it was an unconscious decision for you to offer that lifeline to other people who are going through this? I mean, I don't know if you made that determination, like click, I'm going to go help people do this. But what you've described feeling like you didn't have the right to do it, you are extending every week on this show the right for them to do it. That has got to feel rewarding.




Warwick Fairfax:

It absolutely does. I mean, it's one of the key motivations for what I do with Beyond The Crucible is, we'll talk about this later, and we're skipping to point three, but don't let your worst day define you. And we'll talk about that more in a bit. But it's really giving folks hope. When I was reflecting in the weeks and months after that talk in church in 2008, and people telling me, "Hey, your story really helped me." I'm thinking, I know it's going to be painful writing this book because, yes, I talk about inspirational leaders and historical leaders and other members of my family, but the core of it is my story and reliving my most painful days. And it was very painful writing about it. I mean, after two or three hours a day, I was done. I couldn't do anymore. I had to recoup and hopefully find some strength the next day.

So it was painful. But what kept me going is, if this can help one person or more face the crucible they've gone through and find a way to have hope, find a way to bounce back, that was really, it's always been the mission of Beyond the Crucible is to help people in their darkest time, their darkest hour. At the end of pretty much every podcast, I ask a question, something like, for many listeners today may be their worst day. They may be at the bottom of the pit. They may have no hope. They can't see any light at the end of the tunnel. What would a word of hope you would have for somebody who today is their worst day?

Now, why do I ask that question? It's because that's, if you will, my focus of what we do is for people who today may be their worst day. So that is absolutely the animating driving force mission behind what we do. And I mean, it's conscious and subconscious. When I wrote the book, I may not have used those words, but I was thinking I want to help people who've gone through what I've gone through and have hope. Some of it was subconscious, some of it was conscious, but that was always the thought, always the mission.




Gary Schneeberger:

And don't worry about getting out of order. I mean, this is all a big soup of help. We're just putting ingredients in the help soup here as we're going through it. Because we are. It's an interesting discussion because we're dealing with what you went through, but also then how you've leveraged what you went through to help others going through the same thing. So a lot of these things are kind of mixed together, and that's a good thing. Because when you're dealing with something as emotional as a crucible experience, you're going to grab whatever lifeline comes by.

And the second point in the blog is a really good lifeline, I think, that you wished had been extended to you. And that is feeling broken does not mean you are worthless. I'm going to say it again, listener, so you catch it, you make sure you catch it. Feeling broken, like you do after a crucible, in the midst of a crucible, at the bottom of the pit, that does not mean you are worthless. Why did you make this the second point of the blog and how does it speak to your own experience?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, Gary, I was broken. My mission in life, my reason for being on this earth, getting good grades in school, working hard, not wanting to be one of these dilettante kind of rich kids, humility being my highest value, or certainly one of them, Oxford, Wall Street, Harvard Business School. I spent my life serving a mission that I felt was almost like a holy cause, a sacred calling. A family business, newspaper business that plays a role in the nation of Australia. It just felt like this incredible cause that I was born into.

And so when the company went under, I just felt broken, worthless, the reason for me being on this Earth is gone. What was the point of it all? Oxford, Harvard Business School, all the work, all the effort, I just blew it by my stupidity. I mean, there was a book written in that time, late '80s, early '90s, the central premise was Warwick could have had it all. Eventually, it might have taken a few decades, but eventually I would've been the leading shareholder in the family, just in terms of the way inheritance and various things worked out. If only he'd waited, he could have been head of this company. But because of his folly and naivety, he didn't.

And yes, there's some truth in that. But obviously I felt like, oh, the company isn't going to be around, or because of the stupidity in management. It doesn't matter whether my assumptions were right or wrong, but that was my feeling. And so I really felt broken and worthless, and it was very hard to come back from that. I mean, I did. My paradigm shifted a bit. But I felt both those things, that I felt broken and worthless, and that's a terrible feeling.




Gary Schneeberger:

We've talked to many guests. You mentioned Adam Vibe Gunton who said a couple of times that he felt as if he just wanted to die, right? We've had other guests tell us that. That moment of I can't take this anymore. Not just the brokenness, but the emotional, then humiliation of feeling worthless. What was the turnaround for you? How did you get past that feeling? Because we're not having this conversation if Warwick Fairfax didn't get past that feeling.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's very true. I guess, especially since the Evangelical Church at Oxford, I'd been a person of faith. That was late March 1982 for me. So we're now talking the early '90s, I guess my paradigm shifted. I went from God had a plan for my life to resurrect the company in the image of the founder, John Fairfax. I'm a believer, he was a believer. I blew God's plan, which as I mentioned, was the most excruciating part of this whole crucible experience. It was the tip of the spear, if you will, going through my heart.

But what changed is I began to realize, despite my stupidity, and in all fairness, a lot of it was my fault, but not all of it, it was very complicated. A lot of things going back decades as I mentioned. But if God had wanted it to work out, he would have. So God's sovereign will, from my perspective, he has a plan. And you might believe it's God, the creator, however you look at it.

But I also came to realize that God loves us unconditionally, even when we make mistakes, which we all do, God loves us no matter what. So I came to realize God does have a plan for my life. It just may not be the one I thought it was. My hubris, naivety, and youth, but that unconditional love that we are loved because, I think Psalm 139 talks about we're wonderfully and beautifully made. That sense that we have innate worth and value as human beings, it's one thing to realize a proposition. It's another thing for a proposition to work its way through the pain and the agony and the darkness that has worked through your soul.

But over time, it didn't happen like a flash of light, over time, I came to realize that is true. And I've used this image like a man clinging to a mast in a raging storm. I clung to that view that, as human beings, we have innate value. God does have a plan for our lives. And we have inherent worth, and there is a plan out there. I clung to that. And drop by drop, like drops of grace, it began to give me hope. This fundamental change in my thinking, it began to give myself hope.




Gary Schneeberger:

I found a quote that I'm going to steal after we're done, and you may want to steal it yourself. It's a really good quote about this very issue of feeling broken does not mean you're worthless. And that's by Rumi. And the quote is this, "The wound is the place where light enters you." That is something special. That's good. The wound is the place where light enters you, right? And that's what you've just described, Warwick, is that in that wound entered this bedrock belief that grew and grew and grew and grew, that you have inherent value. And led you to create Beyond the Crucible, which lets other people know they also have inherent value. Safe to say that without the brokenness, you could have skipped over, you probably wish you could've skipped over the worthless feeling, but without the brokenness, again, we wouldn't be sitting here having a conversation about Beyond the Crucible, would we?




Warwick Fairfax:

It's profoundly true, Gary. Yeah, sometimes the light, as you said so well, does come through that wound. And yeah, in hindsight it did for me. Out of that sense of brokenness and pain came a mission, as we'll say here in a bit, to help people not be defined by their worst day, to give people hope. As I've spoken to people, and people have found some sense of hope and healing, that obviously gives me some degree of further healing. So it's hard to think of it at the time, but without that crucible and the pain and the brokenness, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing.

I've often thought if I was smarter, I don't know that I would've been happier, which sounds a bit crazy, because if I'd been smarter, listened to the good advisors who said in early '87, "The numbers don't add up," and these were blue chip merchant bankers, as we call it, which is Australian English speak for investment bankers, "The numbers don't add up. If there's a hostile takeover," I was afraid of, "well then gather the family round, wait a few decades, try and get on with other people. Not just listen to the stories you heard growing up or what have you." I mean, there's a long list of things that I could have been smarter about.

But would I have been happier? I would've been trapped in this gilded cage. There always would've been different factions within the family. And it's a large company. As I often say, it didn't really fit my design. I'm more of a reflective advisor, somewhat philosophical. I'm not a take charge, take no prisoners chief executive type. So a lot of reasons it really didn't fit. But if I'd been smarter, I could have been trapped in this company. I mean, very comfortable definitely. I could have been hundreds of millions of dollars more comfortable, if not more than hundreds of millions. And so great. But I don't know that I would've been happy. I would've been trapped in a role that I didn't enjoy, worrying about different factions and what's going on and what's going on behind the scenes and management and all.




Gary Schneeberger:

That is a powerful thing for you to say. Because remember, listener, when we started off, Warwick, and you've heard it before, the failure, in this country we think money is going to make us all happy. If I just had more money, I'd be happier. The failure was $2.25 billion. That was in 1990 money. Today, think of what that could have grown to. So that's a profound statement. I used your word, you say profound a lot on the show, I just used your word, that's a profound statement that you wouldn't necessarily have been happier. In fact, in many ways you would've been not happier.

We are going through, listener, Warwick's latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com called Four Things I Wish I Knew In my Darkest Time. We are moving on now to point three. We've teased it a couple times, sort of like a coming attractions trailer. But the third point in the blog, Warwick, that you wish you would've known, that someone would've told you, or that it would've been on - right - in the syllabus at Oxford, at HBS. This idea that you are not defined, we are not defined, by our worst day. That's one of the top three. If this was Match Game, and I had to pick the top three answers of what Warwick Fairfax says the most on this show, somewhere in the top three would be we are not defined by our worst day. So why was that point, again, of only four you have in this blog, why was that point so important for you to include in this blog?




Warwick Fairfax:

We have a number of sayings, a number of things we believe are true on Beyond the Crucible. But this idea that we are not defined by our worst day, that is close to number one of the truths that we talk about at Beyond the Crucible. So what it means, we're not defined by our worst day, it's we all have mistakes and failures. We all have times in which things go wrong. And it's easy to think, as I did, I thought I was defined by my worst day. I thought my life is over, 150 year old family business founded by a strong believer, I'm a believer, I blew his legacy, caused splits within the family, instability and uncertainty with 4,000 plus employees, et cetera, et cetera.

But I came to realize in hindsight that I was not defined by that. Yes, it's part of my story, but I'm using that to help others. There have been better days. I have three wonderful children. I have a wife of over 30 years. I'm so blessed in so many ways. I've been on two nonprofit boards. I love what I do at Beyond The Crucible. I'm just incredibly blessed and grateful. I could not have foreseen that on my worst day. My life has not been defined by my worst day. It has absolutely not been defined by it. And so that's really one of our central, if not the central, mission of Beyond the Crucible, to help our listeners, to help everybody understand that you are not defined by your worst day. There can be a better day.

We talk a lot about learning the lessons of your crucible that can lead to a vision we call a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. But it all begins, and we use the word choice a lot at Beyond the Crucible, you have to make a choice. Maybe it's not on your worst day because you got to have a bit of room to process and grieve, but ultimately you've got to make a choice, sooner rather than later, to say "I will not let this define me." I'm going to find a way to move forward. I might not have the answers right now, but I'm going to find a way to move forward and I'm not going to let this one mistake or this one terrible circumstance that happened to me be the defining moment in my life. It's going to be one of the toughest moments, but it will not be the defining moment. And I'm going to make that choice to not let that day define me and define my life.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have a question to ask after I ask this one. So sort of give me a yes or no, or a very quick answer when I ask this one. That realization was not all inclusive. It wasn't one and done. It's still, I mean, that's still in process in some ways, isn't it?




Warwick Fairfax:

I think that's fair to a degree.




Gary Schneeberger:

Here's why I ask that question because one of my favorite moments in working with you, Warwick, was when you were preparing for a speech that you were going to give. And every time you had prepared for this speech before you were talking about your crucible, you were talking about the failed takeover of the family media company. And then you talked about the speech you gave in church and people were moved by it. You couldn't understand how people were moved by a speech you gave because, and you said this, you would say this in the first 25 times, I heard you say it as you were practicing, you would say, "I looked around, I didn't understand how this could resonate with people because I did not see any other failed media moguls in the congregation." You always used the word failed media mogul.

And then one day when you were preparing for a speech, we were sitting in your study at your house, we were sitting in your house, you were preparing for your speech, and you said, "I looked around and I didn't see any other former media moguls." And I was like, that's it, right? That was that moment when you weren't defined by your worst day anymore. You didn't use a word that had defined you for so long, failure. You took it out, you deleted it, you threw it out. That was a powerful moment to watch you go through.

What does that liberation feel like? When you're in stage three, when you're in, you're not defined by your worst day, just emotionally, because we talk a lot about emotions here, what does it emotionally feel like to be beyond that? Even if it's only 85, 95% of it, you're mostly behind it all the time. It's very, very small. What does that feel like? So listeners who may be having their worst day today will know what to look for.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, that's a great question, Gary. You're right to pick up on that. I mean, that says subconsciously a lot to go from failed to former. Former is more a statement of reality. There's less emotion behind it. Failed is similar to I am a failure. It would be a synonym in this case. Not always, but in this case, failed meant failure. I am a failure forever was the subtext. So yeah, I can obviously, because of what I do and we do, I talk about the failed takeover. But yeah, it's more objectively talking about what happened.

I don't give a talk, and have to go in my room and sob for a few hours or something. I mean, those days did exist, but they don't happen. At least I can't remember it happening often, if ever, for a long, long time. Doesn't mean there twinges every once in a while. People use this word often today, and rightly so, being triggered. Yes, I'll be triggered occasionally by something, something I read or wherever. An article in an Australian paper that references me. Or there was some cartoon in the last few years that wasn't overly favorable.




Gary Schneeberger:

Correct. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. But yeah, it's subconsciously being able to say, as I've said more recently, that what I went through was a gift. I couldn't say that five years ago. I'm not sure I could have said that two or three years ago. But being able to say former and not failed, that what I went through was a gift in some sense, because I wouldn't be where I am without that, to have some sense of gratitude. I've used words like freedom, liberation from the situation I was in. So that's a very significant mind shift and heart shift and soul shift, if you will.

So back to your question, today, it may be your worst day, it may be hard to fathom. I understand how that could be. But it's true for me, and it's true for many if not most of the guests we've had on the podcast, they haven't been defined by their worst day. They've made a choice to move forward. And yes, I don't know that you can get 100% healed, saying, oh, there won't be any scar. There'll be scars. But yet, can you get to 80, 85, 90% of feeling like you're healed or less broken? I absolutely think that is possible. I absolutely think it's possible.




Gary Schneeberger:

And I love, and I didn't realize I loved it till right now, that you used the word defined here. You're not defined by your worst day. Because what you've just been talking about are new definitions that you've added in to define your worst day. It was a gift. In many ways, in important ways, it was a gift. You're not a failed anything. You're a former something. All of those words, the way that we talk about ourselves, going back to the second point here, just this idea that just because you're broken, you're not worthless. Hanging those adjectives on ourselves, not a good thing. And what you've just described, you've defined a new position that you're in as you're moving through this. And that kind of freedom, you've described this as feeling freeing, that kind of freedom is available to all of you within the sound of my voice.

And we'll move on to the fourth point in this blog, which is the way you put your foot on the step that will lead you there. We talked about this idea of realizing that you need to give yourself permission to grieve. That's sort of the starter's pistol to a life of significance. This fourth point is the start of the physical journey to that place. And that is this, your fourth point, Warwick is a small step forward can be a defining moment. Talk about that a little bit. Because I know for you, and I know for a lot of guests we've had on the show, that is so, so, so true.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. If one of the defining mantras or concepts is your worst day doesn't define you, one of the single most important pieces of advice that I and every guest has shared that I can think of is this concept that a small step forward can be a defining moment, can be huge. For most, I remember we had a series last fall, Second Act Significance, and we had Erik and Emily Orton on. And they sailed around the Caribbean. They've got this whole course about helping people lead kind of worthwhile lives and all.

But it all began when Erik was looking out the window of his Manhattan skyscraper. He was in theater production, and Wicked, I believe. And then he went to start a small production, which basically went under and he lost everything. And he was feeling sorry for himself. And he's looking out the window and he sees these sailboats going down outside of Manhattan. And he's thinking, I'd love to learn how to sail. Now you would think that wasn't a big step, but it was a small step, but in some sense it was the biggest step. And he would say it was maybe the toughest step. Why should that be so tough? But it was very different than what he'd done. And for some reason, the next steps about getting his family to learn how to sail, and then eventually, hey, let's sail around the Caribbean with the whole family, we can be together with his kids. Those were further steps. But the biggest step, the hardest step was the first step, which is sort of interesting.

So for me, one small step I made was we were in Chicago for about nine months in 1991. So company goes under in December 1990. Soon thereafter, we go to Chicago, where my wife had lived for about 10 years before we met in Australia. And I remember thinking, it's cold and it's a big city. And we had friends in Maryland, Annapolis, and they said, "Well, why don't you kind of move here for a few months orIsix months?" And I thought it might be good to give myself a change of location, smaller town. Being from Australia, nicer weather. Did that change everything? No. Did my attitude improve overnight? Did I say, hallelujah, I'm feeling great about myself, hooray? No. But it was a small step. It felt like a small positive step forward to just be in a different environment and we were going to create a new life.

Maybe that's why it was a small step. We were going to create, my wife and I, and she was in the early months of 1991, she was pregnant with our first son, Will. But it was an important step. And there were in steps after that, like the talk in church. Small step after that was, I think I'm going to write a book about this. Not quite sure how it's going to evolve, but I'm going to start writing. And it evolved, and there was a series of steps.

But the power of making a small step forward rather than me just sitting in that small house in Chicago that used to be... My wife Gale's grandfather, built it in the '30s or something. It's a nice, small little house. Two room house, one bathroom. I could said, well, let's just stay here. And it has a basement. So I could have gone to the basement, sort of unfinished basement, and sat there for, I don't know, several decades. And eventually somebody probably would've pushed us out, or say, "Hey, we need to use it for other people," or, "Need to sell it." Couldn't have stayed there forever. We didn't own it. It was owned by my father-in-law. But still metaphorically, I could have stayed in that basement in Chicago for decades, and just moaned and groaned and felt sorry for myself. But that's never the answer.




Gary Schneeberger:

What you've described there, you talked about first small step, moving to the US, moving to Maryland, starting your family. But then you added in some other steps, and then one step led to another step, led to another step. And there's a phrase that you coined recently here at Beyond the Crucible, which I've determined if we ever have a house band like they do on the Tonight Show, we're going to name the house band this. But that phrase that you coined is what?




Warwick Fairfax:

I'm blanking out here. You're going to have to remind me.




Gary Schneeberger:

That's how many things of import come out of Warwick's mouth. You can't remember them all. Flywheel of hope, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Amen.




Gary Schneeberger:

It creates a flywheel of hope. What you just described, Warwick, of you moving, then you started this and you did this, it was a flywheel of hope. And what that did is it then spun into what's happening for you right now. And that is where hope is really coming alive for you and for our constituents here at Beyond the Crucible. That is kind of where your life of significance is right now, is at Beyond the Crucible, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean flywheel of hope, even if I/we thought of it, maybe it's not humble, but forgive me, but I do really like that phrase.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, it's great.




Warwick Fairfax:

Because it's true. And just like with Erik Orton, that one little turn to the flywheel led to him taking lessons, having lessons with his family, sailing around the Caribbean. Then a whole mission to help other people find meaning and purpose. Once the flywheel starts going, the next steps are easier. And so sometimes it takes a while to get cranking. I know for me, there are a few years as we're starting a new family that definitely gave life hope and meaning. It's sort of amazing when you have young kids. You come home, and they kind of just run to you and hug you, and with this immense, unconditional love. It's almost hard to process the unconditional love of your kids, especially when you're broken. It's hard to comprehend that kind of love, but it's incredibly meaningful and healing. So it wasn't easy in the '90s. That flywheel took a while to get going for me, I got to say.




Gary Schneeberger:

Well, flywheels crank a little bit. It takes a while to get them cranked up.




Warwick Fairfax:

The first couple cranks can be slow, but around about '96 or something when I got a job in a local aviation services firm, this was just kind of pre-internet, so didn't really know who I was. So I was working in financial business marketing analysis. Got good performance reviews. Yes, I had my cubicle moment when I realized I wasn't using all my skills and abilities for God or for some greater purpose.

But that was an important part of the flywheel of hope because I felt like maybe this isn't the ideal job, but I was doing it well, and I was working hard, as I always do, in everything I do. It's one of my highest values. I was getting very good performance reviews. Now, I respected the bosses I had and just tried to the best of my ability serve them and what they were trying to do. So the flywheel started cranking faster at that point. And it's cranked. There'd been moments where it's cranked faster with each decision, at each moment to move forward. But it's not easy to see when you're looking back, okay, we're going to move to Annapolis, Maryland. Okay. What's that going to mean? But that was part of the flywheel moving forward. And you have to believe that it will lead to other things if you just keep having that flywheel of hope perspective.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. And that's when a one small step becomes one major moment in your life. One of the quotes I pulled, and I have bad luck pulling quotes in that they're really good quotes, but there's always a name I can't pronounce. It's like I'm going to get this wrong. This is a quote, I'm going to guess the name is Lamine Pearlheart. It's a quote from Lamine. "It's the little keys that open big doors." That's another mic drop moment for me. It's the little keys that open big doors. It's that one small step that can then trigger that flywheel of hope. And next thing you know, you've created Beyond the Crucible, and you're helping all of these people, including listeners to this podcast, get over their worst day. Understand their worst day doesn't define them.

So we've gone through the four points of the blog just to remind listeners what they are. I'm going to keep talking and stretching it out till I can read them again. Here we go. The first thing that you wish you had known after your crucible moment was it's okay to give yourself permission to grieve. Second thing was feeling broken does not mean you are worthless. Point three, we are not defined by our worst day. And point four is on the other side of this piece of paper. Here it is. Point four is a small step forward can be a defining moment.

All of this stuff, listener, again, all of these insights are on Warwick's latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com. Before we get into what you always end your blogs with, really insightful reflection questions, summarize what we've been through, Warwick. I'll flip your question on you. Why do you think these four points, the way you've articulated them in the blog, in this podcast, how and why do you think that will offer hope to folks who are listening and folks who will be reading?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think it just starts with this notion that your worst day doesn't have to define you. That we may be feel broken, but you're not broken forever. Shards like the Japanese pottery. I think it's-




Gary Schneeberger:

Kintsugi.




Warwick Fairfax:

There you go.




Gary Schneeberger:

Kintsugi.




Warwick Fairfax:

Exactly. You can sort of glue those pieces together, and obviously in kintsugi it's like gold paste, if you will, to glue them together. So you may feel broken, but you're not broken forever. You're not worthless, you're not defined by your worst day. It's really realizing that you're not just defined by your worst day, but you won't be in that pit forever. It's a moment in time, and you have a choice to move forward. Sometimes there are consequences, I realize, depending on the crucible, but there can be a better day.

And really part of it too is realizing, if you have a purpose and a mission in life, we talk about the value of a life of significance, life on purpose dedicated to serving others, and there is some healing. There is some worthwhile, I mean, I enjoy writing, I love hearing other people's stories on the podcast because I learned so much for my own life. I'm a reflective person, so I can't tell you how many times I've listened to podcast guests and going, boy, I love what they said. And just really trying to think about that. What does it do for my viewpoint in my life?

So I feel like what I'm doing now is a blessing because, in my own small way, I am trying to lead a life of significance, to serve others, to have a higher sense of purpose. So yeah, I believe that your worst day does not have to define you. You don't have to be in that pit forever. You just have to start taking some of the steps we talked about. Move forward, take those small steps. And part of what maybe pulls you out of the pit is, when you have that sense of higher purpose, a vision of how this could help people, it's like there's a rope being dangled down the pit, pulling you up out of that pit. And so, assuming that the cliff has some footholds and handholds, you can try and get out of it by yourself. But when you have that vision, it really helps you get out of the pit faster.




Gary Schneeberger:

You've mentioned a couple times here on this episode, Warwick, that you're a reflective person and you always end your blogs with questions of reflection. And listener, I encourage you to listen to these, and to truly reflect on them because part of the way you're going to get meaning that you can apply to your life out of this discussion is to reflect on these questions.

So question one is is there some area in your life where you need to give yourself permission to grieve? Do you feel like you need to journal, or talk to a friend, or seek some counseling? And Warwick didn't write this here, but I'm going to add it here, then do it. Take that first step. It may not feel like a small step, but take that first step. Do it. If you feel like you should do it, do it. The rewards will be great as you move through.

Second point of reflection, what can you do to help you feel that you may be broken, but that you still have worth and value? Do you feel called to read and meditate on a spiritual or philosophical way of thought? Is there someone you know who can give you some positive encouragement? Words of affirmation will knock out those words of degradation all the time. Speak them to yourself and surround yourself with people who can speak them to you. And then the third point of reflection, what one small step can you take that will give you a glimmer of hope that there is a way out of the pit? I'll add something after that too, ponder it, reflect on it, and then have the courage to take that step. Warwick, we've come to the end of our conversation. What would you like to leave listeners with before we go?




Warwick Fairfax:

On your worst day, it is hard to have hope. It's hard if somebody says, "Oh, you know, this too shall pass," which is sometimes people's least favorite aphorism. It's like, oh, it's easy for you to say. You're not where I am. Thank you so much. But I guess you just have to take this leap of faith. You have to make a choice that the pain may be excruciating, but you've got to believe that there is a way out, that there is a glimmer of light, even if you can't see it. Because if you say there is no hope, there is no glimmer of light, then there won't be. Your words will become reality. Your words will put like a cement block on top of that pit.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough, I say all the time, when I know the last word has been spoken on a subject. And Warwick just spoke it about our robust discussion about his latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com. So until the next time we're together, folks, remember this. You've heard it throughout this entire episode. We understand. Warwick understands truly. He talked about it, how painful crucibles are. His was painful, mine was painful, yours are painful. But remember this too, that there is a flywheel of hope. There is a way to get out of the pit. There is a way to move beyond it to set a course for the next stage of your life, the next act of your life, which can be the most rewarding act of your life because where it leads to is a life of significance.

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

Adam Vibe Gunton shares in harrowing detail how his life went from him being a “golden boy,” the star of every sports team he played on, to a tragic descent into darkness and dependence on heroin and prescription painkillers – set into motion by being introduced to cocaine at 12 and worsened when he blamed himself for a friend’s suicide.

He wanted to die … until the rekindling of his faith in a miraculous way set him first on the road to sobriety … and then to significance. He founded Recovered on Purpose, a nonprofit that helps men and women in recovery tell their stories in ways that help others find sobriety, too. Just five years clean, he’s helped more than 1,000 people overcome their addictions … and has big plans for even more wide-ranging impact.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Adam Vibe Gunton:

When that happened, the only coping mechanism that I had was drugs and alcohol. I hadn't been taught what to do when a traumatic event happens, so that led me all the way down to being homeless and 86-ed from a homeless shelter because I got to a point where I was hopelessly addicted. The drugs and alcohol weren't working anymore. They were causing the problems instead of solving the problems. And then by that point, when I realized this isn't working anymore, I found that I couldn't stop. Which is a really scary place for someone to be.




Gary Schneeberger :

A really scary place for someone to be. Our guest this week, Adam Vibe Gunton, is referring to being caught up in the cyclical grip of deep drug addiction. But anyone who's been through a traumatic crucible experience regardless of its details, knows all too well, it's a painfully common emotion. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show.

Gunton shares in harrowing detail how his life went from being a golden boy, the star of every sports team he played on, to a tragic descent into darkness and dependence on heroin and prescription painkillers, set into motion by being introduced to cocaine at 12 and worsened when he blamed himself for a friend's suicide. He wanted to die until the rekindling of his faith in a miraculous way set him first on the road to sobriety and then to significance. He founded Recovered On Purpose, a nonprofit that helped men and women in recovery tell their stories in ways that help others find sobriety too. Just five years clean, he's helped more than 1000 people overcome their addictions and has big plans for even more wide-ranging impact.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Adam, thanks so much for being here and I love what you do in Recovered on Purpose and working with addicts, if that's the right word, or people who've had substance abuse challenges and just the power of their stories to help others and help them recover. It's the paradigm that's incredible, and just the title of your book, From Chains to Saved, that is such a powerful concept. But before we get into what you do now, I'd love to go into a bit of the backstory of the threads of Adam and what made you who you were growing up. What was a young Adam Gunton like?




Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, absolutely. Growing up I was like middle America golden boy. I started out having straight A grades. I was the home run derby hitter at the Little League World Series in eighth grade. My football team won state every year in Little League, and I won state in wrestling in Little League. And then I went to a school that everybody's heard of. I went to Columbine High School and I was the defensive captain of our state championship football team my senior year, I was the captain of the wrestling team. I even had the opportunity of taking three Broncos cheerleaders to my senior year homecoming.

So by all extents and purposes, I was living the teenage dream, but the issue was that I was putting on a facade and hiding a deep, dark secret that had been growing since I was 12 years old when someone introduced me to cocaine. And it hit a peak my freshman year of college. And that's when things just kind of changed for me. It was no longer just having fun. I wasn't that athlete anymore. And it was as if my whole life went in a totally different direction.




Warwick Fairfax:

What was your upbringing like? Your parents, did you feel like you had a good home and it seemed like life was going pretty well, so just talk about that. Yeah, how was that for you?




Adam Vibe Gunton:

I loved my family. My family loved me. We had a really good upbringing, suburbs, that kind of stuff. My parents never missed a sporting event. My grandparents never missed a sporting event. And when I was 10, I didn't grow up in a religious household. We didn't go to church together and that kind of stuff. But when I was really young, I started just knowing that something else was there. Really young, eight, nine years old. And when I was 10, my best friend at the time, Ben, we had a sleepover at my place and I knew that he went to church, I knew his family did that and that kind of stuff. So I started asking him, I was like, "What is God? What is this idea of God?" And he told me, "All I know is that you have to accept Jesus in your heart."

And right in the basement of my parents' house, two 10-year-old kids got on their knees in front of each other and he just asked me, "Do you accept Jesus?" And I said, "Yes." I get chills every time I tell this story because it happens again. And I felt it. I had all the opportunities that I could have dreamed for, all the opportunities you want to give to a kid that you're raising. And I think that's why it's important that my story gets out just as much as everybody else's story.

A lot of people think that the foundation of addiction or the foundation of alcoholism is you grew up in a broken home and it's not true. Everybody, by the time they're 15, about two thirds of students by the time they're 15, say that they have experienced some kind of real trauma. So I think we need to stop allowing excuses and start taking responsibility in a new way as a society and stop telling addicts, "Yeah, it's because of your past, the way that you are." Because it's not true. I was homeless, an IV drug addict, and I had every opportunity not to be.




Warwick Fairfax:

Was there a time in life in which you were harder on yourself than maybe other addicts might be or, I don't know if that question makes sense at all or any sense of guilt or...




Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, 100%. It makes sense. So there's two parts of this, because I have seasons to this question. At a part of my recovery, I had this remembering moment of what actually happened. I was introduced to cocaine at 12 years old by someone that was 22. So for this period of time in my recovery, all of a sudden my brain is like, "What did this person do to me? I had all these opportunities and this kind of stuff," and then I had to have a realization. So the fact that they weren't in my life anymore for a month after that, a month after he introduced me to it, I kept going with it. When did it become my responsibility? When are my actions my responsibility?

And this goes back to the same thing with the trauma I was just saying. I am not discounting the horrible things that I have heard people have gone through that led them to addiction. I'm just saying whatever it is that led you to it, as soon as you recognize, you can stop blaming it, and you can stop excusing yourself for your actions today. And that's kind of where I had to get. As soon as my body felt that I could change the way that it feels by instantly just putting something in it, I was like, "What else can I feel like?"




Gary Schneeberger :

And that was a big pivot for you, Adam, wasn't it? From doing drugs to just kind of party and have a good time and have fun, to what you just described as changing the way you feel. And there was a reason for that pivot that really set your life on the trajectory that made it really hard to come back from. Talk about that a little bit, that pivotal moment where you were still dabbling, I guess, on the edges of things and then something happened in your life and that set you on the express train, if you will.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

It was September 28th, 2008. And I had been out partying and drinking like most nights of my freshman year of college, when I woke up to my phone ringing and vibrating down by my leg, and I swam through the soft sheets to find my hard phone with the bright screen that read 4:47 AM and my best friend Chucker was calling me. And I remember having the conscious choice that I could either answer the phone I always do with, "Hey, what's up Chuck?" Or I could answer the way I was feeling with, "Ugh, hello?" And in my still drunken state, I chose the latter, to which a soft voice replied, "Hey, what's up?"

"Why are you calling me this late?"

"I was just calling to say hi."

"Don't call me this late again." And I hung up on him, and he shot himself. And nearly a decade after that experience, I couldn't share that phone call with anyone. As I bottled it down deeper and deeper and deeper with drugs and alcohol, they were no longer the way to party and have fun. I had to drink in order to be around the funeral as people were hugging me and consoling me. And inside I'm telling myself, "This is my fault." And that's where I started learning all the things that I am ashamed of in myself, all the negative feelings, all of the worries and anxieties and things.

I can mask those with drugs and alcohol. I can go to this club and be a little high and have some drinks. I can talk to everybody, I can dance with that pretty girl over there. And before that moment, I was doing it, experimenting, having fun, that kind of stuff. But when that happened, the only coping mechanism that I had was drugs and alcohol. I hadn't been taught what to do when a traumatic event happens. So that led me all the way down to being homeless and 86ed from a homeless shelter, because I got to a point where I was hopelessly addicted. The drugs and alcohol weren't working anymore. They were causing the problems instead of solving the problems. And then by that point, when I realized this isn't working anymore, I found that I couldn't stop, which is a really scary place for someone to be.




Gary Schneeberger :

Listeners may know this about me because I did an episode of the show where I was the interviewee, Adam, where Warwick interviewed me about my life's journey. And you and I talked about this when we talked before we started recording this episode. I have an alcoholic past; in fact, I told you that I was going to wear a special thing. Well, this hat that I'm wearing is a hat that I had made by a Hollywood hat maker to look exactly like the hat that Warren Beatty wore in Dick Tracy. It was my gift to myself from my 25th sober anniversary, which was last April. When this show comes out, it will be 26 and four days, 26 years and four days since I have gotten sober.

So I say all that to say one of the things that you're talking about about letting guilt go, one of the things I remember from AA when I started there was, we can only deal with our side of the street. We're only responsible for our side of the street. We're not responsible for what other people do. We're responsible for what we do and we have to forgive ourselves as we go through that. That had to have been a difficult process as you we're walking it out.

One of the reasons I think it didn't happen to you as immediately as it might have happened otherwise, there's the grips of the addiction, but you were a high functioning addict, right? For the longest time you weren't the guy who got booted out of the homeless shelter. You were highly functioning. Talk about that a little bit, that period, because that makes it harder. I was like that too, where it didn't affect my life in the sense of I couldn't hold a job or I couldn't keep relationships. I could do those things. Talk about how that played out for you and why that made it so difficult to even know that you needed to find help.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

That's a deep question with a lot of different paths because after Chuck's suicide, I found Oxycontin and then had a prescription for it for 250 milligrams a day. And that's what started opiate addiction for me. And when I moved over to heroin, I had started this company, this pest control company, and I had never sold anything before. I had sold drugs before, but not as a business. So had never sold anything before professionally. And my partner and I started it out of his apartment with a truck and some pesticides and a dream. And the first year that we went out, he was doing servicing. I was going door to door and selling. I just figured it out. And I sold 967 accounts my first year selling door to door. And during that time, I had a needle in my arm. The reason why I believe I was successful with sales, and what I try to let people know is the addiction doesn't say who the person is, because I never lost my heart for people.

I wasn't a liar. I wasn't somebody that would manipulate somebody into sales. The reason why people would do business with me is because I would learn what I'm doing to the best of my ability so that every question they ask me, I can answer honestly. And that bled into every single sales job I had. I broke records in two different industries, in three different states for selling DirecTV, Dish Network. One time during my addiction, I wanted to show people that it didn't matter what you're selling on the doors. And I decided to show someone that by not knowing anything about solar and going out for a day with him and showing him that I could close some solar.

We got three deals in four hours for solar, because I wanted to show, it's not about figuring out the exact process of what you need to say to people. It's about loving people, finding the people that can actually use your service. When you knock on the door, have something that you can find if you can help them within 15, 30 seconds, if you can't wish them well. And it was difficult being so good at that and a drug addict because I was able to feed my addiction very well also.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's just fascinating in that you weren't really a different person. You were caring, you were loving others, you were successful professionally. Were you thinking to yourself, "Well, I got this drug addiction, but life's not that bad." Does it make harder being a pretty high functioning addict, if you will? Because maybe I guess it got worse, but at one point life wasn't that bad.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

Having a heroin addiction, an IV heroin addiction, it's always bad. It's always bad. It's so up and down all the time, that first year that I'm doing all that success on the doors, everybody's seeing the pest control company, but nobody's seeing that every penny I'm making is going in my arm and I'm living in an apartment that's really dirty. It's basically I'm living like a junkie, but same as the athlete in high school. I'm putting out this really good show, but nobody sees where I'm actually living. Nobody sees what I'm actually doing back here.

It became a pattern. And it was almost like I needed to put that face on for people. I needed people to value me because I knew I was of no value and I had different ways to prove it. And one of them, I never had to worry, and I never have to worry about ever getting a job. I can go get a sales job at any point in my life if I ever needed to. And they loved working with me. They loved it because I was able to come and break records, do really well for their company and they supported me.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's a scary image you've just portrayed. You've got the public Adam that people think, "Yeah, he breaks records, he's a nice guy, closes sales, wonderful guy to work with." And then the private Adam, which you just sort of felt broken and worthless and unable to stop this addiction and eating up all your money. There were two different Adams. That must have been an incredibly difficult thing to wrestle with. So I know there was a turnaround, but from what I understand, things did get worse, which is hard to, how could it be worse? But talk about that, how it went from, you had this dual life that was... I don't know if it was functioning, but maybe on some level you were functioning in some strange way. But talk about how it did get a bit worse.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

In 2015, on November 6th, early morning hours, November 6th, 2015, I was in Montana and I was selling door to door. And that night I had gone over to my then girlfriend's aunt's house where she was staying and I was kind of hiding my drug use from her. Even I had told her that I had stopped and that kind of stuff. And I left her house, went around the corner and I made up a shot and I shot up. And at first got really upset because I thought it was bunk because I didn't feel anything. But then the next thing I know, I'm waking up on the asphalt in a pile of glass, blue and red lights everywhere and police and medics around me. And this was before everybody knew about fentanyl. This was at the very beginning of it when they were still selling it as heroin.

So I overdosed on fentanyl and at the time there wasn't enough knowledge about it and that kind of stuff to find me support. And I was put into the criminal justice system. I didn't go to prison, I didn't go to jail for very long, but I was on probation. I got a felony for having a really little amount of drugs and I was sick. It was my medicine. You would think that being in a courtroom facing five years in prison and watching body cam footage of your own dead body would make you stop. But I suffered for two more years after that. I was seeking treatment. There was no treatment for me. My probation officer was seeking me treatment because I was honest. I was honest.

By this time, 2015, 16, 17, I was honest with everyone. I couldn't hide it anymore. I actually wanted help the whole time. And I couldn't get into a treatment and it just kept going. I was going to 12 step meetings every day. I was going to church every Saturday and Sunday, a Bible study every Tuesday. And I was consistently just getting worse and worse and worse. I had quit my door-to-door job because I knew that I'm just enabling myself. These companies now give me an apartment or they give me a house, they pay all my bills. Plus they give me a check every week as I'm selling. And I was being mentored by the second fastest growing CEO of that year on Inc 500. And the reason why he decided to mentor me is because when I came up to him, I said, "I'm a drug addict. I have a good heart and I want to help people. I don't know what to do."

So he started talking to me every day and it ended up where I called him on the floor of this corporate apartment that he had gotten me telling him, "I'm going to kill myself. I can't do this anymore." And he talked me down and I decided to quit my job, quit everything and do whatever it takes to find recovery. Moved into a homeless shelter. You've ever heard, "You got to let him hit rock bottom?" Rock bottom is a myth. It is a myth. It does not exist. Because I thought it was rock bottom back in 2013 when I had that pest control company and I was sitting in that apartment, I was telling you about, writing a suicide note on my iPad and then shooting up, trying to kill myself. Then I thought it was rock bottom when I was in a homeless shelter and I was on my knees praying and I look over and I'm in a homeless shelter with about 80 other men in a room. And I thought that was rock bottom.

Then I got 86-ed from the homeless shelter to where I'm super homeless and I can't even go back to the homeless shelter to eat lunch. And I thought that was rock bottom. And it kept getting worse and worse and worse. And for me, I just consistently was making these plans on how I'm going to make this work. If I go to this meeting and this meeting and this meeting, if I get this guy to sponsor me and this guy to mentor me and all these different things, then I'm going to make it work. And I couldn't get it.

It just got to a point where I literally gave up, I gave up, I wanted to die. I asked God specifically, "Please just let me die. I'm not going to these meetings. I'm not going to church anymore. I'm not going to Bible study. Please just let me die." And when I said that to him, I was so honest, I really didn't want my life anymore. And that's when he showed up and that's when I actually had the willingness to listen to what he wants me to do and change my life.




Warwick Fairfax:

It seems like up to that point we sometimes talk about when you're at the bottom of the pit, what you are saying is there was no bottom. It was like a black hole. It sucks you in. There's no way out and there is no bottom. There's endless degrees of down and darkness. There's an infinite array of more darkness, more pain, and no hope, no light. As we know from black holes. There is no escape once you go in there, even light can't escape. Is that fair, that sounds like that's where you're at and that's probably why you were thinking of suicide because you're thinking, "Oh, it can get worse." Even when you couldn't even get to a homeless shelter, you were probably thinking, "Oh absolutely, it can get a lot worse than this." At that point that's probably what you were thinking. Is that fair?




Adam Vibe Gunton:

That's exactly what - exactly. And that's what scares me so much about ever going back in any way because people will say, "I know I can't relapse," because they'll die. I'm like, "I know I can't relapse because I don't know what's going to happen." And I know that I got to a point where I wanted to die but I couldn't die and I couldn't quit using. So I don't ever want to go back because it's so scary not knowing how bad it gets.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, was there any sign that after being arrested that you'd pivoted from this double life? The public Adam and the private, you were one Adam, maybe a messed up hurting Adam, but one Adam. As you were falling down this bottomless pit, at least your arms were flailing to try and get a handhold on the stones maybe before you weren't even trying to grab the stones, but at least you were trying. Did it feel like there was a small shift, you were being honest, you were being one Adam and at least you were trying?




Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, 100%, because then my boss had to bail me out of jail. That's a hard phone call when someone doesn't know you're a drug addict to say, "Yeah, I am in jail because I overdosed." That's a hard phone call. Then everybody knows. And at that same time, I used to be able to go to different states and would have my own technician because I could fill the technician's schedule up. He wouldn't have to have a whole team. So I would be able to go wherever I wanted. My technician, God bless him, he didn't understand anything about addiction and he just quit. And he was like, "I don't want anything to do with him. I don't ever want to talk to him again. Addicts are this and this and that." So all of a sudden my worst fear was added onto because someone actually left me because of it.

But then also there was this other group of people that were fully supportive, came and bailed me out, still kept me in a hotel, talked to me every day. And yes, I was working for him. But I could tell there was a difference. It wasn't just because I was working for him. Because he knew me. He knew that I sell to love people. I do this because I love people. And that's interesting. I wish everybody, and it's getting better and better and better, but people should know that addicts are very sick, they're very sick. They're not bad people. And some people are bad people whether they're addicted or not. So I believe in love and I hope that everybody listening to this shows someone love that they might not have before.




Gary Schneeberger:

And you have a friend that you had at that time. It's a great segue. Who was that kind of person who didn't try to fix you, quote unquote, who just walked alongside you. If you needed a ride somewhere, he gave you a ride somewhere. If you needed something, he gave you something. He treated you not like your disease, he treated you like his friend. And that really was the start of the miraculous healing from addiction that you encountered. Talk about that, what that meant to have someone who just looked at Adam as Adam, not Adam as a problem to be solved.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

And you put that so perfectly. My best friend, Brendan, he was the Bible study leader of the bible study I went to every Tuesday for months before I found recovery. He took me to church, he would pick me up from the homeless shelter, take me to church, Bible study, coffee, lunch, whatever. And then when I was kicked out of there, he would pick me up from the streets wherever I was at, make sure that I was getting to Bible study, make sure I was getting to church and that kind of stuff. And he was the only person in my life, throughout my entire addiction, that never gave me advice about how to stop, advice about what I need to do to change. He just expressed love the way that he knew he was supposed to from God. He just walked with me through this and it took me months.

He baptized me in the Yellowstone River August 28th, 2017 and I didn't get sober until November 6th, 2017. That's saying something when someone is just walking with someone. Because in reality, we have to really understand our own inadequacy sometimes. We don't know everything that's needed for someone else's life. And if you can recognize that love is the thing that someone needs and you just express the love because you want to express love to them, that's when they can find the change themselves.

Can you imagine telling an alcoholic that's in his alcoholism these days, "Why don't you go to AA and do the 12 steps?" Do you think there's any alcoholic on the planet that's never heard that, or that isn't thinking that in the back of their head? We know, we know, dude. You're just bashing me more and more. And that's what I coach people also that have someone in their life that is addicted. I tell them, don't bring it up until they ask you because there's no reason to. Just love them. Text them every week and just let them know how much you love them, that kind of stuff because you'll become a safe place for them to come to when they're ready.




Warwick Fairfax:

Humans don't often have that unconditional love in which they love you right or wrong, slow to condemn, quick to love, quick to forgive, quick to understand. That's not very human for most of us, but it sounds like this friend Brendan was a lot of that.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

And I think you actually hit the nail on the head that I haven't put together before. It's not a human trait. It's not a normal human trait to unconditionally love somebody, not judge them, not condemn them, and to see them as the value within them. And how can you possibly get that except from getting that from God. You have to learn how God sees people in order to see people how God sees people. And what he did and what was so different, it was as if he was on a mission from God. It was as if as he was walking, he knew that what he was doing was what he was supposed to do from God. And it wasn't something where he needed to be the one that was the one that gave Adam the advice that got him clean. He understood that ultimately it was going to be God.

And he believed also. I believed that he believed the entire time for me also. But he didn't have expectations of me. He didn't expect this thing from me this month and do this in order for me to keep loving you. No, he was just there. I express that in every way that I can to people now. And it's a difficult thing to do. Like you're saying, it's not really human and especially when you get messages from everybody and you're getting a bunch of them per month.

A way that I express it now is every single email, every single message that I get from someone, I personally speak with them. I personally ask them what's going on in their life. I personally ask them questions and I personally tell them what I would do in those shoes because I've been through it. Or I ask them, "How can I support you? What do you need?" And the interesting thing is that it feels better being the person loving than the person being loved. It's this paradox, this spiritual paradox where you will always be more fulfilled by showing the love than receiving the love. And it's almost as if it's because you're getting the infinite from above and expressing exactly how you can in your human.




Gary Schneeberger:

Speaking of getting the infinite from above, great pivot point here. We've spent a lot of time talking about the grip of your addiction and the way that it affected your life, but here's the pivot point. From above came change. Walk us through that. Let's get into both your getting clean, your getting saved and then getting commissioned to go out and doing what you're doing right now with your foundation.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, I started it a little bit earlier when I was sitting in a car that a girl let me borrow and it wasn't stolen, but I did have to start it with a screwdriver because that's how we lived back then. But I'm sitting in this car before Bible study and I had this epiphany that I have tried everything here. I have literally tried everything there is here to quit. And I sat back in the seat and I audibly said to God, "I'm done. I'm not going to Bible study, I'm not going to church. I'm not going to these meetings anymore. Please just let me die." And right when I said that I heard a whisper in my heart. I don't hear the audible out here, it's as if he is right here in my heart. And he said, "It's time, go." And at that moment you would think I was like, yay, excited.

But I knew it was God. And my immediate reaction was anger at him because what's different about this time? What's different about this time than all the times that I dumped my dope in the toilet saying I'm never going to use again and then wake up and pawn my TV? What's different about this time? So I'm in this car and I'm screaming at him and I'm crying like, "Please just let me die. Please just let me die." And I'm doing this for a few minutes. And then when I start calming down, he just repeats himself in that still soft voice. And he said, "It's time. Go." And again, I didn't get this overwhelming sense of power or anything, but I just got this sense of willingness that I'd never had before. Okay, I'm going to let go of all my plans of two meetings a day and church every Saturday and Sunday and this person sponsoring me, I'm going to let go all of that and let you take total control.

And I made that decision right there in that car with him alone. And I go to the Bible study, I'm 12 minutes late, I open the doors, I bust them open and they're in the middle of prayer and I interrupt prayer and I dropped down on my knees and I throw my hands up. I'm like, "Guys, I used again. I can't stop. Please help me, please help me." And I'm 148 pounds at the time, I'm 215 now. I'm crying, I'm a mess. I was just screaming and crying with God. And Brendan, same exact Brendan, walks over to me and he pats me. He's like, "Hey bro, let's just get through Bible study." He walks me over and we go through Bible study.

At the end when everybody was leaving, one of the elders, Carmen, comes up to me and he says, "Hey bro, I just got a word. I need to pray for you." I was like, "Okay." And he sits me down on this ottoman in the middle of the room and he stands in front of me. And Brendan is standing behind me to the right. And George, another elder is standing next to him. And for the first time in my life, this man put a hand on my shoulder. He looked me in the eyes and he started to speaking to spirits in the name of Jesus and telling them to leave me.

At that moment, I'm literally feeling weight coming off of my shoulders. I'm feeling as if I'm getting loosened from things. And after this event, I actually make it five days clean, which at the time is a total miracle. We can't do that in those grips. And Brendan, again, Brendan comes and picks me up, takes me to IHOP, International House of Pancakes, and we're having breakfast and I'm sitting there and I'm talking to him and everything, I'm all excited. I'm like, "Dude, I'm actually going to do it. I have five days." He's like, "Okay bro, yeah, let's go."

And I get this text message on my phone and I open it up because I just have this little flip phone and it's from my dope dealer. And he's like, "Hey bro, I just got some new stuff. It's fire. I'll give you a free 20 to try out." And right when I read it, I felt the spirit go in through the top of my head all the way through my body. My toes were tingling, my fingers were tingling, I lost my peripheral vision. All I could see was the phone and my thumbs just started texting back and it was in King James. It was like "Ye shall not text me again. Thou has texted me for the last time."

Then when I finish the text, I feel it, leave me again. My vision comes back. I'm like, "What the heck?" And I'm looking at the phone and I show it to Brendan. I was like, "Dude, that was not me." I was like, "That was not me. I don't know what that was." He was like, "Okay." And I pushed send, I close it and I'm looking down at my pocket. I was like, "Dude, I don't know what that was. I don't know who that was." And I look back up and Jesus is sitting across from me. The entire restaurant had completely disappeared, it was as if I went into a trance. There was a bright light coming from behind him. He was smiling at me. I immediately knew who it was, immediately knew it was happening. And the only thing that I can compare that moment to was when I used to shoot up heroin, when all those negative thoughts and those identities that I've been struggling with and the guilt and the shame and all this stuff is clouding my mind and then it all goes away with one warm flood.

But the difference of this moment is all that negative stuff flowed out of me. And immediately I was overwhelmed with a sense of purpose and value and love and identity and peace in less than a second. And I immediately fell my face to the table, my hand up. I said, "Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God." I came back up and he was gone. And I believe 100% in instant healing, putting your hands on somebody and they're healed and Jesus does that. That didn't happen for me. And I believe it's for a reason. For the next three weeks, I was craving, withdrawing, shaking every day, needing dope because this is the first time I've gone this long since I was 12 years old. And the only thing that helped me through that time, the only time I got relief from those shakes and the cravings was when I was sitting down with another person that suffered the same disease as me who was helping me find recovery.

I embarked on the 12 steps. When I was actually sitting down and writing out my fourth step, I spent all my hours working my steps. When I was actually sitting down and writing it, I didn't have the cravings, I didn't have the withdrawals for whatever reason. I did my first ever fifth step on day 25. And this whole time my sponsor's come in and pick me up every morning from the sober living house at 6:30 AM. On day 26, he comes and picks me up and we're on the way to go do the work in his 1983 mailman Jeep. And I'm looking over at this beautiful sunrise and for the first time since I was 12 years old, I had no desire to drink or use and it hasn't returned since.

It was as if one day my mind is going this way, "I need dope. There's nothing I can do, I'm craving." And then all of a sudden just a completely different thought pattern. I actually don't desire it. What is this? And when I actually experienced that freedom that I wanted to die because I didn't think it was available to me, as soon as I accessed that and knew it was available, I knew it was my life's purpose to get as many people to find that freedom as possible and to help as many people find it in whatever way I possibly could. And at the beginning of my recovery, again, I found a lot of professional success. I built that company. That was in 2018, they did $48,000. I came on as chief marketing officer in March of 2019 and we did $1.3 million the rest of the year and then we doubled the following year also. So I'm having a lot of success in early recovery.

I'm in my apartment right before two years clean and sober, new apartment, new car, new motorcycle. I was homeless a year and a half ago and I had a thought that I wanted to kill myself. Like, "What the heck? I made it, what is going on?" And as soon as I felt that though I have these guards up from it, I know that's not me. I know those are not my thoughts now. So I got up and I went over to my bed, dropped on my knees, and I started praying deep those deep prayers like, "God, I'm sick of this. Show me what you have me here to do." And just started praying, "Help, I want to help millions of people, God. Show me what to do." Go to sleep, wake up in the morning, do the same prayer, and five minutes later I'm eating breakfast and I'm on Instagram and I see this ad, never seen this ad before and it's for a conference for how to bring God into your business.

I was like, "If that's not an answer, I don't know what is. So I click on it, I buy a ticket and I go out to this conference in Vacaville, California. And the first night, I don't know anybody there, there's 1500 Christian entrepreneurs there. And the first night Jesus Culture is playing on the stage and I'm right in front and I'm worshiping and just getting in it with God. And then I hear that same voice from the car before Bible study and it said, "Your new company's called Recovered on Purpose." And I looked up, I was like, "That's good." And I pull out my phone and I get the domain right there, recoveredonpurpose.com, dot org. And then I check the Secretary of State. I'm super excited. And then a couple days later, this speaker comes up on stage and is talking about publishing a book, how to self-publish a book and all these different things.

And I'm rigorously taking notes and I've always wanted to write a book. Same voice again. "If you publish your book for your two years clean and sober, you're going to inspire so many others to do the same. I was like, my two years, that's in five weeks. And I was like, but I know that voice. I know that voice. And anybody listening, when you hear that voice, follow. Whatever you think your plans are and whatever you think your limits are, that voice has none of them. He doesn't have limits and he has plans we can't conceive. So I go home, I let my business partners know, "Hey, I need to take a few weeks off," and I turn my phone off and for the first couple days I know that I'm not going to be able to just sit down and figure out writing a book.

I have five weeks. So what I do is on this giant whiteboard, I start dumping out every experience for my life, every possible memory I have of stories, of experiences, of things. And I write them all out in five words or less just so I can remember what they are. Write them all out. And then I think, okay, what do I want my book to actually say? I know I want to share my recovery story, but my recovery story could share so many different things. What do I want it to share? In mine, I wanted to share with people the reality of the spiritual realm and my testimony of Jesus.

So I take this list of all these stories and I start picking the ones out that would point to that message and I start putting them on this other whiteboard. Then I make a mind map. You know how it'll make a story. And then I sit down with a checklist and I write each one, one by one by one by one by one. And then I published From Chains to Saved on November 6th, 2019, for my two years clean and sober. It became a number one bestseller. I was able to outsell the Big Book for a month, which the Big Book saved my butt and the Bible saved my soul.




Warwick Fairfax:

Just for those who may not know, just say what the Big Book is because you guys know, but everybody might not.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yep. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm okay. I don't say that I'm a member of any specific fellowship, but I do work out of that thing because it worked for me. I sit down and I read it with people and I do the work with it exactly how it says to do it in there and it works. So I published that book. And what I didn't realize during this whole process is that that way that I just wrote that book became exactly the foundation of Recovered on Purpose and how I coach others to share their story. Because when you get up and you share a recovery story, what do you want it to share? Do you just want to tell your story? Or do you want to specifically tell women out there that have lost their kids in their addiction, who feel hopeless that they're never going to get them back, how you lost your kids and you got them back two and a half years into recovery.

And now you're getting married and you, you're doing podcasts and you're doing all this stuff. Do you want to share that specific message or do you want to make sure that you share your testimony of Jesus? And there's all kinds of different ways to share a story. And now we're got a lot of people out there sharing their stories. I've got someone that's given her first professional speech this month to a bunch of judges and lawyers and teachers who are leaders of at-risk youth because she was an at-risk youth, but now she's going to be speaking to them and teaching them how to help the kids that they're serving.

There's so many of us in recovery. And to be clear, I love every single one of the fellowships out there that are helping people. I love every single member of every single fellowship. I believe that it is outdated, the way that you expect to help people waiting in a room for them to walk in. We have social media, we have podcasts, we have books, we have videos. I have a video on YouTube that has reached over 750,000 people. And the amount of emails I've gotten from people, "Hey, how did you do it? I'm looking for help," and this kind of stuff. Hey, send them a link to the fellowships near them, send them a link to treatment near them. We have so many different tools at our disposal in this season of the world. We need to take advantage of them. And that's what Recovered on Purpose is about. We get our stories out to reach the people that don't know that the freedom is available to them.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's so inspiring what you're sharing, Adam. I just want to go back for a moment to that time in the car and IHOP. It seems like you tried everything, mentors, advisors, you were falling through this bottomless pit. There was no hope. Maybe it's like the walls were glass, there was nothing to hold onto, but yet somehow you found faith, you found God. That provided a bottom to the pit and more than just the bottom, lifted you up. It seemed like, if I'm getting this right, God was able to help you when nothing else worked. The other thing that I know it's hard for many of us to fully grapple with, I know in my church and others this whole concept of spiritual warfare, which is very difficult to understand and the word is controversial maybe, but there's different ways of looking at it.

But I guess more broadly, I think many people would think there are forces for good and forces for darkness. And I think we all have moments in our lives where there is good thoughts that enter our minds and there's not so good thoughts. And for people of faith, the tools we use is prayer and the Bible. Say, "I don't know where this came from, but it's going." So it sounds like you faced those thoughts. People talk about inner demons and it doesn't really matter for the purpose of our conversation where it all comes from. But not only did you have faith, you found a tool to deal with your inner demons, inner darkness, what have you, that you didn't have before. So talk about, that was the reason for the change for you.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

The whole time, I know God exists. There was even a time in my addiction where I was writing prayers to him to quit and I even wrote my own 12 step program, thinking I might be able to do it just with God. But I had this immense amount of shame and guilt because I loved him so much and I knew that there was no way he could love me because of the way that I was being. And that shifted in my first 30 days of recovery. I remember having this, I was in a meeting and I don't know what happened, but it was like my thought process just clicked like, oh my gosh, God loved me first. He loved me before I even accepted him.

Then I just started going through all this stuff. I was like, he loved me the whole time. There's nothing I have to do to earn his love. There's nothing I can do to earn his love. And when I realized that, I can know that that solves all my problems, not just my inner demons. It solves all my problems. And I can always go back to a place where the same love from Brendan, it had to be expressed to me through Brendan for me to get it, but now I spent time with him every morning, I need to fill myself up with that love that I know exists.




Gary Schneeberger:

I say all the time to guests, we always go by content, not the clock, but we're also mindful that guests have lives and they have places to go. Tell listeners how they can find out more about Recovered on Purpose and then we'll let Warwick ask more questions for as long as you can stay with us.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

And I appreciate that and I'm loving this conversation, loving this conversation. On Facebook, Recovered on Purpose. I do a lot of stuff on there. I do the Recovered on Purpose show and do some posts on there and stuff. And I reply to every message on there. And if you're in recovery, I made a free relapse prevention worksheet and you can fill it out on your phone or your laptop, your tablet or whatever. Made it super simple at recoveredonpurpose.org. And I give my book away, a digital and audio copy that I read to you, and that's on recoveredonpurpose.org as well.




Warwick Fairfax:

Adam, one of the things I love about Recovered on Purpose, and I loved the title, is your thought about the power of addicts sharing their stories to help others. You mentioned, I think that 9% of addicts coming out of rehab make it sober a year. So relapse is sadly all too common and maybe the norm, but just talk about how the power of giving, of loving others through sharing their stories is a game changer to change those stats, which I think is the core tenet of Recovered on Purpose. Talk about how the power of sharing their stories changes addicts lives and changes others' lives.




Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, for instance, if you have a school that you're speaking at next week, you have this big podcast you're doing three weeks from now and you have a TEDx talk that's coming up in October, how are you going to be thinking about using drugs? You are looking forward to so many different things and you're thinking about the people that you can help. You're constantly thinking about this message that you're going to be able to express to the world and help people with, you know, have this purpose. And that's what I think is lacking in the recovery world.

We are really grateful to find recovery and we forget how hard it was to find it, how much work we had to do to find it. And we should be working equally as hard or more hard to help others find it. Even if you're not in recovery, if you're not an addict, there is something that you have been through. And this is something I tell everybody, if you have been through something that you thought was going to break you and you made it through, there is somebody going through that thing right now that needs your message for hope, the exact same thing that broke you, that you healed from, and it can become your superpower.




Warwick Fairfax:

Let me ask one final quick question. There may be somebody today that feels, I usually say at the bottom of the pit, but let's, I think, use your perspective, which is haunting. They may feel like they're falling through a bottomless pit. There is no bottom, there is no hope, there is no light. Suicide may feel like for them the only option, but they're in this ever falling bottomless pit. What would a word of hope be for somebody that maybe today they're in that situation and they may be an addict or some other challenge, which they're just in endless free fall. What would a word of hope be for that person?




Adam Vibe Gunton:

Well, it's a lie. It's a lie to think that there is no way out. And it's a really powerful thing to take responsibility. And I'm not saying it's not hard what you're going through. I'm not saying that you don't deserve the grace that you need right now, but all grace to you, all love to you. And take the responsibility to learn from whatever's going on right now and take the steps that are going to pull you out of it. If that means calling someone in your life that could help you through this, if that means reading a book that you think might give you some wisdom around it. If that means going back to church, just walk in. The first step towards really changing is deciding to take the first step. Whatever it is in your situation, this is your call to take it.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough, listener, to know when the last word on a subject has been spoken. And Adam Vibe Gunton, Vibe is not his middle name. I asked him, did Mr. And Mrs. Gunton name you Vibe? And he said, no. It's a nickname that helps him differentiate himself between another guy. And it's kind of cool because he is got a vibe to him, which is nice. So until we are together the next time, listener, please remember, we understand. You heard it in this episode. Your crucibles are difficult, but you know what? They're not the end of your story.

In fact, if you learn the lessons of them, if you apply the lessons of them, they can become a great new chapter in your story, as it's become in Adam's life, as it's become in Warwick's life, and my own life. Because what ends up happening, if you learn the lessons of those crucibles and move forward, the destination that you're headed to is the best of all because it is a life of significance.

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

Early 1991 was a dark time for me.

In December 1990, we had declared bankruptcy for John Fairfax Ltd., after a failed $2.25 billion takeover bid for my family’s media company in Australia.

I felt like I had let my family down, causing rifts in the family after my takeover bid.  I felt like I had let my parents down, including my father who died in early 1987.  I felt like I had let the four thousand plus employees down of the family business.  I felt like I had let the legacy of my great great grandfather John Fairfax (the founder of the company) down.  I being a person of faith like my great great grandfather, even felt like I had let God down.  I was not in a good place.

I was in the pit of despair. 

My whole life, I had prepared myself to take a leading role in the family business; undergraduate degree at Oxford, working on Wall Street, an MBA from Harvard Business School.  But after the failed takeover I wondered, “How would I ever have the kind of impact that I could have had at John Fairfax Ltd. for good?”

I was lost. I had a purpose before, to carry on the legacy of my great-great-grandfather and ensure the company was aligned to that legacy. “How would I find my way?” “What was my purpose now?” 

Crucible experiences are setbacks and failures that fundamentally alter the course of our lives.  They are defining moments.  We have our lives before our crucible moment and our lives after it.  We are not the same.

While crucibles can lead to good and can lead to a place of clarity and of service to others, that is not a given.  For me as for many, the pain when you are in the bottom of the pit is excruciating.  There does not feel like there is any end to the pit. Hope seems illusory.

How do you get out of the pit?  How did I get out of the pit?  For me, it was a long process that lasted years and it wasn’t easy. But, knowing these insights may have helped.

Here are four things I wish I knew when I was at the bottom of the pit…

1. Give yourself permission to grieve.

When you have something traumatic and life altering happen to you, it is going to hurt.

There will be waves of intense feelings.

While I did have some thoughts around how difficult it was navigating the dynamics and relationships in a family business, most of my feelings were directed at myself.  How could I have made such crucial ill-advised assumptions and decisions?  I had an Oxford degree and a Harvard MBA.  How could I have been so dumb?

I needed to realize that grieving is a natural part of the process when you face trauma.  Understanding what happened, the part you played in it, forgiving others, and forgiving yourself is critical and can help you move forward.

2. Feeling broken does not mean you are worthless.

Feeling broken does not mean you are broken forever.  There may be scars, even lifelong scars, but healing can happen.  At the bottom of the pit, the thought that healing is possible or that the waves of despair can lessen and become manageable seems illusory at best.

For me, a key part of my healing was realizing that God loved me unconditionally.  Whether my takeover succeeded or failed, God would still love me.  His love did not depend on what I was going to do for him, or would do.  I came to believe that God did have a plan for my life, just not the one I thought he had for me.

I believe as children of God we all have inherent value.  We are valuable.  We are worthy. Our worth does not depend on our failures or successes or what others may think about us.  We have inherent worth and value as human beings.

3. We are not defined by our worst day. 

We all make mistakes.  We all have setbacks and failures.  Some are our fault.  Some are not.

Even on our worst day, we need to try to realize that as painful as our life may be, there can be another day; a day filled with hope and possibility.  That thought that our lives could have purpose and meaning, that we could contribute to others and in some way to our world, seems hard to believe on our worst day.  While in the pit, we need to make a choice. We need to choose to believe that our life can have purpose.

4. A small step forward can be a defining moment.

In the pit of despair, it is hard to believe that a small step could have any meaning.  But it does.  A small step forward gives hope.  It gives the glimmer of a faint thought that our tomorrows could be better, could improve.  One small step gives the greatest gift we need.  Hope.

For me, that one small step during those early months was a decision my wife and I made to move to Annapolis Maryland in the Fall of 1991 with our then small family.

We had a few month-old son at the time.  We moved to a new environment where we knew some people amid the beauty of Annapolis.  We began to raise our new family.  During the decade of the 1990’s we were to have three kids; two boys and a girl.

That new family gave me hope as I saw the promise of new life.  I eventually found meaningful work using my skills and abilities.  I became a certified executive coach and was on two nonprofit boards whose missions I deeply cared about.  Ultimately those small steps led to the writing of my book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance.

That led to what I do now with the mission of Beyond the Crucible, to help people realize that their worst day does not define them.  That they can indeed lead a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.

But it all began with that one small step, to move to Annapolis.

It began with the thought that I may be broken but I was not worthless, that God indeed loved me for who I was despite my mistakes.  And it also began with the thought that while that seemingly grand purpose to lead a large media company in Australia may be gone, I still had a purpose.  And from my perspective, that purpose is as important as the seemingly grand purpose I grew up with.

Any purpose that is on our hearts, that will help and serve others, is important, valuable and worthwhile.

Reflection:

Ready to create a life you love?

Our guest this week, Beth Guckenberger, explains how the death of her father when she was certain he would pull through knocked her off balance, making her question the faith in which her life was rooted. But when she realized God’s ways were not her ways, that they were grander and more mysterious than she had ever imagined, that knowledge was fuel for her journey to care for the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of orphans through Back2Back Ministries, which she and her husband started by writing a personal check and which now has 400 employees rescuing the most vulnerable all across the globe.

“If you know what you’re going to be doing 50 Sundays from now, your faith is not reckless enough,” she says, bold inspiration to all of us pursuing lives of significance.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Beth Guckenberger:

I keep saying we all have little banks of testimonies and some of those testimonies in our banks are stories other people tell us about the things that have happened in their life. This is why we have podcasts like this so people can put someone else's story in their bank of testimonies, and some of the stories in our bank of testimonies come from our own life, things we eyewitness that have happened. When we're in maybe one of those crucible moments, we're in one of those moments where like, "Man, I do not know which way this is going to go," then we withdraw from that bank of testimonies and we can pull from it hope, perspective, encouragement, discernment, wisdom, whatever we need.




Gary Schneeberger:

We've welcomed about a hundred guests to be on The Crucible since our first episode three and a half years ago. That perspective from this week's guest, Beth Guckenberger, could serve as the mission statement for why we produce this show week in and week out, to provide listeners like you a bank of testimonies from which you can withdraw insights and action steps to help you move from tragedy to triumph. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In this conversation with Warwick, Guckenberger explains how the death of her father when she was certain he would pull through knocked her off balance, making her question the faith in which her life was rooted.

But when she realized God's ways were not her way, that they were grander and more mysterious than she had ever imagined, that knowledge was fuel for her journey to care for the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of orphans through Back2Back Ministries, which she and her husband started by writing a personal check and which now has 400 employees rescuing the most vulnerable all across the globe. "If you know what you're going to be doing 50 Sundays from now, your faith is not reckless enough," she says. A bold perspective you just may decide to deposit in your bank of testimony.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Beth, I'm so excited to have you here. I first met you and your husband Todd at a Taylor event, just, I don't know, back in February and you spoke a few times and I was just blown away by your story. In particular, you talked about reckless faith. I mean, I just could not get that word out of my mind because I'm not... I mean, I've done some pretty bold things I suppose, including a somewhat stupid $2.25 billion takeover of my family's media company, which I guess that was bold, but it wasn't the smartest move, which listeners are pretty well aware of. That concept of reckless faith, I mean, you talk in your book about a burr in your saddle, you've written a lot of books and this is the first one, but I had to read that book. There was something about it that's like, "What does that mean? That does not feel like me, but I need to understand it."

It was almost haunting. I know you don't like people saying your book's haunted them, but in the best sense of the word, haunting. All that's to say it's a privilege to have you here, and I kind of just wanted to start a bit, Beth, with a bit of the backstory, the origin story of kind of where you grew up, your parents, and maybe even... Obviously, you're a very missional person having spent 15 years in Mexico with orphan ministry and now Back2Back Ministries, but as you're telling your story of growing up, I wonder if there's any threads that looking back now you can see how you ended up where you did. Just tell us a bit about a young Beth and growing up and your family and all.




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me, both of you, on this conversation. I always like to imagine that a listener is sitting at the table with us. When I think about telling my family's story, it was, gosh, it was very idyllic for most of my childhood. My parents loved each other, they loved God, they loved my siblings and I. We had only safe adults around us, so I certainly grew to understand that there were dark forces in the world, there were people doing bad things, but I never interacted really with any of them. While that made for healthy self-esteem and it made for a healthy understanding of connection and attachment and communication, it also... One of the unintended consequences of that kind of idyllic childhood is that I formed a theology around this idea that if you do your thing, if you do right by God, he'll do right by you because that's certainly what I had seen.

I had watched... I had been encouraged by my parents and I had watched God do some big things even as a teenager, then through college. We started a Young Life ministry when I was a freshman in high school, and I remember the club leaders saying, "If we get 50 people in your parents' basement, that would be killer." I immediately thought to myself, "We need to get a hundred people in that basement." We had well more than a hundred that first day, and just that spirit of asking God for big things, bold things. I would later use phrases like "assignments that outsized me," wanted to stretch bigger than anyone thought was possible, and then giving God credit for it. I had those muscles pretty well-exercised all through college. Lots of mission trip experiences. Lots of thinking, "Man, I have God on my side, nothing is impossible."

It was just a little speed bump when the year I got married, I was 22, and my Dad was 51. He was diagnosed with cancer and I told him, "Hey, no worries. We know God. It doesn't matter what the cancer counts say. It doesn't matter what a doctors says. It's going to be okay. God, he lets water get pooled on an office and still lights it up on fire. There's still like anything is possible, and even before I should have, I was standing in front of churches telling people, "Don't be crying about my Dad. God's going to do something really amazing in the end."

The last weeks of his life, he could see that the crash was coming because he knew he was dying and he knew I was not facing that. He knew that once reality hit me, it was going to be bad and it was. I remember the moment my father passed, my brothers and mother and I were in the room and all of a sudden you could tell when he was gone. I looked at my brothers and I'm like, "Dad just moved. Heaven's not a theory. It's actually like an address and he moved there." I had assumed I wanted my GPS set to where my parents' GPS had been set to because that looked like a pretty good life, but all of a sudden the GPS got moved. I thought, "How do I live a life that's based on things that are still to come and not on the things that are in the here and now?"

It was conflicting with this deep disappointment that God had failed me and I broke up with him for a while. I walked away from my faith for a season. It wasn't comfortable for me because it's really all I'd ever known, but it was this like, "Can bad things happen and God still be good?" A pretty primal, primary question to ask, but it just took my breath away, and so when God and I got back together again, I had to accept that He was sovereign and if He was doing something, regardless if I didn't like it, or worse, didn't understand it, I could trust it. Later, I would find a verse in the Book of Jeremiah that says, "When you extract the precious from the worthless, then you can be spokesman." That's in the 15th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah.

I didn't know that verse, but that was what I was busy doing there in the aftermath, trying to figure out in the midst of something that felt worthless to me. Death feels worthless, like that should not have happened. How can I find precious in the midst of it? It really set me up for then what would become a lifetime of working in some of the hardest and darkest stories around our globe. I had my eyes now peeled for precious.




Warwick Fairfax:

You know what's interesting, Beth, is on this podcast and, I don't know, I've had like 150 episodes or so, we hear a lot of really tough origin stories. I mean, the stuff you experience on a daily basis with the orphanage, that's not uncommon. Victims of abuse, abandonment, physical challenges, quadriplegics, paraplegics, financial failures, drug addiction, I mean, we've had pretty much them all, but your origin story is unusual because it was a good, loving family and yet some... I mean, I haven't thought of this before, but sometimes there can be challenges when you grow up with a seemingly perfect, almost Disneyland kind of experience.

I mean, how could that be challenging? Every child wants that. Probably every orphan you've ever ministered to has said, "Boy, I wish I could have grew up the way you did, Beth. That just sounds a life I can't even imagine. I can't even contemplate." Does that makes sense? Talk about how-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

... I think you've really explained even growing up in the so-called "perfect family" with loving, wonderful, God-loving parents, that can set you up, well, I don't want to say not for failure, but that can have its own unintended consequences. Does that make sense at all?




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah, I mean, for sure. Just no one's immune and I would love to have God who taught me the lessons that I learned in that season in a hundred other ways, but I certainly had to metabolize at the most basic level, do I trust God? Do I really believe this life is about that one? Because if I do, then I believe that God created my Dad for eternity and his plan was not thwarted when he only had a little over 50 of those years here on Earth. He was still created for eternity and will live for eternity. Am I going to really believe that I'm living for a world to come? When I work... so I work, I don't know if we've mentioned it yet, but I work with orphaned and vulnerable children around the world and they have some really hard stories. Some of those stories, those knots are not going to get untied here on Earth.

The consequences of the choices that other people have made ad that they have to face, they'll carry with them forever here on Earth. There are some miracle stories. There are ways in which you can't believe it how stories get turned around, but for a lot of kids, they have to live with the consequences of choices parents made before they even got to raise their hand and say, "This isn't fair." I think... so I've been doing that work 26 years now. I think if you were to poll some of the communities where I serve, I think what they'd say that I bring to the table is a sense of hope, and hope is a pretty... it's a powerful gift to bring into a conversation, a hope that things can still be good even when they're hard, a hope that your questions can remain unanswered and you can still find peace. A hope that there are good days still ahead, even when it's something that feels devastating.

There's a lot of messages of hope out there, and I think that probably walking through my Dad's death and the aftermath of that impact on my family, his parting gift to me was God is sovereign and He's going to have hope. That's... I will forever carry those inside of me and all the kind of complications that life threw in the aftermath of that, the adult-sized problems that I had not yet experienced.




Warwick Fairfax:

Maybe one of the other gifts maybe he gave in your upbringing even before all that, you always had hope. We're not going to have 50 people for Young Life. We're going to have a hundred, 150. You have, I guess, a sense of hope ingrained, whether it's God-given or parents or family. It sounds like that is something that you came out of the box or through your parents regard, if that makes sense, that sense of optimism. There's probably a few dents along the way, but sure seems like you came out of the box that way, right?




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah, I do think it's a part... It's part of it's temperament, whether you the Enneagram or your Myers-Briggs or whatever your personality profile is, I always tend to skew that way, so some of that is just part of who how I was made to be. Part of it is having seen things, seeing marriages that look like there was no hope for them getting resurrected, watching prodigals come home, watching sicknesses get reversed. I keep saying we all have little banks of testimonies and some of those testimonies in our banks are stories other people tell us about the things that have happened in their life. This is why we have podcasts like this so people can put someone else's story in their bank of testimonies. Some of the stories in our bank of testimonies come from our own life, things we eyewitness that have happened.

When we're in maybe one of those crucible moments, we're in one of those moments where like, "Man, I do not know which way this is going to go," then we withdraw from that bank of testimonies and we can pull from it hope, perspective, encouragement, discernment, wisdom, whatever we need from the things that we have accrued. When I think about particularly my childhood and kind of early adult life, the way it set me up for some of the challenges we would have in international orphan care ministry and community development around the world is like kind of make me. You tell me it's not possible? All things are possible. Really, anything can happen.

When most people tell me something can't work, it feels frankly like a dare to me. In fact, someone asked me the other day if... Reckless Faith came out almost 15 years ago and they were asking me, "Do you think the older you get the less reckless you are because the stakes are higher and you realize?" I said, "No, actually, it's quite the opposite. The older I get the more reckless I become because I now have more deposits in my bank of testimonies and I now can tell you with even more certainty that I'll be just fine." Even more than I ever imagined is possible is possible, and so Reckless Faith is a relevant... it's a relevant message for me still today.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's mind-blowing. I want to fully hit the bounce back because you mentioned it a couple of times. You've very kindly said it to me, so I'll hold up for people. This is the original one, Reckless Faith. That is mind-blowing. I love the subtitle, Let Go and be Led. I mean, that is just... yeah, that says it all. Before we kind of talk a little bit about how you bounced back through this, one of the talks you gave at the Taylor event, I think you mentioned there was another challenge and you've adopted some kids. It was an adoption challenge that was not easy, and you used the words "spiritual bruises." I think you used that phrase, and a bit like reckless faith, it's like, "Gosh, I think I know what that word means." What an incredible phrase, spiritual bruises. Again, it was just swimming around in my brain that phrase. I think you talked about I believe just the experience with your Dad left you, I don't know, more prone to be triggered by different things. I don't know if that makes sense at all. I remember-




Beth Guckenberger:

Mm-hmm.




Warwick Fairfax:

... something like that. Talk about what you meant by that, that part of the talk and maybe it was another-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

... crucible, if you will.




Beth Guckenberger:

Like a year or two after my Dad was gone, Todd and I tried to, my husband and I tried to adopt a set of sisters that were one and three at one of the orphanages that we served. We felt like God told us to do it, and we started that arduous process of an international adoption and the paperwork it requires. Then, halfway through that process it got disrupted, and maybe if I had been in a healthier place, it would've just felt like something along the lines of this just wasn't meant to be, but instead because I was tender, I was mad. Like, "Here I am again feeling like I thought you were powerful. You're obviously not that powerful or this thing would have happened. Why didn't you stop what stopped it?" I now know because of the work we do in trauma training in our organization that anger and all of its forms is a secondary emotion sitting on the primary emotion of fear.

I was actually scared. I just didn't have the words to say that, so it came out like anger. Then, I got pregnant with my first child and in the process of that pregnancy delivered her in Mexico where we were living at the time. Pretty fast after, about six weeks after her birth, I got a call about a little boy who was her exact same age and who had been moved from Mexican state into another and his international adoption eligibility was shrinking. Someone was just looking for an American family who was paperwork-ready who would execute an adoption that very week. I was paperwork-ready because I'd gotten ready for those two sisters the year before and we kind of sprung into action and felt like God was opening this crazy door for us and, is this what he always meant to have happen?

We brought my son home that week and he and my daughter are the same age, and it was really exciting for a hot second until I realized that he had some kind of disability. I didn't have any expertise in disabilities, so I didn't know what it was. It turns out he was diagnosed eventually with severe cerebral palsy and the physician was able to let us know he'll never walk or talk or live independently.

While we at that point already were pretty crazy about him, we loved him like a son, it was another pressing in on that spiritual bruise like, "Gosh, I don't even know what to do at this point. I'm definitely not going to pray for healing because that did not work. I'm supposed to trust You, God, but is this really what You had in mind? Now, this young boy needs a lot of medical attention that would require us to live in the United States, and I thought you wanted us to live as missionaries in another country, so which one is it? Are You asking me to do that or this? Could You just make up Your mind?"

Again, a lot of anger coming out, but it was not really anger, it was actually just fear. I just didn't know how to say it. Then, the way God healed my spiritual bruise 18 months later, my son still had met none of his developmental milestones. One afternoon just started to move across the floor and, I mean, I didn't even know what I was looking at. I left the room for just a minute to get a camera to video him, and when I came back in the room he was all the way across the floor. He pulled himself up on a couch and turned around and walked across the room into my arms. I realized I was looking at a miracle. I'd never seen a miracle before. I never even knew anybody who had seen a miracle, but I couldn't deny what I was looking at.

Eventually, that young boy, my son never again had any other signs of cerebral palsy. He was considered medically healed. Went on to become a pretty tremendous athlete, played football for the university where our children attended. I got to share his story with his university campus, and at one point when I was telling the story and I got to the part of his healing, the students started to cheer because that's what kids do. I tell them, "Listen, I'm not sharing this," and the same thing is true for your listeners, "I'm not sharing this so that people know wildly personal things about my family. I'm just here to testify that what God taught me is that with Him, still all things are possible because I'm the same girl that prayed to the same God for two people that I loved, and one of those stories did not turn out the way that I wanted it and one of them turned out better than I even asked it for.

The way that God healed my spiritual bruise is He basically whispered to my very soul, "Just trust Me. No matter what happens, I am good and I am to be trusted." That lesson I have carried with me, my son is 25, I've carried with me the last 25 years because there were lots of stories when I find myself subsequently there were lots of crucible moments, disappointments. I thought I heard you. Did you want this or that? Just let me know. This is not turning out the way I thought it was. I don't like this circumstance. I can't control this circumstance. The reminder of that God is good and He can be trusted has carried me through a lot of hard seasons.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, there's so much from what you just said. That is remarkable stories you share in your book, your daughter Amber and your son Evan. You mentioned looking back that whole artificial twinning that your daughter is significantly responsible being used by God for your son walking. I don't know if kids tease each other about that saying, "Hey-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah-




Warwick Fairfax:

... "you know-




Beth Guckenberger:

... very much so all the time.




Warwick Fairfax:

... just remember it's all me.




Beth Guckenberger:

Every touchdown she said, "Those are my seven points, by the way."




Warwick Fairfax:

I'm sure it's all-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yes it's all...




Warwick Fairfax:

... in good nature and fun-




Beth Guckenberger:

Fun, yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

... you know?




Beth Guckenberger:

Yes, yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's just remarkable, and I think what you said is sort of deposits in the bank is that sometimes things will work out he way we hope they would, and God is sovereign in a way we hope it'd be. Sometimes He's sovereign in ways that it's hard to understand, but those drops of grace, that manna from Heaven as sort of the Israelites had, sort of that whatever, that sort of sweet bread that came from Heaven to get them through the desert as they were fleeing Egypt, those do get you through. You remember when God really showed up, and there are other times you can't understand, but you now He's sovereign, so it's those are the drops of grace that help us to go through and carry on and trust and believe. He doesn't have to, but He does, which is remarkable.

I want to talk a bit about your ministry with Back2Back Ministries and it kind of, at least reading the book, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it felt like it all started in Albania. You'd say, "Well-




Beth Guckenberger:

Mm-hmm.




Warwick Fairfax:

... "it all started in Mexico, didn't it?" Well, yes and no. Right? You were there with Cru in '94 with Todd and you saw this child on the street, so talk about how there was something about that event that, I don't know, you talk about defining moments. Maybe that was a defining moment that altered the course of your life, so talk about that story. I think later you talk about... I believe it's about this, the... Is that, well, I was going to say burr under the saddle. That's probably a different story.




Beth Guckenberger:

Mm-hmm.




Warwick Fairfax:

Forgive me.




Beth Guckenberger:

It's all connected. I mean, it's okay-




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah-




Beth Guckenberger:

... this is not a book report, yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

Thank you.




Beth Guckenberger:

I think-




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, that... We'll-




Beth Guckenberger:

... I-




Warwick Fairfax:

... get to that other story in a second, but talk about the Albanian kid and thank you. I'm glad it's not a book report, even though I've got lots of notes, but still, yeah, talk about that Albanian kid.




Beth Guckenberger:

I was going to say you would still pass. Yeah. You know, when you look at your life at any point in hindsight, you realize how there were these inciting incidents that happened that set you on a course that you don't know at the time, "Hey, my whole life is changing." You just are living the life that you're living, but you can look back and realize, "That's why that happened." I think we were college students at Indiana University and Albania had been under a pretty difficult government for about two generations. They were essentially couped and we knew that they had about a month and a half where they would be reorganizing and probably shut out the Western world again and, therefore, all evangelical influences. They were asking college students if anybody could afford to take an additional week out of classes and we'd go for two weeks to Albania.

They were just trying to blitz the country to expose as many people as possible to the Gospel. Obviously, I mean, as you know, I like to say yes. I'm like, "Yes, sign me up," so we went... He was my current husband, but at the time he was just my boyfriend, and we were going around to university campuses and government buildings and local parks and telling people about Jesus. Then, I think now looking back, there probably was a miscommunication and there was an afternoon free and they were trying to figure out something to do with us. They took us to an orphanage and it gave me a sensitivity, it was the first orphanage I'd ever been to, to the idea that somebody... I mean, I had watched Little Orphan Annie. I knew the concept of an orphan, but I'd never actually met an orphan, and it was hard for me to imagine institutionalized orphans, like kids who were living in homes.

Then, the very next day we were walking down the main highway in Tirana, the capital of Albania, and I saw a toddler that was asleep on the sidewalk without a single adult in sight. I kind of rushed over to that child with my newfound glasses that were seeing vulnerable kids in new ways since the day before. The translator hurried over to tell me to not touch the child and I said, "Well, I mean, he's out here all by himself. Somebody needs to hold him." He told me it was a gypsy child, that the gypsies were keeping kids awake all night long so they would sleep during the day. He said, "If you lift up his side, you'll see people have been throwing money at him all day. They'll come around at dusk, wake up the children, collect the money, and stay up all night."

I mean, again, I literally grew up on a street that was called Sunday Lane. It was as picturesque and idyllic as you can possibly imagine for a street called Sunday Lane. I just didn't have any worldview that somebody would treat a child like that. I understood and respected that they didn't want me to touch the child, but I wasn't quite ready to leave him, so I sat on the bench for a seat for a little bit with Todd and with this translator and just kept wondering out loud like, "Are there more kids like him? Does he know that this is being done? If somebody picked him up, is the parent miles away? Does anybody care?" Just kind of the hardest versions of those questions you could ask, I was just kind of outward-processing.

On the way home on the airplane, people were all buzzing on our plane about some of the crazy experiences we had in a country so far from the state we were living in in the United States and with a people group, a country that was in utter chaos trying to reorganize itself. Just remarkable stories we had seen, and honestly, all I could think about was that gypsy kid and that orphanage I had been in and, what did it mean? How many more kids out there were like that? What did that mean for us for the rest of our life? When I think about the story of the life I live today, it very much started on that park bench when I just felt kind of gobsmacked with the reality that kids are treated that way.




Warwick Fairfax:

I feel like in God's providence, that was one moment he dropped in your life, and then I feel like a little bit after there was another moment he dropped, which was-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

... the story I was getting the two together in which you were visiting Mexico. I don't think you'd moved there permanently yet. It was a missions trip and you were in an orphanage and you were providing toys and hamburgers to the kids, but yet one little girl did something unexpected with that hamburger. Talk about what she did and why it affected you much and why that was a defining moment that that little girl in that orphanage on that missions trip in Mexico.




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah, we were participating in a mission trip that someone else had organized, and we were painting a wall around the church from blue to green, which is kind of okay, except for the year before we'd been there and painted it from green to blue and people were just trying to keep us busy. I don't think any... We weren't swept up in anybody's strategic plan or mission.




Warwick Fairfax:

Okay.




Beth Guckenberger:

In the back of my mind, I'd never left that gypsy child and what it had stirred in me, and so just pretty miserable on this experience and wanting kids to have a different kind of experience than the one we were having. I said to Todd, "Do you think there's any orphans in this city?" He didn't have any idea, but man, it was worth exploring, so we eventually found an orphanage and the director of that children's home told us that the kids hadn't had meat in over a year. The next day, we brought enough meat that we thought would feed those 50 kids for a month. I was serving the hamburgers from off of a griddle right into kids' plates and hands. This little girl came up for the fifth time and Todd was like, "Hey, I don't know a single preschooler who can eat five hamburgers, so something's going on with the food. Why don't you follow her and see if you can find out what's going on?"

I followed her like up some stairs and down a hall and into the doorframe of what was her dorm room. I stopped because from that vantage point, I could see the other preschoolers. They were all waiting, helping each other lift up mattresses and they were sticking those burgers underneath them saving them for another day because they'd never tasted or seen anything like that really probably in their memories. I just kept thinking like, "Gosh, I know people who would buy hamburgers for orphans if they just knew how to get them here."

The vision of the life that I live was born in that moment, like the idea that we could build a bridge. I didn't realize at the time that things would flow in both directions over that bridge. I didn't understand. I had a lot to learn about poverty and a lot to learn about nonprofit work. I had a lot to learn about the language and the culture, and there was still a lot of lessons ahead for me, but in that moment I thought, "Hmm, I think that God's kids are supposed to do something about this, and I mean, it might as well be me."

On the way home, we talked about, what would it look like for us to try to do that? I got back. Mission trips are usually a week. I went home and drove my same car, my same job, same condo, same friends, same life, but I kept saying like, "I feel like I got a burr in my saddle. I'm trying to sit down in the same place and I just feel something poking at me." Eventually, that burr caused us to just want to do something now even though we weren't really in a position to.

We decided we were double income, no kids. We are just going to live off of one of our teaching salaries and save the other one. At the end of that year, sitting on what we thought would be a pot of gold, we were going to ask God what He would have us do. Would we buy a bunch of hamburgers with that gold? Or would we buy a plane ticket with that gold? What would He want us to do? It turns out, He wanted us to go, and so that one year of a teaching salary basically supported us for a year of living in Mexico, and that's the start of the organization that we still lead today.




Gary Schneeberger:

One of the things that you said to me when we talked earlier, Beth, was that you started Back2Back Ministries, right? It was birthed out of your checkbook.




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah.




Gary Schneeberger:

Fast forward, now you have... You told me it's probably, and it could be more now, 400 employees, so from a line item in your checkbook to 400 employees, that is, as they say, money well spent, right? I mean, you have to look back on that and go that leap that you took was the right leap to take, and in all humility it's made quite an impact.




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah, it's again where you look back and you realize when you say yes to anything, "Yes, I'll go; yes, I'll give; yes, I'll do; yes, I'll say whatever, you really only see the step that you are about to take. You don't have any idea where that step will lead you, what relationship it'll put you into, what door it will open. You just don't know, and if we spend too much time evaluating what's going to happen after our yeses and nos, we might get kind of stunned to inactivity. I've found that I recognize a closed door pretty fast, so I tend to say yes first, and if the door shut, okay, it's shut. If it's not shut, who the heck knows what's on the other side? That's part of the adventure of life really.




Warwick Fairfax:

You know, Beth, that leads to there's a lot of fascinating things in this book, but you talk in a number of places about a refined faith versus a reckless faith, and boy, I mean, I'm one of those people that, yes, I've made my leaps of faith. I'm one of these people that, I don't know, I like to think I'm as fearful as the next person and very cautious, think, think, plan, and go think again before taking a baby step. The only thin that's gotten me out of it, if I feel like the Lord's telling me to do something, I will tend to do it come what may because I've got a fair amount of perseverance, so I guess God gave me that to balance out my innate caution and fear, which is another story.

I tend to be by nature a little bit in the refined faith category. Talk a bit about the difference because I've never heard it described that way. It's like, again, that was haunted me a bit in the best sense of the word. I mean, this is not a thing that most listeners will be familiar with, reckless versus refined. Tell the listeners what the difference is.




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah, I mean, I have a more sophisticated answer in the book, but basically I say if you know what you're going to be doing 50 Sundays from now, your faith is not reckless enough. There has to be some element of, "I'm not in control and I don't know what he's going to do, I don't know where this is going to lead." All of our faith fits in a frame, our understanding of God, what he can and cannot do, what he means in our lives, what... All of our theology, our orthodoxy, and orthopraxy and all of that, it fits in a frame. If we're not willing for that frame to stretch and grow and break and get reframed, then we have a pretty refined faith. I mean, honestly, it'll get you to heaven. I mean, we know what our Bible says about that kind of thing, but what kind of life do we miss out on when we don't allow God to reintroduce Himself to us?




Warwick Fairfax:

I'll just read just a couple of things you say about reckless faith just for the listeners. "A truly reckless faith, however, always expects change, and as a result, it's eager to risk more and fear less. A reckless faith knows there is more to the story, more we can't see, more than I experience. It is hungry." I mean, there's a lot of incidents that for people familiar with the Bible will be familiar with. The talks refers to the woman Mary, who used an expensive bottle of perfume to wash Jesus' feet with her hairs. You have used that image and a bunch of others.

You say, "A reckless faith understands the best use of an expensive bottle of perfume maybe to wash somebody's feet. A reckless faith charges into the sea before thinking that God may part the water. A reckless faith leaves 99 sheep to go after the one. It does not need man's approval or man's money. A reckless faith believes in death do us part." I mean, yeah, that's sort of just that sense of... You know, I think C.S. Lewis talks about that still small voice of God when you know that you know you know it's Him just willing to step out in faith even when you don't have all the answers and all the plans. That feels like what you're talking about. Is that a reasonable summary?




Beth Guckenberger:

Yes. Yes, of course it is, and it just... We live in world so full of Yelp reviews, right? Amazon reviews. We need everyone else to tell it's like, "This is a good idea. This is a really good idea. You should definitely buy this, and here's exactly what my experience was, and I'm going to... You can make your choices based on what my choices were like." I just... I don't want to look left or right. I don't want to make my choices based on what's happening around me. I want to have a singular vision of what's before me and attack it. I'm currently in the middle of a project. It's with very high stakes and a huge possibility for failure.

In fact, we hired a consultant the other day and they said to me, "What kind of odds are you putting on this thing happening?" I said, "That actually does... It's not the point. Even if what I'm hoping happened doesn't end up happening, there's something in this journey that I'll take with me to the rest of my life. I'm not looking... I'm not - I'm not foolish. There's a difference in my mind between reckless and foolish. I'm not foolish, but I am... I will not be held down by the opinion of others, and I think that's what I was trying to summarize in that paragraph you just read.




Gary Schneeberger:

I want to jump in and, just for the listeners, pull some things together because both of you, again, this is my favorite part of the show, Beth, when what the guest says, the guest's story and Warwick's story kind of align. I found this article that you wrote on your blog from 2021, New Chapters in Your Life and How to Embrace Them. You list five steps to go through there, and two of those steps are things that if you go to beyondthecrucible.com right now, you'll find the same things written there, right?




Beth Guckenberger:

Mm-hmm.




Gary Schneeberger:

What you've just described about not having to have all the answers, just take one step, that's what you say in this article. One of the steps is to take one step. Warwick talks about it all the time here on the show. Guests here on the show talk about it all the time. Take that first small step. Trust that step, one foot in front of the other. That's what you did. That's what you're doing. That's what you're doing right now is you're facing that situation that you talked about where the consultant's like, "SO what kind of odds are giving this?" Right? You're not even probably-




Beth Guckenberger:

Mm-hmm.




Gary Schneeberger:

... thinking about that, right? You're thinking about, "I'm taking this step because this is where I'm supposed to go." That, I think-




Beth Guckenberger:

Mm-hmm.




Gary Schneeberger:

... is the great equalizer in what we have here with the show, what Warwick's created and the guests that we bring on is regardless of background, regardless of crucible, regardless of story of coming back from that crucible, folks learn something from the crucible. They've applied that to their life moving forward and that is how they're living their life, one step at a time. I just had to bring that up for folks who are listening in to say nope, you're not crazy. That's the same thing that you've heard 147 other times on this show as we've gone through it.




Beth Guckenberger:

Someone just asked me, an interviewer was asking me about a new book I wrote recently and said, "Tell me the distinctive, tell me what makes this message unique." I said, "I actually don't want it to be distinctive and I don't want it to be unique. If I'm the only person that's hearing that message, that means I heard it wrong."




Warwick Fairfax:

Right.




Beth Guckenberger:

I get encouragement and comfort when I realize God's told the same thing to other people, and so I love the fact that something that I felt compelled to write about is something that you all have found to be true, and may that just strengthen us each.




Warwick Fairfax:

You know, as we're... I want to talk a little bit more about Back2Back Ministries, but one of the things you just talked about with this big initiative you are doing, another thought I think you're implicitly saying, the journey is as if not more important than the destination. If you feel called to do it, you don't necessarily know if it's going to work or not, but you feel certain that the journey will be worth it irrespective-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

... of the result. That is counterintuitive for most people. It's like, "It's all about the result." Well, no, it's like the adage, "Does God care about what we are going to accomplish for Him?" Again, very brief segue, but in my naivete growing up in this 150-year-old very large family media business that was started by as strong a business person for Christ that I've ever come across, and then faith waned a bit as that power and money grew. I felt like, "Well, I know God's plan. I'm a believer." Oxford, Harvard Business School, became a believer at Oxford and evangelical Anglican church. I know God's plan. It's to resurrect the company in the image of the founder. It's pretty obvious to me. That'd be a pretty good plan for God, wouldn't it be? That must be God's plan.

Well, clearly, despite my mistakes, if He wanted it to happen, God's sovereign and it would have. It didn't happen. The $2.25 billion takeover failed spectacularly after three years, so it's like, "Okay, so does God really care about the size of what I could do for him? Or does He care more about me and my heart?" I've done some things since that maybe are not quite on that epic a scale, but I don't think God really cares about the size of what we do. He cares about our heart. You've done a massive amount for orphans, but is there more? Of course there is. It's a drop in the bucket in one sense, which could be depressing. Are there other organizations that do more? I don't know, maybe, but that's kind of irrelevant, right? It's like you can get caught-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah, yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

... up in the size of it and, "Gosh, I did something big for God last year," or, "Now's it's going to be small," and you get caught up in numbers and impact rather than... It's kind of irrelevant. Does that line of thinking make sense at all?




Beth Guckenberger:

It does, and I just had a large speaking opportunity and I was kind of excited about, oh, the size of the venue and the attention it would bring to what we were doing, and I had a very meaningful experience with the person that picked me up from the airport and that was supposed to be my host for that day. At the end of the night when I went to bed, I thought, "My gosh, this whole thing was actually about that conversation."

God just... That was his plan A for the day. The rest of this was just gravy, and I hope God did something with that event, but I actually think the whole reason I went to that city was to have that conversation with that person. I think there's something to training our eyes to not be impressed with style all the time and be more on the lookout for substance, and He can do substance in the middle of successes and in the middle of failures.




Warwick Fairfax:

Amen. I want to talk about just as we're sort of rounding out the conversation Back2Back Ministries. You lived in Mexico for 15 years and now in Cincinnati. One of the statistics in the book that may not be surprising, but for those who are not that familiar with the world of orphan ministries maybe, and this statistic is out of date, but sadly it's probably still true. You mentioned... I think you mentioned, what, 15 years ago there were 143.5 million orphans in the world. I'm guessing it's probably larger than that probably by a lot-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

... but then what you said here is, I mean, it's hard to read to be honest, but it says, "Statistics say that 90% of orphans go into the black market or prostitution. They often lack family support." You give lots of stories in this book and I'm sure others. I mean, it's a pretty dark, depressing world and you save some. You can't save all of them, be it spiritually, physically, and that's got to be soul-crushing. Talk about just... This isn't for the faint of heart, but talk about this ministry and it's... it'd be easy to get depressed and say, "I saved one, but there are 30 abused kids who I didn't save." You know? "I saw them for a second and they left."




Beth Guckenberger:

Mm-hmm.




Warwick Fairfax:

"I did everything I could." How do you work in that area without it crushing your soul? Yeah, there's some glimmers of hope, but there's the darkness must feel overwhelming. How do you work in that kind of environment?




Beth Guckenberger:

Tenderly. I mean, there's a pastor in the United States named Andy Stanley, and he has a phrase, he says, "Do for one what you wish you could do for them all." There is this sense that you have to just realize, "I'm going to do for one," and I hope that in my doing for one, I inspire or encourage or challenge someone else to do something for their one. There's enough people in God's family to turn around those numbers if everybody does there's something for their one. I happen to make this my vocation, so I'm helping more than one, but if we would all have eyes to see, there's a Greek word that sometimes is translated in our Bibles as look, like Peter looked at someone, John looked at someone. A better translation is like double taked or look look.

I'm always challenging myself, "Make sure you look look. Make sure you double take." Don't... Let your eye linger there even though it might make you sad or it might make you feel helpless or it might make you angry or you might feel afraid. Don't be afraid to look look because it's when we don't look look that God gives us His heart and sight for things. To some of the listeners on your podcast who have experienced really, really worse days, they know what it feels like to have nobody look look at them. Sometimes our pain is so bad that people just avoid us because, "I don't even know what I would do with that kind of thing. That is so hard." We remember who look looked at us. We remember who came for us in those moments, and that's exactly what it feels like to a child in their darkest day when someone comes for them.




Warwick Fairfax:

And somebody cares. One of the things you have on your website is this Five-Point Child Development Plan, and again, I'm not an expert and you know way more than I do, but I looked at that and I was blown away. It is so different. It's just this holistic... You talk about the sustainability of the orphan, the spiritual, physical, educational, emotional, social. That just feels a lot different than meeting the physical needs, which is obviously-




Beth Guckenberger:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

... important to talk about why that all those points are important to care for orphans and ultimately give them hope and a sustainable future. Talk about those five points because it just blew my mind reading them. It just seemed so wise.




Beth Guckenberger:

Well, in the beginning, we weren't that wise. In the very beginning, we just met physical needs because that's all we could see, and then our language skills caught up with us and we wanted to make sure people knew we were doing it in the name of Jesus, not in our own name. Then, our tagline was, "We provide care for today and hope for tomorrow," but it didn't feel like much hope for tomorrow when kids were leaving orphanages across the world around age 15 when the government stops giving it to them for free. They were chronologically 15, emotionally because of their trauma more like 10, 11, and 12. Not able to take care of themselves out in the world, finding each other, making babies they couldn't take care of, and bringing them right back to the same places.

Then, we thought, "Education is the key. That's it. We're going to just make sure everybody gets a fabulous education and this will set them up for life." We got a lot of attention when we did that. We were taking orphans all the way through Bachelor's degrees in countries where not many people had that level of education. I was meeting country presidents and it was very exciting. Then, we graduated one of our first college graduates, a computer systems engineer, and after six weeks in his new job he told us he was going to quit because there was this guy who was following him around everywhere and he was driving him crazy because he was always telling him what to do. I said, "Is he your boss?" "Yeah, he's our boss."

I realized that this young man had all the intellectual capabilities of performing his responsibilities, but he had so much trauma in his heart. He hadn't dealt with issues of men or authority or working in a team or asking for help. Then, we took a deep dive into trauma and eventually rounded out what we now call the Five-Point Child Development Plan where we want kids to be holistically... their needs holistically addressed so that we eventually release kids into the world who are able to financially be independent, still interdependent within their communities, and fully dependent on Jesus. That's now the goal of the kids that we work with in Back2Back.




Warwick Fairfax:

Just maybe one final area to talk about. As you've been talking, sometimes we feel like there's so much problems in the world. We've touched on this, but whether it's orphans or whatever area we work in, it's a drop in the bucket, so why bother? Or there can be a sense of guilt. "I didn't save that one," or, "I didn't have that spiritual conversation with their family member or tribe, that things didn't go the way I would hope." It's easy to just get depressed and say, "Well, why bother?" I feel like as the years go by, I guess I have this thought as, "I'm not responsible for solving every problem in the world. I'm just responsible for Lord Jesus, What are the things that you want me to do? What are the areas? What are the ministries? What are the people?" I'm just responsible for listening and doing that.

That might mean some might think I have a big ministry, a small ministry, which is irrelevant. The only person's opinion that matters is God's, and it's not easy, but I'm trying to have that attitude of not being measured by numbers. When my book came out in the fall of 2021, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trial to Lead a Life for Significance, I mean, I was pretty much on my knee saying, "Lord, I will not be defined by numbers. If it sells one, a thousand, 10,000, it's irrelevant. All I'm called to be is faithful. I will not measure my sense of self-worth by numbers, even numbers of a book or numbers on a podcast." Not that we don't try to improve those numbers. We try to do all the things you can. I'm not foolish to use your words.




Beth Guckenberger:

Yep.




Warwick Fairfax:

I'm sensible. I'm a planner. I have a Harvard MBA. I get this stuff, but my sense of self-worth and identity will not be measured by numbers or the impact the world sees or places I speak at or what have you. I'm not responsible for solving every problem in the world. I'm not responsible for solving any of them. I just need to be faithful to what God has led me to and... Does any of that make any sense at all? I think... Put that in your words. Or what's your sort of thoughts about that paradigm? Or how would you pit it in Beth Guckenberger phraseology, if you will?




Beth Guckenberger:

Yes, in my first language. A hundred percent, I mean, when I think, again, just circling back to the beginning of our conversation, when I think about what being in the presence of someone dying did for me, it made me realize this life that I live, it's just... it's mine. I give it back to God, but no one else should tell me what to do with my life. No one else should like... That doesn't mean I'm not influenced by the right things, but at the end of the day, we only get this day one time and you exchange it for... What are exchanging today for? What conversations? What things have I labored towards? What have I given myself to my most important commodity?

We've learned how to budget our money and we've learned how to budget our time, but the most important thing for me to budget, frankly, is my energy, my capacity. What am I going to budget my energy towards? Am I just going to give it away all day to anybody who asks of it and we'll figure out if there's enough at the end of the day? Or am I going to think about... I'm going to... I want the bulk of my energy to go in this direction. I want the intentionality of a life that I've lived in a way that I've given it away, and I can just testify to your listeners that the more I have given my life away, the richer it's become.




Gary Schneeberger:

That sound you just heard, listener, was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating that we have begun our descent to end our conversation, but we are not there yet. A couple things before we get there. One, Beth, I just want to be in full openness and honesty, say to you, I'm going to steal steal the look look viewpoint of the way that you do things. I love that, so-




Beth Guckenberger:

Of course, anyway.




Gary Schneeberger:

... I'll be using that in conversation with friends. Very, very, very sterling insight into how we should regard those with whom we interact. Second thing, I would be remiss if I did not give you the opportunity to let listeners know how they can find out more about you and Back2Back Ministries, so how can they find out more?




Beth Guckenberger:

Absolutely. They can find us online at back2back.org. Certainly, we're on all social media platforms, and you can find me every place. You can find me on social media platforms. I have my own website, but yeah, any of those locations back2back.org is probably a great place to start.




Gary Schneeberger:

Awesome. Warwick, you're the one who brought Beth into our midst. You can be the one who asked Beth the final question as we wrap.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, thank you, Beth. I mean, it was a privilege to hear you at that Taylor event back in February and read your book Reckless Faith, and maybe I have more reckless faith than I think, but I just feel like that's so not me, but maybe it could be with God's intervention. It's given me a lot to think about. I almost hesitate to ask the last question because what you said before was just so fantastic, but a question we often ask is, there might be some listeners today listening to you, and today might be their worst day as we often say, they might be in the bottom of the pit and there's all sorts of pits. That could be loss of a loved one, abuse, financial failure, physical loss. They might feel like there's no hope. Any faith they had was squelched. What would be a word of hope for those who maybe today is their worst day?




Beth Guckenberger:

That they're not alone. I think one of the things that can happen to us on bad days is we can feel shame and we can feel isolated, and those are dangerous mindsets to adopt that this happened to us because we're not okay in our very core. There's something about us broken and we're not okay, and there's... That shame is very insidious and isolation is where we don't get any fresh air into our thinking. If our thinking is toxic because it's our worst day, it can just make us sicker, and so I would just say to someone who's in a really bad day, reach out and look up, and I'll pray that someone is there for you in that place.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communication business long enough, listener, to know when the last words have been spoken on a topic, and Beth has just spoken it. Thank you for spending time with us, listener, in this episode of Beyond the Crucible. Please remember before we meet again, in the time that it takes for us to meet again, which will be next week, please remember that we understand that your crucible experiences are indeed difficult.

We described some of the difficulties of those crucibles right here in this episode, but we also know and we described that as well. We talked about that as well, but they're not the end of your story. In fact, if you learn the lessons of what is being taught to you in those moments, you can move on, one step at a time. The direction that it will lead you can become the most fulfilling direction that you go, can become the most fulfilling destination that you end up at because that destination is a life of significance.

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

Your crucible didn’t happen to you, it happened for you. You’ll hear us say that a lot — tied to that trial, set within that setback, affixed to that failure… you’ll discover seeds you can plant along your journey to a life of significance. You just have to look for and learn from them.

Our guest this week, Andrea Heuston, has accumulated plenty of those seeds as she’s moved beyond her crucibles. From an emotionally wrenching infertility struggle, to a medical emergency that left her in a coma for weeks, to a fire that destroyed the home she called her “happy place” — she has faced a lifetime’s worth of tragedies. And yet she’s moved on to live a life of triumph — choosing hope and grace as she helps others to do exactly what she’s done.

“I had to get over myself in order to go anywhere else,” she tells us… and the wisdom she’s accumulated can guide you along your own unique path to the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Andrea Heuston:

I can't control what happens. I can't control a spark from a fire that hits my roof. I can't control the fact that I was born unable to conceive. I can't control any of these things. I can't control the fact that I was in a coma. Who knew? But what I can control is my reaction to things and how I moved forward. So for me, I could be a victim. "Oh my gosh, the universe did this to me," or "Oh my gosh, this happened to me." It's really about what happens for us, not to us.




Gary Schneeberger:

You'll hear us say that a lot around these parts. Your crucible experiences did not happen to you. They happened for you. Tied to that trial set within that setback, affixed to that failure, you'll discover seeds you can plant along your journey to a life of significance. You just have to look for them and learn from them.

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Our guest this week, Andrea Heuston, has accumulated plenty of those seeds as she's moved beyond her crucibles from an emotionally wrenching infertility struggle, to a medical emergency that left her in a coma for weeks, to a fire that destroyed the home she called her happy place, she has faced a lifetime's worth of tragedies. And yet she's moved on to live a life of triumph choosing hope and grace as she helps others to do exactly what she's done, to lead like a woman. "I had to get over myself in order to go anywhere else," she tells us. And the wisdom she's accumulated can guide you along your own unique path to the life you've always dreamed of.




Warwick Fairfax:

I loved reading your book, Andrea, Stronger on the Other Side. I just felt that so much wisdom, empowerment, it was incredible. Love what you do with your branding and communications firm, Artitudes Design. You've got a podcast, as Garymentioned, The Lead Like a Woman Show, and then a new book as we just heard, Lead Like a Woman With Audacity, so a lot of things. But I'd like to start a little bit about your background. I think growing up in Washington state and just obviously that was formative in both your challenges and how you've chosen to use those challenges to help others. So just tell us a bit about a young Andrea growing up and who were you and dreams and challenges. What was the young Andrea like?




Andrea Heuston:

Oh, the young Andrea was a nerd first of all. Although my brother, who I'm very close to, he didn't call me a nerd. He called me a brain. So I grew up as the middle child of three. And my older brother's only seven months older than I am because my parents couldn't conceive. So they adopted my brother at three days old. And so Ryan and I grew up fairly close. He's still a major player in my life. Really, I was born in the seventies, well early seventies. So it was, I don't want to say an idyllic childhood, I just want to say life was good overall. I mean, both my parents were teachers at one point, so we had no money because you only get paid once a month as a teacher. So at the end of every month we were eating Campbell's soup and saltine crackers, but none of us knew that. We just had a pretty great life together.

As I got a little older, I realized that as a girl, I was not as valued, and I have to be careful about that word, as the boys in the family because I was the girl. I grew up very right wing, conservative Christian, which was great. I had a huge community there because my friends were all youth group friends or friends from church overall until I went to Europe as an exchange student. But it was very much girls are supposed to do certain things and they have certain roles, and really those roles are about being a mother and being a wife and taking care of the homestead, things like that.

So I chafed against that a little bit just because I do. I am a very much, my favorite quote is leaders challenge the process. And that's what I do and have done for many, many years. But yeah, I had a dad who worked for The Man, as we say, The Man, so the suit and tie, all the whole thing all the time. And my mom was a teacher, which was a great career for a woman. And then she took time off to raise kids, and then she was a principal of a Christian school for a while as well. So it was lovely in a lot of ways. And you only know what you know. You know where you are and you know what you know until you learn something new.




Warwick Fairfax:

And that is interesting. I don't want to dwell on it too much, but that part of the book when you talk about your upbringing, that to me, it's going to sound weird, that was one of the saddest parts of the book as I read it. I just felt so bad for you. And again, I don't want to prolong this too much because I didn't grow up like that. I grew up in a sort of Anglican background in Australia, and my parents were... My dad was philosophical in his faith. He wouldn't have considered himself evangelical, still less fundamentalist. And along the way, and again, listeners know this, faith became important to me. We go to an evangelical church. But I read that and I don't want to get too much on it, but I just thought as you were talking about your upbringing, it's like, well, this doesn't really accord with my philosophy of life, which is sort of interesting given that faith is important to me.

So yeah, I have two sons.




Andrea Heuston:

Mine neither.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, I have two sons and a daughter in their twenties into early thirties. And with all of my kids, including my daughter, I want them to be who they want to be. Encourage them. And whenever they say, "Gosh, I don't know that I feel worthy enough," I'll absolutely hammer into that if that's the right or wrong word, saying, "You are worthy. You are brilliant." I mean, I'm into all of the kids. So suffice it to say, I read that it's like, I don't know, I found it hard to understand, even though I'm a person of faith. Anyway, I don't want to dwell too much on that because it's your story, not mine. But I just felt so bad. So anyway, let's move on from that. But I guess as we're talking about that, that was really formative because I sense from your book that there was a sense of not just not being valued, but it's like, am I worth something? Am I a valuable person?

And sometimes people mean well, they have their paradigms and we may agree or disagree with them, but it was formative into some of the lifelong challenges. So talk a bit about what that did to you, right or wrong, let's ignore how it happened for a moment, because I could talk about it for a long time because it really kind of hit me pretty hard I got to say in terms of... But let's move on from my issues with that. But talk about what that did to you. Just that sense of girls get married and have kids, which is not wrong, but it's like this mortal, you shouldn't be lessened if you will or limited. So talk about what that did to you, that kind of philosophy.




Andrea Heuston:

Yeah. Well, I called it "other" in my book is that I felt like I was other because I was a girl. And my feeling came not just from my upbringing, but also from the church in a way of how girls were supposed to be a certain way. And I did allude to that already. But I wanted more myself. I wanted more. I wanted to be more than that. And so I had a brain or I have a brain, but at the time I used it. I was teacher's pet sometimes. I was slightly ostracized. I was bullied a bit because of that. But the idea of girls must just fall in line, do what you're expected to do, say what you're expected to say, always honor the church and God. And I think it's wonderful for people to have religion, to have faith. I mean, we have to have faith.

And I'm sorry, I look outside at the mountains right now and how stunning they're, and there is a greater being, absolutely, because otherwise the beauty wouldn't be here. But for me growing up other, as I say, was hard because I felt absolutely like I wasn't worthy, like I couldn't do all the things I wanted to do. And to be honest, in the seventies and early eighties, women were still pigeonholed. I mean, women couldn't even get a credit card in their name until the 1970s. They couldn't buy a car without a husband's signature. They couldn't rent a place to live. There was nothing a woman was allowed to do until we had somebody in the Supreme Court who really, really, really voiced her opinion and helped us out. But it was one of those states of the world as well and of my family and of the religion that kind of piled on to make me feel small.

And there's nothing about me that's small. And so for me, I had that imposter syndrome. And frankly, I still do. I mean, there's that voice in my head that says should you really be doing this? Should you really say that? That kind of thing. And don't swear and never take the Lord's name in vain, and all those things are in my head. And so feeling other when I was young gave me that feeling of smallness as well. And I didn't really find my voice and really get to who I believe I am, the beginnings of it, until I was an exchange student in Europe.




Gary Schneeberger:

And Warwick's going to ask you some questions here about your crucibles as we define them on the show. But before we go there, I just want to stay here for one more minute or two, because that's a crucible. Your first crucible in life was being made to feel other. And that crucible, as we'll hear, shaped the way you responded to some of those other crucibles that came, didn't it?




Andrea Heuston:

Oh, absolutely, because I had to find the power within myself and my voice where I didn't feel like I had a voice as a child. I just didn't feel like it was there. Even as I say in my book, I was suicidal at one point when I was 14 years old because I felt like I had nowhere in the world to fit. There was nowhere that I fit. And that was feeling other. I don't like to use the term being made to feel other, only because I think it was a bunch of things that came together that helped me feel that way or created that feeling within me versus being made to do something. And as a child, you do what you're supposed to do. You follow your family norms and the societal norms, I mean, most of us do, but you try because you want to please people.

So being made to feel feels like somebody said, "You must do this." And there's always a little bit of that in families, especially when you have a patriarchal family. It just is how it is, and a religion that was very patriarchal or is very patriarchal in this case. But for me, that was a crucible because I had to get over myself in order to go anywhere else. Because if I was still in that space, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I wouldn't be elevating other women. I wouldn't be keynote speaking, I wouldn't be an influencer on female leadership topics. And I believe wholly that women have a voice and they need to be able to use them. But I wasn't raised that way.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you state in your book that a key moment was when you went to Denmark as an exchange student. It seemed like that was a key step to finding your voice and trying to discover who really is Andrea Heuston? Who am I?




Andrea Heuston:

Oh yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

Is there anything inside there? Was there just a hollow nothingness? I mean, who am I? So talk about that sort of experience in Denmark and how that was pretty transformative.




Andrea Heuston:

Oh my goodness. So I applied to be a Rotary Exchange student, and I was a sophomore in high school and I applied. I learned about it my freshman year because a friend of mine from elementary school, her sister was an exchange student in, I believe Spain at the time. So I applied to be a Rotary Exchange student. And when I got it, I wanted to go to France because I spoke French. I'd lived in Canada as a small child, and I had learned French in school there. And then when I moved back home, I try to keep languages even as a kid, I remember some of the words. And then I took French in high school. So I was so excited. I wanted to go to France. Well, I didn't get France. So my second choice was Scandinavia. And because my mother's half Swedish, I thought, "Oh, it'd be fun to go to Sweden."

Well, then I got Denmark and I was so devastated. I was so upset that I got Denmark. What Denmark is the place now where if I fly into Kastrup, which is the main airport in Copenhagen, my eyes fill with tears because I'm coming home. Because what happened for me is I found a place. And it wasn't just a physical place, but it was a place within myself and a voice. So I said that I was a nerd when I was a kid or brain as my brother Ryan has always called me. But I did feel ostracized. In Denmark as an exchange student, everybody wanted to talk to me. They wanted to know me. They wanted to know my opinions. They wanted to joke about America like, "Are cheerleaders real?" I'm like, "Yeah, sadly they are." So things like that that they learned in movies that they wanted to talk to me about.

And it made me feel like I had a place and I found my best friend in the world there. She's still my best friend to this very day, so many, so many years later. But I also found a place for me that challenged the beliefs I'd grown up with. I mean, women had a voice already in Scandinavia. Absolutely. Women were important. And in my little world that I'd grown up with or in, women were not important. And so learning that, but also learning that it's okay to think differently. It's okay to have different laws and different rules and different norms that are absolutely different than what I'd grown up with, and it wasn't wrong. So I had always believed it would be wrong to be different, but it wasn't wrong. It was just different. And I realized and learned that I could be different too, and I could have a voice and I could have my opinions.

And Denmark in the eighties and now is a very liberal place. I mean liberal in their political thoughts, liberal in just the way they do things and believe in things. And I'd never seen that in my life. Liberal was bad, bad when I was a child. But what it gave me was this ability to see both sides of the coin. I was able to say, "That's not bad. And the other way's not bad either. It's just different." And it's okay to find your place in between or it's okay to find one or the other. It's a spectrum. It is. And so Denmark changed my life. And I learned the language very quickly. I had to communicate. I just had to communicate. So I spent a lot of time learning how to communicate. And my God, it was the best year for me because I figured out who I am. And it helped me figure out who I was going to be even though I was still forming.




Warwick Fairfax:

Let's move on to some of your crucibles. But you know, went to college, you had to finance that yourself from what I understand. You got into founding this business Artitudes, which became a million dollar business, very successful, got married to your husband, Eric. I mean, a lot of good things are happening. I mean, you're not sitting there just like a wallflower. You are seizing life and you're saying, "Let's go for it," which I think is wonderful. But challenges didn't just desert you once you grew up. Okay, that's in my rear view mirror.




Andrea Heuston:

No.




Warwick Fairfax:

Upbringing had some challenges, but now everything's Disneyland. Sadly that wasn't the case. So you and your husband tried to have kids and that was certainly one significant issue. Let's talk about that. Sadly that's not a new issue for many women. Sadly there's obviously other women who've gone through this. But talk about that and why that was every woman's journey in this particular case is different. So talk about your journey through this and what that meant to you.




Andrea Heuston:

My husband and I met, we were young, so he's about a year and a half younger than me. And we met when I was 21, almost 22, and he was 20. So we got married when I was 23, which was part of the path and part of the way I grew up is women get married, women have families. And I'd always wanted kids. And I have a girlfriend who's a teacher, and she said, "I didn't know really you wanted kids. We've been friends since we were 12." She goes, "I just didn't." I'm like, "No, no. I've always wanted kids, my friend." And so we tried. We started trying fairly early on to have children and it just didn't happen. And so we ended up starting infertility treatments and that was where we started slow. So they start you slow and then they ramp you up. And it was over the course of four or five years that we did all this.

I mean, it really was so many treatments and so many things. And I was devastated. I will say to the women listening that if you're doing infertility or you're trying to get pregnant, every month that you don't is a small death. And that's something you have to deal with. And I say you have to deal with you, get through it your own way. But it is demoralizing and it is brutal, especially when you've been taught and what's ingrained in your head is this is what women are meant to do. So I felt like I couldn't do what I was meant to do despite the fact that I was learning to find my voice and really following my own path. But that was still there. So women were meant to be mothers, wives and mothers, and I could not do that.

So we spent years trying to have kids. We did everything possible. I mean, we did all of the procedures that were there in the late nineties and 2000 to get to a point where we could be parents. And that included all the way up through in vitro fertilization. Now in vitro also takes a toll on both women and men, frankly, because it was a death for my husband each time as well. And it was one of those things where so I have veins that roll. I have other things that I didn't know were issues, but they ended up taking blood out of my foot, out of my forehead just to get test results from me. So I was not only a pin cushion, I was a science experiment. My husband had to give me shots twice a day. Twice a day he had to give me a shot, one in the backside and one in the abdomen.

So it was one of those where first of all, the romance is gone. Let's just say that. There's no romance there when you're in infertility treatments. You're like, "Hmm, what time is it? What's my body temperature? Let's go." So it's not fun, really. It's not fun. And it takes a toll on your relationships too. It just on your relationship with your spouse or your partner, it takes a toll. And it was brutal because I looked at myself as defective. And I will tell you that I called myself defective for a good 10 years. And this is after I had children as well. So I was doing that to myself and I was doing that to my psyche and I was bringing myself down as well because I felt like this is my fault. I will also say we were undiagnosed for most of that time until they figured out I had polycystic ovarian syndrome.

And that said, that's a long definition. But that said, later on in one of my other crucibles, they figured out why I could never have children. But it was one of those things where we had to go through every step possible, and we spent so much money that we didn't have. In the US in particular, it's not covered by insurance unless you work for a Microsoft or if you live in the state of, I think West Virginia, they cover it. But they don't cover any of those treatments anywhere. And I could go on and on about our healthcare system, but it is absolutely broken. However, I had friends who would say to me things like, "Well, maybe you're not meant to be a mother. Maybe this is God's way of telling you that you shouldn't be a mother." And which that friend I are no longer friends.

But still. It's that space where you feel like you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, where you're not being who you're supposed to be. And it was horrible. It spun my husband and I into marriage counseling, the only time we've ever done something like that where we were just not on the same page because we were blaming each other because we didn't know what the reason was that we could not conceive. It was hard. I had multiple surgeries, I had multiple procedures, and so many things that didn't go right. And in hindsight, they all went right. We don't know that at the time. You don't know that when you're in it.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, I know there's a couple other crucibles I want to dwell on too, but just to talk about this one. As I read that, there was a lot of hard things to read in your book. It's just so sad. And I can't think of the word that adequately describes it, but thinking that you are defective, that from your worldview as you grew up anyway that inherited worldview, gosh, women are meant to be wives and mothers. And as a woman, if you're not a mother, you're not being who God designed you to be, which from a faith paradigm is about as much of a sword through the heart as you can possibly get, absolutely soul crushing.

And again, it doesn't matter so much whether that's a right or wrong paradigm, that was the truth that you grew up with.




Andrea Heuston:

It is.




Warwick Fairfax:

And therefore that was a real dagger to the heart saying, "I'm defective." Anybody to think that they are defective, broken, that leads you on the path to why am I here? And I'm worthless. Those are the cousins which is just terrible.




Andrea Heuston:

Absolutely.




Warwick Fairfax:

And obviously this wasn't easy, but that led to adoption, I think you mentioned from a woman that had some substance abuse challenges, and you adopted two wonderful boys, which was a blessing. Wasn't an easy process from what you stated in the book.




Andrea Heuston:

Not at all. But you know what? We were there for the birth of each boy.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow.




Andrea Heuston:

We were there for the birth of each child. So anyway, I just have to talk about this because it's so beautiful. They are half-brothers, same birth mother. She actually has five.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow.




Andrea Heuston:

Five children. So yeah, I don't know what that says because when you go through adoption, you have to really give blood and all your money and they have to look at everything and interview you to see if you're fit. But there are women who can conceive when they look at somebody else and really probably shouldn't be parents in lots of ways. That said, it was a process and it was brutal because we actually had started with we were matched with somebody else first through a private adoption. And she decided after she gave birth, her mother would take the baby.

So we'd already had plans. That's not in the book. But when we met the birth mother of our children through an agency on the other side of our state about five hours away, she was already four or five months pregnant. And so we were with her that whole time. And then when my son was two and a half, almost three, I always sent her flowers, yellow roses, on Aiden's birthday. And when he was almost three, I couldn't find her again to send her flowers. So I called her grandmother and I just picked up the phone and said, "Hey Mary, I'm trying to find our birth mother so I can send her flowers because it's Aiden's birthday. Do you have her address?" And Mary said, "Just a minute." And then our birth mother came on the phone, shockingly. I was like, "Wait, I like to prepare myself for these conversations."

But she said, "Would you like another child?" And I said, "What?" And she said, "Well, this one's due on August 27th," which would've been our 10th wedding anniversary. So without hanging up and calling my husband, I said, "Yes." Because I'm like that's a sign. The universe is telling me something. And then he was born on August 21st. So the first thing I did is I looked at his toes and they're the same toes that Aiden has. And just for some reason I wanted to see, and it was beautiful. I was the first to hold each boy. My husband was the one to cut the cord each time. So anyway, I had to side bar there because it's such a beautiful story. And these are my boys. They're my heart.




Gary Schneeberger:

And there was a moment that you told me about Andre. I mean, we talked a few months back that really, because after you adopted your first son, you said you still struggled a little bit with feeling like a mom. But then you were in the car. You said he was 10 months old. He was in the backseat. You were in the car. Tell listeners what happened because that was a pivotal moment where you owned that you had gone from feeling less than to feeling like a mom in that moment. Describe that moment for folks.




Andrea Heuston:

Oh, absolutely. And it's such a funny little moment. Most moms probably wouldn't remember this but it struck me so hard. So we were running a quick errand and I didn't bring the diaper bag. Note to all you new moms out there, bring the diaper bag everywhere you go. But we were in the car and Aiden had sneezed. And when he sneezed, he had snot running down his face. And so when I stopped the car, I thought, what am I going to do? This baby and I are running into the store. What am I going to do? There was nothing in the car to clean up with. So note, there's always something in the car nowadays. And they're 21, almost 22 and 18. So I got out of the car and I went around and I had to dig through my bag and I found a receipt.

So I took the receipt and I wiped down this child's face. And of course I got stuff all over me. But in that moment I was like, wow, I'm this kid's mom. I'm a mom. I just cleaned his face up with a receipt. You do what you have to do as a mom. But I still remember that moment. I still remember that chubby little baby face in the car seat. It was that moment that I went, "Wow, I'm a mom. I'm a mother. I'm not just taking care of this gorgeous baby who I loved from the minute he entered the world." But that is when it got me. I'm a mom.




Warwick Fairfax:

So I want to pivot to another crucible because unfortunately you've had quite a lot of challenges.




Andrea Heuston:

I had a few. Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you write in your book you had a weight challenge. You were heavier than you would like to be and so you went and had lap band surgery, which led to a bunch of other things that you probably had no way of knowing would happen. So just talk about what happened from that whole journey, if you will.




Andrea Heuston:

Yes. Well, as we talked about, I had fertility issues, but I had a lap band put in, as you just said, Warwick, and things were going great. I was losing weight. Now also, the lap band was a fairly new procedure at the time. Yes, it had been all approved and everything else, but there were things they didn't know. It's that whole thing. You don't know what you know or don't know until you figure it out. And I had in January of the next year, lap band went in September, and January I had ovarian cyst burst. Worst pain I've ever felt in my life. In February I had another one burst. And so we needed to go in and take that ovary out, which was full of cysts. And they also took my appendix out at the same time. But the surgeon, when I had my follow up, he said, "First of all, I took pictures of your insides because I'm writing a textbook and you have the worst endometriosis I've ever seen in my life," which was pretty brutal.

And I'm not going to define endometriosis here, but it is the absolute reason why I couldn't conceive. But he said, "You need a hysterectomy." And so I went and had a second opinion and a third and everyone agreed. So I again went under the knife, you will say. But what happened is both surgeries were done laparoscopically. And when they do them laparoscopically, they blow your insides up with gases so that they can do the work. The second one was done by the DaVinci robot, which was very, very new at the time. And so the surgeon was running the robot who would go in and do the surgery. Great. They got everything. So I had two surgeries, boom, boom in a row, a couple months apart. And then about a month later, I started getting really sick.

And we were on our way to our beach house. And I ended up throwing up probably every three minutes. The kids were little. They were three and six at the time. And my husband decided to sleep in the guest room that night because I was so ill. And he came up around 3:00 AM and found me on the floor of the bedroom, the cold bedroom and excuse me, I was naked and crying on the floor. And so he called 911 and I ended up in an ambulance to the local hospital down where my beach house is, which is not really a great hospital. So diagnosed with food poisoning. Had to go back and get more medications in the form of suppositories because I couldn't hold anything in, even though the hospital knew about my history and we talked about it.

We ended up going to three different hospitals on our way, I think it was five stops basically, to the hospital that had diagnosed me with ovarian cysts. And they knew right away what it was. They put me in an ambulance up to another hospital and I had a surgery the next morning. The last thing I remember was at midnight I spoke to the surgeon. They went in and took out the lap band, but I aspirated on the operating table and my lungs filled with fluid and they honestly didn't know if I was brain dead because they didn't know how long I'd been without oxygen. So that was a worry. But they had me intubated. And the surgery that was supposed to be short went very long. So my husband knew something was wrong. And I ended up in a coma. So what happened is I got pneumonia. When your lungs fill with fluid, that's what happens. I got pneumonia. And the next day I got something called ARDS, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, which they're controlling way better than they did 15 years ago.

So when I had that happen, it was a 30% chance of survival. And I was put into a medical coma to heal. And I don't remember June of 2008, I just don't remember June. And my babies were little. My husband was told to say goodbye to me three times, that I wouldn't make it through the night. The first time they asked him if we had a priest. He goes, "No, we don't have a priest." And so he said goodbye to me, but they also brought the children in to say goodbye, which I had a conversation with my son a couple months ago. We were talking about memories. And I was giving him my first memory. He was in a psychology class and I said, "What was yours?" He goes, "You don't want to know." And I said, "Why not? What's your first memory?" Taking into account this child was three.

And he said, "My first memory was saying goodbye to you at the hospital," which just broke my heart into another million pieces. And it was hard. It was hard to come back from. After the coma and I woke up, the first thing I did is ask my husband for my cell phone, and he sat down on the side of the bed and started crying. I'm like, "What's wrong?" Apparently they didn't know, like I said, if I was brain dead. So he was very happy that I was asking for my cell phone. But it was a long road to recovery, including lots of physical therapy, Pilates actually, a wheelchair, a walker, all sorts of things.




Warwick Fairfax:

I want to talk about the lessons here in a moment because that was pretty transformative in your life and marriage. You talk a lot about gifts from crucibles, which we actually do funnily enough too. But I want to round out these crucibles because people are probably thinking they can't surely be anything more. But wait, there's more. It's like a sales offer. But wait, we have more for you. So talk about the beach house fire because it may not seem in one sense as big as the others, but yet emotionally it was really, really hard. So tell people what happened and why it was so hard. Because you have got to dig beneath the surface to truly understand why that beach house burning down was so devastating.




Andrea Heuston:

Well, for me it was the most devastating thing that I have dealt with. For my husband, it was my coma, but for me and my husband wasn't there when the house burned down. So we had started a little fire, a little Duraflame log in the fireplace, and the kids were getting ready for bed. And after they'd gone to bed, they'd brushed their teeth and gone to bed, I heard a noise. It sounded like a jet airplane landing on the roof. And I thought, what is going on? And sparks flew out of the fireplace and I ran and got a Brita, a Brita thing with a pitcher in our fridge. And I got that out and I dumped it all over the fire and I thought, "Oh, we're fine." And then somebody is driving up in my driveway honking. So I ran outside and they said, "Hey, you have a chimney fire."

Because there was spark shooting out of the chimney. It was incredible. And so there was a lot of fast forward here, but the house, it did ignite, the roof ignited. It was a cedar shake, shingle roof. It was August. It had been a dry July and it was pretty brutal. So I had to get my kids out of bed. We ran. I called 911 and as I'm on the phone with 911, I'm getting my kids out of bed to get dressed. And one funny side note is I said, "You got to get dressed and get out of the house. Get dressed. Get dressed." My oldest who, God, I love this child, he was 13 and he had Spider-Man underwear on. He had flip flops and he had a fleece. So we're - that's right. We're down below and I'm like, "You got to go get some pants on. You have to go back in the house."

So we ran back in the house and he gets more clothes on and we come back down. But he tells the story that I sent him into a burning house. I'm like, "I was there with you and it hadn't hit everywhere yet." I just needed him to wear clothes because I knew we weren't getting back in. So we watched it burn for a couple hours because it was a five alarm fire and nobody knew we were there from the city, even though we had called 911. I used to spend every August at the beach with the boys. And this was only August 4th. So we had just been there a few days. But finally the police chief drives by and he said, "Are you the homeowners?" We're standing in the neighbor's driveway watching our house burn down. And I said, "Yeah, I can't get out," because I had somehow moved my car to the neighbor's driveway.

It was a car I loved. It was a convertible. And I had moved it and I don't remember doing it, but I couldn't get out. So they took us to a local hotel to stay. But the beach house has always been my happy place. We bought it when my youngest was two. He's now almost 19. So it's been 17 years this year since we bought the house. And it was the only place on earth I really felt like I could be me. In August especially, I would go down and I would just be a mom. My company could run itself. I had people in place who could do the things they needed to do. And that was a result of the coma, which I can talk about later. But it was one of those spaces for me where it was my heart home. So I would be there and I would find peace there.

So I call it my happy place, but it was peaceful as well. And I felt like I could be me. And so when the house burned down, I lost me. And what happened there is that felt like there was nowhere on earth I could just be where I could relax, where I could just be a mom, where I could just be me without judgment. And I know a house doesn't judge you, but it was a feeling I got that I needed this happy place to really be happy. And when it burnt down, I was devastated and I spiraled. I spiraled down because I didn't have that place to go. My realization now is anywhere can be my happy place. That's my choice.




Warwick Fairfax:

Right. But there's obviously a lot of learning that came from that. But in that-




Andrea Heuston:

Oh my gosh, yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

But in that moment you're thinking, this is the only place on the planet where I can fully be me. And not only is my house burnt down, I have burnt down. My soul is burnt down.




Andrea Heuston:

Yeah, and that's how I felt.




Warwick Fairfax:

Everything who I am is burnt down. And it's like, does the universe, God, whoever's up there, do they not like me? I mean, what is the deal here? I mean, come on. Can't you just give me a little corner of the world where I can be me? I mean, my gosh. Are you going to chase me with lightning bolts. I mean, what's the story? It sounds like just emotionally it was just crippling and devastating.




Andrea Heuston:

It was. And for me it was about humility. I felt in hindsight that any time I got a little high on myself that the universe would smack me around. I don't believe that's true now. I just really felt that way that apparently I'd done something that I needed to be more humble about. And I don't remember what it was. I just think for me, every time I really was in a good place where I was feeling good about myself and the business, I maybe got a little cocky, the universe said, "No, no, you're not allowed to do that."




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I think both of us would agree. That really doesn't quite work that way philosophically.




Andrea Heuston:

No it doesn't but that's how I was feeling.




Warwick Fairfax:

At the time. One of the things I find that with crucibles, they can be a gift. I mean even in my own world, again, this is about you, not me, but having done this $2.25 billion takeover of the family business and it falling into receivership under my watch, I was like 30 at the time.




Andrea Heuston:

Wow.




Warwick Fairfax:

It was crippling, disappointing my parents, 4,000 employees, I mean was yeah, myself, my attitude in life is if something in the world goes wrong, it's my fault. That's my default psychology. I tend not to blame others. I blame myself. So the point of that story is that was sort of crippling yet as I look back in the last maybe year I've been able to say what happened was a gift because it delivered me from the bondage of a family business. And again, we grew up very different, but I could truly be me because me growing up was the heir to this dynasty. What do you want to do in life, Warwick? Irrelevant. I have got my duty. Who I am as an individual is, I guess, that's the ultimate othering, I suppose. Who I am as an individual is completely-




Andrea Heuston:

Yeah, exactly.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's completely irrelevant. All else to say is crucibles, if we choose, can provide a huge gift. And you've put a number of them in your books. I'm going to just touch on a few of them. I mean there's many of them. But one of the things that you say early on, well, I like the thing in your forward, which was really fun, "Don't apologize for who you are." So that's a great quote.




Andrea Heuston:

Never apologize.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, sometimes there are things you have to apologize for if you've done something wrong but you don't apologize for who you are. That's different. Okay, so first one, other than that's like a little prelude is you write, "The gift from the fire is this. The realization that I'm not in control of anything. I'm only in control of the way that I react." And then you talk later on about almost being a cocoon or caterpillar emerging out of the butterfly. So just talk about this profound wisdom you share there. You can't control what happened to you. You can't control your upbringing, your house burning down, the infertility, the coma, all of these things you can't control. And in pretty much all of those cases, not like, oh, it was your fault, you did something stupid. None of them was really your fault. So talk about how you can't control what happened, but you control the way that you react because that is very profound.




Andrea Heuston:

So that is my theme in life, I would say now, because so many things have happened. I can't control what happens. I can't control a spark from a fire that hits my roof. I can't control the fact that I was born unable to conceive. I can't control any of these things. I can't control the fact that I was in a coma. Who knew? But what I can control is my reaction to things and how I move forward. So for me, I could be a victim. "Oh my gosh, the universe did this to me," or, "Oh my gosh, this happened to me." And as Gary said in the beginning, it's really about what happens for us, not to us. And for me, the for me is what lessons can I learn? And it is really hard to see in the moment. I will tell you that. And I honor that and I understand that.

Because you know what? It feels good once in a while to be a victim for five minutes for me, five minutes. That's all you get really. Although you know spin a little bit sometimes. But really if you can focus on the mindset of there's a lesson here. And I will say from the coma itself, I learned. I mean, my business ran without me for six months that year. My business coach came in and helped. My husband came in and helped out. And some of my peers who were also business owners came in and helped out. And you know what? We were fine. We didn't make a lot of money that year. We didn't lose money either though.




Warwick Fairfax:

Talk about how there was a gift in your marriage. So talk a bit about that because I found that so fascinating. So talk about that.




Andrea Heuston:

There's been a lot of gifts in my marriage. What I learned actually from my coma within my relationship, I'd always taken over. I was the one who just wanted to be in control of things. And it was fine. Our roles worked that way for a long time. But for me, when I was in a coma, I didn't do anything obviously, and I don't remember any of it. But the world still had to run. The company had to run, but my family had to run, and my boys had to get to school. And there was so much that was out of my control that I didn't know about, and then I did know about when I was awake again and healing. But my husband stepped up. And for me, it wasn't that I didn't know he could because he's an incredible human being, but I never let him. I never let him show or let him do because I was always showing and doing.

And so what happened from there is it almost, I don't want to say our roles evened out or it became equal or equality, but it became different and it's more of a gift now with a lot of introspection as well, because my husband is so giving and so intelligent and so amazing. And yes, he's an introvert and I'm an extrovert. I'll jump off that building too, and I will grow wings before I hit the ground. My sweet wonderful husband will look over the edge and then he'll back away slowly because the risk is too much. We balance each other out. And I will say, as of last December, we've been together for 30 years, married over 28 right now, but we've been together for 30 years. And what was created after my coma in his ability and my ability, his ability to know he could do it, first of all, because I always did everything, but my ability to let him created this depth to our relationship that hadn't been there before.




Warwick Fairfax:

So as we sort of begin to wrap up, talk about how that's almost maybe the theme of your book in a sense. Obviously it's called Stronger on the Other Side, but it's in the broader sense of that word. It's also about choice. It's choosing your mindset and your attitude. And I'm assuming you had to have some measure of, I don't know if the word is forgiveness. We talk a lot about forgiveness, doesn't mean condoning - very different. But you must have had some ways of coming to peace with because if you were just a seething sea of anger, it just poisons you and typically other people don't care, which is galling. But talk about in that whole word of choice, I guess I buried another question in there, forgive me, but talk about what that means to you. And also there's got to be some sense of forgiveness but not acceptance or something in there to enable you to move forward and be whole. Does that question make any degree of sense?




Andrea Heuston:

Oh yes. And I'm a work in progress, but I do believe that every day we get to choose first our attitude when we get up in the morning, but also our reaction to anything. It's that deep breath. It's that moment where you go, "Oh, I don't need to get angry. I don't need to jump on somebody else." The other thing I would say within that, Warwick, is it's the look in the mirror. A lot of people don't look in the mirror. They don't go, yeah, what is my part in this? What happened here that I could have done differently? And you actually have to understand yourself in order to be able to do that. So I choose the word of the year every single year. Last year was momentum. This year is kindness. And the reason I chose kindness, it's for myself and others, but it's all around grace and really it's for myself.

I am mean to myself. I look in the mirror and I say mean things, and that's both literally and figuratively. I just am mean to myself. Would I say those things to other people? Never. So it's my choice every single day to realize and to say things to myself and other people that are kind. But really we have the power to choose where we're going. The universe has given us thoughts in any situation, and I'm saying at the lowest of my lows, very, very lowest, I had the power to choose my attitude and to choose where I was going next. One of the quotes that I will share this with you, it's not in the book, that I have really hung my hat on for the last year or so that I say to people all the time, because I'm also a speaker coach and this helps people understand.

But you know what? It's none of my business what other people think of me because it's not. It doesn't matter. What I think of me is important. It's not what they think of me. It doesn't matter because your self-worth doesn't come from outside sources or other people. It comes from inside. It takes a lot to get there. I'm not saying that's easy and you can't flip a switch. You can try, but it's a lot of self-work. So honestly, I start every day with gratitudes. I write three things down every morning that I'm grateful for. It can be as small as the first spring bird that I hear chirping out my window. It can be the taste of a fresh strawberry. Or it can be as big as my health or my family's health. It doesn't matter. It's a gratitude.

And when I fall into that space of not being grateful or not having a good attitude or not realizing my own worth, I stop and think about what I'm grateful for because without gratitude, you really cannot be a gracious person and you cannot be gracious to yourself. And I think that's important for all of our growth. I think that's important in choosing our own path and our own attitude and our own reaction to anything that comes our way. Like we said, it doesn't happen to me, it happens for me. What are the gifts? Really hard to see when you're in it. But if you stop and try to think about it, you get there.




Gary Schneeberger:

That's an excellent point. Warwick used the words a little while ago. We're getting close to winding down. I like to say the sound you heard listeners, the captain turned down the fasten your seatbelt sign indicating we're approaching our dissent, but we're not quite on the ground yet. Before I turn it back over to Warwick to ask you like another question or so, I'd be remiss in my duties as co-host if I did not ask you to tell our listeners how they can get to know more about Artitudes, more about you, more about your work, where can they find you and your work online?




Andrea Heuston:

I'm all over the place just so you know. The best way to get me is on LinkedIn, and it's Andrea Heuston. My last name is weird, just so you know. I've been spelling it for everybody for almost 30 years and I'm sure it'll be in the show notes, but it is H-E-U-S-T-O-N. So it's Andrea Heuston. I'm all over LinkedIn. You can find me there. I also have a website called andreaheuston.com that leads to all my brands. So it's the easiest way to get me.




Gary Schneeberger:

Awesome. And with a guy whose last name is Schneeberger, trust me, I know how to spell a last name. And I've been doing it for 58 years now. I wasn't doing it when I was like one-




Andrea Heuston:

That's funny.




Gary Schneeberger:

But I've been doing it for a long time, more than half a century. Warwick, last question or two are yours.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Andrea, I love kind of what you do and we haven't talked about it too much, but I love what you do in Artitudes Design, creating you say thoughtfully branded visual experiences these days with visual media being everywhere from social media to presentations. That is huge and obviously very successful, multimillion dollar brand, which is awesome. I love just the thought about your podcast, Lead Like a Woman Show and your two books.

I want to end with a question that there may be some people here who are maybe feeling worthless, maybe whether it might be a young woman or somebody of just different backgrounds may not be feeling much worth. I guess two questions, a word of hope and I guess another question that popped into my mind as you were talking, and so I'll maybe make a brief statement. One of the things I think of, and I'm a very reflective person by nature, is that internal soul work is important because if we hate ourselves or other ourselves, unfortunately anger, bitterness, whatever, it leaks out and it tends to leak out on those that we love the most, which spouse, kids, which they don't deserve because it wasn't their fault.

Some things are people's faults, but our stuff is never, but not never. It depends.




Andrea Heuston:

That's right.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's assuming they're not the protagonist in this conflict, let's say that's not the case. So for those who say, "Look, I don't want to deal with my stuff." Well, if you don't, you will affect your coworkers, the people that work for you, those that you love, your friends. So that soul work-




Andrea Heuston:

You'll alienate.




Warwick Fairfax:

Right. As one person set in a broader contract, it's holy work. So talk a bit about that and then maybe just a word of hope for those people that might be where you were years ago and it's like I'm worth nothing and I just need to hide in a hole for the next 40 years. So talk about both of those.




Andrea Heuston:

Yes, I do believe absolutely if you don't deal with your own stuff, everybody else, they'll feel it because they know when you're not being the best you. And really that means if you're angry or if you're resentful or if you're feeling like a victim, frankly. Because when you are feeling low like that, it brings everybody else down. And I know that from personal experience. Especially with little kids, they take on whatever energy you give off, but so does everybody else. It's just not as apparent. My husband was a massage therapist for about a minute years ago, licensed massage practitioner. And he always came home saying, "Oh my gosh, this person, I could feel their anger," or "I could feel how low they were." And as a massage therapist, because you've got your hands on people and you take it into your body, that's how it works.

But it's the same thing when people are around us, you take it into their body. And so it manifests itself in so many ways that it just brings other people down around you. So it's hard to go forward when you're stuck. When you're stuck in the past or stuck in a moment, you can't move. So it's about moving forward and owning your own path and really knowing who you are and what you stand for. And that's hard. It's so great when I meet somebody who stands for something and I don't care if they stand for something that I don't stand for. It doesn't matter to me. They believe something and they stand for it. It's so powerful to be able to do that and to be able to show it to the world.

And I would say there's a Martin Luther King quote, and I'm going to butcher it today cause I can't remember the whole thing, but you can't see the whole staircase. You just got to take that first step because you don't know where it's going to go. And you know what? You can figure out where it's going to go. You can change where that staircase leads because you have the power to do that by owning your own path, and you just got to remember to give yourself grace. That would be the thing that I want people to remember is take a pause and give yourself grace. It is so, so okay to be human because you don't have to apologize for who you are. You just have to own it.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word has been spoken on a subject, and our guest, Andrea Heuston, just spoke it. Until the next time we are together listeners, couple of things I want to say to you. One, remember from Andrea's story, several things, but one thing I really want you to take away is that she went through these periods in her life where she felt that she was other. She felt that she was less than. And play it back. That's not the testimony of this woman who we're talking to today. She does not feel other. She does not feel less than. If you've ever felt that way, you don't - that's not your destination - you don't have to feel that way either.

Also, we understand that your crucible experiences are difficult. We've all been through crucible experiences. You heard Warwick and Andrea talk about theirs here. But they are not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning of a brand new story for you which can be the best story of your life. Because if you learn the lessons from them, if you embrace them, as both Warwick and Andrea talked about, as gifts that can teach you lessons, they can lead you to a destination that will be the finest in your life, and that destination is the life of significance.

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

Over the last eight weeks, our guests have shared some profound insights to help guide you as you consider making a bold, dramatic pivot in your life to pursue something life-changing and significant. We distilled their top tips into our latest blog, and Warwick and cohost Gary Schneeberger discuss them in depth on this episode.

Our goal is to help you walk away – maybe “sail away” is a better way to put it – from the series with critical takeaways to help you decide whether it’s time for you to burn some ships… and if it is, to give you some guidance on how and when to strike the match.

And you’ll want to be sure, more than ever, that you stick around till the end. Because that’s when we’ll give you all the details you need about the opportunity we’re offering for you to be personally coached by Warwick as you look to board the boat that takes you from “Is this all there is?” to “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

There you go.




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

Who came up with that line?




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

Shameless. Shameless, sorry.




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

The line in the blog here is the shift in names is not a pivot from our mission and vision, but an adjustment. We sparked up some boats but not our biggest vessels and not to sail to a completely different destination. But the fact of the matter is we did light some vessels, it's still igniting ships. Those small ships matter too as you're navigating your way through life. Speaking of navigating your way through life, listener, we've arrived at the point that I've been teasing this entire episode. And that is the opportunity for you to be coached by the man over my left shoulder known not the crane over Warwick's left shoulder, the man over my left shoulder is Warwick in Beyond the Crucible logo for the podcast.

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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

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

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

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

No, not at all.




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

So given that kind of-




Mike Beckham:

Ironically, one thing-




Warwick Fairfax:

Go ahead.




Mike Beckham:

I'll interject here.




Warwick Fairfax:

Sure. Yeah.




Mike Beckham:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Mike Beckham:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, right. But the-




Mike Beckham:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Mike Beckham:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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




Mike Beckham:

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

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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

See you next week.

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

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

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

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

Right, exactly.




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

How long were you at HNTB for?




Dan Wolgemuth:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

Right, exactly.




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

No, stepped all the way out.




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Dan Wolgemuth:

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

Right.




Donte Wilburn:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

After that happened, what was going through your mind?




Donte Wilburn:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Donte Wilburn:

I didn't have a clue.




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Donte Wilburn:

Right.




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

Really?




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

Awesome.




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

Oh, my goodness.




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

Wow.




Gary Schneeberger:

What's your response or reaction to that?




Donte Wilburn:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

Right, right. And the destinations...




Donte Wilburn:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Donte Wilburn:

Yes, for sure.




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Donte Wilburn:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

Yeah, yeah.




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

For sure.




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Donte Wilburn:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Donte Wilburn:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

All right. Warwick, take it away.




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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




Donte Wilburn:

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Joel Hungate:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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

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

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

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Joel Hungate:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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




Warwick Fairfax:

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




Joel Hungate:

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

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

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

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

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




Gary Schneeberger:

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

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

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