Zachary Green’s life story is the stuff of movies – a stint in the Marines that taught him survival skills he used beyond the battlefield, creating a successful business where the crucibles came early and often, then being laid so low by COVID-19 that he thought his life would end. But it did not. And neither did his dreams. He compiled the truths and tactics he learned from his military and business experiences – successes and failures alike – into WARRIOR ENTREPRENEUR, his best-selling book that offers readers insight and inspiration to defeat the devastation of crucible experiences and turn them into the fuel for a life of significance.

To learn more about Zachary Green and his book, WARRIOR ENTREPRENEUR, visit www.warriorentrepreneurbook.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Zachary G:

So I go on vacation. I tell my CFO, "Whatever you do, do not call me." I want to really check out and just be present for my family that I've neglected these last couple of years as I grew this company, and guess what happens? He calls me, and I remember his words, and more importantly, I remember his tone of voice, very somber, saying, "Zach, I'm sorry to inform you, but there is no way out of this. We are going to have to liquidate, and when you come back, we need to talk about bankruptcy options."

Zachary G:

Now, for me, it wasn't just that I was losing my dream. It was that I was letting my firefighter brothers and sisters down because I couldn't produce this lifesaving product. The bank was going to foreclose on my house, because at that point in time, I had spent all my money and I had to use my house as collateral.

Zachary G:

I would have to go through the humility of going bankrupt and being known in our area as somewhat a celebrity entrepreneur and look at how far I fell. And at that time, that's when the abyss started to really come into focus for me. I thought I was having a heart attack. It turned out to be a panic attack. I dropped down to my knees. I can't breathe. I could feel tightness in my chest. I could feel electrical currents shooting down my arm. Everything they taught me in the fire service that if someone presents with that, you take them immediately to the hospital.

Gary S:

How do you move beyond a crucible like that, one that not only threatens your livelihood, but your life? This week's guest, Zachary Green, tells Warwick he did it by activating his inner warrior. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Green's life story is the stuff of movies. A stint in the Marines that taught him survival skills he used beyond the battlefield. Creating a successful business where the crucibles came early and often. Then being laid so low by COVID-19 that he thought his life would end, but it did not, and neither did his dreams.

Gary S:

He compiled the truths and tactics he learned from his military and business experiences, successes and failures alike, into Warrior Entrepreneur, his bestselling book that offers readers insight and inspiration to defeat the devastation of crucible experiences and turn them into the fuel for a life of significance.

Warwick F:

Well, Zach, thank you so much for being here. I love just looking through your book, Warrior Entrepreneur and love all the military metaphors, Spartans, and what have you. I've never been in the military, but love military history and some of the great heroes of antiquity and history. I love just understanding just what a successful entrepreneur, and the courage you have of just producing products that serve real needs and help people.

Warwick F:

But I'd like to go back, as we do here at Beyond the Crucible, a bit of the origin story. I think you grew up in the Cincinnati area, and had some challenges. I think you were in five different schools from kindergarten to 12th grade, and ADHD. So talk a bit about the backstory of Zach Green and growing up and, yeah, some of the traits probably that ended up serving you well later on in life, although it probably didn't seem so at the time.

Zachary G:

Well, Warwick and Gary, thank you so much for the opportunity to be speaking with you much for the opportunity to be speaking with you as your guest today. I chose the location of where we're going to have the discussion today at a very sacred place for both me and quite a few people in our country, and that is Parris Island Marine Corp base.

Zachary G:

Behind me, you're actually seeing a lot of activity. We are on a live, active Marine Corps base, and we just recently had a graduation of our newest Marines. So if you see some young men with a big smile on their face, it's because they just finished a very, very grueling, both crucible, which we'll talk about, before, and their experience here in the Marine Corps. So pardon in the background music, it's just simply the noise of freedom in the background there.

Zachary G:

But to answer your question, Warwick, I did struggle a lot growing up. I had very severe ADHD. Now, it's funny because when you're in school, it's called ADHD. It's considered a disability. When you get out of school, you're called a multitasker and you're very energetic and it's a great trait.

Zachary G:

And it's funny how keeping you at your desk, listening to reading, writing, and arithmetic is such a challenge, but when you get out and you do four or five things at a time and you have a lot of energy and you're able to help inspire others, like you have, Warwick, to grow and build a business, that disability becomes actually an ability.

Zachary G:

For me, what that did, though, was it gave me a foundation in my youth where I had a lot of people tell me I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't good enough. Now, for most young kids, that's something that's probably going to carry that emotional baggage with them throughout their entire life and really cause issues. For me, it did the opposite. It motivated me.

Zachary G:

The more people told me that I wasn't smart enough, or I wasn't good enough, the more that drove me to be able to prove them wrong, and always, in everything I do, I'm never, ever content with my success. I'm never, ever happy with where we've gotten, because I still feel that voice in the back of my head saying, "You're not good enough." And what I've done is I've turned that into an ability to drive me to success and greatness, and now at this point in my life, to help inspire others to do the same.

Warwick F:

So you're 18 years old and you decide to join the Marines. Why the Marines? I mean, clearly you've had this warrior... I don't know if it came from parents or other influences, but you just always had this desire to be in the military and specifically the Marines, so how did that all come about?

Zachary G:

The short answer is because they're the best, and now, I know there are other units, other branches that have their units, the Navy SEALS, the Army Rangers, but as a force in itself, nothing comes close to the Marine Corps.

Zachary G:

But let's back it up a little bit before that. I always knew I was going to be a Marine. I had posters of the Marines in their fancy uniform on my walls. I constantly was collecting videos and things around Marine movies, but I wanted to double-check.

Zachary G:

So when I was doing my round of the recruiters, I remember going to the Navy recruiter and saying, "Hey, what does the Navy have to offer me?" And he pulls out this booklet, starts showing me all these incredible pictures of all these places that I can travel to, the adventures of the high seas.

Zachary G:

So then I go to the Air Force recruiter and he starts talking about how easy it is, it's very civilian-oriented, it's a very easy transition from civilian to the air force, back to civilian. Then I go to the Army, and the Army starts throwing out all the money and bonuses I can get, and all the great jobs that I can do.

Zachary G:

So I finally get to the Marine Corps recruiter, and I'll never forget, it was Sergeant Beatrie Houston, this big, huge Marine. Big chest, tiny waist. I walk in, he greets me with this big smile and a firm handshake, and he's like, "What can I do for you?" And as a typical 18-year-old cocky kid, I said, "Well, Army offered me, Navy offered me that, Air Force offered me this. What can the Marine Corps do for me?"

Zachary G:

And that smile turned upside down into a grimace. He sat in his chair, he put his feet up on the desk and he looked at me. He goes, "Son, we've been the finest fighting force for 250 years. We're going to continue to be that way with or without you. The question is, what can you do for the Marine Corps?"

Zachary G:

So I'm like, "Wait a second," and then he goes, "I've seen your type. You're not strong enough. You're not tough enough. There's no way you could handle Parris Island and go through recruit training." And I showed him, because I yanked the contract out of his hand, signed it right there on the spot and said, "You know what? I'm going to prove to you that that's not the case."

Zachary G:

So it was a great tool to use against arrogant teenagers like myself, but before you knew it, I was down in this godforsaken place here of Parris island, the land that God forgot, with sand fleas and drill instructors, and really started that journey to ultimately become a Marine.

Warwick F:

That's an amazing story, and you were in the Marines, it sounds like, for about nine years. You went through that, I don't know how many weeks it is, but that basic training where you are right now, in Parris Island, which is probably some of the toughest training on the planet. And you got through, you did show them that you were tough enough, that you could take it, which is impressive.

Warwick F:

You clearly love the Marines, but you have... There was this, I guess, transition, this pivot point in your story, in which, from your book, you make it clear your wife is a medical doctor, and you met her, and she had this phrase, "It's the Marine Corps or me." I mean, that is laying down the gauntlet. That is laying down the challenge.

Zachary G:

Yes, that's not unique to her. A lot of women have that same phrase.

Warwick F:

So tell us about that choice. You could have said, "Well, it's the Marine Corps, sorry."

Zachary G:

To back up, at the Marine Corps... I had a wonderful family, even though I did have a lot of challenges growing up, they afforded me every opportunity to get me tested, to have me go to different schools, to give me extra tutoring, lived in a very nice upper class neighborhood. Great friends and support structure.

Zachary G:

What was interesting was, when I get down here to Parris Island, the first thing they show you is that you're not unique. Everyone's the same, and you all suck, for the lack of better words. It was interesting, I really struggled those first couple weeks, and the kids that didn't struggle were the kids that grew up in the coal mines of West Virginia, that didn't get three meals a day. The kids that were in the projects of New Orleans that didn't sometimes have a place to sleep. They excelled so quickly in this environment, where I really struggled because I didn't have that warrior skin that they had growing up.

Zachary G:

So my time in the Marine Corps was brief. It was very uneventful, which is the reason I didn't re-enlist for a second tour. I actually went through both Parris Island, then I went to Quantico and went through the officer program, and there was no deployments. I was in the infantry. I wanted to go out and kill our enemy and be a infantryman, and there was no opportunity, so I got out, and then two years later, September 11th happened, a day we all remember very well.

Zachary G:

That was right about the time that I met my wife, and decided at that point, I'm going to really pursue my career in corporate America and try to focus on some of those things that I couldn't get in the Marine Corps. And joining the fire department was a real experience because I was riddled with a ton of survivor's guilt, in that I was in the Corps, I got out. Two years later, we have this horrible event that happens. My brothers and sisters are going off to far-off distant lands, taking vengeance to our enemy and justice to them, getting killed. I went to a lot of funerals and looked at those flag-draped coffins and realized that could have been me. I left, and left a hole in my unit, and someone filled that hole, and now they're dead and I'm not.

Zachary G:

So I had this fever, and again, as I looked at the Spartans, the Marines, it's never really about them. It's just about the sense of service. It's about putting something above you, and serving to get your growth rather than just taking. And when I joined the fire department, it's funny, because in the Marine Corps, we take stuff that's really miserable... Or really fun, and we make it as miserable as possible. In the fire service, we take stuff that's really miserable and we make it as fun as possible. So it was an interesting transition as I moved from the Marines to becoming a firefighter.

Warwick F:

I mean, that's... Obviously you had no way of knowing when you got out what was going to happen. Your wife could have, as I said, threw down the gauntlet, and obviously as you said in the book, that was a fantastic decision, and you've been married many years, and obviously what a blessing that's been. But you still had this desire to serve, and, "Okay, maybe my time in the Marine Corps is up, but I could serve in the fire department." You were working at Eli Lilly at the time, so you could still serve, so it seemed like... And that was to lead to future businesses, which obviously you weren't to know at the time.

Warwick F:

So talk about, there's sort of another pivot, when you're working in Eli Lilly and you had to make a decision about being an entrepreneur, and it sounds like you had a boss that was particularly helpful in helping you think things through. So talk about that, one of the certainly key career pivot points, from Eli Lilly into being an entrepreneur.

Zachary G:

That's a great question, and it's funny because as I look back, it's interesting how I've come full circle with this, both decision process and what got me to that decision point and ultimately brought me back to it. And I'll explain that in a second. What I learned at Eli Lilly, it's all about solutions to problems. So all the problems we had were depression, diabetes, it could be sepsis. Our solutions were not a drug, not a pill, but a brand.

Zachary G:

And what we did with the brand as we first looked at, "Okay, what is the disease? What is the problem? Who are the people that suffer from that disease? How can we help them solve the problem?" We never would show on a commercial that if you take our diabetes, your hemoglobin H1c's would go down. We would show a grandfather now playing with his grandchildren, because that's ultimately what the solution was.

Zachary G:

So in that light, I was just such a fan of marketing and how we provide solutions to problems. However, it's a very large company, tremendous bureaucracy, tremendous procedures. You not only had the typical bureaucracy and process that you have in corporate America, but we had the FDA also, and all the legal and medical and compliance issues.

Zachary G:

Every time I'd come up with a great idea, it would take six to nine months to just get vetted, and by the time it was vetted, it was so different than what I wanted to do, and it was so neutered, to the point that it wasn't even a great idea anymore. And I was just like, "One day, I'm going to do my own thing."

Zachary G:

So my journey to entrepreneurship, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know when and how and what it would look like. But during my early times in the fire service, I got lost in a fire. It was a horrifying experience. Couldn't see my hand in front of my face. And as soon as I got out, I wanted to find a way to solve that problem.

Zachary G:

And what I came up with was this glow-in-the-dark material that glowed so bright and for so long, and I worked with a couple people to put it into different materials, like helmets and tools, and I started selling it out of the trunk of my car the more it started to take off. And that really was the basis of the company.

Zachary G:

Now, what I would do is I wouldn't talk about glow-in-the-dark material and how long it glowed for. What I would do is I'd go to a fire station, I'd have all my samples with me, knock on the front door, I'd say, "Hey, I'm Zach, I'm a firefighter from the Cincinnati area. Can we go in the bathroom and turn the lights off together?" And if they didn't beat me up, they'd usually say, "Oh, well that's actually cool."

Zachary G:

And the reason I did that was that dark room, I could show them the problem of disorientation. The fact they didn't know where they were because there was no windows. And then when I pulled the glow-in-the-dark material out, I could show them the solution to that problem, which is having a visual reference point to orient yourself and to find your way out.

Zachary G:

My story comes full circle in the fact that as the company started to grow, and it grew rapidly, grew very quickly outside of my capability, I missed the fact that I didn't have a team of people that I could bounce ideas off of. I missed the fact that I didn't have an HR department that could vet the ideas. A legal department to talk with if there was a liability.

Zachary G:

And it turns out all that stuff that I hated at Eli Lilly, bureaucracy and procedure, was what I missed in my entrepreneurial journey, because I didn't have that support structure, those things that were put together. So there is a reason for that. When I was at that low level, as a sales manager and as a trainer, I couldn't see it. But when I was the CEO and the founder, and ultimately I was the one that was going to get sued, I really realized what a credible process that was, that they built over that last century, of bureaucracy, procedures and the process.

Gary S:

So the lesson there is, bureaucracy is not in and of itself a crucible, right? I mean, bureaucracy can be quite a help. It's not a bad thing necessarily if you apply it in the right way, for sure.

Zachary G:

It just depends on where you look at the problem. If you're looking at a very selfish point, and that you want your idea, then yes, it's a problem. But if you're looking for the greater good, which is how can we help our company accomplish their mission, how can we ultimately help our patients have better outcomes, it's not about you. You're part of that program, and that team, and that bureaucracy and that procedure is actually a good thing.

Zachary G:

And then the same thing in our government. People say, "Oh, well, DC's so messed up." No, it's not. It is a amazing process that they put in place to make things go through procedures and committees, and get voted and filibustered. That's all there for a reason, so that when we finally have a law or we finally have a product, it's been vetted, it's been looked at from all those different areas. It's frustrating to go through the process sometimes, because we're a generation of immediacy, but at the end of the day, there's a lot of value in that.

Warwick F:

Yeah. It sounds like that was maybe a first crucible, or certainly a crucible in which at one point I think you were vacationing in Hawaii with the family and got a call that, "Hey, we can't meet payroll," and you had some financial challenges. I think you write in the book that the vast majority of startups fail. I don't know if it's 90%, but it's a massive number.

Warwick F:

But it sounds like you did what most entrepreneurs don't, that you realized you're a good founder and entrepreneur, but maybe not the day-to-day executive, because those skills are just radically different. Typically a founder or entrepreneur clings on too tightly, says, "This is my baby. I started it in my garage. I'm not giving up the keys of the kingdom," and ultimately they fail.

Warwick F:

But you were wise enough to say, "I'm going to do what I can do. I'm going to be the cheerleader. I'm going to lead the charge, be the visionary, but I'm going to have others manage it day-to-day." So how did you make that change? Because you went where most entrepreneurs don't. It takes a level of humility, courage and common sense. How did you make that pivot?

Zachary G:

So, before we can get into that, we really have to look at what the warrior's journey and how critical the crucible is during that journey. My first crucible, actually, and it's kind of amazing that I'm sitting here, happened a couple hundred feet behind me on the parade deck. And that was about week three or four into training, when I kept messing up, and again, these other kids that had all those challenges, they weren't getting the fact that I literally missed my mom. I was crying at night. It was difficult, because they break you down, you're so emotional.

Zachary G:

And I remember me messing up on something, the drill instructor leaning over me and saying, "I knew you were a failure. I knew you weren't going to make it." And then he said those words that cut so deeply. He said, "Your mommy's not here to help you." And that was the time I realized I didn't have all those benefits that my parents gave me, and I got crushed. I fell into my crucible.

Zachary G:

Now, in the crucible, there's two parts to the crucible. At the bottom of the crucible is the abyss. And as the great philosopher Nietzsche once said, if you stare long enough into the abyss, eventually the abyss will stare back. And what that means is, the abyss will consume you.

Zachary G:

If you spend long enough in a drug or alcohol problem, a bad relationship, a bad company, a bad job, or whatever, the longer you're there, the harder it is for you to transform and get out of it. But you have to respect the crucible and honor it, and recognize that it's dangerous and it's bad. Just don't go too far into it. Just like if you're walking along the sidewalk and this big truck comes by, that truck will kill you if you step out there, but just don't spend too much time spinning out in the middle of the street. Recognize it.

Zachary G:

So then the other side of the crucible becomes the process you have to do, and there's two things to get outside of your crucible. Number one, you have to conquer it. You don't survive it. You don't ride it through. You conquer it. You have to destroy what got you to that point. And a lot of times that destruction is the self-talk, the people that told you weren't good enough, the environments that you put you in that just wasn't healthy.

Zachary G:

And then the last part of the crucible is, you have to transform. So let's go back to your original question, Warwick, and that is, what happened when I got that phone call? So I knew up to that point, my company was making a lot of revenue, but we weren't making a lot of profit. I was the bottleneck. Every decision had to come through me.

Zachary G:

I had a great team of 10, 15 people, and it wasn't the big decisions that were difficult. It was a bunch of small decisions every day, and some of those were financial in basis. Do we pay this bill or do we go ahead and sit on that one and pay this bill? Do we call this person up and ask them for our money because they're a couple days late, or do we wait on it? And none of that was happening.

Zachary G:

So I go on vacation. I tell my CFO, "Whatever you do, do not call me." I want to really check out and just be present for my family that I've neglected these last couple of years as I grew this company, and guess what happens? He calls me, and I remember his words, and more importantly, I remember his tone of voice, very somber, saying, "Zach, I'm sorry to inform you, but there is no way out of this. We are going to have to liquidate, and when you come back, we need to talk about bankruptcy options."

Zachary G:

Now, for me, it wasn't just that I was losing my dream. It was that I was letting my firefighter brothers and sisters down because I couldn't produce this lifesaving product. The bank was going to foreclose on my house, because at that point in time, I had spent all my money and I had to use my house as collateral.

Zachary G:

I would have to go through the humility of going bankrupt and being known in our area as somewhat a celebrity entrepreneur and look at how far I fell. And at that time, that's when the abyss started to really come into focus for me. I thought I was having a heart attack. It turned out to be a panic attack. I dropped down to my knees. I can't breathe. I could feel tightness in my chest. I could feel electrical currents shooting down my arm. Everything they taught me in the fire service that if someone presents with that, you take them immediately to the hospital.

Zachary G:

And what my wife said as she was leaning over me was, "Look, you're having a panic attack. You're not having a heart attack. You need to go out and relax." So in this crucible, so real, one is, I could quit. I could kill myself, because I thought... I wasn't suicidal at the time, but I thought, if I killed myself, I know the company's got a $3 million life insurance policy, and that could be a way out. When you're in a crisis, all options become visible. You will never, ever think of an option like that until you're in that crucible, in that crisis.

Zachary G:

The other option was, "I got to transform and change." So, thank goodness my CFO was able to dance to the raindrops. We were able to make payroll. We were able to avoid that situation. We got a short-term bridge loan. And the first thing I did is I said, "Look, I got to make the change, and the change is, I'm going to step down as CEO and I'm going to hire a CEO."

Zachary G:

And what happened is instead of having a bottleneck like that, the bottleneck went like this, and I was able to, just like you said, Warwick, be the cheerleader, be the founder, be the visionary. This is so important because a year later, COVID happens. And at that point in time, within 48 hours, I was able to convert our whole entire manufacturing process to, instead of making exit signs, we were going to make Lucite barriers for people that needed them in their offices.

Zachary G:

In addition to that, I launched a multimillion-dollar brand within 48 hours and became Home Depot's number one distributor of COVID protective products in a very short period of time because my bandwidth allowed me to focus on what entrepreneurs like you and I do best, which is innovation, creativity, excite everybody else up around that. Had I been the CEO, I would've been so focused on money and HR and what we were going to do about renting our new ..., I would've never been able to have that opportunity.

Warwick F:

I want listeners to hear what Zach has just said because for a lot of entrepreneurs or even people in larger companies, it's knowing what your strengths are, and knowing the value of a team. And obviously, as you know better than I, the team is greater than the sum of its parts.

Warwick F:

You probably had really talented folks in personnel and development and marketing and sales and management, and you leveraged all of them in doing what you do best. There's a phrase that somebody told me once, don't do what you're merely good at, do what you're great at. But what you're great at is being the visionary, the cheerleader, the entrepreneur. You might have been good at some of the other things, but why not let people who are great at it, rather than merely good at it?

Warwick F:

So you had that, I would say also part of the warrior kind of mentality. Each person probably in a team, even in the military, has different strengths, different skills, different backgrounds. Maybe munitions, sharpshooter, I don't know, you know far more than I do, but you combine the different skills in a cohesive unit.

Warwick F:

And maybe that sense of teamwork and that management structure you built probably served you well for probably a very recent crucible in December 2020, when you got COVID. As all listeners would know, because we're all very familiar with this, this was before vaccines. From what I understand, you were careful. It wasn't like you were doing crazy things, but stuff happens, and some of your family got it and they bounced back, but you didn't bounce back so easily, so talk about that crucible, because that was a massive one.

Zachary G:

We talk a lot about the crucible. You talk about it, I talk about it, but it's a metaphor. I actually had the physical crucible. Let me explain what happened. I got COVID, everyone in my family got it. Now, I never get sick. I never missed school for being sick. Never got the cold, nothing. I figure I'm invincible.

Zachary G:

Within 24 hours of getting COVID, I started to feel a level of nausea that I cannot explain, 10 times worse than anything I've ever experienced, and it lasted for about 10 days. I couldn't eat. I couldn't drink. I couldn't get out of bed. I was delirious. I was hallucinating. And the only issue my son and my wife had is they lost their taste buds, and so they went through a whole bottle of Tabasco sauce in one week, which, for your listeners, it usually takes about 10 years to go through a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

Zachary G:

All of a sudden I got a tickle on my chest. That tickle changed from a tickle to an uncomfortable cough, and before you know it, I was having a hard time breathing. My wife called the doctor. The doctor said, "Take him to the hospital." She starts backing the car out. I said, "Honey, it's not going to be the car. Call 911." And thank God they did that, because by the time I got in the ambulance, my pulse ox was about to 80. Just for the listeners that are non-medical, anything below 98 on your pulse oxygen is serious. When you get into the low 90s, you're really having a hard time breathing. I was in the 80s.

Zachary G:

By the time I got into the emergency room, which, by the way, there was like 20 other beds that were lined up in the hallways, they had people lined up in the waiting rooms, I was in the high 60s, and my heart rate was starting to fall. Thank God they found out that that was the case. They immediately triaged me and sent me up to the ICU, put me on a external ventilator, and I stopped breathing. And ultimately, my heart rate... I don't think I flatlined, but I think I got down to like the teens, and I had a very intimate, visceral experience with death.

Zachary G:

I've been around death a lot in my life, between the Marine Corps and the fire service. I've seen it, I've almost dodged it a couple times, but nothing like this. The intimacy of falling down this black hole, and at the bottom of it was the abyss, that was that crucible, and the abyss wasn't black. It was a color darker than black, a color I can't even comprehend and explain.

Zachary G:

And I remember thinking, if I could get to the bottom of the abyss, I could stop breathing, they could put the tube down my throat and breathe for me, and I could get this needed... This break. I needed a break. I just couldn't breathe anymore. And obviously I was getting down there, I started hearing everyone yelling, "Zach, you got to breathe, you got to come back to us." I thought about all those crucibles that happened to me in my life before, and the warrior, and that I had so much more to give, and just did every effort in my fiber to just breathe. You don't realize how difficult it is to breathe until you lose that gift.

Zachary G:

And when I came back and was able to ultimately... I unfortunately went through that three different times until I finally was able to make the turn, but that gave me a power and a fire that is in me now to really give back and honor God for giving me this other opportunity to be alive and survive that crucible that made all those other crucibles literally nothing.

Warwick F:

And it seemed like, out of that crucible, and you write about this, and I totally agree, when you go through that almost life-ending crucible, it makes you think, "Okay, I've got these successful businesses. They're serving firefighters and protecting people from COVID." I mean, the exit signs if the lights go out. I mean, you're doing well, but you're doing well by doing good. You are serving people.

Warwick F:

That's obviously always been what Zach Green is about, but yet you had this notion coming out of COVID that you wanted to write this book, Warrior Entrepreneur. And I'd love to get into that now, but how did that happen? Just, you're trying to get out of COVID, you're finally starting to get better, you just had this notion, "I want to write this book." What led you to want to write that book?

Zachary G:

So as I went through this journey, everyone said, "Well, you got to write a book. This is a great story," before COVID. And I remember talking to an editor, and he said, "Zach, I'm sorry, but other than your mom and your wife, no-one's going to buy your book, unless your name is something crazy, like Barack Obama or Beyoncé or something."

Zachary G:

So I started to put together just some collections of essays and blog posts and just very loosely had it. When I was in the darkness of the abyss in the hospital, I was making very long, lengthy Facebook posts, because I really thought I was going to die. There was no question in my mind.

Zachary G:

And one of my favorite quotes was the wonderful poem, Invictus, from one of your countrymen in Australia, that talks about being the master of your own domain, and being able to conquer all the challenges that happen to you, and not what happens to you, but how you conquer it.

Zachary G:

So all these essays that I started to write on Facebook, that started to get shared virally, I mean, some of them had thousands upon thousands of shares. And when I got home, I just started writing, and the words just flowed from there, and I was able to complete the whole entire book in probably a couple weeks.

Zachary G:

Now, when the book was done and I started go back and rereading it, it was not good. It was one of the books that, if I read it, I would throw it away after 10 pages. But that's where the editorial process comes in, with a team of incredible editors, about five different editors. Some are in content, some are in syntax, some are in typesetting, some are just in punctuation. They were able to massage the words. They didn't really add much on. They took a lot out, rearranged things, and ultimately got us to the book that you have in front of you now.

Warwick F:

I mean, that's incredible. I know there's editing, but two weeks, my gosh, I mean, I started my book in like 2008, and took years to write in part because I was writing about some of the dumbest mistakes I made growing up as, obviously, listeners know, in a 150-year-old very large family media business in Australia. But wow, that's impressive.

Warwick F:

I want to get into some of the specifics in the book because there's so much here that is really good. One of the first quotes I see is from Walt Disney, and you've got, "All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me. You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you." I mean, that's an amazing statement from Walt Disney, that I'd not heard before, so talk about why that inspired you.

Zachary G:

Well, here you've got Walt Disney, who is literally the king of happiness. Everything he does, his why, is about providing happiness. So you assume that he's had a really happy life, but he didn't. Before he created Mickey Mouse, he had issues with being a cartoonist where he either... I don't know what the story was, he either lost a cartoon or something happened. A lot of hardship.

Zachary G:

What he did was so incredible in Orlando, he bought swampland, and he recognized that in order for him to do what he needed to do, he had to not only buy the land, he had to create his own pseudo-government, his own electric, his own plumbing, his own water and everything. And it was setback after setback after setback.

Zachary G:

So when a man that is the embodiment of happiness and smiles and fantasy had gotten his you-know-what handed to him and needing that kick in the face, it shows you that on the outside, what you see is just the pretty. You don't see all the stuff that goes into it and what it takes to build that up.

Zachary G:

And those stories continue on for people like Elon Musk, and we all think he's this multi-billionaire and great guy, but the reality is, Elon Musk had a lot of challenges along the way. Richard Branson. We can just go on and on and on. And what happens with warriors, and the 10% that do succeed, because again, 90% of businesses fail within the first 10 years, are the ones that use that adversity to learn from it and to grow from it rather than make themselves feel sorry that it happened to them.

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean, that's such a great point. It's funny, Walt Disney also was one of my heroes and I think what you're referring to, certainly one key crisis is, he had this cartoon about Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and some unscrupulous New York distributor, I think it was like in the '20s, the guy was an... Walt Disney was an animator. He's not like a legal guy.

Warwick F:

And he had this fine print in the contract that basically said, "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is mine," and behind his back, he pretty much stole a lot of his key animators, this guy. So you would think Walt Disney is devastated. He gets on the train, it's the '20s, you don't fly back then. Well, not easily. And he's on the train from New York to California.

Warwick F:

And rather than getting morose, here he is with his wife, Lilly, I think her name was, and he starts doodling on a napkin three circles that turns into a mouse. And he says to his wife, "What do you think about Mortimer the mouse?" And she says, "How about Mickey, Mickey Mouse?" So really, it illustrates your point is, most people would say, "Look, I put my heart and soul into Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. My team has literally become traitors, they've betrayed me and gone to the enemy. I'm done."

Warwick F:

But no, I mean, nobody's ever heard of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Everybody's heard of Mickey Mouse, so he really exemplifies what you're saying, that grit, that, "Okay, I've got a kick in the teeth. I was betrayed by my team and my business partner. I'm not giving up." So, I mean, there's story after story of these successful folks, it's not the absence of pain, it's knowing how to deal with it, which is such a great example.

Gary S:

And I'm going to jump in as an advocate for the reader to say, do you hear things, listener, that you've heard before from Warwick? I mean, Warwick's book, as he just mentioned, talks about Mickey Mouse, and there are things... We're going to go on and talk more here about Zach's book, but just in the contents of Zach's book, as he's talking about what makes a warrior entrepreneur, here are some of the concepts, think of what you've heard on this podcast, what you've read in Warwick's book as well, to see if there's some commonality here.

Gary S:

Teamwork. Purpose. Adaptability. Don't give up. Sacrifice. Morality and serenity. These are... One person can luck out and create it, and it may be true, it may not be true. If you've got a couple of people with varied backgrounds who focus in on these things, who focus in on the fact that adversity, that crucibles, that they don't define you, they don't stop you. You can move beyond them. You can move, not just past them, you can obliterate them and create a new life of significance for yourself. That begins to add gravitas and truth. And it's not just one person.

Gary S:

My mom used to tell me all the time, "If one person says you're, [fill in the bad word that I won't say on the air here,] it's a difference of opinion. If two or three people say it, it's probably true." Well, what you're hearing, listener, is two or three people, two people right here. Warwick and Zach are saying some of the same things, and it's that your crucible doesn't define you and it doesn't stop you.

Warwick F:

Amen.

Zachary G:

Gary, thank you for sharing that, and Warwick, if I could just piggyback off of that story around Walt Disney, there's only one way that an entrepreneur and a founder can fail. There's just one way, and it's to give up. As long as you're willing to have the courage to go into the danger and to keep trying and keep focusing on reinventing yourself, this concept of failing forward, where it's better to fail multiple times and keep moving in that same direction than it is to do nothing.

Zachary G:

But eventually there does come a time when it's just not worth it anymore. The personal sacrifices, the emotional sacrifices, the financial sacrifices are not enough, and that's when you say, "I'm done." And that's okay, because that probably means that's going to lead you to something else, or it's going to make you a better person in that other area.

Zachary G:

But knowing that Disney could have quit, but instead of quitting, he used that as a way... And it's funny you say this, Warwick, because I've done business with Disney. They are the most hardcore brutal, almost to the point of evil, when it comes to enforcing their copyright and their IP. And I imagine a lot of that goes back to the days where you can't even mention that you met with Disney, it's so strict on how they protect their IP nowadays.

Warwick F:

Oh, that's so good. So I want to get into, there's a few pages where... Well, a lot of pages, actually, where you talk about the whole warrior metaphor and crucible. And I don't use that image in my book, because my background is different than yours, but I absolutely can identify with the metaphor.

Warwick F:

So, just going to read just a few little bits that talk about, to me, the heart of some of what's in your book. You say that "A warrior's journey typically has a point in which you are tested unlike anything you have ever experienced in your life. A crucible, an event that tests the soul. It is at crucible that the warrior chooses to fail and quit or to dig deep and realize that a transformation has to happen to continue their mission. The crucible can occur in the early phases of training and it can happen again in the execution of your mission. It's at this terrifying point that a warrior is made."

Warwick F:

And then you go on and say, "Here's when you look into the abyss and realize that to make it to the next stage of your mission, you have to disconnect from your past, shed your former self and transform. The warrior sees clarity in the chaos. The warrior stands tall in the face of that chaos and inspires others to be their best self."

Warwick F:

And later on you talk about when you're in that crucible and the abyss, that's when they find their why. I mean, they're some absolutely key... So talk about that whole notion of the warrior and the crucible and abyss, and how that changes you, because I think it's really profound stuff.

Zachary G:

What I talked about before, when you're in that crisis, you're in that crucible, all options become available. The clarity becomes available. And in first section of my book, I talk a lot about human anatomy and neuroscience, and the way that we've been created with sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, which is kind of the fight or flight.

Zachary G:

If you or any of your listeners have ever been involved in a car accident, the one thing that happens is, right before the moment of impact, everything slows down. You literally get this like superhuman understanding of, that you can see things, smell things, hear things, similar to the basketball player that's shooting that free throw and he's able to tune all that noise out and get into that zone.

Zachary G:

That's the crucible, that's the chaos, and a lot of times we want to organize chaos. We want to stop the car right before that impact and tell someone, "Hey, slow down, don't do that." But the reality is you can't, because it's chaos, and you can't control that, and it's happening so fast.

Zachary G:

So what you need to do is embrace the chaos. The example I use is, if you're a surfer and the wave comes in, you can't get control a wave. That's Mother Nature. What you can do is sit there and try to stop the wave, in which case you're going to get crushed, or you get on your surfboard and you ride the wave, you embrace that chaos, like what I did when we had the pandemic. Instead of saying, "Hey, oh, my God, we're going to go out of business," because we would've gone out business within a matter of a couple weeks, we said, "Let's go ahead and do that." So that's the first thing, is, don't put chaos into order, embrace it.

Zachary G:

The second thing is having clarity amongst everybody else in their confusion. And the way you do that is again by absorbing and using the superpowers that your body creates, cortisol, adrenaline, that flood into your system when you're faced with that emergency situation. Your pupils dilate, your breathing increases, more blood flows to your brain, and being able to utilize those situations.

Zachary G:

So it could be something as simple as getting ready to go into a sales meeting and your computer crashes with your only copy of your presentation. It could be a car accident. It could be a situation like I witnessed firsthand where my friend got attacked by a shark right in front of my house, and seeing the process of what he did to fight the shark off, and what happened after the case.

Zachary G:

So the warrior, because of their experience, are going to be able to handle that emergency situation a lot better than the non-warrior, and anybody can be a warrior. I think some of the greatest warriors are the mom that's working two jobs just to hold things together, because they've handled so much adversity and so many things that when the guy knocks on the door and says, "Hey, rent's due," where that would crush most people, they'd be like, "Okay, we'll figure it out. We'll work through that." And not everyone's cut out to be a warrior, and that's okay. We, the warriors need that support structure and that inspiration and everything else around that.

Warwick F:

Absolutely. I love all your quotes and stories. You've got another great one, many ones, but by Thomas Edison. A reporter asked Edison, how did it feel to fail a thousand times? Edison stated, "I didn't fail a thousand times." He's talking about different filaments for inventing the light bulb. "The light bulb was an invention with a thousand steps." Edison went on to say, "Great success is built on failure, frustration, and even catastrophe," and you write, "Thomas Edison recognized the same thing that warriors recognize: adversity, failure and resistance are all keys to growth needed for success."

Warwick F:

So one of the things we talk about in Crucible Leadership is when you go through a crucible, you have a choice. You'll either hide under the covers, complain, whine and say, "This is unfair," and eventually, after 30, 40, 50 years or more, life will end for all of us. Or you can say, "This was unfair. I was an idiot," which is more in my case, I was an idiot, "but okay, how do I bounce back? How do I use what I've been through to serve others?" And that's really what you are talking about is, adversity isn't the end point. It certainly wasn't for Thomas Edison, all these stories paint a similar picture, right?

Zachary G:

You go to the gym and you say, "Well, I don't want to have any adversity, so I'm just going to sit here for an hour in the gym and do nothing," you haven't helped your body. But you get on the treadmill and you push yourself, and you lift heavy weights, which is hard, you're creating adversity, that's going to grow your muscles. And that's the exact same thing that happens along that warrior's journey, is that concept of using adversity to help you grow and to do that.

Zachary G:

The other thing is, it feels so much better when you get to that win and that point, when you struggle to get there, than it does if it just comes easy. If you're playing a video game and you use all the cheat codes and you just blow right through the video game, that's one thing. But if you're playing a video game and you're able to really work and build yourself up, that creates a whole nother process.

Warwick F:

Yeah, that's so well said. I mean, I love everything you have about abyss and crucible stuff. You've got, "When you're at the darkest moments, you find yourself in your crucible and realize that to make it to the next step in your life's mission, you have to disconnect from your past, shed your former self and transform."

Warwick F:

I mean, you've lived that. You had a crisis of your company all going bankrupt. "I've got to transform. I've got to let go, not micromanage, bring in a professional team." When you went through COVID, okay, you still kept all your businesses, but you're going to transform and pivot, and write a book. So you've lived that, when you've gone through the abyss, each time it's had a profound effect on your life and career, right?

Zachary G:

Well, and if I could leave one last thing with your listeners, and that is, don't feel sorry if bad things happen. Don't pity yourself if you didn't have enough money growing up, or your mom and dad didn't give you enough love, or somebody got promoted above you. That's what happens to you, and you can't control what happens to you. You can control how you react to it, and I know that statement is almost to the point of overused and cliché, but it is so, so true.

Zachary G:

You have a decision every day to decide, "Is this going to make me stronger or is this going to make me weaker?" And even the people that you find that struggle with cancer or something like that, instead of saying, "Oh, woe is me, there's a problem," they tend to live a more fuller life when they've conquered it or as they're going through that. And that's just the one thing I would ask everyone to challenge themselves, is to look at all the things in your life that you think are difficult and bad, and use those as a force to help grow and to make you stronger and better, and accomplish whatever your life's missions may be.

Gary S:

Now, here's a situation that's bad for me as the co-host of this show. This is the time where I usually say the captain's turned on the fasten seatbelt sign, but I'm aware that I'm not talking to someone who's like at the Air Force grounds in Colorado Springs, and I have no idea about how to... I wasn't in the military, so I don't know how to use a clever phrase. So I'm just going to say, yes, the captain's turned on the fasten seatbelt sign, and it's going to be time to land this civilian plane on the ground here in a bit. However, before we do that, I would be remiss, Zach, if I didn't give you the chance to tell our listeners how they can learn more about you, and very importantly, buy your book. So, how can they find you online?

Zachary G:

Yeah, so if I can use a Marine term, we call it popping smoke.

Gary S:

Okay.

Zachary G:

So when we're on a mission and we're ready to get extricated out of the mission, we'll pop a smoke grenade, and that means, "Hey, we're getting out of the zone." So instead of landing the craft, we're at the point where we're popping smoke. Yeah, so this is where you get a hold of me.

Gary S:

I'm so lame, I should have asked you that beforehand.

Zachary G:

No worries. LinkedIn, I'm very active on LinkedIn. I think that's the way that I actually met you guys.

Gary S:

Right.

Zachary G:

My website is warriorentrepreneurbook.com, and if you go to warriorentrepreneurbook.com and type in the coupon code PODCAST2021, podcast 2-0-2-1, you can actually get a copy of the book for 50% off, and I'll go ahead and personalize it for you also. The last thing I'd ask all of your listeners is at the end of that, there's a Contact us information page there. Please, please, please put in your number, your name, your email, your address. I am launching a Warrior Framework program that is going to be very multifaceted. It's going to include online training. There'll be workbooks, there'll be exercises, there'll be one-on-one coaching opportunity with me.

Zachary G:

And ultimately, it's really designed more for people that want to either start a business or grow a business, but it can be for anybody else, and I'm creating a unique way, in that it's going to be a journey. So think of it as like a board game, and you're going to start off in the board and going through certain modules, and every time you make it through a module, you're going to get a pin, an award, kind of like in the Boy Scouts, a patch.

Zachary G:

And the goal with that is ultimately to create this warrior movement that I would love to investigate ways that maybe we could all work together in utilizing the crucible concept and the crucible training to create seminars, workshops, training material. Think of it as like the warrior university. That's getting ready to launch here in the next month or so, and I'm looking for beta users, so people that want to buy into the course at a very discounted rate in exchange for helping me coach me and creating that best material for your fellow warriors.

Warwick F:

Wow. Well, thank you so much, Zach. I really appreciate you being there, and I love the whole concept of Warrior Entrepreneur, and as you... There might be listeners, maybe today is not a good day for them. What's a word of hope you'd say if today's the day when the abyss, the crucible at its worst, what's a key message you want folks to hear as they try to move forward?

Zachary G:

So the first thing is just this mantra, it's going to get better. It will get better. You've got to have faith and confidence of knowing that it will get better, even if you don't know what that answer is. It's okay not to see that finish line, to be able to know that it will get better, it'll be stronger.

Zachary G:

And then the second thing I will tell people is, you got to help other people out on this journey. You can't just do it yourself. You can't just have a mentor. You need to be a mentor. And at all the times during my career path, I was both a mentor to other people and had a mentor myself, and I continue to do that. So I would just... Guess I would ask that you never know what other journeys and crucibles other people are going through, and be here to help them out in addition to getting people to help you out too.

Gary S:

I've been in the communications business long enough, not the warrior business, but the communications business, long enough to know when the last word's been spoken on a subject, and Zach, you just spoke the last word on our podcast episode. I'm going to leave you, listener, with one of the quotes that Warwick didn't read. And it's fascinating if you, if you've listened to the show a few times, you know that I'm usually the guy that's pulling out quotes and reading them to people, and it's fascinating to me, and you should be very proud of this, Zach, that Warwick was reading your quotes, because he doesn't do that often on the show. He was truly moved, I think, and again, I think it speaks to the fact that you guys speak the same language.

Gary S:

But here's a quote which I really liked, because the subject of the quote is from a guy who knows a lot about the subject, and the quote's from Arnold Schwarzenegger, and here's what you quote him as saying in your book, Warrior Entrepreneur. "Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength," and that is truth, listener.

Gary S:

So thank you for spending in this time with us on Beyond the Crucible, and until the next time we are together, please remember what we've talked about on this episode with Zach Green, and that is, your crucible experiences are painful, for sure. They can change the trajectory of your life. They can put you in the midst of an abyss, and you can feel like you want to stare in that abyss, and that abyss can maybe pull you in. You can break through it. As Zach said, you really have to kind of go to war with your crucible. You have to take it on. You have to confront it. You have to move beyond it. You have to blow it up, and those things that are holding you back, you have to find a way to move beyond them.

Gary S:

And the reason why you do that is because when you do that, it's not the end of your story. Your crucible's not the end of your story. When you learn the lessons of them, when you escape the abyss that is at the bottom of them, that leads to the best story of your life. And the reason it's the best story of your life is found in the life of what Zach's described today, what Warwick has described in every episode, and that is a life of significance.

Have you ever felt like that a failure or misstep or somebody else’s judgment is still following you around? That your identity, in a very real way, has been frozen in time?  BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax and cohost Gary Schneeberger discuss Warwick’s new blog that spotlights how to turn a heat lamp – sometimes even a flamethrower – on those frozen negative perceptions from the past that can stick to us in the present and threaten our future.  They discuss several steps you can take to restore your true identity, from recognizing your life matters, to dealing with the lies spoken over you; from forgiving yourself and others to embracing the beauty in your brokenness and using it as fuel for your unique life of significance.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. In the Australian media and some people's minds, I will be perpetually the 26-year-old young kid who launched this ill-advised takeover until recently, my Wikipedia entry was "naive, idealistic, young 26-year-old launches $2 billion takeover. Could have had it all, messed it up and ends 150 years of family history". So it's this, almost this tragic young figure, a 26-year-old. And it is frozen in time, frozen in concrete, if you will.




Gary Schneeberger:

Does that sound familiar? Not the details of the story. Those are the beats of Warwick's journey, but the feeling that a failure or misstep or somebody else's judgment is still following you around, that your identity in a very real way has been frozen in time and not in the most encouraging ice.




Gary Schneeberger:

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week Warwick and I have a wide-ranging discussion about how to turn a heat lamp, sometimes even a flame thrower on those frozen negative perceptions from the past that can stick to us in the present and threaten our future. We unpack several steps you can take to restore your true identity, from recognizing your life matters to dealing with the lies spoken over you, from forgiving yourself and others to embracing the beauty in your brokenness and using it as fuel for your unique life of significance.




Gary Schneeberger:

As a guy who creates, who writes for a living, me, I always get jealous when someone turns a phrase and I'm like, "Ooh, that's really good." And Warwick has a phrase he's going to talk about in this discussion of identity, and I'll point it out. You'll notice it when you hear it, but there's some great perspective, Warwick, that you have in this blog about not only the importance of identity, but a different way of looking at identity than we have tended to do here on the show.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. Absolutely, Gary. I mean, as listeners would know, we talk about identity a fair amount, but we talk about it more, don't get your identity from work, from money, from image, accolades, get your identity from within. And all of that's true, but here we're talking almost about broken identity, or as I talk about in the blog, identity that's frozen in time. This is a bit different. And sometimes it's you know identity can be actually not our true identity. It can be almost a false identity.




Warwick Fairfax:

So sometimes we're perpetually a 16 or 17-year-old teenager in high school. Maybe we missed out on the basketball team. Maybe we were a bit overweight, negative self-image. And sometimes we never really see ourselves grow out of that. Other people might, but we perpetually see ourselves as who we were as a teenager or as sadly, a lot of folks on our podcast who've been guests, and I'm sure listeners, have faced during the darkest days of your crucible moment. On that worst day, sometimes we have this negative self-image. Either I'm a failure, I made these huge mistakes. I hurt people, or it may be horrendous things were done to me. And somehow when bad things are done to you, for some people, it understandably causes a negative self-image. So your negative self-image may be rooted in your worst day of your crucible moment. You may be frozen in time from high school.




Warwick Fairfax:

So really, what this discussion is, how do you get out of that pit? How do you unfreeze this false identity, this identity which is a lie, which can be frozen in time and decades can go by and you just can't seem to get out of that hole of that negative self-talk and negative identity.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that's the phrase that you turned that I'm jealous of, frozen identity. Love that. I read that in the blog and I was like, "Oh, that's really good. I wish I'd written that." I didn't though. You did. And it's in the blog and you're right, Warwick, this discussion, we often talk about identity, beware of an overdeveloped sense of identity, right? You get your identity from how many zeros are in your bank account, what kind of cool car you're driving. That kind of thing where you're maybe pushing to be bigger than your britches.




Gary Schneeberger:

We're talking about a different kind of identity crisis in this case. It's almost underdeveloped identity. You're not walking in who you really are. You're you're stuck in a place where something happened to you, someone spoke something to you, someone spoke something over you. You encountered something and you haven't been able to shake that negative perception and the ramifications that come from it.




Gary Schneeberger:

So as soon as you brought this subject up, Warwick, it occurred to me if anybody is an expert or can speak to what it's like to have frozen identity, it's you. Because still there are places, and I know you'll unpack why, there are places who still will refer to you in the context of your takeover of the family media business as Young Warwick. True?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of crazy. I'm like, now, hard to believe the decades go by over 60. So you don't tend to think of somebody that's a little over 60 as being Young Warwick, but my dad was Sir Warwick and I had, I don't know, three knighthoods in a row in my family. You know? Sir James Redding Fairfax, Sir James Oswald, and my dad, Sir Warwick Fairfax. So growing up, they didn't seem like such a big deal. It was my father, Sir Warwick, and Young Warwick, kind of heir apparent.




Warwick Fairfax:

Still in the media in Australia, that phrase will be coined. And so my frozen in time moment, as listeners would know, grew up in this 150-year-old family media business started by my great-great-grandfather. By the time I came on the scene, it was a massive $700 million, 4,000 employee company, newspapers, magazines, TV stations, radio, and newsprint mills. Had the Australian equivalent to New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, major opinion leaders. Launched this $2.5 billion takeover to bring the company back to the ideals of the founder and have it be well managed. Family sold out. Didn't work out. Three years later, company goes bankrupt when Australia hits a recession.




Warwick Fairfax:

So that's the very brief Cliff Notes version, but in the Australian media and some people's minds, I will be perpetually the 26-year-old young kid who launched this ill-advised takeover, until recently that my Wikipedia entry was "naive, idealistic, young 26-year-old launches $2 billion takeover, could have had it all, messed it up and ends 150 years of family history". So it's sort of almost this tragic young figure, a 26- year-old.




Gary Schneeberger: Right, right.




Warwick Fairfax:

And it is frozen in time, frozen in concrete, if you will. I'm trying to remember that second Star Wars movie, Empire Strikes Back. Remember when the guy gets frozen and I don't know if it's concrete or some metal?




Gary Schneeberger: Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax: And he's frozen, and it's like-




Gary Schneeberger: Han Solo. Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. That kind of like me, I'm frozen in whatever substance that is. And I'm still there in most people's minds. It's like, "Unfreeze me, please." You know?




Gary Schneeberger:

And the phrase, Young Warwick, that name, it's not just design. It was not just designed. Those who hung that name on you, it wasn't just designed to indicate your youth. It was designed to indicate, as you hinted at right there, it was designed to indicate you were inexperienced, you were in over your head, that you were the whelp, the whelpish Warwick who wasn't quite ready for prime time when you launched the takeover. That's where the sting comes in.




Gary Schneeberger:

It's not so much, as you said, you were a Young Warwick in the sense that you're the son of Sir Warwick, but the way that it was used against you was to paint you as... To freeze you as a failure. And I think that's...Would you say it has been that you spent some time frozen in that spot?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. And as we talk about and as in the book, there are cartoons, editorial cartoons that really personify this sort of frozen in time, Young Warwick, young, naive, idealistic crusader that kind of fails in a sense. So yeah, there's one of me as this Mongol warrior. Again, I'm like 26. I'm there as this barbarian attacking the gates of Rome, or I don't know quite what it would be, and destroying this family dynasty and destroys in a day what took more than a hundred years to build.




Warwick Fairfax:

And there's other cartoons, the man behind the mask. I never gave interviews. What's he thinking? How do you create a small business? Give Warwick Fairfax a big one. All these cartoons help crystallize this sense that my identity is frozen in time. But what happens is while there's still that perception in the media in Australia, it would seem, then you can't help but having your own identity frozen in time.




Gary Schneeberger: Right.




Warwick Fairfax:

Other people's perceptions become your reality and my internal reality, and so it's not easy to shake those. I mean, some people have nicknames for decades that they don't necessarily like, but it goes back to high school or whatever. And they just see you as this screwup from when you're in your twenties. And it's like, I'm not that person anymore. It's like, yeah, no, you always will be the screwup in their twenties who did dumb stuff.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. Yeah. It's like, I'm sure there are people listening right now who were told at some point, "You'll never amount to anything." Right? Who were told at some point, "That's why X, Y, Z, Q, P, L, Y happens to you." Those words, words have meaning and words can hurt. And when those words are spoken, they can sort of bore into our spirits, bore into our soul, bore into our psyche. And we can indeed be suspended in animation, if you will, at that time when those things might have been true for a period of time. But it's moving beyond those things.




Gary Schneeberger:

The name of the show is Beyond the Crucible, and what we're really talking about here is how do you get beyond the identity that has sort of stuck to the bottom of your shoe as you're going through life. But before we do move on to the great points you make in the blog about how to move beyond that identity, I want to say this. The joke's on those people, Warwick. The joke is on those journalists who said, "Naive, young kid could have had it all and blew it," because guess what? That young kid's grown up into a man who does indeed have it all, at least all that matters.




Gary Schneeberger:

You've talked about it many times. Family, you've got a Wall Street Journal bestselling book, you're speaking in places across the country. You have achieved things that you would, I know you've said it before, you have all that matters. So that as the Bible says, "What the enemy meant for evil God has turned to good." And what that label was supposed to make you feel, it's true, you do have it all, at least what matters most to you.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I mean, that is well said. You know, we talk a lot at Crucible Leadership on this podcast about a life of significance being the measuring stick for every human, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. I mean, I'm blessed to have a... I married the American girl who I met in Australia. We've been married over 30 years. I've got three wonderful kids from 30 down to almost 24 in a few days.




Warwick Fairfax:

I'm just blessed to have work that I do with a wonderful team at Crucible Leadership, such as yourself and the rest of the team. Between speaking, the book, podcast, I feel like I'm trying to give voice to people's stories and just really champion that your worst day doesn't define you. I've been on a couple nonprofit boards, including my church, being an elder at my nondenominational church.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I mean, I am blessed. And my self-image is definitely in a much better place. I mean, scars tend not to go completely away, but I think I have a more realistic, more accurate picture of who I am and what I'm worth. And I believe we all have intrinsic value obviously, as children of God. But yeah, it's been an evolution. But yes, I do feel blessed, absolutely blessed.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that's a great way to sort of move into the next area that we're going to talk about. And that's the seven points that you have about how to unfreeze your identity. Because we started out talking about here's the frozen identity and it's Young Warwick, and then we come out the other side where you're living a life of significance.




Gary Schneeberger:

Now it's time, right, you're going to unpack some things that listeners can do to put the meat in the sandwich. Right? We have the two pieces of bread on the side. Now we're going to put the meat in there, and step one that you enumerate in the blog for folks who are struggling with a frozen identity is to recognize that their life matters. What do you mean by that?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. The starting point for many will be the image is frozen in negativity either because of a mistake they've made or maybe some horrific things that were done to them. Either way, your image can be really corroded and you might feel like, what is the point? I'm worthless. Nobody can love me. Nobody should love me. I'm like this leper that people should say, "Unclean," and just toss out on some garbage heap and I'm not worth anything.




Warwick Fairfax:

So the best thing to do, I mean, people who really go into negativity can say, "I need to end my life," or you can really get down a dark space. And so really the first standpoint when you're thinking about your life matters is that the world needs who you are. The world needs your gifting, your talent, your soul, your very essence. And so by wallowing in self-pity, recrimination, anger, be it at yourself or others, it robs the world of who you are. It actually robs your family, your wife, your husband, your partner, your friends, coworkers.




Warwick Fairfax:

It robs them of the essence of who you are. Because I think we're all, as we'll talk about it in a minute, beautifully made in the image of God. So the first standpoint is your life matters and you are a gift on this earth who, from my perspective, is meant by God to contribute to the world. And so wallowing in self-pity, while it can be understandable, it doesn't serve you. It does not serve others. It robs people of your gifting and your essence, and that sense of negativity, it also tends to spread. And it hurts people around you.




Gary Schneeberger:

And coming to the realization and really owning that your life matters is like planting a flag, right? My life matters. I may not have it all worked out after this. I may still trip and fall sometimes, but that recognition that your life matters is the perfect first point because it then leads to the small steps that come next. And the next one, the second step that you talk about in the blog is you are loved.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. You know, I love the image, just to drill on what you just said for a moment, of planting the flag. We talk a lot in Crucible Leadership is that when something horrific happens to you or you make a horrific mistake, rather than hiding under the covers for the next 30, 40, 50 years until life ends, which it will for all of us, you have a choice.




Warwick Fairfax:

Either just wallow away the rest of your life, or to say, "This was awful. It was unfair, unjust, or I was an idiot, but how do I move forward?" And so that's really what you're saying. That plant the flag is the choice we talk about on pretty much every episode of Crucible Leadership is I'm going to make a choice that my life matters and I'm going to make a choice to move forward. It's a fundamental decision.




Warwick Fairfax:

And so really, moving to the second point, the sense which I think reinforces the sense of your life matters and builds onto it, I believe that we are all loved by God. I think my Christian faith perspective, like Psalm 139, it talks about we're beautifully and wonderfully made. There's this notion that God loves us. We have intrinsic value, every human being, just because of who we are. And beyond just the divine, the eternal, the universal, that sense of love.




Warwick Fairfax:

I think most of us have at least one person who loves us. Many will hopefully have friends and family who are cheering us on. There's very few of us that has nobody that cares about us. Very few of us have at least one friend, one family member who just feels bad for us, wants us to get out of that hole, whether it's of our own making or others. And so we are loved both by God and, I believe, by others.




Warwick Fairfax:

So if other people love us, including God, maybe we do matter. Maybe our life should matter. Maybe our negative identity needs to change. That's people that know us well. They love us in spite of our foibles, in spite of our mistakes, idiosyncrasies. It's not like there's blind love in which they don't know us. Oh, they know exactly who we are, but they choose to love us anyway. That should cause you to think positively.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. There is, interestingly enough, as we're talking about this subject, in the current issue of Entrepreneur magazine, there's a very short column in the beginning by a man named Dennis Gillan, who is the executive director of a suicide prevention center. And he talks about he's a keynote speaker and he suffers from lack of confidence sometimes. And he's not sure how well it's going to go over.




Gary Schneeberger:

There are times that he says, as we're talking here, there are times that his identity, his negative self- image is "I just feel like quitting." This is what he writes in an article he titled The Purple File. He writes this: "When I consider quitting, I grab the file, the purple file. And come back with renewed determination. Then he asks the reader, do you have a similar file, somewhere to put cherished testimonial, comment, a piece of feedback, or kind note from a coworker, something that lifts your spirits and reminds you why you do what you do. I recommend it."




Gary Schneeberger:

I read that article this last weekend and I created... Here's my purple file. And I went through, and you're in here, by the way, for the nice thing that you wrote in your signed copy of your book to me. But I went through, like I've kept a lot of cards through the years from when I left jobs and people were wishing me well. And this is just the first thing I pulled out of this purple file. It's a high school graduation card that's 40 years this year that my brother who passed away in 1995, but this was back in '82, this is what he wrote me. Just one little bit that he wrote me:




Gary Schneeberger:

"I want you to know, win or lose in life, I'm never prouder at any time as when I can call you my brother and best damn friend I have. Thank you for making my life with you so happy." That's from my brother who is no longer with me. He's been gone for almost 25 years. That's amazing stuff. When you talk about, you've got one person who loves you, you've got people, coworkers, those kinds of things. When Dennis Gillan talks about these things in his article, this is the lifeblood of shattering that negative identity that can stick to you, I think. Fair?




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh, absolutely. Those are almost sort of markers of grace. I'm reminded of when Moses, who spent 40 years in the desert, he would instruct the Israelites to erect memorial stones as a way of just remembering God's grace and providence. And so those sorts of things, I mean, I have three adult kids. We have at least two out of the three are writers. We write birthday cards, as listeners know. We say positive things about whoever's birthday it is.




Warwick Fairfax:

You look at all those cards and they write in detail about why they love me and what have you. Obviously, the stuff some very kind folks wrote me endorsements to the book, I mean, those things matter. And you remember that and it's hard... It's funny, I often say, It's easy to remember bad things that people say about you. It's not easy to remember the good things because we tend to want to dismiss it. It's like it doesn't compute.




Warwick Fairfax:

So we're like, with our negative self-image, but that's why I think what you're saying, this purple file is because we forget those things. And reading them, it's like, maybe I'm not perfect, but maybe I do have value. And so it's such a good idea, that purple file concept.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. And if the concept that we're discussing here, and it is, is frozen identity, a purple file, the stuff inside this file is a heat lamp that melts that frozen identity-




Warwick Fairfax: Amen.




Gary Schneeberger:

... and brings you back to a place where you understand, okay, I'm not all those bad things that I'm thinking about myself right now.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's not positive, happy talk just for the sake of it. These are accurate assessments from people that know you. So it's bringing you back to reality is what that's doing.




Gary Schneeberger:

Very, very, very wisely said. Okay, the third point, three of seven, after your life matters and you are loved is the world needs us. What do you mean by that?




Warwick Fairfax:

So it's really a progression. So you start with the decision, okay, my life does matter. God loves me. Other people love me. The sense that because we're all uniquely made with talents, abilities, and experience by God, from my perspective, we have a unique set of combination of gifts and talents and experience that not one other human in the billions of humans on the planet have. Every person is unique with a unique set of characteristics, gifts and talents. So the world needs that.




Warwick Fairfax:

What would life be like if we didn't have some of the people that, whether it's Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln. You look at Abraham Lincoln went through a pretty tough life. He lost a mother, I think, when he was extremely young and a woman that he loved early on before he married his wife. He lost several elections. I mean, he could have just gone away and hid and said, "You know what?" And he had suffered from melancholy, which is in modern language, we'd call it depression. He could have said, "You know, I'm a loser. The world's against me. God's against me. Look at the tragedy with lost kids and a mother and lost elections," but he didn't give up.




Warwick Fairfax:

He kept pressing on. He just had this sense of drive, hope, and a sense of calling. The world needed, America needed what he had to offer. He believed, not getting too much into Lincoln, he believed in fighting against the spread of slavery into new territories which had become states. And from there, he evolved into slavery is wrong and a moral sin, if you will. But that's that sense of the world needed his gifts and his calling to oppose slavery.




Warwick Fairfax:

If he'd just wallowed in melancholy, I mean the world would not have had an Abraham Lincoln, which who knows what would've happened in this country with slavery. It's almost scary to think about it, but I'm not saying, almost none of us will be Abraham Lincoln, but the point is he didn't wallow in his melancholy. He fought that and fought negative self-image to contribute in a powerful way to the world. That we all in our own small ways or big ways can have a massive effect on folks.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. And what you just said about Lincoln, not believing his negative self-image, that was fueled in some part by what people said about him too. And that moves nicely into your fourth point, which is deal with the lie. Right? Lincoln got criticized. He was the backwoods guy from Kentucky and then Illinois. And he was never going to amount to anything. He kept getting underestimated, underestimated, underestimated. Point four, deal with the lie, what do you mean by that?




Warwick Fairfax:

Whether a crucible is your fault or not your fault, whether it's abuse or huge mistakes or just this, they think of you as a screwup from being a teenager or in high school, it's realizing, and this is a choice, it is a lie. It is not who you are. Yes, we've made mistakes, but just because you've made mistakes doesn't mean you're a bad person. There are very few people that you can say are "evil."




Warwick Fairfax:

There's some in history that maybe are worthy of that name, but most of us are not. Most of us have just made mistakes or had bad things happen to us. So part of it is to deal with that, and that may mean help. I think for many of us, I've certainly had some, you might need help from a therapist, a counselor, a psychologist, maybe from close friends, mentors, family members. And just to say, "I have this negative self-image and I don't know, why is that?"




Warwick Fairfax:

I said, "Well, that's because of maybe the divorce, your parents, or maybe it's because of the mistake. But that's not who you are. Remember all these good things you did? Remember the people you helped?" In a sense, it's almost like the purple file you're talking about in which people actually give you specifics. Remember, you did this and this and this and this. Remember that person you helped and that person? "Oh, I guess I'd forgotten that." Well, how can you be such a bad person, given all the things that you did that most people will never know.




Warwick Fairfax:

I'm sure way back when, I know you've obviously had some challenges, as you mentioned a couple podcasts ago. You could have talked to your dad, your brother, some close friends, and they'd say, "Gary, don't you remember, you helped this person and that. Remember when you did this and that?" Well, your lowest moments, you're not thinking about that. Right? So deal with the lie, whether it's counseling or friends or family or both, but you can't help anybody until you help yourself.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's almost like, yeah, it's a both/and, external and internal, but you've got to deal with the internal, with the internal lie, because that cripples your ability to move forward and help anybody else. If you think you're a screwup and a leper, how in the world are you going to have the energy to help another living soul? You're not. So you got to deal with the lie and don't believe that negative self-image. There are specific steps you just got to be willing to take, make the choice, deal with the lie.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have a phrase I use for myself that gets at both of the ways we talk about identity. And I say, "I am less than my greatest achievements and I am more than my worst failures." So that helps me from believing my own press too much and believing my own worst critical reviews too much. When someone says to you, "You'll never amount to much," that's a lie, because no one's seen the future and knowing that you're never going to amount to much. They're passing judgment on you. Deal with that lie and move beyond it, as you've said.




Gary Schneeberger:

Point five in this very good blog, which you will be able to find, if not now, listener, shortly, it will be up at Crucibleleadership.com. Point five is to forgive yourself and forgive others. Boy, we spend a lot of time talking about forgiveness on this show. Don't we?




Warwick Fairfax:
We do. And honestly, that wasn't in the book, at least not the original book I wrote.




Gary Schneeberger: Really? Wow.




Warwick Fairfax:

Maybe it is, but it wasn't a big emphasis, put it that way. Maybe I'm just forgetting, but who knows? But I think let's put it this way: it's grown to a lot more prominence through the podcast, interviewing people, and as you and I have dialogued, thoughts come to mind.




Warwick Fairfax:

So basically, you're dealing with your negative self-talk and not believing the lie that your life matters. But at a certain point to not believe the lie, you have to deal with the lie. Which is in my case, I destroyed a 150-year-old family media business. I caused friction within the family, lost billions of dollars, made life unstable and uncomfortable for 4,000-plus employees. You know, if you want to take it to its extreme, because of all that instability, maybe even hurt the nation of Australia in some way. I don't know. It depends how big you want to make the lie.




Gary Schneeberger: Right.




Warwick Fairfax:

There's sometimes kernels of truth in these things. It's just the lie magnifies them massively. So part of it is forgiving yourself. Like in my case, look, I was 26. I meant well. I was young, idealistic. My dad had just died in early '87. There was instability in the family for decades before I came along. I listened to the wrong advisors. There's all sorts of, these aren't excuses, but there are reasons why.




Warwick Fairfax:

And so part of it's like, you know what? You tried hard. You were young, idealistic. Forgive yourself. Sometimes, for instance, those who've been abused, when we talk about forgiving others, you could say, "Well, what was done to me was unforgivable." And I understand the concept, but you forgive others, as we often say here on Beyond the Crucible, because you're worth it. Because by not forgiving others, it's like drinking poison. It's just this anger and bitterness stops you moving forward. And I don't see how anger and bitterness allows you to have a positive self-image.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, there's no room for positivity left in your soul because it's consumed by anger and bitterness and rage. It's all negative, destructive thoughts, which I don't pretend to understand. But when you're angry about others because of what they did to you, you can somehow, because of what they did to me, I'm somehow worthless. Somehow that concept, one follows the other. So for you to see yourself as having worth, you've got to be able to forgive others. Because again, you don't excuse the act. You don't condone the act, but you forgive them so that you can move forward.




Warwick Fairfax:

In that sense, you could say it's self-centered, I suppose, but whatever it takes to move forward. But forgiving yourself and forgiving others, if you don't do that, in the podcast we've had a hundred episodes. Not one person that we ever had on this podcast who's moved beyond their worst day has ever not forgiven others or themselves. Not one, not one of them. Every one has forgiven because that's the only way to bounce back from your crucible, or at least put it that way, if you don't do that, I can't see how you will bounce back because it's absolutely critical to be able to move forward.




Gary Schneeberger:

And I'll add in another aspect of that thinking of forgiveness as sort of a 360. There's forgiving others. There's forgiving yourself, but there was this incredibly insightful guest two weeks ago, me. Kidding. But I was a guest two weeks ago. And one of the things I said when I was going through Alcoholics Anonymous, that was asking for forgiveness. That was a key part for me coming to a place where I believed I was worthy of forgiveness, me forgiving me, as other people forgave me for some of the things I did.




Gary Schneeberger:

Again, nothing criminal, but I was just not a very moral, ethical, kind, nice guy. Other people forgave me that, and that helped me as well. So I think it's a three-headed thing. It's forgive others, absolutely. Ask for forgiveness, I think, is also critical. And then forgive yourself. I think those three things work in harmony.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. It's so well said. And you know, when you ask for forgiveness from others because of things you've done, hopefully they'll say, "Look, I forgive you." But sometimes they won't. They say, "Oh. You can say what you want to say, but I'm never forgiving you until the day I die," which is pretty difficult to hear. But even asking forgiveness, there will be some healing that comes from that even if they don't forgive you.




Warwick Fairfax:

Not everybody will. Because you feel like, I've done the right thing, I've acknowledged what I did to that other person. And you feel like, I've done what I can. I'm not responsible for people's response. I'm just responsible for what I do. So even if not everybody forgives you, it still is freeing in a sense, the sheer act of asking for forgiveness, if that makes sense.




Gary Schneeberger:

Absolutely. AA talks about it in this way. All you're responsible for is your side of the street. So you're asking someone for forgiveness for what, as AA puts it, making an amends for what you have done to them, toward them that hurt them is just sweeping up your side of the street. You can't hold yourself responsible for their side of the street. Just doing that, you're absolutely right, can make you feel like you're in a much better place. As I said on the show a couple weeks ago, it's amazing when you ask for forgiveness, how many people will forgive you, who will say, "Absolutely."




Gary Schneeberger:

And just one more thing I want to add as part of this, because it's important transactionally when you're talking about forgiveness to close that circle. So many times someone will come up and say, "Oh, I'm sorry." And our response will be, "Oh, no problem. Whatever." To me, that's denying them closure.




Gary Schneeberger:

In other words, if someone says they're sorry to me, I want to say back, I want to close that loop for them and say, "I forgive you. Yes, absolutely." Not just, "No problem. It's no big deal," because in some way that doesn't complete the transaction. It's they're making themselves vulnerable. They're apologizing. We ought to at least say, "Yes, thank you. And I forgive you." Because I think that then makes moving forward even a little bit more easy.




Warwick Fairfax:

As I've written the book and obviously said it to pretty much every family member I've had, I've had other people that were on the other side of the takeover that things were rocky way back when say to me, "You showed a lot of courage and vulnerability in writing that book."




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, you have to believe that meant a lot to me that somebody that was on the other side that wasn't feeling too warm and fuzzy to me at the time would say that, yeah, I had courage and vulnerability and basically admired... Because I don't sugarcoat things. I talk about my own mistakes and don't throw rocks at others. But that's part of the healing. You know? Yeah.




Gary Schneeberger:

What you just described, the way that you got forgiveness from others, that's a flame thrower to the frozen identity of "Young Warwick." I mean that will melt that frozen identity like that. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about that can really propel us forward. All right.




Warwick Fairfax: Indeed.




Gary Schneeberger:

Another place we can go to propel us forward, point six in your seven-point prescription for ways to unfreeze your identity from a bad place is to embrace the broken and the beautiful. What do you mean by that?




Warwick Fairfax:

I think as humans, and this is certainly definitely a faith perspective from my Christian faith, is we may be broken, but we're beautiful. And again, it's funny, we had a sermon just this last Sunday from our pastor. I think it was II Corinthians and it says, "We have this treasure in jars of clay." Basically, treasure being God's light, so to speak, and jars of clay being our broken bodies.




Warwick Fairfax:

I remember also we did a blog, I don't know if it was a year ago or more, in which we had a picture of a vase that was broken, but it was glued together with gold paint or that kind of thing.




Gary Schneeberger:

That's so funny because I'm going to talk about this after you're done talking about it. I'm going to add some more detail. So please, go on, go on, go on.




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh, so just the sense of we're broken but beautiful. In some sense, I think from my faith perspective, God can use our brokenness to help others. So in my case, I was broken by my own failures and circumstances, but it gives you a sense of compassion for others. It wants you to help. And it gives me a calling to help shine a light on other people's worst days and how they bounce back to offer words of hope and healing, so to speak, to write the book I wrote.




Warwick Fairfax:

Very often with maybe how many guests we've had, 80, 90-plus on the podcast, so many have used their worst moment, whether it's failure, abuse, to reach out to whether it's other cancer survivors, other survivors of abuse, other people who've failed in terms of businesses. They've used, to use that oft-used phrase, their pain for a purpose. So some, even amidst the ashes of the broken of your worst day, there can be ways that beauty can come out of that and you can use that as a light to help others. So yeah, we can often find our calling out of our worst moments, as hard as that is to think about.




Gary Schneeberger:

And what you were talking about, Warwick, and I have a note right here to talk about it. In the blog, The blog was October 19th, 2020, called Beauty and Imperfection: Vulnerability for a Purpose. But what you were describing is the Japanese art of Kintsugi. And I'm going to read what that is. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold, built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art.




Gary Schneeberger:

Every break is unique. And instead of repairing an item like new, the 400-year-old technique actually highlights the scars as part of the design. Using this as a metaphor for healing ourselves teaches us an important lesson. Sometimes in the process of repairing things that have broken, we actually create something more unique, beautiful, and resilient.




Gary Schneeberger:

And I have a personal story I want to share about that. So I don't have a lot of art. But years ago, a couple decades ago, I bought these things called poet's bottles. They're very intricate, delicate, three bottles. And they're etched with the words, faith, hope and love from I Corinthians. That was why I got these three bottles and I have them on a stand in our kitchen, on a nice lighted stand from the bottom.




Gary Schneeberger:

And one day when my in-laws were over, I was playing with the dog. I was trying to show how the dog plays catch with a big ball. And we bounced it to the dog and the dog hits it with her nose. The dog hit it with her nose and it went into the kitchen and it knocked over one of those bottles. It broke the love bottle. It fell on the ground and it broke. I was devastated. My stepdaughter, Alyssa, who is an artist, picked up every one of the broken pieces I had put in the garbage and this is what she did with them.




Warwick Fairfax: Oh my gosh.




Gary Schneeberger:
So there's the love bottle.




Warwick Fairfax:
Why don't you describe for the listeners who may not be able to see, so what is it you're holding?




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. I am holding one of those poet's bottles. It's the love bottle and what my stepdaughter Alyssa did was glue it back together and then use gold paint to seal up and highlight the cracks.




Warwick Fairfax: Wow.




Gary Schneeberger:

And the most beautiful part of that story is that she said when she did it, the most beautiful part of that story is she said, "Because love is never completely broken."




Warwick Fairfax:
Wow. Boy, wow. Wow.




Gary Schneeberger:

That's what we're talking about when we talk about embracing the beauty in brokenness. And that's exactly what this bottle symbolizes and what you were talking about earlier symbolizes.




Warwick Fairfax:

I just want to highlight what you've said. I mean, that's such a wonderful illustration. I think our brokenness doesn't necessarily make us weaker. It can make us stronger. If we, to use what we say all the time, if we embrace the crucible, if we learn from it, use it to help others, it can give us a strength, a courage, a calling that we never had before. So it can be broken and beautiful and stronger than ever before.




Gary Schneeberger: Right.




Warwick Fairfax:
You know? It can make you stronger. It's a choice, but it can make you more resilient.




Gary Schneeberger:

And the thing that I said after she did this and she gave it to me is I said, "You know, before, when it was in its perfect state, it was something I liked a lot. Now it's something I treasure," because of what she did to piece... I mean, the beauty that she put into this is far, far, far greater and more meaningful than the beauty that the artist even put into it when he made the bottle.




Warwick Fairfax:

So what you're saying is it was beautiful before, but now that it's broken, it's far more beautiful than it was.




Gary Schneeberger: Right, right. Yep.




Warwick Fairfax: That is awesome stuff.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. It was so funny when you brought up that. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to talk about that too." So I actually pulled the bottle out here and I've been all nervous the whole time because I talk with my hands a lot and I don't want to knock it over. So let's move on to point seven. So we've gone through the first six points.




Gary Schneeberger:

The first six points, just to go through is one, your life matters. Two, you are loved. Three, the world needs us. Four, deal with the lie. Five, forgive yourself and forgive others. I added into that, ask for forgiveness from others, because that helps as well. Six, embrace the broken and the beautiful in your life. And the seventh point, Warwick, that you make in this blog on Crucibleleadership.com is to remember our mission. Unpack that for listeners.




Warwick Fairfax:

So we talk probably as much as anything on this podcast, Beyond the Crucible, or in Crucible Leadership about living a life of significance. It's what life is all about is a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So part of getting over the lie, of changing our identity is rewiring our brains. A lot of people know far more than I do about neuroscience, but it's not easy to rewire our brains, to rewire our identity.




Warwick Fairfax:

But part of that is, yeah, you want to deal with the lie. We're broken and beautiful, but what's the mission? What's that unique calling? For many of our guests, the root of their missional calling often comes out of the crucible they've gone through. It is for me. Crucible Leadership came out of my experience at losing a $2.25 billion 150-year-old company. How do you bounce back from your worst day? How do you lead a life of significance?




Warwick Fairfax:

The book, the podcast, everything we do all came from that. So it's as you find that mission and you begin... It's not like a one and done. I mean, okay, the book's done. We're going to be thinking about things for this year and who knows whether we'll have online courses or all sorts of things we're thinking about in Crucible Leadership. You keep moving forward, moving forward. And that mission, as you walk into it, it provides healing.




Warwick Fairfax:

In the fall, Gary, you were with me everywhere I went. I was speaking and the dialogues we had. As we were at Seton Hall, at Taylor University in Indiana, a Christian school where my kids were. We were at some business groups, XPX in Maryland and North Carolina, ACG, also in North Carolina as part of that. All these things we were at, and especially with the young people, they had a line of folks waiting for me to sign their book. Books just went when people said, "Oh, you know, the students are busy. They won't all take your book," which is fine either way.




Warwick Fairfax:

The questions they asked when you felt like, I'm actually helping some real people here. And it wasn't so much about, "Oh, look at me. I'm wonderful." Because my attitude in terms of dealing with that is all glory be to God, all glory be to God. Whenever anything good happens, I proverbially or physically get on my knees and say, "Glory to God." But those sorts of things make you think, you know what, there was some purpose in this pain. There's some meaning to what happens, and that provides a level of healing and a level of healing to your identity.




Gary Schneeberger:

Absolutely. And I think it also adds gravitas to the counsel and the wisdom that you give to other people. In other words, I love the fact that Young Warwick and all that that is meant to symbolize by those who stuck you with that nickname, it's because of Young Warwick that those kids at Seton Hall were in line waiting for you to sign their book and waiting to talk to you. It's, again, I go back to what the enemy intends for evil, God uses for good.




Gary Schneeberger:

Those things, that frozen identity thawed out, you can bring it into the present then and you can refer to it. Not live in it, but refer to it. And that gives you authenticity and gravitas and experience to allow you to speak into people's pain today. That truly is fuel for a life of significance once you get that identity unfrozen and you set it right. When you can refer back to it and draw lessons from it, that's what we talk about all the time here, that learning the lessons of your crucible is the fuel for your life of significance.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I mean it's so well said. I mean the person I am now, I wouldn't have been that person without what happened to me. I mean, you refer to that phrase, I think it's from Genesis 50. They meant it for evil, God meant it for good, referring to the life of Joseph, who was a young man was full of himself, had this coat of many colors. "Hey, look at me. I'm the favored son." I mean really unwise stuff.




Gary Schneeberger: Right.




Warwick Fairfax:

Gets thrown into a pit by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt. Goes through a bunch of trials, ends up being basically the prime minister of Egypt. So clearly, despite his, it certainly wasn't all his fault, but some of his unwise behavior that caused a lot of jealousy, God used that. And so I look back and I could have been, I don't know, a couple billion dollars wealthier. I would've been in this family business, a bit of a gilded prison. I don't know how happy I would've been.




Warwick Fairfax:

But what I'm doing now, none of that would've happened without that. The life I lived, just the sense of fulfilling and having a wonderful family. My kids don't get to grow up with the whole baggage and bondage of family business stuff, which you know, is tough to grow up with. So yeah, I mean, I am blessed. We had a resilient series in which a number of guests, one in particular said, "What I went through was a blessing." That woman, Stacey Copas, who was injured at 12 in an Australian above- ground pool diving accident.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's hard to fathom that, but there's this sense of reframing it to say, "Maybe it was a blessing." Maybe it was a gift, what I went through, because it enables me to be who I am, to write what I write, to have a passion and hopefully compassion for people, to want to help people bounce back from their worst days to live lives of significance, gives you a mission and a calling. And that does change your identity.




Warwick Fairfax:

I'm not perfect in that sense, but I don't see myself as Young Warwick, screwup, messed everything up. I say, "Yeah, I made some mistakes, but I have a mission in which I'm caring for others." I've served on some nonprofit boards. I feel like I am making a difference in the world in my own way. I go to historical figures a bit too much, perhaps, and none of us are going to be, almost none, like a Lincoln or a Roosevelt. But Franklin Roosevelt is just the case study in how tragedy turned his life around.




Warwick Fairfax:

He was this young guy of aristocratic New York wealth, life of the party. Everybody loved him, eye for the ladies, outgoing person. It's hard to see how he could contribute much to the world, this rich kid who everybody liked at parties. Then he gets polio and he is, I don't know, what, late thirties or something, somewhere around there. And it fundamentally changes him. He had to come back from what at the time was like a death sentence. You were meant to hide away and a bit like a leper. You weren't meant to be seen in society.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, then he becomes president in the depths of the Depression. Well, a wealthy, rich kid, how would he be elected in the Depression? How could you relate to anybody's suffering? But because of what he went through, it's like, look how Franklin Roosevelt, it's so hard for him to walk. When he says, "All we have to fear is fear itself." The gravitas of those words came from people that had at least some sense of the tragedy that he'd gone through. There's no way that the Roosevelt of World War II or the Depression would've been that man without that tragedy. There is no way in the world. I can't imagine he would've been elected president.




Warwick Fairfax:

So again, it's not to say you or anybody else is going to be like a Roosevelt or a Lincoln, but tragedy can transform us into something that can be a real gift to the world, whether everybody knows about it or hardly anybody does. It can give you a mission that can be transforming both for your identity and to help other people's lives. So it can be huge.




Gary Schneeberger:

Absolutely. Since the two historical examples that you've used in this episode are both presidents, I'll say that the commander of Air Force One has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign and it's time to put the leader of the free world on the ground. But before we do that, what's one, if you're going to pull the best highlight, the best advice, the best counsel, wisdom, experience that you have here, what would you want to leave? What do you want to leave listeners with before we go?




Warwick Fairfax:

I think as we often say, if today's the bottom of the pit, is your worst day, it begins with one positive step. And so if I had to say, well, what's one positive step? I'd say it starts with don't believe the lie. Don't believe that you are a good for nothing screwup that shouldn't have been born. That today is the day you need to end your life. I mean, it depends how far you want to go. Don't believe the lie.




Warwick Fairfax:

You are broken and beautiful. You are made for a purpose. The eternal, I believe God, loves all of us. So don't believe the lie, the enemy. If you believe in spiritual warfare that some do, don't believe the lie that you're a screwup, you never should have been born, all that kind of talk.




Warwick Fairfax:

Begin to think, move in a positive way. If God loves me and if there's at least one other person on the planet that loves me, maybe my life is worth redeeming. Maybe I can move forward, even if it's in a small, positive step. All it takes is one little drop of grace and the flower can grow. Just one little drop, a positive thought of grace, and you'll be able to move forward, no matter how small that step is. It begins with don't believe the lie.




Gary Schneeberger:

And there you go. Air Force One's on the ground. I can hear Hail to the Chief. We've landed the plane for sure. So listeners, thank you for spending this time with us as we've talked about this extremely important subject of how do you unfreeze your identity from the bad place it may be in from some of the setbacks and failures and traumas and tragedies that you've been through. And do remember, as you've been through those crucible experiences, that they are not the end of your story.




Gary Schneeberger:

This podcast exists to reinforce that idea that your crucible is painful. We know that, but it's not the end of your story. In fact, if you learn the lessons, if you follow, as Warwick talks about here, some great tips on how you learn lessons from what's knocked you down and you apply those to your life, that can actually be the beginning of a new story that will be the best story of your life, because where it leads you is where it's led Young Warwick Fairfax, to a life of significance.

Sometimes life can feel like the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, in which Murray lives the same day over and over again.  No matter what he does he cannot seem to get out of this repeating time loop.  Sometimes our identity is like this.  We might see ourselves as a 16- or 17-year-old teenager.  We may be older, but our identity seems to be frozen in time from those high school years.  We might have grown as a person and achieved success academically and professionally, yet we still see ourselves as that awkward, insecure teenager in high school.

If we go through crucible experiences, pain and trauma that fundamentally alters the course of our lives, that also has a tendency to lock in our identity.  We see ourselves as that person who made that horrendous mistake or who suffered that unspeakable tragedy.  We feel full of guilt, or perhaps what was done to us makes us feel worthless, fragile and completely disempowered.

This sense of frozen identity, which very often is a false identity, holds us back from being who we truly are.  It also holds us back from being the light that our world sorely needs.  If you feel bad about yourself and feel worthless, how will you have the desire or the energy to care for others?  You will tend to feel that you are incapable of helping anyone or doing any good.  The world would be better off, you might think, if you never existed.  Like lepers in the Bible, you can see yourself as “unclean” and feel people should stay away from you.  Being near others will only lead to them getting hurt.

So how do you get out of this cycle of frozen identity, be it from high school challenges or from a crucible experience?  How can you free yourself from the prison of this negative perception of yourself, so you can contribute to the world and to others?

1. Your Life Matters.

The starting point is to realize that your life matters and that the world needs your gifting and your talents.  Wallowing in self-pity, recrimination and resignation will not only be bad for yourself, it will be bad for others.  Negative self-talk will inevitably be manifested in how you treat friends and family and co-workers.

2. You are Loved.

I believe all humans are loved by God.  My faith teaches us that as humans we have intrinsic worth and value.  Many of us have at least one person who loves us because of who we are, in spite of our foibles.  Some have friends, family and co-workers who are actually cheering for us.  They wonder when we will see how special and valuable, we are.  When will we see ourselves the way others see us?

3. The World Needs Us.

I believe we are all special and unique, with a combination of unique gifts and talents. The world needs what we have to offer.

4. Deal with the Lie.

Many faith perspectives teach that there are forces of light and darkness.  So, from that viewpoint, we might have negative feelings that say we are worthless, that we’ll never amount to anything or even that we never should have been born.  Don’t listen to the lie.  Don’t believe the lie.  This is where some digging and some hard work may be needed.  For some, counseling can be very helpful to get in touch with why we feel badly about ourselves. Counseling can help us understand why our self-image is trapped in our former teenage selves or locked into the bottom of the pit during the lowest moment of our crucible experience.  Friends and family and even co-workers can help us gain a true perspective of who we are as well.

5. Forgive Yourself and Forgive Others.

If you view your crucible experience or whatever is holding you back as your fault, the first step is to forgive yourself.  This may also involve asking for the forgiveness of others who you may have hurt.  Sometimes, others have hurt us perhaps profoundly.  A key part of healing and moving on from your crucible if others have hurt you is to forgive them.  This is not so much because they deserve it, but because you deserve it.  Bitterness and anger are like poison which stops you being whole and moving on.

6. Broken and Beautiful.

We as humans are not perfect, and sometimes we may feel we are broken.  Like a broken vase, we may feel that we have many imperfections.  Yet in our brokenness there can be beauty.  People who move beyond their crucible experiences often use their pain and their brokenness to help others.  Cancer survivors help others with cancer.  Those who have suffered abuse help others who have been through abuse.  In helping others, we use our brokenness to be a light to the world, providing healing to others; and in the process help to heal ourselves.  Our pain has meaning now.  We have a mission.  We have a calling.  We have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

7. Our Mission.

Using our lives, even the broken parts, to lead lives of significance, lives on purpose dedicated to serving others, gives us meaning and purpose.  It can also lead to the rewiring of our brains.  Negative self-talk can be very powerful.  But when we use all of who we are to help others, we begin to get feedback that is out of tune with the lie.  We get feedback from those we help, as well as friends, family and co-workers that we have value.  We are doing something good to help people.  Drip by drip, this positive feedback and the evidence we see about who we really are and how we are helping people can slowly change our identity.

Changing our identity, which may be frozen in time, is not easy.  But as we begin to accept ourselves as broken and beautiful; as we forgive ourselves and others; as we begin to use all of who we are, even our brokenness, to help others; we begin to change.  Our fixed negative identity, the lie that we are worthless and should never have been born, begins to change.  The ice melts.

We begin to see ourselves as loved by the creator and the universe.  We begin to see ourselves as loved by our friends, family and co-workers.  We begin to see ourselves as having a mission and a purpose that will help others and that the world needs.  We do indeed see ourselves as broken and beautiful.  We look at ourselves in the mirror as, yes, having imperfections, but as also having incredible worth.  We might even begin to like who we see.

Reflection

Order Crucible Leadership here

Jeff Caliguire thought he was a victim when the vocational path he chose as a pastor left him lonely, depressed and lacking authentic friendships. It wasn’t until he hit emotional bottom that he found his way forward, through finding the blessings in even challenging circumstances and allowing them to transform his thinking. Today, he’s a life and leadership coach offering clients a safe space to express their doubts and frustrations about life’s inevitable challenges and work on the care of their souls through finding gratitude even in difficulty. That’s the pathway, he has discovered, to a life of significance for all of us – a life in which, as he puts it, we find our deep gladness and apply it to the world’s deep need.

To learn more about Jeff Caliguire, visit www.jeffcaliguire.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Jeff C:

I would end up dumping on my wife things that almost like she would carry. And what I didn't realize is I was almost creating this germ inside of her through my negativity and my complaining and my victimness. When we think of the hero, the hero is able to take what's happened to them and overcome it. I started to play the victim and I started to believe I was cursed, that somehow all these terrible things that were happening to me, and these people who didn't understand me were making me cursed. And it's when we get to the place where we're playing a victim, especially in leadership, that poor me, things have happened bad, that's where we are needing something new. We need a breakthrough. We need new hope.

Gary S:

Hero or victim? How are you seeing yourself these days? This week's guest, author and leadership coach Jeff Caliguire, just explained how he's lived thinking he was the latter. Now, he and Warwick talk in depth about what it took him and what it takes all of us to live and lead as the former. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Caliguire says the key to moving from victim to hero in the aftermath of a crucible is gratitude.

Gary S:

Finding the blessings in even challenging circumstances and allowing them to transform your thinking. Helping clients navigate that journey and giving them a safe space to express their doubts and frustrations along the way is the focus of the coaching he offers leaders. It's also, he says, the pathway to a life of significance for all of us, a life in which, as he puts it, we find our deep gladness and apply it to the world's deep need.

Warwick F:

Jeff, thanks so much for being here. And I love what you do with We Train Coaches and your concept about transformation through coaching. But I'd like to go back a bit, as we often say here on Beyond the Crucible, to get a bit of the origin story of how you grew up. I think you mentioned before, you grew up maybe in the New York area, and your dad maybe was a business owner, chief executive of a paper company.

Warwick F:

So, talk about growing up in New York and maybe family expectations. And obviously, as listeners know I have some understanding of the whole growing up in a family business deal, growing up in a large family media business in Australia. So, yeah, just talk about growing up and expectations and what's the path you thought you were on or maybe your parents or your dad was thinking you should be on perhaps.

Jeff C:

Yeah, my dad was a guy who grew up in the Great Depression, actually sold newspapers on the streets of Boston. He truly was, I mean, if there's ever a self-made man, I know we're all made in a lot of ways by each other. But my dad was somebody who was single mom, alcoholic dad. And he went into business in New York, started out just selling, eventually was able to buy the company. And I don't think I realized how amazing my dad was until later. I went through my own leadership issues and started to think, "Wow, my dad actually knew something." You know how you think your dad doesn't know much. But I was the youngest of three sons, and my dad really had hoped that one of his sons was going to go into the family business. And so, there was this unspoken pressure, and I worked there during the summers in New York. You get to go into the family business. And I just didn't say this to my dad was, "Do I really want to go into the family business? Is this something for me? I mean, I didn't come from the Great Depression. My life was a lot different." So, it's that unwritten, unspoken expectation that made me go, "Okay, then what if I don't go into the family business?"

Warwick F:

Yeah, boy, I know it so well. So, when you say a paper business, just out of curiosity, what kind of paper? Was it newsprint? What kind of paper product was it?

Jeff C:

And most people will get it instantly when I say think The Office.

Gary S:

Okay. Dunder Mifflin.

Jeff C:

It was Dunder Mifflin, instead it was called Willman and it was in New York City. We sold paper to printers and publishers, big rolls. My dad was an amazing salesperson, sold to American Express, Time Warner, and just had amazing success in the Dunder Mifflin type of business.

Warwick F:

Well, and you use the phrase, this unspoken expectation. I mean, I can so identify with it. As listeners know, I grew up in a fifth generation family business. My dad inherited as his grandfather did. As listeners know, my dad was married three times, my mom twice. And because I got good grades in school, I worked hard, and the expectations rose. I was the "good son." I wasn't the prodigal son, if you will, that went away and was rebellious.

Warwick F:

So, he never said, "Well, have you thought about if you're going with the family business?" The question was never asked. It was obviously expected that I would prepare myself, Oxford, Wall Street, Harvard Business School it was. And if I didn't go into it, I felt like it would have just crushed him. So, I maybe took the not so wise path. You probably had enough wisdom, courage or something to say, "I don't know that I want to do this."

Warwick F:

I wasn't even willing to go there. I don't know, five generations. I don't know what it was. But how did you go there, because you went where I didn't and couldn't. So, how did you have the courage? Did you have a conversation with your dad? I mean, how did that come up, that kind of "Dad, my brothers aren't going to do it and I guess you're hoping me as the youngest might, and I'm just not." I mean, what kind of conversation was that?

Jeff C:

My dad was somebody who I think didn't want to put pressure on me. But at the same time, I could tell when I started going in a different direction, there was a disappointment. But because I'd worked there during the summers, I got to know what it really was like and I didn't have any false expectations of what it would be like to lead that business or be in that business. And I would have people who would take me out to lunch, some older people who are part of the business and they'd say, "Do you realize the kind of opportunity that you have?"

Jeff C:

And so, there was this little bit of guilt that I had. I have this opportunity and yet, I'm not excited about it. And a question I think a lot of people who've been in family businesses go through is, all right, I can do anything I want to do with my life, but I really should go into the family business. And so, there's this tension of I can do anything but I'm meant for something else. And so, then when I felt like, "Hey, dad, what if I went to seminary? I'm considering that."

Jeff C:

I could tell he just dropped. He wasn't going to say, "Don't do that," because it was a God thing to do. But at the same time, I hated disappointing my dad. I loved my dad. So, I think there was this disappointment but at the same time, this acceptance. And I remember having lunch with him and telling him I'd like to go to seminary and him not saying much. He didn't affirm it, but he didn't tell me I shouldn't do it either.

Warwick F:

Now, obviously, you're a person of faith. Was your dad and family people of faith?

Jeff C:

Yes, definitely, definitely was. I saw faith in my dad. My dad would be the guy who was before he put his suit on, would get down on his knees at the side of his bed and pray before he started the day and when he ended the day, which marked me. I mean, I definitely saw that. But I think what happens with a lot of people is, I can almost use big word like bifurcate. You have life and you have business, and the two don't always intersect.

Jeff C:

And my dad was a man of character and very moral, but I don't feel like no one ever prayed with him about his business. And I didn't feel like he had spiritual mentors in his business that understood him. So, I think there was a loneliness. It's like I know this faith thing is supposed to be integrated in business, but it's not. And so, I do think there was a separation.

Warwick F:

Somehow, you must have felt peace that your path was to go to seminary. Did you feel like that still small voice that, with all the pros and cons, I just know what the Lord wants me to do. Did you feel that in a sense?

Jeff C:

Man, it would sound so spiritual Warwick if I just said sure. I think I was more confused. My own time in college, I did have a spiritual awakening and I did start to recognize I can have a spiritual influence and impact on people. Especially I was in an Ivy League school, and people had a lot of questions about spiritual things, and I loved being a bridge to that. But if I said, "Boy, there was this clear calling, go to seminary, all the rest," it was more I wanted to do something meaningful with my life.

Jeff C:

And in retrospect, my dad was doing something meaningful. I've come to believe that sometimes we think it was more meaningful to go to seminary than it was to be a president of a company or be in the company. I think, for me, one of the things that was like missing in a lot of my growing up was, how do you process what you're really meant to do, what you're gifted to do, what the opportunities are open. Frederick Buechner said, "The place where God calls is the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."

Jeff C:

And I think a lot of us haven't taken the time to know where is my deep gladness? Where is the need? And then, how do I bridge that? And so, I think seminary for me was a way to almost avoid making the decision. It took me longer to really find my deep gladness and to connect that to the world's deep need. And I think there's a lot of peace when that happens. So, I mean, I wish I could say I love studying Greek and Hebrew and theology, but I actually didn't. There were some people who did, and they were meant for that. And so, it took me longer to really find what I was meant to do.

Warwick F:

Yeah. And we'll get into what you do now in a bit. But I think it's often interesting, and I ask the same questions at myself. I mean, we're both international coach, federation certified coaches. If a coach had asked me back then as I asked you, because I became a believer when I was at Oxford. So, around about the time I was getting to the family business, you could have asked me, "So, what do you think God's heart is? What's your gifting?"

Warwick F:

"What are you passionate about? How do you think God could use it?" Really, in similar sense that you're saying and I don't know how I would answer that. I think I probably would have been too stubborn and too, in my case, the family business was founded by as strong a businessman for Christ as exists. So, that made it seem clear to me what God's plan was. Surely, he wants another believer in the family business, right?

Warwick F:

And the faith has been waned a bit over the generations. But yeah, I mean, if you had had somebody like yourself ask a 20-something, Jeff Caliguire, so what do you love doing and what do you think the Lord wants and ask those great questions, it's unknowable how you would have responded, right? But it would have been nice to have that opportunity. I'm sure you've asked yourself those questions, right?

Jeff C:

Well, and sometimes it's your deep pain that leads to your passion. So, I mean, I had a deep pain that I didn't have those safe people in my life. One question I like asking in coaching is, "Hey, what bugs you that doesn't seem to bug other people?" And what bugs me is that there weren't people...I mean, there's a mentor of mine who said, "Hey, we figured out how to send a man to the moon but we can't figure out how to help an 18-year-old figure out what they should major in, in college or what career they should go into."

Jeff C:

And so, it bugs me that there weren't people who could help me in that way. I wish I had a safe person or people who could allow me to process, and it usually doesn't come in one question or one afternoon. But I feel like if there could be people who majored in helping people discover their major or who majored in helping people discover a career trajectory that can bring together both their experiences, with their strengths, with their gifts, and have no horse in the race. Because my dad was amazing, but he had a horse in the race. You know what I mean? He wanted me in the business. And so, just having people like that, I think, can open up so many good things. So, I guess I would just ask our listener, what bugs you that doesn't seem to bug other people? Could there be a clue there?

Warwick F:

That's an awesome question. So, let's move the story along here a little bit. So, you obviously had some experiences at Cornell, fraternities and other ministries in different groups. You go to Dallas Theological Seminary and then you start a church in Boston. And if you go to Dallas Theological Seminary, it's logical that you want to become a pastor because that's why you go there, at least in most cases.

Warwick F:

So, you start a church and in theory, that sounds like what could be wrong with that, right? You're a believer, you start a church. But yet, that path was not easy and I think it led to some crucible moments. Talk a bit about starting that church and why that wasn't easy and that led to some soul searching.

Jeff C:

There are certain things that you feel like education can't equip you for. And some of the education that I didn't feel equipped for was the loneliness of leadership and also overcoming rejection that comes in pastoral leadership. I think people look to a pastor to have all the answers to have it together. And I remember being in a Bible study one time and sharing about some struggles in my marriage.

Jeff C:

And I got a call the next day from a guy in the Bible study who said, "I'm going to leave the church." And I said, "How come?" He goes, "Because you're struggling in your marriage." And I'm like, "What?" And he's like, "I don't want to have my pastor be someone who's struggling in their marriage." And what I realized was, you want to be, especially when you're in ministry and leadership, you want to be authentic but people want you to, in some ways, be better than you are.

Jeff C:

And what I started to see and started to beat myself with, Warwick, was I started to realize I wasn't as good as I wanted to be or they wanted me to be, and that was really lonely. And so, I'd wake up in the middle of the nights and I couldn't sleep because I'd be angry at myself, I'd be disappointed with others. And I stopped sleeping through the night. I would probably end up getting three or four hours of sleep and then I was tired.

Jeff C:

And I was going through what, in retrospect, was burnout because I was working hard. But I started to feel like I'm a failure, I'm not who people want me to be. I'm really not as spiritual as I want them to think I am. And now, there's this gap between what I'm wanting and what I am and that created a crucible season in my life, where something needed to change.

Warwick F:

The sad thing is pastors are humans, and they have challenges in their lives and marriages and kids like anybody else but yeah, you're not allowed to that. I mean, that must create enormous stress in that I want to model authenticity but they don't want that. They want me to model perfection and Mr. Super-spiritual Superman is what they want, right?

Jeff C:

And again, what I felt like was lacking was the safe place to really share what was going on and come back to hope. And I would end up dumping on my wife things that almost like she would carry. And what I didn't realize is I was almost creating this germ inside of her through my negativity and my complaining and my victimness. When we think of the hero, the hero is able to take what's happened to them and overcome it. I started to play the victim and I started to believe I was cursed, that somehow all these terrible things that were happening to me, and these people who didn't understand me were making me cursed. And it's when we get to the place where we're playing a victim, especially in leadership, that poor me, things have happened bad, that's where we are needing something new. We need a breakthrough. We need new hope. And so, that's where I was in my leadership.

Warwick F:

I mean, anybody that's a pastor or even a business executive, a CEO, VP, they can relate to your story. They've been there. It's like, "I can't tell my boss I don't know what I'm doing. I can't tell my boss I'm thinking of quitting." I mean, really? That's not a conversation you can have. That's not a safe place at all. So, does that make sense?

Jeff C:

Yeah. I had two experiences that woke me up to this. One was where I was, for the first time, meeting a CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation in beautiful big office overlooking Boston. And we started to talk and share and I think I was a little bit vulnerable with him. And he said, "Hey, could you close the door?" And I said, "Sure." I got up, closed the door. I sat back down. He goes, "I need to tell somebody this and I haven't able to tell anybody this."

Jeff C:

He said, "I've been having an affair for the last six months and it's eating me alive." And I realized that here I was this young guy, totally new, and I was somebody he was telling someone as vulnerable as that. The second thing that happened was, a number of years later, there was a guy who had been the CEO of another major corporation and he was retiring, very famous CEO, a man of faith. And we had a question and answer time.

Jeff C:

He was talking to pastors and business leaders, and we did a gathering with him. And I asked a question at the end, I said, "Hey, if you were to do your business over again, what would you do differently," because he just retired. He looked down and then he looked up and tears were streaming down his face. He said, "I'd had a friend." I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "I had nobody who I could share with. I had people on my board."

Jeff C:

"I had people who are nonprofits who wanted money from me. I had people who worked for me, but I didn't have anybody who I could share the real stuff with." And that was a calling moment for me because I realized that's what my dad didn't have. He didn't have anyone in his life who he could share the real stuff with and so I think that's why he bifurcated his life and his business. And that was when for me, I was like, "I want to be that."

Jeff C:

"I want to be that for leaders, and I want to help raise up other people who can be that for leaders." Because that can change the story and change the story for them in their emotions, change the story in their relationships or in their moral issues.

Warwick F:

That's such a powerful point you just made. You wanted to be the friend and confidant that your dad didn't have and that you didn't have at that point in your life at the church. So, I want to shift from there, but talk about what was the lowest moment when you're at the church that caused you to say, "You know what, I have got to change directions here because this is just," maybe it wasn't destroying you, but it was not good for you. So, talk about the lowest moment that caused you to say, "I need to shift. This cannot continue."

Jeff C:

I can go back to it instantly. I know it in a heartbeat. There was a leader who was part of our team who had moved from Chicago to Boston to be a part of our team. And he called me to tell me that he and his wife had decided to move somewhere else, and they were leaving. And I think I put a lot of hope in him being a part of things. And I'd already been feeling alone in this. And when he told me he was leaving, I tried to keep a smile on my face and go, "Hey, if God is leading you elsewhere," I gave him all the good God talk.

Jeff C:

I hung up the phone and I picked up this 25-pound thing called a concordance, okay, which is a big book at the time before things were online. I held it above my head and I threw it across the room, breaking the book, breaking the wall and started just yelling, "I hate my life. I hate my job. I hate leadership. I hate the church." I mean, I just lost it. And my wife walked in at the moment and just looked at me with just sheer terror. Okay.

Jeff C:

And she's like, "You have lost it." And I knew at that point that I couldn't just keep doing what I was doing, hoping for different results. And in a nutshell, I ended up getting in my car, taking every journal I'd ever written, driving to Vermont, driving to New Hampshire and just getting away to the mountains, which has now influenced my own passion to have leaders get away to the mountains. But it restored my soul.

Jeff C:

I started realizing I needed silence and solitude, and I needed to get away. And I needed to have the time and the opportunity to reconsider my own life, but it was because I had flamed out. I mean, I was violent. I mean, I would have hit somebody had they come in, if it wasn't my wife standing there.

Gary S:

This is an interesting opportunity, Jeff, because we talk about it all the time at Beyond the Crucible and at Crucible Leadership in general. And we say it a lot and we don't really unpack it all that often. And this is a great pivot point where we can unpack it. We say your crucible experience can change the trajectory of your life but it doesn't have to be the end of your story. If you will learn the lessons of your crucible and move forward, it can be the beginning of a new story that leads to a life of significance.

Gary S:

That's where we are in your story right now. Your crucible is there. You've got your journals. You're driving to Vermont, you're driving to places. What was the lessons? Can you touch on a couple of the lessons and how those lessons came to you that led you back from the pit of your crucible at its most explosive to then the path that you're on now? What was the first kind of learnings that came to you as you got away?

Jeff C:

Yeah. As leaders, most of us become too busy to care for our own souls and invest in our own, what I call soul care. I ended up in this little town in New Hampshire, went into a bookstore, one of those bookstores that had about 80 books. It wasn't Barnes & Noble. And there was a book there by an author that someone had mentioned to me, a guy named Henri Nouwen, who was a priest. And the book was called the Life of the Beloved.

Jeff C:

I took the book off, started to read it there. And I bought the book, went to a coffee shop and read it front to back. And the whole concept of the book was that, that we are truly loved, not because of what we do, not because of our family name, not because of the family business, not because of how much money we've made, that in our true identity, we are someone who is loved, loved by God, and we're lovable.

Jeff C:

And what I've come to see is that, that is the foundation of everything. I mean, I've worked with millionaires, billionaires. Doesn't matter how much money you have, we still have to go, "Am I important? Do I really matter? What's my identity?" It could be somebody who's an entrepreneur, they want to succeed. But it has to start with I don't need to prove myself. I am loved. And that one concept is truly a transformational concept and we need to take it from our head to our heart.

Jeff C:

And that began a journey for me to go, "How do I keep coming back to that as who I am, instead of what I prove, what I do, what I earn?" And so, identity matters.

Warwick F:

You made a choice to go and seek some solitude to say, "Okay, Lord, what next?" Why did you choose the path of I got to figure this out and change my life, rather than I'm just going to be angry and bitter forever? Because not everybody chose your path. Why did you choose that path?

Jeff C:

I can't help but thinking of a cartoon I saw recently, where there's a monster walking into the room and there's someone under the covers. And the monster goes, "Oh, nuts, they're under the covers. I can't do anything." But I think there's this part of us that wants to just hide under the covers when there's something wrong inside of us and I think it can be physical, it can be emotional, it can be relational.

Jeff C:

Sometimes it comes from breakdown in a marriage, where there's something that's wrong. And so, a good doctor knows that you've got to start with diagnosis. You've got to get to what's really going on. And to do that, you need space. I mean, so my wife and I are creating this 26 acres in Boulder, Colorado to give leaders space, not for information but to process. My wife was talking at a summit, a Q Conference a few years ago.

Jeff C:

And she said, "There's a difference between the transfer of information and transformation." And I think what a lot of us have realized is information is great but it's not enough. We need practices. We need things that are going to bring us back to life. And in the book of John, Jesus said, "I've come that they might have life and have it to the full." And so, when we start to go, "Hey, that's a great concept. But if our life doesn't feel abundant, are we doing something to change that?"

Jeff C:

And that's where I've come to believe that certain habits, certain practices that are both spiritual as well as just life good habits can bring and breathe life back into us. And so, they've become what I call my habits of hope because I know that I'm just that far away like an alcoholic back into the guy who's going to throw the books across the room, shout my life stinks and go back there. And so, practices make all the difference.

Warwick F:

Yeah. And I want to get into the habits of hope. I love that word practices. But just before we do, you're in Vermont, New Hampshire. You're having some solitude. What was some of those first inklings that began to shift you to doing what you do now with We Train Coaches and Habits of Hope and the Soul Care Ranch? What were some of those? Maybe it's an epiphany but there were some inklings that led you to where you are now. What were some of those first inklings you were getting as you were in solitude?

Jeff C:

Yeah, it took a while but that solitude was life-giving. I mean, first, I came back a different person. One of the things that happened when I was there was my first real girlfriend passed away when she was 19 and I was 18. And I went to her grave. I hadn't been there since she died. And as I was staring at her grave, I saw this old couple pull up and go up to this tombstone. And I sat there just watching them and thinking they're going to be here soon. And my friend Cindy is no longer alive.

Jeff C:

It was almost like seeing death that made me go, "Jeff, do you want to live or do you want to die? Are you ready to engage life?" And so, I think we've all got to make that do I really want to live decision and am I really living now. And I realized I wasn't living. One of the things that God brought into my life coaches, one of whom was a mentor consultant who I still meet with. I met with him this week. His name is Bob Beal.

Jeff C:

As I was meeting with Bob, and he became that safe place, I looked at him and I thought, "Man, I wish my dad had this. And man, I wish so many other leaders had what he's bringing to me." And I thought, "How can I do what he's doing?" And certainly, it's not for everybody but I've come to believe that if there could be spiritually minded, great coaches for leaders that could help leaders have the safe place, have them find their story or change their story, that could be something that I could give my life to. And that began a journey for me of how do I learn to coach, how do I become a coach, and how can I bring coaching to others in the way that Bob has done that for me?

Warwick F:

That's so profound, I think, what you're saying. What we've said is, you wanted to become the person that you needed and your dad needed. That was maybe, you said earlier, what's the thing that you feel like It really bugs me. It angers me that there's not enough of x. Well, x for you is being the coach that you needed and your dad needed and that was maybe, some people have called it your holy discontent. That felt like that was for you.

Warwick F:

And I love all the things you do. I mean, there's so many. You mentioned before what you and your wife do at Soul Care Ranch. That sounds like it's replicating, to a degree, what you had in Vermont in those days, probably more better, if you will. It probably includes coaches and mentors, places to use. So, talk a bit about Soul Care Ranch. And it sounds like the genesis of it was that time at Vermont but it's more than that. It's more than just solitude, right? So, talk a bit about what you do at the Soul Care Ranch.

Jeff C:

Well, I think we all love content, right? I'm a content junkie. We love conferences. But what we came to believe is there needs to be space for transformation, for people to get away and be in nature because nature breathes life. The mountains of Colorado are absolutely stunning. But they need to then be able to spend time processing on some of the bigger questions. Where do I need healing?

Jeff C:

What do I need to avoid? What is the vision that is really my vision? And so, we've been creating and raising up spiritual directors and coaches who can work with leaders and then have the space and time for it. A lot of people go on vacation, and vacation is awesome. But this is like a vacation for the leader's soul, where you get away and you create the space to meet with a coach but also to meet with God, to meet with yourself, and it not be rushed. Because busyness and rush is destroying too many good things. So, what if there's this place that brings leaders to life, and that's what we've been creating in the last couple of years. And it's just been life-giving, even for Mindy and I to give and create what we wished we had.

Warwick F:

There's a line you mentioned, I think, before we were on air. And this is true probably for people in ministry and nonprofits, that they're running around trying to care for other people's souls. And I think you said, "Well, I needed somebody to help me care for my soul" or something to that effect. I think that's just so profound because leaders, even in businesses, I mean, more enlightened leaders realized they need to treasure their employees.

Warwick F:

You wouldn't have achieved profitable results without a great team. And so, a lot of leaders, well-meaning leaders are pouring out, pouring out, but nobody is pouring into them. They're not caring for themselves. And like elsewhere, you talked about elite athletes, and you got to take care of your body if you're an elite athlete. Well, if you're a leader, you got to care for yourself. So, just talk about that concept because I think it's really profound.

Warwick F:

You pour and pour out caring for others but yet, you got to care for yourself, which is not selfish. You can't care for anybody else unless you start caring for yourself. Let's talk about how do you look at that? What's your philosophy?

Jeff C:

Yeah. I remember, as a CEO, my dad used to go once a year and get this big checkup, where he'd go and have somebody look at all different elements of his physical body. And I think that's really significant, we all need that. But I also think we need times to get away and get a checkup of our deeper selves, our emotions, our purpose. Are we doing the right thing? Are we going in the right direction, our identity, our soul?

Jeff C:

And I think that, if I was to wish something, I would wish there could be an army of call them coaches who would bring that kind of surgeon general for the soul type of approach to help leaders. Because I mean, some of my mentors, and maybe you know who these people are, Gary and Warwick, is they've become tabloid of what their failures are, their moral failures. And these are good people who went down paths that they didn't plan on going.

Jeff C:

And what I found in coaching is, because I've been in that safe place, I feel like I've worked with some leaders and helped them avoid it just because I asked them the questions. I asked them like, "Hey, right now, one to 10, how are you doing personally? One to 10, how are you doing morally?" And they felt like and they knew that I wouldn't share what they were really telling me. But there are a lot of times, "Well, I'm a nine, I'm a 10."

Jeff C:

And then, every once in a while, it's like, "I'm a two." "All right, do you want to talk about it?" And so, I feel like if we could have that for leaders as a way of their regular life, no matter where you are in leadership, if you're a young leader especially, having where you get away, where somebody is going to help get into the deeper parts. And then, you meet with those people maybe once a month or twice a month over the year to stay on track. What could happen?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, that's awesome, having that safe place where you really can talk about these things and soul care. I love the concept you have in Habits of Hope. And it's like if you want to stay, it's funny, it's been in the back of my mind about some of these things even before we spoke. But if everybody these days they want to eat right, avoid junk food. They want to be healthy, exercise, stretch, cardio. Everybody knows that makes sense.

Warwick F:

But people don't tend to think about, well, what does that look like for the soul, for the inner being? Very few people do that. So Habits of Hope, so talk about, I know there's a lot of stuff in there, but talk about what are the key concepts you would say. And if you need to be physically fit to really do anything, what does it mean to have a fit soul, if you will? What are some of those habits of hope that... because you can't go on a retreat every week.

Warwick F:

What are some of those habits of hope that help sustain your soul so that you don't go to retreat and say, "Where are you morally, ethically, marriage" and it's like, oh, I'm a one, one, one on every... ideally, a retreat is good. You can't rely on that as the whole solution, obviously, which I'm sure you tell folks. So, what are some of those key habits of hope that sustains you day in, day out and sustains your soul?

Jeff C:

Yeah. One of the most encouraging things that I think has come out of neuroscience in the last number of years is that our brains can change. We're not stuck with the brain we inherited or grew up with or we had 10 years ago. There's a thing called neuroplasticity, which means that you can create new neural pathways in your brain. In the Bible in Romans, it talks about being transformed by the renewing of your mind, and that we can become better, healthier, happier, joyful, hope-filled people.

Jeff C:

And so, what are the practices that do that? And one of them is just so simple, that it's almost crazy simple. It's just you take the time each day to literally in your mind think, "What am I grateful for? What in my life is good?" Because I could paint a picture and you could feel really bad for me with things that are bad. Or I could say, "Hey, let me tell you about the things that I'm grateful for." So, every single morning after I have my coffee, I actually list out things that I'm grateful for.

Jeff C:

They could be Barney, my dog. They could be I get to live in Colorado. I mean, literally this morning, it was that I was going to be on this podcast. And so, by having those habits where you see you're blessed instead of cursed, your mind starts to believe it and ultimately, we really are blessed. But the victim part of us says, "I'm cursed, I'm broken, my life stinks." I could tell you stories of things that have happened in the last two weeks that are hard. But the heroes focuses on how am I being transformed in order to live into my better story. And so, I know I have a better story but I've got to practice the things each day that bring me back to the better story.

Gary S:

I want to make sure listeners understand the application to themselves. And that is, it is true, is it not, that no matter how bad your crucible is, no matter how rough your circumstances, even you standing by the wall with an exhaustive concordance that weighed 25 pounds, ready to hurl it into the wood or the plaster or whatever it was, even you, if you would have taken time instead to focus on gratitude, would have had things to enumerate that you had gratitude for. Is it true that all of us, regardless of our circumstances, can find if we look hard enough, and it's not that hard sometimes, things to be grateful for.

Jeff C:

Yeah, any great fiction writer knows, and I've learned this from great fiction writers is that, what they do is they bring about certain circumstances that their characters need to respond to. And how their character responds is what makes a great story. And so, in all of our lives, we're going to get faced with... I mean, we just had a huge fire come through Colorado. We get faced with these circumstances.

Jeff C:

Now, how will we respond? We can respond with, "I'm cursed, I'm a victim, and I'm even a villain because I'm going to get you for it." Or I can respond with, "Man, I get to live into this adventure. Look at how many things I still have going right. And I believe that God ultimately has things in his hands." That's where my faith comes in, that God cares about me in the midst of this, that God loves me in the midst of this. That's where I feel like there's the biggest hope. And so, the habits of hope are practicing the things that bring me back to that way of thinking.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, that's so profound what you're sharing, Jeff. I mean, I totally agree and concur. Yeah. I mean, every day, I have my practices, probably not that different than yours. Daily Bible study and reflection. My church actually, every year, our pastor puts out the chapter of daily book in which a lot of different ways of going through the Bible, but it's right there for everybody in the church.

Warwick F:

We pick it up the first few days of the year and off we go. So, that's a part of that. But also I do reflect, I think it's almost like breathing for me or just a habit. I could look back and say, "Gosh, I lost this two billion plus family business and et cetera." I look back and say, very similar to you, I've been married almost within a year, the same length of time and I just say, "Thank you, Jesus, that you brought... we've been married at '89, whatever that is, about 32 years." It was all the Lord.

Warwick F:

It's a subject for another podcast, but it was definitely I felt like the Lord telling me, "This is the one I'd have for you in life." I was 100% certain, I checked it with some brothers who are believers and all the rest of it as you should on anything like that. But as the decades have gone by, I thought that was clearly the Lord. I'm so blessed with three wonderful kids. I love what I do in Crucible Leadership. We have a great team.

Warwick F:

I get to hear people's stories such as yourself. I mean, I'm so blessed. The Lord has provided us financially, way more than we need. I mean, yeah, there are challenges, but I look at all of those things and I just say, as a person of faith, "Thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus," I mean, pretty much every day. And the more you do, it's like the gratitude almost increases. You get to be just so focusing on gratitude and having those spiritual disciplines.

Warwick F:

If you're a person of faith, read the Bible. If you're not a person of faith, find whatever anchor for your soul is. I mean, at least to me, there are these A type people that go a million miles an hour. That tends not to be my rhythm. I'm a reflective person. So, I know if I don't take space to just be and not run around like a crazy person, my writing will suffer, my thinking will suffer, my interviews on podcasts will suffer.

Warwick F:

So, I try not to go too far too fast if I don't have to, and just say, "Okay, Lord, you're in control. It's not about achieving some big result. I just want to be faithful. And I don't know, I don't know if any of that makes sense. But I'm a huge believer and those habits of hope provide fulfilling life, so it's huge. I really hope listeners hear what you're talking about. Any reflections you want to add on habits? Because it's a massive subject, obviously, and really important.

Jeff C:

Yeah. I mean, I think I would just say there needs to be a paying attention to what are you doing when you're neglecting your soul and what are the symptoms? When you're neglecting, is it anger, is it victimhood, is it discouragement, is it depression? And then, when you do those things, note the difference. When you spend time taking a walk, breathing, to simply like 10 times a day, just take a deep breath and think of something you're grateful for.

Jeff C:

It could be something as simple as that. And going back to that scripture I quoted in John 10:10, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. Whether you believe there's a spiritual principle out there or spiritual person out there that's seeking to take that from you, or you just are doing it yourself. What is stealing, killing and destroying? And then, what will you do to fight against that? I mean, because you can build all the strategies and get all the education and knowledge.

Jeff C:

But if you're not doing the daily practices that keep that stealing, killing and destroying from happening, and instead breathing life back into you, you're missing all that you're going to bring through your presence. I mean, you've probably heard your greatest present is your presence. And for leaders, your greatest present is your presence. Because if you're not fully there, everybody suffers, the people who work for you, with you, or even the coaches who coach you.

Warwick F:

I think another aspect of habits of hope or soul care I think listeners should consider, I think we're touching on this. If you have a splitting migraine and a few days go by, you're not going to ignore it. You're going to go to the doctor and figure it out, right? Because if you ignore it, it might be something really bad that could have been solved a lot sooner. I think it's the same with the soul.

Warwick F:

I mean, I do my daily Bible reading, I'm grateful, I pray. But being human, there are times in which I get angry or frustrated about things and sometimes I don't know what it is. So, I'll think and pray about it. Often, I'll say to my wife who knows me well, "Look, I'm angry about something. I don't know what it is. Help me figure it out." And typically, we'll figure it out. And then, "Okay, so what do I do about it? Do I need to talk to somebody? Do I need to pray?"

Warwick F:

So, when you have those early warning signs of anger, frustration, don't stuff it. Deal with it, figure it out. If you have a coach or a mentor, perfect. I'm feeling annoyed about something. I do not know what it is. Help me figure it out. Those to me is also part of, at least from my perspective, maybe it's not habits of hope but soul care. In that when you have those early warning signs, don't wait till the crisis happens. Deal with it.

Warwick F:

I mean, the tools you've mentioned, Jeff, provide outlets for that. You've got a soul care retreat. You've got mentors, you've got friends, you've got coaches. There are people who can help you get in touch with what that anger and frustration is, and you can deal with it before the whole ember turns into a massive forest fire and your house burns down. As we close and the time is getting on, does that make sense, just that early warning system?

Jeff C:

Yeah. And it's not weakness to need to surround yourself with people and processes that can help. It's actually wisdom. It's strength to know that you need others in your life who are going to ask those questions or coach you, or you need practices, and you need the time to do that. So, I would say if you see some of those symptoms, don't just ignore them. Do something proactive to get to the place where you're thriving because you thriving is what the world needs.

Gary S:

Speaking of practices that are necessary, the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating that it's getting to the time that we're going to need to land the plane here in our very interesting conversation on Beyond the Crucible with Jeff Caliguire. Jeff, before we do that though, and Warwick asks you another question, I would be remiss if I did not ask you on behalf of our listeners, how can they find out more about you? How can they find you on the internet?

Jeff C:

So, you may be listening to this and thinking, "Man, I would love to be that kind of coach," because I'm trying to raise up and train coaches who are spiritual leaders. I believe coaches can be those spiritual leaders. And if that's intriguing to you, go to WeTrainCoaches.com. And then, there's an assessment there called Is Coaching For Me? And there's also people who may be going, "How do I bring a coaching approach to transform my culture?"

Jeff C:

That's also something that we work with, with leaders who are wanting to say, "How do we bring that into a culture by raising up leaders who think like a coach and raise up others in a coaching manner?" So, WeTrainCoaches.com. My wife's website is SoulCare.com. And there's tools there for those who are going, "Hey, how do I go deeper in my own spiritual practices?"

Jeff C:

The book, The Habits of Hope, probably the best place I just say, go to the habitsofhope.com and you can order it there. There it is.

Gary S:

Right here. Here it is right there. So, Warwick, the final question is yours.

Warwick F:

Well, thank you, Jeff, for being here. I mean, it is so encouraging, soul care and habits of hope and surrounding yourself with people that can really be a sounding board and really a safe place. As we sum up, what would you say is a key message of hope, that if you forget everything else, what is the most important thing you want listeners to take away from our discussion today?

Jeff C:

Hope can be grown. It really is like a muscle. If you were to say where you are personally or where you are in hope right now, and you're a six or a five or something, I really believe that hope can get to a whole new place. But just be intentional and go. If you are a person that has an amazing hope, what will that do and what journey will you go on to grow your hope intentionally?

Gary S:

I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on the subject has been spoken and Jeff has spoken it. The captain has indeed put the plane on the ground. Listener, I have a few notes I've been taking as Jeff and Warwick had been talking, some key takeaways that can help you as you embark on your own life of significance. And the first one of that, one of the first things Jeff said that really, really struck me was, find your deep gladness and apply it to the world's deep need.

Gary S:

I'll say that again so you get it. Find your deep gladness and apply it to the world's deep need. That's a recipe for what we call a life of significance. We say it's crafting a vision rooted in your gifts and passions and living out of these things to live a life on purpose to serve others. That's how we express it. And for helping discovering your deep gladness as Jeff calls it and your life's vision as Warwick calls it, you can visit our website, crucibleleadership.com.

Gary S:

In there, you can take our free life of significance assessment. Discover, are you a world changer? Are you a star performer? Are you an imagineer? Take the assessment at crucibleleadership.com and find out. Second takeaway from Jeff, beware victimhood. That's a good one. When Jeff started to view his frustration and depression as a pastor is the fact that he was a victim, that's when his crucible really went deeper and darker.

Gary S:

Your discontent is a sign but not of the fact that you're a victim. It's a sign that you need to discover a path forward in line with your gifts and your passions. And the third takeaway is what we ended our conversation on today. And I'm going to use the exact words that Jeff used when we asked him in a pre-interview questionnaire, what's a critical action you believe listeners can take to find hope and healing after a setback?

Gary S:

This is what Jeff wrote. Make gratitude your way of life. Write it, breathe and focus on something to be grateful for multiple times each day. Multiple times each day, plug into gratitude and that can change your perspective and pretty soon change your circumstances. Listeners, thank you for spending this time with us. Until we're together next time. Please remember this that your crucible experiences we know, we heard some from Jeff, we've heard Warwick's before. You heard mine a couple of weeks ago on the show.

Gary S:

Crucible experiences are difficult. They can knock the wind out of your sails. They can knock the air out of your lungs. They can change the trajectory of your life, but they're not the end of your story. In fact, if you take the lessons of those and you learn the lessons of those crucible experiences, as Jeff did, as Warwick did, as I've done, and you move forward beyond your crucible, your story can move into its greatest place ever. The greatest story of your life can be the next story of your life because that story leads to a life of significance.

Have you ever found yourself laid so low by a personal struggle that satisfaction starts to seep out of your life? Have you pondered, even fleetingly, ending the pain permanently? That’s the story of Gary Schneeberger — the show’s cohost who steps into the guest chair this week for BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE’s 100th episode. He and Warwick talk in detail about how alcoholism upended his journalism career and could have ended his life. But he found hope in AA, which led him to seek forgiveness from those he had hurt — forgiveness that, little by little, he was able to extend to himself as he embraced faith in God. He also discusses the Hollywood dream job he lost just after he turned 50 – and how that crucible has actually been a springboard to a dream life with a new family and a new business … and renewed significance.

To learn more about Gary Schneeberger and his PR firm ROAR, visit www.weroar.la

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Gary S:

I was what I would call a highly functioning alcoholic. I was someone who could go to work, work all day, stay up all night, party with my friends, get up in an hour and a half or two hours and go right back to work again. And I actually had to let people go, when I was a managing editor of a newspaper, who were good friends of mine, who would go out with me at night, drink all night and could not get themselves up and get into work. And they'd miss too much time and I had to let them go. And it was like, "Look, I can do it. Why can't you?" So that was the attitude that I had in terms of being highly functioning.

Gary S:

My work was good and my attendance was good. I wasn't falling, stumbling, falling down. Where things eroded was morally, things eroded for me ethically, things eroded for me in ways that are true crucible. That leads you to those things where after you've had the big party and you've gone out with your friends and you've had a great grand time, you lie in bed and you think, "Is this all there is?" Have you ever asked yourself that question, found yourself laid so low by a personal struggle? Maybe it's alcohol, maybe something else entirely, that satisfaction starts to seep out of your life?

Gary S:

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show. And for this week's episode, our 100th, I'm also Warwick's guest. He and I talk in detail about how alcoholism upended my journalism career and could have ended my life. But I found hope in AA and the forgiveness it led me to seek from those I had hurt, forgiveness that I was little by little able to extend to myself. We also discussed the Hollywood dream job I lost just after I turned 50 and how that crucible has actually been a springboard to a dream life with a new family and a new business.

Warwick F:

Well, Gary, thank you so much for coming here. Because this is the 100th episode, is it?

Gary S:

One hundredth episode.

Warwick F:

Which is amazing and we thought, what can we do that's special, that's different? And obviously, listeners have heard a lot about my story but they really haven't heard about Gary Schneeberger's story. Who is Gary? He's the cohost. What's he about?

Gary S:

And why is he involved in something called Beyond the Crucible? Does he have crucibles?

Warwick F:

Yeah. And because Gary is human like the rest of us, surprise, he has crucibles. I don't know too many people that doesn't. Life is not easy. But Gary has some amazing challenges that he comes through the other side to indeed live a life of significance. I think, in all honesty, we can learn from your story, from Gary's story. And it's a story of hope. And so that's why you're here. So as we always do and you spent some time in Hollywood, we're going to get to the main event. But let's hear a bit of the origin story, the backstory of Gary Schneeberger. You obviously grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin. So tell us a bit about what life was like growing up and kind of the early years.

Gary S:

Yeah. And thank you for that. And thank you for the opportunity to be a guest in addition to being the cohost. It was a bit of a gimmick on our part when we said, "The 100th episode. Let's do something completely out of the box. You interview me." So we thought that would be interesting and we hope it is helpful as well. My origin story, my backstory, as you said, born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, youngest of five children. There's some interesting age differences in my family. My oldest brother, Dean, he is 71. So he's 14 years older than me. And my closest sibling, my sister Jill, is seven years older than me.

Gary S:

So, there's a wide range in ages. And when I came around, after seven years after my closest sibling, not only did she likes to point out, not only did I steal her babydom, she was not the baby of the family anymore and she has still not gotten over that completely. I was raised on my own in the sense that my brother Dean was long gone out of the house. He was in his late teens, early 20s by the time, I was kind of ambulatory and my middle siblings, there were three in the middle, seven years, eight years, nine years apart from me, they all kind of hung out together and had their own pack.

Gary S:

So I was kind of raised separately from them. So their experience growing up, their childhood and my childhood, differed a lot because we were raised in different environments, different circumstances. And the main circumstance that made that different was that our parents divorced, if I'm talking about my siblings, our parents divorced when I was 9 or 10 years old. So they grew up with mom and dad, I grew up with mom and dad but not in the same house, under the same roof with the same last name.

Warwick F:

That's obviously pretty impactful. But I think as you've mentioned to me, it's not like life was totally different. It's not like you never saw your dad or he wasn't around. You had a good relationship with both your parents even though they were divorced.

Gary S:

Absolutely. And that's not to say that that wasn't a crucible. My parents' divorce, it wasn't like when you're 9 or 10 and your parents get divorced, you think it's your fault. What did I do? You're the last kid left in the house, the last child, they didn't get divorced through the four children they had before that, it was you, when you were little, you were a problem. So there was a little bit of that that I struggled with. But I didn't last that long because was I ahead of my years in maturity, I don't know, that it just sort of the stars aligned and I was like, oh, I get that. I saw when my parents split up, as difficult as that was on me in some ways, not having them under the same roof, I saw that their lives individually improved. And as a child who loves his parents, you want to see them live the best life that they can. So there were some not great things when they were together. There were fights and arguments and those kinds of things. Home didn't always feel like the safest place in the world. So when they divorced, I still saw my dad, as you said, I saw him every Sunday. More than that, he take me to ballgames and take me to do things. So I lived with my mom. They didn't fight. They didn't argue over me. There was none of that stuff going on.

Gary S:

And I began to see at a pretty early age that they were happier humans. Not an endorsement at all of divorce, but they were happier people no longer married to each other. And in fact, as I got older, as I grew into my teens and then into my 20s, I saw that the spouses that they met after they divorced were actually perfect fits for them. And they were both inordinately happier, which made me happy. But as a young kid, I did see that home wasn't as stressful. As much as losing dad from the home hurt, home life wasn't as day to day moment by moment as stressful as it was before that.

Warwick F:

There's another interesting beat to the story as you're growing up. Your love of writing and journalism was fostered at an early age. And I think there's something I believe your mom did for you that was a help on that path. She gave you a gift.

Gary S:

Absolutely. What you're alluding to is that my mom noted that I liked to write. That was like my favorite subject in grade school. I still have in the bookshelves behind me here, I still have the very first story I ever wrote in first grade called The Pig. And it begins with like once upon a time, except I spelled once O-N-E-C. So it begins onec upon a time. But I learned to spell later. So my mom saw this in me. She saw this incipient desire to put words into sentences to arrange them into sentences and to build stories.

Gary S:

So she bought me when I was still 10, 11 years old an electric typewriter. Listeners, if you're of a certain age and you have no idea what an electric typewriter is, look it up on Google and you'll see. It's the precursor to a computer that you can do writing on, word processing on. She bought me an electric typewriter, which unlocked for me an entirely new world. Out of the ashes, if you will, of her disappointment in her marriage failing, she was able to pour into me something that ignited my spirit. And I started writing. I can remember Warwick sitting in front of the television set, watching Monday Night Football and typing out the play by play, every incomplete pass.

Gary S:

And, at that time in the '70s, the Packers stunk, so I was writing lots of interceptions and fumbles and stuff. But I was just typing so I could get the feel of what it was like to create words into sentences and paragraphs. But I eventually began to use that typewriter and I still have them again in this bookcase behind me, I still have them to this day, scripts, '70s were the height of super cop shows. So I wrote scripts where my buddies and I were super cops and we saved the city from... I still remember the name of one of the villains from JoJo Maroney who was a bad guy mobster in our city, and we save the city from that. And they're full of misspellings.

Gary S:

One of the weird things that we did is that we fought with monkey wrenches. I didn't even know what a monkey wrench was. I think I had it wrong. I saw it as like this big pipe wrench thing that you hit people with. But every episode I wrote, there was monkey wrench work going on to get us through. But what that did is create in me a place where as I was going through things that felt like something was missing. My dad wasn't there all the time when I wanted a hug right there in the house. He lived away a bit.

Gary S:

I was able to sort of pour myself into those worlds I created and I came to be able to craft stories, craft plots, do things like that. And that was a place where I escaped to, again, not run away from something that was truly horrendous. The first 99 of these shows, 70 plus have involved guests who most of them had far more incendiary crucibles than I did. But it still was painful and I was still able to go in there and put a little cool water, put a little salve on that pain by writing. And that's where my love of writing took off and I'm still doing it today.

Warwick F:

And so you began down a journalism career, it seems like there were two paths in your life. One was you love writing and you worked a number of different papers and worked your way up. But at the same time, there was something else going on in your life that was a challenge. I don't know quite how you want to unpack this but there were two tracks. You were doing well as a journalist working your way up, but then there was this other track going on that was a challenge. I don't know how you want to unpack that. But it's sort of there's two tracks going side by side throughout 20s and 30s, if you will.

Gary S:

Yeah, from my teens and what you're referring to is like many people do, we had a bar in my basement. So I'd sneak down there and grab a little drink and go, okay, that tastes terrible. But I feel a little lightheaded or whatever afterwards and it makes me feel older and cooler. And so from my mid teens into my late teens, with my buddies, I began to drink and I began to drink to excess, quite often. And then as the journalism career went on, one of the vices that they tell you... There are three vices of journalism. And I know this because I served in journalism, one, cigarettes, smoked those, did, don't anymore. Two, coffee, never drank that but I've got a Diet Mountain Dew inside this. And then three is alcohol. And that's one of the things that in journalism stereotypically can become a problem for people. And it became a problem for me. The more I moved on, the further I got away from home and the influences there that stabilized me, the more I tried to find joy, meaning, answers fun, excitement, adventure in the bottom of a bottle and never quite captured it.

Warwick F:

But I think you've mentioned before, you were a pretty functioning person. It wasn't obvious during the day that Gary Schneeberger had a problem. I mean, you talk a bit about this was going on, but your career was doing pretty well. I mean, so talk a bit about that career in newspapers as you began working your way up in journalism. I know there's a subtext there but talk about that journalism career.

Gary S:

Yeah, I was the typical itinerant journalist. I was the typical guy who every two, two and a half years left for a different paper. So I started close to my hometown in Wisconsin, then I moved to Iowa. But I never lasted more than three years because I got restless. I wanted a better opportunity. I wanted better weather. From Iowa, I went to Palm Springs, California. I ended up in Victoria, Texas. At one juncture, I ended up in Wichita Falls, Texas. I ended up in Scottsbluff, Nebraska for a cup of coffee that lasted about six months.

Gary S:

So, I moved around to different places, not because I didn't succeed per se in most cases. Sometimes jobs got cut because newspapers had troubles then too and I had to find another job. But as I was going to those places, the way that you connected, the way that you fit in, as you moved into a new community and a new newspaper, you started to run with the pack in the newspaper. And I was one of those people that in addition to growing in both the stature of my reporting nature and then I became an editor, I was one of the ringleaders, if you will, that pursued the extracurricular activities.

Gary S:

So in the same way that while I was at home, in my teens and early 20s, softball became, the game lasted an hour and the drinking lasted five, newspapers were put out, the paper we put it to bed, and then we didn't go to bed for the next four or five hours when we went out. So that just started to ratchet up. But I was, indeed, I was what I would call a highly functioning alcoholic. I was someone who could go to work, work all day, stay up all night, party with my friends, get up in an hour and a half or two hours and go right back to work again. And I actually had to let people go when I was a managing editor of a newspaper, who were good friends of mine, who would go out with me at night and drink all night who could not get themselves up and get into work. And they'd miss too much time and I had to let them go. And it was like, "look, I can do it, why can't you?" So that was kind of the attitude that I had in terms of being highly functioning. My work was good and my attendance was good. I wasn't falling, stumbling, falling down. Where things eroded, though, was morally things eroded for me, ethically things eroded for me in ways that are true crucibles, that leads you to those things where after you've had the big party and you've gone out with your friends and you've had a great grand time, you lie in bed and you think, is this all there is? And that was where I was treating people poorly. It cost me a very early marriage, it cost me friendships, it cost me girlfriends, it cost me friends. The way that I behaved, even though I could do great at work, I was not a very nice human being many times. I wasn't honest. I wasn't to be counted on in certain things. Beyond work, I was a mess.

Warwick F:

That's interesting, because some of the guests might struggle with alcoholism but some won't. And so, they might have friends, family, but it's hard to understand something unless you've gone through it at a deep level. There's levels of understanding. And so, I think what I hear you saying is it obviously caused health challenges and just being able to function on all cylinders, that make sense. But just this sense that not only did it cause that but it caused more than that in terms of you talked about moral, ethical, character erosion. I don't know that your average person thinks of it quite like that, that alcoholism can do more than just cause you health challenges. To me, that wasn't obvious to me. But that felt like it was true for you that it caused far more than just health challenges. Maybe that even wasn't the worst of it.

Gary S:

Oh, absolutely. And let's be clear, alcohol didn't cause my character deficit. It spotlighted it. I had a character deficit anyway. Alcohol just invigorated it and made it easier to do. It made it easier to not have to face the consequences of your things and deal with it. One of the things I learned when I went into AA finally and we'll get to that point, I'm sure, one of the things I learned then was what makes you an alcoholic is not how much you drink. It's not drinking an entire fifth of bourbon that makes you an alcoholic, when I was told in rehab was what makes you an alcoholic is why you drink.

Gary S:

And I looking at myself and realized I drank to change the way I felt. I felt like the kid that wasn't quite worthy of dad living in the home a little bit, way in the back of my head that was there. I was overweight as a child so I dealt with that. I felt like the guy that got rejected by girls when he dated them and they went out with somebody else. I drank to change what I felt. If I was happy, I wanted to get happier. If I was sad, I wanted to get happy. If I felt guilty, I wanted to feel free of that guilt. And those are the things that got alcoholism hooked in me and continued to go on until there was finally a rather explosive crucible that sent me on the right path.

Warwick F:

So let's talk about the switch. There's a pivot point that you had mentioned to me in 1997, a journalistic conference in which it seemed to be on if you hit a wall, or somehow you hit a point at which I can't ignore this. So talk about that day, which I know is a very challenging day. But I guess you could say some good came out of it, because out of that day came maybe one of the turning points in your life.

Gary S:

Absolutely. It was in 1997, in April of 1997. And I was working in Wichita Falls, Texas and there was a journalism conference every year, the Associated Press has a journalism conference where they give away awards for the best journalism in the state. And it was in Corpus Christi, Texas, which is on the coast, which was a fun place to go, and I was there representing my paper as the managing editor. My journalistic mentor who taught me everything I really know about journalism, he was there as well.

Gary S:

As the awards were handed out, my paper won a whole slew of awards. His didn't win any. It was like the mentee surpasses the mentor. It should have been a great moment of celebration. It wasn't. It was a great moment of degradation. In these conferences, they have hospitality suites where the journalists all gather and play games and play poker and drink. And it started out with me arrogantly bringing a bottle of my favorite top shelf whiskey. I didn't want their cheap whiskey, I brought my own. I'm shooting my mouth off. I'm flirting with a married woman who's at the card table with me.

Gary S:

I'm just acting in such an obnoxious way that this is what happened. The managing editor of the Dallas Morning News, the largest paper in Texas, every year at this conference ran a poker game in the hospitality suite for 25 or 30 years, he would deal. I sat at the table to play that game. I was so obnoxious in the way I acted from my arrogance about the whiskey I was drinking to the way I was treating people who were there. Jack Welch was his name, the ME of the Dallas Morning News, got up, took his cards and left the poker table.

Gary S:

I drove away the founder...He was a dean of Texas journalism and I drove away the founder of the most fun thing about the Associated Press managing editors conference in Texas. I drove him away from the table. I knew when I got back to the office that was going to get back there. People still talk about this in the state of Texas 25 years after it happened. And I knew that was going to happen, that was going to come back and that was probably going to be the end of my journalism career in Wichita Falls. So I went back to my hotel room. And this is the important part of the story that really pushed me over the line and helped me see I had a problem. And that was many was the time when I was drinking and I was depressed. Remember, I said, what makes an alcoholic is why you drank, you tried to get happy, it doesn't always work. The more you do it, the less it works. And it wasn't working for several years up until that point. And there were many times I would call friends in the middle of the night. We used to call it dialing while intoxicated, DWI.

Gary S:

I would call friends up in the middle of the night and I'd say, "Oh, my life is terrible, I'm going to kill myself." I would say that. Now usually speaking when you say that, it's a cry for help is the general consensus. But I remember lying in my bed in the hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas that night knowing I'd just blown up my journalism career, thinking that I wanted to end my life but not calling anybody, just sitting lying in my bed. And that scared me deeply. Because I didn't want to reach out for a lifeline as it were. I was just sitting there. And somehow I got through that night, lots of tears. The next day I flew home. Somehow I knew it was going to be my last drink because I took one at the airport on the way home. This is the last drink I ever had. And got back to the newspaper, quit the paper that same day and checked myself into rehab.

Warwick F:

I mean, that's amazing. I mean, I do appreciate you sharing us because that's a very scary moment when it's one thing to say, okay, time for the lifeline, let's call some friends. But when you don't call friends, I don't know if it's like being in an airplane and an old-fashioned plane and like, okay, you're used to hearing the sound of propellers have gone, there's no propellers, which means your likelihood is you're going to crash, and the nose is going down.

Warwick F:

So if you don't hear the propellers, you get really nervous. If you hear the propellers sputtering, you get somewhat nervous. When they stopped, that felt like it was almost that kind of moment, if you will, in which the silence, the no noise and no voice meant that a bad thing maybe was about to happen. So, some people reach that point and just say either do the ultimate, take their own life, or just say, look, I just got to keep going with this life and whatever, keep drinking. But you didn't. So, do you have any idea why? Because not every alcoholic makes the choice that you did but why did you choose to check yourself into rehab and then AA? Why did you make that choice?

Gary S:

Clearly, I mean, the biggest reason is I did not want to die. So that was a big thing. And it's interesting Warwick. I mean, we talk a lot on the show about the phrase that you first turned on the podcast here where you say it could be your fault and not your fault. I was tired of living the life I was living but there was just enough of still wanting to live a life of something. I didn't know what that was going to be but I knew that it couldn't include alcohol, which it was like I said goodbye to it. I had the one drink at the airport, like I said, and I went back and checked myself into rehab. And that was the last drink I had, April 27th of 1997.

Warwick F:

And it seems like AA was a springboard to a deeper spiritual journey, because that really maybe potentially the pivot point in your life. So talk about AA and that spiritual journey how the direction of your life from we talked about the bottom of the pit, it felt like 1997 might have been close to the bottom of the pit for you. I mean-

Gary S:

Yeah, for sure.

Warwick F:

Because we're dealers in hope here, then hope sprang. Maybe it didn't come with a huge horn but a little ray of sunshine, little itty bitty ray that grew brighter and brighter. So talk about AA and that really path to a deeper spiritual awakening.

Gary S:

Yeah. Backing up to my growing up years, we didn't go to church. I've been to church maybe three times in my life growing up. And that was to go with girlfriends on holidays. So I didn't have any experience in that area. So in treatment, they take you to AA meetings, and we all love them because even before we knew what the content was, because it was only time we could smoke, so we sat there and lit one cigarette after the other and smoke during the meetings. And that was the smokiest things in the world are AA meetings, probably still to this day.

Gary S:

But I remember the concept that clicked in my head was when AA talked about the idea of a higher power. And it was the first time truly in my life growing up non-churched, not really understanding religion at all. It was the first time in my life when it occurred to me there was a power higher than me. I wasn't sure who that power was, what that power was. But the idea that I wasn't the ultimate highest power in my life kind of cracked open a window that let some breeze in, let some sunshine in. And that began a process in which I did lean into the god of my own understanding.

Gary S:

And then that's another way that AA puts it. And that kept me sober for several months but there came a time in my life where I had to ask the question. Logic for me didn't dismiss God as there's no way that could be. Logic for me told me if it's a god of my own understanding and my own understanding is what got me lying in the bed wanting to die and not wanting to call a friend to say I wanted to die, if that was what got me there was my own understanding, how is a god of my own makeup going to help me?

Gary S:

And that was when I was open to the idea of something beyond that. That was when I started a new job in Palm Springs, California. I met a young woman in the newsroom. I wanted to date her. She didn't want to date me. She wanted to tell me about Jesus. She did over the course of several weeks that led to me accepting Christ and that that was the one two punch. AA got me on the on the on-ramp and then Christ got me to a place where true healing could then from the inside out occur.

Warwick F:

I think you've talked about this, but I just want to go one step deeper. So AA talks about you mentioned that a god of your own understanding, but yet it seemed like you had a deeper search for meaning and purpose but it wasn't enough. So just talk about, in your case, why was your faith in Christ, why is that such a pivot point for you in terms of finding meaning and purpose beyond, at least again, this is your journey, your truth as we say, nothing against AA but for you, there was something about your faith in Christ that just offered so much more.

Gary S:

Yeah. And I'm glad you said nothing against AA because I'm the biggest proponent still for AA. If it wasn't for AA, I don't think my life would have been saved. I think my faith in Christ has made my life worth saving, if that makes sense. There was the stain of my hand, the stain of the self-destructive behavior, and then there was living in a way that made my life something that reflected goodness, not self-indulgence. But what was that for me, it was a longing for I said earlier, I would come home after hanging out with the guys in the newsroom and lie in bed and go there's got to be more than this.

Gary S:

And when I was introduced to Jesus and I was introduced to people who followed him, that was when I discovered that there was indeed something more than this, there was something more than just getting by day by day, there was something deeper well before, long before, decades before. While you were still trying to bounce back from your crucible and find your life of significance, I began to understand without calling it that. What I wanted was a life of significance. And I didn't have it and I wanted to find a way to get it.

Warwick F:

And I want to shift to the next at a point in your career, which is interesting. But one of the things we talk about a lot in Crucible Leadership and indeed on this podcast Beyond the Crucible is as you begin to claw your way back from the bottom of the pit, find meaning and purpose and a life significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others, one of the things that's absolutely critical is the word we call forgiveness. Sometimes it's forgiving other people, sometimes it's myself, for me, it was more forgiving my own stupidity. But I have to believe you would not be the person you are today without dealing with forgiveness.

Warwick F:

Because I could potentially understand when you said what I went through is my own fault, how did you deal with the whole issue of forgiveness? I mean, we get the Christian faith says is because Christ died on the cross for our sins, we are forgiven. Those are nice words. It's one thing to read it in the Bible. It's another thing to believe it. How did you deal with this whole thing of forgiveness of, frankly, forgiving yourself?

Gary S:

It started for me anyway with forgiving others. One of the things AA is very good on is making amends as what AA calls it. And that is the people that you look through your life, seriously, they have you do homework, you go and you write down, here's the people you've hurt, here's how I've hurt them, and then you go to them and you ask them for forgiveness. And one of the things that blew me away was how many people just without hesitation, "Yup, I forgive you. Hug me." I mean, I didn't deserve it and they gave it to me.

Gary S:

And there's some kind of transference I think as you go through that experience, as you reach out to people. And there are still people where, there are still people to this day in the last year who encountered me during my alcoholic years who I've had the opportunity to apologize to, for the way that I behaved in that time, and it's healing every time. But the more you go through that, the more momentum you build, the flywheel turns and you begin to find little ways to forgive yourself to go, okay, if this person who I treated this badly and I did this to can say I forgive you, maybe I'm worth it myself.

Gary S:

You say it on the podcast all the time, aren't you worth forgiveness? Forgive yourself. Aren't you worth that? And I had to come to a place where I felt worthy of forgiving myself. And the key to that in a large part was how many people who I truly wronged. And again, we're not talking anything criminal or anything like that but who I had treated abruptly, I had treated poorly, I had lied to, cheated on, they almost to a man and woman forgave me. And as those things build up, it becomes, to use another phrase of yours, a balm for your soul. And you're able to go, okay, maybe I'm not a black hat, maybe I don't have a black heart. Maybe there's something good inside here that someone could forgive me for that I can forgive myself for that. And that was a real turning point for me.

Warwick F:

I want to get to you shifted after being in Palm Springs to work to a very famous large faith-based nonprofit. That was a totally turning point in your professional life. So, talk about those years at that organization.

Gary S:

Yeah. It's two stories will sum that up. So the organization is Focus on the Family, founded by Dr. James Dobson in the 1970s, very high profile Christian leader. Two stories will sum up my experience there for the purposes of this and the purpose of I'm still doing my cohost job here and I'm watching the time. So I want to make this go as expeditiously as possible. But the first story is so Focus has chapel service, still does. Every month, there's a chapel service. And I got my job at Focus on the Family six months after I became a Christian.

Gary S:

And I remember the end of the Christmas chapel service, Dr. Dobson prayed for all of the staff. And I walked out of that. We called it the Chapelteria, because it was also the cafeteria. They still do. The Chapelteria. I walked out of the Chapelteria crying, because I realized that I'm getting paid for James Dobson to pray for me. That's a whole lot different than chasing news stories. And that's rewarding but it's not with a capital R rewarding or underlined rewarding or with any eternal significance rewarding.

Gary S:

So that was when I realized, boy, my spirit was going to come alive in this place. So that was the first telling story there. And then, there was just something about being able to help people with their marriages, their parenting, with their walking out their faith in the public square, it's the same thing, I think, that you think that you feel Warwick when guests say how they felt heard, when guests say, boy, that really helped me when you hear from someone from one of our listeners that something has offered them hope.

Gary S:

We were extending to people hope in difficult times, hope that marriages could be saved, hope that children who may be wayward weren't going to be that way forever. And hearing those stories every day, being involved, being able to be in the midst and help with those stories, yes, it was rewarding to break news as a reporter. But at the end of the day, not all the time did anything really change for eternal significance. These are things when I was involved with these things in Focus on the Family gave me a sense of fulfillment that went beyond just job well done. It went to the things we talked about focusing on legacy and significance and those kinds of things.

Warwick F:

So let's move on here. I know you had a stint in Hollywood from 2012 to 2016. So tell us a little bit about that and how that happened, because you moved from journalism to Focus, and now you go to Hollywood. So that's another shift. So talk about that shift.

Gary S:

Yeah, I'm a career chameleon. But I was 12 years at Focus on the Family and I was there when Dr. Dobson left and the new president Jim Daly came in and my job as the vice president of communications was to navigate in the press the transition from the founder, Dr. Dobson, to Jim Daly, the next generation leader. Had to put Jim on the map, had to get him in the press, had to make a name for himself, had to do a bunch of things to make that happen. That over the course of time did happen over the course of three years. Jim was established. He had just released a book. My last day of Focus on the Family was when Jim's book called ReFocus, which was his manifesto on how Christians should engage the public sphere, the public square. The day that book came out was the day that I left Focus, because I felt like my calling there, my job there was done. I had turned around the Titanic, the big ocean liner that is hard to turn around to go from founder, enormously popular famous founder to a lesser known but enormously talented second generation president. I raised a profile of that second generation president. He became one of CNN's top Christians to watch. Other magazines did the same sort of thing, he got identified and recognized. We did well there. So I decided, okay, I've always liked movies. Remember, I wrote scripts when I was 10 for my buddies and I to act out. So I took a job with a marketing firm in Hollywood, which faith-based marketing firm was marketed films both faith-based films and secular films with faith-based content, or that would appeal to faith-based press. The example I use all the time, people would ask me, we worked on the Superman reboot Man of Steel. People ask me, "Well, you're a faith-based marketing firm. Why are you working on Man of Steel?" And I say, "Well, it's the story of an otherworldly father who sent his only son to earth to save mankind." I read that in a book somewhere. I mean, that's a Jesus story in some sense, right?

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

Gary S:

So I went there and did that job over the course of three years and learned much and accomplished much and continued to feed this idea that we were, it was more than box office receipts that we cared about. It was more than that. It was people picking up their Bibles and reading them after a certain show came out. That was the rewarding part. That was the legacy part for me.

Warwick F:

There is an interesting story that you told me about the movie Noah. And sometimes it gets a bit of flack because the Bible isn't always full of all the details of the story. It just puts what God thinks is necessary for us to know. So it got a bit of flack but yet it definitely had a spiritual impact. I think it's just a fun story when you talk about the impact of movies spiritually that people might not know.

Gary S:

Right. I mean, Noah starred Russell Crowe. The biblical story of Noah, he doesn't speak until the ark lands on dry land. You've got Russell Crowe as your star. If you're going to do an absolutely biblically accurate account, Russell Crowe is in his first silent movie. He doesn't talk until the last third of the movie. So we can't do that. So there were some additions taken. As I would argue, they were extra biblical, not in the Bible but not contra-biblical. But the good news, despite all of the rancor that came from some in the faith community is that when that movie came out in 2014, and I'm reading this out of my book right now, the website biblegateway.com, the weekend that Noah premiered, reported a 223% increase from the previous weekend in the number of people who looked up the Noah story in Genesis chapter 6 through 9.

Gary S:

Also YouVersion, which is a Bible app, the number one Bible app for smartphones in the country in the world, saw a 300% increase in users opening the biblical account of Noah in the US and a 245% increase globally. My argument then, my argument now is how does a movie that drives people to read the Bible, how is that a bad thing? This was at a time, remember, that every movie was about a Harry Potter book or a comic book. This was the good book getting read by people because of a movie. That was a good day at the movie PR factory for me.

Warwick F:

Absolutely. So I want to talk about maybe one of if not the most recent crucible that you went through in which we were talking recently about blessings coming out of crucibles. Perhaps this is a good example. Talk about you had a crucible in Hollywood but it did lead to the blessing and what you're doing currently. So took about that last shift.

Gary S:

I was head of publicity for a PR firm that represented and promoted several movies. When you're like that in Hollywood, Hollywood operates like pro sports. When you're in charge of something and you have three or four movies that don't do well, the box office is disappointing, the studio is not going to shut down. The owner of the company probably isn't going to run away but somebody who's at the highest level of leadership in the publicity side of things, it just so happened I was let go because what the owners of the company had to do is be able to tell studios going forward, okay, this guy is no longer here who was running our publicity department, we've got new blood in place. And that helps you then get more contracts and get more things going on.

Gary S:

So no one ever said I was terrible at what I did. It was just they were good movies, the movies didn't do well at the box office. The numbers were disappointing. So they decided let's get some new people in here, like Gabe Kappeler got another job after he got fired. That's kind of what happened. And I was at a crossroads. I was at a place in my life where, oh my gosh, I'm 51 years old, I've got to find a job, what do I do? And that was when it struck me that I was going to start my own business.

Gary S:

I started my own firm in 2016 after this occurred. And I never would have had the guts to do it with a cushy Hollywood job where they give you a Lexus leased car and you get all this, that never would have happened for me. I never would have been able to leave that. But when that was removed from the table for me, it gave me the opportunity to say, you know what, I've learned a lot over the course of these years I've been doing this, let me put that to use. Not just in Hollywood, although I still do work for promotion of Hollywood films, but also for a variety of clients across the way including you Warwick in Crucible Leadership.

Warwick F:

So that's fascinating that it brings you to the current chapter you're on with ROAR that sometimes, I don't know, with me as listeners would no, I never would have been able to leave Fairfax Media if the company hadn't gone under in late 1990, I could never have left. Similar but different, it sounds like you, Gary, how can you leave Hollywood if you're helping to promote faith-based and secular films to a faith-based audience seemed like a pretty good calling. It was kind of fun. It was cool. Nothing wrong with having fun and you're making a difference but yet, if you believe in a sovereign God, for whatever reason He had another plan, and this plan wasn't just professional, it was personal. So talk about, because that really brings you to where you are now, which I think I would hazard a guess to say you feel pretty blessed I would say these days, if that's an accurate word. So, talk about how it was a professional and personal shift for you leaving Hollywood.

Gary S:

One of the crucible moments in life at Focus on the Family, Focus on the Family, marriage, parenting, helping people walk out their faith. I had my wife at the time who was by the way I mentioned, there was a young woman in the newsroom in Palm Springs who talked to me about Jesus, I ended up marrying that young woman. So we're in Hollywood and it over time became a rocky marriage, it became a difficult marriage. So I was dealing with that. I was dealing with not having a job. I got to a point where the marriage was not salvageable. I'll say only this To those of you who are Christians who are listening in, there were biblical grounds on my part to end the marriage. And I did. At the same time, as that was going on, I've had this weird habit my entire life. You've indicated Warwick, there a lot of stops on my journalism career track. I've worked a lot of places. I like social media. And so periodically over the years and many times it's been done to offer it and amends as AA would say or to apologize to people who I haven't seen who I used to work with. So I would be sitting around if I was bored and go, hey, I wonder whatever happened to Joe Smith who worked at this newspaper that I worked at in Victoria, Texas. And I tried to find Joe Smith on Facebook and say," Joe, what's going on?" We became Facebook friends. Sometimes I was able to run into the women I knew that I dated in those situations and say, "Hey, sorry about that." It's kind of this fun thing that I've done over the years. And on February 13, 2016, two days after my birthday, my mind just floated back to this reporter I knew in college who was, at the time, a young girl. She was 17. And I was editor of my college newspaper here in Wisconsin in Kenosha.

Gary S:

And I recruited her out of high school to come work for me. And she was so good that I promoted her to be an editor and I didn't know much about journalism at the time. I'm 21 but I'm trying to mentor her. I found her on Facebook, sent her a message. Could it be the one time ace journalist at the University of Wisconsin Parkside, Kelly McKissick, if so, wow, what's going on? How are you doing? Within like 12 minutes she responded back and said, "It is me, Gary." And she had been married and she was in the middle of a divorce.

Gary S:

In the course of the next several weeks, we discovered through messaging back and forth the way, the way that we first learned who each other was. And we never dated in college. I was her mentor. We were friends. So much so that when she graduated, I gave her my pen, because I want to encourage her to continue writing. We discovered that we were still friends. We discovered that we still had a lot in common. And more than that, we discovered that we were in love. So that was February 2016. By spring of 2016, a couple of months later, I moved back home from Hollywood to my hometown in Wisconsin where I courted her and we got married in 2017. So that story's come full circle.

Warwick F:

And you now have a wife and a family and kids?

Gary S:

Right. Yeah, being on Focus on the Family, not having any children, it was like, what do I have to offer now that the transition is over? And here's the funny part. All those 12 years I was on Focus on the Family and listened to all the broadcasts about raising kids, that stuff sticks to you. You learn that stuff. So I have two beautiful stepchildren, my wife Kelly, her two children, my stepchildren, Alyssa and Hunter. All that stuff I learned there has come in handy here and I've discovered that my desire to have kids, now that I have them is everything that I wanted and stuff I didn't realize I could want. And that's been an inordinate blessing for me.

Warwick F:

Wow. So obviously I'm sure you feel truly blessed. So as we bring things to a close here-

Gary S:

Yeah, the planes got to, the captain's got to turn on the fasten seatbelt sign.

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

Gary S:

I think I've heard it.

Warwick F:

And I think maybe the managing editor is about to put the paper to bed. And I think I can hear the press. It's almost about to start to roll those big turbines as the speaker about-

Gary S:

Good job. Good job.

Warwick F:

For those of you who've never been where they print newspapers, it's pretty cool. Late at night, 2 AM in the morning, whenever it is, and the presses roll. But as you look back at your life, at the challenges and maybe the blessings, what are some lessons? And you've had some really tough experiences, challenging experiences, gut wrenching crucibles. Few people have had easy lives. You certainly have not had an easy life. But what do you feel about the lessons, I know you're a person of faith and maybe you think of that God has taught you, I'm not quite sure how you put up it, but what are some key lessons as you look back at your challenges and some of the blessings that you feel like you've learned?

Gary S:

First thing would be in 2005, Peter Jackson, who's in the news now because he made a documentary about the Beatles from the footage from the movie Let It Be. But Peter Jackson did a remake of King Kong in 2005. And I really liked the movie, but there's almost a throwaway line in there. Jack Black, the actor, plays this kind of shyster film director trying to fast talk his way to get to Skull Island to get Kong. And he keeps running into things that don't go right, don't go right, don't go right. Talk about crucibles. He hits him every time he turns around.

Gary S:

But he says to his assistant at one point, and this line always stuck with me. It's not a big line in the movie but he said this, "Defeat is always momentary." So I think that my life is a lesson about that. I bumped into a lot of brick walls. A lot of them I ran into myself head first with a running start. But it's always momentary. That's one of the things we talk about in Beyond the Crucible all the time. It doesn't have to be your worst day. Your worst day doesn't have to define you. So defeat, as Carl Denham, the character played by Jack Black said in King Kong in 2005, defeat is always momentary. That's number one.

Gary S:

Second thing I would say is it was funny, we were on a call the other day, Warwick and I said this to someone about you don't have to tell us the stuff that we do right, just tell us what we can do better. And you were like, well, I kind of like hearing what I can do right. It helps me. And I was like, oh, I felt bad. But from my perspective, you learn more about what's vital in life and the life you want to live from what you struggle with than where you excel.

Gary S:

Chances are, in fact, you already know what you do well. Pay more attention to those things you can do better, because the attitude that you can do better is the very reason why you will do better. Yes, it's good to hear you did this right. Absorb those moments. But really dig in. When we talk about learning the lessons of your crucibles, dig into those things where you stumble, dig into those things where you've hit that wall. And learn the lessons of that because as you get feedback from that, we talk about it all the time on the show, when you get feedback from people about what you can do better, that's fuel to actually do better.

Gary S:

And if your heart, mind, spirit is open to the fact that you don't have it all together, that helps you get it all together because you have the right attitude going forward. And the third thing is the biggest thing I learned when I was in Hollywood, all movies come in three acts. There's a first act, second act, third act. The third act is always the most exciting. That's when the big crisis happens. The couple who's been together for acts one and two has a conflict, they break up, something bad happens. The cop loses the bad guy and it looks like the bad guy is going to win the day. Something's gone wrong. That happens in act two. And then the action ramps up, the hero rises to the occasion. And then in the last act comes the conclusion, that third act, the conclusion comes, cowboy rides off into the sunset. In Die Hard, John McClane gets in the limo and drives away. I mean, it's where all the action happens and all the happy endings happen. And all of the legacy, goodness, satisfaction, all of those things, significance, all of those things occur.

Gary S:

When I was in Hollywood and lost my job as the senior vice president of publicity for that firm, I was 51 years old. I was just at the start, if you believe actuarial tables, I was just at the start of act three of my life. And since that, I've moved back home to Wisconsin from Los Angeles. I've married a woman who was so kind and sweet and supportive. I have two wonderful stepchildren. All of those things happened at just the start of the third act of my life. So that's my story of the third act of my life. Always remember, listeners, that life comes in acts, and each act wraps up. So no matter where you are, if it's first act, second act, or third act, there are always plot twists. There are always opportunities to move forward and end in a place that is better than the place that you started. Even if you're in the last act, the third act of your life and it seems like it's ending on a bad note. Speaking of Peter Jackson, I think of the third Lord of the Rings movie, that movie had like five false endings. Just when you thought it was over and you're gathering the popcorn, there was another ending.

Warwick F:

Right.

Gary S:

The ending doesn't have to be the ending. I'll go back to Die Hard, which we have a blog. We have a blog about Die Hard and the crucible lessons you can learn that's on crucibleleadership.com. When we think that movie is over, John McClane's dropped the terrorist out of the top of Nakatomi Plaza, oops, another bad guy shows up, throws off a coat and is almost going to shoot him and John McClane's cop buddy, Al Powell, saves him by taking out the bad guy. There can still be false ending. So even if you think it's ended on a note that hasn't been great, keep going one step forward. One small step at a time as Warwick says, because that can be a false ending. You can write your own ending. The great thing about that, all movies have three acts, you're the screenwriter of your story.

Warwick F:

Wow. Well, that is a great place to end. I think I can indeed hear the managing editor or production manager, as the case may be, hit the button and someone is rolling and the-

Gary S:

The presses are rolling.

Warwick F:

And so just as we close, and then you can close this out as you always do, I just want to say just personally, you've been such a blessing to me, to Crucible Leadership. We brought you on board originally because we felt like it was time for public relations. But you do that great but you do so much more than that. As we're in the third act of getting this book published, you're sort of my wing man as we went through the last edits to make sure it was true to the story and the message and you get Crucible Leadership at a deep level, the cohost of Beyond the Crucible. We're different personalities, actually common faith but different people, certainly different upbringing, that's for sure.

Warwick F:

But yet sometimes, different traits, different backgrounds can make for really a great complementary team, which I think we are. And yeah, I mean, we wouldn't be where we are today without you. So you've been certainly a great blessing to me personally and to Crucible Leadership. And so, thank you for helping make Crucible Leadership what it is today. And yeah, it's been a blessing to hear your story. There's so much in it that I think listeners can really find hope as you've charted through your challenges to live what is an amazing life of significance. You've kept moving forward and you are blessed and have been blessed and look at what you do now with ROAR and a wonderful family. And those are times when you wake up and you think, thank you, Lord, I'm just blessed. Is that like a fair summary?

Gary S:

Yeah. I mean, I don't think about it all the time. And that's why this is a great opportunity to talk about those things because I don't think about the moment in the hotel in Corpus Christi lying in the bed not wanting to go on. I don't think about that every day. I don't think about that hardly ever. So to go I was there 25, 26 years ago and now I'm here, those two people aren't the same people. They don't have any of the same values. They don't have any of the same emotions. They have none of those things.

Gary S:

So yeah, that's an absolutely fair summary. And it's all been because taking one small step and learning to move on and learning to say I'm sorry and learning to say I forgive you and learning to yourself and to others, and learning to do those kinds of things. We say it all the time, I'm going to say it here in a minute. It doesn't have to be the end of your story. And all of those things that happened, all the things that happened to you, listener, that are crucibles could be the end of your story but you have to let it be. And I'm surprised myself sometimes when I say all life's in three acts, all movies are in three acts, your stories in three acts, you're the screenwriter. You can write the way every act goes, no matter what act you're in. You get to write your own ending. And that is a beautiful thing.

Gary S:

So until the next time we are together, listener. Now I've put on my cohost hat. I'm no longer the guest. Thank you for spending time with us here at Beyond the Crucible. And do remember, as I just said, those crucible moments in your life are not the end of your story. I talked about all kinds of things that could have been the end of my story. And I write stories. So I know they could have been the end of my story but they weren't. So, you don't have to be at a place where those things become the end of your story either. In fact, if you learn the lessons of your crucibles, as you move forward, they can be, those moments can be the start of the best chapter of your story, the best act of your story because where they lead is where they led for me. And that is to a life of significance.

It takes quite a bit of pent-up, anxious energy to grind your teeth so violently that they shatter in your mouth. But that’s just what Nick Bradley did. More surprising yet, he says that moment of terrible physical pain brought on by equally terrible emotional pain was one of the best things that ever happened to him. Bradley says what he calls “the teeth incident” was the outward manifestation of his inner turmoil as a successful businessman who had discovered his high achievements came at the price of low fulfillment. So he changed the trajectory of his life. He started a business consultancy and launched the Scale Up Your Business Podcast to help clients and listeners be grateful, be brave, be faithful and show up for work and for life in ways that bring them satisfaction and significance beyond the bottom line.

To learn more about Nick Bradley and his podcast, now called SCALE UP WITH NICK BRADLEY, visit www.suybacademy.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Nick B:

So I've gone from this kind of real connection, starting to question things, starting to build a relationship with my dad after 30 odd years, realizing that actually he's a very success entrepreneur, perhaps that's who I should have been, perhaps I made the wrong decision with my fitness business, perhaps I should have done... All these things are going on. Then he dies, suddenly.

Nick B:

I sort of come back from that, I come back to the UK and a couple weeks after that I wake up in the middle of the night, it's about 3:00 AM, and I'm in a lot of pain. My face is all swollen, the right side of my jaw is really throbbing. And I go into the bathroom and I look in the mirror and it's all red and swollen. It's like I've been punched in the face.

Nick B:

And what's happened is I have literally grit my teeth, clenched my teeth in my sleep through probably a culmination of so many things going on that I've partly explained, and I cracked the two molars. Like, not just cracked them, like they shattered, like there's actually teeth in my mouth.

Gary S:

It takes quite a bit of pent up anxious energy to grind your teeth so violently that they disintegrate. But that's just what this week's guest, Nick Bradley, did. And would you believe, he says that moment of terrible physical pain brought on by equally terrible emotional pain was one of the best things that ever happened to him? Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show.

Gary S:

In his discussion with Warwick and me, Nick details how shattering his teeth was the outward manifestation of his inner turmoil. A successful businessman who had discovered his high achievements came at the price of low fulfillment. So he changed the trajectory of his life. He started a business consultancy and launched the Scale Up Your Business podcast, to help clients and listeners but grateful, be brave, be faithful, and show up for work and for life in ways that bring them satisfaction and significance beyond the bottom line.

Warwick F:

Well, Nick, thanks again and wonderful to have a fellow Australian. You were very kind to have me on your podcast, Scale Up Your Business, and we had a tremendous conversation. So before we get into Scale Up Your Business, I'd love a bit of the origin story, the Nick Bradley origin story. Obviously from Australia but you lived in the UK for close to 20 years, I think married a girl from over there, I'm guessing in the UK. So that's kind of what happens. I married an American girl and she brought me back to the US, so yeah, it kind of happens. Which is all good. So tell me, what's the origin story of your interest in entrepreneurship, equity, you grew up in Adelaide. So tell me a bit about how you grew up and you've clearly always had a fascination with entrepreneurship.

Nick B:

Origin story, yeah. So as you said Warwick, I grew up in this place called Adelaide. It's funny, I can't really lie about it because you know Australia so well. I can often say things about Adelaide and people go, "Oh it sounds like this nice, quaint little town." I often say it's famous for three things. Sharks, big sharks. They filmed a lot of Jaws' open water scenes there. Lots of churches. I think it's called the City of Churches. And the third thing, which always freaks people out, is serial killers. We had this spate of serial killers. Seriously. Like, yeah, this is not the podcast to go into that.

Nick B:

I suppose the summary of that is I had to leave, and I did. And I got into the world of media, and that's where you and I sort of connected a little bit. I worked for Rupert Murdoch for a number of years, specifically for his uncle, who owned a company called Murdoch Magazines. And I sort of cut my teeth in that world for a number of years, which got me to the UK, because I left that company and worked for a business called EMAP, East Midlands Allied Press.

Nick B:

I suppose it was like 15 years in corporate, in reasonably senior leadership positions. I was in sort of board level roles before I was 30. But I had my first taste of exiting businesses around 2007 when we sold EMAP to a couple of private equity firms and also a bigger German publisher. I was involved in the transition before exit, and then I saw what happened after exit, and I thought I need to go a little bit deeper into this world. So I joined another company called Getty Images, based out of Seattle but I was working for them in London and New York. That was a business that was scaled through a number of different private equity investments and exits.

Nick B:

We did multiple numbers of acquisitions when I was there. In fact, I was involved with about 30 of them. I think there's over 100 acquisitions in total. And that just got me into this whole world of... let's call it investment banking, corporate finance, high level wealth creation, all through M&A, mergers and acquisitions.

Nick B:

And I won't get to the punchline because it is the Crucible Leadership story, but let's just say the person I am today versus the person I was through that pretty amazing ride is very, very different because of some things that happened. But that's how it all started and I got kind of addicted to this world of cut and thrust private equity wealth, money, power, status, and it served me for a certain period of time but then after a while I needed to make a few changes.

Warwick F:

And that's fascinating, and one of the other things I think of Adelaide being famous for is wine, the Barossa Valley and at least in the US you see wine bottles... it'll say like Southeastern Australia and I don't know what that means. Southeastern Australia could be like 70% of the population or something. It's an arc from Adelaide to Brisbane.

Nick B:

It's like the whole of Great Britain fits in that, I think. So you better get it right.

Warwick F:

But yeah, were your parents entrepreneurs? Where do you get this business gene of loving the cut and thrust of entrepreneurship and business? Where did that come from?

Nick B:

This is an interesting part of the story. I had a business in Adelaide before I moved to Sydney when I started moving into the world of publishing. And it was a small personal training business. But at the time, we're talking sort of late '80s, early '90s. Personal training wasn't a thing. The people who had personal trainers were doctors, lawyers, stock brokers. It wasn't something that's as commonplace such as today. And I started that business not really knowing much but my grandfather, who was a big influence on me growing up, he was like, "Are you really going to do this? Why don't you go get a job? A job equals safety."

Nick B:

And I had that in the back of my mind. So I closed the business down. I sold it to a friend. Not for much money. Because I just sold my client list really. But what was interesting about that whole first introduction to entrepreneurship is I met some very, very wealthy, powerful, influential people and that was how I ended up meeting Matt Handbury and Rupert Murdoch, through that, having a personal training business.

Nick B:

But the story is I sort of thought you know, okay, well I'm not going to do this entrepreneurial thing, everyone in my family is saying it's not a good thing to do, go and get a job. So that's what I did. I suppose the long story short of that is 15 years of my life was a frustrated entrepreneur, well they call them intrepreneurs or something crazy like that, in businesses. And I just kept getting either promoted or sacked. There was no middle ground.

Nick B:

So I got promoted up because I was this chippy Australian guy, or I annoyed someone on the ladder upwards who wanted the job I was going for or something else, and then I got sacked. And that's kind of how it happened. But I was sacked within the companies, so I was moved around these divisions.

Nick B:

But here's the interesting part to your question. So I was this frustrated entrepreneur, I was quite successful, but I wasn't really happy with what I was doing. What happened was my father, he left our family when I was two years of age. The usual stuff that happens, Mum and him just sort of fell out. But then he came back into my life in my late 30s. So it was something like 35 years difference. And he was a very, very successful entrepreneur in Australia. He had a business, a jewelry business that was based in Collins Street, in fact he had a couple of different sites in Melbourne. And he lost that business in his early 40s because there was a bombing, a terrorist bombing at the Turkish Consulate, and he went from being effectively a millionaire to being bankrupt within the space of this incident because there's no insurance for things like that.

Nick B:

Now, I didn't know any of this, none of this. But then he came back into my life and I realized that he'd done this... he was very much an entrepreneur. After that incident he ended up building another business in his 40s into his 50s and effectively a millionaire again in a separate business. So when I met him, I realized that I had these kind of genes, these desires, this different outlook, whatever you want to define entrepreneurship as, that for many years I had repressed. And it was when I met him, all of a sudden it was like wow, perhaps I need to lean into this a bit more.

Warwick F:

You had this inner conviction that this is what I want to do and you went for it, which is really remarkable. So you were in these companies, you were somebody that wasn't afraid of your opinion. And sometimes that's accepted well. Those who are maybe insecure, it's like ah, Nick, no thank you for your opinion, you've given it to me about 10 times on this subject, can you just be quiet, go away. There are some people that unfortunately are too insecure or small minded that it doesn't work.

Warwick F:

So at some point you went to be an entrepreneur yourself and got into private equity, so how did that transition happen from just working within a corporate sphere to more going into private equity, venture capital, that kind of thing?

Nick B:

Yeah, so my corporate career, from the outside looking in, was pretty successful. As I said to you beforehand in terms of positions and money and roles, all those sort of things, responsibility. When I got into private equity, it felt like a natural fit because I was the guy that would effectively go and fix up problems. So the private equity firms would put me into situations that they found quite difficult operationally. So I wasn't the guy who would sit back with the spreadsheet, the MBA from Harvard and all that. I wasn't that guy. I was let's go in there and see if the people in this business can actually make it work and create value.

Nick B:

And if they couldn't, for the assessment that I would give from being in there, then I would be the person who would deliver the change, the transformation. And I was remunerated by both my time spent doing that but also the amount of value I could create by any change that I made. So if a business was invested in by a private equity firm, the investment went backwards, so it wasn't worth as much as what they paid for it. I would be paid, if you like, on what I could do to get it back to zero, get it back to above water, and then any growth that could come from it. So I found my niche in that. I found my niche. I wouldn't call myself an entrepreneur then. But I was operating in a very, very precise way in a very, very interesting environment.

Warwick F:

Yeah. But an entrepreneurial spirit of okay, we need to make some changes here, get value for the shareholders, and yeah. You usually want it done fairly quickly. So you did that for a while, and it sounds like you were very good at it. Sort of the turnaround guy, which is very valued in business, that somebody can come around and make a big change quickly. Which obviously all investors want understandably.

Warwick F:

So you did that. But does that kind of lead into, I think what you call the teeth incident where a lot of bad things happened. It sounds like professionally things were going gangbusters, things were going really well, you were very good at what you did. You had almost like a Liam Neeson like, a particular special set of skills, right? That not everybody knows.

Nick B:

It's very much like that, yeah, it is.

Warwick F:

Then again I'm not trying to... I'm being flippant but I'm not... But you were seriously good at what you were doing and you were paid understandably, which is as it should be in a market economy, if you provide value you should share in the profits. That's what the whole market economy's built on, it makes total sense. So you were doing really well, and at one level you enjoyed what you were doing, but yet... So talk about how you were succeeding, you were doing tremendously, and that led into the teeth incident which led to a pivot in your life. So talk about the Crucible, the teeth and the pivot.

Nick B:

There's nothing worse than getting a conscience, right? It's a little bit like... probably the best way to describe it, if any listeners have seen Jerry Maguire where he wakes up one day and he writes this memorandum which gets him sacked. It was a bit like that, but there was a lot of things going on at the time.

Nick B:

So when you get up to the top table in some of these investment businesses, private equity firms, that sort of stuff, there are some certain decisions that are made that are very much about the money that's going to be created. And I was involved in some of those situations where the value that we were extracting from entrepreneurs who built good businesses was disproportionately favored towards the private equity firms and the investors.

Nick B:

So we would actively go out there and try and get deals. You could argue that's fair, what's that whole caveat emptor sort of thing. But you know, there's a point where... and I know this now more so because I've delved right into it. A lot of the people who build great businesses are good at doing that but they don't know how to manage what happens up in the echelons of exits and things like that.

Nick B:

And you see that all the time. You see people who sell businesses but they don't really get the value for it. And I was starting to develop this conscience around it, thinking do I really want to go and do this when I'm not effectively lying but the integrity levels of what I'm doing is not where I want to play.

Nick B:

Now, why I started to develop this conscience is partly because my dad had come back into my world, and I realized that as a successful entrepreneur the people that I was screwing over were people like him. And I'm thinking, oh god, this is not feeling very good. And I was starting to get a bit sick, right? I wasn't feeling very good, I was feeling very stressed. And then two things happened. Firstly, I went away on this trip to Vermont, and my dad flew there from Melbourne, I was living in the UK-

Warwick F:

I'm sorry, you flew to where?

Nick B:

To Vermont, Vermont in the US.

Warwick F:

Oh Vermont, I'm sorry, yeah.

Nick B:

Yeah. Your accent's better than mine. And I ran a race there. They've got a 100 mile race, I ran the 100 kilometers because I was obviously not strong enough to do the 100 mile. But anyway, so my dad turns up, we spend this amazing two weeks together. We leave, everything's great, he's hanging out with my daughter who's a couple of years old. And literally 12 months to the day later I'm in Melbourne by his bed and he dies that day. He gets very, very aggressive cancer, lots of things go wrong.

Nick B:

So I've gone from this sort of real connection, starting to question things, starting to build a relationship with my dad after 30 odd years. Realizing that actually he's a very successful entrepreneur, perhaps that's who I should have been, perhaps I made the wrong decision with my fitness business, perhaps I should have done... All these things are going on, right? Then he dies, suddenly.

Nick B:

I sort of come back from that, I come back to the UK and a couple weeks after that I wake up in the middle of the night, it's about 3:00 AM, and I'm in a lot of pain. My face is all swollen, the right side of my jaw is really throbbing. And I go into the bathroom and I look in the mirror and it's all red and swollen. It's like I've been punched in the face.

Nick B:

And what's happened is I have literally grit my teeth, clenched my teeth in my sleep through probably a culmination of so many things going on that I've partly explained, and I cracked the two molars. Like, not just cracked them, like they shattered, like there's actually teeth in my mouth. I could taste them.

Warwick F:

Oh my gosh.

Nick B:

And the first thing happens, obviously I'm awake, right? I take some pills. In the morning I go to the doctor as soon as I can get there, they send me to the dentist, they examine it. The dentist says, "I've only seen this happen before and it's usually people who are in very high stress situations." And I sort of spoke to my wife after this, after I got it sorted out and said, "I've got to change this. I can't do this anymore." And literally that was the moment that I did change it, and within the following days, weeks, months after that is when I started to do the stuff I'm doing now.

Gary S:

Before you ask the next question, Warwick, I want to, no pun intended about crooked teeth or broken teeth, I want to drill down into something you said, Nick, when you started maybe seven, eight minutes ago in this conversation. You just very matter of factly said that your life from the outside looking in was successful. What you've just described at the end of your story there was from the inside looking out, not so much so. And I think a lot of our listeners maybe find themselves in that same position, that success sometimes can be a crucible in and of itself if it doesn't provide those things that Warwick talks about, that lead to a life of significance. Would you say that was much or sort of as much a crucible as the teeth incident? Was what you realized that from the outside looking in, everything was successful, but from the other direction it wasn't?

Nick B:

I know this now because I've examined it more for myself and others. I know there's lots of millionaires who still cry to sleep. So they may look great. Like, I had everything, the cars, the houses, the whole piece. But I wasn't living to what I now understand were proper values that inspired me so that I could create wealth and impact. To your point, Gary, yes. At the extreme of it, a lot of people don't make decisions, they sit within areas where it's sort of not too bad, it's not bad enough that they make change. So it's not great, it's not bad, it's in the middle, and that's what I was. The outside in looked great but actually I wasn't feeling congruent.

Warwick F:

I mean, that's sort of fascinating because I think of that quote from Thoreau, you know, we can live lies of quiet discontent. You weren't sobbing on the floor but it just, it seemed like there was something nagging within you saying is this all there is? Or I'm just tired of coming in and getting rid of the previous regime. Maybe it's not about lying but maybe there was other choices that may have been better for a wider group of constituencies, employees, owners, community, but maybe not the shareholders and private equity. There's all sorts of issues but when you're on a track you tend to block out those other thoughts because they're uncomfortable, then you just focus, okay I've got a job here and caveat emptor, buyer beware, and all that.

Warwick F:

It just sounds like maybe it was with your dad dying, those thoughts, some people don't come to that pivot point but you did. Why do you think you hit that pivot when you probably know scores of people that were just like you, your age, your time of life, and they didn't pivot. They said, "Ah, I hear what you're saying, but it's the world we live in and let's just keep going." Why did you pivot when so many don't?

Nick B:

I'll answer that but before I do I want to say that most people never will. And that is the travesty for me, in different ways. It's the same as someone who's in the job they hate for years and then all of a sudden they realize that time is running out to make any changes.

Nick B:

I think, I was lucky because I had an inflection point. The inflection point, which however you think about these things, I believe these things serve you. So my dad coming back in and giving me a message at that point, which I did resist, he tried to get back into my life multiple times but there was a point where I thought you know what, let's just see where this goes.

Nick B:

That created the inflection point for me to... back to my point around things are either really good or really bad, it got to a point where things were so bad that I needed to change it. That's the inflection point. So any fear I had previously of maybe going out and building a business, building an empire, all the different things I'm sort of more involved in now, I was too scared to leave the comfort of six, seven figure money coming in all the time. Until the pain got so bad I needed to make that change.

Nick B:

And the pain was, realistically, health, am I showing up as a good example for my kids, am I that person? And if I answered those honestly, at the point of time I wasn't, and those things are important to me.

Warwick F:

So, I want to shift to what you do now, but just so that sometimes opposites, or I don't want to say darkness illuminates the light but maybe challenges illuminate the light. Just so that we can understand better what you do now, what was it about your life or what you were doing that was causing you so much anxiety within you, that was causing so much inner turmoil? Because it wasn't like you were doing anything illegal, you were just doing standard operating practice, perhaps, in your industry. So what's wrong with... it's the market economy but yet something was really troubling it. How would you summarize the elements that were troubling you so much, that caused you to shift?

Nick B:

There's no such thing in my mind as what I'd call standardized integrity. Like what you think and what I think are different things. We're not wrong, it's whatever feels comfortable. There were decisions... Nothing was illegal of course, but I would sit in rooms and the conversation would be just create fear and uncertainty in the mind of that entrepreneur so we can get a lower value. Say some stuff here which is kind of on the borders of being real just so we can create a wedge.

Nick B:

It's more unethical than what I would call illegal, but it's like really? And I think back... There was a point in time where I was so driven around achievement that I didn't care about that, right yeah, whatever. But once I met my dad and that period of time was over a few years, he came back and I started to question things differently. I thought, I'm now a dad myself, all that started to happen. Do I really want to be this person? And how important is it anyway? And so that was the thinking.

Nick B:

There are still people who are in that and they may be very happy but that's where their integrity is different, I don't judge it. But for me, at that point in time, I realized I needed to make a bigger contribution to make me feel more complete.

Warwick F:

But let's shift here to Scale Up Your Business. Last thing I'll say on this is part of it is not being aware of it, part of it is you don't want to face it, because if you admit what you really think you are and the mistakes you're making, like my crucible was awfully different, it was a lot of my own mistakes, so it's hard for me to ignore that $2.25 billion failure.

Warwick F:

But yeah, I mean it's painful to look at yourself, at your mistakes and things that you've done wrong. So sometimes it's lack of awareness, sometimes it's I don't want to be aware because if I'm aware of it it's going to be excruciatingly painful. So I'd rather ignorance is bliss kind of thing. So it's a bit of both, I think, for many.

Warwick F:

So talk about how you pivoted in a way that many successful private equity folks don't, because you're on this train doing super well and there's always a desire for the next deal because it's fun, it's super exciting, the thrill of the chase. But talk about what your whole vision is with Scale Up Your Business, you have a podcast and consultancy, professional partnerships you do through it. Talk about what your vision was for Scale Up Your Business as you started it.

Nick B:

Yeah, sure. One of the things that I realized was that I needed to be more externally focused as opposed to focusing on myself. Had a bit of coaching on that, actually. It was about, I had high achievement, low fulfillment. Why is that the case? Because I'm not making a difference enough.

Nick B:

So the podcast was the first thing I started. So I didn't quit the private equity firm straight away. I was making a certain amount of money that I didn't want my family to suffer by any change that I was going through or any midlife crisis, right? So I started the podcast and I did that because of two reasons. I wanted to help people and I wanted to have a platform to share all the experiences I had in growing and scaling businesses. But if I'm honest with you guys, it was also cathartic. It's a little bit like if you journal or you go to therapy, just by saying the things it helps you.

Nick B:

So if you go to the early episodes, a lot of it is me in a dark room just talking into a microphone. I didn't do interviews for a long time. It's me for an hour just talking and sharing all of the war stories, right? And putting a perspective on it. But what I had in the back of my mind, which kind of drove that as well, was what happens if I jumped over the other side of the table? So I'm not going to leave the world fully because it's all I know, it's what I've done, but what happens if I sit on the same side as the entrepreneur? What happens if when they're going to sell their business and the private equity firms come or the corporates come or whatever, I'm sitting next to them, with all the experiences I've had of being on that side.

Nick B:

So the whole thing was, what would that do? And I started to scratch that. You know, play with that. And I realized that there was a massive gap of no one really doing that. So I built consultancy education, all that sort of thing around how can you build a business so valuable that you create a life-changing exit? What does that look like? Which is the scale up piece. Then when you get to that process, the final piece, the pathway to a sale, what sort of support do you need to be able to do that effectively so that you are leveling the table stakes against some very impressive people that may be on the other side? So Scale Up Your Business became that. It came off the podcast but it became more of that because of that one decision.

Warwick F:

So it feels like, in a sense, it's not so much standing up for the little guy but relative to some of these big private equity firms it probably feels a little bit like a David and Goliath, you're standing up for folks, you're helping them get some tools, and maximize their value, trying to level the playing field a little bit. Because I guess you could see your dad in a lot of these folks. You want to stand up for people. Entrepreneurs, they may not be financial geniuses but they have a vision for their business.

Warwick F:

And yeah, I mean I don't want to say it was a ministry, I mean you got paid for all that but there was an altruistic, it wasn't... If it just was about money, there's probably better ways to make money than helping entrepreneurs through a podcast. I mean, you've done unbelievably well, I mean it's just staggering, but do you know what I mean? Clearly your motive for this pivot wasn't how am I going to maximize personal Nick Bradley shareholder value, right?

Nick B:

Well, it wasn't, but I separated the two things. So one of the things you learn from private equity is you learn how to buy businesses. That's the whole play. So I buy businesses now. I buy my own businesses. So I build wealth by building out that and I know how to roll businesses up and sell them to private equity, so I do that. So the coaching, consultancy side of what I do, I don't look at that as oh my god, I've got to have a seven figure business like that. Because I'm approaching it in a different way, it's been more successful. Because I can pick and choose who I work with. I don't treat it in the traditional business sense. I treat it like something that's more of an interest to me.

Warwick F:

Okay, okay, no, that makes total sense. So some of the things you say in Scale Up Your Business and some of the interviews you've done is... I'm certainly aware of this. You've often got entrepreneurs that get their whole identity in the business. They won't let go, they won't bring professional management, and you would know far more than I do, I'm not aware of the numbers, 10 million or whatever the number is. At a certain point they can't do it all, but they want to do it, they're just clinging to it and their identity's all wrapped up into it, they won't bring professional managers. They can still be the keeper of the vision but bring in a good chief executive.

Warwick F:

I know you've seen this a million times, but it sounds like you're trying to come alongside those folks and help them say, "Hey, you know, if you want to get to the next level or any level, you've got to let go." So is that kind of something part of what you do with entrepreneurs?

Nick B:

My quote is this, and I say this probably more times than I need to. I even said today with a client. I said, "You can only scale a business to the level of your identity." And so if you unpack that, what does that mean? It means how you think about things, what you want to create, your bigger vision. I talk about 20 year visions and things like that with people.

Nick B:

A lot of the time I'm working on the person's mindset before I'm getting involved in the skillset that's going to allow them to create what they're trying to create. And that's the piece. If you ask me why Scale Up Your Business the podcast has been successful, is it's really a podcast about mindset. It's who you need to be. Interwoven with how do you raise money, how do you do better sales and marketing. It's not really about the business side as much as it is about the mindset side.

Warwick F:

Right, because if you don't fix your mindset, the other stuff won't happen. You won't maximize profitability, shareholder value, or be able to sell your business at a level that you would want to. That's fascinating.

Gary S:

Hearing you say that, Nick, one of the things that strikes me as is that there's a lot of scale up things we can say that seem to apply here. Scale up your authenticity, if that's part of your mindset, scale up your authenticity is a way to keep yourself from that place where you're successful on the outside but not on the inside. Scale up your significance, to use a word that Warwick uses a lot in helping people find their path to a life of significance.

Gary S:

And then a word that you used when we asked you in a questionnaire that we give to all guests, if we can only ask you one question what would it be, and you said, "What's the impact or legacy you want to leave?" There's an aspect there too, right, of scale up your legacy. That's really kind of what happens when you change your mindset along the lines of what you're talking about, right?

Nick B:

Yeah. And one of the things, I have sort of a mantra that I created in some bizarre way, and it's be grateful, be brave, have faith and show up, right? And the whole idea, gratitude, like being happy with what you've got. For many times, for many years I was chasing something and I wasn't really appreciating what I had. And that was, again, one of the epiphanies.

Nick B:

The whole idea about being brave, I think so many people don't face their fears. They think things are going to be much worse if they take action on something before they've even done it, and that's just such a travesty for me. Faith is not necessarily a religious thing, it's partly around self-belief, and showing up is taking action. Again, a lot of people, they're going to do this, they should have done that. For me it's about how you hold yourself accountable with a certain amount of discipline to make things happen.

Nick B:

So to your point, Gary, I think scaling up is firstly, what do I need to be, who do I need to become, and how am I going to do that to be able to build a business, build a life, make an impact. And that's kind of where everything's culminated into now, which is something I wouldn't have foreseen when I started this journey a few years back.

Warwick F:

That's fascinating because it sounds like when you say have an impact, you're thinking more just return on equity. You're thinking of it in a much broader way, with your family, with your employees, with society. I mean, is that fair? Like when you say impact, it's in the holistic, complete sense of that word, right?

Nick B:

It is, and I think the reason I... the point around legacy, is I think what I found to be true is once someone ticks the box of, let's call it financial freedom. They don't have to earn money again if they don't choose to. Quite often, not always the case, but quite often they then think how can I make a bigger impact? How can I go and help people? It's almost like a Maslow's hierarchy thing. I can't remember how that goes.

Nick B:

But the point being is they then go and do something. And I think, and this is probably the bigger thing for me, is I think with everything that's going on in the world right now, you've got economic stuff going on, political things, there's a lot of things that just seem a bit weird to me. I think entrepreneurs have the ability to make more change.

Nick B:

They certainly have more power, certainly some of the multibillionaires have. They've got more money than some countries. So for me, making an impact has another moral and social responsibility behind it that comes from entrepreneurship.

Warwick F:

And that's the thing that's fascinating to me, is we've talked before. I'm not against success at all, but success in of itself is not going to satisfy, it's never enough. The people with 10 million want 100 million, the people with 100 million want a billion, the people with a billion want 10 billion. It's like oh yeah, have a nice house in the Hamptons or I don't know, somewhere in the country in England, but somebody else has that nice house in Monte-Carlo or I have a small jet, somebody else has a bigger jet.

Warwick F:

It sounds silly but you know those folks. People do think like that. It's never enough. There's always somebody else... Well, pretty much unless you're Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or whatever, there's always somebody else at another level. It's like gosh, I guess I'll probably never be at Jeff Bezos' level. Well, the answer is yeah, you're probably right, you probably never will be. But so what? It's okay. He's been successful, good on him, that's great. Fantastic. He has a great business model. More power to him.

Warwick F:

But if you have your whole sense of significance in being successful and the next quarterly earnings reports, it's not going to make you happy. But when you start thinking how can we use our business to provide a place where the talent of our employees is unleashed. We're serving the greater good of our community, shareholders, customers, we're making a global impact for good, whatever that might be.

Warwick F:

That starts scratching the itch of you know what, now I'm feeling somewhat joyful and fulfilled. I mean, I don't know if you can have it all but I think with the right mindset, maybe. It sounds a little optimistic. Can you have money and be happy? Yes. But you've got to think of the bigger game, the wider impact. I mean, have you found that with people you've worked with, that they're actually beginning to feel joyful and fulfilled, and they're successful too?

Nick B:

Yeah, it's absolutely possible. I mean, you've got to think of it from the perspective... I mentioned a couple of words during our conversation, I mentioned the word achievement and the word fulfillment, right? And this was something that I had to kind of learn myself, is that you can have high achievement and high fulfillment, but high achievement in its own right won't make you happy. So Porsches, Ferraris, big houses, private jets. Achieve, achieve, achieve. I'm growing. All that sort of stuff.

Nick B:

Unless you can give something back it doesn't help you. This was the big thing for me and I've seen it with others, is I just didn't understand that. The quote that changed everything for me was the Zig Ziglar quote, it's often overused, but if you help a person get what they want in life you'll have everything you want and need in life. Now, I'd never heard that until about three or four years ago and I thought, that's weird.

Nick B:

So if I help other people, I'm going to have everything I need? Yes. So what did I do? Honestly, this is how it happened, I launched the podcast. After that quote. Because I had no awareness beforehand.

Warwick F:

Wow. And I bet just with the people you've interviewed and what you've been doing on Scale Up Your Business, having an impact in a broader sense, I'm assuming that's been pretty immensely fulfilling, the stories you get to share and the messages and the feedback from people saying, "Nick, you've changed my life, you changed my business." It's not so much about ego but when you feel like you're doing something good for somebody, there's a feeling you get that's indescribable, that level of joy and fulfillment. I mean, has that been your journey?

Nick B:

It's been life-changing for me in terms of how I... I mean, I look different. I feel very, very different. I feel I have more freedom as a result of it, because I get every single week, I'll get a number of people send me a message, LinkedIn or personal email, telling me their story of how they've been listening to the podcast for a couple of years, they've implemented the stuff that I've suggested and they've got a successful business. And that's allowing them to do other things. And I go really? I still shock myself a bit but I get a lot of personal pride from my small way, if you like, of making a difference there.

Warwick F:

Well, you probably have people saying, "Not only is my business successful, my marriage is better, I'm giving back to the community, I'm happy in the general sense of the word." I'm sure you must have had those messages too, right?

Nick B:

Yeah, because I focus a lot on, as I said, personal development, personal development and scale up businesses. So a lot of it's like, what's your routine? What are you doing? How are you looking after your health? We do cover quite a broad range of things. So I've had people who have lost all this weight, feel better about themselves. It's not a health podcast, but it comes back to the point we've discussed a few times, identity, right? How do you want to be? And are you asking enough of yourself?

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean it sounds like you are now helping people live fulfilled lives. I mean as Gary said earlier, you're helping people scale up their business but their legacy, their life, their significance. I mean, to me, I've found if you want to be joyful and fulfilled, from our perspective you've got to live a life of significance, which is a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. That's the secret.

Warwick F:

And I'm not so much judging people, it's just objectively I don't know any human that's happy without doing that. You can complain about the creator or the universe, it just is what it is and if you're human you've got to live with it, which is you want to be happy and fulfilled, you've got to figure out more than the bank account and how you can help others. And you certainly have proven that.

Warwick F:

You think of some of the great robber barons in the 1800s in the US, there aren't too many that didn't learn that later in life. You've got Rockefeller has foundations, Vanderbilt, I mean Carnegie, Andrew Carnegie. Pretty much most of them, they kind of do whatever they could to be successful. Back then the laws weren't what it is now so there probably weren't as many laws to break, you just did whatever you could to win.

Warwick F:

And I'm sure most, if not all of them, were extremely cutthroat. But then at a certain point, I don't know if they grew a conscience but they said is this all there is? So they set up these massive foundations. I just find it fascinating that some of the wealthiest people in the history of the world in terms of the growth of the business, equity and all the rest, found that sense of gosh, there's got to be more to life than just money. I've got to give back somehow.

Warwick F:

And you could say well, it's to assuage a guilty conscience, maybe. Maybe. But I just find it fascinating that a lot of these folks at some point said there's more to life than just money, I want to have a bigger impact. Does that kind of make sense?

Nick B:

Yeah, but you answered this already by saying it's the human condition, right? This is the thing, like I don't think people who go out there and let's say I'm always going to play to win. You see this in sport, like there's a great documentary about Michael Jordan, right? The Last Dance where he's so driven, so driven to win, he's not a very nice person.

Nick B:

You look at the scoreboard, you look at the championships and you go, wow, but he seems quite conflicted to me. Right? So I think there's a point here where success on the outside, a lot of people look successful but unless they're doing the inner stuff, unless they're doing what we just talked about, a lot of them are just not happy. And ultimately, we want to be happy, right?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned sports. I think of, as you would know, all Australians tend to follow tennis, and at least about as many that play tennis as golf in Australia, which is not true in the US, at least not for men. But I think of Roger Federer, and he's somebody that equal holder of 20 majors, which will probably be broken by Djokovic pretty soon if not Nadal. But you just sense that he is internally very happy. He has a couple sets of twins and a wife that he loves, he has a foundation that helps a lot of folks in Africa. I mean, he seems genuinely at peace with himself. It's not about numbers, he just loves doing it. But yet, there are other things that he uses his fame for to help others. To me, it seems like he's living relatively speaking a balanced life a life of significance. Everybody thinks he's a super nice guy, and he seems to be at peace. Well, there's some lessons to be learned from him and others. That are doing it right in sports, if you will.

Nick B:

Absolutely. I mean, I had the privilege of meeting Hugh Jackman a few years ago, right? And he was pretty damn nice as well, I've got to say.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Nick B:

He's successful. So you don't have to be an ass, if I can use that word on your podcast, to be successful. And I think if I go back to the story I shared, I kind of thought you had to be. And I surrounded myself with like types. And it was only when I made some of the different choices that I realized... whether it's balance or whether it's just the fact that you can do things in different ways.

Nick B:

The key thing, just to do an underline of this, people's values are different. What I was doing just didn't work for me. And I had to change that. And I think that's one of the things I want to get across. If you've got that sort of feeling, you're listening to this and you've got that feeling in your stomach that I'm meant to do more, or what I'm doing now is not my purpose, or I need to change. The worst thing I think you can do is just not listen to that niggle, that voice.

Nick B:

Because my belief, is at some point if you don't, it's either going to do what happened to me, you might get sick, that might be a blessing for you because it might make you change. Or worse, you're going to get to the end and you're going to go, "Did I actually play all out? Did I play the game that was going to get me what was really going to make me happy?"

Warwick F:

I want listeners to hear what you just said because I think it's really so profound, is that I find at least within my coaching, I'm a certified executive coach, the issue is not so much people's values are all messed up. The issue is more often than not, they're not living a life of their own values. I mean, you from your admission kind of weren't.

Warwick F:

So it's like, if you live out of line with what you believe in your heart, that will cause you anxiety, poor health. That will take a toll. So it's not about making other people happy in the sense of living their values. If you live out of line with your own values, that is the path to poor health and misery. So that's really, in a sense...

Warwick F:

In another sense you could say you're fighting for people's souls. I mean, one other kind of beat on this is that there's this notion of well, is it success or significance. I would argue that if you want to be truly successful, even financially, you're leaving... If you're Mr. Competitive or Ms. Competitive, you're leaving stuff on the table if you don't look at this wider game.

Warwick F:

Because you could be more successful even financially successful than you are, if you think about, maybe to use an often used phrase, treasuring your employees. You know, with your customers, it's like rather than trying to say well, you should have read the fine print in the contract. Customers aren't going to like that. You may be quote unquote, "Legally fine" but they'll go elsewhere.

Warwick F:

If you want to create long-term profitability, if you are seen as somebody who cares about their employees, their customers, their world, their community, all things being equal, who would you rather work with? The guy or the woman who has that more altruistic look on life or somebody else? Again, I'm an idealist at heart, but I think if anything, you won't be less successful doing what you're advocating about Scale Up Your Business, scale up your legacy if you will, scale up your significance.

Warwick F:

If anything, I think you could be as if not even more successful. So it's not an either/or choice. It's not like living your values means you're going to be less successful in the long-term. I don't know, did that make any kind of sense? I know I'm a little idealistic here.

Nick B:

People are scared, I think, of being vulnerable. So the point is if you do some deeper work on actually what you do value, if you really understand what that means and why your values are what they are... Because for me, it was explained to me, and I believe this to be true as well, is your values aren't just a couple of words that you put on a piece of paper, like integrity, honesty. It's not that, it's more deep seated than that. And it was expressed to me that sometimes your voids become your values. The things that you missed out on growing up or whatever that weren't around you, they became the things you value the most.

Nick B:

So once you understand those things, they also then help you to understand what motivates you. And then once you have more self-awareness, you then I think have more completeness. So I'm happy being vulnerable about what I've done and what I'm... I said before we pressed record, you can ask me anything, I'm not going to... I'm going to answer it. Because I've done the work to understand what makes me who I am. And a lot of people have never done that, therefore they don't lean into it, and therefore they're too scared to lean into it in case it unpacks something uncomfortable. But sometimes you've got to go there.

Gary S:

That bell that you heard go off wasn't because Nick said ass, ass is perfectly okay to say on the show, no, that's perfectly okay. The bell was the captain announcing that it's about time to land the plane, so fasten your seatbelts and get ready for landing. But before we do land the plane, Nick, I would be remiss if I did not give you the chance to let listeners know where they can find the Scale Up Your Business podcast and where they can learn more about your consultancy work.

Nick B:

Yeah, sure. Well, actually you know what's quite interesting, in two days' time. I know people will listen to this in a dimension of time, so what does that mean. Scale Up Your Business is now called Scale Up with Nick Bradley. For two reasons, partly because the guests that I've got lined up to come on the show were not just business magnates or things like that. I've got some interesting people from the world of sport coming on and all sorts. So we're talking a little bit more about scaling up more generally. But yeah, you can find that on Spotify, iTunes. You can look for my somewhat ugly face on the front of it. That's cool, look me up there.

Nick B:

Then yeah, if people want to kind of... the coaching and consultancy we do is at Scale Up Your Business, it's suyb, so Scale Up Your Business, .global. And you can check us out there.

Warwick F:

Wow, well thank you so much Nick. I mean, as we kind of close, when you're thinking... it's interesting you're changing your name to Scale Up. What would be a message of hope, encouragement that you would have for folks that are listening to you, maybe business owners, maybe people in general. What would be a message of hope that you would offer?

Nick B:

I said this earlier that I feel very, very lucky and a huge amount of gratitude that I had my dad come back, him passing away also and then the teeth thing, all of that happening in... I mean, that all happened in my sort of late 30s, early 40s, around that time. So I had the message. And had I have not done that, had that not have happened, I probably would have stayed in my lane.

Nick B:

So my message to people is, as I said previously, if you're doing something you hate, or you're doing something that doesn't feel aligned with what you really want to be doing, you owe it to yourself and to others to explore that. That doesn't mean the romantic ideal of burning the boats, giving up everything, I'm going to quit my job tomorrow and go and do this new venture. It doesn't mean that, okay?

Nick B:

It means, creating the platform, the space to explore. Because if you don't do that, we've said before, I think you could then regret but what I will also say from someone who's jumped to the other side is it's really good on the other side. So any fear that you have to do that is absolutely worth pushing through to get to something which potentially could change the whole game, the whole experience for you.

Gary S:

I have been in communications business long enough to know when the last word's been spoken on a subject, and Nick has just spoken. Listener, thank you for spending this time with us on Beyond the Crucible. That's still the name of the show, we're not changing it in the near future we don't think. But who knows, never say never.

Gary S:

And until the next time, though, we are together, we ask that you remember this, and you heard it on display in our conversation with Nick Bradley today. Your crucibles, we realize, we know are painful. They are traumatic. They're difficult to move beyond. But they're not the end of your story. And that's what this show is all about. And I hope that's what you glean from this conversation with Nick. His teeth incident, as he calls it, despite all of our chuckles at the name was painful but it wasn't the end of his story. In fact, it was the start of a new chapter in his story. And your crucible can be the start of a new chapter in your story as well. And it can be the best chapter in your story, as it has been for Nick, because where it leads you to, if you learn the lessons of that crucible, is to a life of significance.

David Richman hasn’t just taken a day to walk in others’ shoes. He’s spent hours, and miles, and months, getting to know the stories, the fears, the hopes and the lessons learned from men and women whose lives have been touched by the ravages of cancer. In his book, CYCLE OF LIVES, he chronicles his interviews with 15 people whose crucible encounters with cancer vary from patient, to doctor, to loved ones. In each interaction he has a singular goal: truly providing them a safe space to talk about the roiling emotions they experience in the aftermath of diagnosis. What he’s learned is that deep meaning and emotional healing can be born in those moments of vulnerability – even if physical healing isn’t part of the equation.

To learn more about David Richman and to buy CYCLE OF LIVES (all proceeds go to cancer charities), visit www.cycleoflives.org

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

David R:

You just never know what people are going through or what they have gone through. And to hear it, to say that, sounds trite, but to really get deep into it ... when you say, "Take a day to walk in somebody else's shoes, and then you really understand them," we never do that. And really what people go through, what each of us have gone through or have dealt with in our lives is quite fascinating, inspiring, evocative, sometimes wonderful, sometimes terribly tragic. And we just don't know. And I think that that was an awakening for me at such a deep level, going through this process of this book, that it really made an impact on my life.

Gary S:

David Richman hasn't just taken a day to walk in other shoes. He's spent hours and miles and months getting to know the stories, the fears, the hopes, and the lessons learned from men and women whose lives have been touched by the ravages of cancer.

Gary S:

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week, Warwick and I talked to Richman about his book, cycle of lives, which chronicles his interviews with 15 people whose crucible encounters with cancer vary from patient to doctor to loved ones.

Gary S:

In each interaction, he has a singular goal, truly providing them a safe space to talk about the roiling emotions they experience in the aftermath of diagnosis. What he's learned, he explains, is that deep meaning and emotional healing can be born in those moments of vulnerability, even if physical healing isn't part of the equation.

Warwick F:

Well, David, thank you so much for being here and I'm really looking forward to getting into your book, Cycle of Lives, in which you talk about 15 people who've had cancer and just their stories, which is just incredible.

Warwick F:

And then I love the title of your previous book, Winning in the Middle of the Pack: Realizing True Success in Business and in Life, because we talk a lot about significance and success and you can have both, but success doesn't always mean significance. Different concepts. So I love that.

Warwick F:

Before we get into your book, I'd love to hear just a bit about the backstory that led you to write the book, because I think you grew up in Southern California, Los Angeles, from what I understand, and you have an interesting intro in saying being a smoker, overweight, sedentary and all. But you're also a finance guy. And one of the other phrases I love in your bio is that you realized you enjoy managing people more than money. Not all finance guys are like that. It's like, oh, people are kind of annoying, but you got to have people if you're going to have clients, right? But it's all about making money. But so talk a bit about your background as sort of a bit of a backdrop for your book.

David R:

Oh, sure. I'm going to keep it short, Warwick, and I appreciate it. And thank you for that intro, Gary. Very nice.

David R:

So yeah, my background's kind of interesting. I was so intrigued to talk to you because of this idea of crucible moments, and I've had quite a few of those. And not like a normal step from one stone to the next kind of path ... not that everybody does, maybe even most people don't ... but mine seems a little crazy. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley area of California.

Gary S:

That's crazy of and by itself. I used to live there, so that is crazy of and by itself.

David R:

That's crazy of and by itself, yeah. I had a weird dynamic growing up. My parents were nearly 40 years difference in age, so my father was entirely too old to have kids. My mom was entirely too young to have kids. Neither one really wanted kids at that point in their lives. And so my sister and I kind of grew up quite alone and self-sufficient, which helped me when I embarked on the world at 18 to rely on that self-sufficience as bad decisions and bad luck gave me a lot of challenges and obstacles to overcome.

David R:

I just went kind of from one job to the next, but always found myself in a management role. And that's where you mentioned that I like managing people more than money. I feel like there's not ... there's a lot of people that can manage money, maybe not all of them well, but there's a lot of people. But there's very few people that can manage people, and I really, really enjoy that. And almost everything in my life, including my writing, has gotten me to the point where I really love deeply connecting, being inspired by, and helping to inspire others through life experience, through difficulties, to areas that will better enlighten them, set them on a more authentic life path, those type of things. So I know that's a little out there, a little ethereal, but that's kind of where my life's path has taken me.

Warwick F:

So why finance? And how did that notion of focusing on people more than money, how did that kind of come through in the world of finance? Because not everybody that's a people person which you obviously are thinks, "Oh, let me go into finance, because if you love people you go into finance."

David R:

Yeah. It's a good question. And I kind of have this polymath life where I just cannot seem to focus on one thing. I mean, I feel like I'm really good at a lot of different things. I'm not great at anything. And when I manage people's money, I feel like I needed to be great at it, and I wasn't. I was good at it. I feel like I'm only great at a few things, but I love doing a ton of different things. So that's probably what brought me into finance, is just the intrigue, the math, the difficulty of it, the science, the art of it. It's interacting with people, but also dealing with spreadsheets. I just love that. But I really found that my skills were in dealing with people more than in dealing with the money.

Warwick F:

So you've been in finance for obviously a lot of years, and you could have kept doing that, but it seems like your life took a bit of a turn from just focusing on finance. So I'm guessing that was probably just the passing of your sister. Was that ... I mean, what was the key moment that shifted you from just being a finance guy to writing now two books?

David R:

Yeah. So I was always a writer in the background, but I'd never authored any books. Actually, I did author a couple of books in the finance world and one in endurance athletics before these two books came. But really it wasn't a focus. What happened Warwick is I was in the middle of a really difficult time in my life. I had had great success at work, but I was really not feeling entirely fulfilled. I was in a terrible personal situation. I had four year old twins and I was married to an abusive alcoholic. I was terribly overweight. I was a smoker. I just wasn't enjoying life and found myself at a really dark place. And I had to escape my personal situation for my safety and for my kids' safety, and I did.

David R:

And kind of in that same window, a very short window of time, where I said, "Okay, man, I got to start taking charge of my life and becoming who I want to be on purpose," I got a call for my sister who said, "Hey, I've got terminal brain cancer." And so it was this kind of weird dichotomy where I finally ... it was in my 30s, late 30s, I finally decided that I've got to take charge of my life and make a path towards where I wanted to go and who I wanted to be, and meanwhile, my sister, who I was super close to, at that same moment in time, had to decide how she was going to navigate a path that would lead to her eventual and untimely death.

David R:

So it was this weird kind of dichotomy and it really just ... seeing what she was going to have to go through with family, young kids, a great career, a wonderful life, that was ... she now was on a journey to the end of that. I'm on a journey to what I'm think is the beginning of my life, so those kind of things more, I don't know, accentuated the urgency of trying to live on purpose. And that's kind of where most of the changes came from, if that makes sense.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, I want to dwell on this a bit, because we talk a lot in Crucible Leadership about being in the bottom of the pit, trying not to let your worst day define you. And we've had, I don't know, 70, 75 guests, I guess, on the podcast. And there's typically this moment of choice. It could be you might be abused. Maybe ... we've had paraplegics, quadriplegics, people have lost businesses, and often just really, really tough challenges ... an adverse health diagnosis ... and you're faced with this choice. Either you can be angry and bitter, and you have a lot of reasons to be angry and bitter. Whether you're a person of faith or not, whether it's God, the universe, fate, however you ... whatever paradigm it is, it could be like really ...

Warwick F:

I mean, my kids and family situation is one thing. But then my sister who I love ... I mean, what is the deal here? I mean, one would be horrific. Both is ... for many that say, "You know what? I'm checking out. I'm angry, I'm bitter, I'm going to be self destructive to myself or to others." And you're faced with a choice. Either you can spiral down to anger and self pity, which I have to say, would be completely understandable. I'm not judging you or anybody. I mean, I can't imagine what that would be like, what you went through.

Warwick F:

But yet as pretty much most of the folks or all the people on our podcast, they've made a different choice. And it just always amazes me. How can you make that other choice? You chose clearly not to be angry and bitter and to move forward. What led you to make that choice that many don't? Many, sadly, and I'm sure you know folks, they just stay angry and bitter at themselves, at the world. How did you choose a path that wasn't anger and bitterness?

David R:

It's a great question. It takes a little bit of unwinding on the answer, because for me, I kind of have always had an ... not hopeful ... I'm not very hopeful about things in those type of situations, because you can get swallowed up by the turmoil and the trauma and the misery and the difficulty. But I have been always in the background optimistic. And that's different, right? It's not event-driven. It's just kind of a thing that just, okay, it's going to work out.

David R:

Well, sometimes you have to really take an extra step to make it work out. And for me, that was being honest with myself and relying on myself in a different way. And where that came from is ... and I remember it vividly ... I was only a week or so out of that very bad situation. My kids were asleep in the other room. And I stood in front of a mirror in the bathroom and not quite in tears, but almost, and I just was looking in the mirror going like, "Who do you want to be?" Like, "Okay, you're this and you're that for this person. You're a good employee. You're a good boss. You're a good this. You're a good ... "

David R:

I nailed all the things that I am, but none of those things was who I wanted to be. And I just kept saying, "Who do you want to be? Who do you want to be? Who are you?" And I think that that desire to find out rather than to wallow in the single event stuff was what drove me, and then I wanted to find out. And everything I did at that point, from that point forward, was to find out the answer to that question, is who am I, and who do I want to be? What do I want to do?

Warwick F:

I mean, that's fascinating, because I think somewhere you talk about you can focus on making others happy and it's all about ... I mean, serving others is different than, I'm going to live in light of other people's expectations. I mean, as listeners would know, in my story, growing up at a 150 year old family media business in Australia, 2.25 billion dollar takeover and all, which ended up failing, it was all about living in light of my ancestors' dreams. It was nothing to do with what I want to do. It was making my ancestors happy and parents and whoever.

Warwick F:

So yeah, I had to unlearn. It's like, it's okay to think about what do I want in life and what do I want to contribute to life? Right? You can still serve others, but out of your own reasons, your own motivations. So that took me a long time to unlearn, but I'm hearing you.

Warwick F:

So your sister passes away and I believe you said as she was ... before she passed that somehow you wanted to use her story to help others, which led to ... I mean, you're a sort of ultra marathoner type. I think I've got here, competed in 50 triathlons and 15 Ironmans and races in 5,000 mile bike ride from California to New York, which is to me crazy stuff. Not crazy in a bad sense, but crazy as in most of us would never do that.

Gary S:

On my Fitbit, for instance, they give me badges every time you achieve a new milestone. So my badge I've got for steps distance so far is through the center of the earth. But that's over nine years. You did that on a weekend or something when you took that bike ride that you took. So I'm like, oh my gosh, you're like Forrest Gump, who just ran from one coast to the other and then turned around and just ran back.

Warwick F:

Yeah. It's unbelievable. So just talk about your sister passing and just ... you've obviously, amongst other things, a passion for triathlons and bike rides, and which led to the books. So talk about just those different strings, if you will, how they worked together.

David R:

Yeah, sure. First of all, I will say that nothing of significance ... and you had to go through a very, very significant change ... it doesn't happen because you decide to turn left one day instead of turning right and become somebody. It takes a lot of relearning, a lot of forgiveness, a lot of understanding, a lot ... it's scary, because you're going down new alleys and you're discovering new things. Significant change happens step by step by step. Right?

David R:

And I have a very ... let me just tell you a super quick story. I have a story that happened to me on one of my endurance events ... you'll appreciate this, Gary ... That became an analogy for change and significant change.

David R:

So I'm doing an 85 mile roller blade race, if you can imagine that. Who races 85 miles?

Gary S:

I can't, but I'm sure it's great.

David R:

It's completely stupid. And it's through the hills, the gentle rolling hills of Georgia, which there's nothing gentle about the rolling hills of Georgia. I have no business being on roller blades alone, let alone on an 85 mile race. I've never done anything like that.

David R:

And to make a long story short, I'm about 30 miles in and I'm heading up this hill that I cannot get up. It's just impossible. And I'm at the end of my rope. I'm a few hours in. I'm pouring sweat out of me. I was still overweight. I was still a smoker. And I looked down and I see my sweat had created this little line in front of me. And I was perpendicular to the hill, because otherwise I would've gone back down.

David R:

And I said to myself, "Okay, David, you can either turn around and just go home and call it a day, and there you would've known everything about yourself and everything you're capable of doing. Or you can just figure out a way to make one ... go past ... one step past that line, one little roll. You get one leg across that line and you discover something new. And every you take another step, you're going to learn something new and something new and something new."

David R:

And that's where I feel like that significant change ... or how do you go from smoking to doing a million triathlons and Ironmans and a 5,000? You do it by taking one little step and learning something new about yourself. And that's the way that you invent yourself. The way you rewire your mind is not to take on something that's impossible. You can't just one day not be affected by just a seriously traumatic event. You got to take it step by step. Find out something just a little bit new about yourself and then build on that and build on that.

David R:

And that was kind of like a parody for how I think about things, right? That's an analogy for how my brain works, is that I don't ever want to know the answer. I don't want to reach the line. I don't want to reach a limit. I don't want to think I know everything, because if I do, I might as well just pack it up and go home, because life's done. Right? I got to keep finding out what's past that line.

David R:

And that brought me to understanding or trying to understand what people were going through on an emotional level when it came to their cancer. And not just ... guys, not just people that were going through cancer, but caregivers, doctors, loved ones, survivors, those type, because they were really good about dealing with the tasks of their cancer. But when it came to the emotion of cancer, they had all hit that line, right? They didn't know where to go. They didn't know what lay beyond that line, because most people don't know how to deal with the emotional side of trauma.

David R:

And you guys know this. You talk to people about this all the time. It's the emotional side of it that's so difficult. And so I embarked on this project of saying, "How can I shed a light on what people have gone through or what they're going through and limiters or the things that have enhanced their ability to be able to navigate the emotional side?"

David R:

And the reason I wanted to do that, to wrap this very long answer up, is because I felt like if I could shine light on really traumatic, evocative, inspiring stories of people who had dealt with, or at times not dealt with, the emotional side of this, and we could really, really understand and bond with them in an authentic, heart-centered, deep, authentic way, then we might be better equipped to be able to help people in our lives that are going through difficult times because we might have a better understanding of what they're going through. Long answer, but that's where it is.

Gary S:

It's a great answer. And Warwick, before we pivot, and I know that you want to ask more about that, because that sets up the next part of the story, I want to back up just a couple of feet. I guess in your world, David, I want to back up a few hundred feet since you're used to going a lot longer than a few feet. But Warwick says all the time ... he uses the phrase, "one small step" a lot. And I think we have ... we think about it only as one small step because biting it off more than that would be too much emotionally to do.

Gary S:

I think what you said and what I heard is that it's also important not to go more than one small step because you don't want to bite off too much that you can't chew. You don't want to go from point A to point Z because that's a less chance of success, a less chance of completing it than if you just take that step that you took across that line of sweat, which I think is really important for listeners to know.

Gary S:

And it's fascinating this is how these things work. Today, I'm writing a blog for Crucible Leadership's website about the lessons that you can learn about crucibles from the movie Die Hard. It's going to be out by the time you hear this, listener. It'll be on crucibleleadership.com. But one of the points I make, and I just wrote this 10 minutes before I got on this call, is that one of the things that John McClane, Bruce Willis in that movie does, he keeps running into brick wall after brick wall after brick wall after brick wall, but he doesn't try to get out of it all at once. He just wants to survive crucible A and then move on to crucible B. That's his perspective. That's what helps him win in the end.

Gary S:

And I think what you're saying for you, what helped you at that moment of truth with the line of sweat on the ground was just taking that one small step and not thinking too big, but thinking big in terms of effort, in terms of emotion, but not in terms of activity of what you had to do. I think that's a critical point for listeners to understand as we move forward.

David R:

Gary, you're right. Let me add one thing to that. That step by step thing, and I love that idea of one little step at a time, is wrapped inside of what I think is a huge goal. So what I'm saying is I think you can set a goal that goes from A to Z, a purpose that goes from A to Z. Right? I feel like we don't often challenge ourselves to a difficult enough level to really make a meaningful difference in our lives. But when you go after something that is really difficult, overcoming severe trauma, accomplishing a major business or personal goal, you kind of got to go step by step, because it's impossible. It's impossible to jump from A to Z. Now I like the goal A to Z, but you got to go one little step at a time in order to get there.

Gary S:

Yeah. And the only way Bruce Willis could save Nakatomi Plaza was surviving one incident at a time.

Warwick F:

Yeah, no, it's such a great point. And yeah, just to dwell on this one more moment, because it is critical ... everybody we've spoken to on the podcast, they've just had notion of, okay, what's one small step? And really kind of the way I think of it, whether it's ... I have a book that came out in October, this fall of 2021, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. I mean, it took years to write, but it's like, okay, what's the next step? What's the next step I can do? And be disciplined about yes, I wanted to get it published and have as many people as possible read it, but release the consequences of the outcome. I can't control the outcome. I can't control how many people read it. I can't control how many people's lives are touched or not touched. But what's one positive step forward that I can make today?

Warwick F:

Focus on the ... I mean every good athlete I've ever read about has said this. They focus on the process. What training do I need to do today? What can I do today to make me a better athlete, a better quarterback, a better tennis player, a better whoever? I'm from Australia, so cricket's real big in Australia and the Ashes cricket series between Australia and England is going on right now.

Warwick F:

So there's all sorts of analogies. But elite athletes, they always focus on the process. Every interview with an elite athlete, they'll always say that, right? I'm sure it's true in people who ... ultra marathoners. What's the process? What's one ... so that way of thinking, it cannot be stated too often. And certainly if today is your worst day, what's one small positive baby step that you can do? So it doesn't always change the outcome of a health diagnosis, but maybe it can change ... we can't always control that, but people that we've spoken to have come from hugely challenging physical challenges. They may not ... if they're quadriplegic, that likely won't change. After the first few months, you pretty much know where you are, but how can I change the way I think? That's something you can control.

Warwick F:

So let's talk a bit about your book, Cycle of Lives, because it's fascinating that people are sadly all too familiar with cancer, physical tragedies. They know from their friends, their family. But you're right. People don't talk about the emotional side, the how do you ... what are those stories? How do you deal with that? It's it just seems like people don't talk about that for some reason.

David R:

They don't. And that's not just ... I'm not just saying that. Every person that I ran into had to some level, if not an entire complete diving into this idea of, yeah, I don't know how to deal with the emotional side of it. And that is literally every single person that I spoke to. And I witnessed it as well. My sister and I were able to talk about things on an emotional level, which which only strengthened my idea that that's very much the exception. And I'm not saying that nobody knows how to deal with it, but most people don't.

David R:

I spoke to a woman who was an oncologist at NYU, Perlmutter Cancer Institute, 40 years as an oncologist dealing in female and male breast cancer. And when I sat down and I said to her ... I said, "Hey doc, can I ask you questions that you don't talk to people about?" She goes, "I don't talk to anybody about this stuff. Not my husband, because we don't want to bring each other down. Not my peers, because I'm a woman doctor. I can't show weakness. Not my friends, because we're worried about going to a museum or going on a hike." She goes, "I certainly can't talk to my patients about the emotional side of it." But she had a very dynamic, wonderful story to get out about her emotional journey.

David R:

She just had never talked about it with anybody. And so that was an example of just ... it was every single person I spoke to had had that realization that they didn't know how to talk or even process the emotional side of it. And when I saw that, and I saw it watching my sister pass away and the people that I witnessed during a bunch of different events I did and talking to doctors and all of this, I just said, "I got to figure it out."

David R:

So when I put the Cycle of Lives project outline together, I just said, I want to grab as many different types of people, different age, different types of cancer, different points in their life, different traumas, addiction, abuse, abandonment, making bad decisions, being dealt a bad hand in life, you name it. How did all of these traumas affect them? Whether they were a one and done cancer, or they had lived their whole life with cancer or had given their whole life to treating people with cancer or whatever, so that when we say something trite like, "Oh, you never know what people have gone through," that we really start to get some understanding. And people like you that write books like you have, the lessons that you want to give are not in a preachy, prescriptive way. They're in a, "Hey, I really lived this. I really went through this. This is the ways in which I was enlightened by these really true, authentic experiences, and I'm just going to try to give you some insight into it so that you can take whatever you can from it."

David R:

And that's what I wanted to write these books for, because we both ... well, we all know, that oh, one step at a time doesn't really mean anything until you're not able to take a step. And then finally, when you're able to take a step, you can take one step at a time. Right? And so I have a tremendous number of lessons learned from these peoples' stories that kind of overcome that little ... trite sayings that we never want to listen to.

Warwick F:

So tell us a bit about ... I mean, there's probably individual lessons, but what are some of the themes ... and just for listeners to know, as you interviewed these 15 people, it was in the context of a bike ride across the country in a fairly short period of time, wasn't it?

David R:

Well, the bike ride was in the short period of time. So the bike ride actually came as a bit of a joke. Like I ... okay, you got the whole double meaning of Cycle of Lives, but is that I said, if we're all connected by emotion, which I think we are, and we're all connected by stories ... ever since before man could talk, we were drawing stories. So when I put these together, I said, "Ah, what better way to connect us than to get on my bike ride and kind of be the thread that connects the stories?"

David R:

And so I had talked to the people in the book, and many that didn't make the book, for a couple years. So to get super deep, I was talking to people for dozens, if not hundreds of hours in a few different places to really get super, super deep into their stories so that I could tell them in an authentic, real way, so that we would be able to really take something from their experiences. The bike ride kind of came as an afterthought. I did it in a very short period of time, yes, 4,700 miles in 45 days. A million wonderful stories along the way, but my bike ride was the thread that tied those stories together.

Warwick F:

So yeah. So what are some of the key learnings that you have? Maybe some commonalities, maybe not with all 15, but with a number of them, what are some of the key learnings that you learned from these incredible people that you write about?

David R:

Well, there's two things that I learned, one I'll tell you and ask you to believe, the listener to believe, that even though it's trite, there's so much more behind it, and that is, you just never know what people are going through or what they have gone through.

David R:

And to hear it, to say that, sounds trite, but to really get deep into it ... when you say, "Take a day to walk in somebody else's shoes, and then you really understand them," we never do that. And really what people go through, what each of us have gone through or have dealt with in our lives is quite fascinating, inspiring, evocative, sometimes wonderful, sometimes terribly tragic. And we just don't know. And I think that that was an awakening for me at such a deep level, going through this process of this book, that it really made an impact on my life.

David R:

I'd say the second thing that I learned is that if you do give yourself a chance to really connect with somebody authentically, you can take something from their story, from their experiences, and it will be carried with you as a very, very light, but as a weight, maybe a positive weight. But it'll be carried with you for life. And I'll give you a super quick story if I could guys.

David R:

So you said something earlier, right? Just take one, one step, right? Just figure out a way to take one step. So when I started talking to this woman, if you would've told me ... one of the people in the book ... if you would've told me, "Hey, David, you know what the key to life is? The key to life is just figure out a way to get your feet off the bed, onto the ground, stand up, make your bed, and go about your day. That's how you get through life," I would've maybe punched you in the jaw. Like don't tell me something stupid. I mean, really? That's just stupid.

David R:

So when I talked to Patricia and when I got into her story ... I'm not going to go super long into the story. But when I got into her story, it was absolutely mind-boggling, amazing the things that she had gone through. Not only did she wonderfully find somebody who would love her and that she loved and went through her adult life together, which is a hard thing to do, but it was in the backdrop of her having five different cancers over a 35 year period. Basically her oncologist was like, "Dude, there's nothing left to cut out. So I can't ... you've been at the practice more longer than I have. You're done. Next time you get cancer you're done." Five different cancers. She took care of her dad who was dying of cancer while she was going through chemo herself. I mean, this woman has been through the ringer.

David R:

But that wasn't really her story, guys. Her story was all of that, this finding love and learning how to love and be loved and dealing with a lifetime's worth of cancer and just a tremendous trauma, is that she had spent years trying to escape an insanely brutal, abusive relationship where she was beat up if he thought she looked at somebody. She had to reinvent herself. I mean, it was the most horrible thing anybody could ever go through. And it was just terrible.

David R:

And she told me, and I said to her ... one day I go, "Patricia, how in the world did you ever get through life? I mean, I can't even imagine the amount of trauma and difficulty you got through." And she said, "Well, David, listen. I escaped a certain death when I left that relationship and I escaped death at least five times through my cancers." She said, "The very first day of freedom I had from that relationship, I told myself, 'Every single day, I'm going to get up out of bed and I'm going to put my feet on the ground and I'm going to make my bed and I'm going to go about my day.'"

David R:

And she said, "Sometimes when I went through chemo, that meant as soon as I made my bed, I laid down again because I didn't have the energy to do it. But that's how I get through every day, is I'm optimistic that I'm going to be able to go about my day." And I'm like, "Whoa, that to me is a lesson." So now if I say or I hear somebody say, "Hey, just put your feet on the ground and figure out a way to get through the day," there might be so much more behind that. And now that I know her story, that makes an impact on me. And when I'm not feeling good, I go, "Get your feet on the ground and go about your day."

Warwick F:

Yeah. I think there's that optimistic mindset that really links everybody that's come out the other side of tragedy, that's come out the other side of the pit, is it's one small step, but it's like, I'm going to move forward in a positive way. I'm not going to be angry. I'm not going to be bitter. I don't know one person has gone through tragedy and come out the other side who's angry and bitter. I've not met that person, probably because it's not possible. Anger and bitterness, it's like poison. It will stop you moving forward.

Warwick F:

But I mean, you said so much there that it's ... we know very little about people. You meet somebody at a conference or a meeting, church, wherever you congregate ... and especially in the digital world where it's sound bites, you say, "Hey, my name's Warwick, who are you?" And you might talk about husband, wife, kids, job, but you're not going to say, "So who are you?" "Oh, I'm Warwick. I grew up in 150 year old newspaper business and I lost it at age 30, a billion dollar thing, and it took me most of the 90s to recover. And I'm in a better place now, but it was pretty horrific letting down everybody in my family. That's who I am. And how about you?"

Warwick F:

Like you, David, could say, "Well yeah, I've had a challenging family, marriage. I wanted to save my kids. My sister died of cancer. And I just wanted to really focus on telling people's stories who've gone through tragedy. Hey, that's me David", or some version of that. But who does that as an intro? Wouldn't that be helpful? Is if when they ask you who are you, you just calmly give a couple minute elevator speech, if you will, of who you really are? But we don't do that in our culture.

David R:

We don't do that in our culture. And one of the things that we talked about before is what are some of these limiters? And you know what? People are vulnerable. And one of the things that was a common factor, not in everybody, but in a lot of people I spoke to, was this fear of abandonment, or they had been abandoned or they self isolated, or they were forced to isolate.

David R:

And so what you're not going to do is you're not going to have that conversation with somebody that you don't feel safe with. And who feels safe with a stranger? Who feels even safe around people that know us? Because they might not know us like that. And so it takes a fair amount of strength and understanding that vulnerability is okay, that if you're safe to talk to somebody about the real you, that's okay.

David R:

I had lunch ... sorry to tell you this story, but it's been weighing on me for a couple of days. I had lunch earlier this week with a gentleman. He's 73 years old. He's going through a life change. He's ridiculously successful. And he read my Winning in the Middle of the Pack book and he went, "Holy crap, David." He goes, "You talk about this thing of caring about what you want in life. I've led my entire life knowing that I was supposed to be successful because that's what my family told me." He goes, "And I don't think I've done that. And now I've got to worry about myself? I've never done that in my life before." And it's like, he would've never told me that if he didn't feel safe, right? But how wonderful to know that I can know him at that deeper level now.

David R:

And so that's what we do when we write books or we tell stories or you guys interview wonderful people on your podcast, is you want to unpack it. You want to create this safe space to get to the real heart of the matter.

Warwick F:

Yeah. What you're saying I think I want listeners to really hear, because I've had a number of folks on our podcast that have said, "Thank you, Warwick, you create a safe place where we can feel heard," which means everything to me. But part of the reason for that is, and it's really the whole brand, the whole message, if you will, is I'm very open about my own tragedy, if you will. It's not a physical tragedy. And it's funny. Early on, I would almost apologize for what I went through, because it's not cancer. And I remember ... I know you're originally from California ... we had somebody that was from Southern California, Navy Seal, that was paralyzed in a parachuting training accident. He was an ultra ... as fit and as good a Seal ... his dad was a Seal ... as good a Seal as probably exists, at least from his dad's perspective.

Warwick F:

And so all of that was behind him. And I just was ... one of the very first podcasts, I was apologetic. I said, "Look, what been through is nothing compared to what you've been through," and he said, "No, that's ... Warwick, my perspective is this. Your worst day is your worst day, right? It's not a competition. You could say, oh, maybe some people you've interviewed have worst cancer than others. 'So you only have one cancer? Oh, I had 30. Okay. I got you beat 30 times.' It's not a competition between oh, you've got stage four or five or gee, you've only got one. Ha. You're lucky.'" And it's not that mindset.

Warwick F:

But I guess my point is, as you are vulnerable yourself ... I believe in being vulnerable for a purpose ... it gives other people the opportunity to be vulnerable because you've created a safe place and you say, "Hey, this is me," and other people will share with you. It just creates so much more meaningful dialogue, which would be so useful, because most people we don't know. But you love people so you want to know people. And I'm a bit the same way. I'm a lot the same way in that sense.

Warwick F:

I love learning about people who I know nothing about. I love hearing their stories because that's part of what it is to be part of the human race, right? What are our stories? I mean, for hundreds, if not thousands of years, ancient peoples in every corner of the globe would share stories about their families and about their tribe and their people group and they would hand it down from generation to generation, even before there was the written word, because that's our history, is our stories. Every ancient people group had that philosophy, but we somehow have lost it. We don't share our stories.

David R:

And I mean it's wonderfully said, and what I've found, and I know that I can tell from your experiences just in this podcast, is what you found is that those stories that we share when we do give ourselves a chance to really understand what's going through somebody else's life are really fascinating. They can be transformative. They can provide us with lights that we can use for the rest of our life. And to be open to this idea, and I love this, this concept of everybody's living their own lives and we're just passer-byers in everybody's life. I can never know what either one of you have gone through and vice versa.

David R:

But when you do open up and you do connect in a really authentic, heart-centered, meaningful, true way, if even for just a few minutes, it can provide us a directional light that we keep for forever.

David R:

If I could tell you a super quick story, I'm near the end of the bike ride, okay? And I'm heading over the George Washington Bridge. I'm going to finish at my self proclaimed finish line in Central Park. I got a big group of people and I don't know really how to navigate across the bridge to Central Park. And I roll up on these two cyclists and they're finishing a conversation and one of them rides away, and I asked the girl that's left, I said, "Hey, can you tell me how I get to so and so?" And she goes, "Yeah, you go here, you go here." And then she's looking at me and she sees this little patch on my arm that says, "Stupid cancer."

David R:

And I go ... she says, "Oh, well, what are you doing?" And I told her, "I did a bike ride," and dah, dah, dah, dah. "I'm just finishing it up from California." And she was like, "Oh my god. And you're doing it for cancer?" I go, "Yeah." She goes, "Geez. My dad died of cancer four years ago." And the old me would've said, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. Thank you for the directions and I'll talk to you later."

David R:

But then knowing that if she could just find a safe space, there might be something she could give me. She gave me something I'll never, ever lose in my whole life. I said to her, I said, "Oh my gosh. Were you close?" And she said, "Oh, we were so close. He was a cyclist. He got me into cycling. Even as he was going through chemo for stage four cancer, we would go on these cycling trips when he was able to. And we just had the greatest things, the greatest experiences and memories ever."

David R:

She goes, "And he had a real good sense of humor. When he died, his cycling buddies used to make fun of him because he wore this shirt with a bunch of little ice cream cones on it. And he said, 'Hey, I want the viewing to be with me in this ice cream cone jersey, because it'll give all my friends a smile.'" And she started crying and laughing and we had this wonderful five minute conversation.

David R:

And when I drove away ... I gave her a hug. I knew we'd never see each other again. But I thought to myself, "I'm never going to feel, forget the idea of a man who knew he was going to die and spent time with his daughter and then as a joke to his friends and because I could learn ... like how graceful and wonderful and poetic is it that he wanted to be seen in something that would give people a smile, even though he was getting buried." It just ... the whole thing just stuck. It'll never leave me, right? And so we found this safe space to know each other for five minutes, but it was a light that will never ... that story will never leave me, right?

Warwick F:

That's amazing. So what are some of the ... I mean, there's some commonalities. Were there differences? Or maybe another question would be out of everything you learned in the book, what's maybe something that most struck you? Maybe biggest takeaway or ...

David R:

I think the biggest takeaway is no matter how strong people were, whether they were a doctor, a medical professional ... I mean, I talked to one guy who was a chief medical officer of a very large medical company. No matter who they were, this idea that they felt isolated or self-isolated or that they were abandoned at the biggest time of need. When they needed most to talk about things they couldn't, or they didn't have the safe space or they didn't have people in their lives who cared or knew how to deal with it. How hard is it for us to talk to somebody when we're having a good day or just a normal day? And we know they're having a ... and who doesn't? Right now, I'm sure both of you know somebody that's going through something difficult and it's like, "Shoot, man, I haven't called them in a couple of weeks," or, "I said I would call him and I haven't and it's been a couple of weeks." How hard is it?

David R:

It's just really difficult to find ourselves in the firing line of trauma and know how to deal with people, and that just isolates them. And even though sometimes we don't want to invade their space and we don't want to say something stupid and we don't want to look like an idiot or we don't want to look uncaring, so maybe what we do is just not deal with it, that just isolates them or abandons them in a way that is just it repetitive and ... so that was a theme that touched me the most, is that every person I spoke to either self-isolated or felt abandoned, especially when it came to having those meaningful, emotional interactions with people. And so they just learned to tuck those things away and not deal with them. And that's the thing that touched me the most.

Gary S:

It seems, David, for sure that you and the captain of our plane are on the exact same timetable because this is an excellent point. I think I heard the captain turn on the fasten seatbelt sign to indicate that we're getting close to where we have to put the plane on the ground, but we're not there yet.

Gary S:

Before we move forward and Warwick asks you a couple more questions, I'd be remiss if I didn't give you the chance to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you and your work online. How can they find out more about David Richman?

David R:

Well thank you, Gary. That's nice. The book, I wrote it to help people and to better equip them to have more meaningful connections with the people that are in their lives. But I also wanted to raise awareness and money for great organizations that deal with people that are going through trauma. So 100% of any penny that comes to me from the book or anything related to the book is going to ... is divided between the charities and the hospitals and the other nonprofits that the book participants each chose.

David R:

So if you do go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever books are sold and you think it might be a book that might speak to you, Cycle of Lives, I think you'll get some tools that you can put on your tool belt for how to form deep connections. You'll also be raising a tiny bit of money to help great organizations. So you can go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever books are sold, my website, cycleoflives.org. You can find out more information about me, the book, and everything else. And thanks for that, Gary.

Warwick F:

Sure. There's one thing that I heard, David, that really intrigued me. I think you said something like you discovered in people's stories, the more significant the trauma, the more likely they are to focus on helping others.

Warwick F:

Now, I don't know if I got that quite right, but it's hard for me to get my head around that one. So talk about that, because that does not seem intuitive, doesn't seem normal, doesn't seem to even make sense. So just help us understand that one.

David R:

It's tough because I don't want to sound preachy, right? But there is some truth to the idea of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I mean, there really is some truth to that. And not everybody comes out on the other side better. Not everybody has a happy ending. And that's the reality of this crazy thing called life, is that sometimes things don't work out. They just don't. And it's a sad a thing, but it's the reality. But I have found that what doesn't kill you can make you stronger. When you think about what it might take, one of my book participants walked in when he was six years old on his mother killing herself. Could you imagine how that could be used as a deep well to dive into anytime life gets difficult? Instead, he's learned from that on how to learn how to rely on people and not feel abandoned. And he spreads that message. Not in a preachy way, but he just ... he imbibes someone who wants to help others who feel abandoned.

David R:

I have this one ... a doctor that's in the book. She loves hugging her patients. And there's a lot of reasons behind that. She went through some unbelievably difficult times where she could feel no human contact and all she wants to do as a doctor is hug people. And it's just this wonderful idea of what doesn't kill us can make us stronger. When you go through something as difficult as you, some of your guests, what we all kind of probably go through in life, not measured against each other, but just difficult, our worst days, and you come out on the other side, sometimes if we do come out on the other side better off, we want to just help people. We want to ... we have some empathy for what others might be going through and we want to help. It's just a beautiful, beautiful aspect of life that we just don't focus on enough.

Warwick F:

There's one final comment, because I know our time is going. One of the things I've found is ... and I know I've heard other guests say this, is as you use your story to help others, your trauma, your tragedy, there is a healing balm. There is a healing component in it. Obviously not physically for those who have physical challenges. But I know for me, the book came out October, fall of 2021, and as I've begun to speak and people are saying, "Warwick, that story really helped me. Thank you for sharing." And yeah, I mean, you get over tragedies like that, at least in the sense that it's not an open wound, but it's still a scar.

Warwick F:

Not to belabor this, but one person, in fact, a student at a college outside of New York, Seton Hall, he asked me, "So is it challenging or is it difficult for you to go back to Australia?" Now, he asked that question because he understood my story at a deep level. It's not terrible, but because of the whole memories of the family business, and when you've got a wealthy family, there's often a lot of dysfunction, yeah, it's not totally easy. It's not terrible, but it's not a piece of cake. So I felt heard in that moment.

Warwick F:

But I guess the larger point is as I'm sharing my story and people are getting help out of it, it makes meaning out of the pain, but it also doesn't all go away. But it's absolutely very helpful. There is a healing component of it, at least psychologically and emotionally. And I have to believe that the folks you talk with, as they're focused on helping others, at least in their spirit, in their psyche, there's a healing component as they use their story to help others. Does that kind of make sense as we round up?

David R:

It totally makes sense. And it's really something that is quite unique. I think it's wonderful. I think the world needs a lot of healing. I think that when we are going through trauma, and there's trauma all around us, but we just kind of just accept that that's the way it is. I walked to school uphill both ways in the snow barefoot, right? I mean, suck it up and deal with it, man. That's just the way we've done it, but there's such an appetite now for that type of growth and that type of connection.

David R:

And again, because we can say this without it sounding trite, I'm unbelievably moved by people like you and the guests that you have and others who are willing to share some insight into what's behind that, you never know what people are going through, what they have gone through so that we can connect in a meaningful way and take something with it as we're trying to figure out our own lives and our own path and what we're doing in life.

David R:

So I'm terribly inspired by it. I'm very proud of you for doing it. It's very, very difficult to put yourself out there in a vulnerable, real way. And to have an altruistic hope that you will inspire one person or several people is just really wonderful. So I'm totally with you. I don't say those things lightly. There's not a light meaning behind it. It's a heavy meaning behind it. And I just think it's really, really powerful.

Warwick F:

Well, thank you so much, David. We're frankly blessed to have you and just you share some of the stories and what you've learned and yeah. Thank you so much for coming on.

David R:

You're welcome, both of you. Thank you Warwick and thank you, Gary.

Gary S:

So here's how I know that the plane is on the ground and it's time for us to gather our luggage and depart, is I was going to actually ask ... I've been sitting here for like 10 minutes wanting to ask the question that Warwick asked at the end. And we don't communicate behind the scenes here. I'm not sending him notes on Zoom to say, "Ask this question." So I was going to ask this question as a closer, what he asked you about healing being possible even when physical healing doesn't happen. And that was a beautiful way to end the conversation, I think.

Gary S:

And I want to leave you, listener, with sort of a mashup of the two big lessons from this conversation I think. It's a homework assignment that's a mashup of the two big learnings I think that we had here today with David Richman.

Gary S:

One, we talked a lot about taking small steps to get to your vision, to achieve significance, to reach your goals. There are small steps that ... wake up, put your feet on the ground, get out of bed, that small steps. That's one concept that we discussed here.

Gary S:

The other concept that we discussed was something David said about, we know very little about people and we do that because we don't pause often to ask about people. David told a story of a woman who indicated that her father had passed away of cancer, and rather than just saying, yep, thanks for the directions that he asked for, he paused and he asked a question that went a little deeper.

Gary S:

So here's the homework that's the mash-up. What is one small step you can take, listener, to move beyond perhaps an acquaintance relationship and build a deeper relationship with someone when it comes to this idea of asking more meaningful, deeper questions? Please make sure that it's appropriate to do so. So I say someone who's an acquaintance, the small step you can take. Look around you. See if there's someone in your orbit that you can take a small step and ask a question that you have not asked before that takes your existing relationship deeper and may unlock, for the person you're speaking to, may unlock some of this healing that we're talking about that comes from being vulnerable.

Gary S:

Warwick's experienced it. He's experienced healing from his crucible through his vulnerability. David saw it in the people he interviewed for his book. So let's mash up those concepts of taking one small step and really getting to know each other, really getting to know people in our orbits, mash those things up and see what we can create by doing so.

Gary S:

Thank you, listener, for spending time with us on Beyond the Crucible this week. We would ask that if you like what you hear here, that you would subscribe to the show. We also want you to know as we depart that we understand, we know from experience, both our own experiences and the experiences of the people that we talk to, that crucible experiences are difficult. They're hard. They change the trajectory of your life. But here's the really, really, really great news. They're not the end of your story. Not by far. They can in fact, be the beginning of a new story, a better story, a more exhilarating story that leads to a far better place than just success. It can lead to ... if you learn the lessons of your crucible, apply them as you move forward, what it leads to is a story that ends at the final period of the best chapter you can possibly have, and that is at a life of significance.

In this episode from February 2020, which we’re running in its entirety as we approach the new year and the personal reflection that always accompanies it, BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick and cohost GarySchneeberger explore practical ways we can live today in a manner that leaves a legacy that outlives us well into tomorrow. The key, you’ll discover, is pursuing your career and caring for your family with the kind of character you want to define you in life … and beyond. “If it matters to you on your deathbed,” Warwick notes, “why not get a head start and do something about your legacy now?”

Highlights

Michelle Kuei never really had a chance to dream about what her life could be before a tragic car accident at 11 in her native Taiwan left her with physical and emotional scars that plagued her for 30 years. She just wanted to be normal, she said in this interview first aired in May 2020. But then she discovered she was more than normal, finding inside herself what she says we all have inside of us – a diamond just waiting to shine. And shining is exactly what Michelle Kuei is doing today through her thriving coaching and speaking practice, Elevate Life Coaching.

To learn more about Michelle Kuei, visit https://elevatelifecoaching.org/

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Michelle K:

I finally had an aha moment just a couple of weeks ago and I spent all my life wanting to be normal, and my book was talking about normal, like being perfectly normal. But I'm here, I am here in the middle of the road and that was my past. I've already done that. I am more than normal. I climbed Machu Picchu, I did all that. I'm able to hike. I did all these things, but that's not normal. That's not normal at all. People can't do that. People can't just wake up one night and they say, “You know what? I'm going to go high Machu Picchu.” No, that's not normal at all. I'd done something very extraordinary that not many people can do. Why not accept yourself for your extraordinary? Why not accept yourself for who you are? You are more than just enough. Why not accept yourself for the gift that was given to you?




Gary S:




The gift that was given to you? In the form of a crucible? Accept the traumas and tragedies of life not as things to be erased? But embraced? Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show.

You just heard a snippet of the interview Warwick and I did last May with Michele Kuei – a conversation so inspiring and insightful we’re running it again, in its entirety, as we head into the holiday season.

Kuei never really had a chance to dream about what her life could be before a tragic car accident at 11 in her native Taiwan left her with physical and emotional scars that plagued her for 30 years. But then she discovered inside herself what she says we all have inside us – a diamond just waiting to shine. And shining is exactly what Michelle Kuei is doing today through her thriving coaching and speaking practice, Elevate Life Coaching.

Warwick F:

Well, Michelle, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. You have an incredible story. I'd love to just start with tell us about your story that leads up to your crucible moment. Yeah, just tell us a bit about Michelle and your story.

Michelle K:

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure and in isolation, but it doesn't feel like isolation right now. I'm surrounded by a lot of love. To start, basically, I grew up, like Gary said, I grew up in Taiwan. I was born in Taiwan and as I was growing up at age 11 years old, just like all the other kids who go to school, I came off school one day and I remember that day my mom was running late. I was waiting for her at school and when I saw her coming towards me to pick me up, she was on her motorbike. There's a lot of motorbike in Asia. She was coming off on her motorbike, and I got up from my chair, I ran across the street. I wanted to meet her on the other side of the street.

Michelle K:

As I was approaching and walking to the middle of the street, I realized that my best friend was waving her hand at me and she said, “Stop, stop.” And she was waving at me and there's a lot of shouting that was going on. I was confused. I was standing in the middle of the street and I could just smell the rubber that was burning, and I don't remember where the sound was coming down. Then the next thing I know was that I woke up and I was in a hospital bed. And when I woke up and my parents were standing next to my bed, and they were talking to the doctor. I started to have sensation and I started looking down on my waist, and from my waist all the way down to my ankle, I noticed I was wrapped with this plaster that was surrounding my body.

Michelle K:

Basically, the doctor had… because of the accident, I had the accident while I was standing in the middle of the street, and the doctor had to stabilize me by wrapping me with a plaster from waist all the way to ankle. Following that incident, three months afterwards, I was basically trapped at home in isolation. I was in bed and I couldn't go to school, and I couldn't go anywhere. But what's the crucible, and I love the title of this podcast because it's crucible. What's really difficult in those moment at age 11 is that the fact that I was a little kid and I wanted to go out to play. I wanted to meet my friend and I wanted to just be where the life that I used to live in, but I couldn't do that and I was starting to live a different life.

Michelle K:

That moment was like a turning point for me because I no longer can do all the things I wanted to do in my past. And now I have to learn how to walk after they unwrap me. I have to learn how to do a lot of things by myself. Learning how to walk, learning how to make new friends was another thing at age 11. That was the beginning of this crucible moment. From age 11 all the way till 40 years old, so I spent 30 years of my life living very differently. It's not a normal life where… so just to backtrack a little bit to gave the listener an idea of how I look like.

Michelle K:

I'm 4 feet, 4 inches tall, very short, very petite. This has been the same height since I was in elementary school, because the accident actually required the doctor to go back and perform a lot of different surgeries, so I had a lot of scars on my leg. And with that, something must have happened and inhibited the way that I was growing. I had not grown since when I was 11, the same height as I was 11. Growing into adulthood, being with the same height, it created a lot of challenges for me.

Michelle K:

There's moment where I go to school, I can't reach stuff on the shelf. When you're a kid, that's okay because people will… adult will just reach over and grab it for you. But when you reach over to adulthood or when you're in your first job, and I remember my first job, I work in a pharmacy where the counter is taller than me. In order to me to work like everyone else, I have to use a step stool, I have to reach to the top. There's a lot of climbing. There's a lot of physical strenuous activity that I need to be able to do in addition to all the other responsibility that I have. That's quite challenging.

Michelle K:

And I could never figure out why when you walk into a grocery store, all the essential items would be on the very top shelf rather than on the bottom shelf, that I never figured out. That's also really very, extremely essential challenge for me because I need to buy essentials and I can never reach to the top. And there's something about asking that always frightens me in the past. I never liked to ask people what to do or help me with things. What ended up happening is if I need to reach the toilet paper on the top, I can't do that. I was just using an alternative rather than asking, putting myself out there and ask.

Michelle K:

That's 30 years of my life growing like that. During that time, I was also battling with what's going on in the inside, because as adolescent, as I grow into adolescent, I was experiencing a lot of that peer pressure where people are dressing up, all these girls they're looking very pretty. They started to wear… it was during the ‘80s, so I don't know if you guys remember the ‘80s, the hair.

Gary S:

I had hair in the ‘80s, so.

Michelle K:

The hair, the mini skirt and I wanted to look exactly like that, and that was one of my dream, wanting to look that way when I go out. When I'm in a social group, when I'm with my friends, when we hang out, I want to dress like that, but I couldn't because with my leg, the way that the surgeon was performing, the doctor had told me that, “Michelle, from 11 years old, after the surgery, you have to wear these metal bracelet because as you're growing, we don't want you to grow your bone into a deformity.” I was given a pair of really ugly metal bracelet that I was supposed to wear up until the age of 18.

Michelle K:

But by age of 16, I was struggling with the look. I said to myself, “You know what? I'm not going to wear these. These are too ugly. I want to take it off.” I decided I was going to take it off, I took it off. And the minute I took it off, I started to use my body weight all on top of my leg. That created pressure and as I'm walking, it started to hurt my back. And by the time I reached my college, I noticed that I could no longer walk comfortably without any assistance. For the longest time, my mom was my crutch. She goes everywhere I go. I always hold onto her hand. She goes where I go.

Michelle K:

Once I got into graduate school, I had to live in the dorm. I went when off and left home, I started to live in the dorm. I couldn't take my mom anymore, so I got to figure out a way to somehow walk. My doctor told me, “Well, this is time, basically, at this point, your leg is so disfigured. If you don't use a crutch to walk, you're not going to make it.” I said, “Okay, fine.” I started to use two arm crutches. Instead of holding on to my mom, I used arm crutches. And being short is one thing, it's already a challenge. Now I have to deal with two arm crutches, holding on. I have no hand to hold anything else.

Michelle K:

A lot of times when I go out, it's a matter of how do I strap things on my body so I can carry groceries. How can I use my body so that I can carry things that I need to carry with my hand? And when I see people going to a coffee shop and I get so envy of them because they have the ability of holding their coffee in one hand and looking at their phone at the other. I don't have that luxury. I have two crutches and I can't do neither one of them. I often have to stop either to get my phone, put my crutches down or one or the other. I couldn't do both. And I get really jealous of people having the ability to do that.

Michelle K:

And that was something that I was really struggling with for 30 years of my life because I want to look normal. I want to have that life that everyone else has. Being able to go to a store and reaching to the top without asking people for help. I wanted to dress up pretty in my clothes so that when I go out people will say, “Michelle, you're beautiful.” That first impression I never had, the first impression that we all value. Even during job interview, we look at someone, we look at the first impression. I always thought that that's a luxury that I don't have because I don't have that first appearance.

Warwick F:

Wow, that's an incredible story. And I want to go back a bit. And before age 11, you were probably just a typical girl, had a lot of friends. I'm guessing you've always been a happy kind of person in your nature.

Michelle K:

I was a happy, happy baby, my mom said.

Warwick F:

I can imagine. When that happened, I mean, sometimes there's anger and resentment, like depending on your beliefs, God or some spiritual force, why did you let that happen? Maybe if my friend hadn't waved to me, I would have kept going or why didn't this car see me? And did you go through a cycle of anger and resentment, and how could this have happened?

Michelle K:

I did. I absolutely did. And I thought if my mom had come just a minute earlier or she hasn't run late that day, maybe all of this wouldn't happen. Or maybe if I were to just wait just one second more before I start walking across the street, then maybe this wouldn't have happened. I went through that period initially, at least for a good 10, 15 years of my life, thinking why does it have to be me? Why is it just me that happened? I have two other siblings. I have a brother and a sister, and I'm thinking, “Why couldn't it just happened to them? Why does it have to have happened to me? What is it about me? Why did it happen to me?”

Warwick F:

Why does the world not like me? I mean, you used the word normal before, which is we all want to fit in. It's just part of being human. You want to be liked. You said growing up in the ‘80s, you want to be seen as pretty, be able to wear all the fashions and just like your friends. And it's like, “Well, why can't I be normal like my friends? Why can't I be like everybody else? How has this fair?” I mean it just, the comment you made, “Why can't I hold a cup of coffee in one hand, a phone in the other? I mean, is that too much to ask? It's like I'm not asking for, I don't know, a million dollars and a beautiful house. I just want a normal life.” Right?

Warwick F:

And so, for that must've been not just the accident, but the years after and grad school, and do I have to have my mother around me. I mean, I'm sure you love your mother, but can't I go somewhere without that? And so that must have been… it sounds like it was years and years of dealing with that frustration. It wasn't just the first few years, it was how many years would you say that frustration of just the-

Michelle K:

It was a good 30 years and I just wanted to be normal. And not being normal to me means that you have the normal body shape that we all… we flipped through the textbook, the biology textbook, this is how a woman or a man should look. There's physically, they look identical, they look perfect, their legs are straight. That's normal for me. And that's how I define normal. And that's what I believe normal should be. When I see myself in the mirror, I actually felt really ashamed of my body because this is not what I was taught. This is not what I see around me. This is not normal.

Warwick F:

It's almost like I cannot be happy and fulfilled unless I'm normal. Was that the mindset that you're going through? And therefore, it's impossible for me to have a happy, fulfilling life because I'm not normal, as you looked at it.

Michelle K:

Yes.

Warwick F:

And so, I mean, I'm sure a number of listeners maybe have had physical challenges, there are all sorts of challenges that make you feel like nobody can love me and accept me. And it's all from physical challenges to abuse, to you name it, there's all sorts of things that people feel like nobody can possibly love or want me kind of thing. How did that change for you? Because there are certain things like physically, I imagine that's a difficult thing. I mean, certainly you probably had to accept that you can't actually change, but how did you manage to combat that and just change how you thought about things?

Gary S:

And especially if I can add here, especially from an emotional perspective, one of the things, Michelle, that strikes me about your story, your crucible experience is that it is both physical and very devastating, and also emotionally very devastating. One of the things that you and I talked about in advance of our interview time here and the note I took is that romantic relationships were very difficult. There's an emotional aspect of this that is in very real ways as painful in different ways, but real ways as painful as the physical aspect of it.

Gary S:

To Warwick's question, how did you overcome that both from a physical and emotional sense? And I guess for listeners who face some of those same things, there's a physical crucible and emotions tied to it. Which one was perhaps more difficult to overcome?

Michelle K:

I would definitely say the emotional is the most difficult to overcome. Because a physical challenge, like what I did was I used a step stool. These physical external challenges can overcome by accommodating with a step stool or with something else, or with a crutch for nowaday, I reach over and just push things to the edge. External physical challenge is really easy to overcome, but emotional challenges, what I find that really were the core of the energy, the majority of the time that we're spending dwelling on.

Michelle K:

And I remember one of the incident was I was in my 30s and that was during the time when I first got into relationship. And I remember I was just sitting there one day and there was an empty chair with a man's jacket on the chair on the back. And I was just looking at the jacket and looking at the chair, and I started to crying. I was crying. And there's an enormous sense of loneliness that was inside that was coming out for me, because for the longest time I was longing for someone to love me. I was longing to be loved, to be appreciated and to have that love be returned to me when I send it out.

Michelle K:

But when I'm not getting that reciprocate of love and caring from another person, from another man, I felt extremely hurt and alone. And that was the emotion I was going through from ever since I started to explore the relationship side. And there's so much of interpersonal relationship that we deal with every day. What I've learned is that it says a lot about… it's teaching a lot about who you are. When I was in those moments, and perhaps this is something that the listener can and find value in, is that in order to overcome your emotional challenge, many times you have to be able to recognize it. You have to allow it, you have to accept it.

Michelle K:

And my condition, my physical challenge was something I needed to accept. This is how I am and this is who I am. This is how I'm going to look for the rest of my life. I can sit here and not accept it, and keep having resistance, keep having that fighting emotion and keep wanting to understand why has it done to me, and keep wanting, exploring it in that victim thinking mentality or mindset. Or, I can accept that this had happened. It's very unfortunate, but it happened. I can accept this is how I look and I can embrace every part of me because there's something else other than, greater than what we see on the outside. It's not just the physical appearance, it's not just what we see externally. It's what's going on in the inside. There's a light that's inside each one of us. That's what we need to accept.

Warwick F:

I mean that is so profound about focusing on the light that's within us, accepting the things we can't change. How did you do that? Because as you said, I think it was like, what, 20, 30 years of battling with this. I mean, it's not easy. I mean, you're an intelligent person. You're somebody that looks like when they want to achieve something, they do. I mean, you strike me as that kind of person. It's not like you're somebody that just sits there and does nothing. How did you get to that point where you could actually accept the physical limitations and change how you thought about yourself? How did you do that?

Michelle K:

One of my biggest challenge in this life is my physical challenge, right? I grew up 30 years of being physically challenged and this is my limitation. And part of it has to do with the word that you used, combat. And when you're in that combat mode, you realize there's something that you need to fight. What is it that you need to fight for? And for me, what I need to fight for is to find a light, to find my purpose, find the reason why I am here. I started to tap into that anger, that resentment. I want to know why.

Michelle K:

And one day I remember I was waking up and suddenly, I was getting so tired of living this life. I told myself, “All right, so here you are. This is your physical challenge. What are you going to do about it?” I was asking, having a conversation with myself, I said, “What are you going to do about it?” My answer was, “Well, if physical challenge is my challenge, guess what? I guess I have no choice but challenge my physical challenge.” I decided that in 2016, I'd never been to a gym before. I never signed up to a gym, don't know how to work the easy equipment. I was really afraid of breaking them. And being myself, getting myself broken. I was afraid to go into the gym.

Michelle K:

But in 2016, I decided I'm going to go sign up in the gym. I did that. That was my number one, my first step of wanting to find out what would it take for me to fight in this. I went and signed up to a gym, and then the second thing I did was I hired myself a personal trainer because obviously, I don't know how to work these machines, so I need someone to show me, to teach me how to do it. I hired a professional, I hired a personal coach. And then the third thing I did, at that time all my friends, they were talking about how amazing it is to do hiking, to go out and climb the mountain, and going to Peru.

Michelle K:

And so, I could never participate in those conversations with them because it was some part of me that I just couldn't do. One of my goal is actually to be able to participate in those conversation. That same year, 2016, I made a promise to myself, I'm going to promise myself that I can do this and I'm going to do whatever it takes to hike. I started hiking that year. And the other goal that I had was I don't want just hiking, I don't want to just go up to any mountain, I want to go up to Machu Picchu and I want to do the Inca Trail.

Michelle K:

The Inca Trail is 26 miles and it's a four-day hike. And each day you have to just camp out and you have to rough it out. There's no shower, there's no toilet whatsoever. You really have to rough it up. And so, in addition to just being rough it out there, I flew myself to Peru in that same year, in September. I flew myself to Peru and I don't speak Spanish, by the way. I flew myself there and I had my two crutches and I brought my two pink arm crutches because it has to be pink, it has to be pink. I brought my pink crutches, went up to the mountain, I got food poisoning the day before the hike, check myself to the infirmary the night before.

Michelle K:

And I remember calling my sister. I said, “I'm really sick. I'm in the hospital right now. I don't know, can you talk me out of it?” My sister was like, “Yeah, you need to come home. Come home today.” And I thought about it, right? And I was, “No, I made it this far. I'm going to go.” After we hung up the phone, I told my sister, “I'm going to go.” And lo and behold, the next day, I went out to Machu Picchu, started my first day of hike. On the first day, it was all uphill. It was all inclined. I remember I had a lot of difficulty because the high-altitude syndrome, it was real.

Warwick F:

Right.

Michelle K:

Yeah, it was real. And I remember I was getting tired. I was dehydrated and so my immune system was kind of down. The first day was a struggle and I barely made it to the final camp that night. And my team leader, the tool guy who was with us, he sat me down and he asked me, because past the first day if I made a decision to come back, then there was still a chance that I can come back. He sat me down and he said, “Michelle, I know you were struggling and I know this is something that you want to do, but you were leaving behind you had to a difficult time to catch up. What do you want to do?” He gave the option to me and I thought about it. I said, “Thank you. I appreciate that you're letting me know that after this point, there's no turning back.” I said, “I appreciate that, but I want to continue.”

Michelle K:

Every morning after the first day, so starting on the second day, every morning, I will wake up at five o'clock in the morning, I would start my hike. I would put my headlight on. It's still dark outside. You can't really see the steps. I would put on my headlight and I would start my hike. Every day, five o'clock, I would start my hike. And I can barely just made it to meet everybody around dinner time, around lunchtime, around break time. And all these people that I met during that trip, it's been an amazing journey.

Michelle K:

And so, I did that in September 2016, and the very last day of the Inca Trail hike, we were at the point of the Sun Gate. This is the final entry point before we get into the Machu Picchu, so I was looking at the steps, the final 50 steps at Machu Picchu. I looked up, it was 60 degrees angle or 70, yeah. I was looking up, and I was, “Oh my God.” I wasn't sure what have I done? How am I going to finish these last 50 steps with my two crutches? And the steps were really narrow and small. I stood in front of the Sun Gate, I was looking up and I thought about all my life for this very moment. “Okay, I'm here. What do I have to do to finish this?”

Michelle K:

I gave my two crutches to my team leader, took off my day pack, hand the day pack to him. I say, “Here, you lead me to the top.” I sent him to the top. I got down to my knees and legs, I started to crawl because that was the only safe way for me to go to the top. I got down to my hands and knee, I started crawling every step, every step, one step at a time. And by the time I went to the top, my team leader was clapping. I turned around and there was someone else taking a picture. I took my hand up, that victory gesture. I was in the air. It felt so accomplished.

Michelle K:

Then I turned around, I started approaching to meet everybody and my teammate, and all these other travelers at this big platform at the Sun Gate. I walked in, everyone stood up and they were clapping, they were cheering for me. And I actually got a pin from Canada. It was an honorary citizen. I still have my pin. I still have my pin. And it was amazing. And that was the moment that I start to realize that I am capable. Whatever it is going in front of me, that I am capable as long as I set my mind to it.

Warwick F:

Well, it seems like that moment was pivotal on your journey, that changing how you think about things. I mean, there's the internal and there's the external, exactly sort of busting into the picture here.

Gary S:

Hi Buster.

Warwick F:

For the listeners who are listening to it, there's a beautiful old Tabby cat that just emerged. But Michelle, there's the internal and there's the external, as I said, to think about this story. There's externally, you are having an enormous impact on those around you. I'm not quite sure which to start with but just maybe on the external. You felt alone, like nobody wants to see me, but yet you had a whole bunch of cheerleaders, people that were with you. What did it feel like or as you looked at their faces, they were on team Michelle, right?

Michelle K:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

They were your team, they wanted you to win, they wanted you to succeed. Talk about the effect that you had on them and how it felt back to you.

Michelle K:

It was a really strange feeling because when I was in that moment, when I was so busy caught up in my own misery and tragedy, and thinking that the world, just all the bad things just happen to me, when I'm so busy tied in thinking about that, it was really hard to believe that I had any impact on others. Actually, that's what my teammate had to called were Team Michelle, and we actually celebrate it with a cake on my last day of the trip that says Team Michelle.

Warwick F:

Oh really?

Michelle K:

It was really hard for me to believe that because I was so busy thinking about my own misery. And when you start changing your mind, when that shift starts to happen and you realize that you are not alone in this. There's so many people around you who celebrate you, who cheer for you, who stood out for you and who clap for you. Now they really see you as the light at the end of their tunnel. It was a complete different experience for me and it was eye-opening to really stress seeing them for the first time.

Warwick F:

It's almost like if you let them, they want to be with you, they want to not just support you, they want to cheer for you if you'll let them, and you could see that. And then just it's often we think of physical limitations and there are limitations, but yet it seems like you did what most people would say is impossible. Machu Picchu, I don't know how many thousands of feet height is, but it's very high altitude, sickness that a lot of people get. You got these 50 steps, 60-degree incline. It's like most people would say somebody with your challenges and crutches, it's impossible. Give it up. You're going to hurt yourself. But yet you overcame that physical limitation.

Warwick F:

Talk about the feeling you had when you're on top of those steps and you'd done what most people thought was impossible. What were you feeling at that moment when you'd achieve the impossible, seemingly?

Michelle K:

I was crying, the minute I reached to the top, and to answer your question, it's 14,000 feet high.

Warwick F:

Oh wow.

Michelle K:

That's the altitude.

Gary S:

Oh, just 14,000 feet.

Michelle K:

And when I reached the highest peak, I broke down and cry. And I think a lot of it has to do with that spirituality, that feeling that there's something greater than myself, there's something bigger than myself. And when I look around, the whole environment, the whole world, the mountain, there's something bigger than just me. It helped me to lift my thinking away from that egocentric me, me, me, me, me, to a broader view of I am not in this alone. There's so many people around me who celebrated me and there are so many people who's going through the same journey, and they're struggling too. I may not see their physical struggles, but they're struggling too.

Michelle K:

And on my journey, I remember there's a guy, the perfectly well, very fit. He probably worked out a lot and he was just kept throwing up. Every 10 seconds, 10 minutes, he was throwing up on the side and it was a race between him and I, because he has to stop and throw up, and I have to stop and catch up. It made me realize that yes, my struggle was the physical challenge, this is my limitation. But for someone else, it could be something that's going on inside. There's a storm that they are experiencing on the inside and I don't see that. It's not my place to judge them of what they're going through.

Gary S:

Right. This is a perfect time, I think, to jump in and read something, Michelle, that you wrote in that form I talked about that we have guests fill out. And I have to tell you that we have had every guest that we've had on fill this out, and yours is one of the most inspirational ones I've read. But you said this and I think it summarizes your story perfectly, not just from your perspective, but also, I hope from the perspective of listeners who have different realities to their crucible experiences, but the emotions are the same.

Gary S:

But this is what you wrote in talking about how to think about a crucible, and you just described the way that you did that when you were going through yours and when you were bouncing back from it. But here's what you wrote, in part what you wrote. “So what if this very moment, whatever this setback you are experiencing was meant to be something bigger than yourself? What if this is the universe's gift to refine and polish the diamond within you? What if you are meant to find the gem, and that is what makes you different, unique and extraordinary? How would you choose to see your setback? How would you choose to see your tragedy? The misfortune that measured only a small fraction of our entire lifetime.”

Gary S:

That is a beautiful summary of not just your story, but the story of a lot of folks who are listening right now. And listeners hear that and realize that gift was not a word, I'm sure, Michelle chose lightly. That your crucible can be a gift from the universe, from your spiritual tradition. Can be a gift to help you realize things you're capable of and to help you realize what you were, as Warwick talks about, what your true purpose is here on earth.

Warwick F:

Yeah, so great point. Michelle, talk about how what you went through can be seen as a gift, which for most people they just said, what are you talking about, Michelle? Not getting at all the hidden gem. I mean, there's a lot of profound words in it. Talk about how your thinking changed and your message, frankly, to the world. Talk about that message in your perspective.

Michelle K:

I think each and every one of us are a gift. We are a gift to this world. For me it's I'm really good at doing medicine. I'm really good with pharmacology. I'm a pharmacist, right? That's what I do. And that's a talent that was given to me. And for someone else, they could be a really good engineer. They could be someone who has a lot of analytical thinking. Each one of us are very unique and there's a purpose in our life that we came to this earth for, and that's how we serve to the world. Right?

Michelle K:

And when I talk about gift and each one of us being the diamond, you have to believe, you have to start to believe that you are this thing that we dig out from all the dirt, and what's behind all that dirt, it's actually something very beautiful, very profound, and very special, and very unique. Because there's something inside of you that makes you who you are, that defines who you are, that makes you perfectly different than everyone else. And that is the gem. That is the diamond of you. You are the diamond, and you have to believe that because that's who you are.

Michelle K:

And until you believe that, and until you have that grind in your brain, in your memory, in your mind, everything else in this world just have that impermanent sense, right? Everything that happens to us are just experience.

Warwick F:

Talk about how you began to see yourself as the diamond, because that aged 11, aged 28, 30, that I don't think was where you were at. What did that look like for Michelle, for Michelle Kuei, for looking at yourself as the diamond? How do you change that thinking and what did that look like for you?

Michelle K:

Before I saw myself as wanting to be normal, I just want to be normal. Whatever that normal is that's acceptable to the society, I want you to look just like everybody else. I meet you, I want you to be able to do things on my own. I want you to be able to hold a coffee, a cup of coffee in my hand. I want to be normal, which is fine, but living in normal, that's not who we are. And I keep emphasizing that you have a purpose in life. What is your purpose? There's a reason why we're all here on this earth. And with that purpose, you need to be able to serve.

Michelle K:

Do you want to be normal? Do you want to remain and just being enough? And our purpose is not just being enough. And I think a lot of people, a lot of listener might resonate with this because we're constantly thinking about, “Oh, it's not enough. We're not good enough. We're not pretty enough.” Well, why even bother settling for enough? What if the idea is that you are more than enough? What if the whole idea is for you to find your purpose, find your strength so that you can use that purpose, use that strength to serve others who needs your help? Whatever that strength that you have, that is your purpose, that is your gem, that's your diamond.

Michelle K:

For me, the way that I found it and how did I begin to see myself as a diamond is I start to realize, and this is actually just happened recently, I finally had an aha moment just a couple of weeks ago and I spent all my life wanting to be normal, and my book was talking about normal, like being perfectly normal. But I'm here, I am here in the middle of the road and that was my past. I've already done that. I am more than normal. I climbed Machu Picchu, I did all that. I'm able to hike. I did all these things, but that's not normal. That's not normal at all.

Michelle K:

People can't do that. People can't just wake up one night and they say, “You know what? I'm going to go high Machu Picchu.” No, that's not normal at all. I'd done something very extraordinary that not many people can do. Why not accept yourself for your extraordinary? Why not accept yourself for who you are? You are more than just enough. Why not accept yourself for the gift that was given to you? And then that was my aha moment. I said, “HUH,” so I lived all my life just wanting to be normal. But in fact, there's nothing normal about me. I'm really abnormal. I'm unique, I'm different, and I'm embracing it. I'm going to live it, I'm going to love it.

Warwick F:

And that's a profound message that we all want to fit in, be normal. But I guess why be normal? I mean, as you said, we're all unique, extraordinary in some sense. We're all designed a unique way, with certain backgrounds, talents, skills. We all have a different purpose. Normal is overrated. Why be normal? Why not just embrace being extraordinary, embrace being different? Because everybody's different. Why fit in? Fitting in is limiting, you know? And it sounded like your whole attitude to life changed.

Warwick F:

Talk about how you do pharmacy, but I know you do a lot of coaching and writing, and speaking. Talk about what is, it's a word that's tough to embrace for most of us, but talk about in what ways is Michelle unique, a gem, a diamond, even extraordinary, if you will. How does that manifest itself? What is your purpose in the world, do you feel?

Michelle K:

My purpose in the world is to inspire. I do everything. One of the things that I do very often is to speak about my story and the journey that I came through, and how I was in that place of feeling sorry about myself and just playing small, from the fact that today I see myself as a diamond. It sounds very like I give myself a lot of credit, but I truly feel that I am the diamond. And in order to have this contrary journey, there's a breakthrough moment. There's an aha moment that I finally said, “You know what? I'm going to step in. I'm going to start doing this.” That is my inspiration for everyone and my purpose is to inspire those to start to lead for themselves.

Michelle K:

And I think self-leadership is such a very important process and message that the world needs to learn and to hear. Because through self-leadership, you become the best version of yourself. And when you are the best version of yourself, you start to influence all these others around you. You start setting up example for them. You start showing them the way to lead their life. You're not telling them how to lead their life. You're showing them that it is possible through this crucible moment that you can find your way and make yourself shine, make yourself stand out.

Warwick F:

And what you're saying is so profound. I think one of the things I've also found in my own life and I think some or many others have, is as you take your focus off yourself on to other people, how can I help others? How can I inspire them? How can I… it's not just overcoming your own demons or your own self-limiting thoughts for yourself, by doing that, you help to inspire others. It's almost like the, I wouldn't say the challenge is greater, but the challenge is even more inspiring. It's what is the purpose of getting up? And part of it is you want to inspire others.

Warwick F:

And so, as you're focusing on others, it helps you feel less focused on yourself and how you look. Because when you focus on others, there's not as much room to think about yourself, right? There's what I call a healing balm, like a healing ointment, if you will, by focusing on others. Have you felt that just within your own spirit, as you focused on others? There's a healing component to that, right?

Michelle K:

Absolutely. And when we start looking at the bigger picture, that's where the healing comes in. Because you're no longer focusing on the wellbeing of yourself, you're focusing more on the wellbeing of the society, the community within your family. You still have that broader view of life.

Gary S:

We're at the point of the show where we're going to have to begin to not land the plane yet, but I think the captain's turned on the fasten seatbelts sign. We're starting our descent a little bit. But one thing to follow up on that point, Michelle, one of the really a blessing in getting to know you even before we started this interview, is you are very connected on social media. And after we first talked, you sent me a friend request on Facebook, and I have so enjoyed watching you live your life and the way that you live your life, and the way that you encourage people with exactly what you just talked about. Being focused on bringing joy to people, being focused on not what limits us, but the things that we can do.

Gary S:

And one of the things I said at the outset when I read your bio, the last line, if you're looking for a Michele, odds are you'll find her at the gym. There's a video you posted on social media a couple of days ago and it speaks to this entire story that we've been talking about. On one side, there's a photograph of you with your arm crutches, somewhat at some point after your accident. Obviously, you're older but you're still using those to get around quite a bit. And then the video is you-

Michelle K:

Doing a jump rope.

Gary S:

Right? You're skipping rope and you're not just skipping rope like I'd skip rope. Okay? You're skipping rope like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. You are skipping rope like a prize fighter. You are skipping rope fast. You are skipping rope well. I mean, it is in 45 seconds, hugely, hugely inspirational. In the time that we have left, first of all, let listeners know how they can connect with you to maybe hear some of the things that you can help them along their route as they're going through their bounce back from their crucible.

Michelle K:

They can definitely find me on my website at elevatelifecoaching.org, or if they like, they can definitely follow me on Instagram, which I'm very active on Instagram. It's a Elevate Life Coach.

Warwick F:

Michelle, you have such an inspiring story, that it's one thing to have a physical limitation, but you've changed your whole perspective. You view yourself as, I don't know, to me, a lot better than normal. You view yourself as, as we all should, as a diamond, uniquely created. We all have extraordinary attributes. You've changed the way you're thinking and your focus on the helping and inspiring others. I mean, rather than being normal, you're somebody that people admire. You're somebody that people look up to. I know that you probably think, “Well, how could anybody look up to me?”

Michelle K:

They're probably looking down on me.

Warwick F:

I'm 4-foot something but yet people do look up to you. In that moment when you were on top of those stairs at Machu Picchu, people were saying, “This is one extraordinary woman. This is somebody I admire. This is somebody that can teach me a lot.” It's very difficult to change your way of thinking, but you've done… I mean, that is miraculous. That is extraordinary. You are, in a sense, a role model.

Michelle K:

Thank you.

Warwick F:

Helping people see that we all have limitations. Most people feel bad about themselves. I mean, if you take off the mask, give them truth serum, most people do or many people do. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but not much. But yet you're giving people hope. Your limitations are clear. For many, it's not so clear, it's internal, but you've changed the way you're thinking. You give hope that we all can change the way we think and focus on helping others, and using our extraordinary qualities we all have to help others. You have an amazing story, an amazing mission. Thank you for what you bring to the world.

Michelle K:

Thank you.

Gary S:

And one last thing I have to ask because I'm going to go back to this form that we had you fill out, and we ask every guest the same question at the end. If we could only ask you one question, what would that question be? And no offense to our previous guests, but your answer to that question is the best one I've seen. And this is what you said when we asked if there was only one question we could ask you, what would you want it to be? And I'd love for you to answer this question. Here's how you answered our question and then you can answer your own question. Fill in the blank. You said the world needs what? What does the world need, Michelle?

Michelle K:

The world needs more love.

Gary S:

On that note, listeners. See, I'm sitting there thinking it's going to be a nice long. No, it's very inspiring. And when you can make me like at a loss for words, you've done something, so bravo. But thank you truly, thank you truly for that. I mean, because that summarizes what you're talking about, I think. And listeners, thank you for joining us today on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. There's a few things from Michelle's story I was taking notes on as she was saying them that I hope you heard as well, and I want to accent again before we go because I think there's some good takeaways.

Gary S:

There are far more good takeaways from her story than the three I've written down, but here's three that as you look at your own crucible experiences, as you look at your own desire to bounce back from those to embrace your vision and live a life of significance, here's three things that Michelle has talked about today that I think you can apply to your own life. The first thing is that it's true that crucibles can change the things you love to do and they can even change your ability to do certain things, but you can conquer so much of that with a positive attitude and positive action.

Gary S:

The second takeaway I think from Michelle's story, and this is a powerful thing, and she said it herself here in our conversation that it's hard, but press through how hard it is and do it. Second takeaway point, ask for help. The key to overcoming crucibles, Warwick has talked about it many times, is having a team of people around you, formal or informal, professional or personal. Ask for help. There are people out there who want to help you, who are willing to help you and who are able to help you.

Gary S:

And then the third point, I think that all of us would do well to follow in our crucible experiences, that in order to overcome emotional challenges, Michelle talked about it in depth. In order to overcome emotional challenges tied to your crucible, you have to accept the reality of your crucible. Pretending it's not there, pretending it didn't happen, pretending there aren't repercussions of it isn't going to work. You have to accept the reality of it. But don't camp out there, like we said at the outset. Let it inspire you to action, both in the way that you think about yourself and others, in the way that you act in to yourself and to others. Yes, it's real, but you can make it. You can find the diamond inside.

Gary S:

That's all the time we have, but thank you again for joining us on Beyond the Crucible. We'd ask you for a quick favor, listener, if you can do it right now on whatever podcast app you're listening to this show on, click the Subscribe button. What that will do is make sure that you don't miss any episodes of what we talk about here on Beyond the Crucible. It will also help us to reach more people with inspiring stories, with hopeful stories, with stories filled with joy and laughter like Michelle's. A quick subscribe, share it with friends. That will be a huge benefit to, I think, your friends and a huge benefit to us as we can share the realities of how people are overcoming their crucibles and the hope and healing that comes from that.

Gary S:

Until we're together next time, remember that crucible experiences are real. They do happen. They can be devastating, but they are not. Michelle Kuei's story proves that they are not the end of your story. They are the beginning of a new chapter of your story if you choose to dive into them and learn the lessons of them. And that chapter of your new story can be the best one yet because it points you toward, leads you to a life of significance.

This has been a banner year for Crucible Leadership, so founder Warwick Fairfax discusses his gratitude for all that’s happened in 2021 – from the release of his book, to some life-changing insights from our podcast guests, to his excitement – mixed with a little surprise – over the appreciative reception he’s experienced on the first leg of his speaking tour.  Why are we taking the time to revisit the highlights of the past 12 months? Because Warwick believes gratitude is one of the most important keys to unlocking a life of significance – and rocket fuel for tackling new opportunities to propel ourselves forward for the next 12 months.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Warwick F:

One venue we're at, all of the books went and I don't know, stacks of people signed up to get a book. And there was a line, seemingly a mile long for students in one location at the end of the day wanting me to sign the book. It blew my mind. I mean, it was just, so the reaction by all folks, business folks, but certainly, students, it's like it felt like this book mattered to them. My story the lessons learned about living a life of significance. As we say, often you're not defined by your worst day, how you can get over that worst day and just live a life of significance a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. I mean, it was such a blessing to see that my book was helping people.

Gary S:

What you just heard was not a man taking a victory lap or giving and accepting high fives, puffing out his chest over his accomplishments. No. What you just heard was Warwick, the host of this podcast, talking about just one of the blessings he feels has come his way in the year, quickly drawing to a close. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger his co-host. And what you'll hear this week is a conversation between me and Warwick, in which he expresses his gratitude for all that's happened for Crucible Leadership in 2021.

Gary S:

From the release of his book, to some life changing insights from our podcast guests to the excitement, mixed with a little bit of surprise, over the appreciative reception he's experienced on the first leg of his speaking tour. Why are we taking the time to revisit the highlights of the past 12 months? Because Warwick believes that gratitude is one of the most important keys to unlocking a life of significance and rocket fuel for tackling new opportunities to propel ourselves forward for the next 12 months.

Warwick F:

This time of year, with the holidays coming up, we've got Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year. Many folks are going to be with families in the US and just different parts of the world. And as you're with families, it's a time to pause and reflect. And hopefully, I think, in an ideal sense, it's a time to be grateful, to be thankful and really, just to count your blessings, so to speak. So, as I look back on this last year, certainly personally, but definitely professionally with Crucible Leadership, I truly feel blessed.

Warwick F:

So often, life is so busy. I think human nature is such we tend to focus more on what irritates us or our deficiencies or challenging relationships, all of which is totally normal. And when a good thing happens, we go, "Oh, that's nice," and we just promptly forget it and move on. So, it takes more work to think of our blessings than our trials. Trials bring pain. Pain forces us to remember and not forget or left to its own devices. So, I think it's a good exercise to focus on how we're blessed in this last year and don't just skip over it. So, that's kind of what we're going to do here. It's going to be some broader lessons learned for I think all of us, but part of the springboard is just the sense of feeling blessed in Crucible Leadership and what's been happening. So, that's kind of the thought, it's just taking stock of our blessings and being grateful.

Gary S:

If I had to summarize the subjects that we're going to discuss, I'll channel my mother's Southern heritage and I'll say that it's all about, this episode is all about blessings and lessons, right? We're going to talk about blessings and we're going to talk about the lessons that those blessings have imparted to us as we look to move beyond our crucible. And we hope listener, that they'll also be encouraging and equipping to you.

Gary S:

An interesting point, Warwick that you just made there about particularly around the holidays. Thanksgiving has passed by the time listeners hear this. The other holidays, Christmas and New Year's, are coming up. But you mentioned that we can easily focus on the opposite of blessings - what we don't have, what's gone wrong, worry those kinds of things. Why do you think that's both so common and why do you think that's dangerous as we go into this time of year?

Warwick F:

Yeah, it's a good question. I think as you focus on your trials, challenging relationships, I mean, for some gathering with family in the holidays, is a blessed event. For others, they look forward to it with dread or maybe they've lost a loved one. And so, gathering together with the Christmas dinner table or Thanksgiving, it can be a time to remember what you don't have. That loved one is no longer there - a husband, a wife, partner, parents, grandparents. It's all understandable, but grieving is a part of certainly the process, but if you just focus on trials, you tend to get stuck.

Warwick F:

And if you want to live a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others, which is what we're all about here at Crucible Leadership, at a certain point, you don't ignore the grief, you honor those who are no longer with us. But you also have to, not move on, but in a sense, maybe honor their memory by living life to the fullest. And part of living life to the fullest is just being grateful, being thankful. Because counting your blessings to use that oft used aphorism, it does give you sort of rocket fuel. It's like turbo power to help you really contribute to the world, so it's not just doing it for the sake of it. It's a really important exercise that's both encouraging to you and it can be encouraging to others.

Warwick F:

So, it's a very important thing to do because if you just wallow in your pain, however understandable it is, not only are you not helping yourself, you will typically not help others. And in the extreme when you wallow in your pain, not only is it not helpful to you, you might end up hurting other people, especially those you love, which is never what you want to do. Nobody wants to hurt people they care about. So, grief is a real part of loss and I honor that, but you've got to also count your blessings. You've got to focus on gratitude and what you're grateful for. It's just really important to do that.

Gary S:

And as we talk about at Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible, this idea of did a crucible happen to you or for you, I think what you're saying there is, can you find things that are positive that happened for you. For instance, I mean, I'll just use my example. As we're recording this episode, my father's birthday would have been tomorrow. He passed away this summer, at age 93. It is going to be a difficult day. I can choose to feel bad about that, be sad about that, and I will be. I can live there, camp there, or I can focus on the things not that my father left me, but what my father left me.

Gary S:

I can find those learnings there and use those to, as you have said, calm my spirit, center my soul, give me energy and passion for today. Find those silver linings in the clouds, which we urge people to do through crucibles all the time. That applies as well to this holiday season and to not being knocked down by those emotional things that might tug at us, but pushing through them, learning lessons from them and indeed finding blessing in them.

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean, it's such a good point. I mean, as we're talking here, Gary, both of us have lost our parents. I had lost my mother a few years ago, 2017. My dad a very long time ago, in early 1987. He was in his 80s when he died. He was a lot older when he had me, so it's easy to focus on a loss and we'll be spending Christmas here in Maryland where we live now, not in Australia and we no longer have the house we grew up in. There's a lot of things we'll never experience, so I could focus on all of that.

Warwick F:

Or I could focus on just wonderful memories of having Christmas Day in Australia in Sydney, which is because Australia is on the other side of the world, it's simply the hottest day of the year, which is obviously different than a lot of North America. And just think of those happy memories. We all have them and just to give you one example one happy memory that I have is Christmas Eve, we would gather in one of the rooms that what was a large house in Sydney. And there was a grand piano there and we would sing in Christmas carols. Well, a lot of people do that, but my younger brother and sister, my parents, we would always have this ritual in which my dad would begin to play the piano with two hands.

Warwick F:

Now at that point growing up, he's in his 60s and 70s, he really hadn't played the piano in I don't know, 50 odd years. He probably was never really that good, so we'd always start off with two hands and he'd always start off with, his favorite Christmas carol was Hark the Herald Angels. So, we'd be like, "Hark," wait, wait a second, hang on, hang on. "The," okay, just a minute. "Herald." And we'd be like, "Dad, okay, just go to one hand." Eventually, he'd go to one hand, and then we get through it. Every single year, it would always be the same. Start off with two hands, couldn't do it.

Warwick F:

And so, that's a happy memory of gathering around the piano singing Christmas carols. And it was it's a happy memory, because it was all so comical with the two hands, go to one hand. So, we all have those memories in our past. So, focus on those happy memories rather than the sense of loss. And I'm sure, obviously, you would have, we all have those memories. I'm sure you do, too. So, focus on those happy memories around this time and why we're blessed rather than the sense of loss.

Gary S:

Absolutely. Moving now into specifically Crucible Leadership territory. Over the last several months, listeners may have picked it up if they've really listened closely to some of the episodes prior to this one. But you've had a kind of a significant shift in your thinking about crucibles vis-à-vis blessings, just over the last several months. Talk about that a little bit as we then sort of transition into what are some of the blessings that we've enjoyed in 2021.

Warwick F:

Yeah, and we'll talk more about it as we progress, but one of the interesting things is, we've had maybe like 90 plus episodes of our podcast Beyond the Crucible, 70 plus guests. And one of the things I really enjoy is we learn so much from our guests. We had a Resilience series recently. And, there was a woman, Stacey Copas, Australian woman who was injured in a diving accident, an above ground pool in the suburbs of Sydney. She was about 12, I think, at that time, somewhere around there. And like a lot of kids, they just sort of ignore their parents' advice, which "Don't dive into the pool. It's not that deep." And "Yeah, sure, whatever, mom, dad." She did and she was diagnosed as a quadriplegic.

Warwick F:

That was devastating, as you would expect. She had some substance abuse issues in her teens, but now, she is just this vibrant, happy woman that coaches, that speaks and helps. Actually, coach and speak on resilience and she views what she went through as a gift, almost as a blessing. I mean, nobody would want to go through that kind of crucible or anything. But like what we've picked up from her, and indeed many of our guests, is they obviously don't like what they went through. Whether it was their fault or not their fault, but they're using their pain for a purpose. They're seeing it in terms of a blessing.

Warwick F:

So, I don't know that I ever would have looked back and said what I went through was a blessing before or a gift. I would say a lot, some good things came out of it. I learned a lot. I'm doing what I love. But I think it's been a bit of an evolution in terms of well, maybe, it was a blessing, maybe it was a gift. So, that's certainly been an evolution of my thinking and just the great value of learning from other people. Every human being, I think, has something to teach us, if we will let them. And certainly, I have learned from all our guests and most recently, I certainly learned from Stacey Copas.

Gary S:

And since I am your PR guy as well as the co-host of this show, I think that now gives me the right or the opportunity to put out a press release that says, "He lost $2.25 billion and says it's a gift." Okay, maybe we'll talk more about that. Maybe we'll have to talk more about that, but that would be a headline.

Warwick F:

Indeed.

Gary S:

That would be a headline on a press release that would catch the media's attention, for sure.

Warwick F:

Indeed.

Gary S:

Let's shift a little bit now into a more traditional discussion of what blessing is and sort of the meat and potatoes of what this show is about. And that is 2021 was a pretty phenomenal year for Crucible Leadership, wasn't it?

Warwick F:

Yeah. It's interesting. Part of the genesis of the idea for this episode is recently, we were discussing with our team, "So what happened in 2021?" Because basically, in order to start thinking of plans for 2022, standard strategic planning kind of process is what worked well? What could have worked better? What are some of the strengths? What are some of the areas we want to improve? Standard stuff that most businesses go through periodically. And that is a springboard for, "Okay, so what we want to do utilizing our strengths, for instance, for next year? Because there's a lot of things we could do, but what do we want to focus on.

Warwick F:

So as we were having this discussion and going down the list of the things that happened in 2021, it's easy to forget them in a sense of when you're in the trenches focusing on, "Okay, what do we need to do today? How do we fix this or that? What are we going to do tomorrow?" It's easy to get lost in the weeds in the trenches and day-to-day hustle and bustle of activities.

Warwick F:

But as we were going through the list of things that happened, it's like, "Oh, my gosh. I do indeed feel blessed." I do indeed feel blessings have been showered on me from my perspective, being a person of faith to the Lord. I have a lot to be grateful for, a lot to be thankful for. And so, I did in a sense as I was in the middle of that meeting, just a few days ago, I just felt blessed.

Warwick F:

And obviously, the biggest one is the book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. That was in some sense, you could say 30 plus years in the making from the day of the takeover, 1987. It was probably at least 12 years in the making. As listeners would know, I've often told the story. In 2008, my pastor wanted, in sort of church we go to in Annapolis, Maryland, he was giving a sermon on the life of David, being a righteous man falsely persecuted by King Saul. I'm not David, but I gave a 10-, 12-minute talk.

Warwick F:

Somehow people felt like my story and the lessons learned was very helpful. Hence, at that point, I felt led to write a lessons learned book. It took years to write and then years to get it published. You've got to build a brand, create a following. And that culminated in a book deal with Mount Tabor Media and Morgan James. And as of October 19, this fall, it was published. Well, that's at least 12 plus years in the making, if not more, depending on how you look at it.

Warwick F:

And I feel blessed to actually have a book. It looks good. It went through a lot of, some editing, which you were a part of, and I feel good about it. I feel like this is a book I'm actually proud of. I think it's something that can really help people, but when you have that kind of book and it's taken so long to get there, you cannot help but be blessed. Well, you should feel blessed and you should be grateful. From my perspective, I'm grateful to the Lord for making it possible. So that's, that was probably the biggest blessing this year and that's no small thing to have a book published. So yeah, I feel blessed.

Gary S:

Let me pause here before we move on, to tie a ribbon on that mention of the book, and also set the stage for what's coming next. If you've listened to this show, once or twice before, listener, you know that Warwick is not an ego-driven person. Warwick is not talking about the book here to say, "Look at me, I got a book published." The reason to sort of take this tour of blessings, as we've talked about, it isn't to spike the football, to use a term you've used offline with me, Warwick. It's to create energy and ideas for growing and cementing the life of significance moving forward.

Gary S:

Everything that you're going to talk about here as a blessing, a key moment in 2021 for Crucible Leadership in that meeting that we had as a team sparked ideas for things we can do to take it further in 2022. So, let's be clear. This is not a "Hey, look at me, I had a great year in 2021." It's, "Here's the things that happened in 2021 that give us energy and ideas and passion and purpose for moving on to give you, listener, more content, more hope in 2022." That's fair, isn't it?

Warwick F:

Absolutely. I mean, there's a phrase, I'm sure many of us have heard, "Having an attitude of gratitude." There's a fair amount of books that are printed on gratitude, so it's certainly popular in our culture, but there's a reason for it is that as you're thankful and grateful, it fuels you with energy to take the next positive step. So this book, which we'll take too long to get into, but there were many positive steps.

Warwick F:

I mean, I had some great conversations with potential publishers in Australia a number of years ago. That didn't quite work out just because of the market needs in Australia and what they were looking for and what I was looking for. And there's a couple of editors in Australia that helped me. Then here, we had some recently more editing. We had a fantastic person help us with the cover design, interior design, great team at Morgan James. We walked together in those final editing stages.

Warwick F:

The point is behind this major blessing of getting Crucible Leadership published, there were many blessings along the way. There were positive steps that I was grateful for, that fuelled me with energy to take the next step. Okay, we've got, more of a structural edit. Fantastic. Let's do more of a proofreading edit. Let's make sure we get a great cover designer. Terrific. Let's make sure we get a great designer for interior layouts. All of these things, this major blessing was a compilation of mini blessings. And so having a positive, yeah, obviously, a vision that you're off the charts passionate about, but by being grateful each step of the way, it helps make this bigger blessing possible.

Warwick F:

So, your attitude as you pursue it is huge. If it's like, "Oh, my gosh. This is so much work." Year after year goes by. I couldn't quite seem to make it work in Australia. "Oh, it will never happen and oh, my gosh, it takes so long. And gosh, to go through each chapter." And it was 100,000 words initially and Morgan James very rightly said, "We want it more like 80,000." And be like, "Oh, my gosh, here we go again. What's this edit number, 800?" It wasn't edit number 800. It felt like it. So, I could have had...

Gary S:

I think it was 807.

Warwick F:

Yeah. There you go.

Gary S:

If I remember correctly.

Warwick F:

So, rather than an attitude of gratitude, I could have had an attitude of whining or as we say in Australia, which is worse, an attitude of "whinging," which is like whining squared. I could have complained all the way. What would complaining and whining and whinging or being irritated have done? It would have guaranteed the book never got published. I would have said, "It's all too much. Let's give up." But by being grateful and positive, good things happened.

Warwick F:

So, that's some really important lessons in getting this book published. Not just about the book, it's your attitude can fuel the direction of your life. It can fuel your success frankly. Your attitude can also doom you to misery and failure. You want to guarantee that you will fail, irrespective of what other people do, be grouchy, grumpy, whiny, whingey, and complain every second of the day, and I guarantee you that success won't happen. It's guaranteed if you follow that path, you won't succeed at anything.

Gary S:

And in Crucible Leadership terms, not only will success not happen, but the other S-word, significance won't happen and that's truly a trauma. That's a crucible oven by itself if you're living a life of quiet insignificance, to paraphrase what you quote Thoreau was saying.

Warwick F:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you say, you don't want to, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, lead lives of quiet desperation. You go to work every day and it's just, everything is miserable. Your whole life you think is just awful. You just, you hate the thought of coming home. You hate the thought of going to work. You might even hate the thought of being alive. At least as far as you can change that with your attitude, you want to, I realize there are some circumstances that are very challenging, but you don't need to make it worse with your attitude that can make a difficult situation far worse. So, attitude is everything and that's really why we're talking about it. So, yeah, the book was huge. There's no question.

Gary S:

But the book was not the only blessing of 2021. What else? Again, a blessing that helped fuel your passion that allowed you to work in your giftings and your vision. What else happened in 2021 that you want to single out as a blessing?

Warwick F:

Yeah, as you're talking, Gary, I think and as we're going through each of these items, it's important to note that the reason, one of the reasons they're a blessing is that I'm not a take no prisoners kind of corporate executive, as I often say. Maybe it was arguably needed in my Fairfax Media days. I'm more of a reflective advisor, a writer, a thinker, now, speaker. I love learning and listening, so everything that we do is in line with my design, from my perspective, divine design.

Warwick F:

We don't do things that are off-brand or something that I don't have remote kind of gifting for, because that would make no sense. So, one of the things that really, we've done this year, we started a podcast. I think, a couple of years ago, this fall and Beyond the Crucible, which is what you're listening to now and we took some significant steps forward this year. For the first time, we had a whole series. We had a six week series called Resilience.

Warwick F:

And really, one of the things that's definitely helped us with is the folks at Content Capital, who helped produce our podcast. That Resilience series was huge to have a series based on a certain theme that have helped with our marketing efforts to take our downloads and be able to have our message reach a broader audience.

Warwick F:

Same folks at Content Capital also have an arm that does audiobooks. And so I was thinking, not everybody does it, but I was thinking, I'd love to have an audio book and they have a division that does that. And so I spent a week in Austin, Texas, in August, in sort of a sound booth. And they had a Grammy Award winning sound engineer behind the booth, so to speak, which is, pretty impressive to have that level of quality. And...

Gary S:

Absolutely.

Warwick F:

... so, I kind of narrated the whole book. It was a long week, but took plenty of breaks. And so I actually, it sounds weird, I actually almost enjoy listening to the audiobook because I'm hearing my own understated passion. It takes a lot for me to say that, but they did such a great job.

Gary S:

Absolutely.

Warwick F:

So, they helped take our podcast and the audio book to another level. And just the quality of guests we've had on the podcast. I mentioned Stacey Copas. We've had a bunch of others that I've really learnt so much from. So, I just love learning about from people that I knew nothing about. Another example is we had Jason Hardrath on. Actually, I think it's a very recent episode. Maybe the episode-

Gary S:

Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago.

Warwick F:

Yeah, shortly before this. And here's somebody that had an accident in 2015, stopped him doing triathlons and running. But he shifted to mountain climbing, which he could still do just because the way his knee was injured, he could kind of go up easier than he could run on horizontal ground. And he has an ADHD challenge. But I learned so much from him because of his challenge, he has a gift, which is he has no fear.

Warwick F:

He will just try crazy things like, "Gee, I can barely swim three laps of a pool. I'm going to sign up for a triathlon, which involves what, like 2.4-mile swim" or something like that. And nobody would tend to do that. It's like, "Well, okay, if I can hit a mile swim maybe I'll sign up for a triathlon in six months." But because of his challenge, he holds no fear. It's like, "Gosh, I can learn from Jason. The sense of set a goal but don't have fear." Plan, but just go for it.

Warwick F:

Too many people fail not because they're not going for things because they're not willing to try. So, that had a huge impact on me as I reflect on that gift that Jason gave to me. His lack of fear. He's willing just to go for it, because I'm more plan, plan, plan, think, think, think, then stick my toe in the water, then go back and plan think some more. Now, I'm exaggerating. I'm not as bad as I used to be.

Gary S:

Not much. Not much.

Warwick F:

I'm cautious by nature, fearful, even. But, so what we've achieved with my natural, fearful, cautious design 2021 is nothing short of a miracle. Because you would look at it to say, "How could a fearful person accomplish everything that we've done and we have even got to speeches. Speaking of fear. I mean, oh, my gosh, I used to say-

Gary S:

Before we go there, let me rewind a little bit and talk a couple of things about what you just mentioned. First, the Resilience podcast series, Harnessing Resilience. I encourage you, listener, if you haven't picked that up, go back into our archive and grab the Harnessing Resilience six-part series. Strong guests, who have harnessed resilience in a variety of different ways, both anecdotally, experientially and then also we have some research about what leads to resilience.

Gary S:

But one of the things from that show that really was spot-lit for us here at Beyond the Crucible was that resilience is nearly impossible, if not truly impossible, to move beyond your crucible, as the show is called, if you do not have resilience. And Stacey Copas is sort of becoming the MVP of this conversation, because we've mentioned her now three or four times. But Stacey says something, something in that, in her episode of that series, where she talks about resilience as something that happens where you're crucible is kind of like being on a trampoline. And the lower down your crucible takes you, the higher up resilience can launch you. And that was a real learning point for me.

Gary S:

So as you talk about learning points and little bits of insight and inspiration that we pick up through the show, I hope listeners feel the same thing. I hope you have your own, listener, your own tidbits that you've picked up to help you walk out your path beyond your crucible. But that thing from Stacey about a crucible experience is, think of it as a trampoline. The lower down you go, the higher up you can be launched was a true difference maker for me in terms of how I orient myself toward crucibles. And then Warwick, your mention of the audio book.

Warwick F:

Yeah...

Gary S:

Oh, yeah, please.

Warwick F:

... just before we leave podcasts and Stacey Copas, the Resilience series, I think, we can tie this back to what we're talking about. Because every guest in Resilience series, indeed, every guest I think we've ever had, one of the keys is being a positive attitude that may have gone through a season like Stacey Copas did of substance abuse, of being just angry and bitter. And because it was her fault from her perspective, she was really tough on herself. "Why did I dive in that pool? Why didn't I listen to my parents at age 12?"

Warwick F:

But you're young. Young people do silly things. It's part of growing up. Obviously, there were pretty bad consequences here, but every guest we've had from Jason Hardrath to Stacey Copas, everybody we had on the Resilience series, they've had this positive attitude. They've not let grief or anger about what happened to them or the mistakes they've made overwhelm them. Yes, they've had a season to have to deal with that. And you go through pain, there will always be scars, but they had a positive attitude.

Warwick F:

They count their blessings. They're grateful. They find a way to see and find gratitude in the most unlikely places. And that positive attitude is probably the key to their bouncing back, it's key to their resilience and it's key to their ability to lead a life of significance. So, if you go underneath the hood of everyone of every guest we had in the Resilience series, their mindset, their positive mindset was absolutely key to fueling and strengthening their resilience muscle. It's just staggering to me.

Gary S:

And hopefully, listener, as I said, what Warwick just described is what you have experienced listening to those guests along with us. We've talked about some of the takeaways that we've pulled from the shows from the guests that we've talked to, but we know that, we hope, we pray that you have had those same experiences. One of the things that you don't know is after every episode that we record, Warwick and I talk on the phone, after we turn off play, hit stop and we talk about, "What did you think about that? What stood out for you?"

Gary S:

And it's always amazing, because there is always a learning. Never once in more than 90 shows have we had a phone call after we recorded an episode and gone, "Okay. Well, it was all right. See you tomorrow." We unpack the learnings that we have had and we've studied the guests beforehand. So those conversations, again, we hope continue to use the word of the day for this episode. We hope those conversations continue to bless you.

Warwick F:

Amen.

Gary S:

I want to say this before we get into the next subject because you teased it a little bit, your speeches. And I want to set the tone or the stage for you as you talk about the speeches that you've been giving across the country about your book. And I want to say this to the listener. You've now, if you've been with us for any period of time, a few episodes, you've come to a place where you kind of have an impression of Warwick.

Gary S:

Warwick is a contemplative man. He is a reflective advisor type. He likes to ask questions. He listens before he asks questions. Now, because Warwick is the host of a podcast, which is a form of entertainment, it's also a little form of journalism, you might wonder like you do with some people in entertainment realm, "Is that really who Warwick Fairfax is?" I'm here to tell you what you see is what you get with Warwick. So, when he says to you what he's going to tell you about speaking, have that mindset there.

Gary S:

Warwick when he tells you as he's about to tell you, "I didn't start out as the greatest speaker and it was a little nerve wracking for me," he is telling you the absolute, unvarnished, transparent, vulnerable truth. This is something that he had to work at and when he calls it now a blessing, when he now talks about how he feels as a speaker versus how he felt as a speaker when he started, that is a true movement along the line of a life of significance. So, talk about the blessing of the speaking tour that you've been on and will continue on after the first of the year.

Warwick F:

So, it's interesting, almost a lifelong journey. I remember, at an early age, teenage growing up in Australia, in my mind's eye, I saw myself taking a leading role in Fairfax Media. Giving speeches to employees, encouraging them, making them feel honored, treasured, respected. I just saw myself, just helping them feel like they matter. It was just this daydream as you do when you're a teenager. And so, obviously, whether that whole thing was my vision or ancestors vision is another question.

Warwick F:

But I think over the years, if you ask me about speaking, I'd say, I'm like the world's worst speaker. It is not my gifting. I'm not an outgoing, extroverted person. I'm probably more introverted, shy. I don't like being in the limelight. I can't run around with no notes and just speak off the cuff in some compelling a way. I mean, it's just not me. So, I'm thinking me speak? I mean, that's going to be a heavy lift. It's just not a natural thing for me to be on a stage in front of a whole stack of people.

Gary S:

Now, let's stop here for a second because I knew the pivot was coming. I want to unpack something. I'm going to pull the sweater string now that you'd like to pull on guests.

Warwick F:

Please, you go ahead.

Gary S:

Because that's the first time you've ever told that story about how you thought about as the proprietor, the head of Fairfax Media speaking and inspiring the troops as it were. And I've never heard you tell that story. And you tell that story as if you really wanted that to be true and that there might have been a tinge of disappointment that it wasn't. That's the first time I've heard you articulate something about the failure of the takeover that was sort of a ding to your desire of what you wanted to do. It may not have been your vision, but that aspects of speaking and inspiring people you wanted to do. Did it hurt? Did you think about that through the years that that was something you lost when you lost it?

Warwick F:

Well, it was a lost opportunity, because I was so scared and I just felt like completely out of my element. We had so much debt, as most listeners would know, after the $2.25 million takeover. I spent most of my time in refinancing. I was in my late 20s. I just, I was shy, so typically what you do is you manage by walking around.

Warwick F:

I never walked the floors of John Fairfax Limited. Talking to journalists, staff members, "How you doing?" I mean, I have the capacity to ask questions and be empathetic, but at that time, I was too scared, deer in the headlights, to do that. So yes, lost opportunity to make people feel encouraged and cared. And I was just so out of my element that it was just almost impossible for me at that time.

Gary S:

So, it must make it much sweeter now that you are on the road and you are speaking to audiences about your book and a book that you wrote. It's important to note, I don't think we mentioned it here yet, in a lessons-learned format. It's not just the Warwick Fairfax story. It's in lessons learned how you overcome a crucible and lead a life of significance. That's got to be even more richly rewarding for you now, having not had that opportunity that you thought about before. So, talk about what's been happening on the road. I know the stories, but the listeners don't know them yet.

Warwick F:

So, we had a number of opportunities this fall. A couple of different universities - one faith-based, one more general, some business groups. And what's been amazing is the reception from both business people and students. I mean, it's amazing to me that we would ship books and sometimes, it'd be like, "Well, don't be disappointed if all of them don't go because students are busy." All of them went.

Warwick F:

And we have a moment in the general speech in which we hand out cards and pens, and we ask the audience, "So, talk about a vision that you're off the charts passionate about. Talk about what your life significance is going to be. What one next step will you do this week?" Well, the students heads were down and it felt like two or three minutes were going by. It's like they were writing like an epistle, like a tome. I mean, what's going on here? I was-

Gary S:

Yeah. You had to cut them off...

Warwick F:

No.

Gary S:

... to continue.

Warwick F:

And then we had a time where you kind of leave the question part of it. And the questions they asked, I mean, they got what I was going through. They would say, they might even say, "Do you view now your life is a blessing that, maybe it worked out for the best?" One person even said or asked, "When you go back to Australia is it painful?" Well, yes, it is. Not as painful as it used to be. You've got to be listening very closely to get the fact that it's painful. That was an incredibly good question.

Warwick F:

And then at the end, one venue we were at, all of the books went, and I don't know, stacks of people signed up to get a book. And there was a line, seemingly a mile long, the students in one location at the end of the day wanting me to sign the book. It blew my mind. I mean, it was, just so the reaction by all folks, business folks, but certainly students, it's like, it felt like this book mattered to them.

Warwick F:

My story, the lessons learned, about leading a life significance. As we say often, you're not defined by your worst day, how you can get over that worst day and just live a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. I mean, it was such a blessing to see that my book was helping people. And the questions they were asking. They were engaged. It felt like students that when you would ask them, what one next up.

Warwick F:

So many of them said, "I'm going to talk to my mom or dad this week. I'm going to tell them what I'm thinking of." I mean, that when a student says that, they don't talk to mom and dad about everything. They talk to mom or dad when it really matters, about something you really care about. So, it was such a blessing. So, and I can honestly say, I'm not the world's worst speaker. I think I can say I'm competent, maybe even good. And for me to admit that I'm good at speaking, it's a miracle. It makes no sense, given that this is not my area of strength.

Warwick F:

It just goes to show you that anything is possible. If you're passionate enough about what you're doing and you care enough about helping people, anything is possible. I mean, it's a miracle that I can get to competent, if not good at speaking. It makes no sense. It's a miracle. I'm absolutely grateful and I absolutely feel blessed. It just, it blows my mind.

Gary S:

Two points, actually, three. First point, not necessarily a miracle. You worked hard at it. So, second point, you mentioned earlier in this episode, Jason Hardrath and your appreciation for Jason through his crucible in his athletic career, that he seemed to have no fear. That he just was like, "Okay, I'm just going to, I'll figure it out." And he just pushed ahead and he was not immobilized by fear.

Gary S:

I've watched you as you've embarked on this journey to craft a speech, prepare to deliver a speech, deliver it, you've done the same thing. You've not been afraid. You've not been slowed or stopped by fear as you've moved forward to do that. And there's a pivotal moment that I want to bring the listener's attention. You were practicing the speech, it was me and Keri Childers, who you mentioned earlier, your speaking agent and a friend of ours. And you were performing the speech. You were giving the speech to me and Keri as your as your stand in audience.

Gary S:

And every other time as you're telling the story of the takeover bid, every other time you'd ever talked about it on this show, in other people's podcasts, in interviews, in conversation, behind the scenes, you always refer to yourself as a failed media mogul. In context of, most often in the context of when you were asked to give a speech at church about the life of David, you told your story in the context of a sermon series on the life of David. And you said it moved people and your line was, "I don't know how it moved people. There weren't a lot of other failed media moguls in the audience."

Gary S:

As you were delivering the speech to me and Keri, out of your mouth, and I listened for it more than once to make sure it wasn't just a change that happened because you changed your tune once. You said, you stopped saying failed media mogul and you said, "I don't know how it moved so many people because I looked out in the congregation and there weren't any other former media moguls." And I listened and you said it once and twice and three times and you've continued to do that.

Gary S:

And to me, that was an enormous sign that not only were you not afraid, but you had grown in confidence in delivering that speech, and more than just delivering the speech, in talking about that time in your life and how you've moved on beyond it, how you're living a life of significance. You were walking around in that, not feeling cocky, feeling confident and comfortable in your skin. And that's why you stopped, in my view, that's why you stopped defining yourself as a failed media mogul.

Gary S:

But as a former media mogul, because the truth of the matter is, you were in charge of John Fairfax Limited for three years. It did go into bankruptcy, eventually, but you were still a media mogul for three years. That to me was a pivotal moment in how comfortable you became in sharing that story, for again, a lessons learned format. Is that a fair observation?

Warwick F:

Absolutely. Well said. I mean, it's a sign of inner healing, of coming to terms with things and shifting my inner mindset from failed to former. That was a very, it's a very astute point. And I think as I look back at speaking, it's funny, Jason Hardrath and I couldn't be more different. I mean, obviously he has-

Gary S:

That's true.

Warwick F:

He has ADHD. He's fearless. I'm a cautious planner. Think, think, think, step. Think, think, think again, but yet, and I sometimes overdo my parody almost of myself. Because coupled with fear and caution, I have, in fact, I once went to somebody who assessed me years ago, and they said I had like almost off the charts perseverance. I mean, extremely high and that is true. I have very high perseverance. I'm a person of, obviously, deep faith, at least I like to think and deep conviction.

Warwick F:

So, once I decide this is important. It's not about me, it's helping others. And I'm convinced that I need to do something; 99% of the time, it will get done, because my conviction and my perseverance overcomes my innate caution. And my innate inertia and I can be detail orientated when I want to be. So once I decide to do something, I hate things not getting done. It's a part of my DNA. So, once I decide to do something, it and each step will tend to happen.

Warwick F:

And so there's, we often had different parts of ourselves, almost at war within our souls or. So, that's part of what happened is trust the process, trust the team. And because it was so important for me to get my message out and to help people, to help business folks and students, that inner conviction of "This is important. I need to find a way to do this." And I also felt like, "Look, even if I deliver it poorly," and this is, some of this, the reason I'm saying this is I think it can help the listener.

Warwick F:

Even if I give my speech badly or poorly, the innate story of losing $2.25 billion, of bouncing back to lead a life of significance, of focusing on helping others. That innate story is powerful. I know it's powerful, just objectively speaking, so even a bad story delivered with authenticity, passion, honesty, and hopefully, a dose of humility even badly delivered can work. So that gave me the confidence of saying, "This is a good message. It can work. Even if I mess it up with horrendous delivery, it can still work."

Warwick F:

So, that gave me just a sense of inner confidence and saying, "Okay, what's the worst that can happen?" It still got a pretty decent chance of working because of the power of the story and I'm a passionate person in my own understated way. So, that's some of the thinking that was behind the hood. It's like, "I have perseverance." But I felt like this is a good message. And I've got, I've had great help and so, "Let's go for it." So that, some of that inner psychological working within you as you seek to accomplish your dreams, this is important work.

Warwick F:

And the most important thing is if you believe in your message and you believe in what you're doing can help people that will get you through a lot of fear and a lot of caution. You'll be willing to do things you never thought possible. And you will do better than you ever thought possible because people want to listen to people with convictions, who have a message that they feel that can help them. So, that's part of what got me through my innate caution is my conviction and perseverance and the belief that this message matters. I want to help people get through their worst day.

Gary S:

That sounded a lot like the Captain turning on the "Fasten seatbelt" sign indicating that it's about time to put the plane on the ground. But I know you're not done yet, Warwick, in talking about not just the blessings that have happened in 2021, but as you said at the outset, this all was birthed, this conversation, this idea for this conversation was birthed out of a meeting we had as a team talking about what we can pursue in 2022.

Gary S:

So, what do you want to share about what your hopes are for the next year? What you're thinking of for the next year? What listeners can expect? Where are things headed for Crucible Leadership?

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean, again, I can't help but I'm reflective. But as I look back, I think if I had to sum up everything we've said, I feel blessed from the book, to the printed book, the audio book, the podcast, the speaking, I think there's been another level of healing. Both in listening to folks like Stacey Copas and thinking, "Gosh, it is a blessing, it's a gift." And when you see young folks, in particular, it moving them, that matters to me. It would matter to anybody that's human. There's a level of healing in that.

Warwick F:

And then not only is there healing, as I mentioned, there's learning. Learning from the people we've been on from Stacey Copas to Jason Hardrath, so that's kind of super excited. So, I think as we look to the next year, we're going to continue to grow the podcast and seek to grow and have more series on there, like Resilience. We'll see what we have to come. I'll be speaking in different groups from business groups to students, that's our hope and plan. And maybe, there's all sorts of different things you can do from webinars to online courses, so stack of things we're discussing right now. Different ways to get our message out and the material and ways, both in the breadth of the coverage of the message. There's also a depth of ability to interact with it.

Warwick F:

And I think as I sum up because I want listeners both to understand our journey and what we're looking to do. But I also want listeners to think, "Well, what does this mean to me? How can I use this in my own life?" And I think it's, be grateful. Take stock of your blessings. Count your blessings. Don't forget them, whether it's family or career, take stock of that. And as Stacey Copas says there can be a gift and a blessing in your pain. It's hard to fathom in your worst moment, but think about it, reflect about it.

Warwick F:

Is there a way that I can use this to help people? And when you're using your pain to help people, there can be some level of healing, not necessarily physically, but at least emotionally and spiritually, so. And the other thing about the wonders of being grateful and thankful and counting your blessings, that is like rocket fuel to help you accomplish your vision to lead a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.

Warwick F:

When you're thankful, your ability to accomplish that vision in ways that are beyond your imagination is possible. So, it's not only a good thing from an ethical or moral point of view, it's a practical thing. It will help you accomplish your vision bigger, better, and quicker than you ever thought possible. So, count your blessings. Be grateful, be thankful. You will both feel better and you will accomplish much more than you ever thought imaginable.

Gary S:

I'm going to grab my carry on bag and head off the plane. You just landed it. That was fabulous. I'm going to end this episode, listener, by asking you a couple of questions. Because we've been talking about what we've accomplished in 2021 at Crucible Leadership and what we're looking to do in 2022. So, a couple of questions for you and we want your feedback. What would you like to see? Is there anything you'd like to see content wise from Crucible Leadership? If so, email us at info@crucibleleadership.com. That's info@crucibleleadership.com and tell us what kinds of content would you find helpful as you navigate your own journey beyond your crucible to a life of significance.

Gary S:

And then if you'd like to hear the ex-media mogul, not the failed media mogul or the former, not failed, media mogul if you'd like to hear him speak, if you'd like to have Warwick come to your group or to your business, to your classroom, whatever it is. If you'd like to hear Warwick speak, you can also email to info@crucibleleadership.com. And we will get back to you and discuss how we can make that happen.

Gary S:

Speaking of making things happen, we are thankful that we made it happen that you joined us today. That you made it happen that you joined us today on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. And until the next time we're together, please remember we talked about it here, crucible experience as we know are difficult. They can knock the wind out of your sails. They can make you feel like your life is forever changed. And even if it is, though, here's the great truth. They're not the end of your story.

Gary S:

It was not the end of Warwick's story. He talked. We spent this entire episode talking about things that weren't the end of his story. Things that happen after his crucible. Things that happened because he learned the lessons of his crucible. And that's the great news about moving beyond your crucible is if you learned the lessons of it, it's not the end of your story. In fact, it can be the beginning of a new story for you. And it can be the best story that you live because what the story reads at the end when it says "The End" when you turn the last page, that ending is a life of significance.