Some people may look at John Ramstead’s life and say he’s lost a lot. Crucibles cost him his dream of being a Top Gun fighter pilot, almost ruined him professionally and financially and nearly killed him in an accident that led to dozens of surgeries over two years — and still left him with physical challenges. Yet Ramstead, an in-demand leadership coach and successful podcast host, says those “losses” helped him find the most important things in his life: his faith and his purpose. He recounts it all in his new book On Purpose, With Purpose: Discovering How to Live Your Best Life — which offers readers insights and action steps to find the true north essential to navigating the journey of their lives.
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Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible, I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
John R:
When you’re fighting a combat mission or you’re on an airliner flying along, the way those instruments up in the cockpit work is they have to have a navigational reference. They have to know where True North is so they can, not only set a course, but make a course correction when it needs to happen. Here’s the deal, we’re the pilot in charge of our own life. Our life is constantly being pushed off track, health, relationships, the economy, pandemics. If we don’t have a True North, which I believe for me, it’s my faith, but it’s also the identity.
John R:
As I moved from that person I saw in the mirror to my identity in Christ, and those got in alignment, making decisions, what to say yes to, what to say no to became very straightforward, because remember, folks out there listening, whatever you say yes to, you are saying no to something else.
Gary S:
That’s a clever metaphor about navigating through life from today’s guest, John Ramstead, but it’s more than that too, because John was a Top Gun fighter pilot who knows a little bit about the importance of knowing where True North is. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show and communications director for Crucible Leadership. On this week’s episode, John’s second time chatting with Warwick, making him our first return guest. He discusses his new book, On Purpose With Purpose: Discovering How to Live Your Best Life. He recounts, in the book and in the interview, the cavalcade of crucibles that cost him his pilot seat, almost ruined him financially, and set him on an arduous two-year path as he recovered from a terrible accident.
Gary S:
Some people may look at his life and say, he’s lost a lot, but that’s not John’s perspective. His is that all he’s lost has helped him find his purpose and that all important, True North.
Warwick F:
Well, John, thanks so much for being here. I loved reading your book On Purpose With Purpose, and so exciting, it’s coming out this month in April. You really weave in some just incredible stories, funny stories with some just profound points about what it takes to really lead and to be a leader with significance. It’s awesome. Before we get into the book, just, I know we’ve chatted before, so listeners will be familiar with this, but just give us a few highlights of your story that sets the stage for your book, just kind of the cliff notes version, if you will, some of the key way points, in your life.
John R:
Okay. Well, first of all, great to be with you guys, Gary, Warwick, and love what you’re doing, bringing context and I think growth to crucibles. Having been through post-traumatic stress through some things I’ve been through, I love this concept I’ve been learning about called posttraumatic stress called post-traumatic growth, and that’s what you guys are facilitating. Grew up in Minnesota, had a dream to go in the military, applied to the Naval Academy and ROTC, got in. Chose ROTC. Then I was in college when the movie Top Gun came out. I’m told, as I’m applying to flight school, I never knew if this was true, but we were told one out of every 10,000 people applying get to fly a jet.
John R:
I literally almost quit right there. That’s a whole story, but literally, actually I did quit and realized I was giving up on myself. That’s something we could circle back to, but got down to flight school. There are some great stories there. Flew the F-14. Like you said, I’m so excited, I get orders to go to Top Gun. Then a few days later, I get hit with a line drive in the eye, blow out fracture, nerve damage. I’m done. My entire identity is wrapped up in being a fighter pilot, being a Naval aviator, and it’s gone. I was a pilot who couldn’t fly, an engineer who’d never engineered anything.
John R:
That transition was really difficult. I actually started a company, and because I was not ready, I was still angry and bitter and immature and trying to figure out who the heck I was, I succeeded in my first company blowing up both a friendship and the company. Then I put 90 hours a week into a startup, grew to having a net worth on paper of millions, I mean walk away money, and the 2000 turned, internet bubble pops, 90 days later, not only is it gone, but I’m six figures in debt and I’m on the street, but you got to keep moving forward. You have no choice.
John R:
There’s these times in our life, these crucible moments that we don’t feel prepared for, and choosing to pause or stop or not move forward, not wake up the next day, I guess that’s always an option, not a good one, but you don’t feel like you can. It’s painful. But rebuilt from there and then got into the financial industry and had to manage an entire team and a practice through 2008 in the financial meltdown. We actually did really good, but that was hard. I’m like, you know what? Enough of this. I’m tired of working for these big companies. I want to get back to being an entrepreneur, and this is now in 2011.
John R:
I just started with a new group, new partners, new company, going to grow it from the ground up. That’s when I had that accident you mentioned that put me in the hospital for two years. Had a severe traumatic brain injury. During that period of time, had no income for two and a half years. My health was gone. I was in chronic pain. Cognitively, I had recovered slowly, but 23 surgeries. Here’s the thing, you reinvent yourself and you’re working hard and you’re on a track, and now you literally cannot do it anymore. I could not show up as CEO or managing partner or any role and succeed when you can show up eight to 10 hours a week. That was the most I could work.
John R:
Going through that, I had to reinvent myself. Then building a coaching practice solo with no resources, and then the pandemic hits. Warwick, a year ago, dude, we had the big Mo going on. I had never been more fired up. As soon as they announced the lockdowns and then they continued, 90% of our events, which were in-person speaking, coaching training were just canceled. It just stopped, and I have 11 people on my team. Then guess what? You just got to turn back and trust God and say, okay, I wonder what I’m going to learn this time.
John R:
Then now, like I’m sitting here, you see me I’m tethered to oxygen. I was one of those few people that got COVID and they put me in the ICU for a week, and it was really ugly for a couple of days, were very concerning, and the hardest part, I think, in that scenario was the family can’t come visit and we’re FaceTiming, and they don’t know each FaceTime if it might be the last time. I mean, it was that bad. I’m not using hyperbole there. I saw, after I got home, I’ve been home now for two months, still on oxygen, tore up my lungs and affected my heart. But I also saw in that, especially I think in light of what happened in my accident, now nine years ago, it really shook my kids. They thought maybe this time they really were going to lose their dad.
John R:
That is a snapshot. But man, there’s been … In each one of those, there’s been other crucible moments, but man, it’s been a life that I don’t think is actually that different than most of the people out there. We have these significant highs, but then we have these valley times that we have to go through. What’s allowed me to keep moving forward is how I’ve been able to put those in context and think about them, which I was not very good at in the beginning, but the more and more you go through them. What I love about what you’re doing is you’re showing people how to move through those adversities and those valley times.
John R:
Honestly, there was times where God just did not make sense to me. I don’t see his plan. I don’t see his will. Why is this happening? But I learned actually how to think about that, I think, accurately and differently in a way that was helpful.
Warwick F:
Well, I mean, you’ve had … We talked off-air that maybe your next book would be on resilience. I mean, you’re in a sense an expert on resilience, not by choice, but by circumstance.
John R:
That’s true. Yeah.
Warwick F:
Lord, I want to be the world’s top gun level expert on resilience. Bring it on. That wasn’t a mission you signed on for, but for whatever reason, God signed you up for the mission.
John R:
By the way, it’s not a mission I would have signed up for either, I’ll tell you that.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I want to talk a bit about your book is, it’s so fascinating, On Purpose With Purpose, and there’s so many good things in here. Just the way you started off talking about being the pilot, in control of your life. You talk about early in your career, you felt like you were living the expectations of others and how you can rewrite the script of your life. Talk about kind of how you felt that in some sense you were living other people’s lives and expectations, because for anybody that knows you a bit, it’s like, boy, John Ramstead, he’s a guy that’s in control. He’s a fighter pilot, fighter pilots don’t live other people’s lives. They kind of take control of the throttle and here we go. It’s like, really? But I find that fascinating. Talk a bit about that whole living in light of other’s expectations.
John R:
Yeah. When you don’t have a very specific, I think destination for yourself, what you are trying to create in your life, what it matters to you, and you don’t have a plan, then you are part of somebody else’s plan. What happened is I fell into that trap unintentionally because when I got out of the military Warwick, that was my identity. That was everything about who I was. I didn’t grow up in an environment where I was around anybody of wealth or tremendous success, and couple that with a young kid who felt completely unworthy of success outside of what I’d been doing in the military, right?
John R:
My self-image was low. I always compensated for low self image. I used to joke saying, you know what? I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I will outwork anybody, and that’s what I did. I just tried to outwork everybody around me. There’s definitely some good things that can come out of that, but there’s also some consequences. What I realized was that I was under the thumb of the tyranny of they, and it was unintentional. What do they expect of me? How do they define success? The people in my company, the people in the community, the people at my church, my family, how do they expect me to show up to be able to succeed in this environment that I found myself in? Certain companies have cultures, right?
John R:
Some of those cultures, their values were completely out of alignment with my own. Now that I’m really in touch with those, my number one, one of my top values is family. But if you go back then and you look and say, okay, John’s working 60 to 80 hours a week, I’m out almost every night, in either a social event, a networking event or a charity event, and I’m traveling two to four days every single week, and I’m exhausted on the weekend. Sunday, I’m just grumpy and nauseous because I’m gearing up, not to get through Friday Warwick, but to survive mentally through Monday night when I can come home and my head can hit the pillow at midnight.
John R:
I never had any problem falling asleep because I was exhausted, because I had so much work to do. I’d come home at 10:00, 11:00 at night and I’d work until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and then I’d get up at 5:00. No wonder, over time, even though I had all these different successes, and you know what? I look back also during those period of times, when I made some big decisions either to leave a company, like I was talking to my wife about this the other day, that one of the technology companies that I rose to the management level, and I realized I’m totally out of balance. I got a call. I talk about it in the book. I got a call, I’m sitting there in this moment of just almost anguish, despair, dread about my future at this company.
John R:
Because I had heard that I was going to be promoted, and I knew the guy, and he worked harder than me, and a recruiter called. He said, “John, hey, I heard things are going great at your company. But hey, can I run something by you?” I’m like, dude, absolutely.” Guess what? I made a complete career change. I burned some bridges. Now, in hindsight, I honestly wish, I don’t know if I’d made a different decision, but was there a way to actually look at my role and do things differently from a different perspective with a different purpose?
John R:
What I learned actually back then, the reason that I was so consumed with hours is I didn’t really trust people. I was a total control freak. I didn’t let people go do their best because I knew it would reflect on me. Some of that self-image thing was creeping back in. I blamed everybody around me, my boss and the culture for this feelings I was having. I’ll tell you right now, looking back on it now, I take responsibility for those results that I actually had back then, and that’s not how I saw it. I saw myself as a victim of all these things around me.
Warwick F:
It’s almost like, as you’re sharing, it’s interesting you put it in the introduction, because it’s a prologue to your whole book because you didn’t do the interior work. You were running a hundred miles an hour trying to achieve the expectations of your bosses and the shareholders. Not thinking, will this affect my family? I don’t know. This is what it takes to be successful. If I don’t do it, the guy next door is going to do it, and I don’t want him to outwork me. It’s just living some role where without thinking, okay, what destination, what’s my True North? Some of these key concepts, it sounds like you weren’t really asking yourself at the time.
John R:
No, think about what we’re all taught, right? Get a good education and work hard and everything will be fine. That’s kind of what I was taught. I don’t know if that is really the mindset of the generation coming in the workforce now, but man, that is so far from the truth if we’re having some real talk here.
Warwick F:
Yeah.
John R:
If you’re not doing work and that is connected to something that’s meaningful to you, that’s purposeful, and you’re not doing it as that best version of yourself, we can talk about that too. That whole concept of joy, which is internal. My inner game, what I’ve discovered, determines that outer game. I was totally focused for the first, until I was 45 years old and had an accident, on that outer game.
Warwick F:
But don’t you think that, that’s most people in the business world, most aggressive, hard charging folks, that they’re focused on the results and they’re not really thinking about, who am I, what are my values? A lot of people in that they don’t contemplate or reflect. They just move and they just act. Don’t you think your experience is not uncommon, right? There are a lot of others like that.
John R:
No, it’s not uncommon at all. Unfortunately, it’s almost epidemic. I have been able, over the last year, because of Zoom, have mastermind groups and trainings and forums with literally thousands of mid-level to very senior leaders. Fortune 50 type leaders. One of the things I do when we jump in the room, I say, hey, everybody just do a one word check-in. What is the preeminent emotion you’ve been feeling over the last week?
John R:
Something that kind of shocked me, and it’s been consistent and it’s in 80% to 90% of the words are depressed, anxiety, stressed, restless, words like that. Very few of the words are excited, fulfilled, joyful. I think that there’s a lot of us out there, whether we’ve gone … We’re in the middle of a storm, like Warwick, I know you went through. I’ve been through, you’re coming out of a storm or you’re going into one.
John R:
Cause you know what, there’s kind of three cycles, right? Sometimes there’s that calm. There’s a storm coming. What I realized was, when adversity hits, nothing ever remains the same. You either emerge from that adversity stronger or you emerge from it weakened. The question is, there is going to be another storm. I got to the point in my life, I said, I realized is, what can I do to emerge and set myself up so that when it does happen, I not only emerge stronger, but help those around me emerge stronger with me?
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Gary S:
Can I jump in really quickly? Because you said something at the start of unpacking all that, John, that I think is really important for listeners to understand, and Warwick talks about it a lot. You said that your identity was caught up in what you were doing in the military. You were a fighter pilot. How much do you think the pain of your crucibles, the changing of trajectory of your crucibles has been tied to maybe your identity coming from external forces, not from your own passion?
John R:
Well, it came into sharp relief, Gary, after my accident, when I had to rebuild everything, I’ll never forget. I was actually sitting there with a coach of mine, and I’m trying to figure out what’s next. I said, I need to figure out how I’m wired, then I can figure out what I should do next. He goes, “You know what? What if he asked yourself that question differently? What if you asked yourself, how did God wire you and what did he wire you for?” That, Gary, started this process where I started to really, this whole quest of self-awareness, to look in the mirror and say, what is it that I really do see if I actually pull back the curtain? Because it’s kind of ugly in there.
John R:
What are those limiting beliefs? What’s in my identity. Are there things that people said to me that are lies about who I am and my capabilities that I’ve accepted as truths. As an example, when I was getting into business, I had a corporate job and I was going to go start that first company with a friend who didn’t graduate college. I had a family member that was really concerned. They were very conservative, grew up in the depression, and they thought I was an idiot putting my family at risk, and they told me that I would never succeed as an entrepreneur, and that they were ashamed of me and embarrassed that I would put my family in that situation.
John R:
Now, that stuff sinks in. I told you, that company that blew up, I was, I think, making decisions and taking actions and working so hard as much to prove that person wrong, or more to prove that person wrong than actually trying to do the best thing for my company, my team, my customers. That was always front of mind. But I went through this process of saying, okay, here’s what I see. I have what I call my should values, right? I’ve adopted all these values that make me show up in a way that’s appealing at work and where I’m at.
John R:
Are they really in alignment with those core values, the ones that are wired into me? What are my passions? What are my beliefs? How do I root out some of these lies that I’ve let into my identity? Because what I realized was there was this enormous gap between that identity that I was allowed being given to me externally to an identity in Christ that already existed. What I have discovered for me is, the bigger that that gap is, the more stress, and anxiety, and panic and indecision and ambiguity that we experience in the moment.
John R:
As I really worked to close that gap, and God helped me, and people who were coaches and mentors and disciplers helped me to close that gap, I got to tell you, that stress and that anxiety just melted away. In that, I’ll tell you this before, Gary, that whole concept of purpose, what I should do and why. It’s our big why. we all talk about it. I never felt like I honestly really connected to it. I was compensating with my work ethic, and I felt like it was this mystery. Either I wasn’t worthy of being connected to something meaningful or I didn’t have the tools to root it out of the ground and find it like it was a treasure hunt.
John R:
I realized, my whole life I’ve been going about it backwards, because as I was on this journey to close this gap between my identity and my true identity, the one I saw in the mirror and then the real one, the best version of me, it’s like the fog cleared from the playing field and my purpose was right there in front of me and they have been the whole time.
Warwick F:
I find that fascinating, because it seems like the core of your book is this quest for identity, True North, destination that it’s feels like the foundation is that. You have so many things you put in there, like when that softball accident happened, you talk about you couldn’t get past that broken heart. You’ve felt like smoldering discontent that obviously, who is John Ramstead identity? It’s being a fighter pilot. It’s being the number one through the whole ACE of the base story, which we’ll get to, hopefully, the one in 10,000. You’re the best of the best. You’re about to go to Top Gun. Who is John Ramstead? He’s one of the top fighter pilots in the US Navy. That’s who you are. You had that sense of identity. Then, okay, I’m going to outwork anybody.
Warwick F:
I’m the guy that can work anybody else under the table, because I just will, I have that determination. So, you had these series of identity, and then after that accident, it seems like things change. You have this wonderful quote about that accident, talking about identity. You say, “though, from the outside, the accident might’ve looked like a tragedy, God used it to bring me to my life’s purpose, having to dig deep into my true identity as I did after the accident resulted in living my life more fully than I ever have.”
Warwick F:
In some way, that was unbelievably painful, but you mentioned 20 plus surgeries. Be it in some sense, there was beauty or purpose that came out of that tragedy. Was that the culmination of a journey of, after you went through that, that you really found who your identity was and your purpose?
John R:
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I came to give you life,” and so that you may live it to the full. How many of us actually feel, say scale of one to 10, here’s my 10 dude, Paul gets the tar beat out of him, cane, whipped, thrown into a Roman nasty prison in the basement, shackled to a wall, and what does he do? He busts out in praise songs. I’m like, okay, that’s a 10. A one is you’re barely hanging on. I got to tell you when I ask people that today, like, where are you on that scale? I have never had anybody rank themselves over an eight. The majority of people are a four or five. I actually, when I really, and actually created … To assist in to actually figure out where you are on a scale like that. I’m an engineer, right?
John R:
I like to have a process. I was a 2.1. I actually calculated it, and I’ll show you how to do that, but here’s the thing. But if I’m a two, this is at the height of my career before my accident, running a company, working those hours, recognition in the community, I was so out of alignment, my identity was so external, and I was miserable. That place of smoldering discontent. I could not have told you, Warwick why, I just knew I was unhappy. My big focus is, for me, because I’m honestly a simple guy, it’s what is that next small step?
John R:
That became my mantra in recovery. What is the small step that I can take today? If I’m a two, what would a three look like? Do I need to bring my passions more fully into my life? Do I need to maybe work at honoring my values a little bit better? Do I need to work on some mindset issues? I only could work on one or two things at a time. I just had to think through and pray and say, God, what is the one thing today that I need to work on? It’s like 10 years later. Totally, we overestimate what we can do in a year, but under estimate big time what we can do in 10 years. You know what? This is a journey.
John R:
Through this, we’ve come up with a model that my whole family knows, and that is excellence is the standard. But grace is the word, because guess what? I’m going to have bad days. There’s days I might feel like a victim. There’s days I’m working on some of my anger issues and I blow up at my son, but I want to get to a place of excellence. I want to get gooder. I want to improve. Guess what? I’m going to give myself some grace. I’m going to go to my son and I’m going to apologize. This was a shift, and I’m going to ask him to help me be accountable and share with him, here’s the relationship I want to have. I just hurt our relationship.
John R:
I want you and I to be best friends, because I didn’t have that with my dad until it was a lot later, or my mom, our whole lives. Today, Warwick, my marriage is we walk down the street holding hands, and my kids, every one of them, I’ll guarantee you they’ll either call or text me today. I am as close to my kids that I’ve ever been beyond anything I’ve even ever hoped for as a father. Just focusing on those little things. Something else too, I got to tell you, it was an exercise, I was with Lance Wallnau. You might know Lance.
John R:
He had me take out this huge piece of paper and turn it sideways. Like one of those ones you draw on, like when you’re doing a conference, like a retreat, the ones that you peel off and stick on the wall, but you turn it sideways. He had me draw a line all the way through it. He goes, “John, I want you to plot on here, highs and lows, but from a spiritual perspective, where were you spiritually? What’s the earliest high or low that you can remember?” I marked that. Then we have the lines, and he goes, we’re going to do it in pencil because I want you to make them start making them relative to each other, the peaks and the valleys.
John R:
Then we looked at all of these things and said, hey, what was happening that turned the peak into a downturn? What was happening through the valleys? What caused the upswing? Are there anything here in common? But then he asked me a really important question because there was a number of valley times. He goes, “Do you look at some of those?” Some of them, I haven’t even shared in public. They were very painful, personal trauma. Some things, especially in my childhood. Do you go look at those things from a place of pain, anguish, fear, or do you look at those from a place of learning and equipping?
John R:
Because he shared with me, that’s how God sees it. Each one of those are these beautiful treasures, because the first thing God said to me at the accident, if you remember this, the first word, the Lord of the universe standing next to me, he said, “All things work together for good, for those that love the Lord.” I’m thinking about that and I’m looking at some of these very painful things in my past going, okay, how does that work together for good?
John R:
Well, instead of seeing that as something that defined me or something painful, I asked myself, is that something that could equip me to do better today or/and help somebody else that maybe has that either in the past or was going through something I think similar. It was a process, I’ll tell you that. But I would say that today I’m in the healthiest mental place I’ve ever been because I look at all those valley points now from a place in context, really from, talking about transforming my mind to the mind of Christ.
John R:
From a place of equipping and learning, not a place of pain or doubt or regret. Even though some of that is there and some of it kind of creeps in, then I got to ask myself, where’d that come from, and why did it come in there?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. It’s interesting you mentioned Lance Wallnau. You have a very interesting quote of his, and from a spiritual perspective, may make sense, but people may be not familiar with this. You mentioned in your book, Lance says something like, God calls tells you to do something or gives you a vision and just surrendering our life purpose for which you’ve been created. It’s almost like maybe the creator has a plan, maybe we don’t fully realize it. Rather than saying, well, what do I want to do? It’s almost like what you’re saying is, what was I made to do? What was I designed to do? What was the God given passions that are within me?
Warwick F:
It seems like there’s, it’s not just an internal, there’s almost an external part of finding your purpose. Is that some of what you and Lance were kind of grappling with?
John R:
Yeah, 100%. I noticed as I’m … There’s been a evolution in my prayer life, I would say, before the accident, I was going to church and all those things, but my prayer was here’s the desires of my heart, here’s my business goals, here’s my plan, here’s this. It was almost like the spiritual ATM. It was very immature. It’s like my three-year-old grandson, right? It’s like juice, snack. Then as it evolved, it was like, God, what is your will for my life? I was looking for that assignment. If you actually looked through the Bible, as I’ve now read, because I didn’t do it till after the accident, cover to cover, those assignments, Moses, Jacob, Isaiah, others, they’re actually kind of few and far between.
John R:
What we’re called to do is to love God with all our hearts and love others. We’re called to disciple nations, which is to talk, I think about the gospel and the kingdom, and be ambassadors to that. What I realized was, in all this, having been in God’s presence and realized, not only that he cares about me personally, and I’m not special. This is everybody. But he is, I knew in that moment, he was moving big time in this world and it’s accelerating. I truly believe it’s why I’m alive. I have a part to play in some way.
John R:
My prayer today Warwick is God reveal your will to me that you’re doing in the world. Reveal to me what you’re doing in the life of Warwick in Gary. What are you doing through crucible leadership or this company, this client that just hired me, and what do I need to do to adapt, to grow, to change in order to partner with you and join you in what you are already doing? I got to tell you, some of that is a big stretch. I’ve got to tell you, I’m just being real, some of that has prompted some serious crisis of faith, because that gap felt really big between where I was and serving in that capacity.
John R:
I got to tell you, but think about this, everybody talks about the Ephesians 2:10 calling, right? We want to find the calling part, but what’s the first part of that verse? That you are Christ perfect workmanship. That does not have dependent events. That doesn’t mean you have to go get ready to get ready to get ready.
Warwick F:
Well, I think what you’re really reinforcing is the notion of the being of the leader over the doing of the leader. Metrics are overrated. Nothing wrong with metrics, but metrics, if a leader says, gee, my vision is to grow the company 20% per year for the next five years, you always know that’s the wrong answer. Every leadership textbook will say, well, that’s not a vision. It’s sort of like, I think what you’re really emphasizing is just the being of a leader rather than what you accomplish, how many books I sell, you sell, how many workshops you have, how many leaders you help. That’s not the relevant thing is, am I doing what I feel called to do today?
Warwick F:
Next year and in the next 10 years, am I being who I’m meant to be? The metrics will take care of themselves, but that’s a backwards way for most leaders to think. They think of numbers and doing, which is not wrong rather than, am I being who I’m called to be?
John R:
Well, yeah. From a leadership perspective, you’re spot on. Think about this. What does it say in scripture, that there is no love greater than this than to lay down your life for me. If I’m in leadership, what if I said, you know what, there is no love greater than this if I was to lay down my agenda to serve the agenda of others? I got to tell you, this was modeled to me, believe it or not, by my commanding officer when I was first in the military. I went up to him one day and I said, “Listen, I want to stay in the Navy as a career.” I didn’t know the softball thing was going to happen. I said, “What advice would you give to me?” I’ve always reached out to people who have succeeded at what I want to do and get their input.
John R:
As a junior officer, and he goes here, “Do this, John. Do your job with excellence. And every day, you go find somebody in this squadron that you can serve, senior to you, junior to you, enlisted officer in your department or not and you help them succeed, and you might never get any credit or rewards or recognition, but trust me, those in charge, those that care are going to notice. If you just do that from a place of integrity, you will never have a problem with your career.” What was he saying? Serve others. A rising tide lifts all boats. I think the reason I had the business success I did, Warwick, is my philosophy was always, if I help other people to succeed in that role, max out their comp plan, be invested in them personally, know their families and their kids and what’s going on outside of work.
John R:
And I just help them succeed as a person, and I have enough people do that, just as a by-product of that, I’m going to do just fine. That’s what I was doing this whole time. But that success that I was looking for, for myself had never been defined where that goes. I was like in this mode of constantly working and serving with really no direction or end in sight, and I think that’s what just wore me down to a nub.
Warwick F:
I want to talk just briefly about some of the key principles in your book. I don’t want to give the whole thing away because obviously you need to read the book to fully understand them, but you found your true purpose. You have this wonderful chart there, page 24 of the book, in which you’ve got personal assets, talent, skills, experience, and passion, and you’re on the upper right. You found your calling, working with leaders, empowering them. How do people, at least at a high level, find that true purpose, that sense of joy and fulfillment you have despite all the pain that you have? As you say, you’ve had more joy, more fulfillment, greater marriage, greater relationship with your kids.
Warwick F:
You’re serving your clients. Life is pretty good, even amongst the physical pain, but there are some key building blocks that you outlined in your book of True North, destination, accurately describing your present position. Just touch on some of those key elements that listeners will then … Hopefully their appetite will be whetted to then read the book, is what are some of those key building blocks to help you get to where somebody like you are in a sense in terms of that sense of joy and purpose?
John R:
Yeah. Think about it, when you’re flying a combat mission or you’re on an airliner flying along, the way those instruments up in the cockpit work is they have to have a navigational reference. They have to know where True North is so they can, not only set a course, but make a course correction when it needs to happen. Here’s the deal, we’re the pilot in charge of our own life. Our life is constantly being pushed off track, health relationships, the economy, pandemics. If we don’t have a True North, which I believe, for me, it’s my faith, but it’s also the identity.
John R:
As I moved from that person I saw in the mirror to my identity in Christ, and those got in alignment, making decisions, what to say yes to, what to say no to became very straightforward, because remember, folks out there listening, whatever you say yes to you are saying no to something else. I am a born people pleaser, right? The next thing is, think about you jump in the car and you pull out your Apple maps or Google, and you’re going to go somewhere. You’re running an errand and now you got to go to a different spot.
John R:
What’s the first thing you do? Type in the destination. That app is useless without a destination. It doesn’t even know where to start. It can just show you a map of where you’re at. Of course, I can look around and see where I am. What is that destination that we have in our own life? What is that purpose? Why are we doing this? What is that outcome that we’re striving for, both short-term, long-term, and that legacy we were creating? I want to live a life, Warwick, so the use of my life would outlive my life.
John R:
I’ve got clarity on that one. I should have died 10 years ago, and I realized in that moment, that is not how I’d lived my life. The other thing that we talk about is your present position. Who’s ever pulled up that map and you’ve typed in that destination and it really has, Waze is actually the worst of this man. That’s why I don’t use it anymore. It doesn’t know where you’re at. Then, so you’re trying to make a guess because I’m not familiar with this part of town, and I always go the wrong way. Then I’m on a one-way street, and then it adds like eight minutes to my trip and I’m now I’m late and now I’m frustrated. It’s no different than our own life.
John R:
If we don’t know where we are at, our values, our passions, our mindsets, we can’t figure out, hey, where we’re at and then compare that to the better version of ourselves and start making some progress. Really, the last chapter is where it all comes together for people to create a strategic action plan, and that’s a place called convergence. That’s where all this comes together to move up into the right in that chart, like you talked about, to that 10-10 life. That’s a life fully alive. All of these work together.
John R:
What I’ve discovered is, and this is hard for a lot of busy high capacity folks, I have never found anybody that’s moved into what I would call an extraordinary life, a life fully alive without first slowing down in order to speed up. Even if it’s honestly, just carving out 10, 15 minutes a day or a few times a week to start determining, hey, what are those small steps I need to be taking today? It doesn’t take a lot, but those small incremental changes.
John R:
Then you start getting awareness on all this, and all of a sudden, the fog on that in front of you just starts to lift a little bit, and then what that does this got me excited. Then I took the next step forward and the next step forward and the next step forward, and all of a sudden, 10 years later. But I got to tell you, two years into it, I’d already restored and healed my marriage and relationship with my kids. There were some beautiful milestones along the way.
Warwick F:
I mean, your story is kind of remarkable, and most people, they don’t think. They just act. As you said, I want to go to a good college and I want to get a good job, and I want to work my way up, and nothing wrong with all of that, but is life more than going to a good college and making lots of money and moving up, whether it’s in the military or in the business world? For most people, it’s like, well, what else is there? That’s achievement. I mean, it’s just such … I don’t mean to put people down, but it’s just a superficial way of looking at life. You’re not living true to who you are, your own identity, your own True North. You haven’t really marked out a very clear destination other than I want to work my way up.
Warwick F:
Because that’s what the destination is, just work my way up to the top of the ladder, and then what? I say, you outlined just some key principles and it’s just remarkable that your accident seems to have been just that key point where you could start thinking about your talents and your passions in that upper right quadrant, and getting your marriage to the point where it is. But you had to have a lot of conviction. I’m just trying to find it here. There’s some interesting point here where you were trying to reset your life, and you have this fascinating quote.
Warwick F:
You said, “there were people around me who thought it was irresponsible of me to pursue my passion. They told me to accept my new normal. What I heard was they felt I should settle for an ordinary life.” These are probably well-meaning people, but you wanted to reset your whole life in light of your God given purpose. But yet, it felt like some people were saying, well, no, no. Right? That probably wasn’t helpful.
John R:
Yeah, that was coming out of the accident. I had a well-meaning doctor, Warwick, sit wife and I down. This is as about a year and a half into my recovery. At this time they really knew the extent of my brain injury and physical limitations. He goes, “Listen, I just want to set expectations. I just want you to know John probably won’t be able to be a greeter at Walmart.”
Gary S:
Oh my goodness.
John R:
They kept talking about the new normal that we had to adapt to. I’m like, dude, I ain’t going to have no new normal. I’m going to have the old normal back. I hate the word new normal. Here’s the deal though, I do have it and it is different. When I said, okay, here’s a guy, two years, two and a half years no income in a hospital bed, chronic pain, brain injury. I had seven figures in debt because of the medical bills. I had a lien against me. I said, you know what I’m going to do? I can’t go work, so I’m going to go start. God led me into this. That’s a whole nother story, but a coaching, I’m going to start my own coaching business out of our house.
John R:
Talk about being the most likely to succeed in the entrepreneur lottery. Here’s the deal. I looked at my wife and I said, we’re going to do this. She goes, “If this is what God wants you to do …” Everybody else thought I was nuts, to put my family at risk, to go do … Now, I’ll tell you something because God gave me a vision, and this is what led to my purpose. This was just a lot of time in this whole process, but I’ll never forget it. This is after I’m recovering from a whole reconstructive surgery to my shoulder, very painful, in bed, reading the Bible, and I heard God speak to me. It wasn’t external like at the accident, but it was very clear.
John R:
He said, “John, I want to use this life I’ve given you to equip and inspire leaders in my kingdom.” That led me into coaching, and I want to share with people, I would go to meet with somebody. Let’s say Warwick is somebody that might either hire me or refer me to somebody. This is back. I could literally work eight to 10 hours in a week. I would go, schedule a meeting with Warwick at 8:30, because that’s the earliest I could, say, get to Denver. I’d meet from 8:30 to 9:30, and then I would schedule one other meeting at 10:30. I would go to my car and sleep. I’d set my alarm for 45 minutes, and I would pass out because I had no cognitive energy.
John R:
Then I could have a second conversation, let’s say with Gary, and I would be done. Wiped out in bed in a dark room for the next two days. I’m telling you, because God … I had to do something, and calling people, showing I couldn’t network, but calling people, developing a list, learning web, all the parts to develop a business like this, most of it to me is not enjoyable. All this stuff that I’m sharing with you guys when you are on purpose doesn’t mean that every element of your life is just like ye ha, being a fighter pilot, being out at sea for six months and all the stuff we had to do, 80% of it kind of blew, but that 20%, …awesome!
John R:
When I’m sitting across from somebody and they connect with who they are, they connect with their faith, I help them make decisions that save their company and save hundreds or thousands of employees’ lives, or I’m with somebody and I see them change who they are, and they tell me that their marriage has been restored, their relationship with their kids has been restored, all that stuff and the stuff that I don’t like to do, but needs to be done, so worth it. I think we also have to keep that in context too Warwick that. The stuff that we’re talking about, being on purpose and connecting all these, just doesn’t make everything all cotton candy, and roses.
John R:
What it does though, there’s thorns in those roses and it makes me very comfortable, happy to move through some of that because I know that I’m moving towards something meaningful, not only for me, but in partnership with God, if that makes sense.
Gary S:
That is an excellent time. I would normally say something just simple and not inspired like, the captain’s turned the fasten seatbelt signs and we’re getting close to having to land the plane, but because I’m talking to a former Top Gun pilot, I’m going to probably mess this up, but I’m going to say the tower has connected to us. It’s time to make sure that you’ve locked your seven point harness, that you’re strapped to your ejector seat, and we’ve got to be putting the F-14 down on the carrier in just a little bit. But Warwick, I know you have some further questions to ask John. Before we get there though, John, let me … I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you the opportunity to tell listeners where they can find out more about Beyond Influence and where they can find out more about your book.
John R:
Yeah. Thanks Gary. You know what? You did a really good job on that.
Gary S:
Well, thank you.
John R:
The book, just go to beyondinfluence.com/book. All the links are there on how to pre-order. If you guys pre-order the book and then leave a review, we’re in the middle of producing our audio book, you’ll get a copy of the audio book for free for just leaving us a review. That’s where you would just let us know that you’re signing up for that. We’re excited about this. My goal is to make this a best seller. We want to bring this out into how people lead, because I really think we can change organizations, ministries, families, and cultures by helping other people become a better version of themselves. When you start on that journey, not you master it, but you’re on a couple steps into it, you can help somebody else. One helps a hundred, that’s 10,000 helps another a hundred, it’s millions. God’s moving right now big time work.
John R:
Warwick And Gary, it’s why you’re doing the work you’re doing. We’d love for you guys to be part of what we feel is a movement, and it’s God’s movement that we’re joining him in, and I believe that’s what where my message in the book. So, beyondinfluence.com/book, and it’s at every bookstore, On Purpose With Purpose, or you type in Ramstead, R-A-M-S-T-E-A-D, at any place you buy books and you’ll find it. Thank you for letting me share that with your crew, Gary.
Gary S:
Absolutely. Warwick.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, boy, I really enjoyed just the concepts in your book of living on purpose. There’s a couple of quotes you have at the end of the book that talks about, sometimes, as we say in Crucible Leadership, amidst the ashes of your crucible, you can find your purpose. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, that’s what happened to you. You say these couple of things, you say, “I experienced a lot of obstacles on my path towards my vision and destination. Most of you have too press on, you can do this. My accident could have been a showstopper, but God used it to bring me to my life’s purpose.”
Warwick F:
Then, in the about the author section, there was this wonderful quote it’s just talk about synchronicity between what we’re both doing. You say this, “John had a personal encounter with God at the accident site who shared with him that he would be getting a second chance. With his life hanging in the balance, John emerged with a profound vision of how to live a life of significance.” Now, we didn’t write that, you did.
Gary S:
Don’t worry Warwick’s not going to call his attorney about that. It’s just that-
Warwick F:
We can all use the word significance, but …
Gary S:
It shows how universal that concept is, right?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. For listeners you may be going through the darkest pit, the darkest trial, and it may seem pointless, and whether you believe in God or not, certainly God or the universe can use it for a purpose. It’s just remarkable how he has. I mean, maybe this is an unfair question, but I think of myself, of my own crucible with the whole family business. I don’t know that I ever could have left that if the family business hadn’t gone under. I’ve never been in the military, but the whole loyalty and duty is pretty hardwired in me. The idea to abandon a150-year-old business, abandon the mission, I couldn’t have done it.
Warwick F:
There’s no way I could have done it. I would’ve felt like I was dishonoring my family and my ancestors. I couldn’t have left. God, I think said, okay, I’ll figure out a way for you to leave. You’re leaving. I don’t know, maybe I’m just stubborn or stupid, but for yourself, do you think you would have found your own joy and purpose without that horrific accident with the horse riding accident connecting to that steel fence?
John R:
It’s an interesting question, right? People say, could you go back and take it back and not do it? Because the answer is, in reality, you can’t, but I would say with total integrity that the person that I am today, the father, the husband, what I get to do in the world, I know for a fact I would not be doing it today had it not been for the accident. I would not be the person I am had it not been for the accident. It’s like, you know what? My vine had fruit on it and God lopped the vine off, the one that had, I thought, some nice fruit on it. That’s good fruit. What grew back was something so much better. You know what? It’s just on my heart. Maybe I could share with something to anybody listening that’s in that dark place.
John R:
Because I’ll never forget. Being at Craig Hospital with a severe brain injury and being in that environment, I mean, I was in so much pain, in addition to my brain not working and being told that I couldn’t be a greeter at Walmart. Imagine all this stuff like … My wife went from being a stay-at-home mom to be my caregiver and having no idea how we were going to survive. We were under the assumption for a while that there is no way for me to earn income, a living. In that, the darkest days, I saw people around me that were not injured as much as me, but they started focusing on, I think the victim side of thing.
John R:
Why did this happen to me? They started focusing on the loss. They started focusing on, I saw them despair, and what I witnessed, Warwick, is them spiraled down into a place that’s scared the wadding out of me, because God told me. He said, all things work together for good for those that love Lord. I held onto that with my fingertips, my fingernails, because it gave me hope. Even though there were some days, literally, I had to have God’s strength to get through the next five minutes, because they’d give me morphine and it would last for an hour and a half. They only could give it to you every four hours. That’s how much pain I was in.
John R:
That last hour and a half before they could give me another dose was absolutely excruciating. I was out of my mind for weeks and weeks and weeks. I’m like, you know what? Maybe, maybe tomorrow could be better than today. When I got to tomorrow and it was worse, I said, maybe next week could be better. I said, well, you know what? I have these amazing people around me and they’re praying and I have my friends, and I am alive. What could I possibly be grateful for when all the evidence is against it? Well, I’m grateful that I’m still here with my family, and maybe next month could be better. I started looking at things from a place of hope and a place of expectation, and I was learning to trust God and what he was doing through all this.
John R:
I know for a fact, that is the reason, some people marvel at it, that I was able to get through all of this, I think, with the way that I did. Anybody that’s out there, that right now, this feels like your darkest day, that today is worse than any other day that you’ve been, I just want to tell you, and I’m sure, Warwick, you would echo this, that trust me, next week, and it doesn’t feel like it, and the evidence isn’t there it can be better, and next month can be better, but what I’ll tell you is, a year from now, it will be better.
Gary S:
I have been in the communications business long enough to know when a Top Gun pilot has just landed the plane, and that’s what we have just heard from John. Thank you listener for spending time with us on this fascinating episode. Our first return engagement with a guest, John Ramstead, the author of On Purpose With Purpose: Discovering How to Live Your Best Life, which releases on April 27th, which if you’re hearing this on the day that we drop the episode is a week from now, but you can find it at his website beyondinfluence.com, back slash or forward slash, John?
John R:
Forward slash.
Gary S:
beyondinfluence.com/book, right?
John R:
Yes, sir.
Gary S:
That’s where you can find it to pre-order if it’s before the 27th of April, and you can order it there if it’s after the 27th.
John R:
Yeah, and if you leave a review, we’re going to … Just let us know. We’ll have a form on there and we’ll send you a free copy of the audio book as soon as it’s out of production.
Gary S:
Fantastic. Listener, until we are together next time, thank you for spending this time with us. If you’ve enjoyed this conversation, if you find hope, if you find perspectives that help you overcoming your own crucibles, moving toward a better time, moving forward on purpose with purpose, if these conversations help you do that, we would ask that you subscribe to the podcast, for one. Two, we’d ask that you’d leave a review at the app on which you’re listening of the show. Be honest, tell us what you think of it, but that helps more people find the show and hear discussions like this.
Gary S:
We ask you to remember, as you move on right now, that your crucible experiences are hard, they are painful. John describes some terribly painful crucibles that have happened to him, even just recently with his COVID challenges, but what his life proves, what Warwick’s life has proven, what your life can prove, is that your crucibles are not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning of a new chapter in your story. They can be the most exciting chapter in your story, because where that chapter leads, where your book is going to wrap up at is what we call here, and what John called in his book, a life of significance.
Adversity, Taryn Marie Stejskal says, is a trip we take. Resilience paves the road we walk to move beyond it. As one of the foremost international experts on building and exercising resilience in business and in life, Stejskal has crafted the Five Practices of Particularly Resilient People through exhaustive research into the subject … and informed by her harrowing experience of being stalked in high school by a man who eventually assaulted another victim. It’s not the absence of crucibles that determines our future, she tells Warwick, but what we learn from them and how we apply that wisdom.
Learn more about Stejskal and her practical and empirical insights into resilience by visiting www.resilience-leadership.com or her Facebook page and her Instagram account.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Taryn S:
When we recognize that we have a choice, all of a sudden we’ve gone from being disempowered to empowered and when we have a choice, that’s power. We always have a choice, even if the choices aren’t good. And that choice is in any inflection point, in any trauma we experience and any grief and any loss and any unfair treatment and any moment where there’s a lack of equity or care or empathy, we get to ask ourselves a really fundamental, oversimplified question which is am I going to allow this to make me bitter? Or am I going to allow this to make me better?
Gary S:
Now there’s a question to write down, fold up, stick in your pocket and pull out to ask yourself the next time you get the wind knocked out of you or worse by a crucible experience. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show, and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. The woman posing that question is Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal, one of the four most international experts on resilience in both leadership and in life. On today’s episode, she discusses with Warwick her voluminous research and her personal experience with a stalker while in high school that led her to identify the five practices of particularly resilient people.
Gary S:
She unpacks each one and concludes that while adversity is a trip all of us will take in our lives, resilience paves the road that allows us to move beyond those difficult moments.
Warwick F:
Well, Taryn, thank you so much for being here, I really appreciate it. Just love this whole subject of resilience, I think we mentioned off air I am an executive coach and heard you on WBECS, which is a great forum for coaches and thousands of people around the world, so it’s an awesome community and resilience is something certainly I can relate to, in Crucible Leadership we talk about it a lot, but you’ve done a lot. Whether it’s working with folks in Hollywood, the former executive leadership development head at Nike and you’ve done work at Cigna.
Warwick F:
And now with the five practices of particularly resilient people, it’s just kind of an amazing story. But I’d like to get a bit behind the scenes and what led you to have such a passion for resilience? Something about your background growing up, there’s always a story behind the story, so what led you on this journey to this passion for resilience?
Taryn S:
Yeah, it’s a great question actually, and there’s a quote that says something to the effect of, I can’t remember who said it, maybe the two of you know, you can help me, but it’s this idea that our lives are lived forward but understood backwards. And so oftentimes when I think about resilience, it wasn’t until many years later that I understood that a particular experience or moment led me to resilience, until I was able to many years later sort of look back and connect the dots, because so often our lives I think look like maybe a jumble of dots and it’s not until we look back that we can sort of draw that line through and see a clearer pathway.
Taryn S:
What I will say is that I don’t think resilience is for the faint of heart, there’s some kind of internal mettle, there’s some desire to really show up for challenges in life and to figure out how do we continue to do that better over time. And I’m also a believer that so often concepts and ideas, it’s not so much that we come up with them, but that the concept or the idea finds us. So if I share that in a little bit of a different way, I think resilience found me through a number of experiences that I had in my life.
Taryn S:
The first time that resilience tapped me on the shoulder I was probably 14 years old and without knowing it there was a morning before school where I was getting dressed and there was a man outside of my window. And when I went over closer to the window, it was dark in the morning, to turn off my stereo. For those of you that are of the millennial or Gen Z, a stereo is something that played music.
Warwick F:
Yes.
Taryn S:
Instead of your cellphone.
Gary S:
It was your iPod before your iPod.
Taryn S:
It was my iPod before my iPod, sometimes people used to carry them around on their shoulders, so a very heavy iPod. See me later and I’ll tell you about phone booths and butter churns too. And other obsolete devices. And so when I looked at the bottom of my window, it was on the ground floor, there was this face at the bottom of my window and as the light went down this person’s face, this man’s face, and he stood up. And so he’s standing just outside my window, outside, and I’m standing on the inside, and in my 14 year old mind I’m trying to figure out what the heck is going on?
Taryn S:
And what we do in those moments is we scan very quickly through all of our prior experiences to say what else have I seen that might look like this to help me understand what’s happening? And the only experience that I had had to that point at 14 that was even close to that was one time my dad came home from a business trip and he was outside the window and he was playing a trick on us or something like that, knocking on the window trying to scare us.
Taryn S:
And so that’s what I pulled out of my mind in that moment within a fraction of a second or a second, and I said, “Dad?” And he said, “Take off your clothes, your beautiful.” And I thought, not dad.
Warwick F:
Oh my God.
Taryn S:
And so I went and called for my parents and they heard someone running down the street, when they went out on their upstairs deck. And for us, we thought that was maybe just going to be the end of the story. We called the police, we made a police report, and I remember the woman that came to our home said, “You know what, there’s nothing to worry about here, it’s probably just someone passing through the neighborhood, probably just a fluke.” And then eight months later that my parents were out of town, I always kept that window closed, and then the window in the back of the house, I think we didn’t have air conditioning at the time.
Taryn S:
So the window in the back of the house was open for ventilation, and I’d gotten this new bikini from the Gap, and I had taken off the bikini and I was completely naked and I heard that voice again that was etched in my memory. I didn’t know he was there until he spoke and he said, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.” And for me, as a 15 year old, there were three inconvenient truths there. One, I was naked in front of a man for the first time, two, my childhood bedroom that should have been one of the safest places for me as a young girl growing up became profoundly unsafe, and three, this wasn’t a fluke as we had hoped or as we had believed.
Taryn S:
And what this journey led to was him coming back several times over the course of my high school career and each time his behavior accelerating or elevating.
Warwick F:
And he was outside the window all these times?
Taryn S:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). He never got in the house, although the last two times that I’m aware he was there, he did attempt to break into the house. Once when I was home by myself, he was throwing patio furniture up against a sliding glass door that just thankfully didn’t shatter, and there was a time where I was babysitting at the house behind my house and I saw the figure of a man in the yard and he was advancing toward the house and someone starting ringing the doorbell. And when we went to the door no one was there.
Taryn S:
And then there was a little girl who was a friend and her father came to pick her up and I said, “Were you at the other door ringing the doorbell?” And he said, “No, I just got here.” So what happened sort of short story long or long story short depending on how you want to think about that, is two things, one, I went away to college and his behavior I think continued to accelerate or continued to downgrade and he ended up attacking and brutally raping a woman in my neighborhood and went to prison for 20 years and I realized by the time that I was in my mid 20s, when I was getting a Masters in marriage and family therapy, we were going through the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual where you learn how to diagnose psychological or psychiatric diagnoses.
Taryn S:
And I was like, huh, I actually meet all of the criteria for post traumatic stress disorder. And I didn’t realize that.
Warwick F:
And as you look back on that, you probably thought, “Well, I guess they were wrong, this wasn’t a one off thing,” this lasted months, sounded like it lasted years.
Taryn S:
It lasted years.
Warwick F:
And you probably, one thought was, “Why me?” But then did you think, “As bad as it was for me, I could have been my neighbor”?
Taryn S:
That’s right.
Warwick F:
That must have been a weird, I mean, part of you was maybe grateful, part of you was horrified. I imagine there was a whole sea of emotions, that must have been a hard thing to deal with and then now clinically understanding what you’re reading, how did you process all that of anger? You don’t often think of anger and gratitude in the same moment, like I’m angry, I feel bad for my neighbor, I know it’s awful to say this, I’m just so glad that wasn’t me.
Taryn S:
Right.
Warwick F:
It sounds awful to say that but you have to be thinking that, right?
Taryn S:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). But that’s just the nature, Warwick, I think of survivor’s guilt, is that tension, that paradox that exists of both gratitude and sadness. A deep empathy for, if you’re crossing the street and a car swerves and it hits the person next to you, you’re like, oh my God, thank goodness I wasn’t hit and oh my gosh, I feel terrible that the other person was. And that paradox of I’m safe but this other person wasn’t, this didn’t happen to me but it could’ve, navigating paradox in the human mind is not something that comes naturally to us.
Warwick F:
It needs a lot of I guess training and processing. So, it’s easy maybe for listeners to hear we can understand why Taryn, her whole mission in life is about resilience given what you’ve gone through. Is it that simple? Do you look back and say, “If this hadn’t happened, what would’ve happened to my life? Maybe I would have done something totally different than resilience,” or all the work that you’ve done on there, do you ever think to yourself what would Taryn be without that episode? What would you have done?
Taryn S:
Right. Well, I think that’s one of the principles of how I think about resilience because the definition of resilience after a decade and a half of research is simple and powerful, it’s the idea that we allow ourselves to effectively address challenge or the challenge, change and complexity that is in our path. And when we address that challenge, change and complexity, we find a way over time to not allow those things to diminish us, but instead to alchemize that trauma, that grief, that loss and to allow ourselves to be enhanced by that experience.
Taryn S:
And so on the one hand, I think it would be very easy for me and for other people that have faced difficulty to sort of be walking around saying, “You know what, if I hadn’t had this stalker, if I hadn’t experienced two decades of PTSD, what could I have become in my life?” And instead I think sort of the crux of resilience is that when we flip the script and instead of saying why did this happen to me? To ask ourselves instead why did this happen for me?
Warwick F:
And that’s so profound, that’s so empowering. We talk in Crucible Leadership all the time about failures and setbacks and you have a choice, in our language, to either hide under the covers and wallow and say why did this happen to me? Or in the case of failure it can be why was I such an idiot? Because sometimes we bring crucibles on ourselves, sometimes it is our fault. Sometimes it’s not. Either way, it’s pretty difficult. But you have a choice, but you made a choice, I’m not going to be a victim for my whole life, this was terrible but I refuse to just cower and wile away the next 40, 50, 60 years of my life until it ends.
Warwick F:
But you made that choice. Because not everybody makes that choice, you’ve studied this more than I do, what led you to make that choice to refuse to be a victim, refuse to just sit back and let life fade away?
Taryn S:
Yeah. Well, we’re only given, and I’ll quote another person whom I can’t give you the name, but we’re only given this one wild and precious life. And the first thing to understand is that so often we don’t believe that we have a choice, or people don’t believe that they have a choice, so the first step is to recognize that you have a choice. It’s not a default to say, well, this horrific thing came to me and therefore my future is circumscribed to be this.
Taryn S:
We are the authors of our lives, we’re the architects of our lives, we have free will for a reason. There’s also that quote of life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond, so for whatever reason, I’ve always understood that I had a choice. I didn’t have a choice about the experience, but I do have a choice about how I respond, and the type of life that I live in response to that and living a great life, living a whole life, that’s the best revenge. And I use the word revenge loosely of course.
Taryn S:
But not allowing ourselves, again going back to the definition of resilience, not allowing ourselves to be diminished by our experiences and instead find a way to alchemize that trauma, that grief, that loss, and figure out how we make it beautiful, how we make the testimony. That’s redemption.
Gary S:
I’m going to jump in because so much of what Crucible Leadership talks about and so much about what you talk about, Taryn, it’s as if it was typed on the same typewriter, that’s one of those other old machines that kids today don’t know much about.
Warwick F:
Indeed.
Gary S:
But one of the first quotes you have on your website from someone whose name I’m going to mispronounce and I apologize to her in advance, Pema Chödrön.
Taryn S:
Yeah, Chödrön, I think, one of the first female Buddhist monks.
Gary S:
Yeah, she writes, “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” And Warwick has said this, “In our lowest moments we find strength, courage and perseverance we never knew we had.” You’re both talking one side of the same coin in that the crucibles that we go through, the trials we go through, those things, if we address them correctly, if we look at them through the right lenses, they’re a leaping off point to a better life.
Taryn S:
Yeah, this is an oversimplification so bear with me but when we recognize that we have a choice, all of a sudden we’ve gone from being disempowered to empowered. And when we have a choice, that’s power. We always have a choice. Even if the choices aren’t good, and that choice is in any inflection point, in any trauma we experience, in any grief, in any loss, in any unfair treatment, in any moment where there’s a lack of equity or care or empathy, we get to ask ourselves a really fundamental, oversimplified question which is am I going to allow this to make me bitter or am I going to allow this to make me better?
Warwick F:
It’s funny, as I’m listening to you, Taryn, it’s hard for me to just stop nodding in violent agreement if that’s a word, just because obviously listeners would know this, but when I read what you’ve written, I just feel like I’ve lived your thesis, if you will, and everything that you’re saying makes sense. Again, my experience was obviously radically different, but again as listeners would know, I grew up in a very large family media business, 150 years old, had the Australian equivalent of The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TV, radio, I was sort of the heir apparent.
Warwick F:
It was a massive company, launched a 2 billion plus takeover for a variety of reasons, my dad had died and I felt like the company wasn’t being run along the ideals of the founder, it wasn’t being run well. Whether was that a good or bad decision, it’s a whole question, but after three years, the company goes under, too much debt, Australia got in a recession. So I never thought it was PTSD, but I had my own crucible moment in that a lot of the trauma I went through was brought on by my own idealism and naivete, I didn’t mean to hurt anybody or do anything bad but just this thought of I’ve single handedly brought down a 150 year old family company.
Warwick F:
My Wikipedia entry is not favorable, I have one, and it’s like young hot headed kid could’ve had it all and blew it is pretty much what it says. And so that may never change, I don’t know, so for me, the ’90s were challenging times, look what I did and I felt like I’d let my family down and as a person of faith, and the founder was a person of faith, I felt like, gosh, I’d let down the universe or God in some sense. It was pretty heavy on a lot of levels, but eventually as I clawed my self esteem back, yeah, there was a choice, am I going to let this define me? I own it, my whole Crucible Leadership, I talk very openly about my mistakes, I have a book coming out in the fall that goes into pretty exhaustive detail about my stupidity and naïve assumptions.
Warwick F:
And then explain how this can help others. Don’t do some of the things I did. But as you’re saying, as I started to claw my way back, find things I could do without screwing up and find things that I was gifted at, all the things you talk about, resilience, it’s making a choice, it’s all true. It’s not like there’s no pain, it’s unrealistic to say, “There’s no scar or no scab,” but I can talk about it now in a way that’s vastly less painful. I don’t know whether that’s true for you, obviously you talked openly about what you went through, but I’m sure there’s some pain but it’s probably a lot easier to talk about than it was.
Warwick F:
Because you’re using your pain for a purpose, I know that’s an oft used aphorism, but it’s true. Yeah, it all makes sense to me, obviously. Very different background, very different stories, but everybody, it’s funny, we have a lot of people on the podcast that talk about crucibles, and we’ve interviewed people like Navy SEALs that have been paralyzed and I’ll often apologize because I didn’t go through anything like what you’ve been through or some of the people, we’ve had victims of abuse and all sorts of things. And they all say this, they say it’s not a competition of crucibles, your pain is just as real to you as anybody else.
Warwick F:
And these are people who have gone through things 100 times worse than I have, and I’m astounded how they can be so generous. Anyway, you get the idea.
Taryn S:
Yeah. Well, I’d say two things about that, Warwick, if I may. One is so often we say to people without really thinking about it when some type of loss or challenge or trauma befalls, as we say to people, well, everything happens for a reason. And anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end of that has sat on their hands so that they didn’t strangle you, strangle me, when they said it. So I appreciate that, thank you everyone for your grace. And what we realized is when we say to people everything happens for a reason, that orients people to look outside of themselves for a reason.
Taryn S:
Like why was I disabled? Why did I experience this childhood abuse? Why did I have this stalker? Why did I develop PTSD? No one can answer those why questions. Except for us. So we can spend our lives searching to the answer for why, we can spend our lives searching for the reason, or we can take back that power just as we do when we recognize that we have a choice and we can say here’s how I’m going to make meaning out of what happened. So what I hear you saying is you’re in a place now where you can look on what has happened in the past and say, “Here’s how I make meaning of what happened.”
Taryn S:
And when we look instead internally to make our meaning, when we look instead to answer our own why questions, that’s when healing occurs.
Warwick F:
Do you feel, and maybe this is obvious, but certainly in my own life as I find I’m using what I went through to help others, there’s a healing component, a healing balm. It doesn’t all go away, but there’s something very healing when you’re using what you’ve been through to help others. Obviously you have your own experience, but actually unlike me you’ve done a lot of research on this, does that kind of make sense, that there is that healing component to using what you’ve been through to help others?
Taryn S:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m very hesitant to use the word failure because I actually believe that very, very, very, very, very few things that we experience in life fall under the umbrella or the actual truth of being a failure or a mistake. So my team used to come to me and say, “Oh my gosh, we’ve made a mistake,” and I’d say, “Well, have you made this mistake before?” And they would say, “Well, no we haven’t.” And I would say, “Well, in that case, it’s a lesson.” The first time it’s a lesson, the second time it’s a mistake.
Taryn S:
So, Warwick, you’re not going to take down the family business again, you learned from that. And to your point, and I know we’re going to talk about the five practices of particularly resilient people, this empirically based model that really helps us understand what are those key behaviors that allow us to capitalize and to harness our own human resilience in the moments when we face challenge, change, and complexity, and one of those elements, the fourth practice, is the practice of gratiosity, and the practice of gratiosity is twofold and we’ll talk about the other ones. We’ll start with number four.
Warwick F:
Yeah, absolutely.
Taryn S:
The practice of gratiosity is a compilation of two words, gratitude and generosity, and it’s the ability to after some time instead of saying why is this happening to me? To say why is this happening for me? To stop looking for an external reason or to answer that why question and to take on, to empower ourselves to create our own meaning. And then to look on a challenge, even if we wouldn’t have chosen it, and to say I can see the good in that. I didn’t want to take down the company, I didn’t want to have a cancer diagnosis, and yet I can see the good in what has occurred.
Warwick F:
Yeah, just to give an obvious example for me, I love that notion of gratiosity. I’m basically a reserved, maybe a bit shy, kind of person that’s a reflective adviser, I’m not a Rupert Murdoch, take no prisoners executive. That is just not me, I’m not this larger than life, bomb throwing individual, I’m more nuanced. So I was trapped in a role that I was not designed for but out of a sense of duty and family history, I felt like loyalty is a big deal for me, I had to do this.
Warwick F:
Well, once that was over and I recovered from the experience, which took me a lot of the ’90s, it’s like, well, I can be whoever I want to be. So now with my writing and podcast and executive coaching, being on two nonprofit boards, I found I actually am good at being a reflective adviser and listening. Well, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity trapped in a family business. That’s my gratiosity, if you will. It’s very obvious to me, what can I be thankful for? Well, I was trapped in this gilded cocoon, if you will. Plenty of money, but I was trapped living the life of somebody five generations before.
Warwick F:
So, yeah, does that make sense? It’s empowering to have that attitude of gratiosity for what you’ve been through, at least it’s obvious for me anyway in my case, but does that make sense?
Taryn S:
Yeah, it absolutely does. I love just hearing the realtime application of here’s the practice and you were like here’s how that shows up for me, and then it’s just what you said, because the second part is the -osity, the generosity, is the ability to share those lessons, not mistakes, not failures, but to share those lessons with others as you are doing so that others may learn those lessons through you vicariously.
Warwick F:
Exactly, in our case, we talk about be who you were designed to be. Some people grow up in families where they’ve been lawyers for generations or doctors, and you can do anything you want so long as you’re a doctor like mum or dad, or a lawyer, it’s the same thing, it’s often common. So talk about some of these other principles that you have of these resilience principles, because they’re fascinating, so where would you like to go next on our tour?
Taryn S:
Yeah, well, what I’ll just say to kind of close out this dialogue, what you shared, Warwick, is a really wonderful example of this idea that your story doesn’t have to become your narrative, which I want to touch on for a moment.
Warwick F:
Please, continue. I love that. It’s hard for me to stop nodding but forgive me, please keep going.
Gary S:
I love watching this, after all these podcasts, I love watching this because it’s like you’re getting executive coached right here, Warwick, I love it.
Warwick F:
Maybe you’ll think of something, Taryn, that I disagree with, but it’s been tough so far, I’ve been wholeheartedly agreeing with everything. But keep going.
Taryn S:
Well, I love it, I love that we’re on the same wavelength, it’s a lot of fun. And one of the things that I share in the context of my work is this idea that our story is what happened to us. It’s the thin description of our life. My mother left me when I was a child, people didn’t show up for me, we never had enough food, so there’s a sense of feeling financially or with regard to food feeling insecure. Those are stories. Those are things that happened. And what I’ve realized over time is that the danger isn’t so much in what happens to us. It’s how we incorporate those experiences into our narrative.
Taryn S:
And our narrative is our identity, our narrative is our self worth. So I could have said I had this stalker, I developed PTSD, and therefore the value that I believe I can bring to the world has been diminished because I’ve translated my story into becoming a narrative about my identity and who I am. And so what I love about what you’re saying is that we differentiate between our story, what happened to us, and then what we tell ourselves about what that means in terms of our identity.
Warwick F:
Because what it can mean is whether it was your fault or not your fault, you can say, well, because of what happened, therefore I have no value and I have no worth. Which it’s hard for me to understand, failure is one thing, I get why somebody could think that, but when it’s not your fault at all, and you’ve researched this which I haven’t, somehow, no matter whether it’s your fault or not your fault, it can lead to a tremendous sense of lack of self worth, lack of self respect, which how do you achieve anything? How do you do anything? So that is just so sad.
Warwick F:
But by being able to switch that narrative story, Gary, one of the things you end every podcast with is, why don’t you just tell Taryn in terms of the crucible’s not the end of your story, because it’s unbelievable, it’s just exactly what you’re talking about, but share that, Gary.
Gary S:
Yeah, what we try to encourage listeners with at the end of every episode is that they’re crucibles, those trials, tragedies, traumas, those things that have gone wrong, failure and setback, they aren’t the end of their story. In fact, we say, they can be the beginning of a new story, a better story, if you learn the lessons of them as you’ve talked about, Taryn. If you learn the lessons of those things, it can be a better story because where it takes you as you’ve learned those lessons is to a new life which at Crucible Leadership we define as a life of significance.
Warwick F:
And that basically means a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others. Whatever that means for you, everybody’s life of significance will be different. But as you hear that, that’s in part what you’re talking about, about changing the narrative, using the narrative for good. So just as you’re saying it it’s like, wow. Jaws dropping again here, so, amazing.
Taryn S:
Yeah, right. And this notion that you bring up, Warwick, you used the word fault, whose fault is it, was it my fault. Akin to that is this idea of responsibility. And what I’ve seen over time and being a marriage and family therapist and having worked with a variety of people that have had neurological injuries, spinal cord injuries, brain injuries as the result of car accidents and falls, this idea of responsibility or who is at fault or am I at fault or who’s at fault, that’s a tremendously important inflection point in our healing.
Taryn S:
It’s tremendously important that we get this notion of responsibility right. And a dear friend of mine and a mentor, Richard Pimentel, who was responsible for the American With Disabilities Act and there’s a wonderful movie that was made about him by a dear friend of mine, Steven Sawalich, called The Music Within. And Richard Pimentel talks about this idea of responsibility, and he helpfully breaks it into two components, response and ability. And in the moment when something happens, what is our ability to respond?
Taryn S:
And when we think about all of these things like you shared, Gary, these crucible moments, the challenge, the change, the complexity, the loss, the grief, the unfairness. Really accurately getting to a place where we are assigning responsibility is key. It’s key that we don’t blame everybody else and not figure out what percentage of that is our own, because when we blame everybody else it means the control for our healing and our maturation is also outside of ourselves.
Taryn S:
And conversely, when we take on too much of that responsibility, if you’re a victim of being targeted or a stalker or you’ve been raped or abused in some way and you think, “That was my fault,” we need to look accurately at, in fact, what was your ability to respond? And really get that right as part of the healing process.
Warwick F:
I think that’s so true. Do you think, and I want to make sure we cover all these aspects, these five-
Gary S:
Yeah, we have four more to go. We have four more to go.
Warwick F:
Five practices, there is one thing I’d be curious about is the whole aspect of forgiveness. Certainly for me, part of it was forgiving myself, I was young, 26, young, naïve. I had no intention to cause pain to anybody and there was thousands of people in the company. The company went on, but still, part of it is forgiving others but part of it is forgiving yourself. Is that part of the component of being able to move on from a challenging experience, that whole assigning responsibility and I’ve done a lot of that internal work of how much was my fault, which a fair amount, not all, accepting. But talk about forgiveness and how that relates to the whole responsibility deal.
Taryn S:
Yeah, forgiveness is a tremendously important element. So once we have accurately assigned responsibility and that can take some time and, PS, it’s always good if we have some skin in the game relative to responsibility. We shouldn’t take none of it and we shouldn’t take all of it. But accurately assigning that responsibility, I love that you’re talking about forgiveness. Forgiveness oftentimes, for many people, not for everyone, but comes from you talked about, Warwick, being a man of faith, it often comes from having a spiritual or a religious practice and is often informed by those experiences.
Taryn S:
And for me, there’s really three important things that we need to understand about forgiveness. The first one is forgiveness is for no one else but ourselves. And so often people say, “Well, I’m not going to forgive that, they don’t deserve that forgiveness.” Maybe they don’t, but fortunately it’s actually not for them. The forgiveness is for us.
Warwick F:
That’s the scary thing is we say this too, and I don’t claim that everything you say we say because we’re not that smart, but the notion that why is forgiveness important? Because you’re worth it.
Taryn S:
Yeah, right.
Warwick F:
And they win if you’re bitter. For you to get out of that prison of bitterness, you’re worth forgiving that other person or yourself, because then the power is removed so, please continue because I can’t help but agree.
Taryn S:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, so the first component to understand about forgiveness is it’s for you. It’s not for anyone else but you. The second thing to understand about forgiveness is that forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation.
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Taryn S:
So when we forgive someone, that’s a choice, that’s a decision that we make. It’s not the same as continuing that relationship, going back to that relationship, continuing to be a part of whatever is happening.
Warwick F:
Nor is it the same as accountability.
Taryn S:
Right.
Warwick F:
There is still consequences, sometimes legal consequence, it doesn’t mean that we’re lessening accountability or responsibility.
Taryn S:
Right, exactly.
Warwick F:
And people confuse those two things, right?
Taryn S:
Exactly. So if you’re someone who’s been in an abusive relationship, you can forgive that person and you don’t need to reconcile with them.
Warwick F:
Sure.
Taryn S:
Forgiveness is not reconciliation, that’s two. The third part of forgiveness is oftentimes it takes time and it takes many times for us to say, “I forgive you, I forgive myself.” Oftentimes we are the hardest people to forgive, forgiveness of self can be the most difficult forgiveness. And for me coming from a Christian faith background, it says in the Bible, I think one of the disciples or someone said to Jesus, they said, “Well, how many times do we forgive that person?” And Jesus says, “Seven times 77 times.”
Warwick F:
Which is a biblical way of saying forever, unlimited.
Gary S:
Forever.
Warwick F:
Is basically what it’s saying.
Taryn S:
That’s right.
Warwick F:
It’s a metaphor, yeah, exactly.
Taryn S:
It doesn’t mean that we reconcile and we allow someone to continue to perpetrate something against us, but seven times 77, that gets us into the 400s
Warwick F:
That’s a lot.
Taryn S:
And what I’ve found with the experience with a stalker or I was in an abusive relationship where I was nearly strangled to death, and I have probably had to say 300 times, not directly to that person but in my mind, I forgive you. I forgive you, I’m letting this go, I forgive you. So the third part is oftentimes we can be the hardest ones to forgive and don’t be fooled, forgiveness is not once and for all. That resentment, that anger, that lack of forgiveness, it can sneak back in and it can take 400 times until we really let that go.
Warwick F:
And we’ll move on here in a millisecond, but this forgiveness is so important. I often think forgiveness is a bit like weeding, you know? So, weeds will crop up and I have unfortunately had a lot of practice at this both with myself and some other folks, family, advisers. Something will come up and sometimes we have people in our lives who as soon as you’ve caught up with the last thing they’ve done, they do something else, it’s like, hey, I’m trying to catch up, can you just give me a moment before you lob the next thing that I’m going to be angry about.
Warwick F:
But when I find these things, these little weeds crop up, I say, okay, I’m not going to go there. I nip it in the bud. So it is like weeding, you cannot let it grow and flourish, you’ve just got to get on it, if that makes sense. So talk a bit about some of the other elements, because it’s vulnerability, productive perseverance, connection and I think the last one is possibility. Talk about why those are all important as we try to be resilient people.
Gary S:
And also I’ll add something to layer on top, how they’re all connected, because you started at four, so how do they all connect, those four?
Taryn S:
Yeah, so the great thing is this is an empirically based model, so when we talk about the five practices of particularly resilient people, it’s based on having interviewed hundreds of people and collected thousands of pieces of data where I asked people to think about a time when they faced a significant challenge and what did they do? What actions did they take in those moments to effectively address that challenge? And after coding that variety of data, what that gave birth to or what that gave rise to was the five practices of particularly resilient people.
Taryn S:
So first and foremost, to appreciate that this is an evidence based or an empirically based model is really key. Because there’s lots of things out there that are like, the five P’s of resilience and productivity and positivity. I like alliteration as much as the next person, maybe even a little more, being a writer, maybe you too Warwick.
Warwick F:
Indeed.
Gary S:
Indeed.
Taryn S:
But the empirical base is important, so the first practice that emerged which is really a foundational practice of resilience is the practice of vulnerability. And I thought, when that emerged, as someone who has survived trauma, I spent my whole life trying to be invulnerable. I was over programmed to be invulnerable, to not show emotion, to not respond, because of needing to be in those crucible moments with a stalker where I needed to think quickly to keep myself safe.
Warwick F:
And probably not to talk about some of these experiences, most people who have gone through trauma, they won’t talk about it. They’re not going to be vulnerable about it.
Taryn S:
Yeah, that’s the second part. The first part is, so what is vulnerability in the first place? I’m glad you asked. So, vulnerability is allowing our inside self, our thoughts, feelings, experiences, to the greatest extent possible to match our outside self. In psychology we would call this congruence. That what we’re feeling and experiencing, we allow ourselves to show that to the world and I think for the vast majority of us, reaching congruence or 100% congruence, our internal life is being lived on the outside, that’s a lifelong process, that’s a life long pursuit of vulnerability.
Warwick F:
And it’s rare.
Taryn S:
It’s rare.
Warwick F:
Because most of us put on a mask, again, this is probably getting boring for the listeners, that’s one of my highest values of trying to make sure that who I am on the outside is who I am on the inside. It’s an extremely high value of mine and I find as you share with people, I’m blessed, I did my undergrad at Oxford and did an MBA at Harvard Business School, I was embarrassed to go to Harvard Business School reunion because people would say, “Look what you’ve done, you’ve failed spectacularly,” I mean, in business, this is not cool.
Warwick F:
But you go to these things and people aren’t treating you like a leper. A lot of people have had business failures who have been in business school, and when they treat you like you’re a human being, it’s like, really? They’re not saying, “Unclean,” like in the Bible, “Leave the town.” It’s like, wow, because we have this notion in our head that if people really know how stupid I am or what I’ve been through, that nobody will want to be with us, we’ll be like a leper, right?
Taryn S:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
And when that story is broken, it’s another step of healing, does that kind of make sense?
Taryn S:
It absolutely does. The first thing is you had a business lesson, you didn’t have a business failure, if you took down the company twice then that would be failure or a mistake. But you learned from the first time, you’re brilliant.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I haven’t done any failed two billion dollar takeovers since, so there you go, I learned my lesson.
Warwick F:
So that’s awesome.
Taryn S:
Onward and upward my friend.
Warwick F:
Indeed, okay, that leads to productive perseverance. What is that? That’s a fascinating phrase.
Taryn S:
Yeah, exactly. Well, we’re short on time so I’ll just say one more thing about vulnerability which is precisely what you said, Warwick, which Brené Brown has talked about vulnerability and its role in what she calls living a wholehearted life. Vulnerability also showed up as a foundational practice of resilience, and so I asked myself just that question which you were alluding to which is if vulnerability seems to be so important in Brené’s work of living a wholehearted life and now being a foundational element of resilience, why aren’t we all running around living these fabulously vulnerable lives?
Taryn S:
What gives? And it’s this idea of the vulnerability bias, or exactly the sort of story that we tell ourselves in our heads which is if people really knew, if people really knew this part of me that’s on the inside, that I don’t want to show on the outside, three things would happen. I call it the three Ls that block our vulnerability. People wouldn’t like us, they wouldn’t love us, and they might leave.
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Taryn S:
And when you threaten people with ostracism, what that’s shown is the parts of the brain that are associated with physical pain light up. And we don’t want to experience even the threat or the fear of that physical pain, so better not to be vulnerable and better to stay quiet.
Warwick F:
Right, because if they reject my mask, that’s one thing, if they reject the real me, infinitely worse.
Taryn S:
That’s right.
Warwick F:
So many if not most don’t want to take that risk, hence the world we live in, whether it’s politicians or Hollywood or wherever, it’s a sea of masks. So what would you like to talk about just in the closing minutes we have just about some of the other aspects of these wonderful principles of resilience?
Taryn S:
Yeah, well, I’ll give you a quick overview of the last three and then if we ever want to talk more about them we absolutely can. So the second principle, second practice of particularly resilient people, is the practice of productive perseverance. Remember when I told you I liked alliteration? So it’s this idea of knowing when to maintain the mission despite challenge and that’s very much aligned with Angela Duckworth’s work on grit.
Gary S:
Great book.
Taryn S:
Great book and it’s more than that, because grit is not synonymous with resilience. Grit is a fractional component of resilience, but it’s not the whole story. So knowing when to maintain the mission despite challenge, and recognizing that in the face of a significantly changing environment or a disruptive environment, that we need to pivot and go in a new direction. And this is very much an art and a science, because if you want to become a Navy SEAL or graduate from the Naval Academy, those sort of markers are well defined. And it’s good to put your head down and to be gritty in those situations.
Taryn S:
But in an environment relative to global pandemic COVID-19, where things are shifting and changing, we also must pick our heads up and look at how the environment is shifting and changing so that we can continually evaluate if the path that we’re on is the right one lest we become a Kodak or a Blockbuster or a BlackBerry.
Warwick F:
Hence productive perseverance. Awesome phrase. So how does that lead to connection?
Taryn S:
Well, connection in the midst of this pandemic is really the new currency, we’re all wondering how do we connect with a remote distributed workforce, with our elderly parents, with our grandparents, I held a 70th Zoom birthday party for my mom back in December, and connection’s always been important in terms of resilience and it’s no less important now and again, inherent within each of these practices is a paradox. And connection seems simple because it’s twofold, it’s the connection to ourselves, trusting our gut, knowing our value, listening to the still, small voice within, cultivating and listening to our intuition on the one hand.
Taryn S:
And then on the other hand cultivating and developing relationships externally with our family and friends and community. And that’s all well and good until those two things are at odds.
Warwick F:
Right.
Taryn S:
So that’s connection. We talked about gratiosity, gratitude plus sharing generosity and the last is the practice of possibility, it’s the practice of at its core being able to prioritize or privilege progress over perfection. And the paradox therein of the practice of possibility is being able to navigate the tension between risk and opportunity. In these moments, in order to be resilient, we must hold both risk and opportunity, hold both danger and possibility and allow both to be true.
Warwick F:
But there’s something about possibility in forward movement that I know in economics there’s this fundamental law of business is you’re either growing or you’re declining. If you’re status quo, then you’re about to decline, it’s one of these ironclad business laws. And I feel like maybe it’s true in life too perhaps that if you have a possibility outlook of how can I grow, how can I improve, how can I use what I’m going through to help others as you’re looking forward to possibility, then healing can continue.
Warwick F:
If you start trying to hunker down and not move forward, then I don’t know, do you feel like life’s a bit like that too?
Taryn S:
Absolutely. Yeah, I think if we’re not evolving, if we’re standing still we’re probably devolving, right?
Gary S:
I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know that’s a good place to land the plane, what you just said. That is a bow on top of the package to mix my metaphors, Taryn, I would be totally, totally, completely lacking in my job as the cohost of the show if I did not give you the chance before we go to let our listeners know how they can find out more about you, specifically on this thing called the internet.
Taryn S:
Yes, the internet, the internets.
Gary S:
Yes.
Taryn S:
We’ll invite you take a look at the show notes for all the various and nuanced places to catch up with me. Two great places to spend some time, one is on our Instagram page, Dr. Taryn Marie, we’ve got a wonderful resilience movement happening there and basically daily kind of updates and resilience motivations. So that’s really, really fun. And the second part is there’s lots of free resources, articles, podcast recordings, those types of things on our website which is resilience-leadership.com. We’d love to see you there.
Warwick F:
Well, thank you so much, Taryn, for being here. It’s so inspiring just all your work on resilience, and yeah, I’m sorry I just couldn’t help but agree with everything you’re saying. I’m just looking at one of your quotes, I think from Robert Ingersoll on connection, we rise by lifting others. It’s just so true, some of these things, they may seem trite like pain for purpose, but as we try to understand what happened, yes, look at responsibility, vulnerability, but as we try and use those to help others, there is a healing component.
Warwick F:
It kind of gives you a reason to get out of bed every morning, how can I use my pain in a forward looking way to help others, and so thank you for the work that you do and all the research and just being vulnerable yourself. Because that helps people relate to you. If you’re able to share something very personal, it says, well, if Taryn can do that, maybe it’s okay if I do that. So the research is critical, but so is showing up as a whole person in every sense of the word whole, if that makes sense. It really does help. The research and being vulnerable, the two together, is a powerful combination.
Warwick F:
So thank you so much for everything you do and thanks for being on the podcast, we very much appreciate it.
Taryn S:
Thank you so much, such an honor to be here.
Gary S:
Thank you. Well, that certainly was a different kind of discussion than we’ve had before, based, again as we said earlier, on experiential crucibles but then really deep research about the power of resilience and if you enjoyed what you heard here on the show today, listener, Warwick and I have a little favor to ask you and that is that you would just click like on the podcast app on which you’re listening, share this with some friends, put it on social media, so that we can get the word out about the show because the more people know about the show, the more we can get guests, great guests, like Dr. Taryn Marie.
Gary S:
And until the next time we’re together, we ask you to remember this, which is sort of the motto of Crucible Leadership when you get right down to it, and that is that your crucible experiences are indeed painful. No one is doubting that. The conversation with Dr. Taryn Marie hit on that, it’s very real, that pain is legitimate. What you’re feeling is legitimate. But what you’re feeling is not the end of your story. You can, as discussed on the show today, learn the lessons, learn what is meant to be taught to you through your experiences, apply those lessons to your life.
Gary S:
And when you do that, we have discovered that it is by far not the end of your story. It is in fact the beginning of a new chapter in your story, and a new chapter that can be the most fulfilling one yet. Why is that? Because the direction it will take you as we heard in this conversation today and as we’ve heard in previous conversations, the direction it will take you when you learn the lessons of your crucible and apply them is the most fulfilling direction of your life because what it leads to in the end is a life of significance.
Gregory Robinson’s crucibles piled up in his youth: raised without a father, kicked out of the house at 16, eking out a day-to-day existence swiping soap from restaurants to wash up and making ends meet hustling pool while flopping with other boys from hardscrabble backgrounds. But his life began to turn around after a stint in juvenile detention set him on a path to get a job, join the military and build the responsibility and resilience that has led him to help others employ the principles that have made him The Unbreakable Man. The key, he says, is to never let defeat defeat you.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Gregory Robinson:
I rode the bus home with them. That was my first party ever. So we went to the white section of town that us as kids had heard stories about. That’s just how it was. So we all got off the bus and all my friends disappeared. And so here I am, excuse my jokes, but it’s how I am. I was in no black man’s land.
Gregory Robinson:
So I’m here and pickup trucks and rebel flags and the whole shebang, had no idea how to get home. So I pushed away my panic. And I remembered my landmarks from taking the bus from school to home and vice versa. So I took all the main roads and expressway and I walked home. I was supposed to be home by 6:00. I got home by 6:30. So I look back on it now, so that was a three and a half-hour walk across the City of Tampa.
Gregory Robinson:
So I get home and my aunt’s at the door and she said, “Go back where you come from,” slammed the door in my face and that was the beginning of me being on my own. So I tried to go to school for a while, high school and I kept myself clean through my grandmother’s old house that I still had a key to. So I’d wash up in the sink and things of that nature. We called it a sink bath as kids.
Gregory Robinson:
I’d read by candlelight and still do my schoolwork plus try to maintain myself and tried to forage for food. But then it comes to a point to where you’re trying to survive and go to school. You can’t do both at the same time.
Gary Schneeberger:
Where do you begin moving beyond a crucible like that? 16 years old, homeless, family relationships strained, unable to envision a future for yourself because your circumstances make it difficult to envision dinner or a shower for yourself.
Gary Schneeberger:
Hi. I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. Today’s guest, Gregory Robinson, did find a way to craft a life of significance from the ashes of that experience and other crucibles that knocked him off his feet in the years that followed from juvenile detention to the horrors of war that left him with PTSD.
Gary Schneeberger:
As he tells Warwick, his road back was paved with refusing to let defeat, defeat him and turning to God when there was nowhere else for him to turn. It’s a message and a hope he shares with men today through his podcast, The Unbreakable Man, which he started to help others who have been through pain like he has, find joy.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow Greg. Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate it and look forward to hearing about your story. You’re in the Chicago area?
Gregory Robinson:
Yes, sir.
Gary Schneeberger:
Midwest. Midwest rules.
Warwick Fairfax:
My wife has a lot of family in the Chicago area. We actually lived there at one point before we moved to Maryland. So yeah, I just wanted before we get into all of your story, just to hear a little bit about your background and growing up in Tampa. It wasn’t the easiest one. You had some challenges. Talk about some of your early childhood experiences and crucibles and a bit about your parents and just about the early story.
Gregory Robinson:
Early stories. okay. Obviously, as you said before, I’m from Tampa, Florida. That’s my hometown, home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the world champions. I just had to get a plug in there.
Warwick Fairfax:
How do you decide who to cheer for, the Buccaneers or the Bears? How do you decide?
Gregory Robinson:
I lived here long enough to where I root for them both. We used to have, my wife and I had a joke. When they were in the same conference and they played together, we would draw an imaginary line down the house. But no, growing up in Tampa was very tough. My hometown, obviously I loved it, in spite of all the things that went on during my life.
Gregory Robinson:
I come from an alcoholic family. My mother and father were very … They grew up in the segregated South and were very old-fashioned the way people did business. The family story goes that my mother became pregnant in high school during her senior year and my father was from the other side of town, the other side of the tracks, but within the black community. My father’s parents already had him slotted to marry someone else who was from his part of town. So they didn’t marry, but the family agreed to pay a stipend to my mother’s family to take care of me.
Gregory Robinson:
That was the agreement. I didn’t learn this until many, many, many years later the whole story, how that all went about. But one of the things that I can say about my story, at least in that aspect, is I was 15 years old, going on 16, two weeks from my 16th birthday and I was at a little corner store not far from my house. And the local beer truck driver walks into the store and he walks up to me and he says, “Are you Greg Robinson?” I’m like, “Yeah. Who are you?” I won’t tell you what I said because I was 16 years old.
Gary Schneeberger:
We can imagine.
Gregory Robinson:
Right. And he says, “I’m your father.” This isn’t a Star Wars tie-in, but I looked at the store owner who was like family, as well, because it was a neighborhood place and I asked him and he said, “Yeah. Yeah, Greg, that’s your dad.” So the realization hit me that this man who I had seen for as long as I can remember, who had a beer route in my neighborhood was my father. And so my first football game that I went to was two weeks later, went to see the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with my dad. You can’t make this stuff up.
Warwick Fairfax:
Right. That must have been surreal. You’re 16 years old and you find out who your father was, even though you’d seen him around the neighborhood. Do you ever have a conversation with him because when you’re young, you don’t get a lot of stuff. What’s up with somehow your family felt like my mom wasn’t good enough for you? It’s hard to get your head around. I can’t think of a diplomatic way to say this. He is driving a beer truck. It’s not like okay, so what makes you better than my mom’s side? All those thoughts, as a 16-year-old must be going, “I don’t get this.”
Gregory Robinson:
You’re right. It was surreal, but I learned a lot about my dad over time. He was a Vietnam vet. So not long after I was born, he got drafted. He left college to go to the Army. He was Army Airborne. He came back home, had a lot of issues from PTSD. At that time, they called it battle fatigue and combat stress, all the different names they’d come up with over the decades.
Gregory Robinson:
And I had met him once or twice, but I was too young to remember what he looked like. So as the family story goes, they told me much later, when he came back from Vietnam and he was married obviously, he took a job with Budweiser and purposely took a route that was in my neighborhood so he could watch me grow up. So with that said, I learned to have a lot of respect for him because he to me, in my eyes, in spite of all the bad things that happened, he was a man of great integrity and he was honorable in what he did.
Gregory Robinson:
He later ended up divorcing the first wife, but he and my mother never got together. The drinking got the better of her and so what I developed over time in my late 20s/early 30s was compassion for them both because then I understood why my mother was the way she was when I was younger. But when you’re growing up in a hard situation, for lack of better words, you know all the hole-in-the-walls. You guys know what a hole-in-the-wall is, …joints little side hustle stand that people would sell liquor out of their garages as a makeshift bar and that becomes your normal.
Gregory Robinson:
Then you have brothers and sisters like I did. I was the oldest, so I took up the mantle of being a surrogate father and my mother wasn’t around and then defending them against, “Mr. So-and-so” or Mr. This, boyfriends and things of that nature. So I was the one who took my brothers and sisters to school, taught them how to fight, fend off the bullies and who cooked and made sure they were clean and all those things for many years.
Gregory Robinson:
And then as I went on, I was given over to my grandmother as my guardian when I was about 8 or 9 years old roughly I think it was and my mother asked my grandmother to keep me until she came back. Well she never came back, but I would see her on and off. So yeah, life was tough.
Gregory Robinson:
But I made it. I did fairly well in school. I was very artistic, a very good illustrator. My escape was books. I was an avid reader, loved science fantasy, science fiction and nonfiction and history and learning about cultures and different places. And so what that allowed for me, looking back in hindsight is to develop a broad mind in spite of my situation and where I was at. So you had to deal with all the other stuff.
Gary Schneeberger:
I know that Warwick’s going to ask some more detailed questions about much of what you’ve just described because you’ve sketched in broad brush strokes what you went through. But one thing I always like to do and it doesn’t happen all the time on the show, but when it does, I want to point it out for listeners, especially listeners who aren’t viewing it on video, as we’re seeing it right now as we’re talking to you.
Gary Schneeberger:
But those things that you just described, Greg, so many times as you were describing very traumatic things that happened to you, you smiled. You have the perspective now as an adult who’s processed those things. You smiled. And I just point that out to the listeners so that they can know.
Gary Schneeberger:
We talked at the outset about we are at Beyond the Crucible, we try to be in the hope business and offering hope to people. And as people are struggling right now listening to this in their own crucibles which probably are wildly different than yours and wildly different than Warwick’s, there’s something beautiful about the fact that as you tell those stories, there’s a smile on your face because you’re on the other side of them and that smile is available to all of us if we process the lessons of our crucibles and we do the things that you’ve done like forgive and learn and move on.
Gary Schneeberger:
So I just wanted to point that out in case listeners didn’t hear it in his voice. Greg right now, he is smiling. He’s got a beautiful smile. He is smiling right now even as he talks about those things. I know there’s more to talk about as we unpack more of those details, but I wanted to get that point across because that’s what we’re hoping for, to encourage people there is hope on the other side of your crucible.
Warwick Fairfax:
That’s well-said, I just, to your point Gary, as Greg is talking, you sense this sense of peace, sense of calm, sense of forgiveness. I’m sure we’ll get into more later the phrase the peace the passes understanding comes to mind. So just to flesh a bit more of this out. Obviously, I’ve got to imagine it was very tough for your mother being rejected by your dad’s family and it probably contributed to some of her challenges. Did you feel like maybe this is an obvious question, but she was never the same after that, after feeling rejected? That might have been not the sole cause of her issues, but was that a big part of it?
Gregory Robinson:
I would definitely say so. But at the time, like I said, I was young and it took me many years to come to grips and get past my own anger and other things that I had developed over time by feeling rejected myself. But I will tell you this story. I’m going to jump for probably about 15 years or so, but I think it’s really relevant. I left and went into the military after I went to Job Corps at around 18 or so. So I was gone for more or less about eight years.
Gregory Robinson:
I had developed on my own. I was always my own man. There was no one to tell me what I could and couldn’t do, besides the military, of course. But there was no mom or dad to say no, you should go here son or do this. And I was visiting home one particular time right before my dad had passed away. I was probably about 31, I think, at the time. And we were talking, he and I and my uncle. I should point this out. I come from a family of veterans.
Gregory Robinson:
So my dad was Army Airborne in Vietnam. My uncle Johnny, my dad’s brother, was Airborne Ranger, who was the younger of the two and he followed my dad to Vietnam. And then there’s me who is another veteran and a combat veteran who was in the Navy, a corpsman and attached to the Marine Corps infantry. So we’re all together and we’re talking and I’m about to go away again for the weekend. I’d visit every other weekend during the month.
Gregory Robinson:
My dad, he says, “Hey son?” I said, “Yes sir, Pops.” He says, “I love you, son.” And I turned around and I looked at him because he was very old-fashioned. I’m sure you guys know what I mean. I went up to him and I hugged him and my uncle hugged us, too. And I said, “I love you, too, Dad.” And so I stopped, I said, “Dad, you know what?” I said, “You know I’ve got a place up in Northern Florida and how about I get you to come on up for Christmas this year?” It would have been our first Christmas together.
Gregory Robinson:
And I said, “By the way, I could bring Mom up, too.” And so he just looked at me. He smiled and he giggled because he knew exactly what I was up to. But it was worthwhile to see the smile on his face and the understanding because she was his long lost love and vice versa. So I was hoping to make some mending in the process, but he passed away before it could all transpire.
Warwick Fairfax:
That’s so sad. As you’re talking, there’s a lot of things you could be bitter about, about what happened to your mother after that, your dad’s family. When you’re a young guy like your dad, it’s tough to buck your whole family and they’re telling you what to do. It’s not easy as a young person, but it’s just so sad. You can’t help but think what might have been if people had left him alone. Maybe they wouldn’t have made it, but maybe they would have made it. Do you find yourself in the what ifs? What would have happened if people kept messing around?
Gregory Robinson:
Actually not anymore. Despite how hard it may have been, I’m very thankful, as odd as it may sound, that I went through all the things that I went through because I believe it helped to mold me into making me the man that I am today, to have the strength to be able before you and Gary and talk about things like this and to be able to look back introspectively and say, “Well hey, you know, despite everything that has happened in my life, I’m still here.”
Gregory Robinson:
And I’m happy and I say that genuinely. I’m pretty much at peace. We all still have our things that we go through, but overall, I’m happy. I’ve got a great wife. I’ve got great kids. I absolutely love what I do and despite me being reticent about even writing a book initially and the only reason I wrote the book is people had talked to me about it for years, I was actually inspired by God to write the book.
Gregory Robinson:
He said, “Here. You need to write this, son.” And I was like, “Well …” And He said, “No. You need to write it.” So what do the scriptures say? Obedience is better than sacrifice. So I did…
Warwick Fairfax:
It’s like … I haven’t been in the military, but I imagine when your superior in the military says, “Greg, you need to do this,” you go, “Yes, sir,” or “Yes ma’am.” Not a whole lot of debate, right? Well it’s similar with God right? If God tells you to do something else, it’s yes, sir. Let’s go. Right?
Warwick Fairfax:
But just before we get to what you’re doing now and some of your experience as a Navy Corpsman, I want to understand after things weren’t working too well at home with your mom, you spent some time with your grandmother. But at age 16, it sounds like there was a time where …
Gregory Robinson:
Approximately about 8 or 9 until I was right at 16 years old and this goes into talking about racism to a point and how the Old South was because I had got invited to … Because I was the first one in my family to go to integrated schools. So my grandmothers on both sides were just like in the movie that made a few years ago that came out. That was my grandmothers on both sides.
Gregory Robinson:
And I think a side note that’s very important in regard to that, remember my grandmother and my father on my mother’s side worked for an old Jewish family on the other side of town around Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa. That’s just how it was. And when she would work when I was younger, she would take me to another house sometimes during the summertime when I was out of school and I’d play with their son, who became a friend of mine.
Gregory Robinson:
I got to be about 10 years old or so and started learning some things and understanding because you’ve got to remember, I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s. And so this was at the end point somewhat of the civil rights movement. And my grandmother stopped, I think it was Christmas Eve or a couple of days before Christmas and we picked up all these toys and these clothes and they were all hand-me-downs. And I was at the age where I had a little knowledge.
Gregory Robinson:
And I looked at everything and I told my grandmother, I said, “I don’t want these little white boys’ hand-me-down things.” And she turned around and she looked at me and she slapped me across the face. And she had tears in her eyes and she said, “Don’t you ever say anything like that again because you have no idea.” And that’s just how she left it.
Gregory Robinson:
And as I got much older, I really understood where she was coming from because she was like, “These people have a good heart. They’re doing something for me or for you because they love me and vice versa. And here you have the audacity to be ungrateful.” I’m using my own words in that sentence. But that’s really what it come down to and we had the nerve to be arrogant when you don’t understand the full concept of what’s going on here. And so I took that as a big lesson and I never forgot it. That’s the kind of woman that she was.
Gregory Robinson:
So the whole family was blue collar. My other uncle was a high school dropout. He started working construction at the age of 15 and built his own business and was a contractor by the age of 30. So yeah, a lot of hard times, but a lot of hard lessons, too, at the same time.
Warwick Fairfax:
The couple years before you get into the Job Corps and Navy maybe somewhere around 18, from 16-18, those were some of the toughest years.
Gregory Robinson:
Yeah. I would say 16-18 were the toughest. It was like building a pyramid. You start with a very strong foundation, just horrid things and you pinnacle out to a point. During that time, I was on my own. I dropped out of school because I got kicked out of the house. I’m going back to my previous story. Some friends of mine from school, I rode the bus home with them. That was my first party ever. So we went to the white section of town that us as kids had heard stories about… That’s just how it was.
Gregory Robinson:
So we all got off the bus and all my friends disappeared. And so here I am and excuse my jokes, but it’s how I am. I was in no black man’s land.
Gregory Robinson:
So I’m here and a pickup truck, rebel flags and the whole shebang, had no idea how to get home. So I pushed away my panic. And I remembered my landmarks from taking the bus from school to home and vice versa. So I took all the main roads and expressway and I walked home. I was supposed to be home by 6:00. I got home by 6:30. So I look back on it now, so that was a three and a half-hour walk across the City of Tampa.
Gregory Robinson:
So I get home and my aunt’s at the door and she said, “Go back where you come from,” slammed the door in my face and that was the beginning of me being on my own. So I tried to go to school for a while, high school and I kept myself clean through my grandmother’s old house that I still had a key to. So I’d wash up in the sink and things of that nature. We called it a sink bath as kids.
Gregory Robinson:
I’d read by candlelight and still do my schoolwork plus try to maintain myself and tried to forage for food. But then it comes to a point to where you’re trying to survive and go to school. You can’t do both at the same time, at least during my timeframe. It’s not like now where you have all sorts of programs and agencies that’ll reach out to help. You’re just a young kid and you’re just out there.
Gregory Robinson:
So I got involved with a family of con men who took me in, so at least I had a semi roof over my head. And I hustled pool and just all sorts of things I did just to make ends meet. So what I learned in my salvation about things like that, you have to meet a person at their need. You can’t just come to them with a bible and talk about Jesus loves you and everything will be fine, when he’s like, “Right now, I’m hungry,” or “right now, I need a warm bed,” or “right now, I need a drink of water,” or “right now, I need three bucks to get downtown so I can get to the food pantry, so can catch the bus.”
Gregory Robinson:
And so that’s where I was at. So my saving grace during that timeframe after being on the streets for almost two years is I got arrested by a store detective in a store called Zayre’s that doesn’t even exist anymore.
Gary Schneeberger:
I remember Zayre’s. Yeah.
Gregory Robinson:
Yeah. I stole a half T-shirt of the Cincinnati Reds sports team. Don’t even like the Cincinnati Reds, but I needed a clean shirt. So the detective arrested me and I had some social security card that I found on the street someplace that I would use as my alias. That’s just how it was. So he pulls up the guy’s records and he had a rap sheet as long as both of my arms combined. He says, “Are you sure you’re this guy?” “No. No. No.”
Gregory Robinson:
So they actually sent me, put me in juvenile detention. I went back to school while I was in juvey and mind you at that time because the situation was I had a warm place to sleep, roof over my head, I had three square meals a day and I was going to school for free. So when I talk about meeting the need of people, those are the kind of things that I like to talk about.
Gregory Robinson:
So while I was in juvey from that point, I heard about Job Corps on the radio and once I got out, they let me out because they found my mother, I took a bike that I had acquired and I found a local Job Corps office.
Gary Schneeberger:
For those who aren’t watching on YouTube, Greg just did the air quotes with his hands when he said acquired. Just so you know.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yes.
Gregory Robinson:
And I rode the bike down to the Job Corps office, through the phone book, which I know kids nowadays couldn’t do that. And so I went and filled out an application by hand. I had to have it signed by one of my parents, so I took it to my mother. She refused to sign it, so I forged her signature and I dropped my application in the mail. So about a month later or so I think it was, I got a one-way ticket on Trailways, which doesn’t exist anymore either. I’m telling my age. I don’t care. I left for Job Corps five days before my 18th birthday.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow. So from what I understand, Greg, that then led you to joining the military to be a Navy Medical Corpsman.
Gregory Robinson:
Yes, sir. It’s actually a hospital corpsman. Veterans will forgive you because they understand that you don’t know.
Warwick Fairfax:
Sorry. It sounds like that began a change in the direction of your life it seems, just being in the military. So just talk about that. It wasn’t easy. You were deployed in some pretty dangerous places from what I understand.
Gregory Robinson:
Oh, yes sir.
Warwick Fairfax:
So just talk about that experience. But it sounds like that was the beginning of a turning point.
Gregory Robinson:
It was very much so. Basically, it was really easy in a sense for me because you had already been out on your own for years and for lack of better words, no offense to anyone, but you weren’t a momma’s boy. You weren’t coming from home. But my first tour overseas was actually in a little small country on the West Coast of Africa, funded by ex-patriot American slaves and then their sister country is Senegal, which is their British counterpart.
Warwick Fairfax:
The first was Liberia?
Gregory Robinson:
Liberia, yes sir.
Warwick Fairfax:
Okay. Yeah.
Gregory Robinson:
And so we were there from August 1990 until New Year’s Day 1991 and we were actually relieved. The Marine Corps anti-terrorist team called out and the acronym for it is called FAST Company and so I was attached to a mechanized infantry unit at the time, where I had some really great friends, actually to this day. So it was a very odd situation.
Gregory Robinson:
One of the things I vividly remember when we were flying in from the ship to the helipad at the embassy compound was as we were looking from the doorway of the helo, we saw these Seabees, if you know what Naval Seabees are. They had these huge green camouflaged bulldozers and they were pushing lumber on a beach or so we thought. And it looked like the consistency, what I remember, of Raggedy Ann dolls. There we go telling my age again. And as we got closer, we realized that they weren’t Raggedy Ann dolls, they were bodies.
Gregory Robinson:
And they had ran out of space in the hospitals and the cemeteries and the other places that were used for makeshift graves. So they were bringing the people as far in from the beach as they could so they wouldn’t be swept out in the sea from the high tide, when the high tide came up because the embassy compound was on a cliff face and went straight up. That was my first experience and I was 22, maybe 23 years old at the time. I think I had my 23rd birthday … Yeah. I was 22 years old at the time. And I had been in a few years already at that time. So that was my first experience.
Warwick Fairfax:
Seeing that, it must make you think how can this kind of thing happen? All these questions are probably flooding in your mind. What could lead to such horrific scenes? You probably saw some really difficult things in your tours of duty. That probably wasn’t the last.
Gregory Robinson:
It does, but speaking again as a veteran, all those things about politics and your ideas and what you look like and you don’t look like and where you’re from and all those things, they all go out the window because it all comes down to you’re looking out for this guy that’s beside you and the other guy that’s beside you and vice versa and so everybody just wants to go back home to their own dysfunctional backgrounds and families when it’s all said and done. So you’re just, you’re friends and family. And that’s what makes especially combat veterans so close.
Warwick Fairfax:
It sounds like you found a real sense of camaraderie in the military. So somewhere along the lines, as we get to Unbreakable Man, it sounds like there was a turning point where you were maybe at one of the lowest points in your life and you could have gone one direction, but you went towards faith. Let’s talk about that pivotal moment where you chose faith, chose God if you will and not perhaps an alternative.
Gregory Robinson:
Well there are so many moments, but I’ll go to a funny one. This is after I had actually contemplated suicide at one time. I had just gotten …
Gary Schneeberger:
Now normally, someone doesn’t say I’m going to a funny one after talking about contemplating suicide. So our listeners are dying to hear this story.
Gregory Robinson:
Well, I’ll go back to the first one, the suicide portion. I just really got into a very bad point in my life between the PTSD that I had that I didn’t even know that I had at the time because I just assumed because of the type of people that I came up around in the military, was always normal.
Gregory Robinson:
And what I mean by that, it’s the best way I know how to describe it is when you have let’s say 100 individuals who came up together in an insane asylum for 10 years, just as an example. For them, that’s their normal. But then one day you unlock the door and you tell those 100, “Okay, go out and be with the rest of the world.” And they’re like, “But this is our world.” And so when they go out with the normal population, they’re like, “Who are all these strange people?” They say, “We’re not the strange ones, you’re the strange ones.”
Gregory Robinson:
And that’s what it’s like in my eyes is being a combat vet with PTSD because once you are discharged, especially combat vets, there is no turn-off switch. You just don’t go back to just being Greg Robinson the homeless kid who used to be out in the street. You’ve now had training and you’ve had education and indoctrination into a totally different culture and lifestyle. So whether it be four years or if it’s 20 or 30 years, you’ve still been indoctrinated. And that’s much what it was like being around the Marine Corps.
Gregory Robinson:
But now pushing forward, moving to the funny story. How I came into salvation was actually this lady had come to work for me on the job and she was a sanctified woman. And so every now and then, she’d talk about God. And I really didn’t want to hear it because I had seen almost everything as far as I was concerned. I had dealt with Hare Krishnas, I had dealt with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I had dealt with Methodists, I had dealt with Baptists and Muslims and so on and so on. So to me, it was all just one big melting pot in my eyes.
Gregory Robinson:
And I had grown up seeing hypocrites, these guys that call themselves preachers in the church and they’re hanging out at the same bar that I’m at on Saturday night until about 1 o’clock in the morning because they’ve got to go home early because they’ve got church in the morning. And there was one particular day, just kind of like what I’m doing, I kept people laughing and I was notorious for telling jokes. That particular day, I was telling a dirty joke.
Gregory Robinson:
And so as I was telling my dirty joke, she kept interrupting me, so I got irritated because I couldn’t get to my punchline. I said, “Just let me get to my punchline, say whatever you want.” So I went to go finish again and she says, “When you coming to church?” So I got so irritated that I said, “You know, fine. I’ll come to church, just let me finish my joke.” And she looked at me because she knew I was old-fashioned and she says, “I got you.”
Gregory Robinson:
So now I knew because I gave my word, I had to go to church. So I said, “Well, I know what I will do.” In my mind, I said, “I’m going to go to church to fulfill my obligation and I’m never going to come back.” So lo and behold, I go to church, I get convicted, I went two other times and on the third time, I brought my wife with me. I didn’t know why I brought her with me. I know now why.
Gregory Robinson:
And then we went to church and the pastor at the time made an altar call. And I really don’t remember going up, but I went up to the altar. He made an altar call the second time and my wife went up and our daughter who is now 19, will be 20 this year, she was 9 months old sitting in a car seat, as the assistant in my church watched over her while my wife and I were giving our lives to God. That’s my story in a long-winded, shortest version as I can get it how I came to know and understand God.
Gregory Robinson:
So from that day, actually when I got home that evening, I remember I was taking my daughter upstairs to put her in the crib. And something came over me and I told God, I said, “You know, God. I want to make a deal with you.” And I said, “I’ll tell you what. If you keep my daughter and then allow her to go through the things that I went through as a child and teach me how to be a father and how to be a husband because I didn’t have any examples, that I promise you I will serve you until the day that I die.”
Gregory Robinson:
I’ve got a great kid. She’s in college. She’s beautiful. She takes her brains from her mother and a little bit of her father’s attitude, but she’s still here. I’ve been in the church. I mark my time in the church by her. So I’ve been in the church almost 19 years.
Warwick Fairfax:
It sounds like that experience changed your whole life, led to Unbreakable Man. You charted a journey that was different than the one that you grew up with. Your daughter grew up radically different than you did.
Gregory Robinson:
Yes, sir.
Warwick Fairfax:
The Bible talks about sin can go to seven generations, which basically means forever. It’s just a biblical way of saying forever. I think sometimes virtue or faith can go to generations. So you’ve charted a new course. Without getting too much on a side track, as listeners know, I grew up in a very different background, a very wealthy background in Australia, large family business, but it was founded by a man of great faith. He was an elder at his church, a wonderful husband, great father. He treated his employees well. He did everything that a man of God, a man of Christ should do.
Warwick Fairfax:
That faith, it got a little watered down a bit over the generations as money and power crept in and money and power tends to erode faith, but that legacy of faith lasted in some fashion for generations. And so the legacy you’re leading, I don’t know how many generations that would last, two, three, four, five, 10. I don’t know. But you’ll have kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, great-great-great-grandkids that you’ll never meet unless you live to Biblical 175 or something. Who knows? But let’s assume it may not happen.
Warwick Fairfax:
You have a legacy that’s going to change from what you grew up with. So that’s something to I don’t know, if the words are to be proud of at least to be filled with joy about, right, to seeing what will happen with your daughter and generations.
Gregory Robinson:
Yes. I’m extremely thankful that God gave me an opportunity to be more than that because I know for a fact that I should have been dead at least a decade ago, if not 20 years ago from all the things that I went through. But for whatever reason, God had his hand of mercy upon me and as the scripture says, God is the father of the fatherless.
Gary Schneeberger:
This is a perfect time to bring up because of what Warwick said about your stories being so different, right? You laughed when he said that, Greg. When he said, “Yeah, my background was much different than yours.” And it’s true and yet, your crucibles and the things that you’ve gone through and the impact that has had on you. We discover this all the time on this show.
Gary Schneeberger:
No, not everyone has grown up with a 150-year-old family media company that they lost in a failed takeover bid to the tune of, as I like to tease Warwick about now, $2.25 billion nor has everyone listening to this show, Greg, gone through what you’ve gone through from being on your own at 16. You told me that you would take soap out of restaurants so that you could wash yourself and then your war experiences.
Gary Schneeberger:
But one of the things you said, Greg, that cements how the emotions of your crucible, Warwick’s crucible, I’m not giving the details of mine at this moment, but my crucible, everybody’s crucible tends to have certain emotional touch points. Getting beyond them, you said … We ask all guests what’s one bit of advice you would give someone to get beyond your crucible? And this is what you said.
Gary Schneeberger:
And I say this because that’s the advice that you follow, that’s the advice Warwick followed and that’s the advice that you’re encouraging the listeners to follow and that advice is this and I love the way you phrase it. Don’t let defeat, defeat you. How can people do that if you’re counseling, coaching, meeting someone where they’re at and they feel defeated, how do you tell them what’s the first step they can take?
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick talks a lot about what’s one small step you can take to move towards your goal? What’s your advice to how do you not let defeat, defeat you?
Gregory Robinson:
To be frank, I think I’m kind of a hard man in some ways. So my best piece of advice is to be flawed, meaning to … And sometimes it’s really hard when you’re in a bad situation, but you need to be able to take a look in the mirror and say, “Why am I in this situation? What is a thing that I could do to improve? What are my resources that I can maybe get for help.” Humble yourself. Allow yourself to take advice. It doesn’t mean all the advice is going to be the best advice, but nonetheless, it’s going to be advice and it’s going to help you to get to the point where you need to be if you allow it.
Gregory Robinson:
Because one of the things that I teach on, you mentioned in my bio about I call myself the caretaker of the 12 principles of resolve and this is something that God had given me not even a year ago now and it’s an acronym based off the word father. The first principle is to be flawed. The second is to be faithful. The third is to be accountable. The fourth is to be authoritative. The fifth is to be honest. The sixth is to be humble. The seventh is to be earnest. The eighth is to be an executor. Oh, I forgot my T. Yeah, T is to be trustworthy and the second T is to be tenacious. I’m going to skip down to R because I know I did the others already, is to be respectful and to be a rewarder.
Gregory Robinson:
And it’s actually broken down in three tiers, the first four, the second four and the last four. But the most important I think out of all of them is the very first one, to be flawed. Because you’ve got to recognize your issues, idiosyncrasies, whatever word you want to use, to look at yourself first and address those things and then figure out what you need for help. And of course, all three of us know being men of faith, the most important place you can go for help is to go to the king first because if you don’t go to the king first, then you can’t get to God.
Warwick Fairfax:
Amen. I love that phrase that you use. I think also you mentioned be flawed and ask for help. We all have flaws and we all have our own experiences. You’ve obviously gone through tough upbringing, PTSD in the military. Mine … You can’t compare crucibles. Mine feels like it’s trivial compared to what you’ve gone through. But losing a 150-year-old family media business that was founded by a person of faith and being a person of faith in my naïvety and poor theology, I felt like God had a plan to resurrect the family company in the image of the founder and I blew God’s plan. Obviously, if God had wanted it to happen, it would have happened.
Warwick Fairfax:
But aged my late 20s at about 30, I was just devastated. So we all have our crucibles. But yeah, it’s so true to just admit that you’re hurting, that it’s not easy. Get help from wise folks. So just link that for me. You mentioned the 12 principles and you have a ministry, Unbreakable Man. Tell me about this mission. What is that mission about? What is your passion? Where do you feel like God is calling you today? What’s his mission for you in life would you say?
Gregory Robinson:
My mission is to help other men. That’s putting it very simply, but when I talk about my job is to equip, enrich and to empower men to be better versions of themselves according to God’s base design in character because if you do that, then everything else will fall into place. What I mean by that, I’ll use a Biblical description. We all know that God created the man first and then he created Eve from the rib of the man to be his helpmate.
Gregory Robinson:
And Adam was the head of his household. He was the high priest. We know that’s how things were done at the time. And if Adam had to did what God instructed him to do and he had to chastise his wife and say, “Hey, you know what God said.” But instead, he allowed his wife to do what all of our wives do to us. They come up to us and they say, “Honey please.” And they bat their eyes and maybe they rub you on the back and bring you your favorite meal. And so he was cursed.
Gregory Robinson:
And so he went along with his wife. And when God came into the garden, he says, “Adam, where are you?” And then Adam didn’t answer. And he called him again and he didn’t answer. And he finally called him a third time if I remember right. He said, “Well, I’m over her.” He said, “Well come see me.” He said, “I can’t because I’m naked.” He said, “Well how do you know you’re naked?” So right there, he gave himself away and then of course, you know the rest of the story.
Warwick Fairfax:
Sure. How does this link with what you’re trying to teach? All of us sin. Men and women, we all fall. As scripture says, we all fall short of the glory of God.
Gregory Robinson:
Really what I’m teaching is, when I talk about the principles and then I tie in with this, this is about teaching men how to be real men, again according to God based character and design. And for so long, men haven’t been taught that. And as society pushes forward, we get further and further and further away from that, where we have women who don’t understand their places in the household. I know it’s old-fashioned, but it’s the truth. You get men who don’t understand their places in the household.
Gregory Robinson:
I’ll give you a good example. You gentlemen may or may not have seen it. There’s a commercial that comes on TV about Tide. I think it’s Tide. And it’s these two dads who are washing clothes, a black dad and a white dad, both men and the kids are playing around them. And they’re talking about detergent and what gets the clothes cleaner better. And one of, I think, the wives walks out of the house with a briefcase. There’s nothing wrong with women working, but what I’m saying is that the roles that God has designed for men and women is now completely reversed.
Gregory Robinson:
And the scripture even talks about it. It says how in the last days where the children shall be your oppressors and the women shall have rule over you. And so because we’re out of order, then everything is upside-down and it’s topsy-turvy. So if the husbands know how to be real husbands. For those who are married because you know how the world is today, that they’ve totally destroyed the institution of marriage.
Gregory Robinson:
And it used to be a term of shame if you came home and you were pregnant and you weren’t married. They would send the daughters off to a place with an aunt or an uncle or an old family member someplace in the country. And that’s not to say that my situation was any better because it wasn’t. But the point is that I’m on this side now serving God and I know better now and I understand.
Gregory Robinson:
And if we could teach men these things based upon these principles and understand who they are, what it means to be flawed, what it means to be faithful, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, then we could get them back on track. And I think a lot of the problems that we have in society would be remedied and it would start from that base foundation.
Warwick Fairfax:
Is there an element of servant leadership in which you try to teach men? Because I know the whole role of men and women is a complex subject to discuss in our day and age, but scripture talks about a man should love his husband as Christ loves the church, basically lay his life down. So there’s the sense of leadership. The scripture talks about servant leadership, but not … I know that you are not talking this, about not so much domineering, but more of a servant’s heart. You try to teach men just that husbands are meant to have a servant’s heart as they love their wives.
Gregory Robinson:
Yes. The scripture you’re talking about, it says how men should love their wives as Christ loves the church. So when I speak of leadership, I don’t mean the old-fashioned, domineering, beat your chest, drag the woman by the hair. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about leadership based upon scripture and biblical principles, meaning the scripture says that as a man who wants a wife, he needs to understand her.
Gregory Robinson:
So we know that women are emotional. Men are not so emotional and each one has a specific design by God in their roles. So your job is to teach your wife and children according to God’s ways. But if no one ever teaches you that and you don’t understand that, then there’s no way for you to know. And that’s why you have so many men that are so far from the church and so distant in relationships because now what they have is they have their mothers trying to raise men when you need a father to raise it. But how can a father learn how to be a man unless his father is in his life? When I say father I mean as in marriage.
Warwick Fairfax:
And so many young guys don’t have role models or what it means to be a man of God or even a man of character to not abandon families, to be around to love their kids, not yell and scream, but resolve things peacefully as partners. You try and teach young guys what it really means to be a real man, which is not to dominate. It’s not to abuse or to hit or strike, but just to love, be a servant leader. Leadership can take many forms and often what we think of leadership is not what young folks think leadership is.
Warwick Fairfax:
It’s not my way or the highway. It’s more of a servant leadership, loving your wife as God loves us. So that’s got to be a tall order to try and teach in Unbreakable Man. That’s a real cultural shift. How do you get this through to young guys? It’s you’re speaking a foreign language. What the heck are you saying, Greg?
Gregory Robinson:
I start off with the book and then you engage them in conversation. Because once they get past what you look like on the outside, meaning usually where I work, I’m usually in a shirt and a tie and a jacket, clean-cut is just how I am. And then when they start really talking to you, they’re like, “Wow, you do understand.” So now you’ve met them at their level and so now you can talk to them because you’re not a foreigner so to speak. You’re not someone who hasn’t been in their shoes or worse.
Gregory Robinson:
And they can tell when they talk to you whether you’re sincere or genuine or not. So the authenticity comes out and then I’m able to say, “Hey, this is what you need to do.” “Wow. I never thought about it like that.” And then you’re able to engage more and more and more. And then what I find is they just start absorbing like sponges because they’ve never had anyone to sit down, another man, and to tell them these things. Not all kids or not all young men, but a lot of them.
Gregory Robinson:
And then most young women want to be married, so when they hear it, they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” It’s like, “Well wait a minute. Before you say yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s some stuff in here for you, too.” It’s not really for you per se, but …
Warwick Fairfax:
Well you have a daughter, right? So you’re obviously saying be very careful that the man that you fall in love with, you want to make sure you pick the right one.
Gregory Robinson:
Yes, sir. And I take it very seriously because I told you earlier in my story about being a father. I asked God to teach me because I had no idea. Because what I did when I got married the first time and don’t laugh at me too hard when I say this, but I took what I saw as a kid, friends who had fathers because when I was a kid, the ones who did have fathers, we were kind of jealous. You’ve got a dad and I don’t have a dad to go home to. I can’t say, “Hey Dad, can you throw the ball with me? Can you do this with me?”
Gregory Robinson:
Between the TV shows and everything else that you saw like the Huxtables, Father Knows Best and et cetera, et cetera. I’m really showing age there, Father Knows Best. But I just hodgepodged it in my mind and used that as my reference point on what I should do as a husband and as a father. And the majority of stuff that I did was absolutely wrong because none of it was God centered.
Gregory Robinson:
So when I got married the second time and I had my daughter and she was a baby still before my second child was born. I told you guys my story, how I asked God to teach me how to be a father and a husband. Because I was horrible at both and didn’t even realize it. So what God did for me is because I humble myself and just like the scripture says, the king says, “Take my yoke and learn of me.” We talk about yoke and the kids say, “You mean like an egg?” No. It’s not an egg.
Warwick Fairfax:
Not that kind of yoke.
Gregory Robinson:
It was an old fashioned device that they put around a horse or a beast of burden’s neck to control them.
Warwick Fairfax:
Oxen, that kind of thing.
Gregory Robinson:
Yes. Yes. Exactly. So I took God’s yoke and took my time and I learned and God taught me and I listened. I didn’t buck too much and rebel. I think God did a fairly decent job with me, so I try to set myself a better standard for my daughters so when they grow up they know exactly what to look for. This is how my dad was. My dad was always faithful. He loved my mother greatly. He’d do anything for us. We never had to want for anything, but he was a disciplinarian. He guided us. He taught us right from wrong.
Gregory Robinson:
So now they know what to choose. They know what to look for because of the standard their dad set. And then my standard came from my dad, which is our mutual father which in heaven.
Warwick Fairfax:
Amen.
Gary Schneeberger:
That is an excellent point to do what I normally say, Greg. Normally at this point in the show, I say it’s getting about time to land the plane. The captain has turned on that fasten seat belt sign. But in honor of you, as a huge Star Wars fan, I’m going to say we’ve come to the point in the show when Han Solo is going to bring down the Millennium Falcon. It’s time to land that ship, but before we do, I would be remiss if I did not give you the chance to let our listeners know how they can find out more about you, more about the Unbreakable Man and more about your book, Bad, Bandages, Bullets and Beyond. How can they find out more about you?
Gregory Robinson:
You can find me on Amazon. I’m listed. You can find a link for the book. My email or my website, actually I’ll do my website. That’ll be easier. It’s a long one so you’ve got to pay attention.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We’ll have it in the show notes, too, but go ahead.
Gregory Robinson:
It’s theunbreakableman.live, all one word, dot live. And then my email is great@theunbreakableman.live. Or you can find me on Instagram, as well. It’s also under theunbreakableman and you can find me on Facebook, as well. I’m not a huge social media fan, but it is what it is. So Instagram, Facebook, website and then via email if you want a hard copy of the book, I’ll send you a signed copy.
Gary Schneeberger:
Fantastic. Warwick, the last question is yours.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well thank you so much, Greg, for being here. You have an inspiring story. You’ve had some tough journeys growing up, as well as in the military, but just your ministry, the Unbreakable Man, just really trying to care for young guys, the 12 principles of resolve. It’s very inspiring because there’s a lot of young guys out there that don’t have a role model of what is it to be a real man? It’s not like in the movies, some tough guy that beats everybody else up. There’s a time and a place for defense and to protect your family and all this, a time and a place for that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Being a real man is a lot more than just being tough. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be tough, but being compassionate, having a servant’s heart, being faithful, honoring your family, honoring God. That’s a mission that there’s not a lot of people doing that and they need a lot more people in the game, a lot more people in that company of troops if you will, right? You need a whole lot more soldiers on that mission trying to help young guys understand what it is to really be a real man and what it means to be an Unbreakable Man. So thank you for your ministry. It’s a tough mission field, but it’s really needed. So thank you.
Gregory Robinson:
Thank you.
Gary Schneeberger:
That sound that you heard, listeners is not the plane landing on the … It’s Chewbacca being excited that the Millennium Falcon has landed. Before we go, let me rewind a bit of our conversation and leave you with some take-aways from this very enlightening, moving conversation with Greg Robinson.
Gary Schneeberger:
Number one and this is so good, don’t let defeat, defeat you. There’s a movie. I can’t remember the name of it now, but this line has stuck with me. There’s a movie I love in which this kind of shyster character says after his get rick quick scheme fails again for the 18th time, he tells his associate, “Remember defeat is always momentary.”
Gregory Robinson:
That’s right.
Gary Schneeberger:
When you say that don’t let defeat, defeat you, that’s what pops into my head. It is not the end of your story if you determine to pick up the pieces and move forward. Greg ran into brick walls at many junctions of his life, but he never let the disappointment, even the devastation of the defeat keep him defeated. He moved beyond his crucibles. He realized he is flawed and found a way to find advice to move beyond that crucible. The second point goes back to you, we, me, everyone.
Gary Schneeberger:
We need to recognize that we are flawed, embrace those flaws and use them to empower yourself to overcome the most damaging ramifications of these flaws. Be humble enough to take coaching to help you overcome your flaws. Be authentic enough not to hide them. Be brave enough to learn from them.
Gary Schneeberger:
And then the third point take-away from our conversation with Greg and this is infused throughout this episode and that is this: Smile. Watch this episode on our YouTube channel. I will include it in the show notes. You’ll see how many times, even when describing terrible tragedies that Greg’s face breaks into a smile. Here’s the key take-away there: Finding joy amid the pain is critical to overcoming your crucible.
Gary Schneeberger:
And speaking of overcoming your crucible, listeners thank you for spending your time with us today talking about how we do that, how we move beyond our crucibles. Warwick and I would ask do us a little favor. If you enjoyed this conversation, click like and subscribe on the podcast app on which you’re listening to this.
Gary Schneeberger:
You can also, if you want to know where you are on your journey to move beyond your crucible, we heard about Greg’s journey and moving beyond his crucibles today, you can discover where you are by going to crucibleleadership.com and taking our life of significance assessment. You can find out exactly what your personality type is as you’re navigating your road back and you can find great next steps for how to do that.
Gary Schneeberger:
So until the next time we’re together, please remember this, that your crucibles are painful, they’re real, they knock you off your feet. But they are not by any stretch of the imagination, they are not the end of your story.
Gregory Robinson:
Amen.
Gary Schneeberger:
I’m smiling right now saying that because Greg smiled so much in this episode. They can be the beginning of a new story, a better story, a more rewarding story and the reason why it happened for Warwick, it’s happened for me and it definitely happened to Greg Robinson our guest today, those lessons that you learned from your crucible can set you up in a new chapter of your story that is so rewarding because at the end of the day, it leads you to where Greg has been led, where Warwick has been led and that is to a life of significance.
There is a lot of discussion these days in the world of sports about who is the greatest of all time (GOAT). This was brought to the fore recently with the tragic car accident of Tiger Woods in California. He suffered extensive injuries to his legs. This raised the question of what this would do to Woods’ quest to chase down Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major golf championships. Tiger is now 45 and has 15 major golf titles. Is time running out for Tiger to chase down Jack’s major championship record and be thought of as the definitive best men’s professional golfer of all time?
Tom Brady recently won his seventh Super Bowl championship with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, after having won the previous six with the New England Patriots. Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw have won four Super Bowls each. It would seem that Tom Brady has the edge as the greatest NFL quarterback of all time.
In tennis, we live in an age where three of the greatest men’s tennis players of all time are playing against each other. Roger Federer until recently with 20 grand slam championships, eclipsing Pete Sampras’ record of 14, was thought of as the greatest of all time. However, with Rafael Nadal winning the French Open last year, he now has tied Federer. Nadal is widely expected to win this year’s French Open and thus beat Federer’s major championships record. Novak Djokovic has 18 majors and could well win quite a few more. All this to say, with Federer at age thirty-nine, while he may have previously been thought of as the greatest of all time, by the time all their careers are over, the GOAT in men’s tennis could well be Nadal or Djokovic.
Few of us are vying to be the greatest of all time in any sport. But being thought of as the greatest in our field, our town, our community can still haunt us. Perhaps we were one of the best basketball or baseball players in our high school. We might have won many debating championships, or gymnastics competitions or diving meets. In our careers, we might think of ourselves as the top lawyer or the top surgeon in our community, or perhaps even in our state.
The challenge is that tying our identity to being the greatest of all time in a sport, a career or any field of endeavor can be dangerous. Even if many, including you, think of yourself as the GOAT in your area of influence, that status can be fleeting. As many athletes say, records are made to be broken. Having your identity being wrapped up in being the greatest is quite ephemeral. Even if the numbers back you up today, someone may eclipse your record tomorrow.
So how do you avoid the pitfalls of the GOAT mindset? Can you still try to be the best at what you do, go for it so to speak, without having your identity wrapped up in being the greatest of all time? Yes, you can. Here are some tips to avoid the downside of the GOAT mentality.
1. Don’t focus solely on records.
It is OK to want to be the best at your chosen field, wanting to be the best you can be. Rather than fixating on records, though, focus day to day on improvement. What should I do today to be a bit better than yesterday? What can I do to get to the next level in my field? We should always want to improve. After all, in business and life, if you are not growing and improving, you are probably declining.
2. Enjoy the process.
Some of the greatest athletes have achieved the records they have because they truly love the game and everything about it. They enjoy competing, of course. But they also enjoy training, honing their craft. They enjoy the challenge of the process, and the work they have put in. Yes, they want to win, but if they have given it their all, have prepared as well and as hard as they can, the truly great players seem to handle even losses better than others. Nobody likes losing, but if you have worked hard and focused on the process, it makes it easier.
3. Have other areas to focus on.
Having other activities you enjoy can create balance in your life. You often hear great athletes when they have families saying how much they enjoy being with their families and their kids. Some who have small children bring their kids with them on the road. No matter how much you love what you do, you should think of yourself as more than what you do.
4. Keep your identity separate from your profession.
When you start seeing your sense of self as solely or primarily wrapped up in your chosen profession, that is very dangerous. You have to see yourself as a human being with inherent value whose self-worth does not depend on records or public accolades. How often do we see an athlete or public figure fall from grace in part because they began to believe their own press clippings? They begin to think, “I really am the greatest of all time.” We think of the phrase, “Pride comes before a fall.” This actually comes from Proverbs 16:18 in the Bible, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (NIV).
5. Hold it all lightly.
Records come and go. You might be in the prime of your athletic career or be the leader of your organization. It will not last. Someone will take your place eventually. That is certain and inevitable. Enjoy what you do, but don’t hold on too tight.
When all is said and done and your glory days are behind you, what matters most is not your records and your accolades. What matters more is your legacy. How did you treat people along the way? How did you play the game? You may have given it your all, but did you do it with grace, being modest in victory and conciliatory in defeat? At the end of the day, will your legacy be one that people, including you can be proud of? Will it be a life of records and achievement, or will it be a life of significance?
Reflection
How much is your identity wrapped up in being the greatest of all time in your field?
How will you decouple who you are from what you do?
What one step will you take this week, to having a more balanced and sustainable approach to your life?
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
The Greatest of All Time. Shorthand, GOAT — especially in sports contexts. But the single-minded pursuit of being the best (fill in the blank) in your sphere of influence can invade your professional and personal life, too. And when it does, it can be dangerous. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax talks with cohost Gary Schneeberger about why we should avoid chasing GOATdom – and, more importantly, how to do it. Warwick unpacks five insightful steps we can take to decouple our achievements from our identity to help us pursue a life of significance and a legacy we can be proud of. “Truly great leaders,” he explains, “don’t focus on their own greatness.”
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. So it’s not just for these great athletes, it’s very tempting to want to be the best in our field of endeavor, which is not wrong. But it’s getting your whole sense of identity at being perceived by your friends and neighbors and colleagues as being the best in whatever your arena is.
Gary S:
And it comes with dangers. It comes with great dangers of a loss of identity, where if your identity isn’t being the best oral surgeon and you’re not the best oral surgeon, then your identity is crushed in some way. That’s a crucible. One of the dangers is it allows you to, or it leads you to put your emphasis on the wrong things. I go back to The Natural. You put your emphasis on achievement, not relationships. And that’s one of the things that almost passes Roy Hobbs by in that film. He finally does get back together with his high school sweetheart, but a lot of years pass where he is putting his emphasis on trying to get achievement, and he’s missing relationship, he’s missing those things that are truly important that lead to what you call a life of significance. So there are some dangers that come from being wrapped up in pursuing single-mindedly being the greatest of all time.
Gary S:
The greatest of all time. Maybe you know it better in the context, we’re discussing the concept today, by the acronym G-O-A-T, GOAT. It’s a discussion often had over athletes, who’s the GOAT of the NBA or professional golf or pro tennis. We discuss that aspect on today’s episode, but really only as a jumping off point to talk about how this idea of being the GOAT invades our own professional and personal lives, and the dangers it presents when it does.
Gary S:
Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the show, and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. Today, Warwick and I talk at length, not only about why we should avoid the pursuit of GOATdom but how. Warwick unpacks five insightful steps we can take beginning today to decouple our achievements from our identity to help us pursue a life of significance and a legacy we and our children and their children, and so on and so on and so on, can be proud of. As Warwick wisely says about halfway through our discussion, truly great leaders don’t focus on their own greatness.
Gary S:
So, listener, we have a fun episode today, and we’re not exactly sure what to call the episode. Warwick sort of thought it up, and we talked about it. And when we did, we sort of just put the name GOAT syndrome on the show, GOAT as in greatest of all time, a common discussion in the sporting world. Who’s the greatest quarterback, basketball player, tennis player, football player of all time. So Warwick and I the sort of threw out GOAT syndrome. We were going to call Warwick’s blog something about GOAT syndrome, and one of our team realized that there is actually something that’s a syndrome involving farm animal GOATs. So we didn’t want to call it that. So we’re not exactly sure what we’re going to call it.
Gary S:
I came up with this morning while I was getting ready, let’s call it, we shouldn’t be GOAT roping, we shouldn’t be trying to rope in and lasso being the GOAT. That’s not necessarily a great thing. But we will unpack in this conversation why sort of a single-minded pursuit of being the GOAT, the greatest of all, time is not necessarily the wisest thing for your life. And Warwick, what are your initial thoughts on why that’s true, why pursuing GOATdom is not necessarily the wisest course of action for us?
Warwick F:
We’ll unpack more the challenge with trying to be the GOAT or GOAT syndrome, so to speak, is you get your identity wrapped up in achieving that. And even if you’re the greatest of all time, at one point in sports or even in life, the challenge is, your chances of staying there, it’s not always that high. Some people will retain that position forever, but in many cases, they won’t. So it’s sort of an ephemeral goal that risks being beaten by somebody else. Everybody wants to be the best in whatever their field is. And so having your whole sense of identity being wrapped up in the greatest of all time, in sports, or at some field of endeavor, it’s a slippery slope that your sense of self and identity could be shattered. It’s a goal that is probably not sustainable, at least in terms of your inner sense of self-worth and psyche.
Gary S:
And this would probably be a good time to sort of begin the discussion by saying what we’re not saying. And we’re not saying, I don’t think, we’re not saying that you shouldn’t try to be the best you can be, you shouldn’t aim for being the best you can be. But being the best you is different than being the best them. In other words, the idea of a GOAT is to be the best of everybody who ever lived or everybody who ever played this game or did this profession. And that can be unhealthy. Trying to be a better you, working hard to be the best you can be, that’s a good thing. But wrapping your identity up in being the best whoever did x, y, z or q, can cause some problems.
Warwick F:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s nothing wrong with striving to be the best in whatever your field is. Having your identity being wrapped up in being the best of all time in your environment, your profession, or even having your identity being wrapped up in achievement, in goals. Trying hard is good, realizing your whole sense of self and persona is not about what you do. Who you are is a lot more than achievement. And that’s really the root of GOAT syndrome, if you will, is getting your identity wrapped up in achievement, whether it’s the greatest of all time or being the best. So that’s the subtle thing, which we’ll unpack more as we go on.
Gary S:
Right. So, if you’re out there GOAT-roping, if you’re trying to be the GOAT, that’s where the problems can come in. And it’s fascinating to me as we talk about this, so many times in life, some of the best analogies we can make to a situation that we face in our day to day lives is through the sporting world. And the term GOAT tends to be used mostly in sports. People will argue incessantly. There are talk show careers that are made on who is the GOAT in football, who is the GOAT in golf, who is the GOAT in tennis, in hockey, in Jai alai. Who is the GOAT in whatever the sport is, that tends to be where the conversation starts. And that’s helpful to discuss in order to see how difficult it can be to one, establish who a GOAT is, and two, to stay there and how that can sort of knock us off our feet as we talk about as a crucible experience.
Warwick F:
Yeah, absolutely. And three, that we’ve really discussed was in golf, football and tennis. And part of the impetus for this discussion was the recent tragic car accident that Tiger Woods had in California. He was chasing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major golf championships. Tiger Woods was at 15, Tiger’s now 45, which is getting a little old, frankly, to win golf majors. I think Jack Nicklaus won his final Masters at Augusta at 46 I think. It’s not impossible with modern fitness but it’s tough. It was always going to be tough.
Warwick F:
Tiger’s definitely had his challenges, physically and otherwise. But then this car accident on top of that, which shattered his lower legs, it just made you think, oh my gosh, it was tough before, it’s even tougher now. And so, everybody, including me, just felt so badly for him about what he went through and we all hope he can come back and win more majors. Nobody knows exactly where his thinking is but it’s got to be tough. I mean, he’s got to be thinking, Jack Nicklaus’ record, love to beat it. The morning after the whole car crash has got to be, oh my gosh, now what.
Warwick F:
So that’s kind of was in my mind, and then you have others. Tom Brady recently won his seventh Super Bowl this last one with Tampa Bay before as we know it was with New England.
Gary S:
And that is, by the way, let me just add this, his seventh Super Bowl, just to put that in perspective, there have been 55 Super Bowls. 13% of all Super Bowls that have been won had been won by one quarterback. That is just astounding to me, and that is one of the reasons why people throw the word GOAT around when they talk about Tom Brady.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean, obviously you’ve got Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw with four Super Bowls. And not having grown up in this country, you would know better than I do, Gary, about this, some people look at Joe Montana’s stats, but certainly, Tom Brady certainly has a right to be in the mix of being called the greatest of all time, if not lay claim to it. Winning seven is not going to be the easiest, and he’s still going, it’s not going to be the easiest record to break. But who knows?
Warwick F:
In tennis, which all Australians love tennis, there we have a real active discussion about who the greatest of all time, and is in a potential changing of the record. Roger Federer currently holds 20 Grand Slams. He eclipsed Pete Sampras’ record of 14, a number of years ago, which people thought 14, how can you break that? So he’s at 20. Now you’ve got Rafa Nadal that recently also got to 20. And because Rafa Nadal is so dominant on clay on the French Open, if he is vaguely healthy, he has a very strong chance come June when they play that championship in Paris of being considered maybe the GOAT in tennis, he will have broken the tie at 20. You’ve got Novak Djokovic at 18 majors. You’ve got three of the greatest players of all time playing in the same era.
Warwick F:
If you’re Roger Federer, it’s like, well, gosh, I thought I was in good shape. Just my luck to have, it’s almost like being Tom Brady playing against Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw in the same era. It’d be like seriously, really? Not that it’s easy now, but it’s that kind of a deal. But the point of those analogies is being the GOAT is ephemeral. Roger Federer is considered the second greatest player on clay in some ways. But he keeps getting beat by Rafa Nadal, so it doesn’t matter when it’s clay. So the sporting analogy show that Tom Brady of the three maybe has the greatest claim to being the greatest. Records are meant to be broken. It’s tough. And then the whole sense of, we don’t know where these three players stand, they’re different folks. But having your identity wrapped up in that, it’s a dangerous thing.
Gary S:
To the point that you just made about it being ephemeral, I’ve got a statistic sheet here in my hands. When he retired, Brett Favre, former quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, when he retired, Brett Favre was the NFL’s all time leader in passing yards, passing touchdowns and quarterback wins. That’s GOATish statistics, right? He’s been retired for more than a decade, he’s been retired a while now. Now Brett Favre is the NFL leader in most times sacked, most career interceptions, and most fumbles. So, what was GOAT-ish in the good sense, greatest of all time, now is sort of GOAT-ish, in you’re the GOAT, the guy who kind of ruined the game. If you fumbled the most, been intercepted the most, and sacked the most, those are not auspicious statistics.
Gary S:
So, all that to say, if you wrap your identity up in what your numbers are, whether they’re numbers on a playing field or numbers in a ledger, from your career, numbers in your bank account for how much money you make, if you wrap your identity up in those things, those things can change. There’s a story, Warwick, that I’ve heard you tell a time or two, that I want to, as we sort of shift from the sports analogy into the real world. I’ve heard you say on a couple of occasions, and you write about it in your book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, coming out this October from Mount Tabor Media.
Gary S:
You say in the book and I’ve heard you say before that while you were going through the period where you were the heir to the family media dynasty, you were told by family members, by your parents, that you had the ability, you could be, if this goes right, Warwick, if your running of the company goes the way it could go, with your experience at Oxford and at Harvard Business School, with the way you’ve prepared yourself for this, you can be not just a great leader of the company, you can be one of the great Fairfax’s, perhaps the greatest Fairfax since the founder of the company, your great, great grandfather, John Fairfax. That had to have been a lot to live with.
Warwick F:
Yeah, well said. That’s true. I mean, as I think I’ve said elsewhere, I made the mistake of working hard. Growing up in a wealthy almost aristocratic family, I sometimes jokingly feel like, it does feel a little bit like the royal family, it doesn’t feel like you had a whole lot of choice but to go into the family business. But I jokingly say that I made the mistake of working hard. So I got grades in school, I went to a good private boys school. Got into Oxford where my father, grandfather, elder brother has gone. Worked on Wall Street, got into Harvard Business School. So, all of that kind of working hard to do my duty and make my parents and family proud, that made people think, gosh, I mean, he’s intelligent, he works hard. Could he be one of the great Fairfax’s since the founder, John Fairfax?
Warwick F:
And so while humility is very important to me, that sense in my mind, I think it started affecting me in the sense, gosh, maybe I could do a whole lot of good for Australia. Maybe my name would be known generations to come. The thought did creep into my brain. And then you had some people around the time of the takeover, well-meaning believers saying, gosh, we’ve been praying for God to raise up somebody in the heart of the media for 20 years or more. And you’re an answer to prayer. Gosh. I could be one of the greats since John Fairfax, I’m an answer to prayer, I could have an impact on my country.
Warwick F:
Even somebody like me where humility and faith is so important, it starts seeping into your psyche and consciousness. So when the whole two billion plus takeover ended, it’s like, well, now what’s my mission? It’s almost like, you get too old to play football and now what do I do? Well, that mission’s over, that goal, that dream. It was a tough thing to deal with. So there’s some part of that GOAT syndrome in some sad way that I can identify with. Having your whole identity wrapped up in a goal or a persona, or what people are saying about you, about who you potentially could be.
Gary S:
And is it safe to say, I mean, you’re crucible, you lost the family business, 150 years in the family, gone. Price tag of $2.25 billion dollars, gone. But is it safe to say, even with that, that it was the sense of failure, the blow to your identity was even just one tick harder because of that? Did whatever bit of GOAT syndrome, GOAT roping, whatever bit of that seeped into you, did that make it even that much worse, even just a click worse, that failure?
Warwick F:
I think it was. It was a failure of epic proportions, and while it wasn’t so much the money because money has not been a driver for me, the sense of, gosh, the impact I could have had on the company, bringing it back to the ideals of the founder, have it be run well, the impact through newspapers on the country, that sense of what might have been and what could I have done, it’s sort of like unfulfilled promise. Somebody that may have been an incredible high school football or basketball player suffers a devastating injury, and they never know what would have happened in college, or professional, what might have been. And so, you have to live with the what might have been. And that’s not uncommon unfortunately. Because of the expectations others were putting on me, and I was putting on myself, that sense of what might have been just added to the difficulty, the bitterness almost, that feeling of failure certainly.
Gary S:
And that feeling that you had, that’s why we’re talking on Beyond the Crucible on the podcast that deals with how do you bounce back from crucible experiences. That’s why we’re spending so much time talking about great football players and tennis players and golfers and all of that. The reason we’re talking about that because it can affect us in our own pursuit of our professional dreams, our professional goals. And those are the dangers. Your identity gets wrapped up, not just in what you do, but in being the best there ever was in what you do. You and I’ve talked a lot about, in the movie, The Natural, with Robert Redford, there’s a great scene that you love in that movie. Describe that scene what happens and why that then applies to all of us in some way, what happens to Robert Redford’s character?
Warwick F:
The Natural is one of my favorite movies. It’s about a young guy from Nebraska that kind of makes a mistake, a woman that just is somewhat psycho, and she kind of basically injures him. And so, his promising career seems to be over. He comes back and, they don’t tell you, but I’m guessing somewhere in his 30s, with the mythical New York Knights team. I think you have a jersey.
Gary S:
I have a hat, a jersey, a T-shirt, I have the whole-
Warwick F:
Which I think is so cool. Anyway, just because he’s an honest guy that won’t kind of play ball with people who want to bet on sports, he ends up getting poisoned and he’s in the hospital. And the woman that he knew from when he was growing up played by Glenn Close, he’s in the hospital bed, and she is at his hospital bedside trying to comfort him. And Robert Bedford’s name in the movie is Roy Hobbs, that’s the character he’s playing. And he just says to Glenn Close, “Things really didn’t work out the way that I had hoped.” And she says, “What do you mean?” “Well, I just thought I would be one of the great baseball players of all time. I’d walk down my hometown and they’d say, there goes Roy Hobbs, the greatest there ever was.” And she says to him, “Well, Roy, but then what?”
Warwick F:
He looks at her. He does not understand the question what she’s saying. So you’re the greatest of all time. Well, then what? What’s after that? Almost not so what, but is that all there is? He cannot fathom the question that Glenn Close is asking him. I’ve thought about that a lot. And that’s just a perfect scene that epitomizes GOAT syndrome, that sort of there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was. Could be, there goes, John Smith, Mary Jones, the best there ever was.
Warwick F:
I guess the point of this episode is not just about great athletes or sports heroes. It could be, maybe you could think, gosh, maybe I could be the best lawyer in my town, the best surgeon, the best real estate person. Maybe if you’re a student, maybe I could be the best high school basketball player, swimmer, diver. In whatever arena you’re in, there is a temptation to say I want to be the best in my field, in my area, so that all my friends will say, gosh, there goes Joe, there goes Susan. They’re the best at what they do. They are the best. They’re the best I know personally. They’re the greatest.
Warwick F:
So it’s not just for these great athletes. It’s very tempting to want to be the best in our field of endeavor, which is not wrong, but it’s getting your whole sense of identity at being perceived by your friends and neighbors and colleagues as being the best in whatever your arena is.
Gary S:
And it comes with dangers. It comes with great dangers of a loss of identity, where if your identity is in being the best oral surgeon and you’re not the best oral surgeon, then your identity is crushed in some way. That’s a crucible. One of the dangers is it leads you to put your emphasis on the wrong things. I go back to The Natural. You put your emphasis on achievement, not relationships. And that’s one of the things that almost passes Roy Hobbs by in that film. He finally does get back together with his high school sweetheart, but a lot of years pass where he is putting his emphasis on trying to get achievement, and he’s missing relationship. He’s missing those things that are truly important that lead to what you call a life of significance.
Gary S:
So there are some dangers that come from being wrapped up in pursuing single-mindedly being the greatest of all time. And that’s why we’re having this discussion, and that’s why we’re going to pivot here in a minute to start talking about ways in which we can cut short that pursuit, that all encompassing pursuit of being the GOAT. By cutting that short, we can avoid some of the pitfalls and the heartache that come from it.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, I think it’s really two things. One is trying to avoid the pitfalls of getting into the GOAT syndrome. But then sadly, others, me to a degree, we’ll have times in which maybe, I wasn’t ever the GOAT perhaps, but I guess I had my expectations of trying to make a great contribution to the company and the country. But for those who are legitimately in conversation about being the GOAT in sports or in business, once you’ve had a fall from grace or you’re no longer in the mix, that’s hard to deal with too. So it’s really both the ones, maybe you’re on your way up, or how do you avoid the GOAT syndrome pitfalls. And if you’re already on top of the mountain and have fallen, what do you do then, how do you recover? So it’s both almost like vaccination, if you will, before you get the disease, and if you have the disease, how do you recover? It’s kind of both.
Gary S:
And when you’ve roped the GOAT. When you have achieved GOATness, not only is it ephemeral, but it’s not fulfilling. Here’s a quote from 17th century French poet, Jean de La Fontaine, said this, “Neither wealth nor greatness render us happy.” It can be not just fleeting, but it can be not fulfilling in the sense of you can get it and it’s not, it’s Glenn Close saying, and then what? Is that all there is? There are other things that are more important than just being identified from the outside looking in as the greatest of all time.
Gary S:
And we just had a guest on the podcast a few weeks back, Hank McClarty. And Hank talks about this. Hank was in many ways, close to the GOAT in his financial services career. He was on the cover of magazine, his firm’s were ranked in the top 10, 15, whatever they were. Hank, by his own description said he started drinking the Hank Kool-Aid, believing his own press clippings, and his life collapsed. He spent more than two years living with no direction and no job off of credit card points in a hotel relying on the free breakfasts. Not only was that not his identity, his identity was gone. He didn’t know what to do but he didn’t have a job, he didn’t have a direction. And what he found was significance. He was able to rebuild his career as he talks about in the episode. He rebuilt his success. But more important to him, based on gratitude and humility, he was able to build significance. And that’s what not focusing solely on being the GOAT allowed him to do.
Warwick F:
That’s absolutely true, and that’s a great example, the sad thing is, for those on the way up, there’s this myth that once I get to the top of the mountain, then I’m going to be happy and fulfilled. And the reason you feel stressed is because you haven’t succeeded in your goal to be the greatest in whatever field it is. I’m reminded of that fable, if you will, about there’re an anthill, and the ants were crawling over each other to get to the top. And one ant says to the other, “So, why are we doing this? What’s up there?” And says, “I didn’t know, it must be amazing, because everybody else is headed up the top of the hill.” And it’s like, yeah, I don’t know why we all try to be the number one financial advisor in the country, or the top real estate person or the top surgeon or the top this, I don’t know. But once I’m there and everybody goes, wow, this guy, this woman, they are the best.
Warwick F:
You want to realize that that’s ephemeral because sometimes, you might be spending your whole career to get there, and you’ll get there later in life. And by then, I wouldn’t say it’s too late to turn, but your years to change the whole legacy deathbed experience as we talk about. There won’t be as many. That’s almost the worst case scenario is reach the peak of success in business or in some other field when you’re over 50 or over 60, because you spent your whole life chasing being the GOAT and it’s like, well, now what.
Gary S:
And this is a danger, we haven’t talked about this in advance, we haven’t talked about it since you first brought it up, but you mentioned one time, when we were going through some stories to film a video for Crucible Leadership about some retirement community somewhere, where there were all these people who had had these great careers, and they were just so unhappy. Am I remembering that right?
Warwick F:
You’re right. I think it was outside of Denver, a bunch of wealthy folks, and that achieved success, but now they’re in some retirement home, and it’s like, well, now what. Probably mention it later, you’ve mentioned before about the whole headstone deal. It’s like, what do you want your legacy to be, and when you’re on your deathbed, you’re thinking about what people are going to say at your funeral, it’s typically not Joe, Mary, they were the wealthiest, the most successful, the best athlete, the best this. That’s not how you’re going to want your family and friends to remember you. It just is not.
Gary S:
It’s ephemeral and it’s fleeting. It’s ephemeral and it’s fleeting. And that’s why significance is neither of those things. significance is not ephemeral, it’s not fleeting. So, how do we, those of us who are listening here today, how do we avoid the pitfalls? How do we solve, what’s the solution to being so wrapped up in pursuing GOATness that we end up falling victim to its more insidious aspects? What are some keys to how we can avoid those things happening to us?
Warwick F:
I think the first one is, don’t focus solely on records. Records can’t be a benchmark of how we’re doing, especially in sports, wins, losses, stats. But rather than focus on records, I think some of the best athletes do that, focus on day to day improvement. Just focus on how can I be better. If you’re in business, what can we do today to serve our customers better? What can we do today to improve our product? If you serve your customers well and improve your product, you’ll probably make more money.
Warwick F:
Some of the most successful people in business know this, if ever you ask a CEO, well, what’s your vision, what’s your mission? To increase revenue 20% for the next five years. Smart business analysts will say, really, that’s it? That’s not a vision, that’s not a mission. The smart ones will say, it’s really to serve our customers, to treasure our employees. Some of the best companies like Southwest Airlines, their whole mission, what started them in Texas, was to unite families, bring families together by bringing the cost of an airfare at an affordable level at a time when air travel was incredibly expensive. That was their mission. Well, they’ve done fabulously well and been very profitable for many years.
Warwick F:
But that wasn’t the goal. The goal was really not about numbers. It was about a thought of bringing families together. The best companies, the best organizations are focused on, not so much on the records, but day to day improvement that’s really anchored by an altruistic mission, or vision.
Gary S:
And that’s the best way for an individual to live in pursuit of goals as well. One of the things I thought about as we were talking about this episode was focus on goodness, not on greatness. Focus on how you can be good, how you can do good for people, not on being great for yourself. I think that shift in things can be an enormous boon to your joy, not your happiness, happiness is circumstantial, and it can be rooted in success. But joy is internal. If you’re focused on bringing goodness to the table, not gathering greatness for yourself, I think that is one of the first prerequisites, one of the first steps toward a life of significance.
Warwick F:
I think that’s very true, is really, it’s what we talk a lot about when we talk about a life of significance, which at Crucible Leadership we define as a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So it’s not about your own stats, your own record. It’s about the team, it’s about serving your customers, your employees. I think of Jim Collins, his book, Good to Great, which is really a great testament to what we’re talking about. He wrote it a number of years ago, but basically, he analyzed companies that had 15 years of reasonable returns, and then 15 years of incredible returns relative to the stock market.
Warwick F:
All of the leaders he looked at were what he calls level five leaders, in which they were driven, but they were humble. And when he asked these leaders, so what accounts for your success? He says, well, gee, I don’t know, I’ve got a great team. They’re almost humble. They didn’t say, well, I’m brilliant, I work hard, I’ve got a good strategy. We’ve got a killer app. I mean, whatever it is, it was just a humble sense of, it was outward focused, it was other focused. We have a good team. The truly great leaders are like that. It’s not about their own personal success, it’s about the success of the team. And serving their customers, serving their clients, serving others. There’s this altruistic other centeredness. The success, the numbers, that’ll all come. That’s a byproduct of their heart, which is other focused.
Gary S:
Another quote I’ll throw at you, Anne Frank said this, “Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.” That’s exactly what you just described. It’s not about “success.” It’s what do you bring to the table, what do you offer other people that you’re interacting with in the area of character and goodness. What’s another step?
Warwick F:
I was just going to say, just before, you triggered another thought by saying that.
Gary S:
Good. That’s my job, to trigger thoughts.
Warwick F:
As listeners will know, I love history. And two of the greatest presidents as historians would view would be Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. And their greatness wasn’t in their numbers. Yes, George Washington defeated the might of the British army that was the greatest army on the face of the earth in the late 1700s. That was an amazing stat, to defeat the greatest army in the world. Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War, at tremendous cost. So their stats were pretty good. But yet, you look at somebody like Abraham Lincoln was clearly very driven, very committed to the cause of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. But he was humble, it was about the team. He didn’t want accolades for himself. George Washington was a man of great character, great self-control. And he wasn’t focused on his own accolades, some of his generals and people almost wanted him to be a dictator at one point when the war looked like it was almost over. And he said, no, this is not what it’s about. We’re about creating a democracy.
Warwick F:
So, the greatness of the two greatest presidents was really the greatness of their character. And that’s why they’re remembered, not just because one won independence for America and the other one preserved the union. It was really their character that was their greatness to your point.
Gary S:
And it’s not impossible, it’s certainly not antithetical to be the GOAT and to have great character. But if you’re caught up in pursuit of GOATness, if you’re caught up in pursuit of being the GOAT, sometimes you can take your eye off the ball, to go back to the sports metaphor, to take your eye off the ball of character. And that’s what our guest last week, Hank McLarty, talked about. He was pursuing success, success, success, and he lost some of his character, he lost some of his integrity, he lost some of his humility, and that cost him dearly.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Truly great leaders don’t focus on their own greatness.
Gary S:
Right. Great place to move on to point number two of how we can avoid some of the pitfalls of trying to single-handedly become the GOAT, pursue the GOAT. What’s another way that we can sort of short circuit that and avoid that pitfall?
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think another way, and you hear athletes talk about this a lot, the great ones, is enjoy the process. It’s about getting better each day, but it’s like, enjoy the training. If you’re a football player, enjoy watching film. The truly great players, they love getting in the gym, they love watching film, they love trying to get just a little bit better. And what’s interesting is with these great players, if they’ve done their utmost to train, to prepare, to improve, if they lose, it’s like nobody likes losing, certainly great athletes don’t, but it’s like, well, I did my best. The better man, the better woman won today. The great ones are often humble in victory and magnanimous in defeat, because, yes, they want to do well, but the focus isn’t on, okay, the sheer act of winning. It’s they’re focused on the process of what do I need to do to be the best that I can be.
Warwick F:
It’s the training, it’s the little things. I’m sure, and you would know better than me, Tom Brady, probably practices endlessly. I think somebody that listeners wouldn’t know here, Steve Smith, is a cricket player in Australia and considered one of, if not the best in the world at the moment. He’s had his challenges. He practices incessantly, more than any other player on the planet, he’s just obsessed. He’ll be in his hotel room with his cricket bat, you’ve heard of shadow boxing, will be like shadow practicing. It’s just like move after move after move endlessly, 100, 1000 times in his hotel room. Does he ever sleep? It’s like he’s obsessed with every little part of his technique. And it’s all about the process. The great players are all about the process. So that’s another key is don’t focus on the result, just focus on each day, how can I get better? How can I enjoy the training, enjoy the practice. Enjoy the process.
Gary S:
And that’s not just obviously for sports. That is in your professional life, that is in your leadership life. Enjoy the process of having people entrusted to you to lead, enjoy the process of being able to lead that.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. It’s helping them improv, delegating. Certainly I know in Crucible Leadership, whether it’s a book cover or anything we’ve done, there might be like 10 meetings to get to a good result. I’m impatient by nature, but it’s like, you’ve got to realize, this is the process, to get a great result, you’ve got to have a good process, keep the team on board, listen to good advice, and just enjoy the process. Even if that’s difficult, for a lot of us, good things come with patience and a good process. I’m not into bureaucracy, but I have come over the years to realize a good process is the key to a good result. It’s critical.
Gary S:
The next step that people can take to avoid getting caught up in the negatives, for lack of a better phrase, GOAT syndrome is what?
Warwick F:
I’d say having other areas to focus on. I mean, one of the ways that it helps to have your whole identity separate from being the greatest in sports or in business or the arts, what have you, is have an outlet. It could be being with family, it could be hiking, running, painting. I think of, certainly it helps with stress. I think of Winston Churchill in World War II, and certainly some consider him to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest Prime Minister in British history. He was a very good amateur painter. So when he had to make incredibly tough decisions and things were looking very dire in the midst of World War II, he would get away to the country, and he would paint.
Warwick F:
So, having an outside relief, not just for stress, but just don’t have your whole sense of self-worth, your whole sense of self wrapped up in your profession. Have other outlets. It could be community groups that you’re involved in. Some people may be the coach of their kids sports teams and middles middle school, or what have you. Just have other areas that are outside of your main profession, I think really helps to provide a bit of balance, and frankly a bit of sanity.
Gary S:
The word that comes to mind as you talk about that, and the next point, point four, is having perspective. Having perspective. And I think it applies, having perspective on this whole question of being the GOAT and pursuing GOATdom. But there’s also having perspective on your crucibles. When I heard you just talking about your family and thinking about, and really spending time with your family. I think about in your crucible with the loss of the family company, your family, you were married, you had children. That perspective, that other areas to focus on, helped you get beyond your crucible so it can help you avoid the GOAT syndrome and some of the trappings of that, the negative trappings of that, but can also help you get beyond your crucible to have that perspective, right?
Warwick F:
There’s no question. When my kids were young in the 90s, after the whole takeover ended, just being able to play. I have two sons and a daughter. So boy, girl, boy. With my oldest son, those first few years, being able to throw a baseball or kick a soccer ball, or just the simple things of life, it just was immense joy. When I was working in the aviation services firm, I’d come from work, and like a lot of dads and moms would appreciate, they’re looking in the window of our house, and you’re walking down the path to the front door and it’s like, Daddy’s home, and they kind of run up to you and give you this massive hug. It just gives you a perspective. They don’t care that gosh, daddy’s lost this $2 billion company. They didn’t understand that at the time. They were too young. It’s hard for them to relate to too much even though they’re in their 20s.
Warwick F:
But those simple things about being able to play with your kids. I remember one year when my oldest son was 10, I co-coached his soccer team. Coaching sports is not really my gifting, but they were desperate and needed somebody, so you kind of, I don’t know, do what you need to do. It was okay, it’s just not the sweet spot of my gifted-ness. But all those things with my young kids at the time, it just gave you a perspective that they didn’t care about all that stuff that I was involved in. It’s just those simple things in life, being able to play with your kids, taking a walk in nature, it’s like, it gives you a broader perspective, than everything being thought of of what you do.
Gary S:
And another perspective generating point is your next point about keeping your identity separate from your profession. I’ve heard you say this often on Beyond the Crucible in your blogs. Why is that so important to stave off some of the negative consequences of pursuing at all costs being the GOAT?
Warwick F:
It’s so easy, we’re all human, unfortunately, and it’s so easy, especially if you start doing well, think maybe I am the best basketball player or the best real estate person or the best surgeon. Let’s say you get some awards and magazines, top surgeon in Maryland, Wisconsin, Illinois. There are professional publications that come out, and your name is there, one of the best. And that’s tough. And so, you have to realize who you are is not about what you do. It’s really more rooted, as we say in Crucible Leadership, in who you are as a person, your inherent value.
Warwick F:
We believe that, I think of Psalm 139, which says, we are beautifully and wonderfully made. Just as human beings, we have inherent value and worth that has nothing to do with what we do. I’m fortunate to have a wonderful wife, and she loves me not because of what I do, but because of who I am. And even in those first few years after the takeover, that never wavered. Now, I realize we’re not all blessed, we all have different family situations. But that helps you realize, who I am is not wrapped up in John Fairfax and some takeover. It’s more wrapped up in who I am as a person. So that’s really key is, you are so much more than your success and your profession. You are so much more than that. You have intrinsic value as a human being in terms of your character and who you are. That’s really the most important thing that people have to really get their head around. You have value in yourself.
Warwick F:
I almost think sometimes when people achieve is because they have an inherent feeling of lack of self-worth. I don’t know that this is always true, but it can be, an inherent maybe, a little bit sense of worthlessness or you should value who you are as a person. If you do that, it will make the fall from the pinnacle, which is maybe not inevitable, but records are meant to be broken. It will make it easy if you see yourself having value as a human being.
Gary S:
Yeah. Some of it might be tied to, you have to prove yourself worthy. You have to prove yourself worthy so you accumulate this record, you do this thing, you do that thing. And that becomes who you are. I want to run a real time experiment here. We have not talked about this. But you just said something when you were talking about keeping your identity separate from your profession, about accolades that came in. And we just went through a process.
Gary S:
Again, I mentioned earlier that your book, Crucible Leadership, is coming out in October. And one of the things we did on your book is we gathered endorsements from a wide swath of folks, people we’ve had on the podcast, people who are business leaders, people who are theologians, people who are business school professors and business school educators. I read those endorsements of your book, 28 of them, 29 of them, at the end of the day, we had 29 of them. And there were some incredibly positive things said about you. As someone who has just gone through the experience of having deep words of affirmation about your work presented to you, how do you keep your perspective in that moment? Help the listeners and the readers who are eventually going to grab the book, help the listeners process how to do that, because I just watched you do it and it was beautiful to see.
Warwick F:
That’s a really interesting question. I think part of what kind of occurs to me is, I mean, my faith is my life. As listeners know my faith in Christ is a bedrock of who I am as a person. I never want to go back to believing the press clippings or believing oh, I could be one of the great Fairfax’s. I’m human, I don’t want to be like, oh, look at this book, look at Crucible Leadership, Warwick’s back, redemption. I mean, I’m human, we all have our temptations. And so, if ever I start looking at these things and go, boy, that’s pretty, and I’m grateful, I’m unbelievably grateful for the very kind words that a number of people, many said, there. Almost it’s like a mantra, it’s like it’s all you Jesus, it’s all you, God. I just bring it right back to Him saying, it’s not me, any gift I have, it’s ones that God has given me. And the good fortune and the good team, good circumstances, the resources I’m blessed with to be able to do what I do, it’s all the Lord.
Warwick F:
So it’s really my faith helps me, if I ever I get tempted, I’m human, it’s like, it’s not me, it’s you, Lord. I just sort of open my hands and just say, it’s you, Lord, it’s not me. I’m just trying to be a faithful servant. I just turn praises back to him. That’s kind of what I do. It works for me. Whenever you feel like your temperature rising a little bit, your arrogance, your believing your own press clippings, that’s when I just turn to my faith and say, it’s not me, it’s you, maybe working through me. I don’t know how that translates more broadly maybe, maybe it’s my family, it’s my team. I’m just trying to be faithful here. I think there’s a way of looking at it more broadly a bit. That’s kind of what I do.
Gary S:
And that’s helpful. That’s a real world application of keeping your identity separate from your profession, and specifically, your achievements within that profession, because that’s where I think the GOATness comes in, it’s your identity is tied up not just in your profession, but your achievements in that profession. And when you write a book and you get endorsements from people, it’s easy to think, wow, I have achieved a lot. And to be able to tamp that down and recognize that you are more than that, that you’re more than your achievements. We’ve talked about it before on the show a lot. We are all more than our best moments and more than our worst moments. We all sort of live life in the middle. And that is true I think for pursuing GOATness. We’re more than how many Grand Slam titles we’ve won, how many Super Bowls we’ve won. And that is what really matters in life.
Gary S:
We’re getting to the point where, since we’ve talked so much about sports, I’m going to say the clock is winding down or something like that. I can’t think of a good metaphor for, captain’s turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. We’re going to land the plane here shortly. But you have one more point that I think is really critical for listeners to find the strength, to really take strength, find the strength to turn away that desire, as you just described it, the heat rising up, of wanting to embrace and pursue and even grasp at being the GOAT. And what is that final point that you have, Warwick?
Warwick F:
It’s hold it all lightly. Records come and go. Maybe you’re in the prime of your athletic career or the leader of the organization. But it won’t last. Records will be broken. And if you’re the CEO of your company, newsflash, you won’t be CEO forever. You’ll retire, you’ll get replaced. You might be asked to leave. I remember when my dad was, he was chairman of John Fairfax Board, before he was thrown out by some other family members in 1976. And as chairman of the large media organization, he would be invited to government functions and embassies deals, consular things. I think I remember my mother telling me that when he was removed as chairman, not only did those invitations not come. In some cases, I think he was told you don’t need to attend. The invitation was withdrawn. That does happen. Unfortunately, anybody that’s been in some area of success, there might be some who have experienced that. Well, you’ve got to hold all these records lightly.
Warwick F:
Of the three people we spoke about, one of the folks I most admire because I love tennis is Roger Federer. And I don’t know his psyche, but he sure seems like he has a pretty balanced life and has his head on straight. He has a nonprofit that helps underprivileged folks in Africa. He has a young family, I want to say he has two set the twins, which is kind of crazy. I think he actually blew his knee out one time helping bathe his kids and took him out for six or nine months. If you’re going to blow your knee, that’s probably not a bad way of doing it, right?
Gary S:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
Recently he was asked because he’s tied with Rafa Nadal, and now they’re probably got to beat him in that record in the next few months, what he thinks of it all. And Roger Federer says this, as he’s talking about playing against some of the most incredible players of all time Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal. And Federer says this, “But all records are there to be broken. The guys are unreal,” in other words, his competitors, Djokovic, and Nadal. “We all know that. I hope they keep on going. I hope that they do everything they possibly want and they look back with no regrets. We want to leave the game with no regrets, and I think from that standpoint, we all sleep very well at night.”
Warwick F:
I don’t know whether they do but you sense that Roger Federer does. He loves the game, he’s like 39 years old, which is ridiculously old for a tennis player. Why does he keep playing? As that saying goes, for the love of the game, he honestly loves playing tennis. He wants to do well, and if he’s not the greatest of all time, his record is broken, which undoubtedly will be, he seems like he’s about as much peace with it as any athlete is, as any elite athlete is. So there’s something about him that really impresses me. I feel like of all the athletes I know, he handles the whole GOAT syndrome about as well as I know. Maybe his psychologist, if he has one, says actually there’s the real Roger Federer nobody knows.
Warwick F:
But as far as anybody knows who watches tennis, everybody feels like gosh, this guy, not only does he handle it well as is good character, and what’s the result of that, pretty much everywhere he goes, everybody cheers for him. People love him, not just his grace and ability to play tennis, but who he is as a person. It’s okay to be cheered for the right reasons, which is not just about his tennis, but about his character. If you’ve got to be cheered, let people cheer for you as a human being.
Gary S:
And that is true, not just of folks who are playing sports, that’s true of all of us in any field of endeavor that we’re involved in. As we wrap, Warwick, let me say a couple of things. One, all of the insights that we’ve discussed on the show today, you have in a blog that folks can find on crucibleleadership.com. So if you want to revisit any of these posts and sort of look more deeply into some of the points that we’ve made, Warwick’s perspective on them, you can read them at crucibleleadership.com under the heading of blog. You can find that there.
Gary S:
But there is a a summary of all this. You had these five points, but it all leads to kind of one great big summary of what our goal should be. And I’ve often thought of this in the last couple of months, in particular, as we talk about a life of significance, that what you’re about to talk about, legacy, seems to be like the the postscript to a life of significance. We live a life of significance and we leave a legacy. But how do all of these points when they add together, why is legacy such an important true north to go for?
Warwick F:
In some ways, people talk about living life backwards, when you’re on your deathbed, when you’re thinking of your kids and your spouse, giving your eulogy, if you could write it for them, one of our folks, I think it was Mike Valentine talked about what would you like your eulogy to be like, which is an amazing comment that he made. It probably won’t be about fame or success, it might be about being a mom, a dad, brother, sister, maybe about serving the people that you worked with, serving the people in your community. How do you want to be remembered by your kids, grandkids, and friends and neighbors? That’s kind of in part what we talk about legacy? Well, how about living your life today in accordance with what you would like the eulogy to be like, in accordance with those last moments of consciousness before we pass? You don’t want to be going oops, I blew it. I’m on my third or fourth marriage, my kids hate me. My employees think I was just the worst jerk imaginable. That’s one legacy. Do you really want that to be yours?
Warwick F:
And so, now’s the time to leave a legacy that you can be proud of. And that’s why we talk about a life of significance because to live a life well lived, to leave a legacy you can be proud of means to do that, I think from our framework, you have to live a life of significance, which is a life lived on purpose dedicated to serving others. When your life is other focused, when it’s built on a foundation of character, of values, of faith in something beyond yourself, that’s a life that you can be proud of. And ultimately, we only get one life, and it may be short or long, we never know the day, it’s just one of those uncertain things in life. So how about living a life today that you’ll be proud of tomorrow and that your kids, grandkids and family members will be proud of as they gather for your eulogy. Live your eulogy today.
Warwick F:
And if you do that, you probably won’t be so focused on being the GOAT in sports or business or the arts, or whatever field of endeavor. You’ll be more focused on other people, about, yes, using your talents to benefit others, working hard, but it will be more other-focused rather than self-focused. That’s really part of what it means to leave a legacy you and certainly others can be proud of.
Gary S:
And to tie the idea of legacy up in the idea that we talked about here, this idea of being a GOAT, we’ve talked about this before, and you alluded to it earlier, arguably the GOATs of country music, of rock and roll music and of jazz standards music, and that would be Johnny Cash in country, Elvis Presley in rock, and Frank Sinatra in jazz and standards. These were the GOATs in these musical genres, but their tombstones, their legacies, two of them don’t even mention that they were musicians at all. Johnny Cash has a psalm on his, Frank Sinatra simply has, “The best is yet to come,” a lyric from one of his songs, on his. Elvis Presley doesn’t mention that he was a recording artists, but the main things about how he was a son and he was a father, those very things that you talked about, having other things to focus on, having a perspective.
Gary S:
If anybody had the right to go out to as the curtain closed, since they’re all performers on their lives, as GOATs and to really trumpet their GOATdom from their tombstones, it was these three gentlemen, and none of them did it. They all focused on those other things you talked about, those other things that bring joy to life, that bring meaning to life, their families. That’s what they focused on. And I think that’s a great place to kind of tie the bow on the package of our podcast here today.
Gary S:
So listeners, thank you for joining us. Until the next time we’re together, remember this because it’s true, your crucible is painful. We know that. Warwick knows that. I know that. We’ve been through crucibles as well. But it is not the end of your story. In fact, your crucible moment can be if you learn the lessons of that crucible, and you apply those lessons moving forward, your crucible experience can be the jumping off point to a new chapter in your story. And it can be the best chapter of your life because that chapter will lead you toward two things that we talked about on this episode. And it won’t involve another one. It doesn’t lead you to GOATdom. It leads you to a life of significance and it leads you to a legacy you can be proud to leave.
He was, in his own words, an “intense goal-setter” from the third grade. And Hank McLarty achieved most of what he set his mind to: a football scholarship to Auburn, a financial services career at prestigious firms, recognition and wealth as one of the youngest and best in his industry. But when he started to “drink the Hank Kool-Aid” and believe he was as fabulous as the press coverage he earned said he was, his world collapsed. Living in a hotel with his two boys for two years, needing its free breakfasts to make ends meet, he slowly began to recast his vision — away from success and toward significance. Today, he says he’s blessed to have found both through Gratus Capital, the firm he founded on the principles of gratitude and humility.
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Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Hank M:
I had a thriving business, a stellar reputation, but what I thought was a good marriage. Two amazing boys, a brand new house I had just built, like I had all these things and literally with the flip of a switch, I lost everything in a very, very quick amount of time. And so, I think I was in a state of shock. I was embarrassed, I was ashamed, I couldn’t talk to anybody about it because I didn’t want anybody to know. And I was petrified because for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do. And I had these two little boys looking up at me every day with a big smile on their face. Like, “Daddy’s our hero. He’s going to…” They didn’t know what was going on, except that they were now living in a hotel with me, and I just didn’t know what to do, and it was definitely the scariest time of my life.
Gary S:
Have you ever felt like that? Knocked down so hard by your crucible that you aren’t sure which end is up, let alone how to get up. You just heard today’s guest Hank McLarty, discuss the fallout from his fall from grace. Life in the fast lane to life at the Residence Inn. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership.
Gary S:
In this far ranging interview with Warwick, Hank opens up about how a lack of humility and gratitude led to him losing the lavish life he had built in the financial services industry and how his low point became his turning point. When he found the grit, his word, to rebuild his career and his reputation, he did it by forming his own company, Gratus Capital, where his goal is to grow his team and his character as he grows the portfolios of his clients. He’s recaptured success, yes, but far more important he says, is that he’s found true significance.
Warwick F:
Well, Hank, thanks so much for being here, really looking forward to the conversation. You’ve done a lot from your football career to finance and wealth management and non-profits. I’d love to just maybe start just, just to get a feel of your background, family, growing up, siblings, so tell us a bit about Hank McLarty and kind of how you grew up in that environment?
Hank M:
Well, growing up my childhood was pretty unspectacular. A normal kid playing sports, I have one younger brother, mom and dad, the four of us. So I will say one thing that was a little different about my growing up was, at a very young age, I started setting goals and that was something that I don’t know why it wasn’t something that went on in my family, but it was just something that I felt it gave me comfort to set goals and work towards things.
Hank M:
And so, as early, as third and fourth grade, I started setting goals for doing physical things like pushups and sit-ups, and would ask my dad to test me on Sunday. So as a normal childhood, other than when I talk about my childhood now, people look at me a little cross-eyed, like, “You were doing what?” And I’m not really sure what the motivating factor was, but I was a fairly intense goal-setter at an early age.
Hank M:
And so, by the time I got to high school, I started playing football and junior high, and that seemed to play into the whole goal setting and physical workouts and all of that. And for some reason, when I was in the 10th grade, I decided I wanted to earn a college scholarship for football, which is not that uncommon. It’s very uncommon for somebody that’s not starting for their JV year, their varsity team. And so, I wasn’t even good enough to start in high school, so setting that goal was a little bit unusual to say the least, but I liked what it did for me because it gave me kind of a North Star to focus on all through high school, and so, I worked extremely hard. It kept me out of trouble because my answer to everything was I’ve got to work out or I’ve got to run, what have you.
Hank M:
And so, by the end of my junior year, I still wasn’t starting for my high school team, which is not a good sign when you’re hoping to get a college scholarship. So, usually players by their junior year are known throughout the state, they’re on the newspapers all the time and there’s colleges recruiting them. So I asked my dad, I said, “Dad, I need some help from you. This goal is getting very far off in the distance, I need to do something drastic. I need to move away for the summer to get ready for my senior year.”
Hank M:
So he helped me to get a job on a horse farm in Kentucky, and I lived in a cabin by myself that summer. And so, I worked on the horse farm mid day, I ran in the morning and I worked out every afternoon at Wildcat’s Gym in Lexington, Kentucky, and I worked hard and it was a lonely summer because I didn’t know anybody there, but I came back for my senior year and I was in phenomenal shape. And that set me up to have some success. So third game of my senior year, there was a lot of college scouts at that game to see players from the other team that were already getting a lot of notoriety, and I had the game of my life. And the next day I got a full offer, a full scholarship offer from Auburn to go play linebacker there.
Hank M:
I got other offers from Tennessee and Georgia and Kentucky and so forth and ultimately decided to go to Auburn, so that’s kind of in a nutshell, my childhood, and getting out of high school and kind of that, I guess the genesis of all the goal setting and kind of intensity that I’ve had throughout my life and setting goals.
Warwick F:
I mean, that’s fascinating obviously from the earliest age and not everybody’s driven. A lot of people are laid back and it’s not right or wrong, it’s different, but you’re obviously driven from an early age, did you see any of that in either of your parents or grandparents? I mean, where did that drivenness come from? I mean, do you have any role models in your family that kind of, you emulated a bit?
Hank M:
No. Which is a strange answer, but no. I think for me, my home life, I was never hit or abused or anything like that, but my parents had a very tough time. It was very unsettled at my house, a lot of drama and things of that nature. And I think setting goals kind of gave me something to focus on other than things that I wasn’t happy about. And so, it had nothing to do with any role model, it just something I fell into and it made me feel good, it made me feel good to accomplish something and check a goal off and to go do something that was hard to do and do it well and look back on it. That’s really the only reason I can say that I was doing it.
Warwick F:
So it’s not like your dad, for instance, was like ex military or one of these very driven people that you often hear stories about dads driving their sons like, “Hey son, you had a good game, but I know you can do better.” They’re always pushing, pushing.
Hank M:
No.
Warwick F:
It wasn’t that kind of upbringing, it sounds like.
Hank M:
No. In fact, I think my dad was confused and bewildered as to why I was doing all the things I was doing, making sense with him.
Warwick F:
Well, sometimes it actually can work out better when somebody is not pushing you and you’re doing it for you not to make anybody else happy. I mean, that’s to me almost the ideal. It’s too many pushy parents, I’m sure you probably in high school and in college, you probably ran across your fair share of your buddies, who had the pushy parents and scholarship stars in their eyes and they’re going “Come on son, you can do better,” and I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of that in your time?
Hank M:
Oh yeah. Certainly children living out their parents’ dreams and through that. So I guess in that sense when you put it that way, I’m probably lucky because the only reason I ever pushed myself was because I was pushing myself, nobody ever pushed me.
Gary S:
Hank, I want to jump in just for a second based, because I know from a conversation we had as we were preparing for the interview, there is the one story, right? About your dad when you sort of had it with football and you were going to quit and you talk to him and he did, even though he didn’t push you, even though he wasn’t trying to live his dream through you, he did help you, right? Stay focused on your dream and stay with your goal?
Hank M:
That’s a great point, Gary. Yeah. So, when I got to Auburn I had worked so hard. I mean, I had worked myself really hard in high school, maybe even to an unhealthy level to try to achieve, attain this goal. And so, once I got the goal, it was kind of like, “Okay, what do I do now?” So all these athletes at Auburn, most of them didn’t have to work that hard to get there. They’re just naturally gifted. They’re much faster, much bigger, much stronger, so I remember driving over to Auburn my first day, driving over to move into the dorm and start a summer practice, being very intimidated and insecure about my abilities. Can I hang with these amazing athletes? Because I had to work probably 10 times harder than them just to get here.
Hank M:
And so, I went over there with that attitude, “Am I worthy of being here.” Which is not a great place to start, but it’s where I started. So in my sophomore year, and so, I struggled a little bit, my freshman year. My sophomore year, a coach came up behind me in practice to motivate me and he didn’t mean to do it, but he kicked me, kicked me in the behind, and said, “Hey, come McLarty, let’s go,” and when he did, he just happened to hit my tailbone right on the end, and it was kind of like a funny bone, right?
Hank M:
It’s like a cattle prod on my butt or something. So I jumped up and I lost my temper and I spun around and I grabbed the coach and which obviously that’s not a good thing to do. And so our head coach at the time, my whole time there Pat Dye a known disciplinarian to do things the right way, he was up in the tower and he saw it happen.
Hank M:
And so, a lot of things happened, but one of them was, they ran me off the field, I thought they were going to kick me off the team, but they didn’t kick me off the team, they just ran me until I won. They just ran me every day, and it’s kind of like, to see what he’s made of, does he really want to be here, and so they were testing me.
Hank M:
And I wasn’t passing the test very well, I wanted out of there. I was whining to myself how unfair it was, and I called my dad who was living in Las Vegas at the time and told him I had this elaborate plan to leave Auburn and get a job at university of Georgia at the time, financially, my scholarship was paying for everything and we didn’t have the money. So I figured out this grandiose plan to get out of all these mean coaches and go to University of Georgia and get a job, and I was going to pay my own way.
Hank M:
So within about 10 hours, my dad was at the athletic dorm, he flew immediately from Las Vegas to Atlanta and drove down and I’ll never forget. He said, “Son, I’m going to tell you from personal experience. This is your scholarship, you’ve earned it, if you want to quit, I’m not going to tell you, you can’t. But from personal experience, I’m going to tell you that if you quit now, when things are difficult, it’s going to make it easier and easier in the future, when things get difficult for you to quit and walk away from something. And I don’t think you’re a quitter.”
Warwick F:
Wow. I mean, that’s… As you look back I mean, that is some profound advice that your dad gave you. I mean, that was a gift that don’t you think that he gave you back then?
Hank M:
Yeah. And that’s not what I wanted to hear. At the time I was probably 260 pounds and just a big muscle up baby sitting in his car, talking about how unfair the world was to me, and so, I wanted him to say, “Yeah, get out of here. This is unfair.” I mean, and he didn’t, he just said, “I don’t think you’re a quitter.” And there was no way I could respond any other way than to stay, unless I was just spineless. I mean, he challenged me in a unchallenging way and I got out of the car so mad at him, because I knew I couldn’t leave now, especially I had just met him. But he challenged me as a man and I stayed and I worked through it.
Hank M:
And it definitely is a foundation that of all the other times that we’re going to talk about today, that I could have quit. I didn’t, and that one instance was the foundation of me learning to never, ever stop when things are tough because you need to make a decision work through it and then make a decision when you’re not feeling negative about it, it’s a horrible time, took me a long-term decision.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a lesson that I think the audience needs to hear, is you don’t want to quit for the wrong reasons, you want to quit because, oh, it’s hard, and life is unfair, well, life is unfair. Everybody alive knows that. So to quit for that reason, you always inevitability will regret it. You don’t want to make a decision that you know you’ll regret. There’s a time to quit for the right reason and a time not to quit.
Warwick F:
And so I want to jump to the really first crucible, but kind of one of the things I’m thinking of is sometimes, and we don’t need to get into all the detail, but sometimes when there’s a bit of drama and uncertainty at home, by setting goals, it’s like, “Well, I can’t control the drama, but I can control who I am.” I can set my own goals, I can set my own path, and so sometimes we live our lives in reaction to things. And so, I don’t know, maybe there was… maybe you’re wired that way anyway, but when there’s things that you can’t control. “Okay, what can I control? Well, I’m going to set some goals, and I’m going to chart my course.” Does that kind of make sense? Maybe there was a correlation way back when…
Warwick F:
Yeah. So this is an amazing story because anybody that follows sports, there’s some people who were so gifted and sometimes they work out really well, and there are a number of folks that are really gifted that never live up to their potential, because it was all too easy. I mean, I grew up in Australia, so Australians follow tennis, I can think of without naming them. I can think of one or two tennis players that can’t miss. Going to win multiple Wimbledon’s majors that didn’t… I’m sure there’s football players, baseball, there’s a number of them, but the ones that have to really work hard and don’t have as much physical ability and natural ability, they’re often the ones that go further.
Warwick F:
Sometimes the ones that coaches want, right? Coaches want folks who have a good attitude and a work ethic that watch film.
Hank M:
There’s a kind of word that describes that grit. They have grit, that means that they have the intensity and the wherewithal to push through things when they’re not going well, and ultimately we all know that’s what’s necessary to succeed in life. I mean, life doesn’t always go well, so yeah, absolutely I agree.
Warwick F:
Yeah. Do you have the grit to get through it? So the first kind of major crucible you went through I understand was when you’re in college and you’re diagnosed with a blood disorder. So just talk about that whole… How that all happened and what happened and yeah, that story?
Hank M:
Yeah. So, after I went through that whole quitting exercise with my dad, things got much better and my attitude was great. I started feeling finally, like I was worthy of being there. I worked really hard and got myself in a position that I was really going to be contributing to the team and getting a lot of playing time. And so, I went into summer camp in August, in Auburn, it’s a little hot. It’s a very hot place, so in August, it’s a hundred degrees, very high humidity, and we’re doing… At the time we were doing four practices a day. And my coach he liked to push us a little harder than most coaches, so four practices a day and I had no idea I had this blood disorder.
Hank M:
And so, during this time of high stress on the body and so forth I had been losing weight over the previous week. I had lost about 15 pounds and it’s normal to lose some weight in those practices, but I had lost more than was acceptable and couldn’t figure out why, and I hit a guy in practice in a drill that normally I would dominate. And when I hit him, I passed out. And the next thing I knew, I woke up, they had me packed in bags of ice on the field, trying to get my temperature down. Apparently, my temperature was over 105, and so those field, the big bags of ice, you see at sports scene, so they had me literally laying down with bags of ice all over my body. And when they finally got my temperature down, they took me to the hospital and then did all kinds of tests, and I had a blood disorder that my immune system was kind of fighting me.
Hank M:
And so, next thing I know I’m in the head coaches office two days later when I got out of the hospital and they’re telling me that I couldn’t play anymore. So I had dedicated at that point, most of my life to the dream of being a starter at Auburn and being a contributor to the football program, and I was told I couldn’t play anymore. So that was kind of a redefining of me, because my whole identity up to that point had been… I’m a high school football player, now I’m an Auburn football player. I really didn’t have a whole lot going on in my life, other than that. And my grades were just, okay, so I had to… Well, first I had to get over the depression because I stayed in bed for about two weeks, I didn’t go to any classes.
Hank M:
My roommates were worried about me and I just didn’t want to get up. And that’s the first time I had ever been through anything like that. And then I finally got up and had to go beg some professors to let me make up some work, so I didn’t fail classes, and I worked through that. And then generally I got focused on my grades, I graduated, I think I had about four more semesters out of school, five more semesters, after that I made a 4.0 in all of those and got my GPA up to a respectable level and moved on after college.
Warwick F:
So were you a junior when this happened? Or what year were you? So you’d spent your whole life focusing on goals, football was sort of the medium, if you will, that you were going to… The playing field that you were going to aim for and you weren’t a starter for most of your high school, you’re able to get a college scholarship, I mean, some things maybe stars were aligned, you played hard, you were thinking of quitting, your dad gave you that talk and there you were, and then it feels like this is unfairly taken away from you sort of the coach kicking you on the backside, and you’re getting blamed for it, it seemed a bit unfair, but this is the ultimate unfair.
Warwick F:
It’s like, “How do you solve a blood disorder?” What’s the goal? What’s the program? What’s the plan? Okay, do I go back to Kentucky and work out harder? But it sounds like there was no plan that could overcome this, right? This was one goal you couldn’t achieve no matter what you did, it sounded like no fault of yours, obviously. So I know this is probably blindingly obvious, but you’ve told us a bit about how you felt that your whole sense of self was wrapped up in football on this goal, so those first few weeks, first few months, that must have been excruciatingly tough to have to deal with the new reality.
Hank M:
I think the best word is just lost. As I said earlier, kind of like, no matter what was going on, whether it was being invited to a party or dealing with girls or class, pretty much any decision I had to make my whole life from high school on, the North Star was always football. I always had an… like, I could just think about, “Should I do this or shouldn’t I?” How’s it going to affect this goal that I’ve set?” That was what I valued everything off of. And then I just felt lost without it, and I wasn’t really sure how to make decisions anymore.
Warwick F:
Well, inevitably for most of us and as listeners would know it’s a very different parallel, I suppose, but I grew up in a large 150 year old family media business, and when that ended on my watch, largely because it was my fault, I had this massive loss of identity. Well, who was Warwick Fairfax, if he’s not part of this Fairfax family media empire. I mean, I’ve no identity, it was just kind of crippling. So yeah, talk a bit about that few, because I imagine there have to… Would have to be in a hit to your identity, who is Hank McLarty without football? I mean, was that part of the sense of loss? It’s like, “That’s who I am. Who am I now?” Is that part of your internal discussion?
Hank M:
Of course, because I didn’t even know what it meant to just be a student. Without this thing I was passionate about outside of that. It was just a huge void there, that joining a fraternity or going to some local gym or something, none of that was going to fill it. And I had to start really… Because I’m a goal oriented person I had to start thinking about, “Okay, what’s the next phase of my life, I’ve got to get these semesters of school finished and go start a career.” And so then I started focusing on my career and that started filling the void.
Hank M:
Then when I started making good grades, which I wasn’t used to, you know I’m making great grades. I wasn’t used to that, that started filling the void and before I knew it, I was out of college and looking for a job, and then that became my identity. So I-
Warwick F:
It sounded like you sort of shifted. I mean, we’re all different. I’m a reflective person which has its good and bad sides, but it sounds like you’re a driven person that you don’t sit still for long. I mean, we’re all human, you might wallow for a few weeks or month or so, but you’re not going to sit there. It’s like, “Okay, this is over, it sucks, it’s awful, move on.” What’s the next goal? What’s the next one? It sounds like… Which can be…
Warwick F:
Reflection is good. It’s one of our guests said, there’s a difference between ruminating and reflecting. Ruminating is, “I’m a terrible person, oh my gosh, what happened?” Reflecting is like, “Okay. This sucked, this was awful, what can I learn from it, let’s move on.” Radical difference between… So you’re more on that healthier spectrum. So you shifted from understand to saying, “Okay, football’s over. What’s the next goal?” And so why did you pick finance? Why did you shift to that to be the next goal?
Hank M:
I’d like to say it was a dream, I had the dreaming of high school and college and I had this big plan, surely because I majored in finance really for no reason. And when I got out of school, I was like, “Okay, what does finance mean a bank or a brokerage firm?” So I’ll go interview at brokage firms. That was the very simplified basis for doing it. And I will say I interviewed probably 20 different banks and financial advisory slash brokerage firms, and every single one of them turned me down because I had no experience, I guess, to them I was a cocky former football player that probably was too big… in four months, who knows? I don’t know, I probably wouldn’t have hired me.
Hank M:
So I was certainly no glamorous high grades depth of experience with a passion for the markets, that was not me. I just wanted a job. And I think people saw through that and nobody wanted to hire me.
Warwick F:
So yeah. Because often, especially in this day and age of three kids in their twenties, I kind of know it’s like people build their resumes now it’s crazy, you know high school, summer jobs, I mean, just by the time you’re a college graduate, there’s all the stuff that they’ve done. President of the Auburn Finance Society they’re already invested on different batches of stocks and it’s all this stuff… I mean, how do people do all this? But they do. I mean, you hire people in your current firm, you’ve seen it, it’s just crazy what people at a given age have done.
Warwick F:
So I hear the challenges, so how did you get that first job? I mean, given people were… Well, you say seeing through you. I mean, at least rightly or wrongly they had a perspective of you, which maybe didn’t feel that flattering at the time, but you’d have…
Hank M:
Probably it was.
Warwick F:
I mean, you’re a smart person, you could probably tell what they were thinking, right?
Hank M:
Sure.
Warwick F:
I mean, how did you break through that barrier if you will?
Hank M:
So I wouldn’t say I broke through it. I found an angle. I went to an Auburn alumni supporter, a very wealthy man that lived in Atlanta that I’d become friends with. I had lunch with him and I told him I couldn’t get a job. And he said, “Well, I have all my money at Merrill Lynch, let me call the manager over there at Merrill Lynch.” I said, “Okay, I’ll take any help I can get.”
Hank M:
So I went to meet with the manager and he was so unimpressed, even after that guy called, he said, “Yeah, you’ve no experience, we’re just not hiring right now.” And so, I was at the time, I was living with my grandfather, I had a one bedroom apartment in Atlanta and I was living on his pullout couch, and I was pretty desperate. So the only person that I had had a conversation with that I had a reference point was the manager from Merrill Lynch.
Hank M:
So I went back to the Merrill Lynch office the next day, waited on him to come in from the parking deck, approached him again and said obviously I didn’t make a very good impression first time. I’d really love the opportunity, he blew me off, the next morning I went back, and the next morning I think he was a little frustrated and annoyed, but also somewhat impressed, I guess, that I was back there again.
Hank M:
And he said, “Here’s I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you take the Series 7, if you fail it you’re fired, if you pass it, I’ll give you a shot. But you won’t become an advisor, you’ll have to work for somebody as an apprentice. And in the meantime, while you’re studying, you wear jeans and a t-shirt to work, you go pick up lunches, move furniture, basically be a gopher for me and I’ll pay you $18,000 a year.” I was like, “Okay, done.” So, that’s how I got the job. It was very unglamorous.
Warwick F:
Again, another good lesson is even when people say no, just that level of persistence, I mean, I don’t know many people that would wait for the guy to go in, in the parking garage, like three days in a row or what have you, I mean, that’s not normal. But that shows persistence does pay. I mean, if somebody… Not to say everybody should try that, turn the tables and do that to you, but if proverbially, if somebody has that level of get up and go, I don’t know if you’ll say yes, but you’ll pay attention, right?
Warwick F:
It’s like, “Okay, this guy’s persistence is impressing me.” Okay. So you got your start at Merrill Lynch, and from what I understand, when you join a brokerage firm, it’s kind of like dialing for dollars. It’s like you just pick up the phone book. I don’t know if we’re pre or post internet then, but it’s a tough road those first year or two building the client base.
Hank M:
Yeah. For sure. And I didn’t like it at all. At least on the football field, I could see who was hitting me, right? I mean, right in this situation, it was just calling people that hated the idea you were calling them and throwing some cheesy line at them about, “Hey, I’m so-and-so from Merrill Lynch, how can I earn your business? Or some silly line like that.” And there’s nothing about it that’s good or fun or whatever, and frankly, I was failing miserably at it. I was in a group of people that they had hired and I guess, a class of people and we all trying to hit goals, so we didn’t get fired and you know hopefully move on to be an advisor, and I was way behind on all those goals and just kind of miserable just wasn’t clicking for me, and I started really questioning, “I don’t think this is for me, I need to find something else.”
Hank M:
And so about the time I was ready to, here we go again, quit I cold called this man in Atlanta and I threw the same cheesy line at him that I did to everybody else, and he cussed me out worse than any football coach had ever cussed me out. He said, “I’ve never even heard of that before.”
Gary S:
But he didn’t kick you.
Hank M:
No, he didn’t kick me. He didn’t grab me by the face mask, but if he could have, he would have, I promise you. He yelled and screamed to the point that I literally… I finally, when he slammed the phone down on me, I hung up and I thought nobody’s ever talked to me this way, I got to go get in this guy’s face. So I was like, “I’m good, anyway, who cares?” So I drove out to his office… I mean, I remember it like it was yesterday, I drove out to his office, I knocked on the door and here came this guy probably 60 to 65 years old.
Hank M:
He came and answered the door, like, “Yeah, yeah, what can I do to help you?” I’m like, “I’m the guy, you just said, this, this, this, this to, and I’m not… on your show. And I wanted to see what I could do to earn your business,” and I got up kind of real close to his face when I said that.
Hank M:
And he said, “Oh, I’m so so sorry. Don’t take it personal, you guys call me all day, I’m so frustrated with it and all, come on in, let’s talk.” So anyway, I talked to him for about three hours that afternoon, about life and sports and whatever, and then he introduced me to his partner who was the CEO. And they ended up great. They got a private equity firm to invest in their company, and they brought in about $15 million, and they called me up, this is after months of me building this relationship.
Hank M:
They called me up and they said, “Hey, you’re a little green, you don’t really know exactly what you’re doing, but we like you, and we trust you get somebody with some experience in your office and partner up with them and we want you to come pick this check up.” So I went and picked that check up and brought it back. I had to raise $10 million to get off the program, and this check was… So in one cold call and one client, I broke all my goals and graduated before everybody else and went from a dog to a hero overnight.
Hank M:
And the main thing that came from that, well, there were two main things that came from that. One was, it was another example for me. I was on the verge of quitting and yet again, I learned that every time I feel like quitting something, there’s something incredible on the other side of it, if I’ll stick with it. So, that was a massive part of what we’re going to talk about in a minute.
Hank M:
And the second thing I learned was I got this job by being direct and myself and confronting things with the manager to get the job. I got this huge account by being direct and professionally confrontational, like dealing with things. I think maybe I can do this job if I quit worrying about all the things, I don’t know, focus what I do really well and use all the resources of the firm to help me with the other areas. And that’s how I started building my business.
Warwick F:
With those and profound lessons for people, be yourself. I mean, you have this direct, never say die attitude. I mean, everybody can learn from that. I mean, very few people when somebody curses them on the phone with you know you play football, so I imagine your vocabulary is pretty decent in terms of different colorful language, but when you say, “Boy, there are some words I’d never heard off.” I mean, that’s… This guy obviously has a level of creativity in that arena that’s impressive.
Warwick F:
Most people would say, “I’m not going to go confront that guy.” 99.9% of people wouldn’t be but you said, “Okay, you know what? I’m not going to just sit here, I’m going to go and…” Because he was almost embarrassed, he gave you a shot and I mean, amazing, so what was… I can’t imagine what your manager’s face was like when I got so-and-so at X firm and he’s going to bring in Y millions of dollars, I just need somebody to partner with me. I mean he did his jaw fall on the floor. I mean, what was that manager’s expression like when you told him back at Merrill Lynch?
Hank M:
You know, I don’t know what they thought of me. I certainly was not an eloquent speaker of the financial markets and I was not. I didn’t have all the terminology and the language down pat or anything like that. I don’t know what they thought of me. I don’t know if they thought I was on my way out the door or maybe they thought I had more potential than I thought. I’m not really sure. I mean, they were definitely happy when I got off the program and brought in these accounts and I don’t know if they thought, “Well, that’s a one hit wonder and he’ll be out of here, I don’t know.” I was never that close with that manager, he didn’t give me a lot of feedback.
Warwick F:
So he never said, “Hey Hank, well done, you had more in you than I thought you did.” He never really gave you any kind of feedback? You never kind of…
Hank M:
No.
Hank M:
No, I don’t remember that.
Warwick F:
Oh, that’s kind of-
Hank M:
Maybe he did, I don’t remember. I just know that my belief in myself went up, at that, more so my belief in my style of doing things and I didn’t have… There was a lot of guys and girls in my class or in that firm that were significantly smarter, better, understanding of the markets, better understanding of financial planning, all of that. And I was just constantly looking around thinking I need to be more like that person or more like that person. And the result of this was more, I need to really train myself on what I’m good at and focusing on these things that I’m good at and be a student of the market and start to really step up my game. That’s really what I’m…
Warwick F:
Yeah. And now I want to shift here a bit to the kind of next step or crucible, but certainly as an aside, I mean, I’ve been blessed to work with a lot of good people and have a tremendous financial advisor. It’s funny, you said off air, you started at Merrill Lynch and went to Morgan Stanley. I also have a financial advisor that was at Merrill Lynch and when he moved to Morgan Stanley, I went with him. Well, I’ve been with him, I don’t know if it’s 15 years, I mean, a very long time, and the question is why? He knows his stuff about finance. I mean, markets, technical stuff, he knows that, but the reason that I have used him for so long is I trust him.
Warwick F:
Yes, he’ll speak straight to me, but I trust that he’s not going to sell me a line, oh… I understand a bit about how it works, the powers that be at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, they’re pushing something and they’re telling their brokers, “You’ve got to push X security because we’ll make more money off X security.”
Warwick F:
I knew he would never ever do that unless it was good for the client. It wouldn’t even occur to him. So I don’t need somebody to push me something just because the powers that be want to make… That’s what they’re selling this month. So trust is huge. I mean, I’d rather have somebody that I trust than somebody that was the equivalent of a rocket scientist in finance. There’s armies of people at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. I mean, it’s all these resources that if you’re smart enough, you can bring to bear, but it’s that trust, trust is everything. And obviously you’re in this business. I mean, I’m not preaching to the choir here, but whatever your style is, clearly the people that you work with, they trusted you that you will be straight with them and you are going to fight for their interests, not because of somebody in the firm told you it’s Tuesday and this is the security we’re pushing. Does that make sense?
Hank M:
Yes. For sure.
Warwick F:
So, okay. I want to shift, so you went from Merrill to Morgan Stanley, so how did that shift happen? Was there just an opportunity there at Morgan Stanley? Or…
Hank M:
Yeah, so Warwick… When I’m backing up for a second, when I closed that account, then it was kind of like, I see you don’t remember when I set my goal to be a major college scholarship football player, so now I was like, “Okay, it’s time for another one of those.” So I said, “My family’s not wealthy. I don’t come from money and so forth.” So I was like, “You know what, if I keep doing this, I bet by the time I’m 30, I can make a million dollars,” which to some people that’s not a lot of money, but to me and where I came from, that was a massive amount of money.
Warwick F:
From where you came from, and at that age, anybody was going to say, that’s a massive amount of money.
Hank M:
That’s right. And it would imply huge success starting from zero, to get to that point. So I’d set that goal by the time I was 30, I had a beautiful wife and two healthy young boys, toddlers, and I was making a million dollars or over a million dollars a year. And then Merrill Lynch made a few mistakes with a couple of our largest clients, and it almost cost me the relationships, and I decided to make a change to Morgan Stanley as a result of that, I moved my team over to Morgan Stanley and transitioned our entire… All of our clients, a hundred percent of our clients and our team over there, and I continued to grow. And I really… By this point I was pretty darn good with the markets. I was really good with client relationships. I knew very well what I was talking about. And I started to get notoriety for it.
Hank M:
I started to be on the cover of magazines and rising young star at Morgan Stanley and flying me all over the country to talk to other advisors about how I built my business, and unfortunately, all the humility that had gotten me to this point started to fade a bit, and I started kind of drinking the Hank Kool-Aid and my ego started…
Hank M:
Frankly, a lot of people in that business, right? It’s a very ego driven business, and I started falling into that trap. And so, the more magazine covers that I was on, the more I was actually… They wrote a book about the top 20 financial advisors in the entire United States. And at 34 years old, I was listed as number 12 across alll firms.
Hank M:
So I had reached a level of success at an age that was pretty unusual. I was aware of that and I believed in it and it made my ego feel really good.
Warwick F:
And that’s a tough thing. I mean, it’s a… Failure is not easy, but success, that’s pretty tough too. It’s tough to withstand when people are saying, “You know, Hank, you’re one of the rising stars here at Morgan Stanley, you’re reading this stuff and my clients love me, I am pretty good. I’m pretty hot stuff.” I mean, it’s hard… I don’t care where you come from, that is intoxicating.
Warwick F:
I mean, humility is funnily enough one of my highest values, but nobody’s impervious when I was growing up in the newspaper business unlike some people that come from wealthy backgrounds, I always worked hard and got good grades. I didn’t want to be some dilettante heir to some family fortune. So I had my dad saying, “Boy you could be one of the great Fairfax’s, because it’s five generation business and come back, I’m about to launch a 2 billion plus takeover,” and being a person of faith, I had some people say to me, some believers, older believers we’ve been praying that God would raise somebody up in the heart of the media in Australia. You’re an answer to prayer.
Warwick F:
I mean, you add all those things up. It’s like, “Gosh maybe there’s some preordained plan,” and I worked hard at Oxford, worked on Wall Street for three years, Harvard Business School. It was like, even though humility is one of my biggest values that it tends to erode that a little bit when you’re hearing some of this press and other people and you work hard, which is not a whole lot of people from wealthy backgrounds, frankly, do work hard. So it’s good. But then you can get pride over that, right?
Warwick F:
Look at me, I’m working hard. So yeah. Success is a tough thing to withstand, so you were rising high, you’re doing great, and then there was a fall. Sadly, sometimes it happens when you’re rising high, right? It just feels like the laws of nature. Right. The markets go up and down, I don’t know. It feels weird, so tell us about that fall, you were doing so well at Morgan Stanley and two boys, a wife, what happened then?
Hank M:
Well, speaking of my wife, at that point I think I was full enough of myself, she was getting pretty frustrated with me because I had developed into a ego centric person, not necessarily the humble person that she had met originally. So she was frustrated with me. I got approached by another firm to leave Morgan Stanley, it was a new firm that had some very established people running the firm. They had already brought in a couple of teams from Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley to join them in other cities, their headquarters were going to be in Atlanta. And they said all the right things that my ego needed to hear to convince me that I would be the man at this firm.
Hank M:
My team would be the anchor team of the whole company, and they were going to pay me a huge amount of money up front to come do this. And so, I introduced the CEO of this firm to a couple of my top clients, the clients… These are my two biggest clients. They loved the CEO. They thought it was a great move, but in my getting caught up with everything they were saying and the money they were going to pay me, I never checked their financials.
Hank M:
And so, I went in and resigned at Morgan Stanley, and the Morgan Stanley leadership went crazy because they had been promoting me, they said they were going to ruin me, and I didn’t care because I thought I had it all under control. And I left Morgan Stanley and got in my car to drive over to the new firm, and when I did, I called them and said, “Hey, I just resigned. I’m on my way over.” And they said the ever fateful words, “Well, we’re waiting on our next round of funding, we can’t write you your check yet, we should get it tomorrow. Come in tomorrow.”
Hank M:
And I thought that was curious, but I didn’t let it bother me, but it ended up… They never got their next round of funding, they shut down. They went under and I never walked in their office once. And so, Morgan Stanley increased my team. I had a team of nine people working with me, they increased their salaries and income and they cut my clients fees that were there and bad mouthed me to the clients, and then I ended up with nothing. I lost my entire business, and my wife and I split up. And the next thing I knew, all my assets were frozen and I had very little liquidity at the time because I’d spent most of my money on showy things.
Hank M:
And so, what little bit of liquidity I had, I had to give that to my ex-wife. And I moved into a small little motel that I lived in for 14 months with my two sons and wondered what I was going to do next, because I had no income.
Warwick F:
I mean, that must’ve been excruciating on so many levels. I mean, you’re a very smart person. I mean, the due diligence you do for your clients. How did you avoid… I mean, I spent years beating myself up because of launching the takeover I did and making some massively stupid assumptions months after graduating from Harvard Business School. I mean, I wasn’t an idiot, but sometimes there are reasons that smart people make really dumb decisions. Did you go through… I know this is obvious, forgive the obvious dumb question. Did you go through a period of self-flagellation, self-recrimination like, “How in the world could I have made that decision? How could I have not looked at the books?” I mean, come on. How did you process all of that?
Hank M:
You know Warwick, I don’t think it was so much, how did I make that decision? It was more, “How do I get back?” What, literally two days ago, or three weeks ago or whatever I had. I had a thriving business, a stellar reputation, what I thought was a good marriage, two amazing boys, a brand new house I had just built, like I had all these things and literally with the flip of a switch, I lost everything, in a very, very quick amount of time. And so, I think I was in a state of shock. I was embarrassed, I was ashamed, I couldn’t talk to anybody about it because I didn’t want anybody to know, and I was petrified because for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do.
Hank M:
And I had these two little boys looking up at me every day with a big smile on their face. Like, “Daddy’s our hero, he’s going…” They didn’t know what was going on, except that they were now living in a hotel with me, and I just didn’t know what to do. And it was definitely the scariest time of my life. And for a little while, I didn’t know what to do, and basically just kind of had to sit and marinate in it for a while. And just feeling like I’m going to throw up 24 hours a day.
Gary S:
And there’s a story that you told me when we first talked Hank, about the hotel you were staying at, had free breakfast, and free food. Talk about that. I mean, from being a man who covers of magazines, flashy stuff. You’re living in a hotel that has free breakfast and you were surprised that that was so important to you at that time, right?
Hank M:
Yeah. I mean, in all my spending on the credit cards, I had built up a massive amount of points on the credit cards. And fortunately those points would work at this hotel, at the Residence Inn, in Buckhead, and so it just happened they had free breakfast too. So our morning routine was to get ready and before I took the boys to school, we’d go up to the little cafe area in the guests check-in of the hotel. And of course, living there for 14 months, we got to know him pretty well. But certainly it wasn’t a place that I had ever imagined that I would be after achieving the success that I had. But that being said, a lot of tears were shed at night after I put the boys to bed, a lot of self analysis, a lot of self-awareness coming around that maybe wasn’t there before.
Hank M:
So it was definitely the scariest and most painful thing I’ve ever been through. But at the same time, what I learned about myself in that process and what I’m still working to become, but I realized I have potential to become… A hundred percent of that came from those moments of just being scared as hell, and realizing… I mean, sometimes the only motivation I had… Because there was plenty of times I felt like giving up. If I hadn’t had those boys so dependent on me, I’m not sure that I… Who knows, I don’t know, it’s hard to imagine, but certainly, it was my motivation, was to be with them as much as possible and make sure that I was a good role model for them and make sure I could provide for them. And that was really the motivation to start the new company.
Warwick F:
What is it you mentioned that you obviously can’t imagine it was devastating time given how high you were flying and how well you’re doing, what is it that you learned about yourself during those very dark days? And probably at night, the boys are asleep and you’ve got time to think, which is not always a good thing, but you had that time, you’re looking at them and I got to provide for them and give them hope, what were some of the lessons that you learned about yourself during those dark days?
Hank M:
I learned a lot about my perseverance that became… James 1:4, it’s a Bible verse that I had framed and put in… At one time it was in my hotel room and it was in my office. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. That was something that kind of became my mantra because I didn’t know how this whole thing was going to turn out. I mean, there were many days that I thought I’m going to end up on the street. I learned that I’m a lot tougher than I thought.
Hank M:
I was spiritually, mentally, and even though I kind of figured out that I could work really hard and make anything happen with the getting a scholarship to Auburn, like I really realized in this scenario that I’m capable of a lot, but the gratitude and the humility that are necessary to be the kind of leader or the kind of father or the kind of friend that I want to be, are something that I have to stay constantly focused on, versus allowing the things of the world and shiny, flashy things to become important, or affirmation from others that really shouldn’t matter that much.
Hank M:
I should be affirming myself, if I’m living up to what I believe I should be doing. So those kinds of things were a lot of self-awareness that came from it.
Warwick F:
Those are some profound lessons. I think everybody can value from, especially people who are successful. And I believe you can truly be successful without gratitude or humility. If you don’t have that, in my book, you’re not successful. And certainly, you’re not somebody that I would admire or you would admire, right? Does that make sense? You’ve got to have some gratitude. And ultimately, people get tired of working with arrogant people.
Warwick F:
Clients don’t always like… It’s not a good way for a long-term relationship. It’s rather than, “Well, of course I have your business. I’m giving you 20%, 30% return a year, why should I be grateful? I’m the one doing the work, why should I be grateful?” You can have that attitude, but clients don’t appreciate it. They want you to be humble and grateful. So not only does it make good personal sense, it kind of makes good business sense too.
Warwick F:
And I’m sure you’ve said some young high flyers that have worked for you. You’ve seen, it’s like, “Okay, you’ve been there, done that, let me see if I can help you avoid some pitfalls.” You learn some perseverance about yourself that you… But you have a lot of, you hadn’t really seen. So talk about how that led you to Gratus Capital and maybe a new vision of how to do things. Because I’m sensing what you do now. I’m sure you do well financially, but it’s more than just the financial, the way you do business and the people you work with is different.
Warwick F:
You mentioned one other thing I don’t want to lose just seeing your sense of self-sufficiency and who you are, not needing others praise, it shouldn’t be like, “For my car to run, for my Ferrari to roll, if I don’t have the adulation from others, it’ll go nowhere,” no. Your car shouldn’t need other people’s adulation to roar down the highway if you get the metaphor. So that’s another huge lesson. Be internally motivated, don’t depend on others adulation. And again, I’m sure these are all lessons you’ve imparted to your team, but talk a bit about Gratus Capital and where that vision came from and what it’s about and how who you are is such a huge part of who Gratus Capital is.
Hank M:
Well, when I started the company it was really the only choice I had. I knew wealth management. I knew how to take care of clients, and why would I go to another company when they didn’t really… I didn’t have anything of value. I didn’t have clients anymore. I had to start over. So I decided to start my own company because at least I could be in charge of all aspects of it. I decided to do it differently. I didn’t want to name the company a Wall Street name or my last name, and it’d be about me, or a name that has to do with money and typical type stuff you see. So I spent a lot of time and came up with the name Gratus Capital because it was Latin word for grateful, and from day one I said, “This company is going to represent something different in the marketplace. It’s a company that’s going to be built on gratitude for our team, for other people, the clients that we work with. It’s a company that’s going to be built on humility.”
Hank M:
And I’m not sure I would have been capable of building a company on those principles prior to having gone through this. So the vision I had originally, it was just survival. It was just, I’ve got to figure how to make this happen quick. I’ve got child support, alimony, private school tuition, and I have no income. And so, I was in a very desperate place. I didn’t have time to cold call. So I went cold walking. I mean, I knocked on people’s doors, I got escorted out of buildings by security for soliciting. But at that point I was so low, I was kind of feeling like, “What’s one more person kicking me?”
Hank M:
I had really… I was so desperate at that point that I just needed to build the company and slowly but surely, I will say when I was out, I had that book that have been written about me. It was the only thing I had that kind of certify or clarified that I was somebody that knew what I was doing, even though my company was very young and I didn’t have a track record or anything like that. I did have this book and I could say, “Oh yeah, look at chapter 12, that’s me. There is somebody I used to know, have some access to media, and I used to have people write things about me that said I knew what I was doing, so take a look at that.”
Hank M:
So it was for some credibility anyway and sure enough, I closed my first big account, had a little bit of money to hire somebody and got a little bit of money to buy some software and then build some momentum and hired some more people and closed some more accounts. And then, we really started to build momentum. But it was really through the attention and the care that I paid to clients in a very different way than I did before. Because I was just so damn grateful to having clients trusting in this new company that I had started all on my own with nothing, and it was just a very different feeling and a very different approach.
Warwick F:
So talk about, let’s say, I don’t know some club, or what have you had. Some of your biggest clients from your Merrill Lynch Morgan Stanley days, and let’s say they’re ran into some of your clients at Gratus Capital and say, “Oh, you use Hank McLarty, a great guy. So tell me about Hank, what’s your experience?” What would they say about you, sort of the folks you knew in the old days and the folks that you know now? What are the contrast of the two, Hanks, if you will?
Hank M:
So if one of my clients that I deal with now… I only deal with a handful of clients now. Because I spend all my time running the company, but there’s still a few that I spend time with. They would tell you that I will fight for them like nobody that they’ve ever worked with. That I won’t take no for an answer, I’m an advocate for them, and that I’m extremely tenacious when it comes to making sure that their situations turn out the way they should, the way that I told them they would, and that when it comes to dealing with outside people that have impact on their situation, that I fight for them.
Hank M:
The asset management, the returns on their stocks and investments and the trust, estate, and the tax strategy, all of that is a given, my team is phenomenal. They’re the best people that I could ever get on a team, but what they would say about me personally is what I told them. That I’m extremely passionate about taking care of them.
Warwick F:
I’m just trying to contrast, because I imagine the folks you knew, when you were at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley days might say, “Well, that’s the guy who we know. He fought for me back then.” What would be the difference between the Gratus Capital Hank and the Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Hank? Are there any… What made the difference?
Hank M:
I fought for clients back then but I wouldn’t say that I would go to the lengths for clients then like I would now. I would say that the approach that I have is there’s just a whole different level of appreciation that I have for the clients that we work with. And I was never unappreciative before, I just didn’t really think about it a lot. Today, I and this team that I work with, we built this, we have a very special company, we built this. So when we have clients come and they trust us with other than their children and probably the most important thing in their life, like, I recognize that.
Hank M:
And my attitude, and my passion for taking care of them, and my team’s attitude and passion, because it all comes from the top is much more personable and much more intense than it was when I was in my prior.
Warwick F:
Do you think that there’s a level of humility and gratitude that has taken your level of perseverance, even your desire to perform for your clients to another level, in some ways if that makes some degree of sense?
Hank M:
Yeah, for sure. I also think that one thing I’ve learned, our company is close to 40 people now. And as we achieve my vision will be over 200. The greatest satisfaction I’ve ever had in my career has been building this team. I love taking care of our clients, but I’ve imparted that on my team members because they’re running the company now. So I think the greatest honor and responsibility that I have other than raising my sons is ensuring that this team can reach their potential. And it is now my North Star.
Hank M:
It is us achieving our vision as a company, me constantly working on my leadership skills, my ability to impact this team, bringing them together and getting them to believe in our vision. I mean, how many work places have a team that believes in something bigger than themselves? Like that is what motivates the hell out of me. Is looking now on Zoom calls, it used to be face-to-face. Now on Zoom calls and I’d go over our values and our vision twice a month with our team, and I see their eyes light up on the Zoom calls and I see them totally focused on what I’m saying because they buy in. There’s nothing in my career that I’ve ever done that gives me the motivation that that does. That-
Warwick F:
I want the listeners to hear that because what I’m sensing is there’s a big shift from Hank McLarty being focused on his own performance, maybe primarily in the old days to well, yes, you want your individual performance to be good, but I’m hearing you talk a whole lot less about Hank and a whole lot more about the team at Gratus Capital, and you used the word North Star. Your North star is helping your team be the best they can be for the client.
Warwick F:
Does that make sense? It’s a bit of a shift from I to we, and yes, the results are going to speak for themselves that vision and values will translate into superior performance. But do you know what I’m saying?
Hank M:
Warwick, I know exactly what you’re saying. I think that’s a great way to put it. I would not have put it that way but now that you do, I think that’s exactly the difference that maybe my clients today might say, because I take zero credibility for any success with our firm or any success with clients. Frankly, my team is all, they have more designations than me, my only designations is the rise and fall.
Hank M:
And then right again they’re all smarter than me, they’re more talented than me. The only thing I’ve been really, really good at is bringing them together into a team, because my team is amazing. And the only other thing I’ve done well is to motivate them and get them inspired to work together and get them to believe that our team is a unit, is more important than them as individuals. And I say that to them constantly. And a lot of that comes from the lessons I’ve learned the hard way that I hope none of them ever have to learn it the way I had to learn it.
Warwick F:
I know we’re getting to the point where we probably need to summarize here a bit, but again, this is probably an obvious question, but as you look at where Gratus Capital is, and yeah, just one of the things that we’ve have, it says that Gratus Capital today is ranked one of the top hundred firms in the US by Forbes. I mean, that’s a pretty amazing accolade, there’s a lot of financial firms out there and you’re obviously doing amazing. But as you look at what you’ve achieved, would that have been possible without just the crucible you went through being in that kind of Residence Inn, with two boys sitting there late at night, and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to afford everything from school and food on the table, and just those darkest time. What you’ve achieved at Gratus Capital would’ve been possible without the lessons and those hard times that you went through?
Hank M:
Maybe for some, not for me. I think for me, I needed my ass kicked, and I got it kicked.
Gary S:
Not by a football coach?
Hank M:
No, no. I got my ass kicked by life. And as a result of a hundred percent of my own doing and my own decisions. But for me to realize what my potential and my abilities were, were never going to happen where I was. And I do think I have some good leadership skills, I have a long way to go, but I’m committed to becoming every aspect of what I can as a leader, and I think the major thing that motivates me now is I’m 51. Before you know it I’ll be 70 if I make it that far or 80, and I am scared to death of looking back on my life and saying, I did not leave it all on the field.
Hank M:
And I know for me to leave it all on the field, it’s not a dollar sign, it’s how many rock stars can I bring into this company and mentoring coach for them to become better than me. If I can look back and say, maybe that’s 20, maybe it’s 200, whatever the number is, I would never have been able to do that, had I been the old me. There’s a lot of people that will impact thousands, millions of people, they’ll make hundreds of millions more than I’ll ever make. But for me, looking back knowing what I’ve been through, if I can say that I have to my fullest potential worked hard, become a leader, a great dad, and had an impact on the team that I am lucky enough to get to lead, then that does it for me.
Warwick F:
And that’s one of the things we talk about is legacy. That’s a kind of a legacy that you’d be proud of, right? When the folks that you’re mentoring now, let’s say 30, 35 years down the track, your boys in 30 years, who was Hank McLarty? These are some of the things you’re hoping they would say, “Yes, a good dad. He was there for me.” Coworkers, “He fought for me, he helped give me opportunities. He developed me. He coached me. He mentored me.” Sounds like that’s the kind of legacy that you would hope or the portrait that would be painted of you, right?
Warwick F:
That’s kind of, I don’t want to use the P word, the plan or the goal, but it’s nothing wrong with plans and goals, but that sounds like it’s shifted, right? That’s the kind of image that people in 30 years time or 40 years time, that’s what you would hope that there’ll be saying of you, right?
Hank M:
So I’ll just, unless you want to ask me another question, I’ll kind of close my comment on that with this. When I turned 50, we had, I don’t know, maybe 30 friends come to my lake house for my birthday party and my sons were there. And at the end of the dinner, they started going around the table and making some very gracious comments towards me about who I am as a person, whatever. And my oldest son stood up and hopefully I can get through telling you this real quick, because I get emotional every time I talk about it.
Hank M:
But my oldest son stood up and he raised his glass and he said… He’s 24, so he would have been 23 at the time. He raised his glass and he said, “Most of you have no idea some of the things me and my dad and my brother went through. But I want to toast my dad because no matter what we went through, there’s never been a day that my brother and I ever wondered if we were my dad’s number one priority.”
Hank M:
And for me, even my friends came up to me after he said that and he’s like, “Buddy, you won. Like you won. When one of your sons or both your sons say that about you, you win.” And so yeah, to your point.
Warwick F:
Well said.
Gary S:
That sound that you heard was not a barking dog, it was actually the captain turning on the the seatbelt sign because it’s about time to land the plane. Until we do that though, Hank, I want to ask you a couple of things. One is, you named the business Gratus Capital because gratus means what?
Hank M:
It’s the Latin word for grateful.
Gary S:
Correct. And if we could see it, if it were summertime and we were at the beach, you have tattooed on you, a couple of words that guide your life as you’re moving forward, correct?
Hank M:
Correct.
Gary S:
And those words are?
Hank M:
Gratus and humility.
Gary S:
Two key principles for how you’ve moved on to live your life. And one of the things about this conversation, and I think listeners will agree with me, in many ways, Hank, while your story is so unique, the beats of your story are almost prototypical, Crucible Leadership. The idea that you go through crucibles, you learn the lessons of the crucibles, you bounce back from those crucibles, and then you apply them to your leadership in business, in your profession, in your community. While at the same time you learn and how to lead a life of significance, focused on something larger than yourself, larger than just success.
Gary S:
You’ve got success, you’ve also got significance with your son saying what he said at that 50th birthday party. Before I wrap up with sort of what I think are three good takeaways, I’d be remiss Hank, if I didn’t give you the chance to let our listeners know how they can find out more about Gratus Capital.
Hank M:
Sure. www.gratuscapital.com. G-R-A-T-U-S.
Gary S:
Thank you for spelling that.
Hank M:
Yeah, definitely not gratus meeting free.
Gary S:
Bravo. That sound you hear is Warwick laughing and the plane landing, so Warwick did you have a final thought before I close?
Warwick F:
Just thank you so much, Hank, for being here and just your transparency, and it’s easy to talk about failure in a lot of ways and tragedy, but you’ve had your challenges, but you’ve also had success, and being able to learn how to be successful and be content, to be humble and grateful and successful, that’s very difficult to be. I doubt that you know too many people outside your orbit of Gratus Capital have all those things that are successful financially and are humble, and are grateful that is… Trust me, it’s really, really tough.
Warwick F:
And the fact that you’ve done that and the testimony from your son, and I’m sure if your coworkers had got up, they would have shared. Obviously your son is going to be the pinnacle of who you care about in terms of your kids and all. But I’m sure your coworkers would have shared some amazing things about how you fought for them, and you’re with them, and supported them, and so yeah, I think it’s just… We talk about a life well lived, it feels like you’re doing that. You’re living a generous life, focused on others and that’s an amazing journey that you’ve been on.
Warwick F:
And so I think listeners can really learn from this. It’s fine to be successful, but you’ve… I’m sure known a bunch of successful clients. And obviously I grew up in about as a wealthy, a privileged upbringing, as it’s possible to grow up in. There’s a lot of miserable folks who are very wealthy and so nothing wrong with being successful, I’m all for it. But being successful, and content, and happy and filled with joy, it requires some of the things that you’ve learned, some humility and gratitude.
Warwick F:
So that’s I think a message for folks that they don’t always hear. You can be successful, but you want to be joyful and happy, you’ve got to have some of those other things too, humility and gratitude. And so that’s a very important lesson for folks, yep.
Gary S:
I have been in the communications business long enough to know in the last word on a subject has been spoken and that was yours Warwick. I do have in summary, let’s call it an epilogue to the last word being spoken. I have a summary of some takeaways from this conversation with Hank McLarty that I think listeners you can apply to your own crucibles in your own movement beyond those crucibles.
Gary S:
Lesson number one, and Hank said it at the very outset of our conversation, you are never too young to set goals. Hank started doing it in third grade. Identify the things you’d like to achieve, to bring your vision to reality and break them down into milestones you can pursue as you walk the path to make that vision a reality. A goal set is a stone laid on the path that will lead you to the life you want. Despite the bumps along his path, Hank’s dedication to setting goals has helped him not just find success as Warwick just mentioned, but has pushed him through setbacks and failures to find significance.
Gary S:
A second takeaway point. The lesson Hank learned from his father. Don’t quit. Listen to Hank’s dad listener, don’t quit. Especially when you’re in the abyss of your crucible. When the chips are down, stick it out, stay the course, build your character, build your grit, is the word Hank used when we were talking about it. You will not only move beyond your crucible that you want to abandon, you’ll set yourself up to weather the crucibles that will certainly come down the road. And we heard it from Hank, his first crucible with football ending was not his last crucible. He’s been through others, and the grit he developed along the way has helped him through that.
Gary S:
And then finally, a third point is, don’t drink the, insert your own name here Kool-Aid. Hank’s greatest crucible as he explained, occurred out of a lack of humility and gratitude. He was on a roll and impressed with himself. His words not mine. So much so that it contributed to his crucible. It led to all that he believed to be true and important about himself to crumble. And it was in the rubble of that crumbling that he discovered a new vision. One that he’s passed along to both his children and to his employees. He took his focus off the only goal being the brass ring, and he put the focus on his offspring. It was the start of his life of significance. And that sort of shift in thinking can be the start of your life of significance as well.
Gary S:
So listeners until we’re together the next time, thank you for spending time with us in this truly moving and informational and hopeful and helpful conversation with Hank McLarty.
Gary S:
Warwick and I have a couple of favors to ask you, one, tell people about the podcast, if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard here, let people know that we’re out there, share a link with them in social media so that they can benefit from this as well. And while you’re at it, we’d really appreciate it if you would click subscribe on the podcast app that you’re listening to our show on right now.
Gary S:
So until that next time that we are together, remember this truth about your crucible experiences. Yes, they’re painful. Hank’s certainly were painful. Yes, they can knock the wind out of your sails that happened to Hank. They can change the trajectory of your life. They did that for Hank a couple of times where he felt like his identity was stripped away. But the good news is if you stick with it, if you learn the lessons of your crucibles, they’re not the end of your story.
Gary S:
In fact, as Hank’s story proves, they’re the beginning of a new story that can lead to a far better conclusion than you ever thought possible. Because the conclusion that your new story leads to is a life of significance.
Seton Hall University students who attend the Buccino Leadership Institute discover early the value of learning and leveraging the lessons of their crucible experiences. That’s because the institute’s executive director, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bryan Price, teaches a freshman course in which students share their most painful setbacks and failures with their classmates as a means of building confidence in themselves and camaraderie among their peers. It’s leadership authenticity Price learned as captain of the baseball team at West Point — spotlighting how vulnerability for a purpose pays big dividends in our lives and careers. And the sooner we learn our identity is not tied to what we do but rather to who we are, the better we become at the essential skills of reframing failure and not falling victim to imposter syndrome.
To learn more about Bryan Price and his leadership coaching services, visit www.topmentalgame.com
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Gary S:
In organizations, when you try to put all the ingredients together of what makes an organization successful, one of those things is trust, trust between leaders and followers, trust within in peer groups, trust with the organization. And in order to trust you, I have to know you. And if I to really know you, you have to be vulnerable and share parts of yourself that normally, you might be willing to kind of keep from others. And so when we did this class, the setup was before the class starts, I asked my students, each student to come up with between one and three crucible moments in their life, and I described them very similarly as you and Warwick did at the outset. And I had those ahead of time. And then in that class, I talked about the importance of it, just very similarly to how Warwick did, and their importance in our growth. And then I lead from the front, I share my crucible moments with the class, and I ask some of my associate faculty, my associate directors to do the same. And then we turn it over to the students to volunteer. So you don’t have to volunteer if you don’t want to. But boy, the past couple years when we’ve done this, the emotional response that we’ve gotten from students that have shared their crucible moment has been extremely powerful.
Gary S:
College course on crucibles? You bet. At Seton Hall University, Dr. Bryan Price teaches his students the power of vulnerability with a purpose of sharing some of their most painful experiences in life as a key element of the leadership skills he’s imparting to them in the classroom. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. Dr. Price also shares in this interview with Warwick the lessons on Life and Leadership he learned on the baseball diamond, at West Point as a military officer and as head of Seton Hall’s Buccino Leadership Institute. A major theme of the stories he tells and the perspective he offers, the essential roles authenticity and identity play in mustering the resilience to move beyond your crucible.
Warwick F:
Wow. Well, Bryan, thank you so much for being here. I know we’re in a bit, we’re going to talk about what you do at the Buccino Institute at Seton Hall, the Crucible Moments class, which given what we do at Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible, it’s all about crucibles and critical moments. I love the fact you have a class called that. So we’ll get to that here in a bit. And you’ve had just an amazing career at West Point and teaching there and Army Aviation and a number of combat tours. But before we get into all of that, tell us a bit about growing up in Sea Girt, New Jersey and kind of what was your family like and who was like a young Bryan Price and your family and all?
Bryan P:
Yeah, sure. So I’m actually reporting live from Sea Girt as well, which is, if you’re not familiar, it’s a postage stamp. It’s kind of a sleepy resort town on the Jersey Shore. And the reason why it’s called Girt is because we’re surrounded by water. It’s almost like a little peninsula where you have water to my north and south. And then the Atlantic Ocean is obviously on the east here. And I’m living in the same house that I grew up in. So that’s also interesting. So I was actually born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. But then when I was less than one, my family moved down to Sea Girt. My father was a sports writer and wrote for the Staten Island Advance for 44 years. My mom was a nurse. And I grew up with two brothers, one older and one younger. And as we speak right now, they are probably within three quarters of a mile from where I’m sitting. So fantastic opportunity growing up. As I mentioned, we’re on the Jersey Shore. So my years were spent playing sports, going to school, and then we had the beach and as we say here, it’s like, our lives are other people’s vacations because people would come to our town to vacation and we get to live here. So it was awesome.
Warwick F:
Oh, that is so cool. I mean is obviously growing up in a newspaper background. You were never tempted to follow in the family business and be a sportswriter or something? Did dad ever say, “Bryan, come on. I got in at the Staten Island paper and maybe from there who knows, the Newark Star Ledger or whatever.” Did you ever think of doing that or not really?
Bryan P:
I did. In fact in high school and this might be the first that I think anyone’s ever hearing about this. While I was playing on the basketball team, I went under a different name in my local town paper and was the beat writer for our team, which it’s funny. I went under a name from my favorite baseball player, which not many people knew named Mickey Hatcher.
Warwick F:
Oh, yeah, Mickey Hatcher, yes.
Bryan P:
And I wrote for the Coast Star. And so the funny part is, is like you could imagine, the access that I had to that team was amazing in terms of the reporting, because I was on it. But I had to be careful. If you go back through those files, I don’t want to write about myself. So it was all about the team and those sorts of things.
Warwick F:
You had to be careful. If like, the team played well, but boy the coaching was really awful. We could have won that but the coach was just asleep.
Bryan P:
Exactly. Who is this Mickey Hatcher guy?
Gary S:
I’m intrigued, I’m intrigued because Mickey Hatcher was a bit of a character as I recall, baseball player. He played for the Dodgers, mostly. And he was a bit of a, I wouldn’t call him a flake, but he was a bit of a character. So why was he your favorite player?
Bryan P:
One word, hustle. If you ever saw him play, whenever he would draw base on balls, he would sprint to first base. Whenever he hit a home home run, he would sprint around the bases and kind of interesting factoid on him, only hit two home runs the entire regular season in 1989. Kirk Gibson gets hurt so he gets to play in the World Series, he gets a starting job and hits two home runs the World Series. But he was a character, but I loved him less for the character and more for his hustle. And I emulated that in my play, or at least tried to.
Warwick F:
That’s awesome. So obviously high school, you mentioned three sport athletes. So which sports were they, out of curiosity?
Bryan P:
So I played football, basketball, obviously since the beat writers aspect. And then baseball was the sport that I probably excelled in at the most.
Warwick F:
Awesome. And then I know you went on to, you were the co-captain at West Point. So that was a huge deal, baseball. And do you ever, I mean, obviously, there’s a sports writing angle. Do you ever think, “Gosh, could I be good enough to kind of get to the next level?” Would you ever toy with that about minor leagues or more?
Bryan P:
So as a kid growing up, I mean that was always the dream. But at my size, I was always undersized. So in my playing days, I was no taller than I usually say I’m 5’7 1/2″. I don’t even know if you know and that half, if I’m there yet. But I know I got the most out of my my playing days. And my co-captain, Mike Scioletti, who will probably watch this, did get drafted by the White Sox. But he turned it down to continue his army career. But I felt like I got the most out of my out of my athletic ability. I’ve no regrets.
Gary S:
And one of the things that’s probably true, as you describe your baseball career, and your physical stature in the way that you played the game and what you liked about Mickey Hatcher, I imagine the name or the adjective scrappy was assigned to you at some point. You were a scrappy ballplayer. But as we talk about overcoming crucibles and moving beyond those failures and those setbacks, and what you’re teaching to your students now, being scrappy, I’ve never thought of it in these terms, but being scrappy is a key personality element to overcoming a crucible.
Bryan P:
Yeah, it’s funny, Gary, when you mentioned this. We all have like different narratives that rattle around in our brain over time. And by the way, just to answer your specific question, if you go back to the media guides during those time periods, I guarantee you’re going to find the word scrappy there. So you’re spot on, you’re spot on. But I don’t necessarily classify this as a crucible moment. But it’s one of those moments that it’s so definitive in my life, and I think to your point, helped shape how I saw myself and how I wanted to perform not just in sports, but in life. And so I was in eighth grade going into high school. And I had, again multi sport athlete, we have like an advanced version of, they call it the Babe Ruth League, where I come from, so there’s Little League, and then you kind of advance to this Babe Ruth League, and I had just been voted MVP of that league. The summer was winding down, and I would go and play, one of the great things about my dad was his job as a sportswriter, was he had a fair amount of flexibility. So we could go out in the summertime and practice and play.
Bryan P:
And I remember we would go to the high school, the local high school to play and inside of high school, they had a Coke machine. So we’d go play in the summertime, it would be super hot out. We kind of walk into the school. This is pre like school shooting days where you could just like walk into the school and go use the Coke machine and the janitor was there and the janitor happened to be from a family in our town that was known for athleticism, multiple generations of top athletes, and he saw me play so he came in and he said, “I’ve seen you hitting out there with your dad.” He said, “You look pretty awesome. Pretty good.” He goes, “What grade are you in? You are going into what? Sixth grade?”, and I was about to become a freshman.
Bryan P:
And again, it doesn’t sound like much to anybody. But to me, it was my height and my stature at that time. I said right then and there, I was like, this is how people are going to perceive me whenever I walk into the room. So I’m not going to impress anybody with my I saw your Tom Brady bit the other day Warwick, which is great. No one’s going to fall in love with the scouting report just off of paper. So I felt like I had to outwork everybody in whatever organization or group that I was in, because I wasn’t going to impress you on paper.
Warwick F:
Yeah. And that’s really tough when you’re a kid, and somebody thinks that you looked good for sixth grade and you’re about to be a freshman. I mean there are some stereotypes people have when they don’t really know who you are. But anything that’s physical, it’s sort of obvious, and they size you up. And so okay, therefore, he can’t do A and B. It’s like, all Australians play tennis these days. And some of these top tennis players for guys, they’re like 6’1″, 6’2″ is kind of about the minimum. And then some of these guys are 6’4″, 6’5″. The women, it’s like 5’9″, 5’10”. You’d be hard pressed to find a woman who’s in the top 20 or the elite that’s much smaller than 5’9″, 5’10”. So if you’re a some five foot girl growing up, five foot four. I mean, you get a lot of coaches saying, “Yeah, and I’m not really seeing it.”
Bryan P:
Yeah, exactly.
Warwick F:
And it just feels so unfair. It’s like it doesn’t capture the whole Tom Brady thing, which as everybody knows, his scouting report was just kind of abysmal, not mobile.
Gary S:
Weak arm.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean, doesn’t throw a tight spiral. I mean, you would never draft that guy, but it misses the heart. Clearly you had a heart, passion, hustle. I want to talk a bit about before we shift to West Point and Seton Hall, everybody’s had crucibles. I think you mentioned your parents got divorced when you were young, and you lost your mom to cancer at 9/11, I mean, clearly around 9/11. That’s obviously tough. I mean, how did those things shape you? I mean some people, like parents getting divorced, you can be angry, and it’s always devastating. But some people are able to move on in some fashion, and some are not.
Bryan P:
Those two moments kind of stick out for me the most in the sense that as a kid, all you know is you’re a nuclear family. And when there’s a divorce, that can really shake up a lot of families. And in my case, it did, because my dad moved out of the house, but also my older brother went to go live with him, too. So it wasn’t just one person moving out, it was two people. But one of the things that I tell people in terms of why I felt like it was impactful to me was because I saw what love was like, and so my dad literally tried to find the closest place to our house where he can move, and again, a resort town, so it’s not like there’s a ton of apartment complexes around here. It’s mostly residential houses. And so he found an apartment that was four blocks away. And so I had the opportunity growing up, even though my parents were divorced, to see both of those individuals almost on a daily basis, to make it as normal for us as possible.
Bryan P:
And I think when you look at leadership, and putting others in front of your own interests, I saw my dad do that, because it wasn’t the greatest appartment that he was in, but it was close to us. And that was more important to him than having some type of great place to live. So that was kind of telling. The second one was, as you mentioned, so I ended up losing my mom in October of 2001. And that was also right around the time of September 11. In fact, when I found out, my mom had been sick for that year prior, but it really started to elevate in September. She was supposed to go into her first bout of chemotherapy on the morning of September 11.
Bryan P:
And so when I actually got home from physical training, I was at Fort Hood as a lieutenant as a platoon leader at that time, and so we just got done from our morning physical training, I come home and my mom is calling and I knew that she was supposed to be going into her chemo that day. So she says, “Turn on the TV.” We talked about it. Turn on the TV. And obviously, that was after the first plane had hit and then I was on the phone with her for the second plane.
Bryan P:
The hospitals had actually called her to tell her that her chemotherapy was going to be canceled that morning because our area’s hospitals were preparing for the triage. We’re close enough to New York City where they felt like they were going to be feeling the effects of of this tragedy. And so less than probably three and a half weeks later, she was gone. So everything accelerated very quickly. I know there’s lots of people out there that have lost loved ones at various ages. For me at that time, it’s tough. You never want to see your parents in pain. And it’s just kind of a wake up call. And maybe the silver lining out of all that is when you do experience that pain and personal loss, I think you look at the world differently. It’s kind of like somebody proverbial shaking you out of your rut and the lifestyle that you’re in. And it shakes you to say like this thing we have here called life is short, and you have to take advantage of it. And so I took both of those lessons from the divorce, but also from losing my mom, and hopefully trying to make that impact, that life of significance that you talk about in your fantastic book. And I think that even though no one wants to go through those tragedies, those things can serve a purpose in your life, if you’re open to it.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, it’s such a good point. That makes you think, well, every day is precious. You have obviously married and I think you mentioned earlier, you have a daughter and you said one kid?
Bryan P:
Yep, she was so perfect. Why bother?
Warwick F:
Well said, but it makes you value every hour every day, with your family, with students. Yeah, you go through a crucible, as we say, and you can either, which is understandable, wallow in them, hide under the covers, and be bitter and angry, either at the world or at yourself, if it’s through your own mistake. And setbacks can be one of varieties. Or you can say, “Yeah, this is pretty awful. But how am I going to move forward? How am I going to maybe use this in some way?” Obviously, you have empathy for people that have gone through those sorts of things. And just, yeah the silver lining I think with your dad, that’s sort of a remarkable story that irrespective of how the divorce happened, the fact that he was so dedicated to his family, that he was so close and spent so much time with you, that was something that it’s like, even when bad things happen, what’s important to you in life, you don’t let that go. And that probably was an incredibly invaluable life lesson that you learned from your dad’s actions. It’s often we learn as much or more from people’s actions than their words, right? His life, the way he modeled love and putting family first in that situation was, it was remarkable, really. I mean, a lot of dads wouldn’t do that. They’d say, “Okay, I’m out of here. And off I go.” But not your dad.
Bryan P:
He completely put his kids at the forefront and put his entire life, including social life on the back burner. Another kind of interesting thing is, again I mentioned the small town. And so my brothers and I, we would play sports all the time. And my dad, again given his schedule, was willing to be able to go out whenever we wanted to go practice. And so looking through the eyes of our 2021 lens back then, I’m sure there are tons of people in my town that thought my dad was crazy, and maybe demanding that we would go out and play. But the beautiful part is, I can’t remember one instance in my entire life, where my dad kicked me on the couch and said, “Hey, Bryan, you got to get out and practice, let’s go.” It was always us asking my dad. And he was like, okay, and going into the sports crazed world that we are today, and I have a daughter, obviously played sports, we talked about that earlier, that was also a gift for me of whenever my dad wanted to play with me, he was available. He was never the one putting guilt or pushing me to get out and practice. So that was another life lesson.
Warwick F:
And now I’ll shift here to West Point. But just to kind of talk about this for one more beat, what your dad modeled for you, I’m sure that you model for your daughter. Your daughter, you mentioned earlier is like an elite athlete on the top team for 12 year olds in the country. She’s obviously one of the top 12 year old girls in the country. Well, a lot of dads in those circumstances would be like, “You got to train, you got to do this, you got to do that. You could be in the U.S. women’s team, you could be the Olympics.”, and I strongly suspect that you encourage and support. But you’re not saying, “It’s 5 a.m. You’re working out, are you?” You’re probably not that dad.
Bryan P:
If my wife was listening to this right now, she would say, “Bryan, you better be taking your own medicine.” And so I have to fight that impulse in order to do that. And I’ll just be honest, while I think I am not bad in that regard. I feel like my dad was better, and it’s something to kind of shoot for for sure.
Warwick F:
Yeah. So I want to hear about the Buccino Institute. But tell us a bit about West Point, because obviously, and afterwards, you played on the baseball team, co-captain and I think there was some important lessons you learned about teamwork probably throughout your whole career, but I’m guessing that might have been the capstone of it. What did you really learn about yourself, about teamwork just by playing on the baseball team there?
Bryan P:
Yeah, well, I think just to expand it even further, the entire experience at West Point for those of you that are not familiar, it’s essentially a 47 month leadership laboratory. And so from the moment that you arrive to the moment that you leave, you are consistently learning about yourself all the way. And one aspect of that leadership model which is pertinent to this conversation, is that it’s designed to make you fail at something. And the way they do it is very interesting, because they give you so much work to do, that no one can possibly do it in a 24 hour period. And so you have to, at a very early age, kind of manage your expectations of what tasks are you going to do well, and what tasks are you just not going to.
Bryan P:
So for example, the differences between cleaning your room, studying for your chemistry exam, and shining your shoes for inspection the next day, and you have 45 minutes before lights are out, you got to figure out how to manage that. The other thing I’ll say is, no matter how skilled you are, no matter what an athlete you are, or how academically adept you are, there’s going to be something that you fail at. For example, you have to go off the 10 meter platform in the pool. And so there’s lots of people, I don’t know if you’ve ever gone off a 10 meter platform before, but even if you’re not scared of heights, that can be a significant emotional event. For another kid, it might be chemistry. For another kid, it might be on the marksmanship range.
Bryan P:
So what West Point teaches you, and I think the baseball team as well is, even when you do fail, you have to pick yourself back up, and then move forward. And I think that’s an especially important lesson for leaders, because I think all too often, there’s this streak of perfectionism in our society where leaders have to do everything perfect. And when you think about it, the most impactful leaders probably in your lifetime were ones that were authentic, and authentic people are vulnerable. And it’s okay to admit if you’re not great at something, or if you failed at something, and then move forward. And so that’s one lesson that I think West Point does a great job of teaching.
Warwick F:
I mean, that’s so great, because so often in society, you see people that won’t admit their failures, that will not apologize and double down, triple down, what have you. But I imagine in your army experience, like in any organization, there are good leaders, bad leaders, and so so leaders. It’s just part of being human. Were you able to observe leaders that were able to admit that they made mistakes and were wrong, and maybe you were right, others were right. Did you have modeled for you leaders that you think these are folks are actually doing it right?
Bryan P:
Oh, 100%. I mean, on average, I don’t care what profession you’re in, you’re going to run into leaders that are good and bad in every profession. And so one of the things that West Point also teaches you is consider yourself kind of carrying, they call it a kit bag, but good lessons, bad lessons, put them in that bag, and reserve for later. But when it comes to servant leadership, which is the kind of model that we try to espouse at Seton Hall, is definitely espoused in the military. I feel so blessed and fortunate to have had leaders in my orbit, in my network that are some of the best people on the planet. And of course, you can see those things come out in crisis moments, because you’re in the military, whether you’re in combat or when the stakes are high, that’s when you really see people’s true colors. And to see people that you really trust, respect, and look up to, it’s been awesome. So yeah.
Warwick F:
I mean, it occurs to me in the military, if you’ve got some stubborn colonel, general that doesn’t want to admit failure, I mean bad things can happen to them. I’m not really a military student. But yeah, I think maybe World War One, you had them fighting 19th century battles with full frontal assault against machine guns, which was insanity. It was never going to work and thousands or maybe millions of people die, but general after general, whether it’s, I don’t know, French, German, British, maybe Americans later, they just kept with the same battle plan. And it’s like, this is idiotic, but nobody wants to admit that they’re wrong or that they’re clueless. And they haven’t been trained in tactics for what was then modern warfare. They’ve been trained in 19th century cavalry charge tactics when they were in their 20s. It’s just mind blowing. How could you keep doing the same thing and wasting enormous numbers of lives? You just have to think a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of, well, I don’t want to admit that I don’t know what to do here. I haven’t been trained to deal with this situation. What do we do?
Bryan P:
I think one of the phrases that helps manage that kind of aspect of it, and by the way, in the military, we’re probably one of the most hierarchical organizations that there are. There is a rank structure. But I do believe that they in certain aspects of the military, they do respect you to speak truth to power, and especially in the planning stage. But once the decision has been made, then it’s execute. But there’s a phrase that I think I gravitated towards when I was in the military, but one that I think is also applicable to whatever profession that you’re in. And its mission first, people always. And so, sometimes when you’re in the military, you get asked, saw the helicopter pilot. So what if you get to go take this very dangerous mission, maybe behind enemy lines, where you might have a high likelihood of some of your folks not coming back? And so they say, “Well, do you do the mission? Or being the leader, do you take care of your folks, and you not do the mission?” And you do both. You accomplish the mission, but you also take care of your people. So mission first, people always is kind of a nice catchphrase that I think is also applicable in business and sports and whatever profession that you’re exploring.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. So after West Point, obviously you became an Army helicopter pilot, did that for a number of years before going to Stanford. So before we get into sort of the Stanford and then combating terrorism center, were there are any key lessons you learned by being a helicopter pilot in Iraq, Afghanistan, and just all of that with sort of life leadership lessons you learned from that period?
Bryan P:
Yeah, I think both of them offered kind of their own different lessons. But as I mentioned earlier, when you are in those situations, you learn a lot about yourself, both good and bad, and maybe some things that you’re not super proud of about your own leadership. But I think so when I was in Afghanistan, for example, as a company commander, I had 106 people that were underneath my charge. And having that sense of care, love, devotion for those people, I don’t know, when I talk to people about, actually this is an interesting thing that we do with our students at Seton Hall, which is on their first day in our program, I ask all the students to take out a piece of paper and fill out and say, “What is your definition of leadership?” And when they do that, they can’t use Google, I don’t give them any primer, I collect all the answers. And then I put it into a word cloud.
Bryan P:
And for the past three years running, I’ve done this and the one word that comes out above any other is others. And if I had to use any one word to define leadership, that’s what it’s all about. It’s all about others. And if there’s one thing that leading in combat or being in the military taught me is the importance of others. And so that type of servant leadership style is kind of in our DNA. And it’s what we’re also trying to do with our folks at Seton Hall. One quick side story, I go from being responsible for 106 people in Afghanistan, weapon on me every single day, flying all over the country, I get back. And then within weeks, I’m in Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, which is one of the most beautiful places on the face of the planet. And I went from that environment in Afghanistan to Stanford where I was only responsible for myself. And in my first meeting with the graduate school people there, I said, “I’m here to see so and so.”, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, we’ll bring her right out.” And she walks out. And she’s barefoot and her dog is accompanying her. And I was like, it’s like culture shock, but two very high performing organizations, going from the military to Stanford. Again, I feel just very blessed that I had the opportunity to kind of learn in these really interesting leadership laboratories.
Warwick F:
And before you got to Seton Hall, you spent a number of years at the West Point Combating Center. But I think you mentioned when you first applied to teach there, it didn’t work out. But what was that like? I mean, it obviously worked out eventually. What was that like? Was that like, how could it not work out? I mean, I think I’m pretty qualified. I mean, what was going on?
Bryan P:
Yeah, this was really interesting. So I did my first tour there. So I went to Stanford. And after I got the Ph.D., I then started working at West Point in the Department of Social Sciences. And then I went to Iraq, I deployed to Iraq. When I went to go, there was a job opportunity that opened back up to become a permanent professor. So West Point is a mix of rotating faculty that will rotate every couple of years, and then a small segment that is kind of permanent faculty. So a permanent faculty job opened up and I applied to it and I thought I was relatively qualified for it. And I went and I interviewed and I thought I crushed the interview. And I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody this story either. So this is twofer here, Gary and Warwick.
Gary S:
Wow, we got exclusive here on Beyond the Crucible.
Bryan P:
So I’ve already given up my pet name of Mickey Hatcher out there. The second one is in the military, I don’t want to say the real army, but you don’t wear your dress uniform. It’s not like the movies. You turn on the movies and they’re wearing their dress uniform to go eat breakfast every day. That’s not happening. You were in your kind of fatigues, your battle dress uniform. And so for this opportunity at West Point, I had to wear my dress uniform. Well, the Army’s got this crazy thing every couple years where they’ll change up uniforms, and ribbons and all this stuff. And so when I went to go do this interview, I thought I did very well. But a couple weeks later, I get a phone call, it says, “Hey, you were not selected for this position. And oh, by the way, we noticed that your uniform, your deployment stripes were on the wrong sleeve.”
Bryan P:
And to me, when you talk about when you walk into the room, that’s what people see, this is something that was not super important to me, probably should have been. But I had taken my uniform to the military complex where I was stationed at, for them to put all the proper accoutrement and all that stuff on there. Well, the woman made a mistake and I didn’t catch it. And so I don’t know if that was the reason why I was not selected. But it was the only piece of feedback that I had gotten. And that was tough to swallow. I don’t know if that qualifies as a crucible moment. But that was one where I was like that was tough to swallow.
Warwick F:
Because you’d be thinking, “Seriously? I hope there was a better reason than I’ve got my, I’m not lying about my deployment. It’s not like I put on a ribbon I didn’t deserve, which to the military would be a serious deal, which I don’t think any right thinking person would ever do. But putting it on the wrong sleeve. I mean, my gosh, think of a better reason.” And there may have been a better one, but humanly speaking, it’s easy to go there and say, “Seriously?”
Bryan P:
But that’s never been my mentality Warwick. If anything, I was turning all that inward on me. My thing wasn’t, I can’t believe they would only focus on that. My thing was just beating myself up over. How could I have not? I should have checked that. I should have, and in the preparation for it, so I don’t fault them for it. But it was one of those where it’s like, “Man, I thought that was great opportunity.” And as it turned out, life is weird how it turns out, an even better opportunity opened up with the Combating Terrorism Center.
Warwick F:
Yeah, and then I want to get to Seton Hall. Is there anything you want to say that’s relevant to this conversation about your time at the Combat Terrorism Center, about learning about yourself and leadership? There’s probably, you’ve been through a lot so I don’t want to skip anything before we get to Seton Hall.
Bryan P:
I think the only thing I would say there is it was a very different leadership experience, because my team was all civilians. There were civilian researchers. And so leading a different type of individual, and then the other component of that opportunity was we did research that was in high demand for senior leaders in our military, as Gary mentioned in the intro. And so there I was as a major and then a lieutenant colonel, having to present information to Secretary of Defense, the CIA Director. I testified in front of Congress. In all those moments, those are like, you’ve heard of the imposter syndrome. I was battling that in severe ways. But what I learned about leadership there, I think, which is pertinent to this discussion, is someone told me one time when I came out of a meeting with my first, I think it was a four star general meeting that I had presented at, and I came out and my boss at the time said, “How did you think that went?” I said, “It went well.”, and he pulled me aside. He said, “You know, Bryan, the best leaders that are out there, you can tell by the proportion by which they speak in a meeting and the proportion by which they listen.”
Bryan P:
And by golly if I didn’t kind of think of that every time I was in a room with a senior leader, and to see how they operated, that’s a pretty doggone good heuristic for senior leaders is how much are they in transmit mode versus how much are they listening and taking in information. It was powerful.
Warwick F:
Well, that is a good that’s a very good lesson. So what made you decide to leave West Point and the Combating Terrorism Center and found the Buccino Institute at Seton Hall? Because if you’re a West Point person, a lot of West Point people will be like, “Okay, maybe I missed out on that full time faculty thing, but I kind of want to be here forever.” You’re West Point sort of for life. It’s funny as some listeners know, I’ve never been in the military and I’m from Australia, but I live in Annapolis, which is the home of that other place. I notice that you put in the bio on Seton Hall, it says West Point, the world’s premier leadership development institution. It may well be. I don’t know what the Navy folks think but that’s another story. But so what made you want to leave West Point and found the Buccino Institute at Seton Hall? Because that’s a huge decision.
Bryan P:
Yeah, it was. Thankfully, it was made for me by my wife. So I had always told my wife that if she would kind of follow me around for my first 20 years in the army, by the way, that’s what the time you can become eligible for a pension in the military. And I said, “Once I hit 20 years, then you can kind of get full veto power over whether I stay or go.” I thought she had forgotten about that. But apparently not, she didn’t. So that was the decision. But to me, the decision was like I had spent the bulk of my professional career going after and studying bad leaders and terrorist group leaders. So I wrote a book called Targeting Top Terrorists, which was published by Columbia University Press. And so that was my dissertation. That was my research. But that could be really depressing Warwick. And I wanted, I loved leadership, and I felt like what a great way instead of studying and going after bad leadership, can I help develop the next generation of good leaders? And so it was a tough decision, because I love my West Point team and my Combating Terrorism Center team. But it was a easy decision from a professional and a gratification.
Warwick F:
And as you look back, you’re probably gratified you made that decision, maybe gratified, because if you got full tenure at West Point, that would have been a lot tougher decision, it might have been, to leave.
Bryan P:
Yeah, no, I mean, so I could have stayed at West Point until I retired.
Warwick F:
So that wasn’t an issue. But it’s interesting, yeah. But shifting from studying bad leaders as you put it, I’ve never thought about it that way to hopefully instilling young leaders who will become good leaders, one of the most terrible things is if you study “bad or evil leaders.”, that they might be using good leadership tactics. So it’s like using good leadership tactics for bad or for evil. That’s got to be the ultimate depressing thing. It’s one thing if they’re hopeless, but when they’re not hopeless, and unfortunately, some evil people, some leaders of poor character, they understand a bit about how to motivate people.
Bryan P:
I think so. You’re exactly right. Osama bin Laden, for however evil you think he is, and sign me up for the person that thinks he’s evil, he demonstrated a lot of servant leadership. And one of the reasons why he had so many followers and was so impactful. I don’t buy into his reasons. But in terms of leadership, he was willing to sacrifice for his cause and be there for his people. So yeah, but it’s so much funner, more fun, working with, making people good leaders, as opposed to…
Warwick F:
So talk about the Buccino Institute. In particular, I love this course you have, Crucible Moments, what was really on your heart when you came to found the Buccino Leadership Institute? What was the vision you had for helping undergraduates learn about leadership?
Bryan P:
So they had a previous organization that did leadership in the business school, which is not uncommon for a lot of universities. That’s where leadership sits. But the university made a decision in the year that I arrived to expand that program. So it was the entire university as opposed to just the business school. And I think one of the things that makes our program unique, particularly in today’s world, is the fact that we are teaching leaders how to be leaders in an interdisciplinary environment. So it’s not just business school kids. I have a poet sitting next to the education person sitting next to the diplomat sitting next to the scientist, and learning about leadership in a four year program, I think is important to get that interdisciplinary field because that’s where the world is moving. We’re moving out of our silos and we’re moving more towards small teams of diverse groups. And that’s one thing that we’re trying to do there.
Gary S:
And it’s true, I would imagine, as you’re thinking on this crucible leadership course of study, your athletic experience, your experience on teams, because teams, I’ve been on teams, sports teams, I was a baseball player, too. I was never described as scrappy. I was the fat kid who caught. I was the fat catcher in the Bad News Bears, but teamwork on sports teams, sharing successes, sharing failure builds camaraderie and confidence. I suspect that was at least in the back of your mind, perhaps the forefront of your mind when you decided to talk about crucible experiences with your students.
Bryan P:
Yeah, you’re 100% right there. And whether you take that from the sports world, you could say the same thing in the military. But the reason why I had that course, I think in organizations, when you try to put all the ingredients together what makes an organization successful, one of those things is trust, trust between leaders and followers, trust within in peer groups, trust with the organization. And in order to trust you, I have to know you. And to really know you, you have to be vulnerable and share parts of yourself that normally you might be willing to kind of keep from others. And so when we did this class, the setup was before the class starts, I ask my students, each student to come up with between one and three crucible moments in their life, and I described them very similarly as you and Warwick did at the outset. And I had those ahead of time.
Bryan P:
And then in that class, I talk about the importance of it just very similarly to how Warwick did and their importance in our growth. And then I lead from the front, I share my crucible moments with the class, and I ask some of my associate faculty, my associate directors to do the same. And then we turn it over to the students to volunteer, so you don’t have to volunteer if you don’t want to. But boy, the past couple years when we’ve done this, the emotional response that we’ve gotten from students that have shared their crucible moment has been extremely powerful. I think it’s powerful for them, because it’s a cathartic moment of getting this off their chest and sharing something that they haven’t done with others.
Bryan P:
But it also empowers them that when they do that, afterwards, you see the kind of stress relief, but also the pride that they have that they were able to get through something very tragic, meaningful, difficult. And yet, I think there’s another side of it too, which is the students that are in the audience that are hearing these experiences, because some of those 18 year olds, and I’m happy about this, haven’t experienced that life trauma yet. And so the fact that they are seeing one of their fellow students get up and share this experience where they’ve endured this thing and have emerged stronger on the other side, I think it’s important for them to hear because in their minds, they go, “You know what? This is going to happen to me eventually. And when I do have that moment, I can be just as strong as this other student.” And so it’s a really powerful, powerful lesson.
Warwick F:
And that’s such an important point, because at 18, obviously you had some experiences with divorce, and obviously, I guess you weren’t 18, but later on your mother dying, but a lot of kids these days, they will have had crucible experiences. But even if they haven’t, life is not easy. They will. I can’t think of anybody that’s lived on this earth that hasn’t gone through a tough experience at some point. It’s sort of inevitable. Life is not easy. Things will happen at home and the workplace.
Warwick F:
And so yeah, just being prepared. I mean, one of the phrases, I know Brene Brown talks a lot about vulnerability. One of the phrases that I love that we’ve begun talking about is vulnerability for a purpose. And I’m sure you would talk about this with your students. It’s not always like, with a bunch of co workers, let me tell you about every dumb thing I did in school, whether it’s drugs or whatever, that has no relationship to the situation or what people are going through. That’s just sharing every dumb thing you did can be useful, but not always. But maybe if you’re leading a bunch of folks in the military, maybe you’re saying, “Yeah, first time I led a company of 10 people as a lieutenant, I was scared stiff. I couldn’t sleep that night, or I figured the noncommissioned folks, the sergeants knew way more than I did. But over time, I realized that OK a day at a time, I learned more, got a bit more confidence.”
Warwick F:
I mean, that’s the kind of thing and just not saying you’re in that position, but I’m sure it’s somewhat common for new commanders sharing that with other newly minted lieutenants. Well, that’s vulnerability for a purpose, because it’s like, okay, gee, if somebody that I respect, like Bryan Price, or whoever it is, can be nervous, I guess it’s okay to admit that I’m nervous too. Does that kind of make sense?
Bryan P:
Yeah, and I love, I’m a huge fan of Brene Brown too. And when she talks about vulnerability as a purpose, I think to tie it to leadership, you need to be vulnerable. If you’re vulnerable, you’re seen as authentic. And authentic leaders are trusted. And that to be an effective leader, you need to be trusted and then you can be effective. So I think it all ties together, for sure.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, and part of it with crucible moments is part of its vulnerability. And one of the other things I find is I’m sure you found this with your students, it’s when students share sometimes, let’s say it’s a mistake they’ve made. They think, well, if other people knew how stupid I was, they’ll judge me and I’ll be shunned. As a young 18 year old, a 19 year old, you’re absolutely thinking that. You’re thinking about that later, but when other people kind of slap you on the back, give you a hug or whatever, and say, “Hey, that was amazing you did that.” It’s like, “Well, you’re not judging me? I’m not ostracized?” That’s also and I’m sure you’ve seen that. It’s like, because that’s what you think if I share this, I’ll be rejected. I’ll be a pariah or something.
Bryan P:
Especially in this kind of Instagram happy environment that we have, where you have to put on these airs in order to show everybody that everything is fine, when in reality, my analogy for this is, I coach business leaders outside of West Point too. It’s the duck. When you look on top and you look on Instagram, the duck is kind of moving gracefully through the water. But if you had that underwater camera of said duck, that thing is churning, the water’s all muddy and churned up. And so I think people should not be afraid to show that underwater view of what’s going on in their life, and particularly when it comes to mental health, you know, when you need help get it in this world, in this country. I don’t know how it is in Australia, but I’m interested in your thoughts in terms of the comparison. When I coach athletes, if they have a sprained ankle, they go to the doctor for the sprained ankle. In this country, if you have a mental health problem, there’s still this stigma attached. I think it’s getting better, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
Warwick F:
No, I think I know there’s some elite cricket players, I probably get it wrong here. But I think it may be Glenn Maxwell. But there’s one of these folks that has unbelievable talent, but does struggle with this. And then he says, “Look, I’m sorry, I can’t play for Australia or some elite team right now because I just need to take some time off.” And that’s accepted and they go through protocols. And so that’s great, which is important. The other aspect of crucible moments is vulnerability. But it’s demonstrating to young folks that it’s not the end of your story is as we always say in Crucible Leadership. You can learn from that, if it’s your mistake, learn from your mistakes. Even if it’s not, okay, what maybe I can help people who are survivors of this, whether it’s cancer, or whatever. Maybe I can use that to serve others. So it’s seeing crucible can be an opportunity for a life’s mission, a life’s calling can come out of that. And I’m sure that’s probably part of your discussions, I imagine with your students.
Bryan P:
You said something on our podcast that stuck with me, and I’ll probably butcher it, I’ll paraphrase you. And if I screw it up, you can fix it, Warwick. It was kind of like your crucible moment or your worst day doesn’t define who you are. And to me that is powerful, because when I work with athletes and business leaders, I try to decouple what they do with their identity. So when I work with elite athletes on the mental game, oftentimes they will self describe themselves as “I’m Sally, the swimmer.” And I say, “Okay, that’s a recipe for some self esteem and some identity issues down the road.” I say, “You’re Sally, the awesome kid, the awesome daughter, the awesome everything who also happens to swim, but you can do some other things in your life.” And I think it’s important to kind of decouple what you do with your identity, in order for both your sanity but also your self esteem, and as a leader, because you’re going to have those bad days, but like you said, don’t let those bad days define you.
Warwick F:
And that’s so key. Boy, that’s the whole issue of identity. I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently. But I’m sure you probably have, I would guess, conversations with your daughter. I mean, she is one of the elite soccer players of her age. She might be on the U.S. team one day might be in an Olympic team, or maybe not. But try and instill in her she is not defined by her soccer ability. You’re happy for her. But she is defined by who she is as a person. I’m sure you, I mean, this is on your heart and mind, I got to believe, I don’t know whether it’s a conversation that you’ve had at least some, helping not get too wrapped up in it, because there is going to be some people. They’re going to say, “You know what? You’re one of the best players I’ve ever seen. I’ve been watching young people for 20 years. And you’re incredible.” They try to be helpful, but that’s not always so helpful when people tell you that. You know what I mean?
Bryan P:
It’s funny, first off, if you look at the statistics, it’s likely that she’s not going to be any of those things. I mean, just based off of the numbers, but this is an area where I wrote a blog piece about this, and I’m interested in your thoughts. I was actually hoping that she would have a failure moment earlier in her life. Because I mean, look, she’s a good player, but she’s on a fantastic team. The team is ridiculous. But I would prefer at some point, not to say that I want her crucible moment to arrive earlier in life than later. But if you go through life and you don’t suffer any type of adversity, how do you react? This would be a great research project to look at in terms of are people more successful or less successful, based off of when is that crucible moment happened in their life? Would you have been the same if you were 45 as opposed to when your crucible moment happened? I don’t know.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I never thought about that before. But that’s an insightful point. I was probably, in some ways fortunate that the whole thing, well, the takeover happened of the family media business when I was 26. And that ended by the time I was 30. But yeah, I mean, certainly the whole issues of identity growing up because I unfortunately worked hard, got good grades at school, Oxford, Harvard Business School. I was sort of, I’m not going to be this young, dilettante, wealthy kid. I’m going to work hard. And yeah, I mean, sort of, I wouldn’t call myself scrappy. I’m not a hustler in the sense of I’m a contemplative person. But in terms of determination and perseverance, I’m very, if not extremely high. And so yeah, that didn’t help all these expectations. You could be one of the great Fairfaxes, you could have this huge impact for your nation.
Warwick F:
I mean, so once when it ended, it’s like, huh, well, that’s not going to happen. I’m never gonna achieve anything, no matter what I do that is at the level that I might have achieved. So that’s where you really got to do some serious soul work and say, “Where is my identity? Is it being a Fairfax in charge of this mammoth media organization or as a person of faith? Is it in what God thinks of me? Is it in more spiritual eternal?” So yeah, I had some years to figure that out. But identity a huge thing.
Gary S:
So gentlemen, we are in a hover at the moment. But we are descending, and we will soon put the skids down on the helipad. Before we do that, I know Warwick wants to ask some questions about the things that you tell your students when they talk about their crucibles and how they get through them, because they’ll be very applicable, Bryan to our listeners. But before we get to that question, let me, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you the opportunity to tell listeners how they can find out more about you, more about the Buccino School about anything that you’ve talked about here. How can they learn more about Bryan Price and what you do?
Bryan P:
Yeah, sure. So almost all my social media is under Top Mental Game. So Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. For the Buccino Leadership Institute, you can get ahold of us at www.shu.edu\leadership. And then on Twitter, it’s @shuleadership, and Instagram, it’s @buccinoleaders.
Gary S:
And we will put those in the show notes, listeners, so you can see them written out.
Warwick F:
Just as we close here, I know one of the things you mentioned in advance, we talked actually quite about a lot of these things. There are some key principles that you advocate. And I think we’ve covered actually a number of them. But just wanted to give you a chance to explore any of these further. You talk about the ability to reframe failure, overcoming imposter syndrome, becoming aware of negative narratives, proper goal setting, process over outcome, identity questions. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve covered. Any of those you want to as we close, just really touch on a bit for our listeners?
Bryan P:
Yeah, I think one that is kind of near and dear to my heart, and it just keeps popping up over and over is kind of a combination of that imposter syndrome and those narratives that I told you about. In the past week and a half, and I just had a recent post on this as well, I coached a former Major League Baseball pitcher, who is now in the corporate world. I’ve coached a gymnast who is at the top of her game. I’ve coached a CEO that went from nothing in his family and he’s brought up, he’s the CEO of his own internationally known organization now. And it’s funny when you coach these people, one of the consistent themes that emerges through that is, at some level, there’s a confidence issue.
Bryan P:
And those confidence issues are usually borne out of this thing that we call the imposter syndrome where you feel like you’re not worthy of your promotion, or whatever things are happening positively in your life. Or it’s they’re based off of these narratives, oftentimes that are formed at very young ages. When I talk to this one person, not to give her age away, but she’s around my age we’ll say, and yet she thought back to a moment when she was 13 years old when somebody said something to her. And these things rattle around in our heads, but worse, they influence or negatively influence your ability to act.
Bryan P:
And I think that’s the most damaging thing and I told an individual that is in the corporate world, I say can you imagine if you are able to do coaching for every person in your organization and get to the root causes of either that narrative or that imposter syndrome, how much more productive, how much happier, how much more effective both that individual and the organization would be? I think that’s where the secrets lie. And it doesn’t matter, oftentimes, why this is so frustrating for both individuals and organizations is your feelings about your narrative or your suffering under the imposter syndrome is usually not rational. One of the things I try to do with my clients is to say, “Look at all the areas in your life where you have succeeded. And all you want to do is focus on that area where you failed or stumbled.” And I don’t know, I just think that that if we could unlock that both as you know, an organization, but as a country, I think we’d be happier, more productive because people are holding back. They’re playing small, and for no rational reasons.
Warwick F:
Well said.
Gary S:
It’s interesting what you said there, Bryan, about that woman with the 13 year old experience. One of the things we’ve discovered on this show, this is the 58th episode that we’ve done. And one of the things that keeps coming up, and you actually alluded to it earlier in the episode, it was sort of a drive by moment, but you were talking about when you were about to be a freshman, I think and someone thought you were in sixth grade when they saw your stature and that, I mean, you’re not a freshman anymore, but that’s still the forefront of your brain. When you got asked that question, you talked about it. And we’ve discovered so many people on this show whose crucible moments or one of their crucible moments date back to single digits or early teenage years, those things that set up what you describe, what others describe as the imposter syndrome. And those things are hard to outrun. And one of the one of the goals of what Crucible Leadership does is to help you learn and leverage those things, so that you can then apply them learn the lessons of them and move beyond the crucible, so you can lead a life of significance. Warwick, any final words you want to leave our listeners with before I wrap?
Warwick F:
Thank you so much, Bryan, for being here. I mean you’ve served our country, you’ve helped students at West Point, you’re now working with students at Seton Hall and other athletes and folks in business and really teaching them about what true leadership is, what servant leadership is, what vulnerability for purpose is. None of us are perfect. Getting over the whole imposter syndrome, I mean that is really important. Almost, I’d say soul work, to be really effective leaders, you’ve got to start at the root. And that’s often at a soul level. You’ve got a good foundation at a soul self image level, you’re going to be so much more effective and compassionate. You have a bunch of weeds or some issues at a soul level, you’ll find it very difficult to care for other people. So you’re really dealing with what I’d call soul work, both with the athletes and the business folks you work with as well as the students. I don’t know whether they quite see it that way. But you’re setting that solid foundation that then enables them to be fantastic leaders to make a difference in this country and beyond. So thank you for the work that you do.
Bryan P:
Oh, thanks. And it’s always awesome to wake up every morning with those kind of challenges. And I hope I continue to have those opportunities. And thanks for what you’ve done with this podcast and your book and sharing your experiences. Because I think that’s where this is a topic that you’re bringing up in terms of crucible leadership that I think is going to move the needle for sure.
Gary S:
That is the second time listener that Bryan Price, our guest today, has said the word book. I am remiss in that the first time Bryan said the word book, I didn’t say the book Crucible Leadership comes out by Warwick in the fall. We actually have right now, October 19, as an on sale date on Amazon. So the book is called Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. So I just embarrassed Warwick. But it is, to Bryan’s point really encapsulates all of what we try to do here on Beyond the Crucible and even more so, what Crucible Leadership tries to do.
Gary S:
Speaking of Beyond the Crucible, until we are again together listener, Warwick and I have a little bit of a favor to ask you. And that is this. On the podcast app that you’re listening to the show right now, click, push the button whatever you need to do to subscribe. That would be a real great help for us, and that it helps us share it with more people interviews like this one with Bryan but it also will help make sure that you don’t miss one of these episodes where we talk about how to move beyond your crucible. So until that next time that we are together, always remember this and we’ve talked about it from the opening bell of this show, that is your crucible experiences are painful. They’re real. Whether you know the name crucible experience or not, you know what it feels like to go through if you’ve been through one. They’re painful, they’re real. But this is the great news. They’re not the end of your story, as we’ve talked about here with Bryan, as Warwick talks about every week on the show. Those moments, they’re not the end of your story. They can be the start of a brand new story, the best story because as you learn the lessons of them, as you apply those lessons and move forward, where you end up headed, the destination you end up getting to, where your helicopter lands, is at a life of significance.
From the outside looking in, Tracy J. Edmonds’ life couldn’t have been sweeter: a high-profile executive job with a Fortune 30 company at which she excelled. But on the inside, where she discovered it really counts, her career had come at a high cost because of a self-imposed crucible: not being her authentic self. So she decided to embrace both her figurative and literal wild hair — trading her corner office for a cubicle and tackling a vision that not only meshed with her gifts and passions but also allowed her to live who she truly was rather than conform to a corporate mold. She’s found her life of significance in coaching other women of color that to be the best versions of themselves, they have to be the real versions of themselves.
To learn more about Tracy J. Edmonds and her book Wild Hair: A Courageous Woman’s Guide to a Bold and Authentic Career, visit https://tracyjedmonds.com/
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Tracy J. E:
When we talk about being authentic and living your best life, having the career that you want, it always comes down to four components, self honesty. You’ve got to look yourself in the face and face the demon, whatever that may be. Or just clearly articulate what you want out of your life and your career. You have to have the courage to own that. Once you say it out loud, you have to own sometimes what’s very ugly, but also, the big dream of what you could be.
Tracy J. E:
You have to have the confidence to work it out and the resilience to stick with it because it’s never just a straight shot. There’s going to be hills, valleys, turns, things you’re going to have to navigate. Times like I had in my career when I restarted my career where people say, “Oh, you’re not so good at this.” Wow. Ego blow. Never heard that before. But I didn’t give up. Now, I cried about it, and I said, “Okay, here’s the plan.”
Gary S:
So, what is the plan? Your plan to learn and leverage the lessons of your crucible to put yourself on the road to authenticity and the life of significance that flows from it. The woman dispensing the wisdom you just heard is leadership coach and author Tracy J. Edmonds, whose new book, Wild Hair; A Courageous Woman’s Guide To A Bold and Authentic Career, offers plenty, more insight and inspiration where that snippet we just played, came from.
Gary S:
Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. In today’s episode, Tracy tells Warwick about the breakthroughs in her personal and professional life, that she set into motion by embracing both her figurative and literal wild hair truths. She chose to move from a corner office to a cubicle in her career, because the success she achieved in the former, didn’t give her the purpose she found in the latter. She explains it all in truly poetic terms. Keep listening all the way to the end and you’ll learn why that word poetic is very, very intentional and quite beautiful.
Warwick F:
We’re going to get into your book here in a bit, but I have to say that I loved reading your book Wild Hair, and we’ll get into it more. Why? Because not everybody’s viewing this on YouTube, but people might think, “Well, why Wild Hair?” It’s not just a physical description, it’s a meme of your philosophy of life that can help so many women and so many people in general. I love that whole concept of Wild Hair. And subtitle of the book is, A Courageous Woman’s Guide, To A Bold and Authentic Career.
Warwick F:
You’ve been through a bunch of experiences, successful corporate career, and a lot of successes and challenges as there is with anybody’s career. But I’d love to start just with who is Tracy Edmonds? Kind of how’d you grow up? Parents, background. What’s the story behind the story, if you will? Who is Tracy and…
Tracy J. E:
Well, first of all, thanks for having me. This is exciting to be able to have this kind of conversation and talk about crucible moments. Because in fact, I have a chapter about that in my book. I’m super, super excited. One of the things though, I am not is a poet, so I appreciate the distinction. but to be honest, when I thought about what we could talk about with your listeners, it was important for me not to describe myself in the more traditional ways, but to describe myself in terms of my life experiences. And who those life experiences have changed me into and how I’m ever evolving. That’s just what came to mind. I did not have it prepared. I wrote it and said, “Hopefully they won’t send me a note back and say, “Okay, this is not what we’re looking for.”
Warwick F:
I thought it was brilliant. That was terrific.
Tracy J. E:
Well, thank you.
Gary S:
It was so good that it, we didn’t know that we could look for it, if that makes sense. I mean, truly it was informational and beautiful. SO thank you.
Tracy J. E:
Well, thank you.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Tracy J. E:
Who am I? I the African-American child of two alcoholic parents who came from very different backgrounds. A mother who came from the South in Tennessee, who’s struggled and had a difficult life and who was very, very dark skinned and a father who came from a sleepy, river town and was as fair as you, Warwick. I share that because I am the mix of that.
Tracy J. E:
I am the mix of two people who come from the same race, who had very different experiences being black in their own skin. Because that shaped me into who I became and I think quite honestly, drove me to address issues of diversity. They both had their challenges, which meant I grew up in a household full of love. I have two younger brothers, we are extremely close, but I also grew up in a household that was emotionally unstable, very often.
Tracy J. E:
I found myself stepping into, as the oldest, more of a leadership role to help sometimes my brothers to eat that night, because my parents were struggling with their own addictions and their own issues. Those things kind of shaped me into this young woman who believed education was everything, and went off to college to be an engineer, two years at Cornell University, and realized that I hated these classes I had to take.
Tracy J. E:
And found her way back home and back into college, but also working while I was going to college. That began like a 30, 31 year journey with one organization, honestly, that evolved over time, and a career where I could learn to bring all of that, that I just shared with you, into who I was as a leader, and to help other women and men, but women, especially, to lead in their lives.
Warwick F:
I mean, one of the things I observed from reading your book is that, you’re a driven, passionate person, has a heart for the world and to help folks. Where did that maybe drive and passion come from? Did you have like a role model? Where were the seeds of that?
Tracy J. E:
In my family, quite honestly, my mother and father, and it sounds like such a contradiction, because we were not a perfect family by any stretch of the imagination. As I mentioned, my parents had their own addictions and their own struggles. But we were loved and we were taught to be fierce and strong. I can remember my father sitting me down on the edge of his bed when I was 12 years old and saying, “Tracy, you are a black woman in this world. You will have to fight for what you get. You will have to be better than everyone else. We never give up, we never quit. That’s what it’s going to take for you to be successful in your life, but you’ve got it in you. You can do it.”
Tracy J. E:
My mother was an extremely compassionate woman, who had struggled a lot in her life, growing up as a child in the South, horrific things that had happened to her and finding her place in the world without losing that compassion. She was a victim of incest. She was a victim of racism, in some of the strongest ways. And for her to still have compassion and love and to see the good in people, I think she passed that on to me.
Tracy J. E:
I have this fierce desire to succeed in this life, whatever that looks like, but a desire to take my challenge and pay that forward. Whatever the journey is, it’s there to make me a better person. Hopefully, I can share that with others and help them along the way.
Warwick F:
You know, one of the chapters in your book talks about the value of mentors and in particular, those who are truth-tellers.
Tracy J. E:
Yes.
Warwick F:
You’ve had a dad who was a truth-teller, in a sense, he was your first mentor perhaps.
Tracy J. E:
Yes.
Warwick F:
And he was giving you encouragement, but he wasn’t sugarcoating it. He said, this is going to be tough for a black woman. Certainly, as you were talking as a young woman, it’s probably not easy today, it probably was worse back then. Not that it’s great, but there’s sadly often always worse. And he wasn’t sugar coating it, but yet he was encouraging you.
Warwick F:
I often think biblically, they talk about balance of truth and love. Your dad gave you truth, your mom gave you love. I’m sure your dad gave you love too, but truth and love that will make a lot of folks grow done in the right way and the right balance. Even though they weren’t perfect, did you look back and say, “Look, they weren’t perfect, but they were gifts in many ways. They were blessings as parents.”
Tracy J. E:
Gosh, absolutely. They were absolutely blessings. I would not trade my life growing up as a child, for anyone else’s. It was not perfect. I mean, I can think of times when my parents were arguing and I was sitting outside just crying, like, “Why is my life like this?” You think of everyone else’s life as perfect. Of course we know as we grow older that, that’s not always the case. But I can remember crying and thinking, “Why can’t I have a better life?”
Tracy J. E:
A moment came in my life when I had the opportunity to pay forward the gift of being a child of an alcoholic family. I had the opportunity to say to a woman sitting across from me at work, who was struggling, that, “I am a child of an alcoholic and I know how that feels.” Because she had a son. And to be able to have that conversation with her and get her on the right track to get the help that she needed and to turn her life around and become a productive employee.
Tracy J. E:
I don’t trade that. Because we don’t know when those moments of what we perceive to be negative experiences, will come back and be the gift that we give to someone else.
Warwick F:
That’s such a profound thought. Again, I’m being authentic when I say this, there was so many profound moments when I read your book. And that was, I forget exactly how you coined it, but sometimes crucibles can be a blessing. The crucible of growing up with alcoholic parents, you’re able to, as you just said, pay it forward and help that woman that I think you described in the book.
Warwick F:
I term it sort of vulnerability for a purpose. You can be vulnerable about things, that won’t help anybody, it’s oversharing. It’s like, “You’re telling me this, why? You did something stupid in high school and took drugs. Okay, fine. But so what? What’s that going to do with my situation?” And if it has nothing to do with it, it’s like, “Thank you, boss. This is not helping me at all.”
Warwick F:
But in this case it was sharing for a purpose. That’s such a key lesson. One last thing on your mother, and obviously she was, as you recount, like one of your best friends, cheerleader, you speak very movingly about her. Her ability to go through unbelievably difficult, if not horrific circumstances, I’m guessing not countenance what was done, but yet not be bitter, not let anger and quickness destroy you. That’s powerful.
Warwick F:
Forgiveness doesn’t mean acceptance. It doesn’t mean condoning. It’s a very, very big difference. That must have been remarkable. I don’t know if she told you everything that happened. Certainly as a kid, she probably wouldn’t have maybe giving you the PG version or the G. but that sense of not being bitter, that’s also a remarkable example, as I’m sure you looked back.
Tracy J. E:
It was a powerful example. I think what it gave to me, what her example gave to me, is that we have the capacity to forgive, for one. But also what we can take from the experiences that we have. I think a lot of times negative experiences happen, and we’re quick to say, we just want to push that out. We want to forget about that, we want to move on.
Tracy J. E:
But what I have found is that, every crucible moment, every one of those times, when I thought it was horrific, there was something in there that I could take from it, to forge a better version of myself. That was one of the big aha moments. I spent my 20s just being angry. I mean, I grew up in this environment where there was constant emotional upheaval. My parents couldn’t hold it together. They were struggling and fighting some real demons.
Tracy J. E:
Once I got through my 20s and got into my 30s and went through that moment where I had a child, I lost my mom. I had lost my father. I lost my mom. I bought a house. I had a child, got the big job. When all those things happened and I didn’t know how to juggle that, I essentially started falling apart. I would sit in the rocking chair with my new baby, she was three months old when my mom passed and I would cry. I could barely keep her in my arms because my mom was my best friend. And she died suddenly. Didn’t know she was sick, found her on the floor, took her to the hospital, dead in five days.
Tracy J. E:
I was distraught. I can remember saying to God that, “I hate you for doing this. How do you let a woman who struggled so difficultly in her life, who finally was getting over alcoholism, loses her husband, starts drinking again, and then dies. It’s not right. It’s just not right.” But what that ended up being, first of all, I had to vocalize that to be brave enough to vocalize that. Then also to realize that this experience of losing her, taught me how to be my own woman.
Tracy J. E:
I was a mother now and I needed to step up and be that mother. I had immersed myself in work because that’s what I knew how to do well. I didn’t know how to be a mom. My own mom left me. How was I going to be a mom? I didn’t know how to manage my marriage. I was only a few years into it. What I had been doing since I was in my early 20s was working. So I dug in on that.
Tracy J. E:
And I had to realize that, that was not what I wanted for my life. We have to think about what do we really, really want? Self honesty. I had to be honest with myself and say, “What’s most important to me is not work. What is most important to me is this child and my husband and family. How do I create that? How do I forgive myself for being so angry at my mother and at God and what do I learn from this?”
Tracy J. E:
Because my mom had that heart of forgiveness. It was like, “Oh, you have to understand, you don’t know someone’s journey and what brings them to the point where they show up like they do and not always in the most positive way.” What can I learn about me, out of this? I learned that I was a lot stronger than I ever knew.
Warwick F:
That’s a remarkable thing that your mother said. I mean, to be able to say, “Oh, you don’t know their journey.” I don’t need to know the details, but you do. At least many of them I, bet. For her to say that it’s like, how can you possibly say, “Oh, you don’t know their journey.”
Warwick F:
I understand intellectually, but how in the world, can you say it and mean it? It blows my mind. I think for most people that’s like, “I don’t get it.” You talked about kind of superwoman, if you will, that that’s sort of a level of, I don’t know, a superior character quality that’s mind-blowing to me.
Tracy J. E:
I think she was phenomenal. I’m a little biased, but what I learned like you just articulated so well, was her capacity to love, to forgive and to understand that our journeys do create our testimony. They do create how we show up. And that a lot of things that she forgave people for, because of the challenges they had in their lives, that created the worldview that they had, the actions that they took, even the ones that hurt her.
Tracy J. E:
She was amazing in that capacity. As I think sought to emulate that, or actually do the best I could with my environment, I drew upon those things that were taught to me. And I talk a little bit about this in the book. When we talk about being authentic and living your best life, having the career that you want, it always comes down to four components, self honesty. You’ve got to look yourself in the face and face the demon, whatever that may be.
Tracy J. E:
Or just clearly articulate what you want out of your life and your career. You have to have the courage to own that. Once you say it out loud, you have to own, sometimes what’s very ugly, but also, the big dream of what you could be. Then you have to have the confidence to work it out, and the resilience to stick with it. Because it’s never just a straight shot. There’s going to be hills, valleys, turns, things you’re going to have to navigate, times like I had in my career when I restarted my career where people say, “Oh, you’re not so good at this.” Whoa, ego blow. Never heard that before. But I didn’t give up. Now, I cried about it, then I said, “Okay, here’s the plan.” I think I learned those things from her.
Warwick F:
Remarkable. I want to talk a bit about just some of the professional path you’ve gone through and really led to the book. And now you have your own kind of consulting company to try to help and uplift women and particularly women of color. It’s probably your mission in life and maybe that’s your calling, God given calling or universe calling, however you frame it, which is awesome.
Warwick F:
You had a very successful career and became a chief diversity officer at a very large company. Talk about some of that journey. Because, that seemed like a sort of a challenge in which, and I think as you articulated very well in the book, for many women, and I think as you’ve mentioned, women of color, there’s a sense of, “Oh, I need to do certain things to be corporate, to fit in.” Because otherwise you don’t rise up the ladder. You will hit a glass ceiling. Talk about just that journey that you and others have been through and why that whole wild hair metaphor is so important. Because I thought that was just a brilliant way of articulating that message and your journey. Talk a bit about that whole wild hair meme and the whole wanting to fit into the perceived corporate mold.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. I kind of grew up in corporate America. I started my career in my early 20s in a frontline role. Worked for a major insurer in the state of Ohio and really just processing health insurance claims. I spent, as I mentioned before, 31 years at that company. And that company went from being just a statewide, small insurance company, to a national Fortune 30, public company. One of the most prominent in the field.
Tracy J. E:
During that time, I went and achieved degrees, got married, had children and navigated my way through that. But for a good portion of that part of my life with almost 20 years, I would say that I wasn’t really authentic. I wasn’t really owning my career. I figured out what it took or what I thought it took to succeed in that environment. That meant keeping my hair straight, looking as close to white as I could and playing the corporate game. Being the corporate soldier. And that worked very successfully for me.
Tracy J. E:
So I reached a level where I was right below the executive ranks, just about to make it into all the big bonuses and packages. I was pregnant with our third child and I kept hearing this voice in my head that was going, “What are you doing? How did you get here?” Like, “What? How did I get here? Well, I worked really hard and I did all these things.” And, “How did I get here?” It wouldn’t go away. It stayed in the back of my mind saying, “How did you get here?”
Tracy J. E:
The reality was, I was miserable. I had achieved success. I was making good money. I had the corner office. Literally, I had the corner office that overlooked the little brook in the back. It was beautiful. I had an assistant that sat right outside my door and I was miserable. I was on the phone from morning to evening. I was exhausted when I got home. I wasn’t as fully engaged with my children and I’m going, “I’ve worked for this company 20 years, but how do I reach this point?” I was doing something I didn’t even care about. I came to a company for tuition reimbursement and 20 years later, I’m a regional vice president of operations with 300 employees. And I’m going, ‘Okay, how the hell did I get here?”
Warwick F:
That’s an interesting crucible to discuss. Because in essence, it’s a crucible experience of success, right?
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
There was a feeling of, I think you wrote somewhere, sort of a feeling of being trapped in the success. Most people don’t think of crucibles as “good things that happened to us.” But as the old saw goes too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. As you bore more deeply into that good thing and explored that corner office and explored that assistant outside your door, you realized what it took to get there, was to subjugate your personality a bit, to subjugate who Tracy was. And that was the crucible.
Tracy J. E:
That’s absolutely right. I realized that the “success” that I had in my career, was primarily due to what others saw in me. Now don’t get me wrong, I benefited by a great paycheck, a lot of perks, nice house, nice car, wonderful things that came from that. I didn’t take a job I ever didn’t want. But it was because others saw something in me and they wanted that. It was never about what I want.
Tracy J. E:
I had succeeded myself right into the crucible and I was burning up. I was literally burning up, because I was miserable, it was inauthentic. I came there for tuition reimbursement, my God, and I’m still there 20 years later, doing something that I found myself not caring about. So, my moment was when I realized, when the dissonance and the voice in my head got so loud, I had no choice but to answer it, “How did I get here?”
Tracy J. E:
That’s where those four steps we talked about, and I talk about in the book of being self honest, having the courage to face what you learn about you, the confidence to execute a plan to make that happen and the resilience to see it through, come into play. The wild hair, was the moment when, even after I made the transition and I left what I knew and moved into human resources. I did the soul searching the self honesty. I navigated a path into a new role and I built myself up.
Tracy J. E:
But even as I was in that space, I still was kind of playing other people’s game. Until finally I said, “You know what? I need to be me. I have got to do me.” And my hair was an expression of that. Not because I was trying to do some big thing that stood out and shocked people, but simply because I had been tired for years of the process of making my hair look like white hair. That process took a lot of time. That process damaged my hair. That process was not what I really wanted.
Tracy J. E:
It was a big decision to say, “I’m going to let this wild hair out, simply because this is who I am and what I want at this moment in time.” When I did that, oh my goodness, let me tell you, there were people who could not close their mouth. They literally jaw dropped, “Oh my God.” And you could see the look on their face because it was something so unexpected for them to see me look in this way.
Tracy J. E:
There were others who absolutely loved it. It was like, “This is you. This feels like you.” It was my kind of wild hair moment. But what it really stood for is, finding that wild hair, that thing that you are at a crossroads over and handling it and addressing it and doing yourself in the process, being authentic.
Warwick F:
It inspired other people, right?
Tracy J. E:
Oh, yeah.
Warwick F:
They said, “Wow, if Tracy can do it, maybe I can do it.” Right?
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
It’s like they admired your courage. Just like, “I can’t believe she did that. I’d be too scared to.”
Tracy J. E:
Right.
Warwick F:
You sort of laid a trail if you will, for other women, other women of color. Because you write in the book, you spend hours on a Saturday or something. We’re not talking five minutes. There’s a beautiful moment where the person that did your hair said something like, “Finally,” or cheering you on. People don’t like to say anything, but when you do something, it’s like, “Oh, hooray.”
Tracy J. E:
You know what? I took a stand. In this case, I took a stand on my own beliefs and what I wanted for myself. But it has become symbolic for me, in terms of what I’m really trying to do. When you talk about purpose, I stand unapologetically for women. I stand here, all women, no matter what shade we come in, I want to be that inspiration. I want to be a source of affirmation, more than anything. I want to affirm them, that when we don’t look like the majority, it’s still okay. You are affirmed. I want to be that strength for them. For them to lean into their own leadership and show up in the way that is most comfortable for them.
Warwick F:
You mentioned some statistics in the book, which I think most people are probably pretty familiar with, about women getting paid less than men, less women in the boardroom, the corporate C-suite and stats, according to your book, which I’m sure is true. It’s even worse for African-American women or women who are minorities relative to women in total. It’s not easy.
Warwick F:
But you’re really preaching a different message, a different sermon, if you will. Some women would say, “Well, the key to success is fit in. Be like the corporate folks. Be more like the male executives.” You’re saying there’s a different road and it might actually be more successful, but at least you will feel better about yourself, whether it works or not.
Warwick F:
Not to put words in your mouth, but I think you believe not only will you be more true to yourself, it actually might be more successful than trying to be somebody or not. Is that kind of a fair summary?
Tracy J. E:
I think that is a fair summary. Because, I have found at least for me, and it’s not just for me, quite honestly, the women that I’ve coached. When I was true to myself, whatever that meant, if that meant the hair, if that meant putting my voice in the room, whenever I didn’t allow that dissonance between what others expected of me and what I wanted to be, when I closed the gap between those two, I was more successful. I had more impact, my career evolved and it happened for other women as well.
Gary S:
Now, Warwick said he doesn’t want to put words in your mouth, but I will put words back in your mouth, Tracy. Because, you and I have worked together a little bit on a press release for your book, which is coming out soon. Which in fact, by the time this airs may indeed be out. But you said this, I wrote this note down on something you said on this very subject. You said this, it was so good, I wrote it down to put quotes around. I’m putting these words back in your mouth here on the show.
Tracy J. E:
Awesome.
Gary S:
“No matter where you work, it always comes down to your values,” you said. “If you can’t express your realness, you don’t need to work there.”
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. I wholeheartedly believe that. And I advise others on that, every single day. I had a really powerful moment with a young woman who met with me after I participated in a panel for the United Negro College Fund. Working with UNCF, they have a leadership program for their college students and they bring professionals and executives together to speak all the time. I had my natural hair at that point.
Tracy J. E:
Afterwards, this young woman comes up to me, beautiful long, natural hair, African-American young woman. She says, “I have to talk to you. I am beginning my interviews for internships. I’ve spoken with my mom and my aunt. They both are telling me to relax my hair and to straighten it. I really don’t want to do that. That’s just not who I am. But I’m afraid I won’t get jobs.”
Tracy J. E:
I told her, I said, “You know what? I’m going to counter your mom here. But are you comfortable with your hair?” “Yes.” “Are you able to style your hair in ways that you believe will be professional?” Because let’s be real too, we have to know our environment. Can we style our hair or shape it in a way? I mean, even people who have straight hair come to work with styles that are appropriate, colors that are appropriate for the career that they want.
Tracy J. E:
“If you’re able to do that, my advice is for you to wear your natural hair. Because, if they cannot accept you for who you are, when you show up in a professional manner and you are capable of doing the job, then you don’t want to be there. You don’t want to be someplace where you have to subjugate who you are.”
Tracy J. E:
The challenge is when we get into environments, there’s so many cues that we get. Even when no one says directly, “Be less, be different, be straight hair.” What you see around you sends you those messages. When I looked up, as I was growing in my career and I would look up, no one looked like me. No one. When I would sit in the talent conversations and they would talk about the successful leaders and the folks who should move up in the succession ranks, typically, there was something wrong with the folks who came in a little bit browner skin. There was something they just had to work on. “We love her. She’s great. If we could just hone off this edge.”
Tracy J. E:
And so that, as you listen to that, you start to say, “Oh, I better hone that edge down. I better straighten the hair.” Because when I see what is successful, it doesn’t look like me. Part of what we have to do, when we embrace our authenticity, part of it is, we are creating the path for others. We are breaking new ground. We’re breaking glass, right? To say, “This is what it takes and this is how it can look.” Look at our vice-president. This is how it can look.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Tracy J. E:
And be successful.
Warwick F:
It takes courage to authentic. It won’t work always. I’m sure part of what you counsel is, be careful where you want to work for. Some environments are more friendly than others. None will be easy, but there’s impossible, difficult, challenging. Maybe, perhaps you’ll get there. If you can go for the, maybe rather than you’re sure to fail, because no matter what you do, they won’t give you a chance, maybe avoid those ones.
Warwick F:
But there is, I think, the power and we live in a culture where increasingly, a lot of young people of all backgrounds, they want authenticity. They want vulnerability. We had a guy on our show, Chris Tuff, wrote a book, The Millennial Whisperer, and a lot of HR research shows that young people, they want real. Give me the straight scoop. Don’t tell me the pandemic’s going to be over tomorrow. Be real with me. Tell me what’s happening. Be authentic, be vulnerable.
Warwick F:
There is part of a societal trend in that matter. It doesn’t mean it’s going to solve everything, but it helps a little bit. Even a couple little ripples or waves can be helpful. But it takes courage, because you think it may not work. It probably hasn’t worked for decades or hundreds of years, but just being who you are and being willing to share some of your experiences, which may be very different than your bosses, your coworkers, your life experiences.
Warwick F:
That provides a basis of connection of sharing stories that sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. Again, not saying it’s people’s fault, but by not sharing and trying to fit in, I actually think it makes it harder in some ways. I don’t think it makes it easier. You may think it might, but it’s like people might say, “I don’t really know who that person is. They’re just so tight lipped.” If you want to have an excuse, you just actually giving them excuses in some sense. You’re not helping yourself.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
I don’t know, in some ways it’s a bit like jumping off a cliff. By being authentic and being vulnerable, it actually can create more connection and give you a greater chance of getting promoted. Not always. That sounds like radical stuff. Does that make any kind of sense?
Tracy J. E:
No, it makes total sense to me. When we’re vulnerable and we are ourselves, we create a human connection and that’s very natural. Humans, desire connectivity and connection. That’s part of why mother has a baby, they lay the baby skin to skin. They want connection. It’s a part of who we are as human beings. It’s interesting because I’ll tell you another story, that when I was chief diversity officer and I was doing a tour, if you will, where I was speaking about our plan for diversity, but I would talk about my hair. Because what I wanted leaders to know is that there are subtle cues, like we talked about, that say, “You don’t fit in.” I talked about my journey to my hair, what I share with you all.
Tracy J. E:
After that, lots of people come up to me, primarily women come up to me, because women can relate, not just African-American women, but keeping their hair from being gray. I have a woman who told me directly that she had a leader tell her, “And get rid of that gray, because people won’t… You look old.” Because she grayed early and she was in her 20s when she started to gray.
Warwick F:
Oh, my gosh.
Tracy J. E:
But here’s what really got me, is a white male came up to me afterwards and said, “Thank you for sharing your story.” I was a bit shocked. I said, “Okay, sure.” Because he in the majority. There’s a bunch of him. So I’m like, “For sure. You struggling. You’re really struggling to make it to the top.”
Tracy J. E:
But he said, “I have often not felt that I could fit in because I like to wear a beard, but none of the men here wear a beard. And I’m going to start wearing a beard, because that is what I like to do in the wintertime. But none of the men here, none of the executives here, none of the folks who report to the CEO, they don’t wear beards. And I didn’t want to be unsuccessful. But that’s who I am.” I was just so surprised that that resonated for him, in terms of how he wants to show himself to the world.
Warwick F:
There’s a sort of a little secret here that people, I don’t think, fully realize, every human on the planet is insecure.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
Some show it by the shyness and reticence, others by their bravado and arrogance. But arrogance is just a sign of insecurity, deep insecurity, frankly. So we’re all like that. It’s funny, I grew up in about as different a background from you as possible to grow up in Australia from a very wealthy, affluent, 150 year old media dynasty, very respected family in the community because we owned the equivalent of Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. It’s one thing to have money, it’s another thing to be respected for generations as positive contributors to society. You’re used to hit all the benchmarks, right? You can have money, but be vilified.
Warwick F:
But yet Australia being a very egalitarian place, which is good in a lot of ways, even though I went to a very good boys, private school, everybody would say, “So, Warwick you think you’re better than us, do you?” Because their dads or mothers, they were bankers and lawyers, which you make a fair amount of money, but that’s not like media mogul level. In my own small little way, it’s like I wanted to be normal. I wanted to fit in. But I felt like I was in a class of one. Because nobody was sort of like our family.
Warwick F:
Very different background, not trying to compare it, not saying, “Oh, it was also terrible.” It wasn’t. It’s nothing compared to what your mom went through. But my point is, as I was starting to talk about my story, it’s like, who would want to hear my story about losing a 150 year old $2 billion business? Who would care?
Warwick F:
The time that changed for me is, we go to a nondenominational church in Maryland and I shared my story with just some regular folks. It’s like, they said, “Thank you, Warwick. Your story helped me.” How in the world can my story help any other human on the planet? Because nobody has gone through what I’ve gone through in that sense. Not that it’s so bad, but it’s in a small way a bit like your story. How in the world can a wild hair example of an African-American woman help some white guy? How in the world? But it could.
Warwick F:
I’ve learned in my own small way, how your truth, your story, if it’s shared with authenticity and vulnerability, can actually help other people. We think, “Oh, nobody can relate to me, because I’m so different.” In a very different way, I’ve sort of not felt what you felt, but you get what I’m trying to say. Is people tend to be insecure and tend to be, “Nobody really would understand me. If I tell them about who I am, nobody will. They’ll laugh or they’ll reject me.” Every human’s like that.
Warwick F:
When you share your truth, it allows other people to do that. It won’t solve everything, but it’ll help more than you know. Anyway, long-winded way of saying I agree with you. But does that kind of make sense at all?
Tracy J. E:
It totally makes sense. I think that that’s a very powerful point in these times in particular. When we think about how divided our country has been and continues to be quite honestly, that power of human connection, is where we can start to build communication. My story and your story may seem like they don’t relate to the people that we tell them to, to our audiences.
Tracy J. E:
But invariably, we have someone who says, “You know what? I get that. Because, here’s my story.” What that created, was communication and dialogue and understanding between two people at a human level. Once we can start to really humanize one another, we can build from there in terms of the issues that we address. We may not always agree on things, but we’ve reached a place of commonality of humankind.
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Tracy J. E:
I think that’s what’s so critical in resolving some of these issues today. Because, like I said in my bio, I am an intelligent mother of a black son and I worry daily for his life, simply because of the skin he’s in.
Warwick F:
Sure.
Tracy J. E:
So for me to be able to make connections with others who don’t look like me and have a different point of view, that’s powerful. That’s how some of these issues can be resolved. Maybe one day I won’t worry every night.
Warwick F:
I think what you’re saying is so profound because, when you know somebody and their story and you humanize them, it’s hard to hate somebody that you view as a human being. I’m not an expert in racism, I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a sociologist. But just looking at history, people who are hated, often it’s because of gross ignorance and you don’t know them as people. You think of them as objects. Whether it’s Nazi Germany or wherever, there’s a lot of terrible examples of racism and inhumanity.
Warwick F:
But you start to know somebody as a real person, you might have all sorts of baggage and all sorts of screws loose, but it will tend to maybe melt the iceberg a little bit. If you treat them as a human, if you seek to understand them. I love that phrase of St. Francis of Assisi, “Seek first to understand then be understood.” It sounds really radical. “What do you mean?” Your mother was actually living that in a lot of ways.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
Again, I’m not excusing anything, but the more we can try to understand people who are different than us, it’s hard to hate people that you like and care for and understand. It makes it harder, right? Why wouldn’t we want to make hatred harder and coalitions more possible.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. And we moved from labels, putting me in a category of Democrat or Republican, Trump supporter. We get away from the labels and we go down a layer and we start to see each other as like you said, humans, individuals, feelings. There’s a lot of similarities amongst the diversity.
Gary S:
And a key way of doing that is what this conversation has been sort of orbiting around. That is, wild hair, right? Is the metaphor of wild hair. Meaning, the true essence of who you are. You are far, far more, Tracy, than your hair. But your hair is emblematic of who you are. To suppress that, denies the world the opportunity to know you. Denies you the opportunity to be known by the world. That’s why it’s so important, why you’ve discovered such freedom to pursue new things in your career when you’ve made that decision to let that essence of yourself, that emblem of yourself show through.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. It’s about kind of giving yourself that gift of acknowledging and being everything that you can be. That means you can’t deny part of your essence. We can only rise to the level of our authenticity. We only go as high as we keep it real. We have to be, again, that self honesty comes in, and sometimes that’s depicted externally, like in my hair, but most times it’s that inner work of what I really want and having the courage to pursue it in your career. That’s really important.
Tracy J. E:
What I try to do with everyone that I coach, is tap into the sense of what really defines them, their values, what is important to them. It starts being from a place of values and what you value in your life and the change you want to make in this world. Then we can define our careers in lots of different ways. We can’t let other things dictate who we are and what we value.
Warwick F:
I just want listeners to understand what you just said, because it’s so profound. I love, in your book, you talk about “authentic values alignment” more than just work life, which is related, but slightly different. But just helping listeners, whether it’s African-American women, women in general or people in general, it’s just be true to who you are and what you believe and follow a purpose that’s in line with those values.
Warwick F:
We actually talk about this in a sense in Crucible Leadership, is understanding your values, belief systems, faith, wherever it comes from and having a purpose that aligns with that. Then as you start to make career and job choices, it’s like, “Okay, does this organization, is this going to embrace who I am and my values? Can I be my authentic self? If I’m not, then see you. Moving on to the next place.”
Warwick F:
If you have some drive, there will hopefully be some options. That is so true, especially with young people starting out. You can obviously help folks in their 40s, 50s, beyond, but helping young people learn this at the beginning, rather than later on, that’s so huge. When you talk people, especially let’s say young women of color, do they hear what you’re saying? Or do they say, “That’s good for you, Tracy? But this isn’t the real world.” You say, “Well, I’ve lived in the real world for decades.”
Warwick F:
Do you have like some challenging conversations in which they say, “I’m not buying it. I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. This is Disneyland. What are you talking about?” How do people that you’re trying to persuade of your message, how do they respond? Do they hear you, or do they just think you’re just full of it and just don’t know what you’re talking about?
Tracy J. E:
Sometimes it is challenging for the younger generation in those conversations. I test this out on my children who are 35, 32, 23, 20, the ones that are out there in the workforce. I find that those that are a little bit older millennials, the 30s, tend to pick up on this because now they’ve lived a little bit and they’ve seen this. But the conversation with the 20 year old, 23 year old, they come from an environment and I don’t like to label groups, but I think what we can say about that generation, is they are a generation that had access to technology from birth.
Tracy J. E:
Unlike me, I didn’t. I grew and then technology came in and I learned it. What that has done is it’s created this sense of hyper-connectivity, this sense of immediate gratification, the sense of access. So those things are happening constantly. There isn’t always the time made to reflect on values. Values, honestly get shaped by what they are connecting to and seeing thrown at them in some ways.
Tracy J. E:
I literally had a conversation with my son a couple of days ago, where we were talking about the amount of crime that we’re seeing in our city, the city of Indianapolis. And especially the black men who are being killed or killing one another. The conversation is centered around what kids or young adults their age, want. And it’s money, it’s success.
Tracy J. E:
When you come from an underrepresented and a socioeconomically challenged area, you don’t always see the ways to get that better, safe and honest and value based. What you see is how can I get this in a way that’s may not always be legal, it’s the quickest way to get there. Sometimes I think that the much younger end of the millennial generation, does struggle with defining their values.
Tracy J. E:
Now, I was pleased to say, and I have to give my son a plug, that he talked about what he had learned at home. While he shares their perspective of, “I want it now,” there are just absolutely some things he won’t do, in terms of illegal things that he just won’t do to get it. We as parents, we play a strong role when we show up authentically and drive a values based family system. But also, we have to remember that our children are impacted by so many things outside of our control.
Warwick F:
It’s really a values war. They’re going to learn these lessons at some point, but hopefully it’s not like on their death bed. One of the things we talked about, is legacy. When you’re having your last breath or it’s your kids and grandkids at your funeral, what is it you want them to say about you? At that point, you don’t want to say, “Yeah, I was married three times, my kids don’t know me. Oops.” You don’t want to be having that as your last thought.
Warwick F:
We talk a lot about success versus significance. I mean, there’s a reason we talk about lead a life of significance. Again, this is an area where I know something about, because I grew up in about as wealthy, a background, as you can. I can tell you, there’s a lot of wealthy people that are unhappy, kids on drugs, on their third or fourth marriage or beyond. I mean, okay, you have all this money and you’re miserable. So what? It is possible to be successful, have money and to be a blessing. Let’s say you have focused on others, perhaps, maybe philanthropic. But just there’s a way that money can be a blessing. It doesn’t have to be a curse.
Warwick F:
But the idea that money makes you happy, that’s a lie that some in the world preach. But everybody realizes that at some point, but you don’t want it to be on your death bed when it’s like, “Oops.” I get why a lot of young people are thinking that way, but it’s a false God. It’s an idol, the risk of getting spiritual. You can be successful, you can achieve, you can go for it and be happy. You want to be happy? Think of others on the way up. Think of the bigger picture. Don’t just think of yourself. A self-motivated vision won’t lead to joy. If that makes sense.
Gary S:
That is a perfect time, I think I heard the captain turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. It’s getting close to the point that we’re going to land the plane. But before we do that, I want to do a couple of things. And, Warwick, I’ll give you another chance, of course, to ask Tracy a question. But Tracy, the first thing is, how can listeners find out about your book, Wild Hair? Where can they find out more about you and about your book?
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. They can go out to my website, it’s tracyjedmonds.com and it’s Tracy with a Y-
Gary S:
And Edmonds with an O.
Tracy J. E:
Edmonds with the O. That’s exactly what I was going to say. On there, you’ll find out everything about me and you can scroll down to the bottom of any page and subscribe to get information about the book release and to stay in touch with me.
Gary S:
Fabulous. That last bit of conversation that you and Warwick had, Warwick was talking about legacy. And listeners, if you’ve been with us from the outset here, you heard early on in the conversation, Tracy said to me, “Well, I’m not a poet.” That comment came from something that happened, unless you’re watching us on YouTube, if you’re listening to us just in a podcast app, you didn’t hear the whole thing.
Gary S:
That is, we ask guests to give us their bio and most guests copy and paste from their corporate page, here’s their bio. Tracy did something different and I think better and beautiful. Tracy wrote what I described, or Warwick described, as a poem. I’d like you Tracy, as we do begin to land the plane, to just read for listeners. Because I think this is a perfect legacy. If one’s going to leave a legacy, what you wrote here is a great legacy of your life from stem to stern. Would you read what you wrote to us as your biography?
Tracy J. E:
I’d be happy to. I am a daughter, sister, mother, a wife, a friend, a survivor of loss, a rebuilder. I am an entrepreneur with depression, a speaker with anxiety, a successful chief diversity officer and a recovering corporate soldier. An author, a listener, a fearful, intelligent, black woman with a son. An open mind and open heart. A leader, a Lakers fan. I am a failure fighter success. Complicated, multi-dimensional, unexpected. A coach, a consultant, a fierce believer in possibility. Always growing real.
Gary S:
Warwick, you’re braver than me to say something after that. I would wrap. But I’ll let you have the last question and then I’ll wrap the show after you and Tracy have a chat.
Warwick F:
I just want to say thank you Tracy, for being here. I just found your message really inspirational. Just that metaphor of the wild hair. It’s funny, in the spiritual circles actually baptism, they talk about an outward manifestation of an inner transformation. You go to a baptism class and a Baptist church. My church is not Baptist, but I guess philosophically, I guess it probably would be. That’s in a sense what you’re talking about. It’s an outward manifestation of the inner transformation. Being authentically yourself.
Warwick F:
I love that just championing women of color in particular women. But I would say your message is focused on that, but I think it is helpful to all human beings on this planet, being yourself, not compromising, being true to your values, living a life of purpose, that’s based on your values. That’s a message everybody needs to hear. I’m an optimist by nature, all things being equal, that will help you be more than less successful, though I’m not naïve. But that’s a message that I’d say all people need to hear. I just found it very inspiring, and thank you so much for being here.
Tracy J. E:
Thank you.
Gary S:
Well, that’s interesting. I say to Warwick, “Do you really want to follow what Tracy just said?” And then Warwick steals what I was going to say? That’s pretty much the summary I was going to give. The idea about crucibles being an opportunity to ask, “What can I learn?” The idea of embracing authenticity and following your values as Tracy calls it, “authentic values alignment.”
Gary S:
Warwick, it’s funny, you didn’t really follow Tracy, but you stole from me, which is great, because you’re the host of the show and that’s the way it should be. With that, listener, we want to thank you for spending this time with us today. We have a little bit of a favor to ask you, Warwick. And I do, if you like what you’ve heard here, please click “subscribe” on the podcast app on which you’re listening right now, trundle over to the spot where you can leave a rating for us as well. What those things do, is allow us to get the show out to more people and more conversations like this one with Tracy Edmonds, that offer hope and healing through times of crucible.
Gary S:
Speaking of crucibles, remember this, as we part for today. Your crucibles are painful, there is no doubt about that. What Tracy described here today, was some painful times. What Warwick has described from the outset of this podcast that we’ve had here, has been some painful times. Your crucibles are real and they are painful. But, they are not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning of your story.
Gary S:
That new beginning, for you, can be the start of a chapter in your story, that’s the most rewarding chapter yet. The reason why, is because what Warwick said and what Tracy explained, both of them in their own ways, have made this to be true. Why it can be the most fulfilling time of your life, is because in the end, that road you’re on, when you learn the lessons of your crucible and apply them, is a road that leads to a life of significance.
Visionaries who are also mavericks, who prefer to conquer what needs to be conquered as a solo expedition, often find themselves foiled by crucibles that could have been overcome had they taken a team approach. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax unpacks why some leaders reject the aid of a team as they pursue their vision while others embrace tackling a mission together — and why the latter are usually more successful than the former. Yes, pursuing your vision with a team requires more patience on your part and a willingness to share the credit and let others have a substantive say in the goals you’re going after. But the benefits of camaraderie, the right mix of skills needed to get the job done and valuable input that can actually make your vision better while helping make it a reality are more than worth it.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. You’ve got to realize you’re going to have to share the credit. But after all, is it about the vision or is it about your ego? And you pretty much have to choose. If it’s about your ego, then give up the vision because the chance of it succeeding, it’s not impossible, but it’s pretty low. So check your ego at the door. Learn a bit of humility and say, “Look, if this vision is so important, I just need to have a bit of humility and realize I might need to hire some great people. Some of whom might be better, quicker, faster, smarter than I am.” But what’s wrong with that, if it will help you accomplish the vision? The only reason it’s wrong is, if you’ve got a fragile ego, well, if you’ve got a fragile ego, then get a stronger ego, and if you can’t do that, give up and don’t try to accomplish the vision.
Gary S:
Those are some pretty direct words from Warwick on this week’s episode, but they are critical words if you want to make your vision a reality in the wake of your crucible, or to avoid a crucible. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. What Warwick and I talk about today is the essential role, the indispensable role really, a team plays in you accomplishing the mission or goal for which you are charting a course. You’ll learn key tips like the aforementioned need for humility. Plus the value of selecting a team based on character, and not just job talent. Surrounding yourself with individuals who have the skill sets that will best serve your vision and why you need to be patient and not rush the process or skip vital steps along the way. If it’s true, as you’ve likely heard, “That without a vision, the people perish, then without the steps laid out here, your vision will likely perish.”
Gary S:
What we’re going to talk about today, listeners is I don’t know, maybe it’s a subject that you are a little wary of and it is… Here’s the title I’ve come up with as an organizing construct for what we’re doing. Without a team, a vision is just daydreaming. That’s what I came up with on the top of my paper right here. That’s what I wrote down. Warwick, why is that if it is, I hope it is. Why is that a good summary of the importance of teamwork to bringing a vision to reality?
Warwick F:
Typically to get a vision, to get a dream to happen, you can’t do it alone. It’s tempting to want to do it alone, but nobody has all the gifts, all the skills, all the experience to make a dream, to make a vision become reality. And so pretty much in the vast majority of cases, if you don’t have a team, your vision as we say is dead on arrival, it won’t happen. And so that is the cold, hard reality. How much does your vision matter? If it matters to you a lot, rightly or wrongly from your perspective, you are going to need to consider having a team. It’s not really an option in the vast majority of endeavors to not have a team for that vision to happen.
Gary S:
Now you use the phrase cold, hard reality. That’s not usually used for things that are sunshine and puppy dogs, right? That phrase is normally used for things that can be arduous, that can be difficult, that can involve friction and headbutting and those kinds of things. Why did you choose those words? Why are people especially leaders, why are they loathe sometimes to not just embrace a team, but create a team to help them enact their vision?
Warwick F:
It’s an interesting question. Think about the profile of a typical visionary. They’re typically passionate, determined, surrender is not an option. They’ve got perseverance, but very often they want to do it themselves. They’re impatient. When you have a group of people, it can take so long, endless meetings, endless discussion. The team doesn’t get it, after all it’s not their vision, it’s your vision. Visionaries are like, “I just want to do it myself. People are just annoying. They just get in the way. I just want to get this thing done. Let’s just go, let’s make it happen.” People can be a pain in the neck, a drag, it’s just get out of the way, people are the enemy at times.
Warwick F:
I mean, I’m overdramatizing a bit, but the typical founder just the whole team thing, it can certainly make things longer. Why would I want to do that? Now, sometimes they’ll grudgingly do that, but it’s kind of kicking and screaming. It’s not like, “Oh, joy. I have to have a team, right?” It’s like, “Oh, joy. I need to go to the dentist.” Well, if you need a filling, if you don’t go to the dentist, you’re going to be in pain. So ultimately it’s like, I may be afraid of dentists, I may not like them, but I’m going to go because what choice do I have? Pain or solve the pain? But you don’t go, “Oh, joy. I’m going to the dentist. It’s the highlight of my day.” So typically leaders feel about getting a team the way they think of going to the dentist, it’s a necessary evil.
Gary S:
I mean, here’s another thing that undergirds these teams are by definition filled with people. People are by definition folks with opinions and views on how to do things and the larger your team, and by large, I don’t even mean 8,000 people. If you’ve got five or six people on your team, you’re going to have five or six different opinions about pretty much every aspect of that vision. And I think one of the challenges, one of the roadblocks to creating a team is this idea that as we go through things, we’re going to go two steps forward, one step back, or one step forward, and two steps back. We’re going to butt heads. We’re not going to see eye to eye.
Gary S:
We’re not going to get along and we’re not going to move the ball down the field. Which is an interesting metaphor, because in order to move a ball down the field in a football game, you got to have a team, right? I mean, one person out there… Tom Brady, as we’re recording this episode, Tom Brady just won his seventh Super Bowl. But Tom Brady hasn’t won a single one of those without a team. We can have a separate podcast if he’s the GOAT or not, even Tom Brady needs a team to make his vision a reality.
Warwick F:
It does, but for all those would be Tom Bradys, it’s like the problem with the team is, I’m throwing to a particular route and the receiver is on the wrong route. So it gets intercepted. I mean, what a pain? I was hoping people would block right, but they didn’t block right, and I got sacked. So it’s like, even people that want to be, would be Tom Brady’s. It’s like, yeah. You know what happens? It sounds good in theory, Gary, but I’ll get sacked when the receiver will go the wrong route and I’ll get intercepted. That’s what team means, if anyone wants to be cynical, you need it, but you don’t want to get sacked or intercepted either.
Gary S:
Right. Before we move on into some of the tips on how to create a team, we should stop and camp out a little bit about, what does success look like with a team? I mean, if you can’t make a vision a reality without a team, what does it look like with a team? I brought up Tom Brady and he’s won seven Super Bowls all with a team. But a couple of quotes that I pulled together that I thought were extremely interesting, and here’s football again, not that I want to camp out here all day, but Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach of my Green Bay Packers said this once, “Individual commitment to a group effort, that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, and a civilization work.” If you prefer to move out of the sports arena and get into the leadership business space, here’s something Andrew Carnegie said, “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.” Exactly what we’re talking about. “The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objective. It is the fuel that allows common people to obtain uncommon results.”
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, those are great quotes. I mean, a great team will be comprised of a diverse set of backgrounds and the skills who, as committed, if not more committed than you are to the mission, it’s really a case of one-and-one equals three. That’s what a team does. It’s greater than the sum of its parts. So picture you have a team that’s even more committed than you are to the vision. They’re all on the same page that the diverse set of skills and things that just go like it’s autopilot. I mean, there’s a beauty of a team when it works well. I mean, I can think of probably my favorite sport to participate in growing up was rowing or crew as they say here. And I rowed in eights, obviously eight people in a rowing shell.
Warwick F:
And I remember one time when I was rowing for my college at Oxford, Balliol College, and the boat I was in was probably they were little bit more talented, maybe a lot more talented than I was, but when you’re rowing with seven other people and you’re rowing in complete unison, the boat is flying through the water. It’s steady. It’s just a beautiful thing. Obviously, when you’re not rowing together and the boat’s going side to side, and it can be a little painful, but when you’re all rowing in unison, I mean, to me, I often think of rowing as the ultimate team sport, because if one person’s not rowing hard, it makes everybody else’s job so much tougher. So it’s a feeling you never forget when you’re in that zone so to speak, as they say in sports, where everything is in complete harmony, and it’s just graceful, it’s movement and you’re all functioning as one, that’s the feeling of a great team.
Gary S:
Yeah. And we haven’t talked about this beforehand, but it just popped in my head. One of the things that you write about in your upcoming book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance coming this fall from Morgan James Publishing, one of the things you write about, one of the people you write about there, you talk about historical figures and their successes and the things that they learned through their crucibles. And there’s one that sticks out to me. And we haven’t talked about this in advance, but with all that Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, you talk about Louie Howe one of his advisors. And to me, that’s an example of Roosevelt people think he’s this like grand, he did it all by himself. And nobody really does anything by themselves, but Louie Howe was very critical to Roosevelt’s ability to achieve the successes he achieved in his presidency.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. As listeners probably know, in the early ’20s Roosevelt got polio, which is very rare even back then for an adult. And his legs pretty much were paralyzed. He could move very ungainly with these massive heavy braces. And it seemed like his political career was finished. This was an era where if you had polio, it was like a life death sentence. You meant to just sit at home while the rest of your years away, somehow it was a shameful thing, even though clearly it’s not your fault. But with the help of his wife, Eleanor and Louie Howe, they helped him realize, you know what, life’s not over. Louis Howe helped Eleanor go around the state of New York speaking. And she was more of a introverted, shy person, but very determined woman.
Warwick F:
She kept his name in the political press circles and Louie Howe was just master behind the scenes campaign director and really helped Franklin Roosevelt become governor of New York and then ultimately president. But, yeah, he had an amazing team Louie Howe and Franklin’s wife, Eleanor, that really believed in him and his mission, certainly without Eleanor but without both of them, nobody would really have heard of Franklin Roosevelt, other than somebody that was on the ticket of a Democratic candidate that lost in the early ’20s, but he wouldn’t have become president.
Gary S:
And it goes back to what I said is the organizing construct for this conversation, without a team, a vision is just a daydream. Without those folks that you’ve just talked about, his wife and Louie Howe, Franklin Roosevelt was a daydream. Maybe he wanted to be president, maybe he wanted to rise to… But he could not have made it happen. And I think it’s safe to say, right? Anybody, any person that we could think of who’s achieved greatness has a team underneath them.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Gary S:
There are very few mavericks who don’t have at least some people behind them who are helping them along the way.
Warwick F:
That’s so true.
Gary S:
So you’ve put together in a recent blog, some tips, some guidelines for people, for leaders to navigate how to create a team. It seems to me, one of the ways to avoid some of those conflicts we talked about early on, and you just hinted at it a little bit. One of the ways to avoid those conflicts is to get the right people on the bus, as Jim Collins would say. You want the right people on the bus, in the right seats. And there are ways that you can go about compiling a team that can both help your vision become reality and also help you from going crazy in the process. Right?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, there are some key things you need to look for in a team. I think as you’re doing that, the first thing you need to do is really change your attitude. And we’ve talked about this a little bit in our discussion here, but you need to stop the whining, stop the complaining. Or as we say in Australia, stop the whinging, which is like whining squared. It’s worse than whining, whinging. No whinging. It’s like, “Okay, I know it’s going to take longer. You’re going to have to talk about the vision a gazillion times, and they’re not going to get it initially. So you can have to talk about it more and engage them.” And we’ll talk a bit about how you do that in a moment. But, yeah, it’s going be a pain in the neck and it’s going to be difficult, but ultimately it’s worth it because there’s a difference between succeeding and failing.
Warwick F:
And if you really care about your vision, then you know what? You just got to suck it up and do what it takes to get the right people and get them all engaged. So really, before you start hiring people, change your attitude, okay? Quit whining, quit whinging, quit complaining, and realizing this is going to make your vision succeed. So if there’s one thing that you should never remember as you’re doing this, is your vision important or not? Do you want your dream to succeed or fail? It’s a binary choice. It’s yes or no. If your vision is that important, suck it up, change your attitude and get your head in the game, so to speak and realize you need a team. So that’s the first thing, change your attitude.
Gary S:
Is there a little bit of maybe in some cases, ego that pops into this, the reason for not wanting to have a team, I used the word maverick a little while ago. Is there this maverick go it alone, independent, do it myself, I don’t need anybody. Can ego play in there and is that part of what you have to suppress and change in your attitude?
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean very insightful point. Absolutely. You’ve got to realize you’re going to have to share the credit, but after all, is it about the vision or is about your ego? And you pretty much have to choose. If it’s about your ego, then give up the vision because the chance of it succeeding, it’s not impossible, but it’s pretty low. So check your ego at the door. Learn a bit of humility and say, “Look, if this vision is so important, I just need to have a bit of humility and realize I might need to hire some great people. Some of whom might be better, quicker, faster, smarter than I am, but what’s wrong with that if it will help you accomplish the vision. The only reason it’s wrong is if you’ve got a fragile ego, well, if you’ve got a fragile ego, then get a stronger ego, and if you can’t do that, give up and don’t try to accomplish the vision.
Gary S:
Do some ego pushups and that will help build your ego muscle, not in the way that we tend to think of it, which is an overactive ego, but to have a more elastic ego, one that can bring other people into the team, into the vision. And that leads logically, Warwick, to your second point.
Warwick F:
Yeah, absolutely. And so this is where you could read 10 different leadership books and they will say this point, but it’s very rarely done. So it’s not always you have in management something in which all leadership management experts agree, but which typically doesn’t get done, which doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. There are a lot of things in life in which experts disagree, not this one. And that’s what this is. And that’s basically, you hire for character and attitude and alignment to the mission first, skill second. So basically if you had to boil it down to its most critical character first, skill second. Now, typically what happens is, let’s hire the person with the most experience and Ivy League degrees. And look, there’s nothing wrong with Ivy League. I mean, I did, my undergrad as listeners know at Oxford and got my MBA from Harvard Business School.
Warwick F:
So I’m not against education, but just because you went to the so-called right schools and even if you have experience, which is obviously helpful, it’s character, that’s the most important thing. And so people might say, “Well, what do you mean by character?” And so what I mean by that is, part of it is what Jim Collins talks about in Good To Great level five leaders. Yes, you want people that are driven and determined, but you want people who are humble back again to the ego. You might have to check your ego at the door or your team does too, because you cannot get on with a team if everybody wants to be the prima donna and have the lights shine on them all the time. So you want them to be driven, but they need to be humble.
Warwick F:
They need to be team players. They need to want to learn from others. If they say they’re going to get something done, they will get it done. There are certain key characteristics that you want. And here’s the thing is, some people talk about hire for character or hire for attitude, train for skills. Why do people say that? Because skills, at least if you have some degree of natural ability or some degree of aptitude, if you are good with numbers and are detail orientated, if you train somebody in accounting, they can usually get it. I’m not talking about training somebody that hates math and is not detail orientated. That’s probably not a good use of time. But assuming there’s some degree of natural aptitudes, let’s assume there’s some degree of training, rather than hire the best accountant or the salesperson who has this great degree, who are the people that you feel like have the right aptitude, the right character?
Warwick F:
That’s really the most important thing. And it flies in the face of what people do. Why? Because if you’re an HR manager or a line manager and you say, “Okay, who did you hire? Well, I hired somebody with 20 years experience at GE or X, big company. Their undergrad was at Cornell or Dartmouth or somewhere.” Okay, great. And so some other person might say, “Well, I didn’t hire that person. I hired somebody with five years experience at a smaller company. And they went to a state school in Nebraska.” If that doesn’t work out, what happens? You passed up the Ivy League person with 15 years of experience with GE, for somebody with a smaller company that went to some small college in Nebraska, really?
Warwick F:
That’s the problem. If it doesn’t work out, it’s like, well, look at the pedigree. How can you… So people are risk averse and how in the world do you measure character? I mean, I described it, but it’s not quantifiable. Therefore, it feels risky. And people hate risk. So that’s why people might say, I hear what you’re saying, but… That’s the problem.
Gary S:
I found an article from… speaking of Ivy League schools and speaking of Harvard. The Harvard Business Review wrote an article a few years back on eight ways to build collaborative teams and among the eight factors that they listed that lead to success go right to the point that you’re just talking about. Their fourth point was ensuring the requisite skills for the team to be successful. And here’s what they wrote, the folks who wrote this article. Human resources department that teach employees how to build relationships, how to communicate well and how to resolve conflicts creatively can have a major impact on team collaboration. So there you’ve got HR departments who aren’t looking at the location or the pedigree of the university, or the education as much as what are those “softer skills”, those relational skills, those being able to work together skills, people who can find that, that is a huge determiner in how successful a team will be.
Warwick F:
It is. And it reminds me of Daniel Goleman’s work in emotional intelligence. There’s a lot of notoriety the last 10, 15 years or more. And he talks about these softer skills, like the ability to persuade, but the ability to listen, to empathize, those are critical components when you have people on your team that want to listen and they want to compromise in a good sense. They want to find, okay, where’s the win-win in this with other team members. They can empathize with others. It’s extremely hard to teach those skills. You either wired that way, or it’s linked to your innermost values, people’s innermost values and wiring tend not to change. Try to train people for values. It’s not impossible, but training people for skills is infinitely easier than values and inherent wiring.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think more and more people realize it’s important. What it really comes down to is you got to have some guts, some courage to do what you know is right. And take some risks in hiring people that may have a little less pedigree, a little less experience. They have the raw talent, but more than the talent, they have the character, the attitude. It’s funny, I came across this in the paper today, speaking of Tom Brady. Okay? I’m sure you’re familiar with this. So here’s his scouting report, his NFL draft evaluation about Tom Brady. “Poor build, skinny, lacks great physical stature and arms strength, lacks mobility, and the ability to avoid the rush, lacks a really strong arm. Can’t drive the ball down field, does not throw a really tight spiral, system type play who can get exposed if forced to ad-lib, gets knocked down easily.” That’s the scouting report. I think from memory, I think he went in the fifth round or something.
Gary S:
Yeah, fifth or six round. Yeah.
Warwick F:
So if you look at that, it’s like, “Well, okay, case closed.” But what’s this missing? Some of that’s true. I don’t think he’s the most mobile quarterback in the world, but what’s that missing? It is missing his heart, his character, his work ethic, his ability to learn to grow. I mean, the way he keeps himself fit, physically and nutrition is off the charts. He’s what? 43 or something?
Gary S:
He’s 43. You’re right.
Warwick F:
So, why would you hire Tom Brady? Well, not based on the scouting report, right? You would never draft the guy based on this, and it’s not all wrong, what this is saying. It just misses stuff. It misses his heart and his determination. And that’s why he’s as great as he is. Do you want to be the one that misses a potential Tom Brady on your team, because of some superficial evaluation that misses the heart? No.
Gary S:
Right. And yet it is true. And I think the third point that you bring out in your blog about the importance of teams and how to construct them, it is true that you do need people who have, as you put it, a diverse set of skills, skills are important, you can’t ignore them. So, what’s the key about finding a diverse set of skills in the folks you put on your team?
Warwick F:
Well, first of all, you got to recognize that you need it. And I know it may sound obvious, if you’re in a organization, yes you’re going to need engineers, manufacturing types, research and development, marketing, sales, finance, you’re going to need a broad range of skills. But sometimes what happens is, if you’re a can-do person that wants to get something done yesterday, some of these people are going to be like chains, you’re going to have an accountant saying, “Well, I’m not sure about the cost analysis here. It’s looking a little dubious.” You’ll have marketing and sales saying, “I’m not sure if the market really wants that product.” The engineer is like, “I’m not sure we can design a product that will actually function properly. Certainly not at a cost effective price.”
Warwick F:
So it sounds good. But inevitably, depending on your personality, typically people with diverse skills have diverse personalities. The type of personality required to be in marketing sales and an accounting or engineering is radically different in almost all cases. So you first got to realize some of these people are going to be annoying to you, but they’re doing their job. Let them do their job even if it’s like, “Oh my gosh, here we go.” Wait, because the engineering folks saying, I don’t think we were quite ready yet. Sometimes they will be overly cautious, but sometimes it’s like you know what? Maybe it’s not ready. If you’re building a car, do you want the wheels to fall off. If the engineering saying, “One of those parts seem a little brittle and the tests don’t look good.” Well, maybe you might want to wait.
Warwick F:
I mean, imagine if you flying an airline, you are not going to ignore the safety folks saying, “Yeah, we’re all worried about that engine. It’s causing some problems more often than it needs to.” So I think part of it is recognizing you will need a diverse set of skills. And the other thing comes back to humility. You’re going to find people on your team because they have skills that you don’t, that in their area, you might feel like, boy, I’m a moron. I’m an idiot compared to them in their area. And that’s okay. You cannot be the expert at everything. Park your ego at the door, assemble a team who know more than you do in their area, because collectively the sum of all those wonderful people will be a set of skills and capabilities that will be mind blowing.
Warwick F:
So it sounds obvious, but people don’t tend to like to hire the best and the brightest in their areas. In part because of ego, and in part because their personalities will be different and you will get annoyed. You will get frustrated. Inevitably, you know you’re going to get frustrated, certain people with different skillsets that you know you need them, but it’s going to be frustrating.
Gary S:
And for listeners who are also viewers, who are watching this on YouTube, you may notice on my sport coat I am wearing six lapel pins and to Warwick’s point about a variety of skills and they can be annoying. And sometimes there can be headbutts. These are six lapel pins of The Avengers. You’ve got Captain America, Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, and Black Panther. You got strength, you got speed. You got stealth, you got smarts. You’ve got all these different things going on. And the unit, The Avengers, is greater than each individual member. But boy, if you’ve seen the movies and read the comic books, they can fight. They end up saving the earth, but they get bruised themselves from themselves sometimes in getting there. And that is true sometimes of many teams in the real world.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, they needle each other. I mean, I don’t know if it was The Avengers, but wasn’t there a superhero movie where they had like a civil war or something between them?
Gary S:
Yep. That was The Avengers. Captain America and Iron Man, they’re at the top of my lapel pin. It’s right here.
Warwick F:
Yeah. On opposite sides of your sport coat, funnily enough.
Gary S:
Yeah, I planned that.
Warwick F:
So you don’t want to be like that movie. You want to realize, “Okay, come on. We don’t need to have a war. We’re on the same team, we have different strengths, but let’s harmonize here.”
Gary S:
In your experience Warwick, do you have an example of what you’ve been talking about here for the last few minutes plays out? Do you have an example, be it personal or historical that you could point to that can help listeners understand in real time, real terms, how this way of compiling the team works?
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, obviously there are ones in history. You think of Abraham Lincoln, he had a team of rivals who were… They were so-called a team of rivals because they were his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination. And they each thought that the better man hadn’t won. So initially they didn’t respect him, but because he felt like they were the best people for the job, he assembled a very diverse group of people who were on his cabinet. So committed was he to the team that I remember one of them, Samuel Chase, I believe was treasury secretary. And the guy was really good treasury secretary, but the guy had a massive ego and he just did whatever he could to undermine Lincoln. Eventually he went one step too far.
Warwick F:
He kept submitting his resignation as some political ploy to try to get more power and eventually reluctantly Lincoln accepted it. But then what he ends up doing is nominating him to be chief justice at the Supreme Court. And this is a guy that did his level best to undermine Lincoln, but Lincoln said, “He’s the right person for the job.” And so that’s was remarkable, but it wasn’t easy, but he assembled a diverse group of people, irrespective of the opinion that they had of him because the country and in the throes of Civil War at the time he assembled them, probably about to go to war. He needed the best people, whether they liked him or not. So that’s really taking team and putting your own personal agenda aside, just at the ultimate level.
Gary S:
Yeah. And that is again, one of those situations where if he had not done that, what we think of Abraham Lincoln, the greatness we see in Abraham Lincoln, those are behind the curtain greatness things that we don’t tend to think about. That’s why the book Team of Rivals is so interesting because it opens the gates on those things that we don’t hear about all the time in the history books or in the movies, where they have the… I mean, movies are all about the hero, right? And I mean, going back a few podcasts ago, the idea of heroic leadership tends not to work. As we discovered with our guests, Joe Badaracco, heroic leadership tends not to work. And in fact, this communal team leadership is the way that things get done that last. I think that’s the safe thing to say.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And if you want to read one single book about a historical figure and how they were able to assemble a team, it’s Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s written as a historical book, but it’s a great book. There’s a lot of lessons for leaders. And what’s the pay off? After he died, these people, that were his rivals, not only were they in tears, but they were praising him as the greatest leader they probably had ever known. I mean, that was… How do you turn people that disrespect you, think you’re this country bumpkin from Illinois, which was way out in the middle of nowhere in 1860, to this deep level of respect? I mean, that’s an amazing transformation.
Gary S:
And another book that comes to mind as we’re talking about these things is actually a book that was the focus of just about half of our podcasts ago, podcast 25, 26, which was ironically the first of two episodes we’ve done that we’re two partners and both of them ended up being because we did another one later, that was also about an Arctic explorer that went around Antarctica, go figure. The book I’m thinking of is Nancy Koehn’s book Forged in Crisis. There are some elements in her chapter on Arctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton that talk about some of the very things we’re talking about here, how do you hire people? How do you find people to be on your team that are going to lend the greatest opportunity for success to your efforts? And she unpacked some things about Shackleton that are a little bit different than what we might expect are the “wise decisions” to make in bringing people on board, literally.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it was a incredible discussion. It was podcast 25 and 26. And really her book is interesting. I mean Forged in Crisis, it deals with some great leaders, it deals with Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer that we’ll explain here in a little bit, Abraham Lincoln, the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer who Lutheran pastor in Nazi Germany that died for his opposition to Hitler. Rachel Carson, that many think is the founder of the modern environmental movement. But Ernest Shackleton was interesting because he was driven in the early 1900s. Think of the space race in the 1960s, US Soviet Union. Well, there was this race to be the first to discover the north pole or south pole between a whole bunch of different countries. And Ernest Shackleton had this vision of being the first to cross Antarctica from one to the other.
Warwick F:
So he leaves in late 1914 and by 1915 he gets stuck in this ice floe basically. He unfortunately was impatient enough that when all the experts said, “Don’t go, the icebergs, the ice floes were as big as we’ve ever seen them.” He decides that he was just going to press ahead anyway. So he gets his team stuck in January, 1915 in an ice floe. And they’re there for about 18 months or so in this ice floe. Finally, he escapes in a small boat and in about August, 1916, he finally rescues his people and he rescues all of them. So, what were his hiring practices, because clearly they’re going to need it. They don’t know it’s going to be this bad, but they’re going to go through a lot. So what kind of people did he hire? And here’s where he didn’t…
Warwick F:
Yeah, he wanted skills obviously, but he really hired for attitude. He was so thorough. One of the things that Nancy Koehn, the author of that book says is that he had 5,000 applicants for 27 spaces. And he was looking for attitude. He would have them do an audition, sing a song, or do a dance, do some play acting. And he was looking for healthy, pragmatic, optimistic people. And he told them, he didn’t sugar coat it. I mean, he said, “It’s not going to be easy.” It’s reported that he placed an ad in the London Times that said this, “Men wanted for hazardous journey, long days, long nights, cold days, danger all around, safe return uncertain. Honor and glory in case of success.”
Gary S:
Yeah. Sign me up.
Warwick F:
So it’s like, “Hey, you got a pretty good chance of dying, but maybe you’ll get some glory who knows?” But he was looking for this pragmatic, optimistic, can-do attitude. Well, if you’re in the middle of… stuck on a boat in Antarctica and it’s absolutely freezing, gale force winds, having people have a pragmatic optimist spirit can do, that’s the difference between life and death. If he just went out and, okay, these are the people who have maybe been on the most polar expeditions and then all about whatever it takes, but they have a crummy attitude, they’re defeatist. I mean, I don’t know if that’s possible to have that, but maybe some better than others. They may well have died. So in this case, hiring for character and attitude was the difference between life and death for him and his team, literally. So I mean, it was really remarkable what he did in 1914 when he was hiring people.
Gary S:
And that’s what we’re talking about for what listeners are going to face in their leadership responsibilities. Probably not literal life and death, but it can be life and death of your company. It can be success of your division. It can be the impact of the nonprofits you lead or the neighborhood association that you run. And these things that Warwick is talking about, these teamwork overlays, how do you pull a team together? These insights will prove invaluable again, not in a literal life and death situation, but it is the difference between in many cases, your vision becoming a reality and your vision being just a daydream, never getting out of your head or getting out of your head and then getting high centered somewhere along that path. I mean, that’s fair to say.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Yeah. I mean, I can think of a more contemporary example of really hiring for the right personality. I’ve been fortunate to be on the elder board of my church and the board of my kids’ school and was involved in governance in both organizations. And in hiring people for the boards of both places, yes, we were looking for a diverse group of people and experiences and talents, but we were also looking for attitudes. And so we had them fill out this application. And certainly one of the questions in both is, do you believe in the mission of the organization, you could be a wonderful human being, but not really be on board with the mission. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are, if you don’t believe in the mission of the organization, then forget it.
Warwick F:
But then we also said, so are you the kind of person that has to be right all the time? Because there’ll be times in which maybe there’s a decision between investing in project A or project B. It’s not a moral issue, typically where there’s disagreement. I mean, it can happen, but hasn’t in the organizations I’ve been involved in, and you might be the only one that believes project A should be invested in and everybody else believes project B. Okay, well, you got to park your ego at the door and say, ” Okay, maybe I lost out on that one, but it’s okay.” Be willing to listen to your fellow board members, speak your truth. Absolutely. We want people that are going to be wallflowers and stand up for what they believe in. But we don’t want people who are ego driven that have to dominate and control.
Warwick F:
And so we specifically look for that. We ask for examples for these things. We even ask people that know them, give us references and we ask them, so tell us about this person. So we spend a lot of time on character and attitude, and what’s the result of being in the vast majority of cases, almost all I’d say, we have had terrific board members on who are collegial, speak their truth not wallflowers, but yet are willing to work together and don’t have to be the prima donna. So even in this state, you don’t have to be Lincoln or Shackleton. It can work today. Those are two non-profits that can work in your non-profit, your team, your board, whatever it is, it is possible to hire for character and attitude.
Gary S:
And the other thing, as you’re hiring for character and attitude, as you’re bringing a team together, the fourth point that you make in your blog is you as the person who is assembling this team, you as the leader, you need to be the chief evangelist for your vision. So as you’re looking to build a team to bring your vision to reality, while that’s going on, while that work is happening, while that team you assembled is moving things down the track, you’ve got to maintain your role as the leader, as the evangelist for that vision. Don’t you?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And so you might be asking in case I got this diverse team, and a lot of good different skills, and a good attitude. So what do I, as the founder do, do I just sit there and see everything happen on autopilot? Well, no. Your chief job is to be the chief evangelist, the chief visionary. It’s your vision after all, as the leader of the organization. If you have no vision, then I would question why do you want to be the leader of the organization? Step down, let somebody else have a go. But assuming you actually have a vision and some passion, which is required to lead anything anywhere, anytime, do not pass go, kind of thing. Then your job is to get everybody on board with that vision. And so it’s not just a matter of, well, I gave one speech once five years ago.
Warwick F:
Isn’t that enough? No, you need to constantly give that speech, but not only do you need to give that speech in that talk, you need to ask people. So how do you see that vision working out in your area? In engineering, in sales and manufacturing, in your department, in your division, in your group? How does that work? Ask them. If they say, “Well, I have no clue.” That’s obviously the wrong answer, but there are many right answers. And so you’ve got to enfold them. And the other thing as I write about in my book is, if somebody has a good idea, it’s okay for that to be a contributor to the vision. As I say, 80% of your vision with 100% buy-in is better than 100% of your vision with 0% buy-in.
Warwick F:
So it’s okay, again, I use this analogy, the Michelangelo statue of David in Florence, which we were fortunate enough to actually see for the first time, a few years ago. You’ve got to be willing to give the hammer and chisel to your team members and let them contribute to the vision. Because if it’s 80% of your vision, it’s still a win. So part of it is constantly communicating your vision. And the second part of it is making sure that your team knows what it means to them and can contribute to it. All that creates buy-in. You have to have your team bought into the vision and unified. If you don’t have that, you’re in trouble. It’s like sand in the gears. The car’s not going too far.
Gary S:
Right. And let’s pause just for a second and put the big tent of Crucible Leadership around this discussion. All the things that we’ve been talking about listener, are ways to avoid a crucible or ways to potentially avoid. You can’t control all outside forces, but if you don’t have a team, the way that Warwick has described it, if you haven’t assembled them, hired for attitude and a little bit of skill, but complimentary skill, any of those things gone wrong if you’re not conveying the vision that your vision to them, and you’re not becoming an evangelist for it, and you’re not reinforcing that, all of those things can lead to going back to Shackleton, getting stuck in the ice. And that can lead to a crucible happening as you’re trying to move down the road of taking your vision from your head to the reality of making it happen.
Gary S:
So from a Crucible Leadership perspective, this discussion is great for leadership in general, but it’s also extremely important for Crucible Leadership because it’s one way that you can’t ever inoculate yourself completely from crucibles, but you can put some things in place to help you avoid them. Or if you hit them like Shackleton did, when he hit the ice, he was able to overcome that crucible because he had applied these lessons of bringing together a good team.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, life is tough. Crucibles are going to happen to you, but you don’t need man-made, woman-made, people-made. You don’t need human-made crucibles. You can make your own crucible. You can build your own iceberg that can sink your Titanic. It’s possible to do that, but why would you do that? And so, if you don’t want to hit the iceberg and sink your ship, well, make sure you hire people of character that don’t have some vendetta or some agendas saying, “I have a big ego, at the first chance I get, I’m going to stab you in the back and see if I can remove you as leader.” If you’re working with some big organization, it’s quite possible, they’ll talk to your superiors, they’ll befriend them, just like you’ve seen in the movies or Shakespeare for that matter.
Warwick F:
And they’ll say the classic lines of “Joe or Mary, they’re great people. I mean, Joe is really is a great person. I feel like that may be past it a bit. Maybe they’re not quite up with the times”, and little bit by little bit, they’ll throw some shade against you. Happens in, I’m sure superhero movies all the time. Those subtle things that the best villains are ones that smile, but say the subtle nasty things behind your back. So you don’t want to hire those people. And you don’t certainly want to turn people into that, which you can by ignoring their comments, not listening to them. So yeah, you can make icebergs if you want to. And here’s the thing from the other side, and in Crucible Leadership, we have this perspective, your vision often comes out of your own crucible.
Warwick F:
Maybe you’ve had a devastating failure or setback could be not your fault. And it’s like, I don’t want anybody else to go through what I’ve gone through. And this vision is, as I’ve said, in a different context, burning a hole in my heart, I want this to happen. If your vision has come out of your crucible, the last thing you want to have is that vision derailed. So if the vision is that important, if it’s has its origin in your crucible, which in my experience often is the case, it’s too important to fail. Therefore, park your ego at the door, hire the right people, be the chief evangelist of your vision. Listen to them. So from a crucible leadership perspective, don’t make icebergs where there are none, don’t make crucibles where they don’t have to be any. And if you’ve gone through a crucible, isn’t it this whole thing you’re doing this vision too important for it to fail? That’s why these things are so important.
Gary S:
Because we’ve been talking about teams. And because I’ve used this as an excuse to talk about The Avengers, and I got to wear my Avengers pins today for the show, rather than say, it’s getting to be time to land the plane, the captain’s turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. I’m going to say, Nick Fury has said it’s time to begin landing the Quinjet. It’s time for The Avengers to be on the ground and go fight whatever nefarious things are happening. So we’re getting to that point where it’s time to do that. But there’s one more point Warwick in your blog that I see as a book end to your first point, right? Your first point was you need to build a team. And sometimes ego gets in the way, sometimes the worry of head butting and tension and problems get in the way. The other thing you have to remember on the back end of it is to be patient, that is also critical. You can stop it before it ever starts, and you can stop it before it finishes, because you’re impatient and you rush it. Right?
Warwick F:
Exactly. I mean, that’s one of the most important things as the founder, as the visionary, you have to be patient. I mean, visions can take time. Maybe you didn’t have the right team members. Maybe it’s not the right time in the marketplace. It takes time to get a team on board, be it unity around whatever aspect of the vision that it is. You’ve just got to be patient. I think in my own case, you talked about Crucible Leadership and the book it’ll be coming out later this year. Well, the vision was birthed in 2008. That’s like more than 12 years ago, at my church where I gave some sermon illustration. My pastor wanted me to, and I talked about my experiences and what I learned in the family newspaper business, and my mistakes and failures and what I felt like since it was a church, maybe God had taught me, or I just learned in general.
Warwick F:
And when people felt like, gosh, they could relate to this in some weird way, which is strange. Because there weren’t too many media moguls in the congregation, but anyway, the vision was birthed is the point. Well, it’s taken more than 12 years to get to the point where I’m going to have a book published. And we don’t have time to get into all the details, but it took forever. Over the course of last few years, I’ve assembled a great team who have branding, marketing, public relations, communications skills, book cover design skills. We’re just going through a period now, we’re trying to just nail down the book cover. That’s not easy. It’s really difficult.
Gary S:
No. As someone involved in those discussions, I can testify to that.
Warwick F:
But we’re getting there and you just got to be patient because, I mean, it won’t be quite at this level. I don’t think because, I’d like it to be. But I think of Thomas Edison and the light bulb, he tried 1,000 different filaments before, I think it was a cotton thread or something with something coated on it. I mean, it’s like sometimes genius happens just because you’re Mozart and you wake up one day and boom out comes a symphony. But even in creative areas, in many, if not most cases, greatness or even things that are good come out of just persistence and hard work. And a lot of discussion and fine tuning.
Warwick F:
So, all I have to say is, and look it’s taken me more than 12 years with this book and it’s been worth it. The team, where I’m now, the endorsements I’m fortunately gratified to be getting, it’s worth it, but be patient. Your vision is too important. If your vision is that important, have the courage to be patient and assemble the right team, with the right attitude, get them on the same page, be the chief evangelist, but be patient. Your vision, your dream is too important. Be patient.
Gary S:
This is a perfect confluence of circumstances for me to say what I’m about to say. So you mentioned endorsements. And there have been some great endorsements for the book that people will be able to see both in the book and as we roll out the book and promote it when it comes out in the fall. We talked earlier about Nancy Koehn’s book Forged in Crisis. And you said that there were other things you could say about the book, but you didn’t want to get into… We don’t have time because Nick Fury has told us to land so we can go save the world. But I will say this as the PR guy on the team, one of the endorsements, listener, we hope you’ll become reader. One of the endorsements is from Nancy Koehn herself, from the Harvard Business School. And she said of Warwick’s book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance.
Gary S:
Nancy Koehn recommends it with these words, “Nuggets of leadership gold.” Now, if I were going to do it, I’d say that’s the end and let’s get out. Let’s end the show and direct people to review the blog to get all of these tips, wind up for them, but I’ll give you as always the last word before I summarize.
Warwick F:
Vision is hard. It’s hard to make it reality. And I’ve known certainly in my own life with my book or even school or church board. I remember one time, I had this vision of governance was important in one of those organizations and the president of the board at the time, was like, “Yeah, not really seeing it at the moment.” And I was convinced this was absolutely critical, so I was like, “Okay.” Well like a year or so later, he’s like, “I think we need to do governance study and bring in take governance to the next level.” Okay. Well, it requires patience. Whether you’re on a nonprofit board or whether it’s a vision you have, it requires patience. And if it’s that important, park your ego at the door, get the right people with the right skills and the right character.
Warwick F:
Who want to play as a team, who want to learn from others. They don’t have to be right all the time. Consciously and subconsciously, I’ve tried to do that with my own team at Crucible Leadership. And we have all those things, people who are driven, who believe in the mission, but who can park the ego at the door and don’t have to be right at any given front. And we have discussions. We come to consensus, we have all those things. Well, that doesn’t happen by accident. I wanted people who were driven, who believed in the mission, but I wanted people that will play nice with each other. If you had a big ego, trust me, you would not be on this team. And frankly consciously looking for it. You get great benefit out of that. Talented people who can park the ego at the door that passionately believe in the mission. Your vision, and your mission deserves that, don’t compromise on that. Find the right people, be patient and more than likely good things will happen.
Gary S:
Well, we began this conversation listener with me saying the organizing construct for what we were going to talk about was this idea that without a team, a vision is just a daydream. I can say being part of both this podcast and part of Warwick’s vision to bring Crucible Leadership to life and his book to life that he has assembled a team. He definitely has checked his ego at the door. I don’t know how many times I have said to him in phone conversations, “Well, as George Bush used to say, you’re the decider you can decide to do what you wish to do.” And Warwick gets insight, gets opinion, seeks the counsel of those he’s brought on board. And that leads to the vision that’s in his head is not a daydream. It’s a reality. And you’re going to see it in October of this year, when the book comes out. First part of the tangible vision of Crucible Leadership, or maybe the next part.
Gary S:
Perhaps the first part was the website. And somewhere after that, is this podcast Beyond the Crucible. And speaking of this podcast Beyond the Crucible, listener, as we park for this week, Warwick and I do have a favor to ask you. Please, if you have enjoyed what you’ve heard, just click like on the podcast app that you’re listening to this on, share it with friends. This looks really good on social media. It’s got a nice logo with Warwick’s face on it. It’s very nice. I actually have a T-shirt made of it that I wear sometimes, never on the show, but I do wear it sometimes just because I’m proud of the show.
Warwick F:
Funnily enough, I don’t wear it.
Gary S:
To be clear. It’s the only T-shirt there is that has been made. I own it. And Warwick is way too humble to wear his own face on a T-shirt. So click like, subscribe, please, and share it with friends. Because the more people who know about this show, we just found out yesterday that the show has begun to chart on Apple iPod charts in the US, and Australia, and Japan. And a lot of places, it’s not charting in the top five, but it has begun to chart. It’s gathering momentum. You can help us continue with that momentum. And until the next time that we’re together, listener, thank you for spending this time with us. If you remember nothing else about this show, remember that your crucible experiences can be difficult.
Gary S:
They are life-changing in many cases, they certainly were for Warwick. They certainly were for me, but they are not the end of your story. They weren’t the end of Warwick’s story. They weren’t the end of my story. They’re not the end of your story. They can be in fact, the beginning of a brand new story that will be the most rewarding part of your life, the most rewarding story of your life. Because when you get to the page that says the end in that story, you will have arrived at a life of significance.
He was born with Poland’s Syndrome, a rare disease that left his right hand malformed and his muscle development non-existent. But Johannes Atlas was also born to parents who, as he puts it, “refused to baby him.” Their support led him to overcoming his physical challenges on a variety of sporting fields and his emotional challenges by believing — as him mom and dad told him often — he was “enough.” Coming under the tutelage of business mentors as a young adult and inspired by his faith, Atlas has launched a growing speaking career and is encouraging others to overcome their own crucibles en route to a life of significance through his Pressing Toward the Mark events.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Johannes A:
My dad is very wise, just a lot of wisdom. I mean, he has a lot of insight that he shares with me, just things that blow my mind at times. And so yeah, and just how they raised me and everything. They really just normalized it, and really gave me that how-can-I attitude because in that I had to figure it out how I can do this. And so, I think that was something that my dad really helped me with. Super grateful for it today because I mean, it’s made all the difference. And not even just for me physically, but in business, in self development, in just a lot of areas. I then asked myself, “Okay, well, how can I do this?” And so, it’s transferred from physically, how can I do this, to how can I in my emotions, in my career, in my relationships. And so, it’s given me a figure-it-out mentality.
Gary S:
A figure-it-out mentality. There may not be a better phrase to describe the mindset we need to overcome the crucibles we encounter on our journeys through life. That’s what today’s guest, Johannes Atlas, has discovered as he’s navigated through life being born with a rare disability known as Poland syndrome, which left him with physical abnormalities affecting his right hand that caused some emotional challenges he spent decades sorting out.
Gary S:
Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. Johannes, he goes by Joe, explains to Warwick that he’s found his footing thanks to the wisdom of mentors, and the belief that Poland syndrome or not, he is enough. It’s a message he shares these days through his public speaking and his Pressing Toward The Mark events.
Warwick F:
Well Joe, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. It’s funny, you were telling us off-air just about the origin of your full name, Johannes. I want you to just tell our listeners, I think it’s a pretty neat story about your dad and his thinking.
Johannes A:
So yeah, my dad, he made me Johannes. He actually comes from Johannesburg in South Africa. And it translates to King. And so yeah, he really liked the name. He actually wanted to name me Johannes Charleston Atlas, would have been the full thing, but then my mom threw in Patrick. So, it’s Johannes Patrick Charleston Atlas.
Warwick F:
There you go.
Gary S:
Wow. That’s a name of royalty right there, young man.
Johannes A:
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Warwick F:
And I have a feeling, as we’ll get into later, when you think of king it probably has more than one meaning. That’s a spiritual meaning, and an earthly meaning. As a person of faith, that’s pretty cool to have a reminder in your name, every day it’s like okay, I know who my king is, right?
Johannes A:
Right, right.
Warwick F:
So, that is so cool. So, now you grew up in California, did you?
Johannes A:
Yes, California.
Warwick F:
Right. And you’re there at the moment?
Johannes A:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Okay. So yeah, just tell us a bit about growing up, about your family and background, and just tell us a bit about Joe Atlas, and as you grew up.
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, I was born with Poland syndrome, so you can see the difference on my hand. For people who might just be listening, to give you an idea my right hand will literally fit in the palm of my left hand. So, one thing that I’m grateful for growing up in regards to my parents, is that they never babied me. They never gave me any special attention, they just treated me like normal. And on top of that I played a number of sports growing up, so I played baseball, basketball, football, tennis, Muay Thai. And in playing all these sports it allowed me to figure it out. And that’s the thing I’m most grateful for was the mentality that it gave me as to figure it out, because there was certain things, and not even just in sports, but there was just everyday life things that I wouldn’t be able to do like everyday individuals would.
Johannes A:
I would have to figure it out in my own kind of way. And so, I didn’t really become conscious about my hand until about high school. And so, of course in high school everybody wants to fit in and be cool, and so because I wanted to fit in and be cool ideally this thing wasn’t cool to me. So yeah, that’s where I would hide my hand in my pocket, I mean, on a regular basis. Unless I was doing something where I needed both of my hands, my hand was always in my pocket just to hide from the circumstances or from situations from being teased and being made fun of, I just hid my hand in my pocket all the time.
Johannes A:
And so, in those moments was when I … Was when the baggage for me, my emotional baggage was really started, unconsciously. I didn’t really know that what was happening, but it wasn’t until some years later, I’ll get into that. But so, after high school was when I would really want to … I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and really just grow as a person, because I felt … I was feeling stuck, a little bit, and I felt that me, hiding my hand in my pocket, it was becoming a problem. And so, I got involved with this finance firm and it was … Though we taught about finance, it was more like a leadership and self-development course. And so, super grateful for that as well. And within that, it was a lot of teaching you to believe in yourself. And so, within that, between that and …
Johannes A:
I grew up in church, and then at a certain point I started speaking at church as well, was where I’d actually gotten the desire to want to become a motivational speaker. And so, I remember the Sunday too, where just during Sunday … Excuse me. During church on Sunday, there we go. So, you know how we have … There’s altar call at end of service.
Warwick F:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Johannes A:
And so, during altar call it was breaking my heart to see Sunday after Sunday people coming up and getting prayed for. But I mean, just some of those are just the most macho-y men coming up and crying, and just to see them dealing with life was just … It hurt my heart. And it was in those moments where I was like, “Lord, we can do something. We need to do something about this, because it’s just not making sense why some of these things are going on.” And so, that was where I really started wanting to become a motivational speaker, and I have … From there, I started doing videos on Facebook, and on Instagram, and some on YouTube as well. And I then, in the beginning of 2020, I’d actually started my first event. It was called Pressing Toward the Mark conference.
Johannes A:
And it was right before COVID hit, perfect timing. And then I ended up going on tour with this guy named… I spoke in Texas, and in L.A. as well. And then it wasn’t until May of last year that I had this experience with God where he opened my eyes to my own baggage. And I was able to then free myself from the things that I was dealing with for over the past number of years.
Warwick F:
Boy, that’s a remarkable story. I just want to delve a bit into your parents, and how they raised you in a way that was probably so helpful, but just … Because I think most listeners, and me included, until we started speaking I’ve never heard of Poland syndrome. So, how does it come about? I mean, I’m assuming it’s in the womb, or it’s some genetic thing. But for listeners who may never heard of Poland syndrome, what is it? I mean …
Johannes A:
Yeah, so it’s characterized by the underdeveloped chest and arm muscles. It’s all characterized on one side of the body. So, it’s all on my right side. So, on top of my hand being smaller than my left, I don’t have any chest muscle on the right side of my body. So, there’s no cure for it, they don’t know what causes it, it’s not genetic, it’s not like my mother was smoking or drinking, or anything. Nothing crazy in the womb, it’s just like a freak thing. It just happens.
Warwick F:
And it’s not like it’s hereditary, it’s not like you can go back a few generations and there been others in your family with it, it’s just … It sounds like it’s fairly rare, and often when things are fairly rare they don’t really understand what it is, because there’s so many things to focus on. So, as you were growing up, I mean obviously you must’ve felt different than the other kids. How did that affect you where you were, I don’t know, three, four, five, six? At a young age. Obviously you were aware of it, but how did that affect you, emotionally, physically, just in general?
Johannes A:
It’s funny because I remember there was just certain moments from elementary school where I think it was on my part, where I was trying to fit in with the wrong crowd. And I wasn’t quite fitting in. And just, I got into a couple fights in elementary school, and just not getting teased and made fun of for my hand, but just for, I guess in a sense, for being different. Wasn’t directly correlated to my hand, but was just being different in a sense. And so, it was in elementary school is when, I just realized this not too long ago actually, was that was when I was really seeking that acceptance. And that was something that I couldn’t seek in other people to give, I had to seek that for myself and give myself that acceptance that I was looking for.
Johannes A:
But yeah, no, it was just in elementary school was kind of where it started a little bit. But then, eventually as I started getting older, I found my crowd to fit in with.
Warwick F:
Obviously not that many of our listeners will have Poland syndrome, but it’s inevitable when you’re in elementary school, kids always want to fit in. And kids can be mean, anybody that’s different, they look different, they’re from a different part of the country, maybe they’ve moved, anybody that’s different gets teased. I don’t know what it is. I think you could go to any culture, at any age, at any time, and it’s just … I don’t know. From a spiritual perspective, I guess you could say the fallen nature of humans. But it’s so sad that anybody that’s different will get teased. I mean, and probably you’ve seen it in others, and whether it’s your skin color’s different, maybe you’re not as athletic, or you’re a bookworm, or you’re … I don’t know what. You’re quiet, or whatever it is, anybody that’s different gets teased.
Warwick F:
I mean, you’ve probably obviously seen that. But I don’t know, it’s pretty sad. You would think that kids would give each other a break, but not always.
Johannes A:
Yeah, it’s a weird part of human nature, and it’s not until sometime after high school, or sometime after grade school that we really start to come together more as a unit. The teasing kind of really stops. It’s more of kid stuff, but … Typically, not all the time. But typically I guess it’s when we get older then the … We become more unified at that point.
Warwick F:
I want to kind of talk a little bit about what you said about your parents not babying you, and that’s probably, in hindsight, was a remarkable gift. Because a lot of parents would’ve, “Oh, we’re so sorry, Joe. This is awful, and we’re going to put you in … We’re just going to baby you, we’re going to protect you, and put our arms around you, and we’re going to make you safe from the world.” Which is a noble goal, but not always … Maybe wouldn’t serve you. So, talk about your parents’ attitude, and in a sense, if it was, the blessing that it was in terms of how they handled all that.
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, and just as you were saying, yeah, my parents, they never … Just like you were saying, they never babied me. The thing was, it was never really a huge topic of conversation. But there was one thing that I … When I was little, I would kind of put my hand up like a chicken wing, so I’d put it up like this. And so, my dad would tell me all the time, “Hey, put your hand down.” Because I would, just for no reason, just for no reason, I would have my hand up.
Warwick F:
Right.
Johannes A:
And so, he trained me in that to put my hand down. Within that, them allowing me to play sports, and then my dad also helping me with that a little bit, to help me figure out how am I going to do this. Because when I played baseball, I would catch and throw with my left hand. So, I would catch the ball, I’d have the glove on my left hand, catch the ball, take it off, grab the ball then throw it really. It was a quick little exchange. But it was just little things like that he helped me figure it out.
Warwick F:
For most people, that wouldn’t be easy. I mean, I grew up in Australia, so we played cricket. So, maybe you would’ve been better off there because there’s no gloves. Unless you’re the wicket-keeper. So, you would’ve been, at least in fielding, would’ve been fine. But-
Gary S:
Well, and there was a professional baseball player, Jim Abbott, who had the same … I mean, it wasn’t Poland syndrome, but he did the same thing. Caught with a glove, took it off, and threw it. And he threw a no-hitter with that … It is a triumph of the will to be able to pull that stuff off. And I would imagine, Joe, that doing that the confidence that gave you right from little league on, each step you took, that helped build confidence and helped you overcome some of those hidden doubts about yourself.
Johannes A:
Yeah. No, it definitely did. Because just like you were saying, it gave me that hey, I can do this. And me having to figure it out, and let me know hey, you can do this. You can figure it out if you’re willing to. So yeah, no, it definitely did.
Warwick F:
And it’s really remarkable, because your dad could’ve said, “You know what, Joe? Forget baseball. Any kind of football, pick anything like that you can’t do it. Just accept your limitations.” Some parents, maybe a lot, would’ve said that. But he’s like, “Okay, now don’t think of yourself as limited. You just have to adapt, be smart.” And that’s so good. I mean, I think of an earlier era with polio, like Franklin Roosevelt had polio, there was a time in which in, after the ’50s, if you had polio it was meant to be a shameful thing. You would stay home, don’t go out. Somehow they were almost blamed for it, which is kind of crazy. But I like to think we’re a bit more enlightened now.
Warwick F:
So, the way your parents handled it was so wise. It’s just, again, don’t think of yourself as even challenged, just okay, there are some challenges, but let’s figure out how to adapt. And that’s a big lesson I’m sure you probably share with other people. We all have limitations, some a bit more obvious than others. But just figure out a way around it. I mean, your parents set you up for success, and not all parents do that. But, I don’t know. I mean, as you look back do you feel like boy, the wisdom that they had is truly remarkable in terms of how they really tried to help you?
Johannes A:
Yeah. No, I definitely do. Especially in regards to my dad, because we grew up in church. My dad was a minister, and so I used to … My dad is very wise. Just a lot of wisdom. I mean, he has a lot of insight that he shares with me, just things that blow my mind at times. And so, yeah, and just how they raised me and everything, it was they really just normalized it, and really giving me that how can I attitude. Because in that, I had to figure out how I can do this. And so, I think that was something that my dad really helped me with, and super grateful for it today. Because I mean, it’s made all the difference, and not even just for me physically but in my … In business, in self-development, in just a lot of areas. I then ask myself, “okay, well how can I do this?”
Johannes A:
So, it’s transferred from physically how can I do this, to how can I in my emotions, in my career, in our relationships? And so, it’s given me a figure-it-out mentality.
Warwick F:
That’s awesome. So, you mentioned your dad was somebody that went to church, and faith was important. So, what role did that play in your family, and you, as you were dealing with challenges in growing up? How did that all weave itself in the spiritual side?
Johannes A:
Having that spiritual advisory, growing up, because I was born and raised in church. And so, I mean, just a lot of the … Just hearing stuff Sunday after Sunday. Especially as a kid, I didn’t really know what was really going on, I didn’t really understand what was … Everything that was going on, but as I gotten older … It was after high school when I had got my first job, I had quit going to church. Because I started working Sundays. And so, then those next few years was when I really started my heathen backslide. And so, yeah. But then after a number of years I really felt that pull to come back. I felt that in my heart, and I wanted to go back. My parents, they weren’t, “Hey, you need to go back to church. You need to get back in …” It was nothing like that, but I wanted to.
Johannes A:
And so, then kind of going, getting back into church. But even with that, growing up I’ve been, in a sense, a voice of reason for a lot of my friends growing up, helping them with a number of things. I remember in, again, in elementary school actually, where I have a thought that I wanted to be a counelor. Just because I would help my friends a lot with stuff that they’re going through, and things like that.
Warwick F:
You use apparently a phrase, that you were … Maybe you were seven or eight, you were the playground mediator. So, talk about what did that look like? You’re on the playground, people are having fights, teasing each other, what did that look like for you being the playground mediator?
Johannes A:
It was kind of cool, just helping my friends when … Dealing with some of the problems that they were dealing with, whether it be personal or at home, or between some of their friends I’d kind of help them bring resolution to it all. And whatever that they were dealing with, to, “Hey, it’s not that serious, guys. Let’s just have fun and be friends. We all came here to have a good time.” And just bring the level of aggravation down a lot was … It was fun. It was definitely rewarding, I’ll say that.
Warwick F:
And that’s also remarkable, because again you could’ve been internally focused, and feeling sorry for yourself, which would be company understandable. But it sounds like you weren’t focused or obsessed with yourself, you were focused on others. Even at an early age, which is truly remarkable. I don’t think too many kids your age, seven or eight, would’ve been thinking, “Hey guys, we don’t need to fight here.” And thinking of others. So, as you look back do you feel like that’s, I want to say not normal, to be focused on others as much as you did? But sounds like you did.
Johannes A:
I think I can definitely attribute that to growing up in church, because the greatest commandment’s in the Bible, love God with your everything. Second is to love your neighbor as yourself. And so, and just not being so focused on me all the time, I just always just hey, what can I … How can I help? What can I do? Just having that servant leader’s heart was something that, again, growing up in church I’m super grateful for.
Warwick F:
Well, and that shows a tremendous degree of empathy, and one of the things, I’m sure you probably talk about this, it’s easy to wallow in our own challenges sometimes, as self-inflicted sometimes, at no fault of ours at all. But either way, it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself, and as understandable as that is it sometimes is more healing, or more rewarding when you’re focusing on trying to help others. And it sounds like you’ve done that your whole life. For listeners who may have other challenges, talk about how focusing on others in some ways is sort of healing, or at least … Why is that the way to go? I know obviously the Bible talks about that, which we agree on, but why is that helpful rather than being obsessed with your own challenges and problems? Why is that really a better way to go, focusing on others and trying to help them?
Johannes A:
I feel like when it comes to helping others, in helping others we really help ourself. So, we are a spirit, and the Bible says that there is one spirit. And so, we all have the spirit of God within us, whether you know or believe that, or not. Everybody has the same spirit. And so, it’s like when I go to counsel somebody I’m secretly kind of counseling myself as well. And just on helping somebody deal with whatever they might be dealing with. But in helping somebody through a challenge, through some kind of struggle, it also simultaneously helps to minimize what I am going through. Not in a sense that saying that what I’m going through is not a big deal, but it takes the pressure off of me and helping to focus on somebody else, but also to realize that hey, what I’m dealing with, it’s not as big as I think it is.
Johannes A:
Or it’s not as great as I feel it is. Or though hey, it may be a big deal but if I’m helping somebody else to go through what they’re going through, I know that I can make it through what I’m going through. If I’m able to help somebody else while I’m still struggling. Or whatever the case is. But in just helping others, it does such a tremendous work in us, while we don’t even realize it may be doing a work in us but it’s subconsciously and secretly doing a great work in you when you take the time to help somebody else though we may be struggling.
Warwick F:
I think that’s so true. It’s also empowering because when you’re not focused on your limitations, and you’re focused on helping others, it’s probably empowering. It’s like, well, look what I can do. Yes, I can do baseball and other things, but I’m impacting people’s lives. I mean, look at the impact I’m having. It probably makes you feel maybe a little less challenged, and a little bit more empowered, and capable of look … You can say obviously God, through you, which I think we can agree with, but look what I can do. Look at the change I can make in my world. I mean, that’s an empowering, uplifting, and energizing concept. I mean-
Gary S:
And I’ll jump in here, Warwick, because what you just said reminds me of something you’ve said about your own crucible. When you said, “Hey, I can do something.” I remember you talking about that job that you got at the aviation services company, and it wasn’t … You weren’t leading a multi-billion dollar company, but you came to a point where you said I can do this. After feeling like after the failure of the takeover, that there wasn’t much you could do, you found that success. And it’s remarkable, listener, catch this, Warwick’s crucible and Joe’s crucible are extraordinarily different. But the emotions that they’ve expressed about hey, I can do something, that was powerful. Wasn’t that powerful for you, Warwick?
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, it’s obviously always a challenge comparing crucibles, because I feel like what I went through is nothing compared to Joe, and his situation in terms of the challenge. But yeah, I mean, more generally, yeah. I mean, there was a time in which lost a 150-year-old family business founded by a strong person of faith in my family for generations. And it fell under my watch, yeah, I was feeling pretty bad about myself, and everything I touched I just destroy. And maybe I should just go away and hide, and maybe I won’t hurt people. I mean, I don’t know if it was quite that graphic. Maybe a little bit, but little bit by little bit, as you do things, you’re not screwing up, you actually can help people or do something positive, it’s like, well … I call it a drop of grace. It’s a little drop of grace.
Warwick F:
Like a little drop of water in the dessert. It’s like wow, I can do that. And little bit by little bit, you connect enough drops of grace and you got a pool. And, I don’t know about an ocean, but maybe like a big pond. Maybe even a little lake. But it’s … Yeah. I mean, I found it very helpful. It’s not every once in a while I’ll read something, or somebody writes some article and it’s like, oh yeah, that’s right. That was me. Yeah. But it is true. I mean, in my own very different way, as you’re focused on others it is so empowering. So, talk about high school, teased a bit, but it sounds like you got through that. I mean, how’d you get through the whole high school thing? Was that the pinnacle of teasing, if you will? Or gee, I’m different, kind of thing?
Johannes A:
Yeah, that really was it. And it was then that, how I kind of dealt with it, was I would just … I mean, consistently, my hand was always, always … My hand was always in my pocket. Unless I was doing something where I needed both my hands, it was just, my hand was always in my pocket. And honestly, that also carried over until when I got out of … Even though I got out of high school, it wasn’t until that I got involved with the Riverside Chamber of Commerce where that was a position where I was really nervous to get into, because being involved with business, business 101, you look somebody in the eye and you give them a firm handshake. And that was the thing that I was really nervous about was because I didn’t want to be reminded of the reactions and the faces that I would get when I would go to shake somebody’s hand.
Johannes A:
Whether it be pull back, or they would shake my hand and freak out, or just various things. And so…
Warwick F:
And that’s a challenge-
Johannes A:
For that.
Warwick F:
… because in our culture, we tend to shake hands with our right hand. Now, obviously some people are left-handed, but the majority, I don’t know what the percent is, the majority are right-handed. So, culturally you lead with your right hand. I never really thought about it until now, but even if you’re shaking a left-handed person’s hand, my guess is they’ll still stick out their right hand because why just make life difficult? They just say, “Oh well, here we go again.” But that’s got to be … Yeah. Because then people feel awkward, and they’re like …
Johannes A:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
Which, even if you weren’t feeling awkward, you are going to feel awkward once they feel awkward. So, it’s like-
Johannes A:
It’s funny you say that, too, because I’ve tried to shake with my left hand a few times, and exactly that. It was a awkward moment at that point. So, yeah.
Warwick F:
Yeah. Well, at least during COVID, and one of the small blessings there, the whole elbow bump. It’s like, okay. I can do that, I can do an elbow bump. So, nobody’s shaking hands these days. But speaking of that metaphor of drops of grace, it sounds like that Riverside Chamber of Commerce, that was somewhat of a significant step for you in your outlook, and your feeling that you can contribute. So, talk about how that really helped change your thinking, or grow your thinking a bit.
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, in doing that, because it’s, like I say, Riverside Chamber of Commerce, where I’m in a room with a lot of … A bunch of business owners, and we’re all just talking, and connecting, and networking. And so, it’s obviously a lot of shaking hands. And so, in just doing that I was … Like I said, I was literally nervous to do it because I did not want to be reminded. But at that point, I was really wanting to get out of my comfort zone. And so, I got into it anyways, and so I started shaking people’s hands. And some people noticed, and other people didn’t. And it wasn’t really a big deal. And it was kind of within that, and just the habitual shaking of hands that I started to … I learned to begin to get over it a little bit. Even after being involved with the Chamber of Commerce, there was still a little bit part of me that wasn’t until about eight nine months ago, that I really got over it.
Johannes A:
But there was still a little bit a part of me that still stuck, that still held on to that ill-feeling I had toward it.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve felt this, but there’s this concept where if you seem to be over it and not awkward or embarrassed by it, somehow it helps other people not be embarrassed by it, or feel awkward. Have you felt that with other people? If you’re like, “Hey, this is cool. It’s okay,” that it’s easier for other people to relax and not worry about it? Have you found that?
Johannes A:
Yeah. Sometimes I’ll make little jokes about it, and it does kind of help ease some people’s tension about it a little bit. Or they’ll go to shake my hand, and they’re like, “Oh.” They’ll make a comment, and I’ll make a comment and say something funny, just to … Yeah, I have noticed that, and it’s … Yeah. You’re right. And it’s only when I made it a big deal that it’s been a big deal to people. When I don’t make it a big deal, then it’s not a big deal to people. It’s interesting how that works out, but yeah.
Warwick F:
It’s an important lesson. So, what was the role of being an ambassador at the Riverside Chamber of Commerce? What did that involve?
Johannes A:
So, in being an ambassador we were pretty much just helping new businesses coming in to the community, and pretty much just situated, come in and network, how can we help you, in what ways can we assist them at that point. Invite them out to different events that we had, pretty much getting … Because we would have events from time to time, and it was pretty much getting as much people as possible to come out, and network. And talk about their business. Because Riverside, it’s a big business city as far as … It’s small businesses. And so, it was a lot of just pretty much getting the community to build itself.
Warwick F:
And I imagine you had all sorts of different businesses, maybe people from different cultures, different backgrounds. So, talk about how that felt like helping a lot of very different people? Because I’m guessing it was a lot of different people, a lot of different backgrounds. So, how did that feel helping those folks?
Johannes A:
Yeah. When I was involved, I was a little bit more on the backend of it. I didn’t really get to the front to see all the different businesses and whatnot. But no, it was rewarding in a sense to see the different businesses, and people come out and network, and come back and talk about it a little bit later where some people would come back to our meeting that we had every week, and they would say how much some of the events that they’ve came to made a difference. And some of the networks and connections that they made at that point.
Warwick F:
Okay. So, talk a bit about what you do now with Pressing Towards the Mark, and … Yeah. Just the things that you do now.
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, with Pressing Toward the Mark conference, that was actually a God-given idea. I remember I was driving home and then just God dropped the idea in my mind, was like, “Hey, have an event at the … Have an event.” And he was like, “Call it Pressing Toward the Mark.” And I’m like, “Lord, that’s dope. I love it.” So, I really had no idea how it was going to work or anything, but God told me to do it so I’m like, “All right, I’m going to do it.” And so, I just started getting everything going. I found the venue and I started marketing, and finding people to come to the event. So, that was my first event. And so, with Pressing Toward the Mark, it was really just about pressing toward your goal. Whatever goal you have in mind, whatever it is that you want out of life it’s pressing toward that and making sure that you achieve what you want, because we only have one lifetime.
Johannes A:
And so, might as well get what you want out of this life.
Warwick F:
And so, what are some of the keys from your perspective, about pressing towards the mark? How do people do that? What’s some of your key philosophies there?
Johannes A:
In Pressing Toward the Mark, one of them was to … You have to really believe in yourself. And between believing in yourself, having mentorship, and growing was where my key points in that. So, with believing in yourself, the Bible says that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. And so, if you don’t have the belief in yourself, if you think lowly of yourself, that’s something that we have to become aware of and heal from that, in that sense, to be able to believe in ourselves so that we can achieve what it is that we’re looking to achieve at that point. And then, having mentorship. I had my mentor there as well, and so I pointed that out to the audience, to have people to come in and help to give you positive criticism, or help direct you. What could you have done better? What could you have done different? And things of that sort, to better guide you down the route that you’re going.
Johannes A:
And then growing. Growing as a person is the other huge part of that, is because we can’t excel past who we are. And so, we have to grow to the point of what it is that we’re looking to, whatever it is that we’re looking to grow towards, what it is that the goal that we’re looking to achieve. We can’t grow past that, or we can’t move past that unless we grow to who that person is, and in the thinking of the mind of that person who it is that you’re wanting to be, you have to become that.
Warwick F:
You said a couple very important things, just the importance of mentors. Sometimes we have this attitude, I don’t need help, I can do it all myself, but it’s amazing … You’ve probably found, when you’ve asked, there are probably people that actually are happy to help you, that want to help sometimes, but they go, “Nobody cares, nobody wants to help.” But if you found in your own experience where maybe you’ve asked people to come alongside, that you have found people that actually want to help you get to where you want to go? Has that been your experience?
Johannes A:
Oh, definitely. Definitely. Once you just start talking about what it is that you’re wanting to do, and your mission, your goal, people, yeah. A lot of people are very willing to help. But I think simultaneously, I’ll say with me in the beginning, when I first got started into it and I would have conversations with people, there was still that part of me that didn’t necessarily believe in myself. So, my baggage for me was that I’m not enough. What I ended up making my hand mean about me, was that I’m not enough. And so, when opportunities, when that’s one way how it affected me, when certain opportunities would come around, because I had that belief about myself was that I’m not enough, I messed up certain opportunities. But yeah, people are definitely willing to help. Willing to-
Warwick F:
Yeah. So, how did you overcome that concept of I’m not enough? Because some of it’s internal, but you have a daily physical reminder, and if you choose to go that way you can say … You can look down, okay, I’m not enough. I mean, how did you overcome that concept? Because if you hadn’t overcome that concept life would’ve been very different for you. How’d you get past that?
Johannes A:
So, it was a moment. It was literally in a moment that that was happened. So, some time, it was in last May. I was praying, because at a certain point in my life I was just … At this point in my life, I was just really just feeling stuck in a sense. I was wanting to grow, but I wasn’t sure what was going on. And so, I prayed, I’m like, “Lord, open my eyes up to me beyond the limitations of my understanding.” And so, because at that point I was ready for the answer. It was within about a week and a half to two weeks, I got an answer to that prayer. And so, I remember I was standing right here in my room, and I’m … God had opened my eyes up to a moment back into high school when I … There was moments when I would get teased, and I got made fun of, that he opened my eyes up to that moment.
Johannes A:
And it was in those moments that I took on that identity of I’m not enough. So, those were the moments of my innocence, my trauma that I had then made it mean about me that I’m not enough. But when you look at the moment, none of that means that I’m not enough. None of that means that. When I really look at the moment from a camera’s point of view, nothing in that situation means I’m not enough, but that’s just the identity I then attached onto it. So, once God had opened my eyes up to that, I then, at that point, just affirmed the opposite. And I told myself, “I am enough. Who I am as a person, I am enough.” And really just in saying that, I had to really feel that, really emotionalize that. And from that point moving forward, there … I had to keep in mind too, because there were certain moments that, moving forward, that would trigger that feeling of I’m not enough.
Johannes A:
But then when they would come about, I would catch it. And I would affirm that I am enough. And it’s just a consistent thing of hey, no, Johannes, you are enough.
Warwick F:
Joe, what you’re saying is so profound, because every human being are going to have days when they think, “You know what? I’m not enough. I’m worthless, I’m …” You may not say it out loud, but inside there’s hardly a human that hasn’t had that thought once in a while. Maybe often. And so, being able to affirm no, I am enough, you have a spiritual foundation obviously. I think of Psalm 139 that says, “I am beautifully and wonderfully made.” And it’s hard to say, I mean, really? But from God’s perspective, everything happens for a reason, and he all makes us different. We look different, we have different background skills, but in his eyes we are all perfectly made. It sounds a strange thing to say, but biblically that’s what it says, right?
Johannes A:
Right.
Warwick F:
And so, if you think you’re enough, and God says you’re enough, what more do you need. You and God together, it’s not a bad team. So-
Johannes A:
A good duo, right there.
Warwick F:
Yeah. So, that’s important. And whatever people’s spiritual beliefs, I think just that concept that you are enough, you just have to own that concept. Whatever your anchor is, it might be a different faith, or a different philosophy, spirituality, it’s got to … Unless you start with believing that you are enough, you can’t really do anything. That’s the rock in which you’ve got to found your ability to contribute to the world, and move forward. So, that sounds like that was huge. You’ve had mentors, what are some other aspects of really helping people press towards the mark, and achieve their goals. I mean, how do people grow beyond that?
Johannes A:
I would say it does vary person by person. I mean, a lot of it starts with awareness, and you have to be self-aware in seeing … Being aware of who you are as a person, being aware of your strengths, and your weaknesses, the things that you struggle in. And in being aware of that, just notice. It firstly starts with just noticing where the struggle is. And when you notice it, hey, it’s not right, it’s not wrong, it’s just what is. And so, then at that point you then have to have the desire to … Or, yeah. You have to have the desire to want to grow at that point. It’s easy for us, as human beings, just to stay where we are, to stay in our comfort zone. But it’s like you have to have the desire to really want to grow and get out of our comfort zone. And so, at that point, once you become …
Johannes A:
You start becoming aware of it, for me hey, I noticed that I was … I struggled getting out of bed in the morning. I struggle with procrastinating a lot, I struggle with my discipline. Notice those areas where the areas of struggle, and then become aware of it. And in becoming aware of it, then you start working on doing something about it. Sometimes just take little baby steps, sometimes just hey, if I struggle getting out of bed in the morning, then let me put my alarm clock across the room. Find one little step, just take little baby steps instead of trying to conquer the whole mountain at the first step.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, one of the things we talk about in Crucible Leadership, is small wins. I mean, I’m not somebody by nature that moves a million miles an hour. I’m a sort of thoughtful person, which can be good. But so, sometimes the mountain can seem overwhelming, but it’s like if you look back, okay, what did I accomplish today? Okay, I did this, this, and that. Okay, if you connect enough small wins it ends up being a big win. But rather than saying, “Oh, that’s impossible, I’ll never, like in your case, be a motivational speaker, I’ll never do this and that.” Okay, what’s a small win? Maybe I can talk to somebody, maybe I can prepare, maybe I can practice with friends and neighbors. I mean, there’s probably a series of small steps you’ve taken to get to your goal.
Warwick F:
Rather than saying, “Okay, gee, I don’t know if I’ll be able to speak at, I don’t know, Staples Center, or something in L.A., or some massive auditorium. And gee, that feels a little far away.” Okay, well maybe one day. But let’s start a little smaller. Maybe there’s some place locally. You know what I mean? Sometimes you can set the bar so high that unless you do that today, then I’ll fail. Well then, okay, just small step at a time, right? Does that make sense?
Johannes A:
Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. And that’s something that I really been attaching onto more and more. And I have it written at the top of my white board here, just 1% every day. Just a 1% gain every day, and at the end of the year you’ve grown 365%.
Gary S:
That is a fantastic word, and I will take my one small step as the cohost of the show, to say that I think that I also heard the captain turn on the fasten seatbelt sign, and it’s getting to the point that we’re going to be moving toward landing the plane. Joe, before we do that, and Warwick asks you another question or two, are there places in social media that folks can find you? One of the things I thought fascinating about your story, and it went by really quickly, but you mentioned that you got your start in reaching out and helping people manage those things that torment them, those things that challenge them by using YouTube videos. And that is a fascinating way to leverage that technology to live a life of significance. But how can people, if they want to know more about Joe Atlas, and your speaking, and your conferences, how can they find you?
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, right now I’m working on a website, that’ll be up pretty soon here. It’s JoeAtlasSpeaks.com. It’s not up yet, but when it does come up … Facebook, you can look up my business page. It’s Speaking To The You In You. That’s the name of my company, and then on Instagram it’s J-O underscore speaks.
Warwick F:
So, I know one of the things you talk about is … And that’s been your whole life, is not letting crucibles, not letting challenges define you. For those people that may be listening right now, and they’re going through a crucible, it could be physical, personal, a marriage breakup, a death of a loved one, getting fired, I mean, how do you avoid letting your crucibles, letting your challenges define you? What’s the way out?
Johannes A:
I would say that whatever the situation was, whatever your crucible was, however it made you feel, you are completely valid for how you feel. That’s first and foremost, I want people to know that. You’re completely valid for how you feel. But now, looking at it, knowing what you know now, do you want to continue to feel that way? And that’s a big thing that people sometimes, we as people, have to take the time to answer. Do we want to continue to feel that way? And then, if not then what is it that I want to do moving forward, but wherever that area that brings us the most hurt, or trauma, wherever the area of our struggle is, we have to work to bring resolution to that area so that we can move forward in what we’re dealing with.
Gary S:
I have been in the communication business long enough, gentlemen, to know when the last word on a subject is spoken. And Mr. Joe Atlas, you spoke the perfect last word in our conversation for today. Well, so I’m going to do what … I mean, there’s a lot. I’ve pulled three takeaways, I think listeners can take from our conversation. There’s a lot more than that, but the three that sort of leapt off to me, and Joe, I got to tell you I do this in every episode, and it took exactly 45 seconds of you speaking when I wrote down number one. So, you’re the fastest person to the finish line on a takeaway that I’ve done yet.
Johannes A:
Awesome.
Gary S:
But takeaway one from this conversation, listener, I think is this. Take the time in the midst of your crucibles to, as Joe did, figure it out. There’s no timer on moving beyond your crucible in most cases. It’s not like an action movie where the hero has to diffuse a bomb before the numbers on the dial get to double zeroes. You can press into the pain, face the challenges, look at the lessons you’re being taught, and then apply them as you press ahead at your pace. Second takeaway, believe you can bounce back. Truly believe that. We hear the word mindset a lot these days, it’s a popular term. And as Joe put it, he built a figure-it-out mentality in navigating life with his physical challenge. He was encouraged by his parents that there was no limitation he could not conquer. You find that encouragement in your own crucible.
Gary S:
It might be your parents, your spouse, your friends, whoever it is find a person or people who give you support that you need to conquer your crucible. And then the third point, give to others. Become a mentor. Help them with the challenges they face, talk to them about their emotions. Help them articulate and pursue their goals. Again, as Joe put it, funny, as all three of these points I say as Joe put it, as Joe put it help them press toward the mark. Help them understand that they are enough. Listeners, thank you for spending this time with us on Beyond the Crucible. Warwick and I have a little favor to ask you. If you enjoyed this conversation, if you got some insight and some hope and encouragement from it, we ask that you would click subscribe on the app in which you’re listening to the show. We also ask that you drop by and leave us a rating.
Gary S:
The more ratings and subscriptions we get, the more people we can bring these insights, like Joe Atlas has shared with us today, to more folks. And until that next time that we are together, please remember this. Your crucible experiences are painful. Joe described some very painful, traumatic situations. He did it with some lilt in his voice, but the pain was real of what he experienced. But the beauty of that, it was not the end of his story. It was just the start of his story. And it can be the start of your story, your crucible can be, if you learn the lessons of them. If you apply some of the lessons we talked about here. And the reason that it can be the start of your story is that it brings you to a place, you learn those lessons, you leverage those lessons to a place that allows you to pursue a new story that can be the most rewarding one of your life. And it is rewarding because as it has done for Joe, as it has done for Warwick, it leads at the end of the day to a life of significance.
