Beyond the Crucible

Our guest this week, Kim Cantin, discusses a tragedy of the deepest sorrow: the 2018 flash floods in Montecito, California, that obliterated her home and took her husband and son from her. Yet the rain and the mud and the devastation could not take her hope.   Cantin was herself injured seriously and her daughter, Lauren, trapped for six hours under the debris. While the body of her husband,...

Winston Churchill was known for many things – always looking for ways to move onward after a trial or challenge chief among them. That’s the perspective we all should hope to have when life’s crucibles knock us for a loop. When setback and failure are all-too-common companions. When we’re wrestling with our own darkest hour.   This week, as part of what we’ve dubbed our series within the show...

Bolstered and resilient. That’s how we all want to feel after we’ve been through a crucible. And this week’s guest, Vanessa Vershaw, is known as the CEO whisperer because she has an impressive track record of helping leaders arrive at that very destination.   In her conversation with Warwick, Vershaw speaks candidly about her own crucibles – some she’s never spoken publicly about before – whi...

A team so connected, so authentic with each other and committed to the leader’s vision – sounds like a great place to work, doesn’t it? Listen to our discussion on this week’s episode that unpacks Warwick’s latest blog.   That blog, HOW TO BUILD A GREAT TEAM, extrapolates lessons learned during a recent team strategy meeting we had in Savannah, Georgia. From our sessions, Warwick discusses th...

A little more hope. That was a lifeline our guest this week, Teri Wellbrock, desperately needed after a soul-crushing series of crucibles that began in childhood. She suffered through the traumas of sexual molestation, rape, bank robberies, the murder of a co-worker, emotional abandonment by an alcoholic parent, physical abuse, poverty and the resulting panic attacks that eventually would lead her...

We hope our series exploring the methodology and the profiles of our Trials to Triumphs Self-Assessment has offered you an exciting opportunity to process the crucible you’ve been through and apply what you learn from reflecting on it toward your unique life of significance.   In this eighth and final episode of the series, we revisit the three big takeaways our...

An exciting opportunity. That may not seem like an apt description for In a Mad Dash, the profile we discuss this week on the seventh episode of our series unpacking our Trials to Triumphs Self-Assessment. But stay tuned – we think you’ll be surprised, encouraged and equipped.   People whose assessment results return this profile are high performers who’ve had a crucible and se...

Life can be better. That’s the cry of the heart and the hope of the spirit for those who take our Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment and get as their result the profile of On A Different Track, the subject we discuss this week on the latest episode of our spring series.   Those who find themselves On A Different Track make up the 28 percent of people who have taken the assessment who don’t be...

A really hopeful place to be. Maybe you’ll be surprised to learn that the profile from our Trials to Triumphs Self-Assessment we’re describing is the one we call Afraid to Trip. What’s hopeful about that?   You’ll learn the answer to that question in this week’s episode as we discuss how those who receive this result are closer to living their life of significance than they likely realize. Th...

Not filling your bucket but draining it. That’s what it can feel like if you find yourself living the profile of Running in Place from our Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment.   This week, in our fourth episode of our spring series unpacking what your assessment results can teach you about where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible, we examine this unique situation in which y...

Not able to get ahead. That feeling is one of the hallmarks of being Stuck at the Starting Line, the profile from our Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment we discuss on today’s show. But fear not: While feeling stuck after a crucible is normal, it does not have to be forever. In this third episode of our series delving into our statistically valid self-assessment, we not only explain what it looks a...

Living as your best self. Pursuing your vision. Fulfilled by your life of significance. If so, we’ve got good news for you. Just keep listening. Does that sound like a place in which you’d like to stand?    This week, in the second episode of our spring series exploring our Trials-to-Triumphs self-assessment, we begin examining the assessment’s unique profiles by starting with the end in...

Could we really prove it? The stages and the process we go through – each of us individually – after we’ve been through a crucible … and then chart our way beyond it? The answer? Absolutely. As you’re about to discover in our spring series that begins this week on how we built and how you can benefit from our Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment.   In this first episode of our eight part series...

Someone you admire. Someone who knows more than you about your job or about the lifestyle you want to live. Someone who shares your values. People like that are the ones you should be on the lookout for in selecting a mentor.   On this week’s episode, we discuss Warwick's latest blog at BeyondTheCrucible.com, titled “How To Find the Right Mentor.” Among the seven tips he offers to assist us i...

Lion Goodman recounts his harrowing experience of being shot twice (two other bullets narrowly missed him) by a man whose car broke down in the middle of the Mojave Desert to whom he was being a good Samaritan – and the hours of discussion that he engaged in with his attacker, finally, miraculously convincing the gunman to let him go.   The incident, he tells Warwick, set him on the path to b...

The horrors our guest this week, Amanda Blackwood, endured almost from birth are hard to hear. Decades of physical, emotional and sexual abuse … but heartache was not the end of her story. Healing was.   Our interview with Blackwood, by necessity, covers the traumas she experienced being sex-trafficked on more than one occasion. But make no mistake about it: Amanda Blackwood may have been vic...

Character. Discipline. Overcoming a natural weakness like impatience. These are critical characteristics for leaders, and for bouncing back from a crucible, and we explore this week how George Washington modeled them. It’s our focus on this fifth episode of our series within the show, STORIES FROM THE BOOK CRUCIBLE LEADERSHIP.   Warwick discusses his appreciation of and respect for Washington...

This week, we commemorate our 200th episode by revisiting three moments from past shows that moved Warwick and have shaped the kind of podcast we have now. You’ll discover how crucibles can often be vastly different in details but so similar to be almost identical in emotion; the power of being able to find gratitude in your traumas and tragedies; and how mindset and perseverance can be your super...

This week, we discuss Warwick's latest blog, “Seven Ways to Live By Your Passions, Not Others’ Expectations.” In the piece, and on this episode, he unpacks key building blocks to develop and deploy a vision for a life of significance that you, not your friends or family, are uniquely off-the-charts passionate about.   What's a stake if we pursue what pleases others, not what ignites our spiri...

Brad Jeffery was visiting a Kenyan slum on a business trip focused on finding ways to financially help those who lived there when he found himself asking questions about what it would really take to help the impoverished, endangered women he talked with. Just giving them money, he determined, would not solve their dire situation.   So he founded Made Free, an apparel accessories brand that co...

Trusting ourselves and our vision, especially when naysayers offer all sorts of reasons designed to dissuade us from pursuing it, is a necessity in our journey to a life of significance.   This week, in the latest episode of our series within the show, Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership, we discuss how Walt Disney did just that, not letting the doubts of others or the crucibles he enco...

Turning tragedy into triumph. You’ve heard us use those words scores of times, because we know, from experience, that it’s not only possible to turn what’s broken into breakthrough – but that brokenness is often a key ingredient of the breakthrough.   This week's guest, Tyler Sexton, has cerebral palsy, a condition that has forced him to endure 18 surgeries and decades of insults and being re...

Original air date: June 20, 2023 Janine Shepherd was on track to represent her home nation of Australia in the Olympics as a cross-country skier – but then her dream, quite literally, crashed when she was hit by a utility truck while on a bicycle training exercise with her teammates. She came out the other side of that horrific accident and the 6 months of arduous recovery that followed to discove...

Original air date: May 9, 2023 Lauren Sisler was a freshman at Rutgers University when learned she had lost her father just hours after she had lost her mother. Having come home to grieve one parent, she was blindsided by the news that the other had died, too. And she had no idea how any of it had happened We speak with Sisler about that 2003 tragedy, when she was not only hit with the unfathomabl...

The way of others before self. The path lined with humility, authenticity and selflessness. That's the road we discuss this week in our latest episode of the Series Within the Show, Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership.   The historical figure we discuss here is Jesus – specifically His example of servant leadership and His exhortation for us to do as He did. Our conversation is designed...