Beyond the Crucible

A violent altercation in which her enraged husband choked her was the last straw for Victoria McCooey. It left her 6-year-old son, who was in the room at the time, thinking she had been killed. But it also started her down a path of self-discovery and self-care.   On this week’s episode, McCooey tells Warwick in detail the toll that being married to a narcissist had on her identity … as his c...

Dr. Erica Harris endured a cavalcade of crucibles – starting with being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and given just two months to live after her body did not respond to chemotherapy treatments. But then, miraculously she believes, she went into remission in time to receive a bone-marrow transplant that put her on the road to recovery … only to find herself in the direst of straits again w...

Using our worst days to help others have their best days. That’s the undergirding philosophy, the bedrock exhortation, of BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE. And we explore it on this week’s episode in detail so that you can apply the lessons we've learned to turn your own trials into triumphs. Warwick and I take a tour of those learnings, ground also covered in the new blog at BeyondTheCucible.com, 3 Critical L...

Helping people develop a right relationship with money, particularly the younger generations in families of wealth and influence, is the unique focus of the work done by this week’s guest, Kristin Keffeler. As a leading practitioner of family wealth advising called Wealth 360, she supports families of significant means in doing what she calls the “inner work” of money. It’s not just about managing...

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   This week, we speak with Sisler about that 2003 tragedy, when she was not only hit with the unfathomable news of the...

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

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

Our guest this week, Beth Guckenberger, explains how the death of her father when she was certain he would pull through knocked her off balance, making her question the faith in which her life was rooted. But when she realized God’s ways were not her ways, that they were grander and more mysterious than she had ever imagined, that knowledge was fuel for her journey to care for the physical, emotio...

Your crucible didn't happen to you, it happened for you. You’ll hear us say that a lot – tied to that trial, set within that setback, affixed to that failure … you’ll discover seeds you can plant along your journey to a life of significance. You just have to look for and learn from them.   Our guest this week, Andrea Heuston, has accumulated plenty of those seeds as she’s moved beyond her cru...

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

When you find yourself with a match in your hand, contemplating burning the ship you’re in to climb aboard another that will take you in a different direction, having the opportunity to make an impact is about the best destination you can chart a course for. And that’s exactly what Mike Beckham did.   This week, in the final interview in our special winter series BURN THE SHIPS, Warwick talks...

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

In this episode of our special winter series BURN THE SHIPS, we talk to Donte Wilburn about how he wound up selling drugs in his teens and 20s – recognizing the danger but embracing the lifestyle that dealing allowed him to live. But that lifestyle, he explains, came perilously close to ending his life.   It was only after he leaned into his faith and avoided prison thanks to a judge who beli...

Go do it! That's the counsel, the hope, the legacy the mother of our guest this week, Joel Hungate, gave her son. He’d need those words more urgently than he ever could have imagined when she died by suicide, leaving him to question everything on which he had based his life.   In this episode of our special winter series, BURN THE SHIPS, Warwick talks with Hungate about how his Mom’s death le...

If you’ve been listening to our special winter series BURN THE SHIPS, you’ll know why we’ve turned the microphones on ourselves this week. It's because we’ve made our own pivot – changing our business name from Crucible Leadership to the name of this podcast, Beyond the Crucible.    While the change is more a remodeling of our ship than setting it ablaze, it does indeed signal an expande...

In this third episode of our winter series BURN THE SHIPS, Darwin Shaw describes how he set fire to a medical career, with the near-guarantees it offered, to pursue acting and the creative joys it offered. Maybe you know him as Daniel Craig’s first kill enroute to double O status in CASINO ROYALE; maybe as the Apostle Peter in the megahit miniseries THE BIBLE. Maybe from his role as a key creator...

What do you do when the normal tools you use to navigate life no longer work? When the ships that have taken you to a crossroads – or maybe a crosswaters – in your life are smoldering? According to our guest this week, Finnian Kelly, you set sail in a new craft to a new destination: intentionality. In this second episode of our winter series BURN THE SHIPS, Kelly discusses how all the success he c...

Eryn Eddy had found a way to make her passion for music pay off -- licensing her original compositions to VH1 and MTV and some of the most popular shows on television. But she longed to give giving people more than a song to listen to. She wanted to give them a truth to live by.   That makes her the ideal first guest for our new series BURN THE SHIPS, in which we’re talking with men and women...

The ultimate hope of every one of us is to live a life worthy of being remembered. If that’s something you’ve been thinking about during this season of New Year’s resolutions, you’ve come to the right podcast. This week, Beyond the Crucible founder Warwick Fairfax unpacks his timely new blog about ways you can commit in 2023 to live in a way that is true to who you are, anchored in a vision that i...

A critical component of Beyond the Crucible’s recipe for discovering your unique path to a life of significance is to develop a strong team of advisers to help you lean into your gifts and passions along the journey, especially in the aftermath of a crucible. This week, Warwick talks to two men serving in that role to men and women all along the-age and-stage spectrum.   Our guests Tom McGehe...

Karen Austin experienced both anguish and joy as she walked with her husband, Tracy, after a cancer diagnosis that took his life, but never his optimism and spirit.   In our conversation this week with Karen, she shares with intimacy, vulnerability and, yes, humor about what she describes as her “crucible life” – the early death of her mother, her brother’s suicide and the cancer that took he...

It’s quite common for those we interview to tell us their crucibles have improved their lives, made them richer than they would ever have been without the setbacks or failures. This week, Warwick talks with Bill Brown – his Harvard Business School classmate in the ‘80s -- who describes how he was approaching the pinnacle of his business career, as a finalist in Toro’s search for a new CEO, when a...

In our first episode of 2023, we’re joined by guest co-host Lexi Godlewski, who interviews the host of Beyond the Crucible, Warwick Fairfax. His face and voice you know, but the deeper parts of his story you may not! Warwick shares new insights, lessons and perspectives on how he moved beyond his crucible and created a life of significance after the failed takeov...

The holiday season, according to the songs that celebrate it, is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. It's when all is calm and all is bright and we join with friends and family to fa-la-la-la-la our way to the new year. But what if we just don’t feel that way?   In our final episode of 2022, we talk with author Gary Roe about how to get through these last days of the year whil...

We put a bow on the package of our special fall series by exploring the wisdom we heard from all five of our guests. The insights they offered form a roadmap for how to find gain out of even the most devastating losses:  be patient, work to change what you cannot accept, understand there is room for your pain on the other side of your loss, intentionally cultivate joy as you continu...