Listen to our new podcast episode where we explore how Wrigley’s cultural transformation took them from a $2billion company to a $6billion company in just 6 years!
William “Beau” Wrigley Jr. is the former chairman and CEO of the family founded Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. Beau is a visionary business leader with decades of world-class experience in the global brand building in the consumer products space.
He is now President of Wychwood Asset Management LLC and WWJR Enterprises – investment companies that invest in a diverse range of venture capital and private equity interests.
Listen to the S2 E4 ‘Culture is Your Competitive Advantage’ with William “Beau” Wrigley Jr.
You will learn these 3 lessons from Beau:
- How to transform your culture for growth
- Be intentional about letting go
- Build your resilience
This podcast episode was recorded in 2023.
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Transcript of the episode
Zannah Ryabchuk
Hello and welcome to the second series of 3 Lessons from Breakthrough Leaders with me Zannah Ryabchuk, CEO of Breakthrough Global.
Bart Sayle
And with me, Bart Sayle, founder of Breakthrough Global, where we’ve spent the past 30 years developing the breakthrough methodology to help transform companies and people looking to reach their highest level.
Zannah Ryabchuk
And this podcast is all about giving you insider tips, and the know how from the world’s foremost leaders and creative talents. Distilling their knowledge and experience into three lessons, which we guarantee will help you and your companies to unleash your potential. And you can get in touch with us at bartsayle@breakthroughglobal.com to find out more.
Bart Sayle
In today’s episode, I’m excited and inspired because we have a good friend of mine, and a colleague over many years, William “Beau” Wrigley Jr, who was the former chairman and CEO of the family founded William Wrigley Jr, company. Beau is a visionary business leader, with decades of world class experience in global brand building and business growth in the consumer product space. Today, we’ll learn these three lessons.
Bart Sayle
How to transform your culture for growth.
Beau Wrigley
To get to a revisioning culture or the culture that you want, you have to get rid of the baggage. Then it was not just saying, ‘Okay, well, we want the culture to be x.’ It was, ‘Okay, how do we want to interact with one another?’
Bart Sayle
Be intentional about letting go.
Beau Wrigley
One, I was terrified that I just, you know, sent the company down the tube because I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen. But intuitively, I did, because you have to look for opportunities to really set the stage and embed that culture and those beliefs.
Bart Sayle
Build your resilience.
Beau Wrigley
Because I remember thinking, ‘Wow, what are we going to do now?’ And we decided to take a failure and turn it into an opportunity about how much we learned from the process and how much this company now had the capabilities to be on the world stage and play with the biggest and the best and the brightest. And what an amazing team we were and this was just an example of that. That’s how I connect my own coping mechanisms to that of a company, and how you turn failures into opportunities through through learning experiences.
Bart Sayle
Lesson One: Transform your culture, grow your business.
Bart Sayle
Well I’m excited today because our guest is a great friend of mine. We started a working relationship as a client, as a colleague, and now we’re great friends. And our guest today is William “Beau” Wrigley. Welcome, Beau. Welcome to our podcast.
Beau Wrigley
Thank you. Great to be here.
Bart Sayle
It is really a pleasure. And we’ve known each other now for over two decades. We met soon after you took over as CEO of the Wrigley Company, where you had an incredible impact. It had a great impact on me, and actually changed the way I led. Really looking at you and seeing you as a great example and role model of a breakthrough leader, but more so as a transformational leader. Because I saw during that time that you took Wrigley from an institution in the USA. You took it across the world. You created a global company, and you took it into the 21st century. So I’d like to start release looking back at that time, and what was the impact on you? Personally, and as a leader during that transformation of Wrigley.
Beau Wrigley
That’s a great question. Thank you also, for the, for the kind words, I would say our relationship, frankly, is definitely part of that transformation as well. And I think one of the founding principles from that as I was listening to you kind of set the stage is that, I think when individuals are willing to listen to one another and learn from one another, great things can happen. That’s what happened from day one. I would say the most transformative thing which you and I obviously worked on very closely together was really transforming the culture of the company, which really became the energy behind pretty explosive growth over over a decade. And it really was unleashing the power of the people and seeing what people could do. And seeing that and being energised by that certainly is, is transformational for any individual, I think. And it makes you want to do more and figure out ways to have people achieve things that they never thought was possible for themselves, personally. So it was, it was quite an experience.
Bart Sayle
Yeah, for me also and it transformed the way I worked as well, that culture. When when we started this culture was talked about, but not in the same sense that it is now. I mean, it’s it’s everywhere now. And people have finally started to see that culture is, it’s, it’s one of your main competitive advantages. Organisations and corporate organisations, global organisations, now they sort of all have the same access to resources. But the one thing that they don’t have access to is somebody else’s culture, and nobody has access to your culture. And that’s something that that I remember you spent a lot of time working with the culture, nurturing the culture, energising that culture.
Beau Wrigley
That’s right. I was thinking another aspect on transformation was, I think, as part of the whole process, I learned to focus much more on the present and the future than on the past. That really enabled the company to think outside of the box. And the people within the company, obviously, in terms of what we could be, as opposed to what we had been. The transformational change versus incremental change, or even evolutionary change. So, yeah, I think you’re quite right, I used to think that, gosh, I didn’t want anyone to know what our strategy was within the company, because that someone would copy it. And then I began to realise part of this whole process that that really didn’t matter, because it really is its strategy, its people, and then its execution. And someone can have your strategy, but you know, chances are, they’re not going to have hopefully, if you do your job, right, you know, the best people that we had in terms of the team. But then when it comes down to execution, a big part of that execution is culture. And that’s really a driving force that I think a lot of people miss, frankly. Then we became, because of the culture within the company, a place where people really didn’t want to work. And that wasn’t always the case. I would say today, and this, you know, obviously a bit of a general generalisation because many companies do do it well. People do talk about culture, but I think it probably still get a little bit more lip service than actual embedded thought. And I don’t think people go as deep as they need to when thinking about culture. And what that really means. And one of the things that we did, as I recall, and it was so much fun was, well, this part wasn’t fun, actually, to get to a revisioning culture, you know, the culture that you want to have, you have to get rid of the baggage. And you have to get rid of the old culture. That’s a challenge and that can be painful but we had tools in the in the bag to do that. We can we can talk about that if you like. But then it was not just saying, ‘Okay, well, we want the culture to be x.’ It was, ‘Okay, how do we want to interact with one another?’ And that’s really what it comes down to, in terms of culture, is how do you treat people within the company? What are those relationships? What’s the company’s relationship with its people? What’s the people relationship with the company? And in any different aspect, whether it’s a project or, you know, a day to day kind of activity, is what really drives culture. And you have to have the tools to be able to communicate, right? And one of those is, you know, that I’m really passionate about is listening and figuring out exactly how to be a truly good listener. Everyone says, oh, yeah, you know, I want to listen. But that’s the superficial stuff, you have to dig deep and have those skill sets and have those tools to really create the foundation for building a culture. And it’s not, ‘Oh, I want the culture to be this,’ you really have to build it with everyone’s involvement.
Zannah Ryabchuk
I’m just thinking about an organisation we were working with last week, actually, who are about to go through their own explosive growth journey. They are at this inflection point and what we were getting across to them last week was the formulas that have got you to where you are now are not gonna get you to the next stage of your journey. And we were really hammering home that idea of culture being their competitive advantage and that being a digital firm, you know, the tech is gonna change all the time people are going to come in and they might eat your lunch but you’ve got to just keep, keep moving. And as long as you have an adaptable, agile culture that’s going to suit your strategy, then you’ll be able to do anything. What are some of the watch out, the pitfalls that you would want to share with an organisation like that? Or people who are super hungry right now. They’re about to go into a period of unleashing all of that potential and explosive growth. What would you say are the things to watch out for?
Beau Wrigley
I think the first one that really pops to mind is authenticity. I mean, if you’re going to do this, then you really have to see it through if you will, and figure out in advance, you know, what do you want to do? How do you want to do it? You know, what are you going to spend against that in terms of not just money, but resources, time? Because if you’re not, and if you give something short shrift, or kind of do it partially, and then back off, people see that, and they understand that you’re not intentional, for example, about what you’re really trying to do. I think it’s, it’s about the complete package. One of the watch outs also would be being to top down. And one of the ways that I got it that, to be honest, was that, as a leader of the organisation, I had to kind of organise my own thoughts in terms of what I wanted to do. And I did, I did that kind of on my own. And then I also had the company build up. And we got to a place that was somewhere slightly different than, you know, what my vision was, and allowed for contribution throughout the organisation. I think that’s, that’s super important. People have to have skin in the game, they have to feel like they’re part of the process, you can’t again, just come in and define. Okay, this is where we’re going. This is why and this is how people have to be a part of that. One of the challenges that we had, and I think that a lot of these companies will have in this process is why change? What’s the burning platform? Especially if a company has been reasonably successful. And it’s a fair question and our company been reasonably successful. We’ve started to flatline a bit, but you know, it’s the Wrigley Company, well known brands. So you really have to find a way to paint that picture of the future of what it could look like under different scenarios and get people to understand that well, okay, the fire may not be super hot right now, on that platform, we are heading in a direction where, you know, there is a reason for change. And, you know, get people to be onboard with that, and truly onboard. And again, that’s where you, you have people who are Passengers, you have people who are Prisoners. And then you have people who are really passionate about making things happen. And some people choose not to get onboard, because it takes change. It takes work. It’s it’s hard. You get to get out of your routine and do things differently. The final thing I would say in terms of watch outs is to make sure again, going back to a point I made earlier, that people have the right skills to manage that transition. Some of the more fundamental tools like communication, you know, like coping with stress, and perseverance and resilience and all those types of things, even integrity to a degree, are not really taught in schools. And so I think it is incumbent upon the great companies to help embed those skill sets within their associate base, because then they will have the tools to work with themselves. And it really does start with yourself. You know, you’ve got to give them those those skill sets so that they can then take that forward and you can all work together to build a culture.
Bart Sayle
As Beau mentioned, and many of you recognise this, so many change and transformation programmes are too top down. With the Wrigley organisation we wanted to ensure that everybody participates. Everybody takes ownership, everybody takes responsibility for the change within themselves and for their circle of influence. And that’s our mantra: start with yourself. And so with this transformation, literally everybody was involved at some level. Everybody went through a Breakthrough process. And what we were able to do as a result of that is really empower our two principles of successful transformation, which is momentum and critical mass.
Zannah Ryabchuk
So absolutely, and I’m sharing this with our clients all the time when we’re onboarding them. It’s not enough just to start with your leadership. And although we do have a top down approach at Breakthrough, we found that the way that works the best, that’s the best method, it can’t just stay at the top. Because then everybody at that level has got a common language and new way of doing things. A collective mindset, that’s, that’s Breakthrough and different but when they go back to their teams and their direct reports, and those people go back to their direct reports, it doesn’t trickle down. So we need to have some form of cascade and critical mass and momentum is the way to do this. You don’t necessarily need to go as far as Beau did in his situation and reach everyone, that is a fantastic way to go about it. But you do need to reach a tipping point where things are so different, that they cannot turn back. When you’ve truly transformed. And you need the momentum. So often people start something, and then business and life gets in the way, and then you lose that momentum, you lose that energy surge and enthusiasm that people have at the start of a transformation journey, and you have to reset and restart again. So with our clients, we’re always advising them, you really, really, really need to get the momentum going from the start and make sure that you’ve got a plan for the long term of how you’re going to embed and sustain this over time.
Bart Sayle
Lesson Two: let go to be intentional.
Bart Sayle
If you change things, you can always change back. But when you’ve transformed something, you’ve reached that tipping point where things don’t change back. And I think when you said that you’ve got to, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul. And you’ve got to really steer it through and not have false starts. Those false starts are actually examples of change, change forward, change back. And if you do that too many times people just lose belief because a lot of this is at the beginning is based on belief. And I think the other thing is that in that transformation, and starting with yourself, you’ve got to let go of things. So looking back on that, what was some of the things you felt, you realised you had to let go of.
Beau Wrigley
You know, just listening to your words reminds me of another aspect, which I think may maybe be a watch out, in the difference between change and transformation is how deep do you go in the organisation. And if you’ll recall, we had about 10,000 people in the organisation at the time, started at six and grew to 10 and on from there, but and we decided, after really starting this whole journey with the top 40 people in the company, that we were going to take the entire company, everyone, absolutely every associate through some form of the Breakthrough Global Programme and the transformation that we were envisioning. That’s where a lot of people get it wrong, too, in my opinion. It takes time, takes research, it takes effort, and a lot of people just take the C-Suite. Take the top tier, take the top, you know, two, three layers or whatever. And that’s great, but then you’re going to end up with a disconnect within your organisation, and not really be able to achieve the transformation, as opposed to change that, that you just talked about. Now, when it comes to things that I left behind, you know, there was a lot of history with this company. And, you know, history can be great, but history can also be super limiting. It doesn’t have to be just, you know, family history. And in my case, corporations have a lot of history, it’s back to, you know, kind of the baggage and how things were done. And, oh, gosh, we tried that in, you know, 19, whatever, even though the consumer has moved on the world has moved on and so on. So, you know, one of the things you do need to leave behind is that history. And that’s not to say that you shouldn’t learn from history. And there aren’t important elements that make up a foundation of a company, that sometimes you’ll want to blow up but most times you don’t. But you really have to be open and inclusive. And I remember at one point in time, actually was very early on in the process, and you’ll remember this Bart, when we had run through a programme about this transformation and what we wanted to do and what we wanted to be as a company which is pretty different than than what we had been for the last 100 plus years. And at that point in time, we decided that we were going to create a microcosm of the world with these 40 people and have them create plans for the future. And I did say at the end of the we wrapped up the entire meeting after that, that that is what we were trying to achieve as a company. We’re not waiting for one leader or a few select pan full of people to go around and be the smartest people in the room, and you know, approve everything. We want you guys to interact directly, share stories, share successes, share failures, and build off of one another because it’s just, it’s just too daunting, a task for one individual. And as you recall, one person got up and asked, ‘When are you going to come around and approve all these plans that we have created?’ And in what I would describe as somewhat of an out of body experience for myself, you know, I paused for a moment and said, ‘You know, what, there’s, there’s so much institutional knowledge in this room, we’ve built so much trust, based on the tools, based on the understanding and so on, that I trust you to go and make things happen. And all of the plans are approved.’ And the room erupted into applause. So there are a couple of learnings from that. One, I was terrified that I just, you know, sent the company down the tube becasue I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen. But intuitively, I did, because, you know, I did know these people. And I, and we did have controls within the company and so it wasn’t, you know, a free for all. But probably one of the most important lessons from that was that you have to look for opportunities to really set the stage and embed that culture, those beliefs, when you’re working on things like that, and that happened to be an accidental one. But that happened to work very well, because that was the strongest signal that I could have sent to the organisation that, wow, this guy’s different. Things are going to be different. This company’s gonna be different. And guess what? We can actually engage like we haven’t, ever before, because then they really had the accountability. It was more of a siloed driven, you know, traditional company back in the, you know, 60s, style management, if you will. And that really, I think, was a seminal moment.
Zannah Ryabchuk
So part of what you also unleashed was a massive amount of intentionality. What were some of the areas where you really harnessed that intentionality and saw your people start to live with a very high level of intentionality? What was that like?
Beau Wrigley
You know, there were a series of little things, I guess, that really sort of all add up, when you when you talk about intentionality. Part of that is saying, what you’re going to do. Sharing, acting, you know, what you want to do, all in a way that’s, that’s very aligned. Because if you look at a lot of people these days, what they say versus what they think versus what they do is, is not particularly aligned. And unfortunately, we can, we can go to our political system to look at that, but we don’t want to go there. So it’s, it’s really important to have that alignment and we worked on that as a tool, frankly, within the company, to make sure that that people were aligned and that came in many forms. Also, in terms of intentionality in using the right language, it really is pretty interesting. When you say, ‘Well, I’m going to try and do that,’ versus ‘I’m going to do that.’ It may or may not work but when you speak about it in a more intentional standpoint, as opposed to kind of giving yourself out, ‘Well, that may happen’ or whatever you say. ‘No, no, this is the goal, we’re gonna we’re gonna make this happen.’ It really changes the mindset. And that’s one of the skills and one of the tools when it comes to to intentionality. But closely related, I think, to intentionality is accountability. Obviously, there’s a lot that’s been said about that. But it’s it is. It’s taking account for your actions and your decisions and that can be very powerful. It can also be very scary for people. But again, if you give them the right kind of support and tools to do that, then they oftentimes find that they can rise to the occasion. It also comes back to relationships, as I referred to earlier. I’ve always been sort of a bit manic about being on on time. And, you know, when I took over the company, and people would wander into a meeting and be like, oh, yeah, I was on a call or whatever, until I started locking the door and saying, if you don’t walk into this meeting, I mean, figure out your call, figure out whatever it is, you know. People got left behind and then they realised that it wasn’t I wasn’t trying to be autocratic, or anything like that. What I was trying to show people is that it’s respect for your other associates or the people in the meeting, which comes down back down to relationships. And frankly, and it’s how you’re communicating to them and it’s a nonverbal communication and that’s always been important. So again, it’s being intentional with your time how you want to be perceived, how you want to interact with other people. It’s frankly, it’s, it’s a it’s a big category to address.
Bart Sayle
One of the hardest things for human beings and businesses alike, is to let go of things that you believe are factors in your success. But often in a transformation, the things that have got you to where you are, are no longer viable to get you to where you want to go. And so we need to let go of those. During a transformation, you’ll find that your performance starts to drop off initially. And that’s because we’re bringing in new things but we’re not letting go of the old things. The old ways of working the old habits, the old beliefs. And so our performance will drop until the point that we realise this and we start to let go of those and focus intentionally on the new ways of working, the new belief systems, and then we see our performance starting to rise. We call this The Dip. It’s a drop in performance. And the drop path of that is because we haven’t let go.
Bart Sayle
Lesson Three: build resilience.
Zannah Ryabchuk
There is a definite shift in the lack of resourcefulness around stress. And yet at a time, when I think the generations coming through have never been told more about resilience and never been told more about health and well being and never been told more about, you know, prioritising and so on. There seems to be this paradox at the moment, where actually they’re the people who are finding it the hardest, and they’re struggling with the day to day and with the pressures that exist for all of us in our lives. And so I was really interested that you were suggesting the need for, for some better training and some better tooling up for for people at any age, who are going into the real, the real world, so to speak.
Beau Wrigley
Yeah, it is. Definitely yeah, the other another that I’m super passionate about. And while I do what I can to kind of change from an educational standpoint, I think it’s really incumbent upon, you know, companies, especially these days, to really try and instil not only values, but, but also resilience in in our kids. And maybe circling back to the beginning of our conversation, I think it really does start with the individual but then it goes all the way through to, you know, teams and to a company, if you will. But from an individual standpoint, like one of the things that I did when I was little, most likely because of various challenges that I faced along the way, was to listen to a lot of people. Go out and hear people speak and visit organisations and do everything I could to get out. Just to get perspectives. And it wasn’t that I was trying to necessarily emulate any one of those individuals. I would sit in, in, in a speech, and I would try and write down three things that read as thought provoking that I agreed with, or maybe even that I vehemently disagreed with. And that was my way of defining, over time, who I wanted to be; what was important to me, and how did I want to function in the world, both as an individual and with relationships, and in a leadership sense. From a career standpoint. So I think as part of that process, coping skills are huge and they’re sort of the foundation for resilience. And you should have as many in your tool bag as you can, but only those that work for you. And some people go out for a run. Some people meditate. Some people, you know, go hug an animal. It could be any number of things. There are different ways of working through issues because there are going to be challenges, there is going to be adversity, there is going to be confrontation, there’s gonna be disappointment, there is going to be failure. Being able to bounce back from that kind of stuff does come back to the whole notion of resilience. But it really does come back to coping mechanisms. And how can you as an individual, not take things personally, for example, and understand that it really isn’t about you. So, once you have those coping skills then you can help others with that. And frankly, be a good, good friend or a good partner in relationships and help people work through issues. You can help teams work through that at a company and then, you know, in a leadership role you also can do the same. And I’ll just give one example that pops to mind and as part of history, the Wrigley Company was intentional at one point in time about acquiring the Hershey Company. And we spent a lot of time and effort and the company management and Hershey was all for it. And we got down to the wire, so to speak. And the Hershey Trust, decided to end the deal, if you will, and literally was the night before it was all going to be announced. And so that hits morale. I mean everyone put a lot of time and effort into that. And it was like, ‘Well, we failed.’ And I was able, I believe, through a series of conversations, I remember flying back from Hershey, Pennsylvania, thinking, ‘Wow. What are we going to do now?’ And we decided to take that event, sort of speak, that failure, and turn it into an opportunity about how much we learned from the process and how much this company now had the capabilities to be on the world stage and play with the biggest and the best and the brightest. And what an amazing team we were, and this was just an example of that, what we just gone through. And so it was a pivot, it was a way of reenergising people as opposed to everyone going back and going, ‘Oh, gosh, you know, that didn’t work and failed. Now we’re doomed.’ And so that’s how I connect both my own coping mechanisms and to that of a company, and how you turn failures into opportunities through learning experiences.
Bart Sayle
But they come out of it in the way that Beau didn’t want Wrigley to. So they do see it as a failure, that it does dampen morale. And I think what they’ve done, they’ve not, they’ve not taken the learnings. They’ve not absorbed that actually this exercise, what it did is it, for me, it expanded Wrigleys identity of itself. And its belief in itself. As you said earlier, if you held to the past, then you limit your future. So what’s important to you about reinvention and particularly reinventing yourself?
Beau Wrigley
I have a couple of different ways of looking at reinvention, the two founding principles in looking at read reinvention are one doing things differently, that are not within your comfort zone. It’s it’s one of the hardest things to do, because everyone wants to be comfortable, everyone develops routines. I’ll come back to that in a moment. But being uncomfortable is when you learn the most. I can’t quote research, but I’m convinced that that is what really challenges the mind and energise the mind. It also really challenges you to look at things differently. Oftentimes, and I think that’s an important kind of offshoot you know of that is your comfort level. The other aspect that I look at is what I kind of call my my growth curve, or learning curve. And in my own mind, I have this mental picture of kind of a 45 degree angle. Doesn’t relate to anything specifically, it’s really just my, my metaphor for that. If that growth curve isn’t a 45 degree angle, then I need to do more things. If it kind of comes down, starts to flatten a bit where I know what I’m doing all the time and it’s a familiar topic or industry or whatever, I really try and break that up and challenge that. I sit down at the beginning of the year, and say, okay, you know, what are we going to do differently across life, really, to break that up and to challenge that. And part of that is receiving external input that is just new and fresh. And there’s certainly plenty of that out there. And you have to kind of wade through, if you will, the plethora of information out there. But I think it’s, it’s, it’s really challenging. I’ll give a small example. And this sounds completely silly but one time we decided as a leadership team, and this is just the leadership group, that everyone had to change their office. And it was actually quite unbelievable how uncomfortable it was and how different it was and how much it actually changed perspective and how people came in you interacted or whatever. And it was just it was a little thing like that, that just was like, you walk in every day; you have your cup of coffee or whatever; you sit down and it was just like everything was just so, but just just mixing it up a little bit like that was really powerful. And then the other aspect to that was really just understanding what you do during the day and it’s helpful every now and then just to kind of write down. ‘Okay, what were all the things I did?’ As you go through the day and then at the end of the day, you look back at it and say, ‘Well, where did they spend my time?’ Did I spend my time on the most important things? What can I do differently? So it is about adapting and forcing that change on yourself. Not just the external change, and that that teaches you skillsets and sort of fortifies you to be able to deal with the external change when you create internal change for yourself, that’s sort of a skill set or a tool that I think is super helpful in navigating life.
Bart Sayle
As Beau says, the key for him was building resilience and is building resilience. And we cannot build resilience by staying in our comfort zone. The way we build resilience is to stretch out of the comfort zone. Now we have three zones, we’ve got our Comfort Zone where everything is familiar and safe and comfortable. And then we’ve got an Overload Zone, where if we stretch too far, we do get into overload. And it’s at that point that we need to recognise that there’s a zone in between, and we call it the Stretch Zone. And the Stretch Zone is our growth gone. The Stretch Zone is our learning zone, where we actually build resilience. If we live our life, in the comfort zone, we don’t build anything. If we stray too much into the overload zone, we get injured, we get hurt. But the stretch zone is the place to build our resilience for the future.
Zannah Ryabchuk
And one of the concerns that I’ve got about the future really, is that we are not setting young people up for success, to believe that they can live in their stretch zone. I read a fantastic article recently that talked about how we are starting to treat our young people like they’re incredibly fragile. They’re not. They’re amazingly resilient. But they need to believe that they’re resilient, that they can do things and they can stretch and they can achieve. And of course that we are there as a safety net to support and help them when they need that additional help. And I think it’s so intrinsically linked to the idea of resilience and living your life and the Stretch Zone that’s where growth really happens. The world isn’t comfortable, the world is full of challenges and that’s where we get to rise to the occasion and meet those challenges.
Zannah Ryabchuk
Okay, so Beau, this is the part of the show where we’re going to ask you your hotseat questions. Are you ready?
Beau Wrigley
All set.
Zannah Ryabchuk
All set. Okay, so what’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever done?
Beau Wrigley
Exciting thing would have to be diving. Underneath the water is just an amazing, amazing, diverse place that most people really don’t get to, don’t have access to. I would encourage anyone to do that because it’s just, it’s an experience that you never know exactly what’s going to happen; what’s going to be there. And I would say that has to be one of the most exciting things that I’ve had the privilege of doing in my lifetime.
Bart Sayle
Great.
Zannah Ryabchuk
And what inspires you in life?
Beau Wrigley
Is learning, growing. I do like to be challenged. And I like working with with great people who share those, those same motivations, if you will, of learning and growing and tackling a subject or an issue or whatever it might be.
Zannah Ryabchuk
And finish this sentence please. Success is…
Beau Wrigley
Success is however you want to define it. Actually, this, this raises another point that I think is quite interesting. To me success is a feeling because it’s not one thing. It’s not a tangible thing. It’s really sort of intangible. It’s not getting the top of some rank in a company or selling company or making a certain amount of money or buying the car or house or whatever. It’s really feeling like you are successful, productive, fulfilled. You know, it’s however you want to define it. I think just to digress for a moment that too many people and this is a function of where our world has evolved, and especially technology, most specifically social media, define themselves in terms of social expectations, and social norms, if you will. And that’s a dangerous thing. And that that gets away from being an individual, and what’s important to really understanding yourself. And so I would encourage us all to think what’s right for us as an individual in a context and then figure out how that works with life and how you going to interact, you know, with others but don’t get don’t get trapped by all these, these social norms and expectations that are that are frankly false expectations. You should have your own expectations and work on those because if you don’t set your own expectations and set them at a reasonable level, then most likely you’re not gonna be very happy.
Bart Sayle
Thanks so much for sharing your experience and your insights. And you know, some some things very personal so I’m really happy for that. Thank you so much.
Beau Wrigley
Well, pleasure to be here. Have enjoyed our relationship and so excited to see what what you guys are doing going forward. So my thanks to you as well.
Bart Sayle
Thank you for joining us for today’s three lessons. Do make sure you hit the subscribe button. And join us each month for three more lessons from breakthrough leaders.
Zannah Ryabchuk
And if have you got a question or comment or want to find out more, you can email us at bartsayle@breakthroughglobal.com or connect with us on LinkedIn at Breakthrough Global or Instagram at Global Breakthrough.
Bart Sayle
And we’d also love for you to share this episode on your own social media and review and rate this podcast on the player of your choice.
Zannah Ryabchuk
And so once again, thanks to our production team, Julia Soltysova at Breakthrough Global and Robin LeeBurn at Fairly Media and of course, thank you for listening.
