My Favourite Failure: Do what is meaningful - Tom Foxley

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1:07Hello and welcome to Secret Leaders. What happens when you build a business that instead of giving you freedom, makes you feel trapped? From the outside, everything looks good. But on the inside, you know that things cannot continue this way. I had things pretty sweet, like not amazing. And then in terms of the business, it was kind of going where I wanted it to be. and then I knew there was a little bit of a struggle that led to small elements of a breakdown on maybe the most special few weeks of my life and that led me to one of the best places I've been. If you don't do what is meaningful, you won't regret it for the rest of your life.

1:57That is simply it.

2:07Tom Foxley originally began training CrossFit as a way of maintaining fitness for his role as a Royal Marine. While working with people at the gym, he realised that what was holding them back wasn't knowledge, but mindset. To support these athletes, he went from personal training to starting a fitness and lifestyle business. The way it actually worked is I was personal training and coaching athletes individually and in a group as well. And within these kind of between the sets and reps, but when people are resting, we're having these kind of conversations about what I've been up to, what they've been up to.

2:40And I was like, oh, this is, this is the same thing, just transferred. And then that led to a small seminar at a local gym. And that was like, great. And then that led to a few more. And then that led to a few seminars over Europe. And then that led to kind of an online coaching platform. And then it kind of self perpetuated with a lot of force to and a lot of like my structure. that was the kind of general way it went. And things were kind of fine. They never really took off. And I didn't know enough about business to make it work. I thought that I was very much in a build and they will come mentality.

3:15I don't need to market. I don't need to invest in sales because I'm naturally good enough. So they'll just find out how good I am and that will work in terms of coaching. And then that led to a small team. It was very much a lifestyle business, Like I said, a small team, we had at one point, we had four coaches working for us. It was kind of a low six figure revenue, like nothing massive, but it enabled me to live the life that I wanted. And actually, more to the point, helped a lot of individuals. And that led to kind of coaching coaches how to coach what we were doing. And that had a huge spin on effect.

3:46So it was great. However, everything felt like a grind for me. Everything felt like, especially after the first two years, it was like, this is heavy. This is difficult. Like this is stressful. And I realized that I was in the cycle that a lot of entrepreneurs might found themselves in where I'd create some success. Actually, where it actually started is I'd freak out because we weren't generating enough revenue and that would lead to some action. And I get great. Like I'm doing something and I'll get some progress from it. And then I'd almost, because it wasn't, there was something missing, which we'll come around to in a second there was something missing and i'd get bored and then i'd cycle back around and i'd just like go to inaction and then freak out because nothing was happening and over the years that just that cycle just perpetuated just through a ton of different a ton of different like situations like it was the same scenario just with the different guys to it so the the cycle that i see a ton with entrepreneurs is especially freedom seeking entrepreneurs.

4:54I work now with people that I call adventurepreneurs, business owners who like doing adventurous kind of stuff every time. And the common cycle, if you don't have a meaningful vision laid out, is that you'll go, well, there's pain. I'm uncomfortable with this. Maybe it's not enough revenue. Maybe it's I'm overworked. Maybe the team is stressful. Whatever it is for you, there's pain. So I take action to remedy that pain. I do something about it. I kind of set up new sales system or I market harder, or I utilize the strategies that I know I should be using anyway. And then that kind of succeeds for a little bit and you do well.

5:35At that point, your self-sabotage mechanism kicks in because you either kick back, you know, hey man, I've got this sorted. Don't need to be worrying about this right now. Or you just kind of get bored with that because we're addicted to the unknown and we're addicted to chaos in some level. So we don't do anything or we'd start doing the wrong behaviors. And then that leads to the problem starting again. And then it just loops around. And having watched this in myself a ton, I now see it in so many other entrepreneurs and business owners. They're just looping around the same behaviors year after year.

6:11And it's that that ebbs away at your soul after a little bit. That's the frustrating thing. This cycle of frustration that Tom is talking about can seem to have no end It's feast or famine Either things are working well and nothing needs to be done Or they are completely broken There's no in-between What Tom soon realises is It's not the business that's broken It's that the business isn't aligned with what he wants for his life So next what happens is My wife and I move out to Canada we lived there for three years and i find a little part of me that i'd buried when i was in the royal marines what i really wanted now looking back at it is adventure i had that call to adventure the hero's journey aspect i think especially guys but a lot of us get anyway it's like that kind of feeling of like a calling to more it's that bit in um in lord of the rings or the hobbit when Gandalf knocks on the door and it's like and then the end after the um after the dwarves come in and it's like that oh there's there's your call to adventure we get that and for me that was originally through the Royal Marines did that and then I kind of put it to one side then we moved to Canada and I found that through mountaineering and skiing and for me that was really exciting and like it got that bit of me alive but at the same time I felt like I had to run the business and it was just like it was taking away from what I really found meaningful and enjoyable and was authentically me so it's like I'd go and be authentically me and then I'd put this persona on and the persona would do the work and then I'd go out and be authentically me so that was like it was a fantastic time in my life like generally one of the best three years I also got engaged at that time which we'll come back to later and managed to pluck up the courage to propose to my now wife after 12 years.

8:10So I managed to do it. And so we eventually, like, so we got engaged. I found this part that I love of outdoors, of ski mountaineering, of climbing, of all these things that I absolutely just adore. And then, but I was still having this, this mismatch in my life. There was still this, this dichotomy between the two parts of myself. I tried to work harder. I tried to push harder. I tried to just, if I figure this out, if I carry on going and I just dropped my head down. We moved back to the UK after those three years. We actually moved back in with my now in-laws at that time. And we just, I was like, okay, great.

8:48I've got all this time, all this space. I'm just going to crush the business and get it to a point where it is absolutely flying.

8:59It did not work. I just stressed myself out. I distracted myself a ton. i took it out a lot too much on my on my then fiance uh i got miserable i got i saw myself regressing to how i was as a late teenager early adult i saw myself become dark moody miserable like not engaging in social like the things i enjoyed not seeing my mates like there was a huge disconnect because i was just grinding and grinding and grinding but i thought if i just pushed hard enough, then I would figure this out for once and for all. And then I could be gone for it. What I really wanted is just for the problem to be gone.

9:43And I thought that if I worked hard enough, it would resolve itself. There's a lot to be said for tenacity. Sometimes things really don't work until you commit to them. Likewise, there is wisdom in knowing when something isn't working before you've given it too much. So it's the dream wedding. It's exactly what we would have chosen. We were out in France. My parents, they live out in France, and we found a little chateau out there, a tiny little beautiful place. We got married out there. We had 85, 90 of the people that we absolutely adore there. A few who couldn't make it, which was a shame. We went from that wedding, which was genuinely the best day of my life, bar none went from that wedding to um to honeymoon we went around the alps we drove around the alps we did a bit in chamonix and like did some mountain biking climbing and then we went on to a few different areas and we ended up in champagne and a little bit of this was frustration because i'd booked a hotel and it turned out to be a scam and there was no hotel there so we had to kind of there's a little bit stressed at the same time these things happen what was really going on is that I'd spent the last six years at that point suffering and breaking myself to try and do something that was not aligned with who I really was.

11:05And there was an incongruency between who I really was and the version of me that I was acting out. And because of that, my mind was messy. What I can see now is my nervous system was shot. So I was stressed out constantly. I was not sleeping i was having panic attacks and i wasn't doing the stuff that i knew i needed to be done like i was falling into these acts of self-sabotage and that all came to a head when i had somewhat of a breakdown and in like what was our honeymoon in the champagne region it was like this beautiful place and i just broke down i couldn't do it like three o 'clock in the morning i'd been up staring at the ceiling for hours and hours and hours and just that endless feeling that i think every entrepreneur knows of just staring at the ceiling just like i can't sleep i'm freaking out about this like there was some some of that was money struggles some of it was like we like i've taken like three weeks off the business and like no sales are coming in because of that and all this kind of stress and like i'm letting my team down i'm letting this business like the i'm letting the um the clients down that was all running through my head and it It just got to me in a full-on panic attack, tears.

12:23And obviously, you're trying to explain that to your wife, then wife, like a week into your marriage. And I'm like, sorry, this is what you've married. You're into this. And you legally can't get out of it without a lot of difficulty now. So yeah, that's what happened. At that point, I know I needed to change. Something needed to change. and the model that i was like okay the model that i have isn't working the stress that is generating is not working um and i was like actually i'm done with this i needed to drop that business model i fired my team i tried to keep them on in a kind of in a supportive capacity i love that team they're great people i got rid of all my clients so revenue went to zero overnight i still had a lot of bills to pay, by the way.

13:14I just got rid of everything. It was like starting from zero, this is all going away. And it was the only way that I could see to move forwards was to completely sever ties from that way of doing things. There was nothing to sell because it relied on me. There was nothing to outsource because again, there were no systems to outsource. It was just my chaotic activity that generated the whole business because there was no alignment of meaning within my life. So that meant that the values of myself, the CEO at that time, and the values of the business, there was a mismatch between them. And there's a Jordan Peterson quote going around my head, do what is meaningful, not what's his expedient.

13:53Okay. Expedient meaning ticking boxes, trying to achieve the objective as quickly as you can. But I was really having a crisis of meaning. I knew who I, I knew who I wanted to be. I knew what set my soul on fire but I wasn't living that life I was doing what's expedient I was trying to just crush the business until I can get out of it I'll do this and then I'll do something different who I authentically was was who I am now really is like I'm an adventurpreneur I'm a business owner that likes going to do cool stuff in my free time I love three things essentially growth adventure and freedom that's what I love and that's who I want to work with That's who I want to spend my time with.

14:33That's who I'm most alive with when I'm spending time with people who love growing, who love doing adventurous stuff, whatever that is to them, whether it is becoming the best father they could be or climbing K2 or base jumping. Like the adventurous person you'd find and freedom as well, being able to do what you want when you want to do it. And I realized that I was not working with those people. I was not spending my time in that fashion.

15:01what tom learned from all of this was that owning a business isn't like locking in for a job if you're going to pour your heart and soul into building something that thing has to be aligned with the person you want to be life isn't there to be a tick box exercise like no one cares like you won't care if you have the income you won't care if you're just living someone else's life. There'll be a day when you do lie on your deathbed, or hopefully you'll get that moment of clarity of like, did I do this well? And the success will not be the revenue you generated. The success will be the change that you facilitated in other people.

15:41It'll be, did you live congruently to your values? Did you do what is authentic to you? And that is not found through logic, it's found through meaning. And that is a really challenging thing to do because we need that logic and we need the meaning. And they combined, they work, but you have to have this nested goals where meaning is the ultimate thing. What do you personally, individually, authentically find meaningful, which leads to a vision of success, which you absolutely adore, which leads to, this is where I start to get logical, smart goals. What am I doing? Which leads to process goals.

16:21What do I need to do right now and how do I do it? And then that leads to how am I training my character to be a better person? That all stems from, are you meaningful? And if there's a lack of congruency between any of those levels, everything is misaligned and everything feels heavy and everything feels challenging. and everything feels clunky, and you end up in champagne having a breakdown. That's what happens if you don't have the meaning. If you do have the meaning, it's not easy, but it's less difficult. And that's a huge benefit. Tom Foxley has found the alignment between meaning and business with his adventurepreneur collective, helping people seek freedom and do cool shit.

17:06That's it for this episode. I want to thank Tom for sharing his story and advice and you. Thanks for listening. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Surter. I'll see you next time.