The Courage to Disrupt: Wayne Williams on Faith, Resilience, and Leading Through Pressure

In the latest episode of the “Courageous by Crossroads Apologetics” podcast, host Jeff Johnson engages Wayne Williams, an accomplished entrepreneur and coach, in a deep discussion about the essence of courage. They explore Wayne’s personal mantra, “grab another gear,” which emphasizes pushing through challenges both in business and life. Wayne shares his most courageous decision—canceling a $1.7 billion IPO—a choice he made despite immense pressure and potential fallout. Throughout the conversation, Wayne underscores the importance of faith and leadership in navigating tough decisions, while also advocating for the necessity of resilience through small failures. The episode delves into historical and modern examples of disruptive courage, closing with reflections on how Christ inspires enduring bravery in Wayne’s life and the lives of others. This enlightening discussion offers listeners powerful insights into cultivating personal courage and leadership.

Thank you for listening! We hope you feel inspired and encouraged by our conversation today. If you did, be sure to share this episode with others.

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See you in the next episode! Be blessed!

Full Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Courageous by Crossroads Apologetics, a look into what motivates us to step out in courage and the everyday bravery of men and women like you. In each episode we hear a personal story of bravery centered around this. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And now your host, founder of Crossroads Apologetics, Jeff Johnson. 

Jeff Johnson:
Hey everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Courageous Crossroads podcast. There’s a quote by Steve Jobs that I absolutely love. He gave it during his Stanford University commencement speech in 2005 and it says, your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. And I just love that quote because it talks about have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition. 

Jeff Johnson:
Our next guest is a dear friend of mine, Wayne Williams, and he is in the Pacific Northwest and just a real talented entrepreneur, a coach, a mentor to a lot of people, just a wonderful family man. I could just go on and on about wonderful things that I had to say about Wayne, but I love that he embodies that bit of courage, that courage to follow your heart and your intuition, to be able to push through or as Wayne poignantly puts it, to grab another gear. And I think you’re really going to enjoy this next podcast and hearing a lot from Wayne. So here’s Wayne. Wayne, thank you for joining us on the Courageous Crossroads. I appreciate you taking the time to visit with us. Can you tell everybody that’s listening where you are? 

Jeff Johnson:
Tell us about your family, tell us a little bit of background about you. 

Wayne Williams:
Yes, thank you, Jeff. It’s good to be with you. Today we live in the Northwest. I was born in Anchorage, Alaska and ended up living majority of my life as a resident in Eastern Washington, really close to the Idaho border between Spokane and Coeur d’alene. Today my wife and I are residents in western Montana outside of Alberton and Missoula County. We have three grown children and we they are two of them are married and we have our seven grandkids from nine until down to two and a half. Right now they all live around our place, our lake place in Liberty Lake, Washington. And we also just celebrated our 40 year anniversary. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. Congratulations. I’ve been out to your place. I’ve had the privilege to come out to Spokane. And also you got a little place in Montana and, or a big place in Montana, and it’s just so beautiful out there. Do you feel like, Wayne, do you feel like Montana and Spokane, Washington are better than Iowa? Because you haven’t come to visit me yet. 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah, I know it. And I missed going through in back in 2012 visiting you when we took that 11,000mile ride around the United States on a motorcycle visiting customers. So I’m very sorry about that. Jeff. I do love, I do love the northwest Montana. Our, Our ranch in Montana is kind of the essence of me. I’ve just been. Even though I was in the high tech market for years, in the telecom market, every time I returned, I always returned back to the mountains. And my kids and my wife and who was a city girl before we got together and got married, just, we all love the mountains. I’m looking forward, though, to visiting you in the Midwest, because you guys are wonderful. 

Jeff Johnson:
Please, please come to the plains. It’s beautiful over here. Okay, so this podcast is based on the one question. We, we narrow it down to the one question, most courageous thing you’ve ever done. And my belief is we could ask people that question even in an individual day. What’s the most courageous thing that you’ve done today? Because I feel like courage is fundamental, you know, and relative to whatever it is that we’re doing at that particular time. But in order to kind of get your insight on it and kind of calibrate it for our listeners, can you tell me how you define courage and why you think it’s important? 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah, I think, you know, for me, being courageous, you know, and I think, you know this about me, I’ve got this idea of grabbing other gear. And courageous is facing your fears up front and being able to push through those. And it’s. It’s difficult because we have all sorts of fears. I feel like we have things that hold us back each and every day. Our family of origin, theology of origin, and sometimes our work or career of origin. And there’s. There’s stuff in front of us and the stuff from behind us that’s always keeping us from taking that next step. And those voices in our head kind of can drive us crazy. But for me, it’s just, it’s facing your. Facing your fear. You still have it, and then it’s pushing through it. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned grab another gear. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about that? Because that’s a beautiful philosophy that you have. 

Wayne Williams:
Well, thank you. Yeah, it came about, and probably as part of my courageous story, which I’ll tell shortly, is kind of in the early 2000s, a friend of mine that was in a home group Bible study with my wife and I and his wife, he was a big motorcycle rider, and I was as well. And we would go ride on motorcycles in mid-2005, I think, or so. But I had just come out of a difficult market collapse, and he was now heading into one. And so when we’d ever get together for breakfast or lunch, we’d always talk to each other, and then we’d find ourselves in that part of where it was painful or real difficult. And he’d say to me his name was Tom Johnson, and he’d say to me, wayne, we just got to grab another gear. 

Wayne Williams:
And so then I do the same thing with him when he was going through his. And it just kind of became a mantra, which is kind of just like life, we grab another gear, whether we’re hiking, we grab another gear, whether we’re driving a car or a motorcycle. And in life, we reach these times where we just have to kind of press through, and it’s the people around us. And in my case, it’s my relationship with Christ that really helps me push through those. So philosophically today, I feel like I look for that in advising and coaching and mentoring and speaking. That’s pretty much theme that I carry through. 

Jeff Johnson:
That idea of grabbing another gear. I think that’s fantastic, Wayne. So I know you to be. You got a lot of facets to your life. You’re an executive coach, you’re a philanthropist, you’re a rancher, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a business guy, very successful, all that sort of thing. So I want to ask you the question. In your philanthropic efforts, have you encountered situations that demanded courage with. With that. 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, our. We’ve. We’ve. I think one of the aspects for my wife and I both is we don’t like to put that out there, but we tend to be generous of whether it’s our time, talent, and treasures. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Wayne Williams:
And I think a few years ago, when we had the opportunity to be able to. My parents started a foundation in the early 90s, and were able to kind of double the size of that foundation. And. And so for that, it was. We had a mission, and that was a mission to be able to get people to understand the. I think, the significance of what Christ did on the cross and that everything was sufficient with his, you know, his life, his suffering, his death, burial, and then resurrection. And so with that, we’re. 

Wayne Williams:
We felt really called to begin to bring people, bring great talent and speakers into the Northwest, where, you know, one of the issues here, if you’re not in the epicenter of Los Angeles or Dallas or Seattle or Atlanta or some of these other locations, you know, Chicago and that where a lot of the speakers and great talent are at, they can’t. They can’t. You can’t really get to them. Most people can’t travel to them. So we’ve really ventured out with our foundation and trying to figure out a way where we can begin to help people hear messages that they haven’t heard before and get teaching in that. And so we end up doing some sponsorship and subsidy. And that’s important because for us, it was pushing through. It’s easy to give and let someone else do mission for you. 

Wayne Williams:
It’s harder to take what you have and then be able to do mission yourself in that aspect. And so we ventured into that and we met with our council and advisors and figured out and determined a way that we’re able to do that and let people be blessed by that. So that was. It was, you know, you hear what you can’t do. And I come from the adage that if you tell me you can’t do something, I want to figure out how to do it, but then also follow, you know, follow the. The rules, regulations and law. And so that’s the most important thing to do is continue to press through and get past that voice of what you can’t do. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well, I think that’s great. I, you know, you read in the scriptures that we’re supposed to be cheerful givers, but I think that there’s a courageous element to that for sure. And you and your wife and your family are so generous with your time, treasure, and talent, as you said that, you know, you’ve really made an impact, and I’m sure there’s a lot of courage. There’s Wayne, there’s 15 podcasts we could do inside of the Wayne Williams podcast. So I’m probably going to have you on a few more times. I’m not trying to slobber on you too much, but the other thing I know, like I mentioned, is that you’re an outdoorsman. Have you confronted courage in your outdoor activities? 

Wayne Williams:
Oh, yeah, I have. I mean, in 2000, you know, my wife, she. She hears my stories and she doesn’t want to go places I’ve gone. You know, I’ve been fortunate to be able to go into Bolivia and fly fish for Golden Dorado. You know, in the midst of every kind of animal species and even microorganism that can hurt you and that it kind of, you know, fires me up and I get excited about that. I think probably the most one happened to me a couple Years ago about 2020, I was hunting in the mountains of Montana for elk and the morning overnight I listened to my three liter water bottle from 10:00 until about 12:30 freeze. And you know, it was 30 below zero. And my beard is completely icicled and frozen. 

Wayne Williams:
And I’m out hunting and every animal out there is sleeping and staying warm. And I’m courageously climbing 1500, you know, 1500 foot elevations with my guide. And we’re going through this place and I end up finally seeing one elk at 95 yards, a small calf elk. And it’s looking at me and I’m just the voice that I was hearing in that from that calf. It’s like, are you serious? We’re not moving and you should neither. But were out there in the midst of it and it was crazy. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow, that’s amazing. Is, do you think courage is an intuitive thing? Do you think it’s a learned thing? Do you think it’s, you know, can I hunker down and become a person of great courage? Or is that something that just is in me already and shows itself when the time arises? 

Wayne Williams:
Well, my, I think everybody’s born with it, right? So I do believe that you’ve, they have some element of that. I, I feel it can be and I’ve watched it and when I speak with others that are, have gone through that are facing that, I think that there’s been times, so many times that it’s been suppressed, it’s been not allowed, it’s been, you know, it’s the nose that we’ told not to do and it’s the no’s or the laws that are put around us that keep us from actually experimenting. And you know, I have an adage that I had in business and I think my son carries it on in his business, but it’s, you know, let the next generation burn their fingers, just don’t torch the house. 

Wayne Williams:
And I think too many times what we’ve been told is, hey, don’t do that, you’re going to burn your fingers or burn your hands. Don’t do that, don’t do that. And, and the generations ahead of that, what we’re doing is we’re not allowing people to actually feel the heat, feel the consequence of the decision that’s being made. And I think that the small failures, the small burns, they help create the calluses and the ability, also the energy and the desire to push through another one. And so what we’ve done is we’ve kind of pushed people down into small cocoons and won’t let them get out. And so they’ve lost the ability to actually even exercise the courage skill. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Oh, I like that this courage idea here on this podcast. What I really like to do is kind of hold it up. And you’ve heard this reference with a bunch of other things, but you hold it up like a diamond and you look at it from different vantage points and it reflects its beauty different ways. I’ve had people on this podcast from Nigeria, from the uk, from people that have been professors, people that have been suffering with family issues, physical ailments, all sorts of different things. I want to ask you the question, is there something unique that you think that you’ve gained from growing up in the Pacific Northwest and in Alaska that gives you a unique perspective on courage? It might not be a fair question, but I want to ask it anyway. So what do you think about that? 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah, I mean, I had the, I think and you know a little bit about my story. I mean, I, I had epilepsy from 3 until 13. I was fortunate that I was one of the 50%, I guess, of the kids at the time that outgrew that. And but for me, there was, I was never one, I think, independently and individually designed to be inside of a box. And so I was fortunate that my parents had, or where we grew up in the Spokane Valley is a little three and a half acre farm. And so I was able to do a lot with, you know, chickens and horses and cows and. But I live close to a river. 

Wayne Williams:
And so when I learned to fly fish when I was nine years old, and this would almost not happen today in the generation that’s bringing up young kids today, but I could go down to the river at 10 years old, 11 years old, with my fly rod and fly fish. And so it. And I remember one time when I was like 12, I was fly fishing in, down there and it was raining, pouring down rain, and it was lightning. And I grabbed my fly rod and ran down to the river and it was like about a quarter of a mile. And so I Think what I did is I had to push through all these ideas of lightning, you know, rain. And my parents, you know, they did. They let me do it, and. Which was probably pretty common during that time. 

Wayne Williams:
And I caught more fish in 15 minutes than I could have fished any other time. Because what’s weird is the fish don’t see the storm, but. But I do. You know, we do. And the fish are living in the midst of the storm all the time, and they’re in the water and they’re there, but they also. Lightning storms and that kind of stuff, which I don’t recommend everybody fishing and lightning, but it’s. It really, what it does is it brings out the insect life. It makes the waters turbulent, and things are vibrant. You know, they just continue to move. And so for me, those are the kind of things that the Pacific Northwest did for me. 

Wayne Williams:
My grandfather had a boat in Alaska, so in summertime, I’d be able to go up and fish with him and, you know, had opportunities of getting out in the woods. And so it just kind of. I think what it did was it. Because I had access to it put it imprinted so much on who I am today. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. I think that’s beautiful. Okay, Wayne, let me ask you the question. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah. Thank you for. And asking me that beforehand. And I got a chance to think about it, even talk to my wife about it, and she starts naming off all these things. I’m going, oh, man. What is it? Some of those are subset. Right. There’s sub courage points that happen from one, I think the most, if I look at one of the most courageous things that I did was in the day before Thanksgiving in 2000, I was getting ready to have to make a decision to fly to Europe on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. And I was talking with our investment bankers because I was in the middle of taking our company public. And at the time, it had about a $1.7 billion valuation. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. 

Wayne Williams:
And I got off a call from them on that Wednesday, and I’d been praying for the door to be open or closed. And I felt that after I got off that call, I felt that the door was closed or it was least postponed for a couple of months. And so I called a meeting with the board of directors, and I said, we’re not going to move forward with the ipo. And that was. If you think about that’s. That goes against everything that in my flesh or my person would want, because you can go out and Sell your business in the public market and collect money and have high market caps, and you could. 

Wayne Williams:
And everybody that has watched you be part of 17 years of growth, and in some cases, were in 45 compounded growth over five years, and in one year, we grew 70%. And so it’s like you got everybody around you going, we’re going to be able to participate in this economic boom. And so that decision was pivotal, the postponement. And I didn’t listen to myself, and I didn’t really listen to anyone else. I just listened to what that the Holy Spirit said, hey, stop and just wait. Postpone. That’s what I heard. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. And the most courageous thing is being able to stand in that, listening to the Lord and holding your breath and following through with it. 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah, I think, wow. It’s very courageous. And it seemed like that was just the. Okay, Right decision to listen to. And what I didn’t know is what I would. What the valley of the shadow of death that I’d be going through after that. And so I think sometimes God gives us little gifts. He only shows us what we need to know in the moment, and just so that we have to rely on him to carry us through the rest. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. Was that like, Wayne, was that like you had hundreds of people that were looking at you going, what are you doing? This is. You’re making a bad decision. This is a stupid idea. And you had to make it anyway because you just knew that. You knew that you knew. 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah, it was, you know, it was a pricing decision, clearly at the beginning, when that decision was made. And we, at this point in time, are business. By that time, we had about 20, 300 employees worldwide. We had operations in Shanghai. Brad Slav, Poland, England, Campinas, Brazil, Spokane, and Guadalajara, Mexico. And so people were everywhere. And so they’re all participating in that growth. We were generous, I believe, as a team, you know, a leadership group. When my parents started the company and I was the first employee there since 1982, our generosity, I think, would have extended even from that, where we would do pretty high profit sharing, bonuses and that during that time. So there’s lots. There was. It was just a. In a time of generosity, I think, even for us. 

Wayne Williams:
And I think in that case that we then I would then be facing this idea that, what now? You know, what. What’s next after that? And. And it took us into about middle of December, early part of December. I still remember my CFO is yelling at our operations vp, and I had a great team. I will Tell you, my executive team was a great team and I had great team of people and I loved working with people. And in my case, money wasn’t the most important thing. People were the most important thing. I felt like that was part of my calling and my mission was to care for people and protect people. So now I’m going to be facing this, you know, area where how can I protect them any longer? 

Wayne Williams:
I remember they were telling, they were having this argument over, you got to stop the inventory from coming in. Because that was the first time in the whole, that whole year that we started to see that our revenue in the first quarter, which if we’d gone public, the revenue was going to be missed. So it’s pretty significant. Those 60 days following that. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. When you. I faced those kind of decisions, I’m not going to say to that magnitude. I don’t know if that’s even fair to even relate them, but I’ve certainly faced those kind of decisions in business as well, where you feel like you’re in a position of leadership and you’re the one that knows and everybody else around you either doesn’t have the information or their perspective is different and you got to make the decision. It’s so lonely, Wayne. And I think all leaders face that. You know, if they haven’t faced it yet, they’re going to face it. But do you see good fruit that’s come out of that? I mean, I’m not talking about necessarily financial things, but how did that equip you making that courageous decision for what followed afterwards? 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah, I think what I, I would share is that first of all, the team that you put together for growing your business or running it, you know, with incremental or small decimal points each year, the team kind of gets used to that process flow and gets used to that kind of work. And, and we, I mean, I, when I say we had a good team, it was like, it was super bowl type team. I mean, were really focused on growth and focused on doing the right thing, creating new products and meeting the industry needs and. But what ended up coming about after that 60 days. So they, while everybody’s disappointed there’s no IPO coming, there’s nothing happening. You turn the corner into 20, 21. 

Wayne Williams:
And I still remember, you know, I worked alongside my dad and mom for years and my dad with his gifts of understanding and kind of his engineering mind and where he was at too, you know, he could capture the ability to see things and do that. But if Things got too big and too magnitude. It was a little bit that. I think that’s where I came in. That was my skill set to be able to do that. Now fast forward into this meeting I serve on the meeting in January of 2021, excuse me, 2001. And that in that meeting I’m with my leadership team. Now we are faced with the fact that we have to lay off. Inside that 60 day period, we have to lay off about 240 people. 

Wayne Williams:
And that is like we had not laid anybody off in the business since 1991, where we laid four people off and we hired them back two weeks later. But this was imminent. This was like we needed to lay them off because we had so much supply chain that’s out there and we couldn’t produce product anymore. We just literally thought it was going to be a hiccup. And I remember my dad walking into, he opened the door of my office and we’re there and we are, we’re laughing a little bit. And I hate to say that, but you guys that have gone through the toughest, tough stuff that you’re at, you know, after you’re talking about this difficult stuff, it seems like sometimes there’s this point of gallows humor. It just like something happened and it was like, oh, we got a chance to laugh. 

Wayne Williams:
And I don’t. Sometimes I think that’s just a little bit of antibiotic for the soul that’s dealing with very difficult stuff. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well put. 

Wayne Williams:
We kind of stopped laughing and then the door opened and my dad came in and he said, how’s it going? I said, well, we’re working on this. And he looked and he shook his head and he said, well, I’ll be praying for you. And that was probably for me, that was the first time that there was this freedom that I’m going to be leading this team and we’re going to be leading the rest of the team through this kind of, I’m not going to say on our own, but on our own with prayer behind us. But not necessarily. It’s. It’s kind of like we’re being prepared for what is next. And, and then what is next was. Was crazy. What is next. But it was good. 

Jeff Johnson:
So courage, so stepping out, encourage and doing that, or as that book says, feeling the fear and doing it anyway and walking through it just instills more resolve so that you can do the next one and do the next one. And then by definition, you know, assuming you’re stacking up a bunch of good decisions, you end up with some real resolve, some real steel in your soul. Okay, a couple more questions for you, Wayne. My belief is that all people of faith have courage. So I really tie courage to my Christian worldview and my belief system that way. But do you think people that don’t have that have courage as well? It’s probably not a fair question, but I’m asking. 

Wayne Williams:
No, no, I think it is. I do think they’re, you know, whether you don’t. When to have faith and especially with, for us that, you know, our followers of Christ have faith that what Jesus did on the cross was fully sufficient. And there’s only, there’s really no middle ground on that. Right. There’s the. You either you either believe and accept what happened there or you reject it. You can’t have, like, you can’t be in between it. And I, I think there’s people out today that aren’t believers and aren’t followers of Christ, that they have the ability to push through and push through fear and have courage. Because I do feel like were all designed, you know, in the image of God. And there are those that have accepted the gift and the trueness of what Christ did and that. 

Wayne Williams:
Those that just have not yet done that. And so I think we’ve got these designs in us that are there. And there’s also people that have had no family of origin or theology of origin in their life, that their parental authorities and grandparents and coaching and educators and that have suppressed, as I talked about at the beginning of this episode, have suppressed their ability also to push through courage. 

Jeff Johnson:
That’s good. So people, maybe people just haven’t. Everybody has it from our worldview. Everybody’s created by God and so everybody has it. Maybe they just haven’t labeled the originator of that courage that exists in them as of yet. But. Yeah, I like that. 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah. No, there. And you. And I think as you get older, you know, there is a risk, there’s a risk of becoming less courageous, less pushing through, becoming more risk adverse. And one of the things I’ve had to do in my life is ask when I get to a certain age, like just turning 60, one thing that has been really helpful for me probably over the last 25 years, it’s kind of been just a saying I have. When I reach something and I have to make a decision that’s tougher and more risky, I go with the wisdom and knowledge that I have today. What was the decision I would have made 10 years ago? Because sometimes there’s the youth of decision that you will take more risk when you’re young, but as you get older, you get more that more risk adverse. 

Wayne Williams:
And the difficulty is you want to hang. It’s dangerous too, because when I deal with succession planning and transition, especially in family businesses, there is a, there is the desire to hang on. It’s a prideful desire to hang on and do less, but still to look back and think about what I have done and that they missed the opportunity to have a really good gift, to be able to say, hey, it’s time for you to burn your fingers. Because I did that once. Just don’t torch House and let me become the mentor to you. And now my, now all of a sudden, my wisdom and all the scars I have can help pour in and support the next generation. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, I had a friend of mine stand in my kitchen. I think I mentioned this one of the previous episodes, but I had a friend of mine stand in my kitchen several years ago and he pointed out to me that this side of heaven, again, based on my Christian worldview, this side of heaven is the only place we have to practice faith. When we get to the other side, we’re not going to need to because we’re going to be in heaven. We don’t have that. And so he viewed it as a real exciting thing, you know, a real gift. You know, some people, I’ve looked at it in the past, you know, faith is kind of like hanging on, you know, as you jump off the cliff. 

Jeff Johnson:
He looked at it, he changed my perspective on it because he looked at it as a real opportunity to adventure and to take some really healthy God given risks and that sort of thing. And I also don’t think I’ve read a book about people later on in life that haven’t said they wish they would have taken more risks. And I think that underlines courage. Just what you said. 

Wayne Williams:
I do. I’ve done this one. You might not have seen this before, but I did. I’ve done this one talk. It’s called wtf. Everybody loves that, those three letter acronyms. But when I put it up there, everybody’s like, what? Oh, here’s this guy going to talk about it. But for me it’s just willing to fail. And it’s. It and it’s just I’ve got to have the ability, you know, the willingness to fail on what I’m trying and that is in my DNA, but at the same time, I have to remember its willingness to fail because he won’t. So. And there’s an important part about that, you know, and there’s worship songs out there. You know, he won’t fail us. And. 

Wayne Williams:
But then the idea is then if I’m risking now and I’m willing to fail in that area, how’s he going to be carrying me through that? Because he’s not going to fail me through that trial or that where it’s at, so. 

Jeff Johnson:
Oh, that’s great. Okay. I, I want this to be the last question. It’s not. This is the next to last question. Okay. And then I’ll, and then I’ll cut you loose. Wayne, in your role as an executive coach, because you do that, you do. Mentoring people seek after you because they can see the wake of experience that you have and the success that you have. And I believe they can sense the courage that you’ve had to step out in faith and to do that next thing. How do you instill that courage in people that come to you asking for your advice? 

Wayne Williams:
Yeah, as people might look at me entrepreneurially and I’ve supported other entrepreneurs and mentored them, you’ve been the recipient of me asking questions or saying this before where we’re just in about a conversation around this, but I, I tend to be a little bit more disruptive on my questions. And so when I sit down with somebody I like, I, I know that for me, as a, a coach and an advisor, like, you’re extremely gifted in how you communicate and talk to your clients and on where it’s at. And we know other people out there that are gifted in their space. None of us are the exact same. And so it’s, it’s fun because if you’re a coach or you’re an advisor and you’re really understand who we’re talking with. 

Wayne Williams:
We, we understand that, hey, we’re not going to be able to help in all the areas. I think I saw Apollo Ono the, you know, one of the best speed skaters of all time in the Olympics. That and he had 11 coaches over his entire time and he applauds all 11 coaches for helping him all along the way. And so I’ve had, I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of, and mentors and like yourself mentoring into my life. And I think that in this case I am not, I’m not really good at just taking a sitting down with you, if you said, oh, I got a business and this is where I’m going to go. And I kind of know that, Etc. But I’ll ask the questions like, you know, at what age do you expect to die? Because people. 

Wayne Williams:
And people, like, look at me like, what? Well, everybody’s got that in their head. They had a parent die, a grandparent die. You know, sometimes it’s. The average life expectancy in my career is only 17 months late, more after we retire. So they have those in their head. And so. And I want to get down there. Well, are you living. Are you just waiting for that day or are you trying to live through it? Which, you know, comes into that punch term 100. But we all fall into ruts. And I think businesses and organizations and lives all will die if all they’re doing is staying in the rut they’re in and they’re not trying to be disruptive. And so for me, you have. Disruptiveness requires courage. I mean, it just requires courage. It doesn’t mean you have to, you know, just go. 

Wayne Williams:
You don’t shake the, you know, shake the whole Apple cart, dump them all out and say, okay, now let’s pick them up. But it’s really looking at what are the things that we aren’t doing because we are designed in our organizations and managers today manage only the process. They don’t. They’re not leading as much today. They manage what they’re told to manage. They’re managed what HR tells them to do. They’re managing that, but they’re not managing, like, what’s next? What if a competitor changes? And I’ll look at a couple examples is, you know, what Uber did to the taxi industry and what Netflix did to Blockbuster Video. I mean, and there’s so many more. And Amazon did the bookstores. The bookstores could have become Amazon for books. The taxicab companies could have got together and said, hey, we’re going to develop our own app. 

Wayne Williams:
And Blockbuster could have said, hey, this digital thing’s coming out right now. Maybe we should look at doing that. In fact, I think they had some early entrance into investment in those industries, and they still chose to hang on to what was and is. And so for me, it’s just getting in there and trying to dig down and have questions. You know, it’s always important to set an exit plan in a private business. Even if you don’t have one, you should still set one. And those are things that put a private board of directors on. Most private businesses don’t I’m like an advocate for it and think you should. You should always have people you’re accountable to. And I could keep going on, but. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, but. No, but you’re putting. But you’re putting structure out there and you’re giving people ideas. And the genesis of that to. To take that next step and to take those suggestions is the courage bit. 

Wayne Williams:
It is, definitely. And it is. And you. But there. And there’s voices, and, you know, this are voices in our heads that say, oh, you can’t do that. You shouldn’t do that. You’re going to mess and you’re going to do right. That’s where it’s going, where you’re relying on other people to come around you. Not the ones I. I think they say there’s an old adage, and I think in dogs, they say if, you know, one dog has fleas, they all have fleas, which is true. And they all hang in that pack. And so you have to be careful, because when you’re changing and you go through change, the pack that you’re with is probably not the pack that you’re going to be staying with. It’s powerful. It’s like when the first time someone accepts Christ, if they accept them, great. 

Wayne Williams:
I felt that freedom. But they go right back into the same pack that they’re with. And it’s hard to discover this newness, this what he has really done. But to begin to get around people that have. You begin to see what it means to be going through trials and still experiencing joy over here. Now I’m going through trials. I’m experiencing no joy. What’s going on? 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, that’s very insightful. See, this is why you’re sought after, though, Wayne, because you talk about this disruption bit and you talk about challenging people’s ideas, and I think people hear that and maybe just walk away. But because of the example that you’ve lived in your life, because of what you just said was the most courageous thing you’ve ever done, I mean, that’s huge. Not going through with the IPO and saying now’s not the time. You’ve got. You’ve got a wake of experience that you can say, I did it, and you can do it, too. You know, your situation might be different, but you can do it, too. That’s great. Okay, I promise. The last question. This is it. I promise. Who inspires courage in you, past or present? Famous or somebody in your local purview, or who do you think of courage in? 

Wayne Williams:
Me. Oh, man, there is. I just have you know, for me, the interesting part is it’s. There’s so many names that just immediately pop into my life. So in my mind on this, the first one was. Was real. Was. And I’m going to go back and I know everybody always says what it ends in Jesus, but I’m say Christ inspires so much courage in me because he was. He disrupted the narrative of the day. The, the. And so did the gospel. It disrupted the narrative that was of the day. It was the process that everybody was used to doing. And you fast forward all the way that I, I inspired by the courage that it took. You know, Martin Luther on what he did by pinning that up on the. The door of the church. And it was hugely courageous. 

Wayne Williams:
I’m inspired by Leonardo da Vinci on his creativity and what he has done. And we fast forward to, you know, even people that might share the same mindset as I do right now. I’m inspired by Leonardo or Steve Jobs, by his ability and this innovation, the ability to innovate against the, against Microsoft. Now I love Microsoft too. I like all the different platforms. But I’m just saying that there’s. There’s a uniqueness and a capability in that then to create. The phone always looked the same and it always used the same way of trying to text and then it completely changed in there. But I’m really. Today I’m inspired by. I get inspired by you when you and I sit down and talk. I’m inspired by Bill Thrall when I sit down and have a conversation with him. 

Wayne Williams:
Because there’s not a person that I can’t find myself finding the way that they went through something courageous. And there’s so many that have. And it’s the person next to me. My wife, she’s. She’s courageous. My, My son right now is going through like one of the most courageous times and handling it in a way that I couldn’t. I would just. I would just probably buckle up and do it. But he’s staying true to who he is. He’s staying true to his faith. He’s surrounding himself by. Around people that he’s staying who he is. He has not tried to create his own narrative. He hasn’t tried to create this something different. But that inspires me in there. So it’s really hard, I think Jeff, you just heard me. I like. It’s hard for me to pick one person in this. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well, that says a lot about you too, Wayne, that you’re able to see the characteristics and all these people around you. And pull out the courage element in that. That says an awful lot about you. Okay, I promise. That was the last one. Wayne. So grateful to call you a friend. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you for being a man of courage, and thank you for inspiring me. 

Wayne Williams:
Well, thank you, Jeff. Appreciate this, and thank you for the opportunity to be with you. 

Outro:

Thank you for joining us today on Courageous. If you’d like to hear more about the work and ministry being done at Crossroads Apologetics, please visit our home on the web@crossroadsapologetics.org Would you or someone you know like to be featured on Courageous? Send us an email at infoorossroadsapologetics.com or infoossroadsapologetics.org telling us about the most courageous thing you’ve ever done.