June 30th is the end of the financial year in Australia. It's also my dad's birthday.
No lesson this week, no framework, no worksheet. Just a reflection, because some things don't fit into five key principles, no matter how hard I try.
In the frenzy that always accompanies EOFY, no matter how prepared you think you are, something always pops its head up demanding to be dealt with before the boxes are ticked and the records aligned. But June 30 always carries something extra for me, something personal.
My dad died in July 2002, when he'd just turned 57. Sascha was a baby. Stuart and I were deep in the weeds of the early years of the business. Dad was an extremely fit and healthy man, a non drinker and non smoker who'd finally realised his long held dream of focusing all of his energy on cattle farming, after decades of running it as a side hustle while working for the State Electricity Commission of Victoria.
He got a shock diagnosis of mesothelioma, asbestos related lung cancer, a couple of months before Sascha was born, the legacy of pushing an asbestos laden trolley around thirty years earlier as a young apprentice. He was given six months to live. As was his wont, he decided he'd set his own timetable rather than let anyone else dictate it to him.
He made it to nearly nine months, and stayed remarkably active for most of that time.
I turn 57 myself later this year. That number has never meant much to me before, but this year it does.
Dad was one of the hardest workers I've ever known. That was obvious to me growing up, but with the benefit of hindsight it's even clearer now. His work ethic, and his willingness to take on anything that moved him closer to his goals, has shaped how I approach both life and work so much more than I probably gave him credit for at the time.
His path was rarely straightforward. He hit plenty of walls along the way, but he was never afraid to start again or learn something new. He believed, without question, that he'd eventually get to farm full time. He did. He just didn't get long there.
I think that's the part of his legacy that sits with me most as I approach the age he was when he died. Not the achievement, but the refusal to wait for the perfect moment to chase it. He didn't get the decades on the land he probably expected, but he did get the satisfaction of knowing he'd finally arrived somewhere he'd wanted to be his whole life.
Each June 30 I take some time to think about him and what he gave me. It was lovely yesterday to catch up with some childhood friends who knew him, also in London, and raise a glass together.
It's made me think more broadly about how much of the way we lead gets set long before we ever run anything. Long before the first hire, the first hard decision, the first time you have to tell someone something they don't want to hear.
I didn't consciously decide to be someone who works hard, who starts again when a path closes, who doesn't wait for ideal conditions before backing myself. I watched my dad do those things for years before I ever needed to do them myself. He never sat me down and explained his philosophy on resilience or persistence. He just farmed on weekends for decades, kept learning new skills into his fifties, and refused to accept someone else's timeline for his own life, right to the end. I absorbed all of it without knowing I was absorbing anything.
I suspect most of us are running on inherited code we've never actually looked at. The way you handle setbacks, the way you talk to yourself under pressure, whether rest feels earned or feels like weakness, a lot of that was installed well before you knew what leadership was. Some of it serves us. Some of it we're still quietly unlearning.
I don't think you need to have had a perfect childhood, or a particularly dramatic one, for this to be true. You just need to have been paying attention, even if you didn't know you were.
What impact have your parents had on the way you lead and run your business?
And how is that still influencing the way you show up today?
Responses