John: You struggle for breath. I can feel it now, it's a horrible feeling almost like you're drowning.

Alex:

Today's guest is John Monroe, originally from Northern Ireland, and the owner of software company global call. In this episode, we'll learn how a man thinks and acts on the brink of bankruptcy. It's March 2014. And John is sitting in his home office in the spare bedroom. He's anxiously waiting for news about a new contract. In fact, John's counting on that contract to keep his business afloat.

John:

The email comes in, it's got a subject line it's got then you can see the first first line of the email. I think the first line of the email says something like we regret to inform you. I thought, God, that's not what I want to hear. I remember I didn't open it for about 10 minutes. I sat and looked at it. I hope that'd be a new email come in saying forget about the previous one. But didn't, the realisation that we weren't going to get that hit me about half past 10 in the morning. I remember thinking, I can't pay my mortgage next month. struggled for breath. I can feel it. No, it's a horrible feeling almost like you're drowning. And you can't you want to reach out for something, you know, reach out for that lifebelt rover, I was desperately trying to think where can I get some money from to, to make this problem go away. I sat in my office home, I really didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to speak to. I didn't want to speak to my wife about it, giving her that news would be a terrible blow. My daughter was at university at that time, my son was just coming up through school. And the last thing you want to do is give them problems. I've always been the breadwinner in the family. I think I've been my expectations of myself. You try and keep a nice happy face for them. And how's things gone? I everything's fine. Because you're that's your role. It was my own private little secret. It was almost like a bit of a sense of shame. Who can I talk to about this? And I couldn't think of anybody.

Alex:

So after you found out that you've not got that contract, what were the what were the days, weeks, months, like after that?

John:

Okay, so the first few days after that bad news carried on very much the same feeling of total panic, felt very stressed. I couldn't find a solution. The harder I looked, the more on the likeliest solution seemed. I'm usually quite optimistic, enjoy a laugh and whatever. But I was getting very impatient and short tempered in the sense of things which I would let go before you know, they there was a noise and irritate me and I would sort of storm off to my room and say, I don't want to talk to anybody. And then I knew I was being a pillock, and that made that feeling that made them feel even worse. So you get into a downward spiral.

Alex:

Do you think your wife had an inkling that there was something wrong? No.

John:

I don't think so. I mean, I was totally wrong about that. She did. And we we've been married for 26 years now. So she she knew me, she knew me much better than I thought.

Alex:

Why do you think she didn't pull you up on it earlier?

John:

I think she tried. She did try. And I just I did. I didn't want I wasn't ready to I mean, I wasn't ready to talk about so because I still, for me, it was a it was a terrible feeling of failure. You know, nobody likes to admit that. So I wouldn't let her in. I really wouldn't let her in. I felt really really strongly. This is a mess. I've got this into something I've got to get this out of

Alex:

and how did you how did it make you feel that you had to keep up that pretence. Everything was okay.

John:

I just felt that was That was part and parcel of being the man and the family. That was that was just a that was one of your roles, you know, in a tech all the good times and this was a bad time. So you just have to take take it on the chin.

Alex:

So talk us through the moment that you do tell Your wife, you know why, in particular that day, that time, wherever you told her?

John:

Well, by this time, I've got the con, I got contract working in Scotland, which I take and to get me out of get me out of the financial difficulty or, and after three months, I was offered a contract renewal. And Allison said, Well, do you have to take it? You know, why would you take that being away for three months? Wouldn't it be better to come back now and stay with the, you know, stay with the family and so on? And so we thought you realise that. And that's when I, that's when I told her, she said, what, what do I not realise that? Don't you realise that I had to take this? Because otherwise, I could have paid the bills, and said, Well, why didn't you tell me? And I? I said, Well, I don't know. I didn't want to worry, you I think was what I said. And she said, but we were all worried about you anyway. Because the way you were behaving and you were, you're much more grumpy and bad tempered, we were worried about anyway, if we'd known what it was, we could maybe have helped.

Alex:

How are you feeling at that moment in time we had that conversation? Was your heart pounding? Or do you feel a sense of relief? Or how are you feeling?

John:

I felt sense, I felt sense of relief, I also felt I also felt very guilty, because of the way that I hadn't, I realised I should have told her and shared it for. So I sort of a beat myself up originally when with the problem, because I that was that was my failure. And then I beat myself up again, when I, I did share with a wife. And I felt I should have done it beforehand. A relationship is about communication and sharing. And I realised that I've not done that very well.

Alex:

So that was 2014, how have the last eight years been?

John:

well, we got better and better. Obviously, the contract that I got with kalmak that plugged the hole up, built up a defence from the fuel like, and that saw me through until 2018 When I got my corporate pension, cashed that in. So by that time we'd my partner, Eddie Prentice. Now we've set up the global coal business, the software development business, which we have no, all of the funds we've taken out of global coal have gone back into development. So we could build that business. So the Kalama contract, got me through to my pension, the pension then provided the providing ongoing financial stability. Which just remove that, and that was a huge load. Go on when we got that.

Alex:

What an amazing recovery, I suppose you know, to go to go from from where you were the depths of despair to Yeah, you know, to get these contracts, get this Defence Fund going from this experience? How how do you think it's helped you to become a better man,

John:

it made me realise the importance of my relationship with protecting my wife. And I need to be more honest with her. I'm still not still not brilliant, that she'll tell you, I'm still not a great share. I do tend to bottle things up. But I'm better than I was, I think, you know, life's a journey. It's a constant improvement. And I think getting the financial cloud lifted, meant that I could really enjoy the kids. And I could I could say to certainly both my daughter but more of my son because he was a start night. Yeah, you know, you do follow him do what you want to do. We can find you through university. That's not going to be a problem. Which is, which is great.

Alex:

Yeah. You're obviously talking about bottling things up. I think we all do it as men, don't we? I mean, I've definitely done that. done that in my life. And, and it seems to be it seems to be the norm of perhaps what we've learned from our fathers and our grandfathers, etc.

John:

I mean, I have conversations with my son, who's 21 that I could never have had with my own father, much to my regret. I look back at my relationship, my own father and think, you know, he went through a similar thing, but he had a corporate job. And that ended. And, I mean, I think he he tried all sorts of different things to keep, you know, keep the keep the family afloat. And I think I ended up having exactly the same experience.

Alex:

So interesting how we can follow what our fathers did in the past, and almost be a replica of them as well. I've the certain traits that I've taken from, you know, For my father, and it's just, it's just interesting. How have you think about how many hours we spend with our, with our parents with our family, you know, 1000s of hours? You know, it's, it's inevitable you're going to pick up some of the things from them.

John:

Yes, yeah, I feel myself doing things that my father would have done. And, and then I think I didn't like it when he did that. So I want to I want to change that, you know, that aspect of my relationship with my son, I want that to be different. I want to have a much more open relationship, and not to have a judgmental one. Again, I mean, I look back and talk to my father. I don't think maybe, maybe I'm saying he was judgmental, and he wasn't. But that was my perception of it. And again, I didn't feel like share stuff with him. Yeah. And it's, it's that whole thing of bottling stuff up and it's far, far better to, to say, and often when you do communicate, it's you're often pleasantly surprised.

Alex:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose you pleasantly surprised when you open up like, for example, if I ever went when I opened up to my father, he was, you know, more than more than willing to listen, but you have this sort of feeling of, well, he doesn't want to listen, or he doesn't understand what I'm going through. But actually, he probably has been through that experience. My father has probably been through a lot of the experiences I've been through.

John:

Yeah, I never quite I never quite got that far with my with my dad before he passed. That's a that's a regret. Oh. I never I never had a conversation with him about, you know, how are you feeling? How are you? How did you get through that? And I wish I thought that conversation because it was a bit useful back in back in 2014. You know,

Alex:

do you think you if you'd have opened up about certain things he might have opened up as well?

John:

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And I think we, we can we can close on occasion to during that there was there was almost that's it? Well, I was a smart horse when I was 2122. I thought I can't learn anything from him. And yeah, that was my fault. That was my bad. Yeah.

Alex:

And so walk us through your son's graduation. And just tell us a little bit about the degree the degree that he did, which university he went to.

John:

So he graduated yesterday. We went over as a family to see it. We met him yesterday afternoon, about four o'clock. He had his robot, and his go or his going and his heart and his his suit, and a massive, massive smile on his face. And my daughter Helen was with us. She graduated from MMU six years ago. So they're two alumni from MMU. We had a coffee and we're off the ceremony. We sat in the balcony, we heard the introductory speech, and then Jim's name was called James Monroe, Bachelor of Arts. He got an opera to one and he marched across the stage with a massive smile on his face. And you kind of think, yeah, it was. It was a it was a great moment. The guide give the guy gave the talk yesterday, a guy called Andrew Heaton on the Board of Governors, MMU. He gave some advice to all students. He said what he called the three T's, trust in yourself, trust in the team around you. And always, always tell the truth. And I think I was what I was saying that was the plan. I was thinking back to my own story. And thinking, Well, I didn't trust the team around me, in particular, my wife, and I should have done that. And again, there was a there was a time in March 2014, where I didn't trust myself, I didn't trust in my ability to to make the thing happen. And maybe if I had done and I trusted my team, it would have been it wouldn't have been as stressful certainly for me. It wouldn't have been as black and experience.

Alex:

John was on the brink of bankruptcy. And he shouldered all of this by himself. He was the breadwinner of the family. He had to look after his wife, he had to look after his children. But for whatever reason, he just couldn't really bring it upon himself to tell his wife, probably the most important person in his life, about the situation that we're facing. You hear this from a lot of men that they feel this need to take all of the pressure, put it all upon themselves, and they're not willing to tell anyone about it. But where does this come from? This comes back to ancestors, our father's great grandfather's and how they had the burden of responsibility and they were considered the breadwinner of the family. This is something that we can address in 2022. And beyond that, it doesn't have to be that way. Because you cause yourself more pain in the long run. Hypothetically speaking, if John had told his wife from the get go about what was happening, perhaps they could have discussed a solution and still kept it private and not told anyone else. But they could have come up with a problem solving strategy. Perhaps they would have really overcome this a lot sooner than what John was able to do. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to learn more about our voices, make sure you go to our website, which is www dot our voices podcast.com. You'll get all the blog articles, all the episodes that we've done in the past. Make sure you follow us on Apple podcasts and leave us a review while you're there. It would really help me a lot as I look to grow the show. Thanks so much. I'll see you next week for another great story.