You're listening to the Decidedly Podcast with Sanger Smith and Shaun Smith. Our mission is to help business owners like you defeat bad decision-making so you can improve your health, wealth, and relationships. We do this by digging deep into the stories and expertise of our guests and distilling their knowledge into actionable wisdom for you to carry into your life and business. If you're new to the show, welcome. Be sure to hit the subscribe button so you won't miss out on any of our weekly episodes. If you prefer to watch this week's episode, head on over to YouTube for the full video. Now, let's get into this week's episode and defeat bad decision-making in your life and business.
When I first started my career, I was really poor. After college, you don't have a lot of money and you're figuring out adulthood. I made things extreme out of fear and lack of money. I never left anything plugged in, kept blinds down to save on AC, and ate exclusively ramen noodles. My grandmother visited and saw me eating ramen, so for Christmas she gave me an exotic pack of ramen and chopsticks. She didn't see it as a struggle, she just thought I liked ramen. Now I don't trust anyone who hasn't had to eat ramen at some point.
Speaking of only eating ramen, our guest today struggled through that phase in a much more extreme way. Suzanne Haywood's family set out to sail around the world when she was seven. What was supposed to be a three-year journey turned into ten years of living on a boat with family and strange crew. She escaped, went to Oxford, got a PhD from Cambridge, worked in the UK Treasury, consulted at McKinsey, and now is COO of Exor. Her story of breaking free from isolation and building a meaningful life is remarkable. I'm Sanger and this is Decidedly.
You know, Suzanne, I used to think my family is crazy, but I think your family can wear that label honestly. Y'all set out to sail around the world when you were how old?
When I was seven years old.
Seven. So that's young enough—did you have any questions about the wisdom of such an excursion or were you immediately up for it?
Well, my father announced it when I was six. I had questions a six-year-old would have: how long will we be gone, what can I take? Not very much—just my teddy bear and favorite dress. I had to leave behind my doll's house and my dog Rusty. My father said it would be a fantastic adventure, three years, we'd see places no one else had, and then come back to normal life when I was ten.
Oh, you had to bail on the dog.
Had to bail on the dog. I know. We might come back to Rusty later. I was very close to him. Yes, we left the dog, the doll's house, all my friends. But my father said, 'This is going to be a fantastic adventure. We'll be away for three years, you'll see places nobody else has, then come back when you're ten and everything will go back to normal.'
Somewhat compelling. I would have been concerned about whether Santa still visits the boat. How does that work?
We asked that as Christmas approached. The answer was Santa will tie his sleigh to the top of the mast and come down. He'll still come.
He always finds a way. So, when you actually took off, were you enthusiastic, reluctant, or rebelling?
I was quite enthusiastic. Like many little girls, I hero-worshipped my father. I thought he was an incredible sailor, though I'd only been sailing a couple of times. I completely trusted he was wonderful. This was going to be a great adventure, and my mother and younger brother would be there. I didn't really question it. I was worried about what I was leaving behind, but I didn't push back at all.
So it's you, mom, dad, younger brother. Did you have any other siblings?
No, just one sibling. When we set sail, we had three crew on board—only one had crossed an ocean before. My father had not either.
So this was a totally new adventure for everyone.
It certainly was. My father taught himself to navigate using the angle between the sun and the horizon because there was no satellite navigation in the late '70s. He'd never done it. So it was an adventure for everybody.
What a place to learn, crossing the Atlantic. What was his deeper motivation?
I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Growing up on a boat is like growing up in a cult—you have no external view of life's purpose. The narrative given was that we were sailing around the world following Captain Cook. My maiden name is Cook, though we're not related. We set sail from England on the 200th anniversary of his third voyage. My father raised money on that. As an adult, I think he wanted to be seen as a hero, creating purpose in his life. The Captain Cook narrative became less relevant as the voyage went on.
So it was more an excuse to make the ordeal happen. But going around the world was still the main objective?
Following the path was the big reason he could give and it got sponsorship. But deeper, he wanted to be a hero—to be the man who sailed around the world with his family and boast about it. Not long after, sailing heroes like Francis Chichester and Robin Knox-Johnston were big in the UK. I think my father was motivated by that.
How much was your mom aware of this?
She knew and understood the Captain Cook narrative and that my father was passionate about sailing. It was obvious early on that he loved the media side. But whether she understood his underlying motivation, I don't know. Whatever it was, my parents were incredibly close, and my mother never doubted she would go, even though she got terribly seasick and hated sailing.
What a time to figure that out.
I think she knew before we left that she got seasick, but maybe not how bad it would be. Every time we left port, she would be seasick for days and retreat to her bunk. That's a huge sacrifice for someone to make for another person.
Yeah, and especially because it's not just hours or days—it's weeks before you drop anchor on dry land.
Absolutely. We set sail from England to South America—six to seven weeks at sea. Not seeing anything apart from sea. We saw one other boat. No communication. Like being in a bubble for seven weeks, surviving storms, running short of food. By the time we reached South America, all fresh food was gone and even canned food was running low.
How do you pack for seven people for seven weeks on a boat?
The boat was Wave Walker, 69 feet long but very thin. It heels over quite a lot when sailing. Most of the time you're living with your world tilted. Cooking and walking are difficult. After six or seven weeks at sea, getting back on land is strange—the land feels like it's swaying. When we got to Rio, we couldn't cross the road because we had lost our ability to judge traffic speed.
Wow. So there was no gradual buildup—you went directly from day trips to this?
We had a couple of trial sails, but the crew kept changing. For the first leg to South America, we had three crew. Later, when we crossed the southern Atlantic, only one original crew remained. That trip was very rough—we lost the compass halfway across. We almost didn't survive, but found a tiny plastic compass stored in the bow. We eventually got to South Africa, but the next leg—South Africa to Australia—was far more dangerous.
The southern Indian Ocean is the most dangerous in the world. Halfway across, waves got bigger and bigger until an enormous wave—three times the height of our 30-foot mast—smashed through the deck and out the side. I was flung against the cabin roof and wall, fractured my skull, broke my nose. The boat was filling with water. We were incredibly lucky to find a tiny island, Amsterdam, three days later. A French military doctor operated on me without anesthetic. That was the moment I realized this was not a fun adventure but a dangerous undertaking my father had brought us into.
That must have been incredibly painful.
Yes. I wrote a chapter called 'The Wave' and another author said I wrote it like I have PTSD. She told me to break through and take the reader into what it was like to be a little girl, not in control. Most such stories are from the captain's perspective up on the wheel, but I was down below. I eventually wrote that, but it gave me nightmares. The operation was incredibly painful. Even so, it changed my whole perspective on the voyage.
How much of this were you aware of at seven versus finding out later?
My parents had a deliberate narrative. They gave me filtered information. We were banned from talking about the wave—my father said it would upset my mother. That was the case with anything that went wrong. When I wrote my story, I had my mother's diary, my father's Reader's Digest article, and his book to cross-reference. As a child, I didn't have access to those. It was only as an adult that I could really understand.
There's no aspect of childhood we can fully understand without adult context. What strikes me is the lack of normal childhood experiences—no friends, few toys. Did you have room to play and use your imagination?
Not a lot. We had stuffed animals. When we were shipwrecked, all our toys were washed away except my small teddy bear. Later, a kind man from a toy factory gave us a bag of toys. As I got older and still trapped on the boat, the lack of friends became a bigger issue. I became desperately lonely and in need of school. We didn't get proper schooling either.
I worked a lot—cooking and cleaning with my mother. We had paying crew on board, mostly men wanting a holiday. We shared the boat with six to eight crew, and my job was to help my mother. But what I really wanted was to go to school, have friends, do normal boring things. By then we had sailed from Australia to Hawaii and down through the South Pacific because my father decided not to come back to the UK. I was living in a beautiful place but trapped on a boat, working, unable to go to school or have friendships. My relationship with my mother was deteriorating, and I was desperate to escape.
How did you even become aware of what you were missing?
