The benefit of doubt: Fergus Watts

If there’s one thing ex-AFL star Fergus Watts learned as a professional athlete, it’s that there is glory to be found in failure. It’s a lesson that has served him well on his successful journey into the business world.

"My football career was a big failure — and quite a public one," admits Fergus, founder and Executive Chairman of marketing and advisory group Bastion Collective. After injury forced him to hang up his footy boots, Fergus took a good hard look at himself before creating a business that would allow him to do his best work.

A ‘brutally honest and unconditionally supportive' family

When he started Bastion Collective, Fergus had harnessed a great deal more self-awareness than many other 22-year-olds, thanks to navigating the highs and lows of playing in the AFL. "Whether it was injuries, injuries not healing properly, not being picked, or public ridicule, all these things were hugely confronting," says Fergus. "They prepared me very well for the up and down and constant pressure of growing and running a business."

Growing up in a "brutally honest and unconditionally supportive" family also helped a younger Fergus get a good grasp on what he wanted to achieve. His father, brother and uncle now have key roles in the management of Bastion Collective. "We get along very well," says Fergus. "We try to create the same relationship that my family and I have with all the people who are part of the Bastion Collective team."

Emotional intelligence takes hard work

It is this emotional intelligence, rather than any formal academic training, that Fergus credits with helping him to make a success of Bastion Collective. His business has grown from a mere idea into a multi-million-dollar collective of nine companies. Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, it has expanded its global footprint with offices in the United Kingdom, China and the United States.

"Developing emotional intelligence is not easy," warns Fergus. "To develop a muscle, you fatigue it by lifting a heavy weight more times than your body was previously capable of lifting. It causes physical pain. To develop your emotional intelligence, you have to push your emotions to their limits and develop them in the same way. It will generally cause some emotional pain."

"To develop a muscle, you fatigue it by lifting a heavy weight more times than your body was previously capable of lifting. It causes physical pain. To develop your emotional intelligence, you have to push your emotions to their limits and develop them in the same way. It will generally cause some emotional pain."

He claims the pain is well worth it and that understanding people is vital to the success of teams in the workplace. "Just like lifting weights or running hard, building emotional intelligence might hurt at the time, but afterwards you’re fitter and stronger than you were before."

Fergus created a training program called the Bastion Degree to instil a different — perhaps more valuable — kind of intelligence in his own employees. "In the modern world, most of what you learn in class at school can be found by Googling when you need to, but we spend little to no time dedicated to developing our emotional intelligence," he says.

"I look at my AFL career as the best university degree a person can have. It’s taught me resilience, courage, hard work, discipline and many other things," says Fergus. "Most of all, it taught me to be ok with failure and never to be scared of it."

Fergus knows he harbours a small degree of self-doubt, and he uses that knowledge to his advantage, motivating himself to work harder. Every year, Fergus says he remains quite unaware of what his business has achieved until someone presents him with the impressive facts and figures. "I stop and think ‘that’s cool’ for about five seconds and then I move on to what’s next," he confesses. "I’m not really someone who ever sits back and reflects on what we have achieved."

An environment where team members appreciate what drives each other lies at the the heart of Bastion Collective’s success. It has has recently opened new offices in Los Angeles and Shanghai, and launched Bastion Live, a new arm of the business focused on creating large scale events that resonate with audiences in fresh new ways.

Top teamwork

"All our companies are run by an expert in the field and a shareholder of the business," says Fergus, explaining the business model works because his people are invested in the job they do. He also believes those working for the Bastion Collective can expect a return on their investment. "If each one of our employees doesn’t leave Bastion Collective feeling as though their time here made them a better and more rounded human being, we have seriously let that person down," says Fergus.

Getting the most out of people is definitely a skill Fergus has transferred from the sporting field to the office. His attitude to captaining the Bastion Collective team is based on the belief that employees develop the business together and and everyone gets a say. Fergus says, "I believe this is the best way to develop a great environment and, in turn, we will develop a great business."

Like any great team captain, Fergus remains humble when asked whether he has created a great business. "We would never proclaim to be the best in the game for any particular reason. I don’t think anyone can claim that. That is for our clients to determine," he says.

"Everything I have done in my life has been through great partnerships and brilliant people achieving things together. Whether this be my family, my friends or anyone else involved in the Bastion Collective journey. Everything has been achieved together."