What happens when the darkest chapters of your life become the foundation for your greatest purpose? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Dr. John A. King, an Australian-born Indigenous Warumungu author, survivor advocate, and founder of the Give Them A Voice Foundation. After surviving years of childhood sexual abuse and trafficking, Dr. King transformed unimaginable trauma into a mission to help other survivors reclaim their lives through healing, leadership, and authentic living.

Whether you've overcome personal adversity, lead others through difficult seasons, or simply want to live more intentionally, this conversation offers hope, wisdom, and practical insight for creating a future that aligns with who you were truly meant to become.

What You Will Learn

Why authenticity is the foundation of visionary leadership and lasting fulfillment.

How unresolved trauma can quietly influence leadership, relationships, and personal growth.

The surprising connection between trauma, resilience, and high performance.

Why healing is a long-term investment rather than a quick fix.

How Dr. John transformed his personal recovery into a global mission to support survivors.

The four guiding principles that have shaped Dr. John's life and leadership.

Why creating your own definition of success is essential for building a meaningful future.

How incremental growth over time creates extraordinary transformation.

The importance of aligning your goals with your deepest values instead of outside expectations.

Why your greatest challenges may become your greatest opportunities to serve others.

FAQ:

What is the Give Them A Voice Foundation?

The Give Them A Voice Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded by Dr. John A. King to provide advocacy, education, and support for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse and human trafficking. The foundation works to break the silence surrounding male victimization while creating resources that empower survivors to heal and rebuild their lives.

What is the Phoenix Collective?

The Phoenix Collective is Dr. John's leadership and personal development platform that helps people transform adversity into strength. Through practical frameworks and mindset development, participants learn how to process trauma, build resilience, and lead with authenticity and purpose.

Can trauma become a strength?

Yes. While trauma should never be minimized, Dr. John explains that healing can transform painful experiences into sources of resilience, empathy, wisdom, and leadership. When trauma is processed in healthy ways, it can become a catalyst for personal growth and meaningful service to others.

Connect with Dr. John A. King

Website

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LVP 141 Dr. John

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Now, here's your host, Angel B. Hartwell

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

John translates hard-won recovery into practical, brotherhood-driven frameworks that help men rebuild discipline, purpose, and relationships. His work has been featured in award-winning documentaries and across podcasts. Serving law enforcement, veterans, and community leaders, he's currently publishing a memoir and several fictional books based on his life and anti-trafficking work.

He is also actively building the Phoenix Collective, a performance mindset platform for people who have experienced trauma and those who support them. I am so delighted to have you here. Welcome to the show.

Anjel: Well, I wanna start our time together talking with you about vision because, you know, certainly from what I understand about indigenous Australian people, vision is a huge part of that culture.

And so I'm curious about your experience with vision and, you know, was it something that was really, um, cultivated for you in your childhood? Or was vision something that kind of came online for you further down the road as a result of some kind of, I don't know, spiritual intervention or awakening of some sort?

So my connection with Warumungu with my family didn't happen until I was 60, uh, just two and a half years ago. That being said, because I wanted to give context and honor your question. That being said, what I've found by going out bush and connecting with my, my family is as an adult, having experience and understanding the power of vision and the need to imagine the future you want to inhabit.

Going back and connecting with my people, I understood that there's a concept called ancestormind, where you have a, a pairing with the things that you just know. And there've, there've been some early studies in DNA that talk about, you know, the, the realities of ancestormind, just not on a metaphysical level, but on a physical level.

So back to your question of vision. Vision was something I had as a survival tool to always be authentic, to imagine the future I want to inhabit, to allow those truths to set my goal and to live susu are the four truths I've always, one always lived by. So when I go back to Australia, I find out that the reality of authenticity amongst my people is just, uh, it's a thing amongst indigenous people.

Mm. And out of that, the future that I want to inhabit, we would often talk about that.

Like they were already in the DNA, shall we say. Right? Yeah. So I'd love to have you speak a little bit about what led you to create the vision of Give Them A Voice.

Dr. John: Um, well, so I had recall when I was 45 of you know, s- 14 years of sexual abuse and what we would call trafficking. And I wanted, I needed to find some resources to try and get well, and there were just none. There was no... This is 20-odd years ago, there was nothing for men. Um, the concept of men being sexually abused, I was told very clearly just didn't happen.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

And out of an auditorium of 300, probably 120, 160 men would come up and just wanna hug my neck and cry because they had never spoken to another man who was so honest and out about an experience that they all had. And that happened for six and eight weeks, you know, uh, long. So with Give Them The Voice, I simply wanted to do that.

I wanted to give a voice to a, a very silent... Majority minority is the wrong term, because there's just as many men that are sexually abused as women. The, the stats of one in three and one in six are, are just inaccurate. And in terms of trafficking, about 45% of those victims trafficked are male. So it's not a, a m- minority, majority gender issue, it's a human rights issue.

Anjel: Beautiful. So can you speak a little bit about the recall experience? Because, you know, I think for many people, that level of trauma most people are probably going to repress it, suppress it, depress it, you know, forget about it , disappear it.

And, and that's the body's way and the mind's way of n- of navigating a trauma of that level of severity. So can you speak a little bit about maybe what led up to your awakening to that having been part of your past?

Dr. John: Daffodils, actually. Daffodils. When I was a kid, I, uh, when the, when the nights were really dark and life was difficult, I'd walk to school.

Sometimes it still turns up, but that was- Hmm ... the script. It went from dead just... And for men that often happens at around 35 or 45. In women it happens a lot earlier, but by the nature of men and their, their relationship to self, sexuality, and work, uh, it gets to a point where there's this, you know, this vomitus you know, traumatic thing.

Something happens, and that's when it gets all mucked up in the whole midlife realignment thing that seems to happen, Hmm ... in a lot of people.

Anjel: Yeah. And so if you wouldn't mind sharing about the 14 year, like you said there was 14 years of trafficking and sexual abuse. Like, was that trafficking within your family of origin?

Dr. John: Yeah, so my, my family of origin I'm unsure of. That's where it ties into the wira mangu. This was a... I was raised in S- in Sydney by a European couple, and the, the woman was a, um, a professor at a very well-known university in Sydney, and she, uh, hated men.

And so she just decided that, um... My, my first act was four when I had to retrieve, um, bread and water from her vagina. Um, I either had to do it or the little sis- my little sister had to do it. Um, the child I knew as my little sister had to do it. And so I chose me. I said, "Okay." Even at that age I knew my role was to protect my little sister.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

I was taken to parties, things were done, I was made to do things, and that was- life that was my normal as a child.

Anjel: Wow. Okay. And they, it was an adoption situation, or you were

Dr. John: just- I, I don't, I, I honestly don't know. I have, uh But you know how when you have, like, kids, you know, if you've had kids, maybe you haven't had kids yet-

Anjel: I, I have.

I have one Okay, well, so- Who was unfortunately sexually assaulted in daycare when he was three years old, which is why we have resonance.

Dr. John: Yeah.

Anjel: Yeah.

Dr. John: So-

Anjel: By a, by a 14-year-old boy, so- Mm ... you know, that, yeah

Dr. John: So when, when you have a c- baby, you've obviously got- Mm ... you've got a series of hospital records.

Anjel: Sure. A-

Dr. John: and out of those hospital records come your governmental birthing records.

They were just handed over and, uh, the woman who I, I went home with was in a woman's asylum at the time, and, and I think the assumption is those sort of places were for postpartum. And it was often the case in the Australian government to take children from indigenous families and put them with European women who were postpartum to help them get over what they were doing.

So, uh, we don't know to, in all honesty, transparency- Mm. Mm ... we don't know. All I know is the birth records are all wrong. Mm. And so the family that, the, the place that I was raised they were the abusers.

Anjel: Okay. You

Mm ... total disregard for another human being. You know, predatory dislike of agenda. Um- Mm ... a kid who was inarticulate and unable to express emotion or have boundaries. So there's all this. It was a total cluster, you know? But it is what it is.

Anjel: Sure.

Dr. John: Sure. Sure. It's a beautiful tapestry.

Anjel: All right. Well, we're gonna take a quick break.

When we come back, we're gonna talk a little bit more about how you are doing now and the leadership that you are ex- you know, expressing through Give Them A Voice Foundation and your Phoenix Collective. But right now, listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries? If you're interested in finding out more about how you can receive support for getting your vision out of the air and onto the ground in a way that's both impact and income producing, the best support is found in collaboration with other leading visionaries, which is why we've created the Creative Age Leader Lab.

I wanna say a big thank you to all of our listeners who are downloading, rating, and reviewing. We are over 75 countries now, so I wanna shout out this week to our listeners in Australia, ah, Denmark and Guatemala. And we'll be right back with Dr. John A. King

Your word is your wand, and as the leader, your ability to articulate and communicate your vision is essential to its materialization and monetization. Please enjoy with our compliments a free copy of the book Be Heard by Millions and Live Your Destiny, which was a number one new release in three categories to get you started.

The book is yours by visiting gift.leadingvisionariespodcast.com.

So I, I wanna hear, like what was the inspiration for you to, to say, "Okay, now I need to turn around and help other people"?

So I've been very comfortable that this process was going to work out in some way. So along the way, my attitude was, depending on the stage I was up to, I would try and help one or two people around me, and so that over time has grown. And so we come up to this stage in life where I'm, I'm at the end of this particular phase that I would call John 2.0.

So we took this 15 years and $300,000 worth of expense that we were in a-- blessed to be in a position to be able to do, and we compacted that into the Phoenix Collective, and that's p- what you're alluding to. Mm-hmm. So that's a leadership performance course for people with a focus on helping them deal with the trauma in their life in order to propel them forward.

Because, you know, trauma is a superpower. It gives you a range of experiences and skills that sets you apart for excellence and high performance if lived and balanced appropriately.

And, you know, many of them are high performers, and potentially many of them have had trauma, uh, in their lives. So I'd love to have you speak to the, the process of creating something- Mm ... to help other people.

Dr. John: Um, I, I, I think the reason I, I did it, or one of the reasons I did it, is because time itself does nothing but put, but put miles between you and an event. If trauma is unprocessed, it doesn't disappear. And there is a process, um, one of the-- our programs is called The Derailed Program, you know, why smart people do dumb stuff.

how much money we should make, and rarely do we stop and ask the questions, "Is this really me?" And align ourselves with that goals. So I think that's really part of what I wanted to do when I was going through this process of redefining what normal looked like, was, okay, well then my normal is not anybody else's normal.

They don't have my set of experiences, they don't have my set of limitations or my set of gifts. So- Mm ... why am I allowing... You know, if you allow someone else to make your world for you, they'll always make it too small. So part of my process was, okay, I just need to regear up my life to do me at the best possible version, and if anyone else can benefit from it, then awesome

Anjel: Yeah, beautiful.

I'm gonna say no to the societal expectations. I'm going to say no to you know, the, the beaten path because I'm called to do something different." So how do you reinforce yourself, you know, bring about even more courage within yourself to stand apart and to do your own thing?

Dr. John: I've got four simple truths.

I, I letted, le- alluded to them earlier. Number one, be authentic.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

I lied to enamor myself to the person who would hurt me the least. So authenticity came to me it was a very hard-won battle. And once I'd obtained authenticity and I understood the need and the power of living from the inside out that's, that formed my future view. I am this man, I choose to do these things, and that's my, that's my true north.

And accordingly to what that direction is, I allow those truths to set my goals. So again, alignment, uh, you know, the, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is, of Pisa is a beautiful example, you know? Integrity is being true to yourself. The, the ultimate of the Greek word. A liar who lies has integrity. We don't, we don't like that concept.

Who am I? What does my future look like? And what am I doing... Not to head there, this concept of, um, mechanism and intention. I don't focus on mechanism, I focus on intention. I know what my future looks like. I am a novelist. I am a writer When and how I get there is not mine to determine. The passion, refining the gift, dedicating hours and hours and hours to my craft, that is all I am compelled to do.

So you add that all together, authentic, here's my future, these are the things I'm going to do to it, and every day I'll ri- rise, and I will relentlessly, resiliently focus my gift and talent on pursuing those things passionately.

Anjel: Beautiful. You said something earlier about John 1.0, John 2.0, John 3.0. I'm curious about how you know, like what's the maybe bodily sensation or maybe it's a, you know, just a divine knowing.

How do you know that you're at the end of John 2.0?

Dr. John: For me, John 1.0 transitioning to John 2.0 was recall. I went from very right brain, analytical-

Anjel: Mm-hmm ...

And one day I just got tired of it. I said, "Guys, you just don't get on. Like, you, uh, you need to get over this shit. I'm done. I'm out." And, and I thought, I'm just starting 3.0, and I declared, my wife and I declared it April last year. And so, but I've been nego- negotiating release from the previous covenant with these two for the last 18 months.

Mm-hmm. And so that was when we decided I was gonna pivot, uh, full-time and become a novelist. So that's all part of the bookending process of doing these things and the Phoenix Collective and getting all those ducks in a row. So the, the concept of entering a new phase in life, When I was in Warumungu, in Warumungu, we have women's business and men's business.

So in Warumungu, the concept of an elder, part of it is to do with our culture and our learning. And then the, then the other thing is, you know, the more gray hair you've got, like at some point they just decide you're old, you gotta know stuff. I came back to America and I was speaking with a gentleman, and I talked about the need for, as men, to embrace the stage in life where we are elders.

And he goes, "Oh, don't tell me that, mate. Oh, that's insulting. I'm, I sound old." I said, "No, you sound frail." Um, see, I am an elder. I have spent 62 years walking this life, and I'm at the age in this, my life, where I have more to give than I've ever given. Hmm. I have more to achieve and do than I've ever had before.

John King, the guy dealing with trauma, trauma, suffering, that goes and-

Anjel: Hmm

Dr. John: So one of the challenges we have is we have a predisposition to overestimate what we can do in 12 months and underestimate what the Creator can do in 10 years. And there's a concept of 1% that's floating around, which I really think is a misnomer. I was flying one day, and I'd set... I was supposed to be on a, on an easterly course, and I set my, my, my compass at 89 degrees, just one degree off.

And over 200 miles, you're radically far from where you need to be. Mm-hmm. And so when I was in a recovery, my greatest frustration is I wasn't getting well quick enough.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

And what I did was relax. You know, you- disappointment arises out of unmet expectations.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Dr. John: And so over the last... I- if you give, if you only change once a year, that's 24% change. Uh, you know, that's tw- 12% change. Two years, 24%. Four years, close to entire change, a, a revolution of, of who you are s- and so it goes on.

So it was like, okay, I'm gonna let myself change over time. I'm gonna just incrementally change who I am. And so after 16 years, I've been through this revolution a couple of hundred percent.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Dr. John: And I decided that I... About two years ago, I finally had my feet under me as far as recovery.

Anjel: Yeah.

Dr. John: And it was time for me to celebrate and move on.

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