Rethink Impossible with Colin O'Brady
Chase Jarvis
Lesson Info
113. Rethink Impossible with Colin O'Brady
Lessons
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48:49 2What is the Meaning of Life? with Tony Nader
1:17:18 3Weirdness is the Key to Self Improvement with Marcus Buckingham
1:10:59 4How to Unlock the Key to Continuous Innovation with Tony Fadell
41:57 5Talent is Bullsh*t with Steven Pressfield
1:06:26 6Finding Self When No One Is Looking with Jason Reynolds
59:50 7Does Cold Water Exposure Really Have Scientific Backing with Dr. Mark Harper
56:15 8Heal Your Past with Sheleana Aiyana
51:06How An Unconventional Path Got Nabil Ayers To President Of One Of The Most Influential Music Labels
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1:08:02 11Happiness is an Inside Job with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
1:19:58 12The Power of Regret with Daniel Pink
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51:37 16Strengthen Your Intuition & Unlock Your Inner Wisdom with Amber Rae
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1:09:31 19Can Food Turn Us Into Geniuses with Max Lugavere
1:21:16 20Peace Is a Practice with Morgan Harper Nichols
1:14:56 21Creativity Hates Complacency with Maria Brito
1:10:34 22A Love Letter to Human Potential with Kate Robinson
54:14 23How to Build Confidence and Be More Social with Vanessa Van Edwards
1:01:21 24Trauma Is Wreaking Havoc On Our Lives with Gabby Bernstein
51:59 25Take The Leap, Start a Business with Payal Kadakia
58:37 26What Every Creator Should Know About NFTs with Tom Bilyeu
1:05:47 2740 Seconds To Fame Or Failure with Apolo Ohno
45:52 28Unlock the Power of Nonverbal Communication with Joe Navarro
1:03:28 29Living Shouldn't Hurt with Aaron Alexander
1:20:24 30Ego, Disrupted. How Buddhist Wisdom Meets Western Therapy with Dr. Mark Epstein
1:11:55 31Words Can Take You Anywhere with Arianna Davis
53:00 32Master Your Inner Voice with Dr. Ethan Kross
1:06:21 33Accelerating 10,000 Hours to Mastery with James Altucher
1:09:49 34Transform Your Mind in 12 Minutes a Day with Dr. Amishi Jha
1:15:57 35Powerful Habits to Ease Anxiety and Boost Productivity with Mel Robbins
1:15:17 36The Art of Self-Reinvention with Malcolm Gladwell
1:00:45 37Creative Acts of Curious People with Sarah Stein Greenberg
1:10:01 38Self-Discovery, Activism, and Rock & Roll with Stevie Van Zandt
57:56 39Why Design Matters with Debbie Millman
1:07:04 40Discover Work that Makes You Come Alive with Jonathan Fields
1:15:34 41Releasing Trauma and Mastering Your Emotions with Jason Wilson
1:05:35 42Food Saved Me with Danielle Walker
47:16 43Changing Our Relationship with Rest with Chelsea Jackson Roberts
49:11 44Retracing Passion to Build Lasting Career Success with Chris Bosh
54:27 45Old School Photography + Other Musings with Kai Wong
41:52 46Escalate and Evolve: A Blueprint for Career and Life with Ben Uyeda
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1:07:22 48Poetry, Vulnerability and Finding Your Voice with Jericho Brown
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53:00 51How To Heal From Your Past with Dr. Nicole LePera
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1:02:44 54Your Network is Your Insurance Policy with Jordan Harbinger
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59:45 60Upgrade Your Brain and Learn Anything Quickly with Jim Kwik
1:21:22 61The Urgent Need for Stoicism with Ryan Holiday
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1:14:35 63Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention with Erin Meyer
56:27 64Stop Living On Autopilot with Antonio Neves
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59:42 66Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable with Jamie Kern Lima
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36:36 68The Power of Idealism with Samantha Power
1:34:35 69Pushing the Limits with Extreme Explorer Mike Horn
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1:15:34 71Uncomfortable Conversations with Emmanuel Acho
45:59 72Why Conversation Matters with Rich Roll
1:24:17 73Elevating Humanity Through Business with John Mackey
1:15:14 74When Preparation Meets Opportunity with Paul Ninson
1:04:14 75The Art of Practice with Christoph Niemann
1:12:18 76Matthew McConaughey: Embracing Resistance & Catching Greenlights
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1:25:32 78Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results with James Clear
1:20:55 79Badass Habits and Making Them Stick with Jen Sincero
1:06:12 80Break Free from Self-Limiting Beliefs with Dr. Benjamin Hardy
1:09:18 81Imposter Syndrome, Getting Unstuck and The Practice with Seth Godin
1:13:19 82The Art of Curiosity and Lifelong Wisdom with Chip Conley
58:47 83The Lost Art of Breath with James Nestor
1:03:15 84The Art of Reinvention with Sophia Amoruso
1:03:59 85Harness Kindness as Your Hidden Super Power with Adrienne Bankert
1:08:26 86Heal the Soul, Restore the Calm with Stephan Moccio
1:28:19 87Finding Resilience & Possibility with Guy Raz
1:08:47 88Truth, Fear, and How to do Better with Luvvie Ajayi Jones
1:18:22 89The Future is Faster Than You Think with Peter Diamandis
57:56 90Music, Writing, and Time For Change with Nabil Ayers
1:20:38 91Freedom to Express Who We Are with Shantell Martin
1:10:34 92So You Want to Talk about Race with Ijeoma Oluo
1:10:47 93Photographing History with Pete Souza
1:16:35 94Maybe You Should Talk to Someone with Lori Gottlieb
58:51 95Never Settle with Mario Armstrong
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1:15:36 97Street Photography + Capturing Truth with Steve John Irby
1:10:54 98Life, Writing, and Real Talk with Roxane Gay
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50:57 100The Power of Passion and Perseverance with Angela Duckworth
1:08:25 101Know What Drives You with Michael Gervais
1:05:20 102The Code of the Extraordinary Mind with Vishen Lakhiani
59:07 103Risk, Fear, and the Art of Chill with Jimmy Chin
1:13:51 104Personal Growth and Understanding with Citizen Cope
1:16:21 105Living Life on Purpose with Jay Shetty
1:20:06 106Get Out of Your Own Way with Dave Hollis
1:08:10 107Hope in A Sea of Endless Calamity with Mark Manson
1:15:12 108How to Find Yourself with Glennon Doyle
1:10:16 109Make It Til You Make It with Owen Smith
1:20:50 110Surf, Survival, and Life on the Road with Ben Moon
1:08:01 111Create the Change You Seek with Jonah Berger
1:00:22 112Workplace Revolution with Amy Nelson
1:05:16 113Rethink Impossible with Colin O'Brady
1:29:31 114Good Enough is Never Good Enough with Corey Rich
1:25:24 115Say Yes To What You Want with Chris Burkard
1:22:54 116Finding Stillness In A Fast Paced World with Ryan Holiday
1:08:00 117Everything is Figureoutable with Marie Forleo
43:50 118The Art of Being Yourself with Elizabeth Gilbert
53:41 119Creativity, Comedy, and Never Settling with Nate Bargatze
1:37:12 120Personal + Career Reinvention with Jasmine Star
1:01:18 121Stay Creative, Focused and True to Yourself with Austin Kleon
1:12:25 122Ramit Sethi 'I Will Teach You To Be Rich' book launch with Chase Jarvis
1:07:17 123You Don't Need to Be Rich to Live Rich with David Bach
1:09:51 124Harnessing Your Human Nature for Success with Robert Greene
1:04:28 125Addiction, Reinvention, and Finding Ultra with Endurance Athlete Rich Roll
1:07:41 126Disruption, Reinvention, and Reimagining Silicon Valley with Arlan Hamilton
1:12:31 127The Intersection of Art and Service with Rainn Wilson
1:03:25 128Your Mind Can Transform Your Life with Tom Bilyeu
1:30:19 129Do Something Different with Jason Mesnick
1:02:38 130Less Phone, More Human with Dan Schawbel
1:07:40 131Startup to $15 Billion: Finding Your Life's Work with Shopify's Harley Finkelstein
1:12:42 132It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work with Jason Fried
1:49:02 133Love, Service, and Living Your Truth with Danielle LaPorte
1:11:05 134How to Do Work That Matters for People Who Care with Seth Godin
1:10:56 135Happiness Through Gratitude with AJ Jacobs
1:12:54 136You Are Your Habits with Julien Smith
1:03:40 137Maximizing Creativity + Navigating the Messy Middle with Scott Belsky
1:09:10 138The Most Important Conversation About Life… Death with Michael Hebb
1:13:38 139Redemption and a Thirst for Change with Scott Harrison
54:58 140Imagination and The Power of Change with Beth Comstock
1:12:29 141Success, Community, and his cameo in Parks & Recreation with NBA All Star Detlef Schrempf
1:02:02 1421,000 Paths to Success with Jack Conte
1:07:32 143Unconventional Ways to Win with Rand Fishkin
1:37:49 144How to Sell Without Selling Out with Ryan Carson
1:05:45 145Be the Artist You Want to Work With with Nigel Barker
47:12 146Your Story Is Your Power with Elle Luna
1:33:53 147Celebrating Your Weirdness with Thomas Middleditch
1:14:04 148Persevering Through Failure with Melissa Arnot Reid
1:33:23 149Go Against the Grain with David Heinemeier Hansson
1:18:07 150Stamina, Tenacity and Craft with Eugene Mirman
1:17:15 151Create Work That Lasts with Todd Henry
1:06:50 152Make Fear Your Friend
08:08 153Tame Your Distracted Mind with Adam Gazzaley
1:12:08 154Why Grit, Persistence, and Hard Work Matter with Daymond John
1:05:15 155How to Launch Your Next Project with Product Hunts with Ryan Hoover
1:11:15 156Lessons in Business and Life with Richard Branson
45:05 157Embracing Your Messy Beautiful Life with Glennon Doyle
1:27:29 158How to Create Work That Lasts with Ryan Holiday
1:20:25 1595 Seconds to Change Your Life with Mel Robbins
1:14:53 160Break Through Anxiety and Stress Through Play with Charlie Hoehn
1:08:10 161The Quest For True Belonging with Brene Brown
1:29:41 162Real Artists Don't Starve with Jeff Goins
1:19:16 163Habits for Ultra-Productivity with Jessica Hische
56:18 164Using Constraints to Fuel Your Best Work Ever with Scott Belsky
1:21:07 165The Intersection of Art and Business with AirBnB's Joe Gebbia
1:19:56 166Build a World-Changing Business with Reid Hoffman
1:19:31 167How Design Drives The World's Best Companies with Robert Brunner
1:05:33 168Why Creativity Is The Key To Leadership with Sen. Cory Booker
53:06 169How To Change The Lives Of Millions with Scott Harrison
1:16:14 170How To Build A Media Juggernaut with Piera Gelardi
1:21:04 171Transform Your Consciousness with Jason Silva
1:08:02 172The Formula For Peak Performance with Steven Kotler
1:01:40 173How What You Buy Can Change The World with Leila Janah
1:04:10 174Overcoming Fear & Self-Doubt with W. Kamau Bell
47:44 175The Unfiltered Truth About Entrepreneurship with Adam Braun
1:21:36 176Build + Sustain A Career Doing What You Love with James Mercer of The Shins
51:58 177How Design Can Supercharge Your Business with Yves Béhar
33:40 178Conquer Fear & Self-Doubt with Amanda Crew
1:29:39 179Become A Master Communicator with Vanessa Van Edwards
1:19:52 180How iJustine Built Her Digital Empire with iJustine
1:08:05 181How To Be A World-Class Creative Pro with Joe McNally
1:05:19 182How To Stop Waiting And Start Doing with Roman Mars
43:43 183Gut, Head + Heart Alignment with Scott Dadich
38:17 184If Not Now, When? with Debbie Millman
55:31Lesson Info
Rethink Impossible with Colin O'Brady
everybody. What's up? It's chase. Welcome to an absolute of show. You guys know the shows where I sit down with amazing humans and I do everything I can to unpack their brain with the goal of helping you live your dreams and career in hobby and in life. My guest today is going to blow your brain wide open. He's one of the top adventurers in the world. He is a speaker across lots of different genre. And he is the new I guess. New York Times best selling author of the book The Impossible First, my guest today is the column already. Welcome to the show Having me here. I love you. Great to be here. Yes, he made it happen. Thanks India for connecting us. Sara are friends that made it made this happen? Very happy to be in the show. Um, and congrats on the book. Thanks, man. Jim List. It's just came out two weeks ago to set The New York Times, But so is this proud moment, you know, poured, uh, my first book, but I poured my heart and soul into writing it, So it's nice to have it. How out in t...
he world. Amazing. Amazing. Um, we'll get a lot of ground to cover, cause this, like we just met 15 minutes ago. When you walk in the door here, I'm familiar with you in your work. And you know that our audience is primarily creators and entrepreneurs, and every creation and every business that we build is an adventure. And so the parallels between the life that you lied literally adventuring all over the planet, doing some crazy things which we will get into and the entrepreneurial or the creative journey that we all go on on the day to day basis. There's no mistaking that there's a lot of similarities there, so I'm gonna want to unpack that. But we're gonna also keep relating this stuff back to really taxable tactical on actionable stuff for audience. Um, before we do this, let's go back. Two young Colin. We always was a curiosity to the drove. You did with it in your blood within your veins. Or was there some event that made you want to seek to see the rest of the world? Yeah, you know, it's it's been an interesting path. Obviously. I guess what I'm most known for in the world is the world record breaking adventures. And, you know, being the first person across Antarctica, Sillen supported things like that. But ah, certainly in my early life. Um, you know, I dared to dream greatly, I suppose, and waited by my parents and influence in that way. But I wasn't really coming from a background that that was an obvious path. You know, I grew up in Portland, Oregon. I was actually born just an hour south of here in Olympia. Oh, night. Parents are big hippies. Went to Evergreen State College. Um, I was born at home on a Bhutan with, like, a group of hippies hanging out of my parent's house. That this commune, basically my mom playing Bob Marley redemption, saw BP giving birth births. So, you know, not the most traditional upbringing, but certainly group in the Pacific Northwest. My parents went from Olympia to Portland, and we don't have a lot of money. They were young parents, but they were always, like, you know, a The things we could do for free honestly were, like, enjoy the outdoors. Um, and so, you know, we go camping and we go hiking and mountain biking and things like that. Um, but also, with this kind of like undercurrent of my mother always saying to me like, you know, whatever you dream of, you can create, you know, whatever. You know, whatever you want to be in this world, just like, you know, I think that a lot of what's happened in my life and there's some elements I'm sure we're impact, but have been from just that inspiration from being a kid and just being wrapped up in, you know, around like, sort of loving positivity. And my parents divorced when I was pretty young. But they still, uh, you know, brought our family together and what they call Ohana the Hawaiian word for family that chose him family. So we still have family events for both my mother and father and step parents and step siblings are all there, you know, breaking bread around the table. So I think that underlying sort of positivity and love played a big role. Wow. All right, so how does one go from camping with their parents to forging out on their own and starting to take risks? Was there, you know, Was it as soon as you had time on your own. You started, like, distancing yourself from, uh, establishment. And like most kids going to the movies on the weekend and you're like doing the Pacific Crest Trail. No, it wasn't so much that I mean, actually, I think the biggest the biggest obvious break for me was so in. Ah, uh, graduate from college in 2006. Um, I was a swimmer in college. On which a Yale University, Um and you know, most my friends and economics degrees 2006. You know, Wall Street's crushing right. I grew up barely any money. Actually, every summer I go home and paint houses with my buddy, but every summer, like I'd be paying houses. My body's getting these internships on Wall Street and get this and I would just like I was looking at that life, at least for me. And that's not judging other people. So I was just like, I don't know, like it's a lot of money, but like in a task in an office in a big city that just doesn't like, you know, you know, speak to my heart and people like your crazy is such a good opportunity. And I was like, I was just like, I want to travel. I want to see the world. So every summer I went, like, saved up enough money, like basic 1000 2000 bucks every single summer throughout the end of high school and college. Kind of put it in this, like bank account, going like when I graduated college. I want to travel and see the world. And so 2006 happens on my buddies from college. You go off to get these Wall Street jobs, and I've got, like, 10 grand to my name. And I take a backpack and a surfboard by a one way ticket to travel around the world by myself. Um, and you know, it was an incredible experience, you know? All told, you know, I've been living in youth hostels. I was hitchhiking around New Zealand. I had a surfboard. Um, actually, on that trip, met turned, hitchhike with a surfboard. Yes, it is, actually. But you can. New Zealand people are really friendly. You places you do that I couldn't really get in half cars. Ah, but Thea, But my I met my now wife on that trip was almost 13 years ago, met her on a beach in Fiji. Um, Jenna And I'm sure we'll talk more about her exes. Huge part of our business in our life. But, um, unfortunately, during that same trip, tragedy befell me. I was severely burned in a fire in Thailand. The book, the second book, is, you know, from fire toe ice. And this was really kind of Ah, big, obviously life changing moment for me of tragedy. I was a silly 22 year old kid on a beach in a party in Thailand, and I was jumping a flaming jump rope and, um, Thailand. That's somewhat common. It's like I invented that I comped it, but the rope wrapped around my legs and my body completely unfired to my neck. Um, and you know, survival mode kicked in, and I jumped in the ocean to extinguish. The flames were not before about 25% of my body was severely burned. Um, and not just the physical trauma, but in the middle of nowhere. In Thailand, there's like a rural hospitals, like a shack. There's, you know, there's a cat running around my bed in this makeshift. I see you and I went into these surgeries and the doctors walked in after a few days. Then, like, look, you'll probably never walk again normally, like you're really badly injured. Sorry. And it was this moment of just deep, obviously physical trauma. But the emotional trauma Bates of being like the way you pictured your life being identified as being an athlete, most of my life was like, You're not that anymore. So think of your next dream. Sorry. And my mother came over to my hospital room, you know, for five days, and she kind of arrived. And, um, I don't know if you have kids or not. Um, I don't have kids myself, but I hope to soon one day and I can only imagine what it's like being a mother, and you assume your kid in this place like so helplessness like dark, dingy hospital. All of this. And I know now she was crying and pleading with the doctors for good news, but she never showed me that fear. Instead, she came into my hospital room everything with this big smile on her face. This is air of positivity and daring me to dream about the future, and I think that that does connect back to entrepreneurship and creativity. And actually, my mother is an entrepreneur herself. There's a lot of those values. In fact, in the book, um, we'll talk about the adventures. But there's actually an entire chapter in the book, which we call from whiteboard to reality, which is this concept that was instilled with me for my mother, which is like she goes in this hospital moment she goes calling like Your life's not over like you're 22 years old. Yes, you're in a really bad spot right now, but like close your eyes like, What do you want to be in the future? Could be anything like What do you want to Dio is in. This is in the hospital and I'm like Mom, are you Give me to come on like I'm just hang on for dear life. You're literally she's like no, like, tell me like set a goal. And so I closed my eyes, and in that moment I visualized myself, probably cause I I thought of myself as an athlete. Throughout my entire life. I pictured myself crossing the finish line of a traffic on which is not something I ever done. Collegiate swimmer, but never bike to run competitively. Nothing like that. So optimized a mom. You know, I want a one day race, a trough, and could she could have easily been like, Yeah, I said, set a goal, but like, the legs and diagnosed me like maybe something else. And she was like, she was like, she was like, All right, let's do it. Let's do it. The next day, she gets a tie, doctor, like you have this vote of his tie doctor. Kind of shaking his head. I've got these. Wait to hand these £10 of, like, Doc. I'm training for a triathlon. Need some way to make? My legs are bandaged from the waist down, but I'm like I'm training in my mind like I'm gonna do this one day or whatever. And my mother, several months in the hospital flow back to Portland, Oregon. I'm carried on and off the plane. I'm in a wheelchair, you know, through this process of her, like teaching me how to walk with her, I put in one chair in front of me, taking like, my very first step, the next patient care. 57 Sway. Take five steps the next day and this entire process, all the while imagining that bigger goal, which was finishing a truffle on him. We'll get too bogged down here, but fast forward. 18 months. Um, I finally did need to get a real job, at least thought nearby parents basement. I took a job in finance in Chicago in 2008 which is kind of crazy time to get a finance timings adds ominous time. And she, uh, I signed up for the Chicago traffic and I end up, you know, months after being burned, being told I would never walk again, I compete in the traffic on I finished the race, which is my goal in them to my complete. Another surprise. I haven't just finished the race, but I actually won the entire Chicago traffic on, um, you know, beating 4 5000 participants on the day. And it was this moment. Now your initial questions about my childhood, which Ford's this mindset or what? You know, this creativity within me. And it was this moment where I didn't just, like pat myself on the back. Well, I guess I'm just a great athlete was the opposite of that. It was going back to the Thai Hospital, in my mind, wondering what would have happened had my mom not forced me to look towards the future and set this measure Buchel like, where would life's outcomes have taken me? And it was in that moment that I realized, not myself, not some like superhuman free Gaff fleet, like we all inside of us have these reservoirs of untapped potential to achieve extraordinary things, particularly when we can shift our mindset and shift him towards these positive outcomes and then dig into the hard work of actually executing on them. And so that has definitely been a, um I guess, a blueprint for the things that I've done those 12 years ago in the other world. Records and things I've done, which is, you know, Now I call it now, from whiteboard to reality. It wasn't, you know, in that my mind that but it was like, What's the massive goal? Write it down as big as you possibly can and then, Okay, hang it on the wall so you can think about that Massive. All that entrepreneur success that huge Exeter whatever it is you're driving you then go like OK, like, what can I do today? The chair. I can take the one step for my wheelchair, the chair for me. What can I do the next date in stacking those stacking those bricks? So what? You said a handful of things that I want to unpack and put a pin in and revisit over the next five minutes here, the first of which is mindset. Now your mom walks in, and there's one thing that's like your mom's mindset. And there's another thing, which is your mind set. And also former athlete went to college on a soccer scholarship. I identify as an athlete have also had some injuries when they said, You're not gonna recover. So I I want to understand your psychology, your own psychology, own mindset. In that moment you got Mom coming and all bubbly. What was your true state? There were anxious. Yeah, I When I think about that moment, it's a it's ah, like a precipice moment or a sliding doors moment. We're like, you know, the physical trauma is gonna be there cause I mean, I've literally burned off all the skin on my legs. There's some photos inside the book. I didn't put the most most graphic, but there couple were like, Damn okay, like you're very hurt. Um, so that's there. But there's a piece of that that I mean, I probably wasn't quite this place, my mind, but that this to shop like I will recover in summer. I'm not always mean this much physical pain, but the lasting impact And that's the precipice moment of who am I if I can't run or walk or you know who am I? And that's that sort of teetering on the brink of this sort of emotional trauma, which is ultimately a lot longer lasting if you allow it to be. And that's where the mindset came in and my mother came in and in a lot of ways facilitated me, overriding that fear, that doubt, because that was very much they're very much bubbling up inside of myself. Um, and you know, I'm a big believer that we are the stories that we tell ourselves, and we get to choose the moments that are inside of our mind inside of our brain. And again, I'm at the time I'm 22 years old, and I've had a lot more of experience that reinforced this since then. But it's the beginning of this understanding of like, you know what? Like I have a choice like I have a choice in this moment. Actually program my mind for tomorrow. I can't change. I can't go back and not jump the flaming jumper obvious that I could I would twitch that there. But in this moment, I am right here right now. I gotta decide what happens today. What happens tomorrow? What happens the next and not try to pretend like just a flick? A switch flipped and I was like, I'm no problems. Whatever. It was a traumatic year. Yeah, but under the sort of guys or the my mom leading me down the trail towards the positivity in that mindset ship towards that versus the opposite, which is like the doctor said, I'm never gonna walk again. That's my new reality. Let me completely adjusted that depression, you know, fatigue, exhaustion, and then that where the compound ing ripple effects of that negative mindset. What were some, like, specific cause? Just saying like I changed my mind Set. It's bits less relatable. And until you tell me a story or like what you actually did, did you visualize yourself crossing that special ended you like you talked figuratively, conceptually about putting a big, hairy, audacious goal on a white board, then looking at every day. But tell me like, how did you get from that dark hospital bed in Thailand with your mom cheerleading? But that you have to be clear. You have to do a lot of work for sure beyond the cheerleading that your mom did for you. So what did it look like on a like for you? Journaling and visualizing like praying? Like what? What? What? What? I don't know what what you did, because there's a lot of people right now her listening that are in a place that they don't they didn't expect themselves to be for whatever reason, economic, social, personal health, otherwise, and we all want to crawl out of the hole when we find ourselves there, give us some tactics, so the process or mean You can definitely apply it to the burn accident and recovering from that. But you can also apply it to the other things that I've built and created in my life. And like I said, there is a chapter in this book that's really about, um, you know, creativity and entrepreneurship. As I've gone and built these other world record projects with my wife, they all started with a massive golden idea, and most of them also started in places like we have no idea what the hell we're doing. So if when we said our first a huge massive world record gold project, it was like, I want to see if I can set the world record for climbing the seven summits that the tallest mountain to seven continents going north and South Pole fashion anyone that's called the Explorers Grand Sam. Great. Great idea. Um, we won't start. Nonprofits would have a bunch of impact and links with schools and kids. And like all this kind of stuff Oh, God, that's a great that we're just starting engaged at the time. So it's kind of like riding high since 2014. Really? Yeah, we're gonna these big ideas. That's what our life's gonna be like together and all this kind of stuff. We get back home and we're like, Okay, so we have literally no money. We're in a one bedroom apartment. If no money, we have no network. We have, you know, 200 Instagram followers. We have no reason. A sponsor. Whatever. Like investments, we have no idea how to start a 95 a one C three nonprofit like there was a moment of, like, we're gonna do this big thing and then we the reality get home were like, Yeah, but like, come on. Like, what are we actually going to do in that moment? You describing? The other people are going like they're in a moment right now going like, sure, I have a big goal, but like, what the How the hell are you actually going to do What's my first step? Second step eight step. And so for us in that moment, it was this moment of like, this is the moment where creativity, innovation, diets like you have a great idea. If you're like, Oh, like I mean, maybe it's not me. Like I could read about the guy or look upon entering the guy who actually did the thing, But, like, I'm not that guy or that girl, right? And we're like, Well, we have no idea how we're gonna do this, And it's gonna cost half a $1,000,000. We have. We have, like, 10 grand saved up for something like that. So Roberts is not ready to check ourselves, like, you know what we do. We have an internet connection. Google. This is a true story. One of first thing. Today we wake up more and we write Google. What is the difference between marketing and PR? That was our first question in Google. Now, fast forward to today. My project crossing Antarctica had two billion media impressions. It was the most viewed, uh, expedite live exhibition ever. I was also a year after that. I was the first person a Snapchat from Everest and that had 22 million views on social. So what happened between Jenna and I Googling match it? And that happening, which was and what it also made bold down to is a daily practices of waking up like I have no idea how we're gonna do this. We called like five people who we night thought might know. Ah, friend of somebody that we called five more people like in the book a year down the path we still were hundreds of thousands of dollars short of this goal. But we woke up every single day ferociously being like how we're gonna build this, How we're going to create this. Who can we talk to? Oh, we learned something else about. I get how to get our non profit, you know, certification through this. Okay, that's one more egg and drop in the bucket. I'll tell the story from the book, which I think is relevant to the entrepreneurs audience. Which is? We asked, hundreds. I don't know exactly what could have been 1000 people for help for funding, getting our project an idea off grounds like we're going to set this world record project. But the larger idea is to build a media campaign around it that has a ripple effect of positivity with this nonprofit impact with kids, we were like, Okay, that's kind of interesting, but like what? Like, what do you do for me? You're running the show literally. Hundreds of people said No, no, no. I mean, with her effort, no so many times to be the same thing. It's a pitching angel. Money for your attack, apple, whatever that is right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And each one of those nose like I got, Of course, Mawr and more and more and more discouraged. However, what I also got was I practiced my pitch every single time I got No, it was like one more rep of being like No, but tell me about your idea. You know, it started off probably like 10 minute rambling. Well, there's like these mountains, and there's this thistle like impact. Like whatever they get better polished, more polished, more polished, more polished. And I tell this story in the book on this kind of like, How did Gen and I built and create this cause? Some people said like, Well, it's great. You walk across Antarctica and you climb on Everest. You've done these things, but that all like, takes a ton of money. Mike, look like we did not do this with money. We did this because the perseverance that we see you saw in the mountains and the climbing and the 10 World records I have or whatever, like actually before any world records, the perseverance is actually getting this idea off of the ground for sure. And so a buddy of mine, we've raised like a piece of the money. There were still hundreds of thousands of dollars short, and I have started take interviews. I'm leaving from in six weeks and General looks over me. And so there's nine expeditions of this Explorers Grand Slam, and she goes like, We're gonna run out of money after the 1st 2 expeditions. But you've already, like, told people that you're doing this and I've started speaking at schools because we actually started a nonprofit part of what we're doing. But were these like, still, like, we're gonna find a way, we're gonna figure it out, buddy of mine. He says to me goes, Hey, Colin, um, I want you to meet a friend of mine. She set a world record. Um, and I just think it be a cool free to meet someone who has a world record because you're trying to set your first world record and, uh, come to the spin class at the local gym by our house. And I was like a spro a spin class like I'm a professional athlete, like I'm not gonna go like a group fitness class on a Sunday. He's like, Seriously man, like, come with you. First of all, it's actually pretty legit workout and, like, just come. And so I was like, Okay, fine. Like, kind of like thought I was a little too cool to be in a spin class. Turns out, by the way, I freakin love Spin now, like it's a legit workout. I did my first soulcycle class dinner days, but getting the I get it again, The classy introduces me and he goes, Hey, um, no, this is my friend Kathy, you know, woman probably 20 years older than maybe super fit. She's already like cranking on this. Been bikes like super strong and fit, just like oh, hey, like nice to meet you. Like, you know, she had the world record for the five K back in the 87 a friend when she was in college. And I'm like, Oh, damn, like legit runner. Like I was like, Super cool teaches the hardest. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 100. The 800 to 5. Yeah, this is like brutal. I'm like, OK, like that's cool. Like legit. Some non come like I'm in the spin custom. Your badass services like and my body is like my body. Angelo says, You know, tell her, Tell her what you're doing. And so I've got no 1000 times at this point. Yeah, so I've just got this. I'm not I'm not picture. And she's like, just a person in the spin class. And so I just give him my tight worry, my 32nd pitch pitch, But just like the story that this is what I'm doing here it is, right retrospectively. It was polished because of all the failures. But I wasn't thinking at a time. I just like I told any person over beers or a coffee or a random networking event or this this story, right? She's like, Oh, that's cool. That's a man in great boom spin. Instructor walks in and starts to spin class. We start spending. It's 90 minutes a spin. I get my sweater demonic started thing. Okay, spends kind of cool, but like, Okay, random cool to meet this woman, Actually. Pretty inspiring. Like whatever walking out of class like hey, Kathy, like, really nice to meet you. Like whatever. Just, you know, Camaro. Quick. Um, my husband, actually, in this class as well. Um, hey, tell, Tell him what you're doing. And I was like, Okay. And I just like pitch number 1008. Yeah. Ticket here. Here we go again, You know, here it is. So I'm doing this saying on Colombia's mountains, my wife and I started a nonprofit where I'm taking kids in this way, but whatever he's like, Wow, um, it's really cool. Uh, are you, like, looking for, like, sponsors where I'm like, Yeah, he's like, I actually think the company I work with could, um I could help. You know, I'm like, of course, Mike. In tennis upright. I'm like, Great. Um, like, you're, like, a business card or like, whatever. And he's like, Yeah, Mark Parker, CEO, Nike, My oh, the company. You work at my field help. Like. And so the essence of that story, of course, is we failed 1000 times, put a You never know who you're talking to in which cases like I was just as passionately talking about my idea because I love it. Not because I had no idea. I was talking to, you know, Fortune 10 CEO, but I was also talking to the woman and spin class. I was also talking to the barista at the coffee shop. I was also talking person street cause I freaking was so excited about what we were trying to dio. You can't no replacement for, like, passion and energy. You just exude that stuff, right? Is like runs out of your like, I want to do this melon to. And then the second piece of that is we kept going. There is, you know, one of my favorite, you know, uh, allegories, the booked out, even the book, The alchemists, of course, Yeah, on my all time favorites. And I quoted in the book as well. And it says, You know, we often die of thirst when crossing the desert just a few moments before seeing the palm trees on the horizon. And it's, you know, I use the analogy in the book when I'm like, I almost want to quit this 54 day solo 1000 mile journey across Antarctica pulling three and £70 lead. But the entrepreneurs tail is just the same. Like I was like, Dude, I'm not going to stupid spin class like come on like I am like this. I'm like so stressed my projects not gonna work. I've been working on it for however long and it just gonna fail. And like all that kind of companies, like actually one last thing. One last meeting, one last, you know, chance serendipitous encounter stacked on top of your 1000 failures that lead to you being Polish and passionate in the right moment that you need to be brings the life. That and of course, there's, You know, a number of other things you know happened since then. But you just never know. Yeah, I love that. To me, that is the part of loving the process and loving what you're talking about, what you're doing rather than just the you want the end goal of being able to ring the bell of I did the seven summits I across the Antarctic. I did whatever your big dream is to me that like getting other people excited about what it is that you're doing. You know, I call that building community around your ideas, and that's how wickedly underrated that is. Because if you've got your own dream in your parents basement, like how how likely are you to achieve it? Nothing happens in a vacuum, nothing happens. So you walked 1000 miles solo or most anymore, just just under yes, Under. But how many people were a part of the night that menopause and the truth is so the I always say this like it's a shame that it's put my name on the books on the cover of the book, Um, and my publisher Extra the other day book published two weeks ago in New York, and I kind of like chairs and books published any. My editor pulls me aside and goes, Push a lot of books con I got to say you might have the record for the longest acknowledgements anyone's ever written in a book that I published leaves you kind of revert me Junker And I was like, That's because, like, the irony of this story is that, like you think this story is about a man walking by himself, 932 miles across an article something no one in history had ever accomplished before and the truth of the story and what the truth is in the pages as well as the truth and Acknowledgments is it actually was a success of a huge community of people. Ah, huge number of mentors, influences family members, dreams, failure, successes, learnings, wisdoms taken from a large community of people that ultimately Ed led to that moment. And I also like what you said about enjoying the process of the journey. Have to not giving up. Giving away the book itself is, of course, I want people to read the book, but I actually end the book 1/4 mile away from finishing the goal as it. And there's an epilogue after that. But as a testament to the point of writing the book, also, the point of making the Antarctica crossing was not to have the moment. When I touched the finish line, I had my hands in the air like I did it. No one in history has ever done it. The book is actually about myself, a relatively young man learning throughout the totality of the journey and experiencing the ups and downs in the hardships and the fears and the doubts in the euphoria and the love and the gratitude and all of these things. It's not about and see. The crescendo of the book isn't and then I did it it's like that would be a flat note at the end of what is actually the sort of the essence I like. The essence, I think, is a really good way of capturing it. So let's talk a little bit about, like, the actual adventures we talk. You know, I think a little bit of background is also helpful. Your, um, your injury is substantial, like that's clearly played a huge role in setting you up for this. Was there anything else before you move forwards or anything else, Childhood Or, um, any part of your upbringing that contributed to your desire to set these records and to live the life that you're living Beyond that, the experience of the I mean the other thing is, we'll definitely getting getting the adventure. But the other thing that I think is a proposed for this conversation is I watched my parents build a business when I was a kid. So when I was 13 years old, my parents had worked in the natural foods grocery industry for a long time. For other people, like they were hippie farmers that ultimately got job with local co op that ultimately Scott sobs like clerks and the grocery store and then ultimately, no work their way up into the management of the grocery store. And in 1999 when I was 13 years old, freshman high school, I guess, um, my parents said, Hey, like, we're actually going to take a swing here and start our own grocery store. Um, and it's, Ah grocery store chain. And both important suggest that spread out now called New Seasons Market. And they said one here. Yeah, there's one to Seattle now. Um, my parents have been involved in it for several years now, but, um, that's their business. And they started it. And what ultimately happened was when I was well out of the house, well, after the burn accent, all this kind of stuff, it was financially successful. Like this is successful business. They sold it. They've done well for themselves, like it's a great thing. My childhood had. There was zero impact of sort of the financial success, their business on mile childhood, the way that I was raised. But the impact to me was actually far greater than that which is our dinner table. Conversation from age 13 to was about my parents building a business. And not that something. Sure, it's about business, but actually them being like we have a dream. Okay, What's the dream? It's a mission driven business. Okay, what is the mission driven business? Ah, mission driven businesses is a for profit business, but we believe that we're gonna make a community a better place by creating this business. Well, how does that work? Okay, well, it's a grocery store chain. We want local farmers and fishers to have a marketplace to bring their stuff, too. And the people that are working in a grocery store, often times large chain grocery stores like don't have health care if they're part time employees don't have, you know, good benefits there, you know, paid low wages were gonna pay them higher wages were going to give them healthcare. We're gonna always think old meters, thousands of employees in this, But that was just their dream in that moment. So I watched my parents from the dream into reality phase and grab. Not really the reality in tow, exit phase of their thing. And that creativity. Although I didn't want to start a grocery store, I watched my parents scraped together every last penny on an idea that they firmly believed in. And they talked about it as a family business was like, We're going to work and we're not talking about it wasn't like they just berated me with, like, you know, spreadsheets everything. Like as a kid. I was aware of them building something create and the incremental successes and the incremental failures along the way. And so that seeped into my blood in my own way. And I've actually a few years ago, Um, talk about living the book. I'm at Burning Man. I'm saying they're burning, man. I'm looking up at this amazing piece of art and myself was an athlete. Never thought of myself as an artist. I was like an artist. Is someone who can, like, draw super well or, like, take a really amazing photograph or something like that? Like I'm obviously not an artist. I'm not creative. I'm staying there with Jenna. Were looking up this art installation. Everyone's playing and dancing and interacting with the piece of art, and I was in that moment I was like, Wait a second, we take ideas of nothing, turned them into something. But we tell the stories of me going on these adventures so that we can have this ripple effect of experience within schools within corporations, within anyone falling on instagram. The stories we tell like Wait a second what we're doing oddly similar. This is exactly the same thing. We are artists. Yeah, and what my parents were building in their entrepreneurial venture, like, in its own way, is this creative process this Arctic, I'm actually chills just saying it. And that was that mindset shift for me to reframe on the last person in the last 30 some years to say, like, you know what? I'm an artist. In a couple years ago, I was like, Wait a second. Like what we are doing is a very creative expression of living life. And the other people are dancing and interacting and playing with it and then taking from that, hopefully create their own inspiration. Like I wrote this book definitely not so that people can read my book and be like, wow, calling. You're a true badass. You walked across an article by yourself like my hope when I called the impossible First, that we called the project itself So someone was set this book down, put it down and be like my impossible First is this like the worst return investment for this book for me is when I get a d m from someone is like, Dude, you're awesome. The best return on investment If someone goes man, I read that book. It was gripping edge of the seat. The story time was amazing in this and like, I'm finally like this thing I've been putting off till tomorrow, Tomorrow, tomorrow, Like I put your book down. I'm like, I'm doing that thing today. Clearly it is like a It's a page Turner B. It is inspiring any time you watch someone live their dream and you could just feel your energy for the things that you've done. And so now, when I don't explore some of those things in particular because of some crazy shit. So, um, and I also my background is in action sports photographer friend about how much you know about that. But all the climbing ski snowboard athletes in the world that I worked for all the brands than all the stuff, Uh, and usually in in sort of, ah, storytelling fashion, But I'm just close enough to a lot of the people in your community to understand and know the the, um, hard core aspects of these feats. But the people who actually do and live those things that such a small, small, narrow group of people Everest, for example, the seven summits, Um, this project of ah, just that we say piloting a boat across very dangerous body water like a where do these dreams? A. Let's talk about a couple of these individually, and then while you're talking about some of them, help us understand. How does one come up with this particular challenges? Seven summits is one. This is not new to you. What s so that's a little bit more obvious. But you should also include the after the folks at home who don't know. Yes. Oh, it you know it's in interesting progression, and I won't stay too long in one place. We keep the conversation flowing, but the The Seven Summits explores Grand Slam is something that's in the zeitgeist of the adventure exploration community. When you call that and so my first big project, the one that we talked about those trying to raise money for at the very beginning, No kind of background. This. That's me saying other people have done this and I want to do this thing. Fashion has ever been done before, so I'm not racing anyone side by side. I'm kind of racing history, but I'm repeating what's been done to the seven Summit tallest mountain, seven condensates, an established thing. So I go up there and I'm successful with that in the next project. How did you decide the order to climbing based on really based on weather, like just the conditions of the weather and like, we're gonna start time in here? Yeah, exactly. You have to start in Antarctica because it's an Arctic summer and you can only come Everest in the second week of May. And so that sort of dictates a few, you know, moving parts when there was a couple of things you could sweep foot around, but there wasn't that much periods. When do you really look at your like? I climbed Elbrus and winter, which is traditionally come this summer, but that when I feel like I handle him winner, where it's like you're gonna get winners and of Everest in a project like this, so there's a few things like that. So after completing that, then I did another world record project, which was called the 50 High Points, which was really the first piece of like, I would say, like, collaborative art piece expedition ings, really sharing the story. But so this Jen's would be doing it. This is one we allowed people to participate in. So I came to tell us mount in each of the 50 U. S. States, um, and fashion anyone has ever done that. So 50 mountains, the tallest in each state, the record before it was 42 days and managed to do it in 21 days. But the bigger sort of excitement around that was after talking to like students and school kids all around the country. I talk to kids and, like, you know, the East Coast are in Florida. Someone that they're like, That's cool. We're talking about mountains, but first of all, like I don't even live anywhere near mountains that I want to go to Nepal or like climbing Kilimanjaro. Well, this is kind of stuff, and I was like, Man, like, there's amazing outdoors. I don't care across this entire country. And so I want to do this project that kind of exam if I and sure enough, the tallest mountain Florida by the waist, like a 350 foot hill on the side of the road. So I had to go like tap that hill. But with this thing we call the Forrest Gump effects on social media, my instagram. We're like live tracking where we were and invited anyone to come out like Come to the trailhead, hike with us, Climb with us, meet us on the summit. We have thousands of people meet us all across the country and touch different parts. That project climbed their home state. Explore partner, state. They have never been to always kind of self, so that was super fun. But then this was all around the similar moment in time when I kind of had that epiphany at Burning Man about creativity. It art. And what is a true artist want to dio? In my opinion, I guess a true artist wants to create something that's never been done before, rather than repeating a record that's been in the way. That's never been done before, but your own independent individual artistry. Exactly. And so that's when my mind started, like, you know, being curious about not just a world record, but a world first, something that had never been done before And the my last two projects. But with the book itself is about becoming the first person history to do this solo crossing Antarctica solo un supported. So unsupportive means no re supplies of food or fuel. So I could carry everything with me the entire time sauce dragon, which started out as a £375 sled basically packed with food and then fuel for melting snow into water. Um, and, uh, several people have tried it before me over the years. You know, one guy made it 900 miles and died just miles from finishing after 71 days. Another really? You know, famous Explorer, um, you know, made it some days that ran out of food and had to, you know, get flown out of there because he was gonna run out of food before continuing the crossing. It basically was in this, like, kind of question of, like, the reason we called it the impossible first, these people were like There's a lot of quotes before I tied. That was like this crossings impossible. Like the math equation of, like, how much food supplies, how much you can actually have £1000 lead. It's 100 food. You never able to move it the first day, right? And so it was kind of that was the question, and we called the impossible First, quite frankly, I think this is to me. I think this is a lesson for any entrepreneur. Was we called impossible first cause we thought this might actually be impossible. But is that a reason not to try it? Because what I've learned when I said audacious goals where I've stepped so far outside the comfort zone, like stepping outside of your comfort zone, is where you grow. So I fundamentally believed if I attempt this thing and put my whole heart into it and I still can't do it, I'm not. It's not going to get just a net loss. I go well, that was a huge waste of time. It's like I'm gonna learn something in this process, and if I do push beyond that and actually prove it, to be possible even better, cause it can, you know, show others with the boundaries of the owner of limiting beliefs. And so that was really where the idea was conceived. That art piece of saying like, What has nobody ever done? And Jenna and I, you know, built out this project with the train for it and all the things you to deal with the intention of attempting to do this thing that no one in history had ever done before. The some details about that. So super good friends with Mike Horn. If you don't know Mike and he's done a lot of these poll the poll right now, which they just got across, he just did that incredible. And then through the through the like darkness to the North Pole like that is one went in the winter like that actually posted about on my instagram yesterday, Today, yesterday, hours, Lakers. You know, I was like, Look, I'm getting a lot of praise for things happen on the polar regions. Like, if you want to know the guy that just did the most hardcore badass project of all time. Like what they just did him on board house alone and, ah, the winter of North Pole. It's like, I mean, it's like how many days? 56 days with no sunshine, no sons, average temperature, 70 below. And I've done a much, much, much smaller expedition to the North Pole, just the last degree of latitude. Antarctica is very tough on your minus 30 degree ambient temperature. Mount there alone always comes up a North Pole. It's crazy because the floating ocean and even in my short expedition out there, I found it to be incredibly hard, because all the ocean, basically the no, the ice floes crack into each other. And so these pressure ridges, they've got this heavy sled. But you also like taking your skis often, like throwing it over like the ice cracks. You've got of my expedition out there with the guys I was with fell through the ice into, like, you know, freezing water at a poll mouth. But then it's minus 30 degrees outside. It's just it's a hectic place. Imagine doing that in winter for two months, like had after they like swims and water gassings and hardcore is all hardcore crazy hardcore. Um, I think a lot of I think. Mike also is one of the guys who did the crossing, but with under kite. Exactly. Yeah, and that's very different than what you s o the inn distinction. Unfortunately, there has been, you know, a small dependent People like I don't understand, like calling your You're claiming a world first. But you know, Mike Horn or Baracoa Birdhouse in your 25 years ago did a full crossing solo, and they absolutely did. And what they did this remarkable, um, and I I guess that I'm in full deference to their accomplishments. The differences there were propelled by kites, which is considered assisted. And what I did is just It's called unassisted walking, and it is called Walk it. And the two of them would probably like that, like that's called dumb. I don't like why would you not do this? But it honestly, in the truth of it, is just an apples to oranges type of thing. Like they're just It's just it's like the difference between rowing a boat or kayaking versus sailing like both are awesome. They're just, you know, they're apples and oranges types of things. And so they were. They with kites have been able to cross even further distances of Antarctica. I was able to cross the entire Antarctic landmass eso from the edge of the Ron I shell for the South Pole to the beginning of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. There's these frozen ice shelves, which basically frozen ocean. And then that extends to the water. Um, and so I crossed the entire mass of the actual There's land underneath, but I stopped at the ice shelves, whereas they with kites were able to do the crossing. And I go all the way beyond as well. So again, it's super cool. I'm point for raising. This is all these definitions and the subtlety. It doesn't take away from the actual experience, right? And be Aziz, You said, like this is individual creativity. And if it's apples to oranges, someone using a kite and you're using this lead and walking like to me this there's so much sort of anxiety and, like I don't want to do this because it's already been done or you have your own lens on all the stuff that you're doing, and ultimately, if you're not doing it for at least that reason it could be that reason and other reasons. But if at least that reason, then what are you doing to me in, you know, connecting with your book that is such a powerful and consistent lens that you seem to see the world with 100%. Generally, I on all of these projects you're actually kind of like the dream phase of like, how we think of these projects won't want to dio And one of our sort of core litmus tests in doing that is we asked ourselves if you could tell nobody about doing this, would you still want to do it right? Such agreed lens, you know, And it's like when you and you sit in that and you're like, Heck, yeah, like, I am personally curious about the experience of being alone for 54 days in this harsh place in the deep learning and the fear and the overcoming obstacles of that journey. Like I want to do this or, like, do I want to Yes, I want to, you know, climb the seven summits cause I'm just always thread about those mountains when I was kid. Even better, if we can do that and have impacted scale and share that story an inspiration and all the other things that come from what we actually dio. But if you don't have it in its essence, if you're if you're looking at the other lens, which is like, I would never in a 1,000,000 years want to do X unless I was gonna get paid. Ah, good jillion dollars or I get this amapola later. I get this famous so I get this like, you know, New York Times bestseller next to your name. You know, whatever these like the external success things like, if that's what you're doing it for, like, stop now, just just stop. And you said you said it in a different way. Produced I liked which is sort of the exuberance or passion, Like when you I'm sure in your life in Silicon Valley, in all the things like you sat with young entrepreneurs and you can just see the difference when more guys like lit up about this widget or that widget. And it does this and like your fight up or verses like I came in here and I'm supposed to say the thing to the guy and the guy when he could write me the check for the and you're just like there is a difference in those two so crystal clear and that it leads to the actual execution because the guy who's, like, all not passionate, he could even have a better idea than the dude who's or Russians. I do female woman, whatever Who's passionate about it, and that passion is gonna override through those hard moments because when it gets super hard, when I'm in the middle of an article pulling a £375 sled and I'm all alone and I'm starting to get frostbite on my cheeks. And like all the crazy things that happened in this entire journey, like if I was like Man, I never really want to do this anyways like, that's the moment like I pull up my satellite phone like Yo like, come pick me up. I kept grinding cause on a personal level, away from all that, you know. Like I said, we turn this project into something. Had two billion media impressions. I had no idea that, like Jenna never told me that the only person had contact with during it basically was Jenna, my wife. And that was like safety and medical checks and emotional kind of stability. Type of like check ins, essentially. And it wasn't like I was like, Hey, like, are we crushing it on instagram right now? Are you alive? Are do people think this is cool like that is not what's going on? And that's my point is that that's the things that are driving you. It's great when the things, your passion, that you're living lied to all of those other things, because then it is a totality of like, Wow, this is awesome. And I can also support my family, my life, my dreams and things like doing these types of things. But if you're doing it the other way around, it just to me, it's probably gonna fall flat. Yeah, and you can like you can feel it when it comes from the right authentic place. And when it doesn't you just around people and that is, You know, if you're the average of five people you want to spend, you spend the most time with like to me, there's not. You can't replace spending time around that riel authentic energy in whatever, whether it's the stock market or adventure or anything in between. Well, you started off the conversation by saying like, Hey, you know, there's a lot of parallels between adventure and entrepreneurship and, like I would take it even one step further. Which is to say, like there is a lot of parallels between people living their passion and their truth in any vertical like love, family, creativity, entrepreneurship, adventure are you know, whatever that is, you meet somebody who's into their thing. You're like tea, infectious. Whenever it is, it could be like a vintage car. Totally. But if someone's like, you're like, I'm like, I'm listening like, it's not my thing, but like them, I love being around people like that. Personally, Yeah, yeah. Um, talk about your recent crossing. Yes. So, um, this is bonkers. So obviously I'm always kind of looking at different ways to create different ways to kind of stretch different muscles. And we talked about mindset of the top of this interview, and to me, I always say, you know, people are always asking me like the slab is still have your this and like, you know, someone's people say when they meet me there like, kind of surprised or like you're like, uh, not trying to say this the wrong way, but you're, like, kind of like a normal size. Do like they're expecting, like, you know, like, you know exactly. And I'm like Mike. Okay, I'm not offended by that at all, by the way, um, but, you know, one of things I often say is I think the most important muscle any of us have to six inches between our years that that, in the end, is learning how to flex and develop. That muscle is so important we talk about mindset, but I wanted to take it one step further in my next last next project last now my last project that my next project after Antarctica, which was just a month ago, I decided to see with a team of people this time So rather being solo exercise the muscle of sort of group dynamics. That's a whole other interests. Lie layer for sure. Um, but also in a discipline that I have never done ever before in my life. And so no one in history has ever rowed a boat. Roda's in growing land or within or no, no. Uh, no sale, no motor, nothing like that. But rowing a boat across Drake Passage. So from the southern tip of Antarctica, all started from the southern tip of South America. Cape Horn across Drake Passage to Antarctica. About 700 give or take mile journey And the Drake Passage. For those unfamiliar with seafaring, is known to be the most dangerous ocean passage in the world's the convergence of the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic and the Pacific. And, you know, commonly 30 40 50 foot swells. Icebergs. The ocean is about a one degree Celsius, so it's basically practically frozen cold water. Um, you know, you've got whales and dolphins and penguins and, like, you know, all the kind of cool but interesting wildlife, you know, out there. And basically you're battling this crazy ocean. Now I set this goal, this group, a group of other people. But the big kind of caveat for me was I up until about three months ago had never rowed a boat anywhere in my life. Like I have not, like, not always like a collegiate roar, which some of the other guys on the trip were. I wasn't I've never, you know, even, like wrote a boat across like a lake on a family vacation. Like I've never rowed a boat anywhere, ever. I've never been open water sailing. I've been spent some time on a few boats and things you never on any. Sort of like a long seafaring crossing. Certainly nothing that I was, like captaining or being like, you know, Ah, an active participant in any capacity. And so the thought experiment with that is but what have I done in that? That seems so different. Like I've never done this thing before. I'm like, Well, actually, what have I done? I've pushed my body in really intense in ways. This is gonna require rowing the boat constantly. So there were six of us on the boat, but three places to row and so was minutes of rolling in 90 minutes of resting. Consistently, the boat had to move 24 hours a day. So we're never getting more than 90 minutes of rest ever an entire time. And the cabin is like tying is an open hold boat. The boat itself is 29 feet long, about four feet wide. You can check it out of my instagram We posted every single day from it on and kind of shared this story live as we always try to do through satellites, Tiny little boat, mean insurance. A type B like spending six dudes like in this time was just like space because, like inside this cabin, like there's, you know, visit me like I'm literally crawled up in a fetal position like That's the like, rest time. And so it's for one. But wait, I've actually pushed my body hard for long durations of time. I've done that in cold places. I've actually been done that in an article before. The only thing is, I actually haven't done it on the ocean. And so it was a question for me. Can I apply what I've learned in my learning and then stack a new discipline or skill onto that? So rather than looking at something and going, oh, rowing, that must just be for the rowers, because how many times in our own lives, in any discipline have you gone have been like, Oh, like I'm not a X. You know, I'm not true. I'm not a math person. I'm not a creative. I'm not like That's just not my thing, but a growth mindset, of course, says like I might not be that right now. Like I actually do not know how to row a boat. I know nothing about that, but I know how to train my body. I know how to train my mind. And you know what? Like I have a pretty good role index of like great athletes around me. Surely one of them knows some good rowing coaches and people who could train me up for that and like whatever. And so, like, I was like, Let's do this and dove headfirst into the training and the preparation. Ultimately, last month I finished on Christmas Day, but with those six guys, we were successfully the first people to robo across Drake Passage. We did battle a lot of 30 and 40 foot swells and insane moments. And the absolute craziness, which was one thing it was cool was we filmed the entire thing and with through partnership with the Discovery Channel on the Discovery Channel, is gonna put out a feature length documentary about the whole road. We call it the Impossible Row, so that would come out this spring, but they also did these little, many episodes. You can check him out now like online if you want to, like, see the entire journey. But it's like it's full on like we are like battling the ocean in an insane way. But it comes in a nasal. Yeah, yeah, start to see that stuff firsthand and it's bonkers. And it's also one of things were like the curiosity, of course, in my mind goes toe outdoor places. But I was like, you know, still continue to climb mountains. Certainly I love the mountains I lived before I saw the deserts and it sounds like ocean like I've done a lot of. I've done a lot surfing in my life. My dad lives the North shore of Quiet now and is organic farmer over there, So spend less time swimming in the ocean like that Boss, like never had been the open ocean like that's like most of this planet is actually open ocean like, I wanna go check that out and what better? I guess better, But they're kind of think of better ways, but what more interesting way then, to see it from this tiny little robot, That's, you know, floating stuff you feet above the water. But it was a wild, wild, wild adventure, but it was really cool. We talk about storytelling a little bit. Um, here, one of my biggest passion is still finding interesting ways. Even share even more visceral and Maurin real time. Yeah, and ah, with this partnership with Discovery were able to kind of investing a satellite technology and kind of had a three part sort of content stream around it, which I thought was really cool, which was literally through Instagram. Every single day. I was able to post videos through the satellite which, like, you know, people are sitting around on Christmas dinner like with their families and their like, a ton of my instagram. And here I am like Chambon, this robot there's, like icebergs flying around. They're like, Oh, damn, I'm glad I'm not sit there with this turkey. Exactly. And then, like I said, they were able to chop that up in real relative real time. A few days delayed, but put out these, like, kind of 5 to 7 minute little like many when they called mid form episode. So those went up like relatively live, which was cool in there to using on the channel. But then there's also this, like to our feature length documentary that's gonna go through their whole chance. It was kind of a cool, Um, I have my heroes in exploration have been the heroes of a century ago who went out for two or three years. No one knew where they were, and they would return back with this, like crazy story, their journals and maybe a grainy image. Or to, um, But in today's age, you know, as much as, like, I do sing the negativity is around social media and things like that. There's been certainly times mess with my brain and things like that. I can also see the obviously beautiful power of being able to share stories at scale the way we have been. And so it's been fun with my expeditions to embrace the moment in history of the timeline of world that we are in and say that technology exists. So let's find more interesting ways throughout it to use that to amplify, and that goes into the classrooms of the nonprofit work that I do. It goes into people's homes and things like that again with the same explicit reason in that I, you know, I wrote the book is not to be like, Yo, I'm the athlete in the arena. Check me out, Do this crazy thing. But through the lens of, like, exposing people to like Whoa! Oh, my God, That is a penguin jumping by the boat. That's Antarctica. Wow, we may We should preserve these beautiful places in the world that still exists and door like that. Dude never wrote a boat before we like and I'm complaining about, like now I can't run my local five k like next month, like, Okay, you know what? Like maybe I can do that. Speaking of heroes, I love that you broke sad topic. Who are some of your heroes, And what role did they play in where you are now? It's a good question. I you know, obviously, when I my my mind goes to like, there's like a couple of from buckets. There's like historic like heroes like people who are no longer living or write books about, you know, there's, you know, Ernest Shackleton is a name of urine, polar exploration, or even not that most people recognize from a history book? Certainly. Ah, hero of mine and the kind of pantheon of exploration. Um, And then to me, there's the people who have, like, true, we touched my life on a personal level, who are, you know, not like famous people or anything like that. But I write about my first grade teacher, Shannon Pennell. I I read about it in the book. Just a short little vignette, A couple of paragraphs. Um, but a nod to I was a rambunctious kid. I've five older sisters and the youngest of my family. Um, a lot of energy. The only you know, the only boy raised in my household. And my this teacher, my first grade teacher who ultimately had actually coincidently first grade and then 4th 5th and sixth grade kind of she, like, moved up in sort of the age of teaching. The same time I did coincidentally, and I was bouncing off the walls, and we all know this story of kid bouncing off the walls like that's a that's a kid that that needs to be medicated, or that's like a troubled kid or he's got he's bad because he is this and what she realized super basic things. She was like colleges go run around outside and so, like kids would have recess. And the school, fortunately, had that kind of a little more leniency. She would like every so often, be like Khan. Go outside with the assisted. You're gonna run around, you're gonna run around the school yard for like, 15 minutes and then come back inside. It was that simple. The difference between dictating my life towards like Cohen actually is really engaged in his school work after he runs around for 15 minutes. And there's I mean, there's a 1,000, examples of a teacher that didn't take that or like, see that and be like, That's a troubled kid. Send in the principal's office. I can't do this. He's disturbing this or whatever, and she was able to find a way to channel my energy input towards that. So when I look back on my life, as the influential people were heroes and then like from a current day, you no answer to that. You mentioned you're a soccer player. Um, Megan Rapinoe. I mean, that's a hero of mine right now. Just a cop would come. Never met her. Don't know what know nothing about no interaction with her, ever. Just from watching from afar. Like what? A hero. What an absolute legend Ledge in the way that she carries herself or her message her poise or grace her determination as an athlete just across the board. So how about the historical you mentioned Shackleton? Yeah. Others that are explorers that air from our current current time Current space? Yeah. I mean, we talked of alliteration from elsewhere. Yeah, no. Totally mean when you talk about a couple of them already, you know, like my corn and Borg. I don't know either of those guys. There's been people in articles of drawing comparisons between us, and I even kind of shy away from that because, you know, they came a couple decades before me Ultimate. When they're kind of coming up when they've done, they're still doing prolific things that they've been doing it for a long period of time. You know, there's guys that those are guys that I know when I'm training for my project, read their his historic accounts and things, things that they've done. Um, so yeah. What? Alex Honnold did a free. So I mean, I think to me, Alex is a really great example. Um, what he did in the sport of climbing is extraordinary, mean unquestionably freezing minutes insane. But I actually think, in my opinion, and this is not just because I inhabit the outdoor community, you know, in some capacity, I actually think what he did for human performance is actually one of the greatest of all great human achievements. Just period. Like, um, like, forget the outdoors, Forget even sport, forgetting that like a true mastery of craft. And when you hear him talk about memorizing all the moves and all the steps, it's like to me, it's like composing like a concerto, a symphony. It's It's a dance. It's a mastery of your mind and body. It's like a true full expression of the human experience. And so, yeah, I mean, what he's done is is extraordinary to me, you know, And another modern example is, you know, Kipchoge a breaking the to the to the two hour marathon record where this year's like that is the stuff that I love to see and what I love to see about a Honnold or a Kipchoge is also there Grace and their poison Like I am doing this and this is so awesome. But, like, I'm certain that if somebody's pre SOS El Cap or free solar cell capital, harder route or somebody five years from now runs a 1 58 marathon like Alex Hall is gonna be the first guy cheering on that other dude as well as Kipchoge is gonna be like Heck, yeah, like I broke the two hours and now this guy broke 1 59 Like the people that I've met at the true top of their game, or people have observed the true top of their game like that generally are not the ones going like I did this? I'm the master of this domain. No one else could do this because I'm the guy who did the thing they're actually like. I did this because I was like, super and I cannot wait to see what the next generation comes up with. The push this race An example. Kobe R I p just passed away this last week, attending lat week. LeBron be exactly record. Heck, yeah, And yesterday I'm spacing on her name, but a female soccer player athlete from Canada. Just beat Abby. WAM backs all time male or female? International soccer scoring record? Yeah, the first people to comment are these grates? Yes, that's such a really, really interesting It says so much more about, um, the character of the person rather than just their great at their sport There. Is this this a 360 degree human, almost as you put it, Um, part of that, like, first of all on Alex's achievement, I agree. And it seems to me that there is this resemblance is like 360 degree view of life that you're referencing and other people, but clearly that you have this in in you. And how is it that you envisioned the next great adventure? Like Clearly, there's a 360 every story. You've mentioned it several times. You talked about nonprofit kids awareness, media impressions, storytelling like it's it's more complex, and I think one might gather on the surface. Was that a wasn't always that way? And B, how do you think about your next thing? So a Was it always that way? And b, how do you think about the next you know, I think just like in everything I see the whispers of it always being this way and that, like, I'm not like Oh, my God. How did I get here? Like we did this thing. It's like we mapped it out and envisioned it and also pivoted and changed in all along the time. But like with the same, the core principles have been the same. That said, like, we've learned a ton along the way, you know? And you know, 11 great example of that actually would be when we first started a nonprofit what we thought was let's raise money. And when we raised money, let's give it to other nonprofits who are doing space in this work. And this was the first non profit we partnered with was an organization that is doing really great work with combating childhood obesity, which, by the way, still something I'm like, really passionate about, you know, fighting the good fight for raising funds for etcetera. But as we like went through that phase and, you know, had a really ambitious fundraising target like we didn't quite get there, you know, we didn't quite get there with our fundraising target. But what we way over index for was awareness and impressions and the impact of the storytelling and then the personal stories that were then reflected back to us like we were read this about your I saw this video content and this change this and this entire classroom had this impact here, whatever. And that's when we went like, Oh, it's not that we were gonna be like, oh, raising money, a stupid We're like, Oh, what our impact with our skill set and what we're doing is actually a little bit better served if it's redirected, reoriented 25 degrees this way, which is actually in the programmatic side of actually executing on taking the storytelling building stem curriculum around it and doing that. So that za tiny micro example of saying example of saying like the why and the purpose and the impact we want to have as actually the through lines been continuous. But the delivery of that was like Oh, like we learned something from step wanted to two Step two and then from step to step 10. It's been like slightly refined over time, so we are different in what we're doing now that we were five years ago where I was sick generation, right in the entrepreneurial mind, 100% your just experience and most people I find I want to see the whole staircase before they start to take one step. But I think you're what you're saying here. If I'm misinterpreting, tell me, but that the journey continues to unfold as you're walking and 100% no different than than some of the things that have happened along the way in your in your e. I mean one of thing and certainly in the expeditions. And I have spoken a lot about Jenna because it's truly her story as much as it is mine. And she's not just like the support role, like cheerleader like Yeah, go. I mean, she is in the details. This is Herbert, just times job dialed like focus on all the things, all the different parts of what we're doing, the creativity of it, the business side of it, all this kind of stuff. But one thing she always says to me, and there's a small little again vignette in the book when we're talking about comeback story of this is she's like She's, like, common. Like basically like you're trying to push this domino down. And you have this domino effect of all these things cascading out because the one thing I can tell you is that the first domino is not gonna hit the next like 100 they're all gonna be, like, perfectly aligned. She's like, there's gonna be a domino effect with one. The one thing that I can guarantee is our plan is not going to go to plan, right? That's the one thing I'm sure. And if you reframe your mind around that into entrepreneurial sense or whatever, there's a whole lot of power in that because a you're not surprised when things don't go your way, it's not to not have the plan, then it's not to like at least try to map out the staircase, but to be like, Oh, it didn't go exact way We were ready for this, and we can adapt in that moment. In so much of the success of these projects, like the first moment that I'm out there on the ice in Antarctica, I I pick up my sled to pull it. I can't move it like I say I straight up actually cannot pull at £375 sled on that day with the depth of the snow and all this kind of stuff, and I start crying. I start straight up crying, and the second half my book is called Frozen Tears, because when you cry and it's minus 25 degrees outside, it's really pathetic, like your tears actually freeze to your face. It's like the all time, most pathetic feelings ever. Like I told the whole world, you know, mile journey across Antarctica, alone in this and hold anything. We're probably talking about what we talked about the whole There's a guy in a racing head to head out there and like he's disappearing on the horizon like and I'm like, Like, good I can't like, pull the sled. And so I pick up the phone. I pick up my satellite phone, I call him to Jenna, and she's like wondering if she knows old details. You know, that just started, of course. And like she's like, why are you calling me? And we had called a project the impossible first, right? And I was like, Yeah, babe, um, I think we named our project the right thing. She's like, What? And I'm like It looks like it's impossible like I actually can't pull my sled But I have this kind of, like, introspective moment that I read about in the book Crime, like How pathetic is? As Colonna Brady announced the world impossibly, I thought I could fail in this project. I actually didn't plan for failing one hour into this project. I was like, 30 days I might run of food or I might break my leg. You know, something crazy might have my tent, my pull away in a storm, you know, whatever that is. But like our one day one, you're like, Damn, that's really embarrassing. Done. And what Jenna says to be in a moment still flying away. Exactly. I'm actually I completely oh, prepare for this. So Jenna says to me, and to me, it's something that I've stuck with me and certainly applies very broadly. If she knows that I've got my GPS, which has these waypoints the market, I'm navigate with the compass. But I've got these waypoints that I can like, you know, direct my way through the route and she goes, she knows the first waypoint is very near the drop off point she got caught. How far you away from the very first waypoint and I like I'm like, Look down at my GPS and like, Ah, it's 0.5, for my guess is a 1,000,000 miles. She's like cigarette half a mile away from the first waypoint, she goes. Forget about the 1000 miles that need to go. Forget about Lew wrote his name. The other guy who was attempting the crossing at the same time like he's disappeared off the horizon. Like Forget about Lou. Yes, he's more prepared than you. Yes, he clearly can pull a sled and you can't like, Forget about that. Do me a favor. Make it to the first waypoint. Just get to the very first waypoint like you at least feel like today. You did something like you said the staircase you least stepped up the first you can't see. The rest of stick is fine. Get to the first waypoint and then we will regroup. And so I sure enough, I was like I somehow managed to pull my sled another half a mile set up my tent, get inside for the first night and we get on the phone. Jenna and she's already retooling the idea, and she's like, Hey, we're already cutting it close on your rations But the only way to reduce food is that basically reduce your rations, even Mawr, which is taking more risk. But we're not giving up on this thing. And ultimately the Net product. You know, two things happen. One she's like You need to get rid of five more days of food, which is, like, you know, was 2010 kilos or something like that. £20.20 pounds and I was eating. I was living off 7000 calories per day when I was burning 10,000. So every day I was already on a calorie deficit, and she's asking me now, get rid of another five days worth of food. We'll figure that out down the line, which does have some consequences much later, won't give that part of the book away, but does have a calm, pounding effect. But in this moment, if you can't pull your sled, we can't get today too. So we need to solve Day one and day one is we need £20 off that sled. You gotta leave five days of rations behind. Unfortunately, at that first waypoint, there's other planes and stuff that land in that area. So we could market so that we're not like littering Antarctica and dig a hole. Bury and they're gonna get so further on you actually can't Just like Chuck stuff out of your sled anyways is like the last moment to make that decision. Um, so we make that decision and that's that's a strategic moment. And then there's also will go back to the mindset. There's also a mindset moment, which is, like I went out and I failed on day one Miserably fell flat on my face Horrible moment literally frozen tears on my face And the next day my alarm goes off After my first night in Antarctica, I wake up. Of course I'm still bleakly alone. Um, I looking out to the endless an Arctic abyss and the first thing that floods through my mind. What happens? Fear, Doubt, shame. All all of the things are coming back. Oh, my God is just a bad dream. I couldn't put my side the estate Would you move the £20 but if I can't put myself out there just like that, it did it. Did the rabbit hole up in your mind? Sure. And this is the moment where I said, like, I get to choose like I am the story that I tell myself in this moment I get it. Control my brain and my thoughts. I've been a big fan of monsters throughout my entire life. I've never said this before ever in my life. But I just sit up in my tent now yell as loud as I possibly can ago calling. You are strong. You are capable, You are strong. And I don't really believe the word that I'm saying, but I'm tryingto override that negative feedback loop in my brain. Awesome. I could go through all 54 days, but Day two I say the same thing. The first thing when I get up Still don't really believe it. Day five. Calling your stronger capable by day 10. By day 20 my body's exhausted. I'm starving. I'm losing weight. I'm starting to frostbite in my cheeks my nose every day when that alarm went off. I know. I gotta pull my sled 12 hours a day. five more of the chores. The 17 hour day. I was never able to take a day off because if I took a day off, I would run out of food. I would not complete this. This crossing, I would lose the race. All of the things. And so when I woke up, every single morning alarm went off. Ding Colin, you're strong. You are capable and setting the tone for that emotional shift. But going back to Jenna going, we don't know what day to day, three day, four day this. Get to the first waypoint, make an adjustment. Then we can think about Day two. At the end of Day two, we can start thinking about day three. And that's how we built this. It wasn't solving all 54 days at once. It was solving them one at a time and starting each one of those days with that positive sort of, you know, search and men's mindset. Scariest moment on one of the seven summits. Mm. I got I haven't actually moment that I've I've sure you've talked about at some point with a very long time. So I talked about this story. So I am Mount Elbrus, which is the tallest mountain in Russia but tallest mountain in Europe, 18,500 foot mountain. I decide to climate in winter and, ah, about halfway through the project at this point, sand for for so mountains through the project. And, um, we're flying over to Russia and actually looks like there's a huge snowstorm coming in like just super super brutal snowstorm that's coming in the next day. And I climbed. I didn't climb any of the mountains with all the same people kind a couple solo, but also different people, like Join me for, like, different. Like like the buddy climb with done Ali with me and someone else climbed Carson's parenting. That makes sense. And so I'm over Russia with a friend of mine. This this woman, um, she's actually Russian, and, ah, we're going over there and we're flying. And we're like, Man, we have to climb tonight or this mountain is gonna be shut down and she goes, Okay. She, like, has some local sounds like, but none of us know that neither must know the row, and if it gets white it out, it's gonna be super sketchy, and we're just like fighting. Like all the things air stacking of, Like how you make a mistake in the mountain like you're fatigued. You don't really know the route. You're rushing it. You should probably get a couple of days. But the weather is so unstable with your kind of throwing thread this needle and I was like So I would like to have any friends or like any people in this town who like, cause she's from this area who, like, has climb this mountain a bunch times. We just, like, come with us. Like, why not? Just like a I'll call up a friend of a friend. This guy shows up. Don't I don't remember his name. This guy shows that Russian guy doesn't speak any English, seems super friendly. She speaks Russia and they're talking About what? I've been up here times like no big deal. Whatever. Um, this would be great. Like it's gonna be fine. Is gonna weather's gonna crap about where we're good. Great. Start climbing start comic The middle night. Common practice and mountaineering up on mount. Any claim to the night. The conditions are better before, like state starts melting, more stable When we divide the gear as we're leaving, he's like, I'll take the rub. Okay? You take this. We're dividing up. The group were also common Practice. Divide the weight. Like between us, we've got skins on. We're gonna skinning uphill with no skis walking uphill when we start going in the first part of it. Just like this long sloping like snow slope. It's middle of the night. Super windy. Probably no wind show minus 30 right? Something like it's a brutal We called Russia in winter Great and that at high altitude, then we're going and we're going and I kind of get my own rhythm a little bit. I'm in the 1st 1 going, and I was kind of stuff going up going up a couple hours in. I looked behind myself and I see one headlamp, probably like maybe 100 yards behind. And I'm like, Where's the other headland? That's weird. So I keep going, Look back, Fly, Stop, my friend. She comes up to me and she's like, Obviously been in your own Little is a home like cruising along. She's a super strong climber, and I'm like, Where is he? She's like what she looks behind herself. Nothing. No one there. And we're like, Yeah, he's got 1/3 of our gear to That's super weird. And for the 1st 2nd is is he all right? But then we're like, Wait a second. Were the two that don't know the route. This guy's been on here like hundreds of times. Not only that, like the terrain we were just on, isn't dangerous like we were not on a place. There's like it's actually the top of a ski resort. The first half is like part of us, part of the edge of a skier store, and then you finally get up on the glacier terrain. Let's gassed up like that is so weird, like, where did he go? So it's like blowing. It's windy. We're getting freezing. Stand the only way. Stay warm. And kids like this actually keep moving. So we got the decision. Point is like, Do we go back and start looking for this guy? Then we both are like nothing could have happened to him. It just doesn't make sense or whatever, and I'm like he's got a rope. I think he has our rope. We're not doing this without that guy. And so we look at each other and it's this. It's a It's a risk calculation and honestly, it's maybe not the smartest decision that I've ever made. We're going okay, I need to climb this mountain winner. But this massive storm, which, by the way, does blow in the next day and dumps like 100 inches on the first day like it just shuts the mountain down for, like, a couple of weeks, like climbing a mountain and winner getting just be straight up, shut down like it's winter Massive storm system can come through. It's not like, oh, to be good in two days. And if I don't climb this, it's stacking against all these other things. I'm trying to go from Mountain to Mountain two Mountain faster than anyone's ever done, and that means you have to get up and down and not get delayed for weeks at a time. Basically and, you know, North Poles next, and Everson exits like that's ratcheting up like the intensity of this like, I kind of need to climb this today like there's not like a not, but if we don't keep moving right now like it's over and always is over. We're gonna be this Russian down for two weeks and then missed the window on the next thing and the next thing and the next thing Mike, do you wanna go with no rope? And so we make the call. It's actually climb without a rope. Um, like I said, which is one of the things we're balancing leisure travel. So, so low glacier travels we get to the part that's consequential and those that don't know, like, usually rope yourselves together. So if someone falls on a curve ass, the other person can arrest so that you don't get stuck. And exactly I'm glaciers. Exact site side note. That's that's why a rope is valuable. Yes, and the other. So that happens. We get on the glacier. And sure enough, on the glacier unr oped I punched through a crass knee deep one leg, but it's like hanging in there and like we're in a curve ass field, Warren robed and we're making. We're now making, like, the mistakes that you make before you really hurt yourself. Get into trouble, like get into trouble. Um, and I won't tell the wrestle starve you asked What the scariest moment. That's the moment when you're like all of these things were compounding. I was exhausted. I was tired. We're trying to thread the weather window. Probably should have been on the mountain anyways. Knew it. So we got this other person because we figured that might like helpless, but actually made it worse because he took the rope and it turns out he just, like, turned around and again, not trying to call him out. But my friend, she's like a five foot two Russian woman, and she's like, Ah, pretty, very badass, strong person. And I think it was one thing for me to be going fast than him. But I think what ultimately happened is that she was also charging up the mountain, and the ego was a little bit like and it was like, Oh, my sting broke and I had to turn around. We're like, Do you? Don't turn around when you're carrying Simmons rope in the middle of the night amount. If you're gonna bail, fine. But like yell ahead and hey, I'm out. Uh, so that was brutal. So that moment of being upon this glacier, But you have to go up or you have to go down. You are in the middle of a glacier and there's no rope coming to you. So it was still this moment of like, you know, what do you do? And ultimately we did. We did actually get off the glacier, which had touched a safer spot when we got the safer spot. We actually felt more comfortable, were like, Well, up from here is actually strangely in that moment was like justice goes down. And so we went, tagged the summit and came back down, you know, obviously lived to tell the tale, But those moments where you look back and you're like I said to myself When I'm doing this project, I'm not gonna take any extra risk that it wouldn't a normal amount. And the truth of that moment is certainly learning. This is early on. This expedition crew was like, I made a really risky call because I was pushing against this world record and like, it's not a call that I would recommend anyone else taking in this moment like I'm like, even now sing. I guess that I've told this story to really in town. That's like Russian winter mountaineering and you decide to walk around on the glacier without a rope. It's not not a super good call. Um, it was super scary, obviously. But I think that's like we all have that in us all the time, and it happens, and we make holes that we know we shouldn't. And yet there's something in there that is powerful and right, And that is our instinct. Yeah, and like reconcile ing those is You do a great job of Tommy stories in the book and, um, last sort of line of thinking before we let you go. Um, there are people out there who want to do things and very, very consistent thing in the, you know, the creator of the entrepreneurs fear. I'll just say in the humans fear this fear. We've got this multi 1,000, year old organ in our brain. It's not there to keep us happy. It's job is not happiness. We have to, you know, program it on our own accord for happiness. It's default is a negative bias for survival and fear. If you just label it one thing. Fear is the killer of dreams, and obviously reading your book is one way to help solve this and burn it. But what on a daily very, very basic level Can you advise somebody to play through their fear? What can you tell them on a regular daily basis? Because you've spoken and coached and written so much about this topic. Give someone at home who is trying to play through something right now a tool. So for me, um, you know, I said it before here, which is, I think the strongest muscle, most important muscle any of us has is a six inches between our years. But I'm gonna go a step further with that. Which is to say if I said you run our talk about myself, like, feel like Well, how did you pull through and 75? It sounds. Let people go there pretty quickly. Don't have to know a lot about sports. Be like, Well, I'm guessing you, like, lifted a bunch of weights at the gym and, like, got a lot stronger and, like, got bigger. And like all this kind of stuff for just 100% that is exactly what it and so I'm going like you're talking about fears the ultimate. You're talking about something that's happening within your mind and how to control that. Well, do you want to make your mind stronger? You need to take your mind to the gym. It's actually it's really obvious intuitive when you say that if you were like wait oh, like there's actually a practice that goes into making this like stronger because I think some, for whatever reason, in the physical body, people think like, Oh, yeah, you got to come and get a workout. You on the mental side people like Wait, it's exactly the same. You got to take your mind to the proverbial mental gym or a tool, as you call it. You know what you know to leave. Leave some with the tool, and there's a lot of ways to do that. I can talk. I'll speak Teoh. What's worked for me? X. I think it's a great it's been great for me, but it could be a lot of different things, you know, visualizations or Montrose or meditation or mindfulness or breathing. Or there's a lot of different, like ways to access that, you know, wearing this practice through yoga, whatever. For me, the biggest kind of change moment, and this does come back to fear. But it goes well beyond that, which is just a mastery of mind or an awareness of her mind, because ultimately there are fears, their actual real fears. Like you said, our brains program, like sabertooth tiger outside of the cave like get up and start running like there's still riel fears like that. Like we're sitting in here in Seattle. You're in California and the Earth starts shaking like man, there might be an earthquake happening like let me, like, find cover like that. Still, So fear is good in that, in that sense. But I think what you're talking about is fear of starting fear of beginning your idea. Fear of taking a risk because your fear of failing judgment, judgment and there's even weirder one, which I'm sure you've seen in the world of Silicon Valley, is the fear of success. Once you've actually built on something and now you're fearful of actually being the guy who did the thing and like like fear has this really crazy, bizarre cycle to it, how to master that? What? I've found at least my practice in doing that has been through meditation. Um, so are you familiar with 10 day silent positive meditation retreats? My wife returns today from one of Castle Rock. You. I'm shaking your hand because you're a lucky man, because she's done to a year. So for the last five years, Yeah, this one in the positive traditional tradition that is not too far from Portland side. And she gets from today just fantastic. Beautiful, beautiful. So you've done so? Yes. So, you know, for those who have don't know what that is or whatever. So 10 years ago, they were high fiving my wife like, it's me. I must have a great relationship because she's so, you know, I take credit. I'm like, Yeah, I'm the stay at home Dad. You go on these big adventures like I got you. Yeah. So 10 years ago, I'm racing truffle on. So after after winning that Chicago traffic when I went to quit my finance job on a Monday and became a professional triathlete, which, by the way, is not like the NBA or MLB. It's like you're making hundreds. It's like more of a peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sleep on your buddies couches that deal. But, like, I'm at least doing that. Um and you know, it wasn't, you know, doing a job, that it wasn't passionate about this where this all started early on in my career, I'm racing. Actually, I'm in Washington that as, ah international event. But it was outside of Seattle, actually, on a friend of mine, Um, he comes to the race and he brings his wife and his wife's this Turkish woman named Ecce, and she comes up to me after the race and she's like, you know, like, really into sports. You know, like my thing I'm like came because I'm your friend. I'm married to your buddy basically. And she's like, But I can see on everyone's face that there is, like, a lot of kind of intensity. She just says that you still like what's What's the practice for making your mind stronger? Obviously this the physical expression, but multiple ultimately is all appear. And it was this really awkward moment for me. Like I felt like I was like, caught with my pants down. I was like, Yeah, like, you know, like I visualized stuff sometimes, you know, and I was like God like Yeah, like I was like, I don't have an answer to this question. You know, it was just one. Because, like I said, like, embarrassing moment because someone's like, Wait, you're a world class athlete. You're attempting to be a world class athlete and like you're telling me you're not actually like training your mind and like, a real way. And I was kind of like, humbly I was like, shit like, what do you suggest? And she was like, Oh, well, for me, she's like, I would suggest these 10 day of a possible retreats. Um, and you know, the different different forms of ones. I went to her 10 days. No reading, no writing, no eye contact, complete solitude. Um, other than when you're meditating in a group, all but no one's talking each other. No one's looking at each other, etcetera, Um, and they're completely free to go. Anyone can go. There's 270 centers or something like that all around the world. So no matter where you are, you're probably than a few hours of one. She's like, Just sign up for one and go, and I me probably take this from this interview at some regard, which is I'm like, Well, I've never meditated a minute in my life But I'm also like a dive head first into Deep and the same guys like I've never rowed a boat. Let me roll one across. Drake Passage, obviously, is like all right, like I've never meditated for a minute. My life. 10 days of silence completely by myself, like Let's go. Was it one of the absolute hardest experience of my life? Bar? None for sure. Sitting there in the stillness, I always say in the quiet with That's in Antarctica, where the meditation pill like it's like throwing a party, and all of your angels and demons are invited like the good stuff's in there. But like the dark and the traumatic and that fear exactly. This question originated like that is in there, but that also sitting there and the awareness practice of a positive, which is ultimately just observing your body. For as it is, it's like as basic as basic gets allows you to go. Oh, I'm afraid right now, huh? You can take that objectively and not like that. Exactly. Not like that. Like ratchet up your fear response or the things that you want to react to in all of this. And ultimately So you're not basically living this life of just this, like reaction to this moment of that moment of fear or joy or craving a version of the that the everything. And so I've gone back and repeated those 10 days several times. Try to get, you know, every year, every other year. And But, of course, what that ultimately does is jump starts the actual daily practice, which is the real work, which is the consistency of doing that. So I was giving somebody a tool out there who is listening, I would say dhamma dot or D H a m m a dot or I don't know, this is a free thing. I don't get like, a referral code that they there's nothing like that. But I would say to me that has been the greatest return on investment for me personally of anything that I've ever done in my entire life by far. And that is definitely hasn't made me a better athlete, definitely has made me a better high performer. Could I have gone in order car for 54 days? without training my mind in a meaningful way for years and years and years to get there. Absolutely not. But what it's also done. And I always joke whether some, like I went there to be a better athlete and like, Sure, maybe it did. But like that's like the 10th most important thing it did in general made me more empathetic, more connected, more vulnerable, a better husband, a better son, a better friend. A You know, all of those things. And those are just a true lasting benefit that yes, are gonna lead to maybe your entrepreneurial success or higher eq you and things like that, but ultimately just the general in her piece of happiness, of having that which is a way of understanding those fears. Do I have fierce all the time. So if you ask me, you must not be scared of anything. Like I'm scared all the time. But I can sit there in that fear and be like, Is this a real fear too? Is this that actual test earthquake happening? Do I actually need to duck for cover? Like or like Oh, okay. Come on. They live outside my comfort zone, right? now. That's all right. Remember every time you get outside their comfort zone. You pushed through that like that's actually where you've learned the most. That's where you grow the most, like, Okay, lean into that fear. Embrace it when we're time on that girl. Dhamma dot or D H a m m a dot org's the positive meditation their centers. Like I said, all around the world, there's one the one I go driving onto several. But the one near here is halfway between Seattle and Portland and on Alaska Washington. Um and, uh, it's ah, it's game changer for sure, completely for causing nothing but 10 days of your life, which you'll definitely never regret. Wow, the book is the impossible. First, congratulations, lists and more so just being able to share your story with the world because a lot of people done a lot of crazy stuff. But your ability to share that and help other people tap into their ability to find their own passion and dreams and pursue them is clearly would set you apart. So thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for having, uh, other coordinates that you want people to finding on the Internet? What's the best? Yeah, The best, I guess, is Ah Instagram social media. I'm at calling on Brady on Instagram Twitter All the things come say hello I like I said, I love to share all the expeditions there. Jenna has set her. She took to me and she goes Last year she goes, Hey, you know my mount over us. My next Mount Everest is actually climb Mount Everest. So Jen and I will be returning to Everest me in support and service of her reaching that goal will be coming from the north side this spring. So if you want to follow, that expedition will be kicking that off here in a couple months. I don't never have never been on the north side, but I climb from the Nepal side previously. But Toto watch her turned her dream into reality and, as that says, someone who didn't grow up identifying as ah climber, an athlete or whatever who has just been a part of it adventurous and has trained actually reached that with that growth mindset of saying that so at Colonna Brady on Instagram, my website called Breitbart com for all my speaking bookings up like that and go, go pick up the book. I think you'll enjoy it. It's incredible. Congratulations. And, um, very, very, very quick read And also super powerful for human potentials. So thanks a lot for being on the show, but thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, man. All right, folks, at home again as my phone hitting the ground right now. We're breaking stuff. Have a great one. I'll see you again.
Ratings and Reviews
Dream Focus Studio
By far the best classes on Creative Live!! Thanks Chase Jarvis for bringing so much greatness to the table for discussion! Just LOVE it!
René Vidal
@ChaseJarvis - love chat with Gabby about hope and the "relentless optimism" you share at the end of Creative Calling. Many thanks. -- René Vidal McKendree Tennis
bob
Excellent interview with thoughtful questions. Thanks!!
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