Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Matt Dawson - From Wall Street to the World's Wildest Frontiers

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Matt Dawson is a former investment banker turned multi-record-holding endurance athlete and founder of Dawson's Peak Foundation. Known simply as "Dawson," Matt's journey is extraordinary—from dominating corporate finance to conquering some of the world's most extreme challenges. Dawson dives into his epic year of Project Seven for Soldiers, where he completed a groundbreaking lineup of global expeditions, including summiting the Seven Summits, skiing to the South Pole, and rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. Dawson's story is one of resilience, overcoming a severe leg condition that halted his pursuit of professional football, only to rise stronger as an elite adventurer and coach. He shares insights on mastering mental and physical endurance, the drive behind his passion for serving veterans, and what fuels his relentless pursuit of the impossible. This episode is a deep dive into the mindset of an elite performer who defies limits in boardrooms and on the world's toughest terrains. https://dawsonspeakfoundation.org/  

What's up, everybody, and welcome back. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Let's head over there, check it out. On their website, blackwiflecoffee.com, it looks like the celebrating 10 years of America's coffee. So a celebratory roast, Medusa's Madness. So it's Medusa wearing a set of panos on her head. That's pretty cool. I bet you that comes as part of the ECS.

Let's hit what that says. Yep, the ECS, exclusive coffee subscription. So you could do that if you want to, and if you do that, you're going to get what I will call a bespoke bag of coffee every month delivered right to your door. It's always going to be different. And it's kind of awesome, especially if you're a coffee head. Below that, I mean, I've talked about all of this. The light roast to the darks, the slider there can take you that. The apparel, the gear, the coffee bundles, the coffee samplers. Think about the holidays at the coffee shop here in Calispell. We're already thinking about getting stuff out there so people can gift. Coffee things. Coffee itself. What does. drink coffee out of, you know, all of that stuff, depending on whatever it is you're into. So head on over to black rifle coffee.com. You can support the podcast by supporting the brands that make the podcast possible. My guest today is Matt Dawson. He and I met years ago at the shot show in Vegas, which is, I don't even know how to describe

that show, but I digress. You want to talk about a man that has pushed the boundaries of what is possible from a physical limitation perspective. Matt, I'd say got his chops in the finance world. My word's not necessarily his, and he explains anyway. And then I think realized like a lot of people do, that money isn't the direct pathway to happiness that a lot of people think it would be. And he, man, went deep, and he went dark as far as how far he was willing to push himself.

The cool thing is he did all of that to fundraise and to make a difference. He's the founder of Dawson's Peak, which I'm going to put the links down in the show notes, and we talk about it during the episode, so I'm not going to break it down too much. He's got a project going on, Seven for Soldiers. We're talking world records. We're talking, you know, on foot travel in Antarctica, deserts, extreme, extreme feats of physical endurance, you know, rowing a boat across the Atlantic, things like that. So fascinating episode, and it really helps recalibrate what people think is possible from a human being.

Episode number 359 with Matt Dawson. Enjoy. Let the red smoke. Okay, copy. Whiz to the smoke? I'm looking at danger close now. Come on. What do we got going on over there?

What's that? I mean, it's a little bit tabbed. People aren't going to be able to see that. but I talk to me about what you have going on there. You know, what's funny is I'm actually a few pages behind the tabs. I mean, I've got to put a couple more in. It just helps me keep it organized. So I'll have, you know, different colors or different things.

What do we got? Book, yeah. So just like a quick reference. Book, podcasts, you know, branding, um, marketing, flight stuff. Are they ideas that you're having and then you will tab it? Or do you create certain sections and then you try to be creative inside of that section? Now, basically what I do is, is this is just kind of a quick, reference I have. So if I'm having, you know, calls or anything like that, you know, I can have the call. Like if I talk to, like, say, Katzenberg earlier, then it's I'll just, I'll make a note, you know, highlight, you know, who I talk to all the notes and I'll just tab. Was it the first note in there with Katzenberg likely waste of time.

Basically. Yeah, because that's what every time I had ever met with him or tried to do things with him, nothing came of it. So I could encompass five years worth of experiences with him to waste of time. Eric, but at least he's entertained to. He's entertained to talk to. Is he running, like fully running branding at 511 at this point? Yeah, as far as I understand, yeah. Okay. Because that's where I met him as well. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you remember, but you and I met briefly at Shot Show. He introduced us back in like 2021.

I do not remember that. Shot Show was like, I mean, literally, we talked for like 30 seconds. Okay. And that was it. But that's when I first started working with him. That was back in like 1920 that he introduced us just for a second. 1920? I'm not that old.

No, in 1920. In 2019 or 20. Oh, okay. I was going to say, damn, man. How old do I look? I know I'm getting some grades, but Michael, let me know I need face or I feel like I'm looking old. You look very old. How did you end up working with them?

I mean, your background is diverse. You are an adventurer's man for sure. How did you cross pass with them? You know, it was funny. It's kind of the old world meeting the new is the first bank I worked for in L.A. It was the largest boutique investment bank on the West Coast. What does that even mean, a boutique investment? Exactly.

So investment banking, you know, offers a whole host of services. And what we did was we focused on mergers and acquisitions. So M&A, fairness, opinions, valuations, you know, that type of thing. So we were helping people buy and sell companies between about 50 million and 250 million. Was your role in that to evaluate it and then help them through the process? Basically, it could be anything. So normally at that time, we were working with private equity. firms. So people that have, you know, have money or sometimes they'll come to us and say,

listen, I want to purchase a company and, you know, like a competitor or I want to, you know, expand my operations or I want to, you know, diversify vertically or horizontally along the, you know, whatever line you want to talk about. Yeah. So they would come to us and maybe they have identified a target or maybe they haven't or someone can come to us and say, listen, they're a manufacturer of widgets, you know, whatever it is. And they do a $200 million a year. They want to sell the company for whatever reason. And we would find a buyer for and we'd run. run the process, we'd do all that, you know, then we'd take a cut of the deal. I was going to say, where's the scrape there?

That's what it is. Where's the V. Yeah. Normally it's about 1 to 3% is the value of it that we would get. 1 to 3% of a large number is a large number. Yeah, I mean, you sell $100 million company, you can make, you know, $3 million, you know, something like that. Now, you were working for a bank, though. Yeah.

So what portion of that scrape do you get? I got a portion of the portion. I'll leave with that, yeah. Not as much as I thought I should have gotten. But in a nutshell, that's how I got hooked up with 5-11, was when I first got there, Francisco Morales, one of the founders of 5-11, an original CEO and all that, we actually worked with 5-11, one of the first years I was there at that bank. Okay.

And then, you know, he and I just, you know, met very, very briefly. And in a couple years later, when I started Dawson-Speak Foundation and started kind of putting everything together, I called just, I just called Francisco out of the blue. And he said, listen, go down, you know, meet with Deb and meet with Eric Katzenberg. And I went down there and met with him. you know, felt like I'd known them 20 years. And, you know, they joined that day and we've been working with them ever since. God, that's crazy.

I never, one, I've never owned a business and thought about selling it. I didn't, I guess I had never thought through the mechanics. If you grow it to a point and you wanted to exit it and you didn't know how. Yeah. That would be tough, especially if it was doing well. If it had value, it makes sense that there is a service like that that exists of people that can take you from A and connect you with B. Yeah. Or C, whatever E, ever.

you, whatever it might be that would want to buy that. Well, it's, I mean, it's a very important service because, you know, look, I've been doing it for 20 years. You still do it. Well, I still do it kind of on a project by project basis, where if I see a deal, if I have the time, I want to work on it, then I'll work on it. So I'm still a managing director with an investment bank. All my, I've got four licenses with FINRA, the regulatory body that are all, you know,

current, that type of thing. But when you think about it in the context of, at this point, we only work with entrepreneurs. So these businesses, I mean, are the biggest thing these people have worked on for 30, 40, 50 years. Sometimes they've been in a family through generations. We sold a company a couple years ago. That was like 120 years old. You know, and this is like the biggest thing that most of these people have gone through. And there's a big difference between building a business and selling a business. And that's the challenge is, is you've spent generations or decades or

whatever building this business. Now, how do you elicit the most value out of it so that you can take some chips off the table, you know, move on to the next phase of life? And it's a big, big deal. It's a big responsibility, but it's, you know, we get to work with very successful people. You know, it's pretty interesting work. And it's, it's, it's a lot of work, you know, to do that deal. What do you see as far as mistakes people make where they're actually taking value away from their entrepreneurial journey? Where are they fucking up? And the money is going in the wrong direction. Right. When you're, if you're talking about, you know, if you're talking about financial value. But so it's just a lot of times is, is people don't build a business,

there's different phases of a business's life is, you know, there, there's kind of the build phase. is kind of getting off the ground. And as you know, 90 plus percent of businesses fail in the first couple of years. It ain't easy. As somebody who's two years into a business, office shop. Yeah. Exactly. And the fact you've been around for two years is a success, you know?

That could be just due to stubbornness and frustration. It's hard to say. But also, it doesn't help to sell an addictive product. Yeah. But it's like once you get the business up and going is there's a big difference between running the business and selling a business. And what a lot of people don't realize is, it's a long timeline for this thing. It's a long lead time. So to get a deal done traditionally was

six to nine months. Now you're looking more at like 10 months to a year, something like that. And it's a lot of times, there's people that that grow these entrepreneurally owned businesses don't have the proper systems in place to take the business to the next level. And that's what a lot of buyers are looking for because if you're going to sell a business, say for, pick a number, you know, $50 million. But the buyer has to come in, now invest, you know, $5 million put the right systems in place. that's a different thing than if, you know, they don't have to build that, you know, put that in place. So that's where a lot of people don't get the value that they could get because they haven't positioned the business for a sale. They simply run it like an entrepreneurily-owned business.

But then also is when buyers come in, they are going to tear that thing to pieces. They want to see absolutely everything you have all the information, all the analytics, all that kind of stuff. And a lot of people fail to have their proper systems in place where they can't provide that level of detail. And that scares a lot of people off. but that also can detract from value because I can't tell you, you know, where my margins are coming from or where my expenses are going properly, you know, things like that. So people will kind of build that lack of information into the price and it'll kind of take some money off the price. So now you're not getting what you, you know, could, the maximum value you could get because you

don't have proper systems in place. How often do you encounter people trying to sell companies and they're just full of shit? You know, honestly, with where we are not that often. Because, you know, the smallest client will take on is about 30 million of enterprise value. And we'll go up to about 200 million, you know, something like that. So when you're playing in that range, these are generally pretty real, real companies. But look, we've had companies in the past where we got maybe eight months through the process, and it was going to be about a $300 million deal as in a telecom space. And then come to find out the CFO was skimming the books.

The CEO knew what was going on. Yes. And basically it's just they were just kind of moving things around, hiding stuff. that they shouldn't have been doing. And probably praying they got sold so they could take their scrape. Exactly. Exactly. And they were just, they were just kind of playing games. They were kind of hiding losses. They were moving money around. And they got found out. They got found out.

And that's normally what happens. So it's like, you know, it's like the kind of a take on an adage is there's three things you can't hide, you know, the sun, the moon, and the truth. And this stuff comes out in the process in the diligence process. What's the wildest thing you've seen in your career in banking? Like the craziest deal you've ever seen. Broadly, if you need to protect identities, obviously. Yeah, it's, yeah, look, it's a great question. I wish I had an exciting answer. I really do. I was like, here, listen to this one. Like some Chinese company that has trucking containers full with dildos that are like, yeah, Michael's like, what? Yeah, look, I wish I had, I wish I had a

crazy story. You know, the bet, it's probably that one, where it's just you get so deep in the process. And listen, I was, I was going back forth between L.A. and New York, I was basically living in New York for for months and months and months working on this deal, working 90 hours a week for nine months, 10 months, and a thing fell apart with about, with about a month left. And I said it's going to be about a $300 million deal. I was going to make some good money. The bank was going to make some good money. And it just, you know, we, you know, started going through some emails and started looking some things and just all of a sudden, you're like, this can't be what I think I'm saying. When did you realize it was? When we brought it up, we brought it up on a conference call with

the CEO and the CFO. And it's just just bullshit, bullshit. bullshit. And you could just smell it and they were just digging. And I'm sitting there. I'm like, I'm looking at the information. And what you're telling me is not jiving with what I'm saying. And I was just like, this can't be, this can't be it. And then it turns out it was. Who pays you in that instance where the sale doesn't go through? Well, it's interesting. It depends on how, it depends on how your comp works. It's some banks, it's, you could go, you know, commission only. Some banks, it's, you know, you have a base, you know, commission, you know, splits, you know, things like that. So it just kind of depends. But I can tell you, it's, I still got paid on the deal.

Okay, good. But it wasn't worth, it wasn't anywhere where I was going to get paid, you know, on it. And that one kind of stung a little bit. Any particular businesses that you've seen that you just didn't realize had the value that they did, like some crazy widget you would have never thought of that sold for crazy amounts? I can tell you exactly. So when I grew up as my parents sold, they were a sales rep for the largest manufacturer playground equipment in the country. So stuff at like city parks, you know, behind churches, you know, at schools. I had never thought there would be a sales rep. That's what I'm trying to say. People see playground equipment. They think that just came out of nowhere.

It just comes to. Or the city has it somehow in a warehouse. Exactly. Exactly. And you just kind of pop it out to it. But I'm telling you, it is a multi-billion dollar industry. So city parks, amphitheaters, you know, building city parks and putting out, you know, benches and trash cans and stuff like that.

So when I grew up and they also did stadium lighting, which a lot of people don't consider, you know, anything like that. So I've kind of grew up in that industry and around these different industries that people don't realize even exist and don't realize the value in it. So I mean, I just, I mean, as far back as I can remember, I've kind of seen that. And you'd be amazed at how many of these things, it's like, you know, my book here. So, you know, the guy that, that, you see how this, the colors get printed. Yep. You know, the, the spring that goes in the pen that shoots the color. Totally. Is, I mean, that could be a $50 million company. It's just, it's things, you know, the,

microphones, you know, the magnet inside of it, the company that creates the magnets. There's a piece in that machine that creates a magnets that goes inside the microphone. That could be a $100 million company. It's just you don't realize how much value there are in these places are things we just take for granted. Yeah. Man. How did you get into banking? So after college is I tried to play pro football.

So I moved from Philly to Dallas. I was there for a couple years and had to overcome some surgeries and things like that. And finally kind of got back in shape I need to be in. had a couple tryouts and was on waivers, invited to training camps, all that kind of stuff. Finally had a couple contract offers, but I realized at that point, I was just going to be a journeyman for a few years, getting my head kicked in, and that was going to be it. So, you know, my degree was in management with basically a minor in finance. Okay.

So it was like I knew I wanted to get started in some type of finance, but it was originally going to be private equity or venture capital. It just because it just seemed a lot more interesting to me. kind of buying, selling companies or starting companies, investing early stage, you know, stuff like that. And really in the U.S., if you're going to do it, it's New York or L.A. And I'd spend enough time in college. I'd been around on the East Coast in college, and I'd spend time in New York and it's like, I don't want to live in New York. So moved to L.A.

And I just couldn't get on anywhere. Private equity or VC. It was just a tough time. What year was that? That was like after football is like aught three, something like that, 0304. So the housing market had not quite hit there. Actually, it was apexing probably. It was on the way up.

It was still on the way up. But it's tough to step out of school and go straight into private equity VC. That's typically for B school folks. You know, they've done their time in investment banking, gone back to B school, got in their MBA, and then step into these other industries. So then I just said, you know, I'll just go with investment banking. But I wanted to focus specifically on M&A. It just seemed a lot more interesting to me.

And so I joined, like I mentioned, at the time, the largest boutique bank on the West Coast and, you know, started doing that and never thought I'd be in it, you know, 20 years later. But it's just, it's interesting because you get to work with guys that have just built these, you know, very successful companies, you know, entrepreneurally owned is all we work with now. It's just, you know, basically, I've gotten paid to get my MBA across so many different industries and just get such a wide breadth of knowledge. It's been, you know, pretty interesting overall. So, and starting in the early 2000s, you know, we're somehow almost in 2025. I know how calendars work, but it's still shocked.

It's crazy. The environment for somebody to start a business, the environment is somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur. Would you say it's largely the same level of opportunity and foundation and ecosystem? Has it changed? Has it gotten better, worse? What's your take on the entrepreneurial landscape right now? I would say right now it's probably a little bit easier. It's just because the access to information now is just so much better.

And just it's so much faster. and we're just all so much more connected. And you can just get getting the answers you're looking for, getting connected to people with the right answers or getting connected to financing sources, you know, things like that. Even though there's more competition out there, it's just so much easier to get these things kind of up and running.

And also it's easier to start hitting these home runs or to gain, you know, larger market share, you know, faster than it was. Primarily through social media, through, you know, online advertising, you know, things like that. Because before you had all the, these kind of traditional areas you had to go into that were very structured, whether it be distribution, manufacturing, you know, marketing, you know, things like that. And now you can just be a lot more kind of creative and, and kind of open-minded and kind of how you're approaching

things where you don't need necessarily to go through these typical historic gatekeepers. Now you can go directly to your consumer. You know, now with Amazon, you know, or just online, online retailers, you know, things like that, where a lot of times people were going brick and mortar before and spend in hundreds of thousands of dollars, sign in leases, you know, long-term, you know, exactly, stuff like that. Now you don't need that, you know, anymore. Or at least not maybe not for a proof of concept.

Or maybe you're like, I am we'll go brick and mortar, but now you launch something and you hold that off for a couple years where you have kind of more resources to support it. And now maybe you kind of even change that strategy or you just move away from it all together. You notice an impact from the rise in AI? Oh, no question. Where do you see it pop up the most?

I think in just, for lack of a better term, in terms of kind of things, things that can be created. And I don't mean that. And I know that's a very broad statement. But to give you an idea is I'm seeing it even in our industry is in providing services, you know, to these, you know, middle market companies where historically when we would take it, say, take a company out to market is we would spend weeks and weeks and weeks or even months writing what's called a book or an information memorandum. And this was like a book from scratch. And this book could be 30 pages, could be 100 pages. And, you know, we'd take that and we'd send it out to potential buyers or investors, whatever. And now a lot of banks are using AI technology to write that stuff.

I'm sure it's taking probably less than a few months to create that. It's crazy, man. It's they just kind of plug some stuff in, hit, you know, hit, enter or whatever you hit for that stuff. And it's just kind of spitting that thing out. And honestly, I don't think the level, I don't think the quality of work is as good as we used to put out. Exactly. But it's such an, it's in such an infancy, but it's just you're getting out so much faster. And you're like, you know what? It's kind of the 80-20 rule. It's like I'm getting 80% of the stuff in there. But I'm getting it out in a week as opposed to eight weeks. And now, you know, people are just, so I'm seeing AI get incorporated really in just into everything. Do you think it makes an entrepreneur's life easier? I think it can. Probably depends on what sector you're in. It depends on what sector you're in. It depends on your knowledge of it. It depends on, you know, how you're able to utilize. it in the space. I think some people might rely on it, you know, too heavily at this point.

I think that's one of the challenges is when we have such, when the barriers of entry have started to come down the way they have, where instead of say memorizing all the stuff like you and I did come up through school, whether it be, you know, history or math or social studies or geography or whatever, now people are just kind of looking things up and Googling it and finding it out in two seconds. I think there's a positive of that and there's a negative. You know, and I think that the same applies with AI is that. it's important, I think, to understand the basics of how it's generating, what it's generating, or where that information is coming from, and not just kind of taking it for gospel.

And I think more and more people these days, especially younger folks, just kind of punch something in, hit, enter, and whatever spits out, they're like, best the answer. And there's no critical thought or analysis going in behind to understanding why is it saying what it's saying. And do I agree with it? And if I don't agree with it, or what's the other side of this case? Yeah, how do I double-check the authenticity? Exactly. And I think a lot of people don't do that these days. hit, oh, there it is, and this kind of put it out there. There's nothing like a Google Scholar that relies upon the first search result of, at the bottom will say, 50 pages. But the first one is gospel. Not that I've ever done that myself, of course. Well, I think the key is you do that

one, then you scroll out on like page five, find something just totally random. So then if someone tries to call you out, then you just cite something that's just so out there. Well, and you can see it, it slowly starts to deviate from whatever the machine thinks is true north, as you start scrolling down. Look, it's a little bit more like some zingers off into right and left field. Exactly. Which, I don't know. Half the time I appreciate that and more interested than that than the actual top

result. Yeah, it's, you know, social media, I don't think is targeted for people our age. I'm in my late 40s. I don't even know how old you are. Yeah, 45. 45? God, I got to get you by two years now. I'm on it, but I use it more for entertainment.

And I guess it, you know, I don't have. have to for the podcast or the stuff that I do, but it helps me with the podcast and the stuff that I do. I look at my children, though, and their peers and cohorts, and they're surrounded by people who it's an entire financial ecosystem, and they have become entrepreneurs by being on the social media platforms. It's wild, and I wonder what that will look like in a decade or two decades. It's tough, and it's funny that you brought that up, because I think about that a lot, You know, and we've used with, with Austin's Peak Foundation and with, you know, Project 7 for soldiers and all the stuff that I do, obviously we've had to be, you know, to rely on social

media, you know, more and more, you know, personally, I hate it. I mean, I'm just, I'm not that guy. I don't like, you know, here's a video of me, here's a picture of me, talk, you know, this and that. It's, I literally would rather go out and carry a 100 pound pack, 5,000 feet up a mountain, then shoot a video, you know, a 30-second video and post it. It just, there's something about it that just, it just, it really bothers me, you know, to do. But to your point is, you know, you know, But today, I just think, unfortunately, you just have to do it. You know, and it's just figuring out, I think, the right way to incorporate it to where you're being, you know, your authentic self and delivering your authentic message and not

doing it just to be, you know, a monkey, you know, with the, with the grinder kind of thing. But it's just tough because you look out there and you see so many people that are being so successful that, in my opinion, they just seem just like just vapid, vacant, people that there's nothing behind it. And it's, it's, I think y'all do a, you know, good job. I've seen, you know, you know, on social and, you know, personally and with cleared hot and all that. Oh, I'm an idiot. I just act like myself. But it's, it's, that's thing, it's like, how do you get through that white noise and be, you know, be your authentic self and kind of, but you still have got to do it in a way you're, because you're, you know, you're doing it for a reason.

And so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's maintained that authenticity, but kind of breaking through that white noise of, you know, all the other competition in the space. And I think it's just going to kind of get more and more challenging over the years to come. And that's something that we're working hard to try to figure out where that balance is. I don't have a recipe for it. There is something for everybody online. Yeah. There is a guru in every space, if not gurus in every space with a foolproof plan of just follow their system and they're going to lead you to financial freedom, spiritual freedom, Ferrari Bugatti in your drive right, whatever it is. I wonder those people who are showing that opulent wealth and success online, I mean,

I would like to believe and hope that they are living in an enriched life, that they're super happy, that they feel a sense of purpose. And in my experience, I don't know if that's necessarily the case. They're showing a life that is incredibly successful. And I wonder about who they are in real life. Exactly. I mean, I think you hit it on the head is that they're showing a life in order for you to be attracted to it, in order for you to buy their product or

follow their program or whatever it is. But like with a lot of the stuff that you do and the stuff that we do is, is I'm not, I've got nothing to sell. Yeah. You know, really. It's, you know, obviously it's, it's, I got like T-shirt and stuff. That's about it. You got some hats. Yeah. I saw a sticker on the site. Yeah. There was a sticker. And we have some patches, right, Michael? I don't know. You fill the packages up. Yeah, we have patches. I have a few complaints, by the way, from emails from you continue to send the wrong things just so I know, I'll forward those to you. Okay, perfect. Sounds good. No, but it's, it's, it's tough is that, you know, we do have, you know, services that we're going to be offering, you know, through the organization, you know, things like

that. But it's, it's, I think a lot of these people, to your point is they just, they do create something because there's an end game to it. The end game is they're trying to sell you something. And a lot of the stuff, you know, that, that we talk about is getting people to do things that to do things that, you know, through, you know, self-reflection of, you know, you know, surrendering into, you know, various elements of your life of, of connection with others, of being of service to others, you know, things like that. So, you know, when you don't necessarily have products, you know, to sell like, you know, by my course. It's a little bit different.

But I think to your point, people do create these things because they're like, hey, you know, they want to make people envious of their lifestyles and then sell your product or service on how to, you know, achieve that lifestyle. I often wonder what it would be like if the rug got pulled on just the whole social media experiment, maybe not permanently, but 72 hours. Yeah. But we don't know it's going to be 72 hours. It could be indefinite.

I wonder the impact it would have on people's lives. For some people, I think it would be completely upending, but for most, I think their life would be appreciably better. Yeah. Look, there's no question. I think, and it's something that we talk about a lot with what we do is we've gotten more and more kind of sped up, you know, these days. And we're more connected than we've ever been. But I think that's led to a greater level of disconnect of disconnection than we've ever had, not only from others, but from ourselves, is that we're constantly looking for this exterior stimuli where most people, as soon as they do, the first thing you do when they wake up in the morning,

just check their phone, start sending this, start seeing that. And they just sit there and just all this scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. It's like they need this constant, this constant stimulation.

And when you do that is you feel like you're connected to something else, but I think at the end of the day, you're just disconnecting more and more from yourself. You know, and with a lot of the stuff you do, like say get out and get, you know,

and hunting and things like that, is it's very important to get disconnected, you know, at certain times, which enables you thusly to reconnect with yourself. And they say, you know, the hardest thing to do

is for someone to sit quietly with themselves. I would agree with that. And whether you're in a tree stand, whether you're hiking a mountain, whether you're doing whatever it is you're doing, but to be by yourself and to sit there and to quietly, sit with yourself and to feel all the things that you're feeling and to let all these, these subconscious things, you know, start kind of coming up that you are either, you know, consciously keeping down or subconsciously keeping down while you're constantly

inundating yourself. I think it would be a big challenge for people. the hunting trips are an interesting experiment because most always you're in a place that has at least limited communication and it'll be generally like the trip we were just on the lodge we were saying it had Starlink which they didn't have in the years before which was frustrating because it was slow enough to kind of connect your phone but not slow enough to get any goddamn information out of it just to tease you enough to tease you so you could see you had emails but not download them you're like fuck I need it was actually the worst We're getting ready to go to a place in Wyoming where it's largely none. And I have a portable starlink so I can maintain connectivity. But even in the forced disconnection, I sleep better. Yeah. My circadian rhythm is better.

We go down when the lights go down. You have more interpersonal conversations. But you can feel that, you know, the phantom vibration in your pocket of your phone going off. And you know, God damn well, you don't have any cell service. It's wild. It's tough to sit with yourself. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. I like scrolling through reels and watching people get, you know, motorcycle riders get hit by cars.

And oftentimes I repost them. Everybody's welcome for that experience. But yeah, it's healthier in the times that I don't. But I still willingly participate in it when I have the opportunity. Yeah. Like I checked my phone in the morning to make sure I didn't sleep in. And then right after that, generally, you know, as I'm getting ready, drinking my first cup of water or whatever, I tell myself I'm going to check the news.

which I do. Yeah. But then I closed it up and you'll like, he'll open Instagram. And before you even know it, and then I will catch myself, what the fuck am I doing? It's about, it's funny you say it because it's, that's what happens is you just, you transfer from one to the other. It's minus. Exactly.

And that, I think that's the key. I was actually thinking about this, you know, this morning is like, we have these little moments that we can make these decisions that seem like that they're difficult things to do. But if we can just take that literally just, just establish that control. and exhibit that control for that for that one second from when you trans you know from you you close one app and you're going to open the other app it's just let it let it you know kind of die down a little bit you know take the control and make sure that you're you're doing the right things for the right reasons and even like literally just one second is that that that that you'll

noticeably feel that anxiety start to lower then you sit there for two seconds and three seconds I know this sounds a little funky but it honestly it works is you sit there and then it's it's you're able to maintain your own dominion rather than just being the other monkey just kind of hitting the button to get the to get the treat. Yeah. And it's like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. But it's like, you know, when I go out on these expeditions, like when I crossed, you know, the Mojave recently, it took, you know, 330 miles and just over seven days. And I had no communication with anybody whatsoever. And it was so nice, you know, even though I was moving 20 hours a day, you know, in the middle of the Mojavee, 100 degrees and sleeping for less than

and three hours a night, it was just so nice to be so disconnected, you know, for a while. And just to kind of sit there. I could feel my anxiety, you know, high in the beginning. Yeah. And in every hours I pushed on, I was just like, oh, I could just feel it noticeably, you have this, you start with this fear of missing out. Yeah. And a little bit into it, you realize, oh, I just don't give a fuck.

Yeah. Like, what are you missing? Exactly. What are you missing? But yet you're afraid of missing something that totally is non-consequential. Yeah. you have that anxiety. Yeah, it's that funny switch. It goes from like, oh my goodness, I'm missing out to yeah, I actually don't really care. But think about like, well, you and I are roughly the same age.

It's like being in high school is I didn't get my first cell phone until I was like deep into college. I skipped the college portion, but it was it was after high school for sure. Yeah, right? So you go through high school and it's like, you know, you're going out on the weekends or doing whatever. You leave the house. There's no like, I'm going to go to so-and-so's house or I'll call them and leave a message or whatever. And like, you didn't have that level of anxiety because you didn't have those resources. like a cell phone, you know, to build that anxiety. But now if I'm going out, you know, if I'm at my house, I'm like, oh, I need to run and get, you know, cart and eggs.

Yeah. And I leave my cell phone. As soon as I leave, I'm like, oh, what the hell? You know, and it's like a minute after leaving the house. How am I going to know how to get there? Oh, I've only been there a thousand times. Exactly. I'm like, well, what if someone emails it?

What's someone calls me? What if I'm like, what if I have to wait 20 minutes to return to text? You know, it's like we all fall into it. Oh, man. Yeah. And we're all willing participants in it. How did you get into the physical. endeavors that you take part in. Yeah, it started just with, you know, we were talking earlier about,

about, you know, cats over at 5-11 and everything. It really came about from the formulation of Dawson's Peak Foundation, which is, you know, the charity that a good friend of mine, Jay Gibbonskin, I started back in 2018. What was your impetus to start it? It's a long story. Long story short was, you know, I was about 38 years old and, you know, kind of tied it back to the investment banking and everything, is I'd reach a certain level of success in banking where I was, you know, very comfortable, you know, professionally and personally. And, you know, I was living in the Hollywood Hills and, and, you know, could have whatever I wanted within reason and, in all this. But I was just, I was in a dark, dark place. And I was just, I was disconnected from everyone and everything.

You know, I'd been partying for, you know, eight years or so and, you know, drugs and alcohol and and all that kind of stuff. And I think if you saw me on the outside, you're like, this guy's, you know, probably got his shit together and looks like he's living. nice lifestyle. But on the inside is I was just, I was just disconnected, is I didn't know kind of who I was, you know, why I was doing what I was doing. I had no purpose in my life. I mean, I spent just, you know, sometimes, you know, weeks in bed just with this debilitating depression, even the thought of turning and putting my feet on the floor. I mean, made me almost want to cry and just shake and pain. I was just, I was in so much pain. And I'd been in that place for literally for decades. And I think a lot of

people can relate to that. It's my entire life, I just felt different. I felt disconnected. I I didn't know how to relate to others. I didn't know how to give love or receive love. And I really couldn't feel a broad array of emotions besides anger, fear, and frustration. Where do you think that comes from? I think some of it was just wiring. You know, I think I'm just kind of wired in a certain way. And that's just something that I've kind of had to come to learn to deal with.

But I think also, you know, growing up is I had a wonderful family. I love my mom and dad dearly, even though my mom's past. I've got a great sister. my sister and I never wanted for anything from a physical perspective, but, but say, an emotional perspective is we really didn't have, the emotional support wasn't what it could have been, you know, kind of growing up. And I learned to be a chameleon, you know, very early in life. It's just to be who I needed to be in a situation to navigate that situation. And it was just kind of like keeping my cards close to my chest. And I started unknowingly basing a lot of myself worth and

value on my performance. And by the time I reached, you know, 18, you know, I'd had, you know, over a million dollars in scholarship offers to play football. I was going to go to the Naval Academy. I was, you know, four point oh, almost four point O student, you know, all state, this and that, you know, whatever. But, you know, inside, I was just a scared kid. You know, it was, I felt like a bad person. I felt like I deserved to be punished and I felt like I'd always fuck something up. Or I'd find a way to fuck things up. And. Damn. Do you, did you feel that way for as as long as you can remember? I tell you, it's interesting is I started to feel that way somewhere around probably

second or third grade. And at that point is, I've always had a lot of energy. And I remember at that stage is I was getting kicked out of school all the time for misbehaving. And where I grew up, there's University of Alabama. This was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A counselor from the University of Alabama would come by my school and talk to me two or three times a week. Like, pull me out of class, asking me about my emotions and feelings and play

with sticker books. And honestly, at the time, I thought it was because I was getting a reward. You know, I was like, I'm doing such, these people love me. So I get this like, they were doing a good job. Yeah. Yeah. I was love to do these books with you lose or stay in class. I'm going to go play with sticker books and talk about my feelings. Like, I thought I was doing it. And then come to find, and then literally later on like in college, it dawned on me. And I called my mom one day. I'm like, who the hell was that woman? And she's like, what are you talking about? I was like, when I was in second grade and I was talking about my feelings and emotions and she's like, I can't believe you remembered that. But it just, that's, you know, I did. And it's just,

she's like, you were getting in so many problems or having so many problems getting kicked out. They were going to kick you out of school unless we agreed to have you speak to a counselor. And I think somewhere around that age is I just, I felt like I was always being told that I was wrong or what I was doing was wrong. And I internalized it not as that my actions were wrong, but that, that I was wrong, you know, as a person. And the, the best thing that I could possibly do was was to not be myself, was to be whatever I was told to be or whatever I felt I needed to be in a situation in order to not get in trouble. And it's funny as, you know, I mean, look, you've been through a lot. You know, we've all been through a lot is, but even at this age, we're just big

kids. And a lot of that stuff we're still processing happened to us so early on is that when I got later in life where I'd made, you know, good money and I could go out and buy this and buy that and date this person and go here and go there. Deep down inside, you know, maybe the, you know, maybe the 95% of it, you know, I was operating, you know, pretty well. But that, you know, that final 5% was still that same stuff I've been dealing with my entire life. So even though I'm sitting there negotiating a $100 million deal in the back of my mind, a lot of times I felt just like a scared child that was like, you know, you're a bad person. You're going to find some way to fuck this up. And you don't, you don't deserve to be loved. You don't deserve this. You don't

deserve that. And it just, that just kept playing just like a, on loop, you know, in the back of my mind. Did you share that with anybody in your adult life? Prior to, you know, you were, you were saying that you were in bed for a couple of weeks prior to you realize you needed to do something about it. Did you share those feelings? Yeah, it looks. A great question is I tried to, I think on three different occasions where I met with a professional. There was one time at, after I left the Naval Academy, I went to Wharton at University Pennsylvania and Philly. I met with a counselor there, you know, talked to him for a couple weeks. I'm like, this guy, he just doesn't get it. Like I felt like I was 10 steps in front of him and we just,

couldn't relate to each other. And after that point, I met with two other professionals like in Los Angeles. And the same thing was, it's like, they don't get it. Either I'm not communicating it effectively or I'm not able to take on board what they're saying or they can't take on board, you know, what I'm saying. But either just not the right person is exactly. It's just not the right person. And that was very frustrating. And it, look, it even led to, you know, numerous, there were numerous times of my life where I was on the verge of suicide where I just, I'd reach that breaking point where it's just like, you don't care anymore. It's just, I was like, all I wanted to do is just to have this pain end and just to get out

of this. And I didn't want anybody to even remember me. And if my family weren't around is, I know on more than one occasion, I probably would have gone through with it. And it sounds ridiculous. But even, you know, before I started the organization, like, I'd fantasize if there was a button that I could push and I'd just erase all knowledge that I ever existed. Like, no one would miss me.

It wouldn't impact anybody. I would just, I would be erased, you know, from ever existing. I would have hit that button on numerous occasions. Like it reached that point. Had you ever thought about how you were going to kill yourself? And the reason I asked that, it's a macabre question for sure. But in talking to professionals, there are sometimes people who will talk about the desire or wish to kill themselves, which should always be taken seriously. But there is a much greater risk when they have already determined how they would do so.

Yeah. So yes, there are a couple different ways. Like, and this is all, you know, in the book. And it's, it's tough because, you know, before I put the book together is I'd never shared this with anybody. You know, but I think it's important to talk about it because when you get to these places in life, you know, when you have this level of sadness and grief and despair, is we have a tendency to believe that we're all alone, is that nobody can possibly believe this level of pain that I'm in or how bad a person I am or how bad I screwed up or whatever. But, at the end of the day, no matter what you're facing, it's been faced by millions of people, millions and billions of times. It is being faced currently. Exactly. Like, I understand it sucks. It hurts. It's all that kind of stuff.

But there's nothing unique about our pain. There's nothing special about it. And I think that's important from people to remember in order to relate to one another. But like when I was in high school is, you know, I grew up there were always guns in the house. I had a couple pistols in my room. And there were times when, you know, I'd hold a loaded pistol to my head. And I'd put my finger on the trigger.

and I'd just start pulling it. And I didn't at that time want to kill myself, but it's like I wanted to feel something because I couldn't, I literally couldn't feel anything. Like I felt like I was just wooden. And all I could, actually, all I could feel was like pain, confusion, and frustration and just anger.

And in those moments with the finger on the trigger, you know, loaded, chambered everything, and I could feel the slack coming out of the trigger, all that kind of stuff, it's I would feel something. I'd feel like a release is the best way to describe it. I was 17, 18 years old. And, I mean, it just, it, it's hard to think that if, if, if I would have, you know,

continued down that line, as I did that, you know, numerous times. And each time I'd apply more and more pressure to the trigger. And I mean, as you know, in your former line of work is, there's only so much pressure you can apply. Yeah. For its game over. And so you're walking a very, very thin line. That ain't a fucking dangerous game.

Exactly. So, I mean, I've been through that. Then when I was at, it just got to a point where I was like, listen, I've, I've, I've, I've gotten as far as I can go. And if this goes any further, then my parents are going to walk in one day and I'm going to destroy their lives. And it's not fair to them because they, I know consciously, they tried to do everything for me that they possibly could.

And that's just, that's not right. And it's not right to have that impact on my sister. But like at University of Pennsylvania, is it got to a point one time where I was just, I was just in such a bad place. I felt so disconnected and just, you know, just alone and again, misunderstood and couldn't communicate effectively, couldn't get the help that I needed, is I wrote a, I wrote a in my family and just left on the desk in my apartment and I walked down to the football field and I sat at the base of the light tower and there was nothing poetic about going to the football

stadium because I played football. It was simply the highest point that I had access to. And I sat down there for probably four or five hours and I was just sitting there looking at it and just thinking about it and I was like I want to do this so badly. But I know if I do it, my parents can get that phone call and it's going to destroy their lives. And literally like I said, if they weren't around and more than likely I would have, you know, that would have been another point where, you know, I wouldn't be sitting here today. Fuck, man. That is a rough journey. Are you free and clear of feeling that way now? You know, honestly, no. It's, it's, and this kind of, this ties back into your original question about, you know, the founding of the organization, all that kind of stuff,

is there, is I've done so much work over the past, you know, six years, seven years, you know, things like that. Like, all of my training is done alone. So I mean, I've trained for that, Every single day, I train alone. You know, thousands of hours I've trained alone. Most of my ex... I try to do my expeditions, you know, alone, you know, things like that. Just because I want to be... When I'm out doing these things alone,

it gives me a chance to reconnect with myself, you know, on a different level and to kind of reexamine myself on a different level. But it's, you know, what I've found is, I think we can kind of work through the first 95% of the challenges that we face. You know, and the challenge you face are going to be a little... Maybe they're same in certain situations. maybe they're different than what I face or what Michael faces, but we all face our own challenges.

And the first 95% of them, I think, are the easiest to get through, although they can certainly be difficult and they can be unique depending on the person. But that final 5%, like that deepest, deepest rooted stuff that we're all dealing with, I don't know if you can ever completely get rid of that. I think you can work through it. I think maybe you can get rid of like 2% of it, 3% of it. So now you're down to like 3%. but I think some of it might always be there because it's just it's so hardwired inside of you.

Like to be, you know, totally honest, totally honest with you is I still struggle not to feel like a bad person a lot of times. I still struggle to receive love. What's your metric for a good person? That's the challenge is with me is it's kind of, I can be unfair to myself because it can be kind of a moving target. Yeah. Where if you come to me is I can look at you and see the qualities that you have or I can see the qualities a friend. mine has or something like that. And I can say, listen, look at all this that I see in you. But when I look in myself, I don't allow myself to see those same things. And then if I do see

those same things, I'm like, well, but there's not this. Then there's not this. It's kind of like a moving target. Because what I found was despite having a very secure household in some elements growing up, is also very insecure in other elements. And kind of a theme that was incorporated in my childhood was something is always wrong. is that it was just something was always wrong in the household, something like, watch out because someone's going to try to get over on you, or this is going to happen, or that's going to happen. So I developed a level of comfort and crisis,

is that if I woke up and something wasn't wrong, I was all out of sorts. Like I was like, I need something to be mindful of or aware of or upset about or things like that, which can be good in certain situations. Like if we're out in the woods and we're going to get attacked by something or you need someone on watch, Like, I'm the guy you want there. I'm telling you, I'm the guy you want on deserted island about survival situations.

I'm great. But in days like, you know, normal life, it's difficult because I don't have that constant, you know, threat, that life-threatening threat or that existential threat. So therefore, I kind of create it in certain things in order to get amped up in order to feel good. It's like a dopamine release for me, which I understand is not good. But, you know, tying back into that 5% is, let's say we can, work through some of it, you know, 2%, 1% whatever, I think probably more than likely that

that last couple percent will always be there. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think you just have to be aware of what it's, what it's saying to you. And the key is not to listen to it, but to hear it, but you talk to it and you maintain control over it rather than being a victim and having it maintain control or illicit control over you. I know that sounds a little kind of heady or maybe a little new agey. But it's just, it... You have to choose with what you expend your energy engaging with. Exactly. And that's what it is.

It's the key is not to listen to it, but to, you know, you address it. You recognize that it's there, but you address it. And again, this is not, I know it's not unique to me and my journey and my struggles. Is that everybody, I don't care if it's you, if it's, you know, Bill Gates or if it's, you know, some, you know, NFL player or whatever that's making $60 million. a year is when you kind of, you know, strip all the shit away is we all have those little things that we're all carrying through that we're all dealing with. Because I know you had the podcast recently, I think, with your birthday and like reflecting back and some of the questions you asked.

Yeah. And, you know, the three questions that Leah talks about. Yeah, the birthday question. You fucking suck. But I think, you know, the first one, I forget exactly about it. What's the heaviest thing you carry? Yeah, it's about maybe not feeling good enough for those around you. And that's what I'm talking about. That's that kind of that final five percent. you know, that that's part of your 5%. You know, that we all kind of deal with. And I think that that can be healthy because the desire to want to be better than you were yesterday can be very healthy, but could also be debilitating and demoralizing. It's on how you choose how to engage with it.

Exactly. Exactly. So you do a lot of training by yourself. Do you talk to yourself when you're out there? Oh, I talk to myself. I'm telling you. Out loud or just, how loud? Are you a good conversationalist?

At this point, I'm tired of myself a lot of times. I'm like, dog. I was like, I've heard this story 18 times, number one. And secondly, that's not how it happened, you know? I talk to myself all the time. Michael, do you talk to yourself out loud? Not out loud, but I have a constant dialogue in my head. How can we don't verbalize it out loud?

And I only ask because I've been shocked at the, I talk to myself out loud. You do. Oh, yeah. I'm shocked to find the number of people that don't. Like, I feel like I look like a fucking crazy person when I'm driving through town because people are like, there's nobody in that car. Who's he talking to? Oh, like, by myself?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, every once in a while. I'll like, if I'd like do something, I'm like, oh, what the fuck am I doing? Like, no, I mean, do you ever have like full on? Yes. Conversations. Yes.

Okay. Alone. I tell you, if I'm alone. So we are either three incredibly normal people or abnormal people. And I'm not sure. I've heard people answer the question both ways. What I'm telling you is I spend, I mean, hours and hours and hours every day talking to myself out loud, full-fledged conversations.

Well, you do ridiculous shit sometimes by yourself, you know, like rowing boats across oceans and things of that nature. Yeah. So you have time to, uh, That's why I asked if you're a good conversationalist. I mean, you better carry both sides of that one. Well, it's funny you talk, it's funny you talk about the row. And this is in the book is, I mean, look, I was rowing 12 hours a day.

And you're locked in. I mean, you're locked in to the seat, to the oars, to the, you know, to the foot wells. Like, you're not going anywhere. It's the same stroke. It's you got nothing else to do. It's, you know, finding different ways to pass the time. One of the ways was I'd tell stories. And I'd sit there and I would talk literally like someone was right next to me.

And I was like, listen. I was like, you're not going to believe this shit. I'm like, listen to what she said to me. And I would tell the, I would go to these stories. I was like, right, right? And literally nobody's sitting there, obviously. But I would, I mean, I would tell stories for hours about, and sometimes it'd be good story, like fun.

Sometimes they'd be like, just pouring my heart out. Sometimes it would be like, man, I can't believe I did that or I said that or whatever. But I would, these are full-fledged. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to say we're three normal people. Yeah. But at the same time, who wants to be normal.

I've met a lot of people who have looked at me when I said that I talked to myself out loud as if I had a third ear on the top of my forehead. They were like, what? Yeah. So I don't know. Okay, let's get into these endeavors you like to do, though. So it started, you know, the Dawson's Peak. What is the premise of Dawson's Peak?

Right. Yeah, yeah. So it just, you know, quickly because, unfortunately, it can get a little, you know, detailed and all this, you know, granular. So in a nutshell, is Dawson's Peak Foundation is a 501C3. I started back in August 18 with my good friend, Jay Jablonski. and our mission is to inspire the discovery and pursuit of individual purpose. And the way that it came about was, you know, when I was going through that hard time in my late 30s, my mother passed away.

I broke up with a serious girlfriend and just, you know, life was just kind of just caving in on me. I talked about wanting to hit the button and, you know, all this kind of stuff. I just, I reached that breaking point again where I was like, I'm either going all in or all out. Like I've, like, I've had enough. So I traveled to Nepal, spent three weeks hiking alone around Mount Everest. And this is, you know, long story short, and it's all in a lot more detail in the book, is that. Well, how'd you land on to Paul? It is, so I went out to dinner with a friend, a very good friend of mine, and he brought a buddy of his.

And just randomly, this guy was started talking about when he went to Mount Everest, like, to the base camp trek, like three years before. And I'm telling you, it's a time. I couldn't have found Everest on a map. I'm like, it's over there somewhere. Number one, number two, I don't give a shit where it is because it sounds terrible, like a terrible idea to climb a mountain. Like that I was like why that's just dumb and you had never done any physical endeavors like that nothing like I mean I grew up obviously playing football and baseball and track and all exactly you know the hiking base camp of Everest is different it's totally different so basically he for some reason he just started talking about this journey you know that he went on took a couple weeks and it just it just fascinated me I don't know why

like before that whenever I heard about that I'm like that's whatever it's stupid I don't want to even know about it but for some reason it just it's what I figured out is it's not necessarily what you hear but it's also when you hear it and some Sometimes you're more receptive. You don't even know that you're being receptive, but you're just kind of in that different headspace where you can just take information in for a different reason. He started talking about it. And I was just fascinated. And a couple weeks later, my mom had already passed. My girlfriend and I broke up. And I was like, I'm going to Everest.

I was like, because I knew I needed to make a significant amount of change. And it wasn't going to work going to a therapist once a week or reading a book or listening to a podcast. I was like, I need to be removed from everything and everybody and make a life-changing thing here. And what I'm just, I've never been very good at being in the middle. I'm normally on, on an edge, you know, somewhere. And I think that's where life is really enjoyed is kind of in the margins. And that's where we learn more about ourselves. So I went, you know, went to Everest, you know, by myself,

hiked largely alone for about three weeks around the Mount Everest region. And then about three days in, I was in the village of Tangbochee. And in that village, like 50 people. No road, you walk in, you walk out. And there's a, there's a Buddhist temple there. And I was invited to join a service with, with the monks. So I sat in there for about an hour with by myself with a room full of chanting monks. And I just started getting enveloped with these waves of energy to where it was literally

taking my breath away at points. I'm like, like struggling to breathe. I'm like what the hell is going on here. But something in my mind is like, just be present. Just try to experience this to fullest. And after about an hour, I walked across the village. I sat down and leaned against this small stupa, which is a religious temple. And I'm looking right at Mount Everest. And it's still probably four days away, but she's so big. I mean, you can see her for, you know, days away. And it's, you know, seven o'clock in the morning and the sun's rising and the clouds are moving across the front of it. And all of a sudden, I just lose it and start bawling uncontrollably like a baby. And next thing I know I'm on my left-hand side in the dirt, in the fetal position.

At the time, I'm 242 pounds. I'm 40 pounds here and I am now. I've got a beard, you know, down to here. Fuck yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm just, I'm just big old chunky on the mountain. And I mean, Andy, I was in so much pain. I mean physical, mental, emotional pain that it was excruciating. But something inside of me said, you know, don't fight this. Don't try to understand it.

Don't try to rationalize it. Just shut the fuck up and understand and just experience it. And after about 15 minutes, as I walked into this little tea, I was like, okay, I was like, you know, what the hell was that? I walked into a little tea house to have breakfast. They brought me a bowl of oatmeal, and all of a sudden, I go to take my first bite, and I lose it again. And I mean, people are now sitting around me, and I'm embarrassed.

I'm covering my head, and I'm just bawling into this bowl of oatmeal. And people have heard me tell the story is that I cried so long and so hard. I remember watching my tears fill up that bowl of oatmeal. And I'm talking, it was deep of tears. And I look up, and the room is now empty. You know, these people are like, this guy's an effing nutcase. And I looked to the back right corner of this room and something spoke to me. And you can call it, you know, God or the universe or collective unconscious or an energy

field or whatever. And it said two things. It said, you're not living with a sense of purpose and your life is only about you. And I'm telling you is I didn't hear with my ears. And I still have, you know, every time I tell it, sorry, I get goosebumps. Yeah. Is I heard it in my heart. I heard it in my fibers and cell.

And like every, every possible person, you know, version of myself. that I could ever be, heard that message. And when it said that, I knew two things. I knew, one, my life would never be the same. And I knew for the first time what my purpose was. And this thing told me, it's like your purpose is to help people avoid being in the situation you're in now. Because I know what it is to be lost and alone for decades. And I don't give a shit how much money you have, how many people you date, how much stuff you buy, how much success you have, how many Super Bowls you win, that shit doesn't matter. When you're utterly and desperately alone and disconnected and isolated, it's a horrible place to be. And I was there for decades. I didn't know

how to communicate that, you know, to get out of that space. And I think that's without question, what my purpose is, is to help people avoid that place because I know that darkness and it's horrible. And also it gave me the understanding of the power and the magnitude of every single second. and then our life can change every second for good or for bad in a way that it will never go back and be the same. And then after that point, it's, it literally took two and a half, almost three more years to figure out how I can incorporate that into something I can actually, you know, put into practice. And eventually it was like, listen, maybe we'll start an organization. We'll put on these big global expeditions where people can see our athletes, you know, doing

things that are pushing human potential and draw a parallel to themselves or athletes and to say, if this person is doing X, Y, and Z, then I can find something representative of that in my life that I can try to overcome or apply myself to or challenge that I thought was bigger than I was. And that's in a nutshell, you know, kind of how the organization got started. And then the first project we're working on now is Seven for Soldiers, where I was originally trying to set seven world records in 12 months with 100% of the net proceeds going to the Gary Snees Foundation and hope for the Warriors. What were the seven world records?

So it was, it's basically, there were a lot of activities. The first was the Explorers Grand Slam, which is climbing the highest peak on each continent. Okay. And then skiing North Pole, South Pole. So I was on, I was on track to be the third fastest person to ever do it. I think right now there's been like 60 people that have done it. And I was going to be the only the fifth person ever do it in a single year. And then tracking solo solo unsupported across the Mojave Desert, rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, and then flying a plane around the world.

What type of plane? Well, it was going to be a, originally it was going to be a single engine. Like we look at, you know, Pilates. We looked at, you know, a couple of, you know, a couple bigger Cessna's, Cirrus, you know, things like that. And we went through that process for a couple years. And like right before we got kicked off is when COVID happened. And right in the middle of the project is when Russia goes into Ukraine. So throughout the years, you know, and obviously, you know, you know, with your flight past,

is that we had, we've had probably three or four planes that have been. dedicated to us that have either gotten pulled last minute because, you know, the insurance rates went up or people didn't want to leave the country. But then you started looking at insurance rates to fly around the world, fuel costs, all this kind of stuff. So what we originally budgeted got increased about about four or fivefold. And it just got to a point where I was like, I couldn't justify spending that amount of money just to fly a plane around the world. I was like, I think we can spend this in other ways to generate, you know, more, more welfare for others or more interest for others than that. It's such a tough balance. Fundraising.

is actually the hardest thing I've ever done. Oh, it's brutal. Because you have to figure out a way to get people's attention so that you can ladder up to something that they might care about that's not going to get lost in the shotgun blast of the face every day of donor fatigue and GoFundMe's to separate money from their wallet. But the things that you want to do are also not free. It's this vicious self-licking ice cream code. But it's like this, look, this stuff that you've done obviously with, you know, with the seven jumps, you know, that y'all did. And then, you know, the, the wing suiting, you know, and all this kind of stuff. It's like, this isn't just, you know, buying a rope to see how many times you can skip a rope in a minute.

I mean, this stuff costs tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yes. But it's funny is if you go back and you look at, say, Amundsen, you know, his race, you know, to the South, you know, try to get to South Pole, or even like back to Christopher Columbus. Like, if you read all these people that have done these things throughout centuries, they all talk about raising funds. Yeah. I mean, it has been something. It's not unique to, you know, to modern day folks. I mean, people have been dealing with this stuff for hundreds and hundreds of years.

It's extremely difficult to get people to care to a point where they're going to get involved in it. And like you said, is they get constantly inundated. It's insane. Every single day. Donor fatigue is 100% real. Did you eat that bowl of oatmeal? That one. I think I probably did.

Yeah. I think it probably did. It's a very teary bowl of oatmeal. Okay. Just checking. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough to know to have that shattering realization of what it is that you want to do. and then you've got to figure out how you're going to do it.

Yeah. That's the biggest thing is because when you, I think when you watch these movies or you read these stories or whatever and you talk about, you know, find your path. And then it's like this assumption. Or your purpose. Exactly. Okay.

I found my purpose. I know this is what I want to do. There are still a substantial amount of obstacles in front of me being able to do that. I have to meet my minimum criteria for life. Maybe I have a family. Maybe I have obligations. My purpose is still over here. How do I do this?

Yeah. It's not easy. It's funny. It's because we get, we kind of have this understanding or this, this belief that once you find the path or purpose, then it's just going to be care bears and rainbows and, you know, every day is sunshine. I think the hard work starts once you find it. Listen, that's, that's exactly. You said it. That's exactly what I was getting at is, is after I found my purpose and I was going to be a purpose finder helper, I'm like, this shit doesn't exist, right? I'm a purpose finder helper. That's what I thought. I would put that on a card. Yeah. PFF, purpose finder helper. Literally, it took, after that point, it took another two or three years to come up with the organization, the idea, you know, things like that. Then I had to start training for it. Then I trained literally over 2,000 hours alone after that point. I had multiple surgeries, I had multiple surgical procedures. I had broken bones and torn this and torn that and all this kind of stuff. That was just to get to the starting line of pursuing, you know, all these things, you know, that ended up having a chance to do. What was the first one you tackled? Well, the first was supposed to be North Pole, but it ended up getting and canceled. So the first was Everest. First thing out of the box was Everest. Michael, you grab us a six-pack of the water out of the fridge while I dig into this Everest story. Okay. So you'd seen Everest before. Talk to me about the actual experience of climbing Everest because

I know a few people who have done it and there are the national geographic stories of the beauty and the challenge. And then there's the stories you hear of human waste everywhere and dead bodies, which are in fact used as landmarks. What was it? actually, or, you know, at the Hillary step, there's 300 people waiting and you get you time to go up there and then you have to figure out your way to get down. What was it like? It's a good question. And honestly, it's something that I'm still divided about, you know, internally is that she's a beautiful mountain. And just to climb her is to have the honor, you know, of doing that was just an incredible opportunity. And, you know, first thing is no one conquers Everest. No one

conquers any mountains. You know, if she wants to take you, she can take you anytime. So first, It's, you know, get that level, thank you, man. It's get that level of, you know, ego out of your head. But, you know, from a physical challenge standpoint, I absolutely loved it. Is that, you know, looking back now, a question, next time I climb an 8,000 meter if I'm going to use oxygen or not, I'm starting to have different thoughts on if the validity of accomplishing something, you know, with that level of support, which, you know,

obviously I use at that point, and there's pros and cons to it. Yeah. I mean, do you take pain meds when you're in pain? Do you take aspirin and ibuprofen? Ever? No. All right. So you're a psycho.

I understand the point. I understand the point. I understand the point. Do you go to the hospital, right? You have surgery. I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying. It exists and are we smart to not use those things?

Are we paying homage to the past by not using the, you know what I? I know. I know you're exact. Listen, I just, I've stayed up nights thinking about this because basically I have no judgment either way. These are the questions. Yeah. When you're on O is, you know, oxygen is, and it's basically going to have your body feeling

like you're at 23,000 feet. But you're still very high. It is. It's still very high. But there's a difference between being at 23 and 26 and 29. Yeah. And the question, you know, that I have now is, look, I was able to sum it on my first attempt and I appreciate it and all this kind of stuff.

But then I question, could I have done it, you know, without the oxygen? And it's not just about having, you know, managing your heart rate and physical performance and things like that, but also it's without oxygen, you get a lot colder, a lot faster. And I've got bad problems, you know, circulation for various shoulder surgeries and leg surgeries. So I've got issues with circulation in my hands and my feet. So, you know, that I questioned, you know,

talking about earlier about me feeling like if I'm a good person or things like that, and I say there's a moving target is now I look at Everest, it's a moving target. It's when I first had an opportunity to summit and I was successful. I'm like, I took a lot of, you know, or some pride in it. Now I look back, I'm like, yeah, but I used oxygen. So does it really mean anything? So it's...

Another question to ask, though, is it even worth the risk to try it without? Yeah. Again, no judgment either way. Those are just, I think, important questions you have to ask yourself. And everybody's going to have a different answer. Yeah. But just, you know, to finish off your question is, from a physical standpoint, I really enjoyed the climb.

It's absolutely beautiful. It's an hell of experience. The people that I was with were fantastic people. we got very close. I got to work with Sherpers for the first time. And those guys are just, I mean, just maniacs. And actually, there's a couple of female Sherpers that are working up there. You know, it's very impressive to be around those types of people in general that have, that have sacrificed the level that they have to be on that mountain. And that was a privilege to be around those people.

The parts that didn't enjoy was it has become very commercialized in a sense that there are a lot of people there that shouldn't be there. They don't have the wherewithal physically to be there and they kind of impair others. And also, it's like everything is set up for you. Like, everything's roped off. You know, here's, you know, the adventure element that I thought was going to be there really wasn't there. It was much more like just a very difficult, and I don't mean this in any disrespectful way, but it's almost like a very difficult theme park, you know, as opposed to just being

on a grand adventure, like you would think about these, like being lost in the Himalayas or, you know, free client to Himalayas. So, you know, overall is a great experience, but there were certain negative elements that I didn't enjoy. How long did you get to spend on top? Maybe about 20 minutes, something like that. And it was, I mean, it was special. You're standing there.

And, but it's, look, it's, you've obviously had the lot, the chance to a lot of things and accomplished a lot of things your life. Is that it never quite feels the way you think it's going to feel, regardless of what it is, at least what I've experienced sometimes. And sometimes it's better. Sometimes it's worse. sometimes it's just different. And, you know, when I was leading up to the top is I remember thinking, and this sounds corny

to say, but I was kind of like, is my life about to change? Like, I will be a guy that summited Everest, and, you know, I don't know what that means and we'll figure it out. And more than anything is I just wanted, I knew my dad was following me on my tracker. And I just wanted to make him proud. I just hope that he was watching saying, you know, my son, you know, did this. And that's what meant the most to me, you know, at that point. just to be at the top and I just I just I just had so much gratitude because I wasn't even though I was

you know there just with just with my climbing Sherpa is all the people that it that had come into place to help get me there you know it just is basically just wait for me thanking them you know for for the their work giving me the ability you know to be in that place have you been able to land at a place where you realize your dad's going to be proud of you regardless of what you accomplish that's hard man honestly like Even you saying that, it makes me squirm inside. Because there's still, as much as I talk about, you know, the entire book is about strength and surrender.

And I've done so much work the past couple of years. I mean, so much just hard, lonely, painful work. And I'm in such a better place where now I can feel a full array of emotions. Is I can, you know, give love and I can feel fulfillment and contentment and, you know, and joy and things like that. But it's one of the biggest things I still struggle. with is feeling is receiving love and just because there's something still inside of me that I have to battle through saying hey it's okay you deserve it you know because I question if we ever deserve

anything you know in life you know period um but it's like I just it's it's hard for me to to say you know your dad can be proud of you or somebody can be proud of you or somebody can love you because I'm like I don't know if I've earned it you know and that's something I struggle with not that I'm aware of okay It's an interesting answer. No. No. It's, yeah.

And, you know, there's an argument for kids. There's an argument against kids. It's having three of my own, you can be proud of accomplishments. And very disappointed in other accomplishments that they may do. But it doesn't change the amount you love them. Yeah. You know, it's one of the things that I am still cognizant of to this day is I don't want my kids to ever compare themselves. to me, I have made some unique life choices. I've had unique occupations. Some of my hobbies

don't make sense to a lot of people, which I just feel like I'm surrounded by people who are boring. But to me, they make sense. But I don't ever want my kids to measure their life against my life because comparisons to the Thief of Joy. And I don't care if my kids ever summit Everest or never even think of doing so. And I'm sure your dad's in the same boat. I mean, he's proud of you either way. No, I appreciate you saying that. And it's, you know, because my dad came up in that era, you know, he was Vietnam. You know, he was in the Air Force. And he just, he's, he's, he's, he's a tough guy, you know, and I look up to him and I admire him in so many different ways. You know, he's just always there for his family and a provider and a protector, you know, things like that.

And it's, but that, it's that old school, you know, a handshake instead of a hug. Yeah. And there's no, I love yous and things like that. But it's, as I've gotten older, he now has told me a couple times that he loved me. Or he's told me. Or he's told me, a couple times that he's proud of me. You ever forced him to give you a hug? Oh, I do it now. Fuck yeah. It's funny to say that.

Get right in his face. Every time I see him now, for the past couple years, is I grow up and I grab him. I didn't make him hug me. Take pleasure in his uncomfortable. Yeah. Or I'll call him just out of the blue. And I'll call him. He's like, yeah, what's going on?

I was like, hey, listen, I just wanted to call and tell you, I love you. And thank you and mom for everything you gave me. And I just, I can feel him just cringe on the other side of the phone. Yes. Yeah. That is what I'm talking about. Yeah, I love it. Yeah.

I mean, honestly, though, his life is probably enriched by you doing those things. Yeah. He fucking hates that I guarantee you. And that's okay. Yeah. But he has, it's, he, look, he has said it is, look, I love my dad tremendously. I look up to him. He's, he's been a mentor of mine in many ways.

And he has made it known that he, that he's proud of me. But whenever he says that, there's a part of me, it's just like, I don't feel that I've earned it. Like, I feel like I should be doing even more to make him, you know, more proud. And I think there, there's a lot of. of negative elements of that that I'm still working through. But I think there are certain positive elements of that because I'm not going to be complacent in what I'm doing. I know that he only has, you know, he doesn't have a whole lot of time left. And it's just, that's why I want to do a lot of

these things, you know, is try to make him proud. So you get back from Everest, how soon, or was it on the freaking hike down where you're next? What am I going to do? Next. Yeah, it's just, exactly. You hadn't even left Everest, had you? Oh, no. Oh, no. Well, because, you know, before we even got started, So we were trying to do everything in a single year. It was just, it was a self-imposed one year. Because I'm like, about a 19-month calendar year. Yeah. It was just, I was like, listen, we're going to do all this shit in a year.

And I talked to people about it. And it's funny is whenever I start to describe the project, whether it be to, you know, Eric or, you know, monster that came on or like, you know, different people. It's, I'm like, well, we're there, what are you going to do? I'm like, well, I'm going to climb the highest picking up on each continent. And they're like, okay, good. I was like, then I'm going to go to North Pole and the South Pole. They're like, okay. I'm like, then I'm going to do this.

And they all looked like sharks where their eyes were rolling the back of their head and they would just glaze over and I'd lose them. And it's because we were trying to do so much in such a small period of time. So it's like before we even got going is we had everything, I mean, meticulously planned out. So when I got back from Everest, I was home for about five days, went to Denali, the highest peak in the U.S., you know, came back and then went almost straight to Kili in Africa and then went to Elbris and then came back and had a couple weeks and then went to the Mojave. And then after Mojave is when I was supposed to, became the first person to go so unsupported across Mahavi and Death Valley, 213 miles. Then I was supposed to fly the plane around the world at that point.

And then we lost the plane. Actually, we lost two planes at that point. That sucks. Yeah. It's hard to get in the first place and just gut-wrenching. And then you put all logistics in place. You've got all the things set up. Then you get a phone call and you're like, plane's gone.

So when did you learn to fly, though? So that was during- Likely a prerequisite for travel. It always helps. It always helps. Yeah. I think it was, I think I've maybe 10 years ago, 10, 12 years ago. Okay.

Yeah, about 12 years ago. How current are you? I'm still current, you know, VFR, FR. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Also helps to probably survive the journey. Yeah.

But, you know, the problem is we're talking to this on the way over is that, you know, is I'm current, I'm like cusp current. Yeah. Is, I mean, I maintain currency, but it's at the, just whatever I need to do, maintain currency. Yeah, you know, your three takeoffs and landing in 90 days and the three instrument approaches or whatever it is, because I have an instrument rating, but I'm not current. That may not prepare you for the challenges of circumnavigating. Exactly, exactly.

So as I get up, I mean, I fly for, you know, a couple hours a month and I'll go up, you know, and I'll shoot my practice approaches and hold in VFR, you know, VOR tracking, all that kind of stuff. That's not going to help when you can't find Iceland. Exactly. So, but obviously, you know, before, you know, all that is I was flying more and, you know, all the training and everything. but then, you know, that got canceled. And then... You think that'll ever come back on? I tell you, it will.

Is that I'm talking to a couple guys now that have an interest in flying with me who have different organizations as well, so I think we can kind of pair them together. Well, let's do it in a helicopter. Hey, I'd be told on board with from looking at that. But I bet you we can break the speed record. Yeah.

Well, see, that's what I wanted to do originally, was to try to... The problem is, and you know this with your flight pass, is that if you're breaking a fixed-wing speed record, I mean, some of these guys are flying just prototypes. These guys are, you know, peeing in buckets. And they've got just a flying gas tank. I do that just for fun.

I mean. That's a Tuesday. Yeah, I got a bucket under here. That's why I have this empty coffee cup. But it's, it's the, you can spend a lot of money trying to break the speed record in a fixed wing. But I wanted to do it in under 30 days. Ideally, like, two weeks is what I was trying to do.

Can you imagine trying to break that speed record and doing that whole thing and not having a second to enjoy it. Yeah. I don't, and that's the thing. Could you get attention from that? Sure. Could you do fundraising for that? Sure.

Could you impact other people's lives? Yes. But fuck, you'd have such a limited memory of that because you'd be on the ragged edge of just being your ability to think. I'd almost would either want to go slower, document the whole thing and celebrate it in a different way so it could be rewarding for the individuals involved as well. It's interesting that you say that. So, and this is just kind of, you know, a quick sidebar is, is really.

recently a couple months ago is in May is I did a second cross a second full crossing the Mojave whereas 300 just under 330 miles 329 miles and change and it's the it's a new record for the fastest crossing of the Mojave on foot and it was seven days eight hours and 45 minutes that's why I think I forgot I mentioned a little bit earlier but I was moving for 20 hours a day yeah no communications than anybody I was sleeping for less than three hours a night yeah you're I mean, literally every single minute, every single second was accounted for. So as soon as I started this thing and I hit the, you know, hit the timers and all the trackers. Yeah. I mean, for the next seven days, eight hours, 45 minutes, there was no sitting there and enjoying it. You're grinding.

You're grinding. I'm like, I'm sitting there on a break. I'm eating, eating, eating. I'm like, I got 30 seconds. I got 10 seconds. I'm like, I'm moving. And then when I'm getting ready to go to bed, I'm like, you know, cleaning my feet. I'm like, that's good enough because I only got five minutes to to watch this or watch that or, you know, it's like, and that, it's just, and I haven't really talked about this before with anybody, but it's when you're, when you're pushing on these speed records, is it such a grind mentally, especially when you're going for over a week, you know, something like that. So if you're doing that fly around the world, you'd be a little over a week. And it's just, it's very taxing. And you look back on it and you can remember

some things. You can't remember other things. And it's, it's a completely different experience. I'd rather do it in three weeks, document. I mean, I've been to Iceland and spent time there. Phenomenal country. And you're going to stop there, at least in Reykvik for gas. But in a small plane or a helicopter, you're going to go probably northeastern Canada to Greenland to Iceland and then into Europe. That is like strikingly beautiful areas. To not have the ability to at least fuck about a little bit.

I mean, come on. But it also, it's why are you doing what you're doing? Are you doing it just to just for your own kind of shits and giggles and set. record or you doing it to get, say, attention and, and generate resources, you know, for a cause. Yeah. And I think if you're going to do like that, then it is probably better to slow down. Yeah. And maybe you can stop somewhere and do like a talk or, you know, me can increase safety margin as well.

Exactly. There's just, there's a lot of different ways. So I think you're, I think it comes down to what's your ultimate goal. Like, why are you doing what you're doing? And then, you know, that kind of leads in, that can kind of back into it. But that being said, look, I would love to figure out a way to do something with you on, you know, whether it be, you know, rotary or, you know, something like that could be, It would be a lot of fun.

Anybody can do it and fix it. Yeah. I mean, you're going to be glad in half the way anyway. Yeah. It could technically. Rotary would be challenging because there's some big hops you'd have to make and they just don't have the distance. Yeah.

You're going to have some altitude requirements and restrictions. You're going to have to go around stuff. You might be able to go under some weather. But yeah, that would be a completely different challenge. But you can also land wherever you want to. Yeah. But that's the big thing now that rush is shut down. Like if you're coming back, you know, Northern Pacific is before you'd hit, you

Russia once or twice where you, you know, came over and made the jump to Alaska. Now you can't do that. I think they'd let us in. Yeah, you might be able to get in, but it's getting out. It's going to be the potential issue. I mean, that's the worst that could happen, right? You're right. Just Russia.

We had a helicopter. It's now got rockets attached to it. Yeah. And, yeah, that would be. Yeah. Okay. So you had all those plans. You did Everest.

He came back. You started doing those other things. Where did the row across the Atlantic come in? Yeah, so the row came in. And that was January 31st. 2021 through March something, 21. So it was 53 days. That's a long timeout in the old blue.

It was on 21 foot boat. Yeah. I mean, what's that like? The best way I can think to describe it is impressively uncomfortable. And look, as I know, and I know as I key, it's, I know that you've done. And honestly, look, I think the things that you've been through are a lot more difficult than a lot of things that I've been through. But I know that-

But it's a matter of, of you, I know you've been there, is that when things are so uncomfortable, it actually, you actually kind of disconnect from yourself and just, you're like, Jesus, like, this is like so uncomfortable. I mean, it's like impressive. It's so, I'm so uncomfortable right now. And when I got to is, when I got to the row of the plan was, I was like, if I can just make it there, having been successful on all these expeditions, I think it was the, I should know this, is either the ninth or 10th expedition.

I was like even to get there going through COVID, going through all this kind of stuff, it's going to be a borderline miracle. Yeah. And I was like, if I get there, I'm just going to get in that boat. I'm going to point it west and I'm going to row until that boat sinks or I fall out or I hit land. And I'm just going to shut the fuck up and just work. And that's what it turned into. Like I spent zero time preparing for it. Yeah, I was going to ask you, did just live on a concept two rover before that?

Zero. I would row periodically for like, you know, an hour or two, just as part of you. like general conditioning. Yeah. And I went down to there was a, there was a group that was at, um, at,

Marina del Rey in, in L.A. And it was like a row group for, for girls. And I called them up and I was like, listen, I'm a row across the Atlantic. I have no idea what I'm doing.

They're like, we'll come down and we'll show you a basic technique. I was on this little, you know, fake erg for 30, 45 minutes. I never even, you know,

left the dock. And I was like, that was my extent of, uh, practicing for this row. And you somehow got sponsors to pay for this? Yeah. Yeah, man.

All right. we got to talk about sales taxes because I need to learn the magic of it's not what you say it's how you say it yeah all right so you get on this boat and what point in time after starting this journey did you realize that perhaps this was a bad idea I'd say about about three hours in okay so you could probably still see land yeah what the funny it was it was myself and a partner Patrick farv who's just who's an awesome guy and you know we got out there and we're three hours in and like I feel I'm feeling great like no seasickness and we had pretty rough seas I I'm like, I'm, like, I'm chilling.

And he's like, well, you know, some small percentage of people don't experience sea sickness. He's like, maybe that's who you are. I'm like, I'm, you know, I'm Christopher Columbus out here. Like, I can do this. And I'm sitting there eating in the cabin while he's rowing. And then all of a sudden, man, I was like, br-and-and-and-I burst out of the cabin. I shove him to the left and I puke right over his shoulder. I mean, it's all over the deck.

And I'm just heaving and he just starts laughing. And I'm telling you, and I, excuse me, is I know you've experienced, you know, sea-sickness. It's the worst. It's for the next three days. Yeah, it doesn't leave you. I, if I wasn't row, and I was still rowing 12 hours a day, there's no, there's no bullshit like, oh, you don't feel good. You can skip this, you know, skip this.

So I was rowing 12 hours a day. And if I wasn't rowing, I was laying down with my eyes closed. Because if I, if I opened my eyes, if I sat up, if I had a sip of water, I would throw up. So there was no food and water for three days, rowing 12 hours a day. And then finally, after a couple days, I could eat, I could drink some water, then I could eat, like a protein shake. that I could, and then, you know, I finally kind of got into it. But it was just, it was just a work.

It's like, I'm just going to get up, get on here and just work. And like it's the, the thing was is you'd row in one position that the deck is only nine feet long. So if you weren't rowing, we would, the little cabin that we would live in is, it was four by four by four. So I'm this thing is tiny. And if you wanted to lay down, you would lay down and put your legs down the center, down the center kind of crawlway underneath the guy rowing. So you're laying like this, and this guy's like doing, he's rowing right here. You just can't escape it. Yeah, it's like right here.

And you're inside this little, this little fiberglass, you know, capsule. And the noise is just always, the waves hitting this thing, it never stops. And it's always rocking. And it's either, it's wet in there, then it's hot and it's muggy. And then we'd open the hatch and he would try to jump in fast and I'd try to switch positions. and sometimes we'd mistime it and a wave would just come to duck all this water in. So I'm like, I'm getting out. I'm like, I'm dry.

I'm ready to go and all of a sudden just, you know, 50 gallons of water. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, now the cabin's flooded. All my stuff's wet. I'm wet. And now I got a row for four hours. And it was just, it was just, it was impressively uncomfortable. And about something like a weekend is our watermaker broke. So we had an auto, an automatic water maker on there.

We just, you know, you just. Yeah, exactly. You just flip a button and you get, you know, we were each going, we were going through like 10 liters a day, you know, something like that. And it would take maybe five minutes fill up 10 liters. And like, you didn't have to do anything. And all of a sudden one day, you know, we go to start it and it just there's nothing. I'm like, what the hell? And we can't fix it. And we had to pull out our backup. And our backup was a manual pump that was affixed to this wooden board, like a sheet that was maybe two feet by three feet with a pump on it. And we dragged two hoses. behind the boat. And you'd have to sit there and pump this thing like this for three hours, three hours to get the water that you needed. So we went from five minutes

of doing nothing to three hours of nonstop pumping to get the water we needed. And it took us almost a week to finally get that thing fixed. And turns out it was like a little $4 part, like a little relay switch. And luckily we had one

and plugged that thing back in. But I was already so uncomfortable. And then I'm like, now I've got to pump. this damn pump for three hours a day. I was like, it just, it almost just, it puts you on the verge of this is just turned into like a nightmare. What's the first thing you did when you got to shore on the other side of the Atlantic? First thing I did was get back on the boat. And I mean that. And you probably experienced this with what you went through is that there's seasickness and then there's

land sickness, you know, when you get back on. And I was so used to being on this 21 foot boat and rocking. I'm like, oh, this is, you get comfortable. And we, We got to land. I got off on land. And I mean, I'm walking like I'm just drunk. I'm walking into stuff. I'm falling over. And I get really nauseous.

So after about three minutes, I get right back on the boat. And I just stay on the boat for a couple hours. I'm like, I'm not, this is, I'm like, screw this land thing. I'm like, I'm a seaman now. What was the first meal you had? An apple. I just wanted some fresh fruit. Okay.

Yeah. What were you guys mostly surviving on food? It was, as you expect. It was, you know, freeze-dried meals. And then I had, I brought, you know, a bunch of protein shape. I mean, I had brought like, you know, pounds of just protein mix. Yeah. That and then beef jerky.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, that is, yeah, probably from a space saving perspective the way to go. That's, and I think I ended up eating like 350 of the freeze pack, you know, foods. Like I was going through just, just mowing these things. And the funny thing was, is that we brought a, like a jet bowl. You had to boil the water to have the hot food and everything. and after, you know, the first three days of trying to eat and sitting there lighten this thing

and having a jet bowl on a, you know, on a choppy ocean. I was like, just ate them cold. I was like, if I want to eat at 5 p.m., I was like, I would fill my water in my one at one and just let it sit there. And so for 53 days, I ate cold food and just, you know, beef jerky and protein checks. Then an apple. Yeah. When did Antarctica occur in this?

An article was just before the row. Okay. So as I'd gone down, actually, yeah, so I went down to Antarctica for, I was fortunate enough to be down there for a month on the ice. So went down there, climbed Vincent and it went to the South Pole. So you probably went through ALE as well. Exactly. Yeah, I've heard you talk about base camp and about glaciers. The most interesting dude alive.

Yeah. Yeah. McDow is awesome. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we shared some of the same space there. There was people who were, there's another base camp out at Vincent, right?

They fly you out there. Exactly. But then you skied, right? to the South Pole? The way it works is if you're doing the South Pole, there's different ways you can do it. So I did what's called the last degree. So I went from the 89th parallel to the pole. So it's 69 statute miles. You can do a full crossing. You can do there's different inlets where you can start. You can do like a Messner start or a Hercules start or you can start on the Weddell Sea or Ross. Like there's a lot of different ways you can do it. So I did what's

called the last degree. So we flew from Union Glacier, you know, from the camp where you were as well, you know, out past Thiel's corner, got some fuel there, which is, I think, their most remote airstrip in the world, you land out in the middle of nowhere. There's a building where there's a bathroom and a couple 50-gallon drums of fuel and snow. I mean, what else do you? Yeah, right? Like, that's it. Yeah. And then we flew out to the 8th parallel, got dropped off.

And then it's so interesting to get dropped off in Antarctica. And the plane flies away, and you're looking around. And there's a small station at the South Pole, which is basically 70 miles away. other than that, it could be hundreds or thousands of miles, and there is nothing, man. And besides, like, some fungi and maybe like a roundworm or something, like there's no life. There's no insects. There's nothing. Yeah.

There's nothing. And, you know, I think what I've said about, you know, skiing to the pole, it's like, if you want to get an idea for it, is good on a treadmill, go on a freezer that's 30 or 40 below and put it right in front of a white wall and do that for about 12 hours a day. and that's basically what it is. I mean, you're looking around, it's just a bunch of flat, white, nothing. Yeah. It's very interesting. I laugh.

People talk about colonizing, Mars. I'm like, you want to colonize Mars. Go down to Antarctica just for a little while and tell me what you think about that. It's just, it's different. I would want to be on the fifth or sixth wave. Yeah.

It's just like, when you get in these places that are so inhospitable, where it can be 30, 40, below and even, you know, even worse. And then it can change. And I know you've been through this with what you've experienced is. It can change so quickly to where all of it. Like, you could be scanned.

It could be 20 below, but you're damn near sweating or you are sweating. And now you're stripping off layers and you're doing this and this. And you're trying to, you know, not get cold. Because if you get cold, you can get like some serious, you know, issues. But if you sweat, you can get some serious issues. Exactly. It's like, it's kind of, you have to walk this line. Then all of a sudden, like you're stripping something off.

And then all of a sudden, one cloud comes. And then now you're just, I mean, race and to put everything back on before you get severe frostbite. I mean, and you could get frostbite in 30 seconds, you know, something like that. So then what did you do up at the North Pole? Was it something similar? The only thing I've done at the North Pole so far is sit in Krasnoyarsk, Russia for two weeks. And what I mean by that is that the North Pole has been canceled every year since 2019 or 20.

Who gets to cancel the North Pole here? It's so... Is this the Santa Claus thing? Exactly. Yeah. It's tough. is that no one technically controls a North Pole. Yeah.

And normally the way you'd get to the pole typically was through Norway. Okay. But then all the people on the ground, you know, the staffers, things like that were Russian staffers. And then Norway and Russia starting having some issues over, you know, various things. And it's either 2019, 2020, I'm blanking now. Do they have a station up there similar to the Murdoch Station? No, no, no, there's nothing like that.

Okay. Yeah, because is where the North Pole is very different than the South Pole is there is no land at the North Pole. It's just floating pack ice. Okay. So the only way that you can get to the, typically the only way you get to the North Pole is about a three or four week period every April. And that's it. Some people have tried to get there during the winter, you know, like on a solo trip or like two people. And sometimes you do. I've seen some of those. They're getting into the sled that they're following or dragging behind them, which is a boat. Exactly. It's different things. And now, and before you, as you had a couple people that would go up and pick you up in offseason attempts, things like that. And now nobody does it anymore. So unless you're going during season attempts, more. than likely, you just can't do it anymore for various reasons, plus ice conditions, you know, things like that. So basically, since that time is I've been scheduled to go to the poll four or five

different times and it's gotten canceled every single time. And normally it's within like a week notice or two weeks notice. And that's the hard part is that, and when I found out about in 2022 when I was run across the Atlantic, we were halfway across the Atlantic when I got the phone call, you know, over my satellite phone that Russia went into Ukraine and the poll was canceled. And we were on track to do everything. Like nobody believed we could, very few people believed we could do it. We were on track to do everything successfully the first time, you know, all this kind of stuff. Like everything was coming together. And to get that news that everything I'd worked for for years and all the sacrifices and all the money and all the people. So it wasn't just about me. It's like so

many people put their efforts into this and that we lost it is, I mean, I went into just a spiral, you know, for a couple days where I'm like, I let everybody down. I failed this. I was like, I didn't care that I'd been 100% successful to that point is, and I internalized everything. Like, even though it was outside of my control, excuse me, it was outside of my control that, you know, that Russia went in. I was like, I should have still been able to find a way to work around it and I couldn't. So therefore, I'm a failure and I've let everybody down. Yeah, how could you not solve that power on a remote boat? Yeah.

With a satellite communicator and no understanding what's going on in the world. And it's like, what a piece of shit. I understand. I understand, you know, uh, on a certain level, you know, on a rational level. But just internally with how I process things and how I internalize things, I sat there. I'm like, you piece of shit failure, you let all these people down. You couldn't find a way to get the poll.

I don't care. It's, I don't, it's, I hate when people tell me stories. They're like, hey, I'm going to do this. I'm like, did that happen? They're like, well, here's why it didn't happen. That drives me up a wall. I mean, even got on my finger here is NFS for no fucking stories. It drives me up a wall.

And I felt like I was starting to tell people's stories. I was like, well, we didn't accomplish it because Putin goes into, you know, Ukraine and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I should have been able to find a way. And that was something that was hard to deal with, you know, for a while. Sometimes life doesn't let you find a way. It's, and that, I'm sorry, I kind of got sidebarred there, but that leads back to this past year, is that we finally got that we're going to have a chance for a poll again. What are you going to do with the North Pole?

Yeah, it's the same thing. Is you, as I'll get dropped off at the 8-9th parallel, finish skiing, and you get picked up. But this past year is in March, is I flew through, I flew into Russia. So I flew into Krasniewarsk, which is in Siberia. It's the absolute very center of Russia. And we sat there for two weeks. And we were supposed to go up. And at the last minute, there's a crack that developed into ice that was so big they

couldn't fix it. And they decided to cancel the season after sitting in Russia for two weeks. Shit. Yeah. You going back in 25? Going back. Yeah. scheduled.

Yeah. It's one of these things just like, I don't give it. I don't care, 25 or 21, 25. Yeah, I mean, you'll get it down with that level of relentlessness for sure. So, okay, you've got the North Pole still outstanding.

What else do you have that you're trying to accomplish? Circumnavigation at some point. We'll figure out a way to do it in a helicopter, obviously. What else? What else you're thinking? For Project 7 for Soldiers, your inaugural project, is that's going to be the end of it.

Okay. Is that, so it's, the pole is the end of it. The pole is going to be the end of it. Exactly. But then if we can figure out a way to get around the world, preferably in a helicopter. It would be cool to have a, you know, that one project that you completed it. There's a way that you could ideate those things along. Exactly. Is that we could kind of, you know, bring it back in and kind of restart it for a second.

You know, there's different ways that we could figure it out. But for the entirety of Southern for Soldiers, the North Pole is going to be the end of it. And then now I'm just kind of figuring out the next expeditions, you know, that I kind of want to put together. And I've got just, you know, a bunch of ideas. and now it's kind of prioritizing which, excuse me, which way I want to go about them, you know, and what I want to pursue first because it's, you know, I'd love to do like a longer row, maybe something across the Pacific, but that could be 250, 300 days, you know, something like that. And a challenge is, it's going to be a long one. But if you, if you want to say, if you want

to climb, you know, another 8,000 meter mountain, you don't sit on the Pacific for 300 days and then start training for a mountain. You know, you do the mountain first, obviously, then go across the Pacific. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, how to stage the things that I'm looking at doing next. So the things you're looking at doing next, do they seem to be individual or do you, are you going to try to chain some things together? That's a good question is, I don't even have a great answer at this point, is more than they're going to be more individualized unless it's something like going after all the 8,000 meter peaks, you know, which, there are 14 of them.

So I've knocked out, obviously one under's 13 to go, is that those would be individual mountains, but collectively they would be 8,000 meter peaks. So I'm just trying to figure out, you know, kind of what the objective is, then kind of how I want to kind of weave them together or I'm standing independently. How do you get a brand like Monster to bite on something like this? Because they get pitched shit. All the time. I was going to say every day, but realistically, it's probably every hour.

Dozens of times a day. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I tell you, I appreciate you asking that. Is Monster has been just a tremendous partner for us, is that, you know, we were trying to get in touch with them for years. And I mean, and we had no idea, you know, who was there. We didn't know anybody.

So it's like cold calls and emails. And, I mean, just we walked through the front door. 1-800 monster. Yeah. Hello. We walked, listen, we walked through the front door like everybody else. Like, hello, miss so-and-so, my name is, you know, whatever. And so we, they didn't know me from Adam.

And at the time, I'd never done anything. You know, there were no records. There were no climbs. There were no, I mean, there was nothing. I've barely done anything now, but this was even worse. Is that we finally, you know, got a phone call. and I was basically, you know, sent it out a cold email to him to Darlene Bartlett, Bartlett, and sent it into her and she's like, listen, you know, the CFO, Dan McHugh wants to have a phone call.

And I was like, did she send this to the right person? I'm like, what? I was like, I can't be reading. Like, is it? What's going on here? So we organize a call with Dan. And I'm telling you the first five minutes of talking to Dan. I was like, I felt like I'd known him 20 years.

I mean, he treated me just with. such just grace and friendship and camaraderie. He's like, he's like, I see it. He's like, I see what you're doing. I see why you're doing it. And he's like, we want to be a part of it. How do you think that you separated yourself from the other messages that got headed in that direction?

That's, yeah, that's a great question. And I think about that because, you know, I think about the success we've had with Monster. And I think about why other people and even smaller brands have turned us down. Yeah. Not even, you know, return phone calls or emails or, you know, so we- Happens all the time to people. people every day. It's, I think the, the, you have to be authentic is I think a lot of times when you're trying

to get money, you're trying to get resources from people, people have a tendency to just to say whatever they feel they need to say in order to get whatever they're trying to get. But that can only play for so long. And I think it's just, you've got to be as authentic as possible. And then sometimes there's something about that message that just resonates with somebody. And I wish I had a better answer, but that's all I, that's really all I've come up with, is that I think, you know, Dan saw that he heard the passion in my voice and that, and I told him I was going to dedicate everything, you know, that I had or was to this thing and 100% of the net proceeds are benefiting somebody else. So I wasn't in it, you know, just for direct, you know, personal gains. And a lot of it was we were, you know, while we were doing what we were doing what we were doing. And a lot of people don't realize what Monster does a lot of stuff on a philanthropic level. But the way they normally work is they don't put their name on any of it. Is they're writing checks? They're organizing things. You're doing all this kind of stuff. Especially for veterans, like they do a lot of stuff that they simply don't promote. And, but, you know, we hit it off

with them. And a couple weeks later, I went down and Dan and I had breakfast together in, in San Clemente, and just got kicked off. And they have been by far our biggest supporter on the entire project. And it's just been a tremendous, you know, honor to work with them. And it's just, it's been just a great family. Because, you know, when you, when you see Monster, it's, you know, Monster has a certain reputation and a certain branding and a certain style and things like that. But I'm telling you, Once you get in there, is there's such a passionate group of people. They're just awesome people to work with. They care about philanthropic endeavors.

They care about veterans. It's just been, we couldn't have asked for a better partner. How will you know when you're done? On like a personal level. Yeah, with setting records, pushing yourself to that level. Yeah, it's, I don't know if I'll ever be done. And I don't mean that from a record setting standpoint. It's in me.

where, and I think it's in all of us, just to, you know, to varying degrees and showcase itself in various ways, is that there's something inside of me that I have to get out of me. And there's a, there's a great quote in a Bible, and just to paraphrase it is, if you let out what's inside of you, what's inside of you will save you. If you don't let out what's inside of you, what's inside of you will destroy you. And I've been in that place, you know, we talked about earlier for so many decades of not letting that thing out, not working to get that thing out. And I'm not working to get that thing out and I felt it destroying me in a variety of ways. And now that I kind of have kind of figured it out a little bit and I've continued to figure it out on a daily basis, I'm just always striving to

try to get that thing out of me, whatever it is. But that doesn't necessitate me setting records or me doing things in a public forum or anything like that. It could be something that's totally personalized that I never promote, that I never do anything. But I think that'll always be a part of, of I don't think we ever truly get everything out of us. But I think it's always a continuous quest to try to get everything out of us. I'm not even sure most people even try. That's an unfortunate statement that I can probably agree with. Yeah.

I think that, you know, the question is, you know, you hear all these things about, you know, the secret or the secret to life or the this or that or, you know, why we're hearing this and that. And, you know, and look, I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, you know, and a lot of things. I know the difference between those two. I don't know a lot. But it's, well, look, what I've figured out, you know, for me is that we're here for two reasons. And it's growth. Number one is growth. And second is you take that growth and you apply it to elevate others.

And that's it. I don't give us, I don't care whatever else you do. Everything we do, I'm not here to be happy. I'm not here to screw around. And it's like I'm here to grow and use that growth to elevate others. You think you can do both? Be happy and grow and use that. growth to elevate others?

This is not to sound, yeah, it's a great question, and this is not to sound dramatic. Happiness doesn't factor into my life. I never use the term happy. I never think about, am I happy? Do you want it to? You know, I question that. But what I look at is contentment. It's like, am I content with who I am?

Am I content with my performance? Do I feel fulfilled in my endeavors and with my achievement? So it's really contentment and fulfillment are the things that I look for over happiness. Some people might define that as happiness. It's just an issue of an accident. Exactly. And I'm not trying to play, exactly. And I'm not trying to play a game of semantics.

But it's just, I think, you know, too often we get caught, especially today because we've got this, you know, like Michael Easter talks about this comfort crisis, you know, this level of comfort we're looking for. We're looking for ease and happiness in our lives all the time. And so I think the, I think the term happiness has kind of gotten convoluted. or misconstraigned in certain ways. You know what I mean? Where it's just like, oh, I just want to be happy.

I just want things to be easy. I just want to enjoy life. You know, and I don't look at it that way. But be honest with it is, I don't know if I will ever be happy. It's just there, again, there's things that I'm working through and, you know, that I'm working for. But I try to be, again, you know, fulfilled and content and, you know, things like that. Are you happy when you're suffering during these expeditions? I would say is I enjoy it.

And I don't know if that's the same as happiness. I don't either. Yeah, but I enjoy it. But again, this is not a game of semantic, you know, a work game. Yeah. You know, what I was getting at is, is I don't look at this stuff as suffering. And I know I keep drawing a lot of parallels to you because, look, I have a tremendous amount of respect for things that you did in your former life. I could have taught a monkey to do everything I've done in my life.

I'm not joking. You're always very humble about it and I appreciate it. But honestly, when I look at, say, you know, trekking days, you know, over a week across Mahavia alone and, you know, rolling the ocean, like doing it and, you know, whatever, is that's not suffering. And it doesn't suck. It's difficult. And I want to do it because it's difficult. Because, like I said earlier, is that even though we live into margins or even though we live kind of in this down the center of the fairway, that's not really where you're learning as much as you can or the real stuff about yourself. we learn about ourselves into margins.

You know, when you're operating and it's sunny and it's 70 degrees and you're safe and comfortable, you just had an MRI or a freeze pack meal, that's one thing. When it's three in the morning and you're cold and tired and wet and alone, that's a different thing. That's when you really learn about yourself. And like, that's what interests me and that's what drives me. So, you know, I say that is the things that, you know, that other people have faced, whether it's, you know, the things, you know, like losing somebody in combat, you know,

working as slave labor in a diamond mine somewhere, being in a concentration camp, getting a phone call that the person that you love has terminal illness, like that's suffering. Going across Mahadi in seven days is not suffering. It's difficult. And that's where I draw that distinction in my mind. And I'm doing these things not to suffer, but to put myself in difficult situations to learn about myself and to exemplify to others, hey, if this old fat guy can do this, you know, imagine what you can do.

And just to exemplify that we're all capable of so much more. And I know you learned this as well is where we think our limits are, we think they're like these solid walls and we're going to get there and we can't go around them or we can't go through them or over them. You get there and it's just, it's a cloud most of the time. You're like, holy shit, I thought this was my limit. Then you're like, oh, maybe it's over there. And you get over there and you're like, it's not here.

Maybe it's like we, we're capable of so much more than we realize. And you can't explore that unless you, you know, push yourself. to those levels. You have to get out of the world of glorious excess that most people live in, which most people don't want to do. And what you were just saying, were you using yourself as the example of the fat old guy? Yeah. We need to talk about how you view yourself. Michael, would you describe him as the fat old guy? Not fat. There's a lot of power and positive self-talk. We might want to reframe on how we look at ourselves. Yeah.

It's, it's, you know, endurance and adventure stuff is not an old man's game to get started in this at 40 versus these guys that are doing this up at 25. It's just a different, man, it's a different world. It's, it's different. Yeah, but, you know, there's a reason in competitive sports that they have age brackets and experience brackets and all of those things. Again, at 40, be cautious comparing yourself to a 25-year-old. It's tough, man. It gets really tough for them when they need wisdom and experience. Yeah.

And they don't have it. And you do. You know what I mean? The scales tip, depending on what is being required of you. Yeah. You know, the two buckets of knowledge and luck. And you have to really pull from the luck one until you have the knowledge and experience and balance it out. Yeah.

I mean, pros and cons to everything. Yeah. But it's, uh, it's been, uh, it's been interesting. It's been interesting, especially to your point, it's to start it at this age. Because look, if I were to start this when I was younger, is I wouldn't have been doing the same things for the same reasons. And it's, it's, you know, there are parts of me that, that look back on my journey and wish that I'd started it sooner or wish this or wish that, but it's just I wouldn't be who I am and I wouldn't be where I am. You know, so I look back just with, you know, more gratitude

or with gratitude. And it's, it's, it's maybe not what I would have planned, you know, if I had if I had the choice, but it's, it's, I am where I am and I've never been more fulfilled. I've never felt more connected to others. I've never felt more of service to others. I've never felt, you know, with a more, I've had a more purposeful existence. You're threatening to be happy. Oh, don't say that. Has anybody ever pitched you on an expedition idea where you thought about it and then said, fuck that?

Not at this point, man. Not at this point. Not like a homemade submarine where you have to like leg paddle that thing through the Atlantic. Would you be in on that? I tell you, I've gotten some, I've gotten, you know, a couple offers on different things, but it's, it's, it's, I want to, I want to push the, I want to start pushing myself in different areas. Okay. And, you know, I'm looking forward to figuring out what that means.

And at this point, I don't know what it means, you know, which is kind of exciting. It's kind of irritating, but still kind of exciting at the same time. And everything you've done, what do you consider to be the most challenging thing you've done in your life? Besides this podcast? This shit's easy. Anything. I'd say, really, it's, I'll give you just two quick ones. And, you know, one is from an expedition standpoint, probably the Mojave crossing of 320 miles.

29 miles and change. Is it just the grind? It was just the grind. It was. It was, and like, I'm still learning, you know, to do, you know, all this kind of stuff. And so I don't, I don't have, you know, the, the systems in place that some people do and things like that. And, for example, after a couple days in, I mean, my groin just absolutely exploded. It was so raw.

I mean, it was, it was just, it was so painful. And I'm sitting there, you know, and just tucking things here and putting it there, just trying to have some type of comfort. And I mean, I've got blood and pus oozing down both legs. I mean, I'm sure you went through the same thing. And a lot of stuff you've done. And it was just, it was so painful. You know, and my feet are just blistered up.

And I'm just walking. I just feel my feet just squishing around and all this kind of stuff. And everything is just seized up. Like when I start moving, you know, I was trying to maintain a certain speed. Yeah. And then when I'd start moving, I was walking like a half a mile an hour, like literally a half a mile an hour. I look like Igor. And I would go sideways sometimes.

I'd go forward. I'd go backwards. Like, whatever I could do to move in that direction. I was pushing a car, I was pulling it. Like, it was just, it was just bad. And it was just that never-ending grind. And the last 72 miles was a 36-hour straight push with no sleep, you know, very little rest, no, you know, very few breaks, all that kind of stuff.

So from a physical standpoint, that was probably it. But from a greater perspective, it was just staying in this for so long since 2018. And there were so many times, you know, we talked about perceived limits earlier. There were so many times when I thought I was at my physical, psychological, emotional limits. And I'm like, I'm all in. Like I'm putting all the chips on the table. I'm all in. And the universe would say, you got to find a way to put more on the table if you want to continue.

Like you've got to find out, you know, more sponsor money. You've got to find a way to get to Russia. You got to find a way this. You know, you got to find, you got to do more. and I would sit back and I'd say I can't I'm like I'm all in I have nothing left to give and the universe would say to me that's your problem not mine if you want to continue you've got to find a way to grow as a person and find some way to go more into this project and that happened time and time and time again and I can't tell you is I mean I I I mean all the all the nights I'd lay there alone in bed and just just thinking about all my mind just racing or I'd wake up at three o'clock in the morning thinking about it's about this stuff, about I've got to find a way to do more. I've got to find a way to find more money. I've got to find a way to get it here.

I've got to find a way to make it. It's like it's just continuously being forced to go more and more, to give more of yourself to something was, was probably, that was probably the greatest challenge. You know, that's, that's been, you know, that's happened since starting a project. At all the things you've done and we've talked about, none of the physical stuff I consider to be impressive, to be honest. Yeah.

The most impressive thing you've talked about is your willingness and ability to get out of bed when you didn't think you could. That to me is, I think, the most impressive thing you've done. You changed your mindset and you changed who you were and you realized where you were and you didn't want to be there anymore and you did something about it. I mean, all the stuff that you're doing for other people, that's fantastic stuff, but how many people do we both know that if they get to that low point, they can't find their way out of it?

And it sucks. Yeah. And I've had plenty of friends who made the decision to end it. at that point. And it says a lot about you that you went the opposite direction from that and made something out of it. Now, look, I appreciate you saying that. And I would wholeheartedly agree with you. Is the, you know, the physical expeditions have been, have been a big challenge. You know, and all the training and, and look, it's, you know, surgeries and frostbite and, you know, injuries and, you know, and sacrifices and all that. But it is, it is you're right.

Is that stuff pales in comparison to the other stuff that I face? But again, as I'm not, and I'm not bringing I'm not prioritizing myself here. It's that we all face. You know what I mean? And when we're in those dark places, I think that's one reason that a lot of people can't, or that's not that they can't, they choose not to get out of bed

or they choose not to show up at the starting line is because we feel that we're uniquely alone in our suffering or our perceived suffering. And we don't have the proper perspective. And that's two of the greatest things I've learned for this project is appreciation and perspective. and with the proper appreciation perspective, life is nearly limitless, and our capabilities are nearly limitless.

And when you sit there, it's like, I don't care what I've been through. Millions of people have been through it millions of times, as I said earlier, or even worse, millions of times. Even though our suffering hurts, our pain hurts, there's nothing unique about it. There's nothing special about it. And when we understand that and we have that level of connection to say, hey, other people have overcome this, I think it creates that level of perspective. that enables us to get out of bed.

I know you've talked about, um, about say buds and that no one particular evolution or day was that challenging. Yeah. But it's showing up again and again and again and you talk about it's like kind of rubbing your knuckles on a cheese grater, I think you mentioned. Or sandpaper.

It's that. It's just, it's just once is easy. 180 days in a row with a little bit different story. Exactly. And that that's what it is. It's just showing up every single day. You know?

And that's, that's just, that's a challenge that I think a lot of people face. And that's the, look, that's, I'm glad you mentioned is that's one of the biggest things, you know, that I talk about in the book and I'm trying to get the message across is even if you don't care about all the physical challenges is that's not what the story is about. Those are elements of the story. And if you want to hear about the mountain was this high and it was 20 degrees below zero and

the pack weighed 80 pounds. Like all that stuff's in there. All that story's in there. But it's a story about evolution and redemption and finding purpose and overcoming pain and dealing with all these things that we all deal with. And I'm just trying to get people to understand that we all deal with this and not to feel alone and lost and segregated and isolated in that pain. Did you find it hard to write? Actually, I don't think that it was. How'd you tackle it?

Would you write just when you were inspired or did you put yourself on a schedule? Yeah, no, it was funny. So I originally, I hired a woman that ended up working with as my editor who I thought was going to be the ghost writer for the book. And I had written like all these personal journals on the, the expeditions that originally I never thought would be published. Like these are, and these are included in a couple of them are included in the book. These are like very raw, personal, intimate, like, you know, personal journals.

So I sent those to her and I had written probably about 150 pages of just like notes and stream of consciousness and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, I'm just going to give all this stuff to her that we're going to have two or three phone calls. Make something of this. Exactly. I'm like, here it is. You send me a book in a week, you know, a couple weeks.

And I'm an author. Yeah. And she sent me back. you know, kind of two or three paragraphs, the first draft of two or three paragraphs. I looked at it. I was like, I got to write a book. I'm like, this isn't going to work because it wasn't my voice. And she's a very skilled, successful author, but it just, it wasn't my story. It wasn't my voice. It didn't have, you know, that. I'm like, I got to write a book. And this thing ended up being originally like 92,000 words in the beginning. We got it down to 83,000. But to your point is, is I would sit down

every single day, whether I was inspired or not, and just start writing because I was still training full-time. I was still running, you know, managing the organization, you know, doing the Mojave, like doing all this stuff. So I couldn't sit back and wait for the inspiration to hit me. It's just you got to just, you know, we're talking about earlier, because I would just grind on it until. Did you set a word goal for the day or time? No, is I would just kind of, I would just get to a place where I could feel where I was starting to kind of tell off. Yeah. And sometimes I could get through a chapter, sometimes I'd get through two pages. I'm just like, it's, it's, it's, I could just feel, yep, you know, one of these things, I'm like, it's not, I'm forcing it right now.

Yeah, just put it down. Exactly. I had to put it down and walk away from it. Other times I'd sit down, I'm like, just, but yes, is people keep out, or a lot of people have asked if I felt it was kind of of cathartic, you know, to, to write it and everything. And honestly, it wasn't. Is there was nothing, I didn't have any of these big revelations about it. I didn't have, you know, any of that stuff as I was kind of reliving it and going through it. Because a lot of this stuff is, once I did it, I kind of moved on from it and wasn't really, you know, going back on it and reliving it. But it was just very kind of more, you know, matter of fact of, you know, kind of what I learned, what I experienced, you know, that kind of thing.

You think you're right another one? Yeah. Yeah. What's going to be about? Well, I've got an idea now is that with the crossing of the Mojave is I want to take that as an isolated, as an isolated event, you know, which obviously it was, is, and I've got a couple ideas about different things that people are seeking. in today's society that I feel are likely leading to dissatisfaction with their lives.

And then to use that kind of like use that in tandem with the story of the Mojave crossing to where there's kind of parallels and kind of take you into the story, out of the story and things that I experienced with what I see kind of trend lines I'm seeing that people are using that I think are leading to dissatisfaction. You saying that makes me think about what we started the conversation with your banking job. how many times have you seen people from an economic perspective they have enough money they can do whatever the fuck they want to do but are just hollow and unhappy inside a lot how did that become the goal for everybody we know you've seen the end state and i've seen it too

people who i don't think drop a million dollars and i don't even know what the if it means to them if they even notice it and they have everything multiples of everything but they're not happy how the fuck did that become the goal for everybody? It's a good question, man. And I've seen it both, look, I've seen it through banking where we've sold companies and someone gets a check for $100 million. And I talk to them two months later and they're miserable. They're like, I don't know what to do.

That seems to most people that would sound unfathomable. Exactly. It's just, and it talks about when you, it's like kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When you have it, we have that kind of that base net. Now you need just, you need different things is that, yeah, you can keep the lights on. can have your turkey sandwich every you wanted or water, you know, whatever it is. But if you don't have that greater level of some, it's the other things that we need. I mean, I've seen people a lot of many who are saying, you know, be miserable. I know, look, personally years ago, maybe, I don't know,

eight, ten years ago, I was in San Trope with a buddy. And we're on this big yacht. It's in Georgia, right? Southern Georgia. Yeah. It's in the Gulf. But we're in, we're in, and I think about this story from time to time is that we're in San Trope. It's two. three o'clock in the morning, we're on some big-ass yacht there in the harbor and there's just, everybody's drinking and there's drugs and there's good-looking people and there's music going and all this kind of stuff. And this thing is, I mean, there's a lot of money, you know, in this place. And I'm looking around and I'm like, I'm absolutely miserable right now.

I'm like, these people suck. I'm like, this energy sucks. I'm like, these people are just, these are just not people that you want to be around. And I don't care how much money you have. And I think you kind of, once you've kind of seen this stuff enough, and you understand is, I'd rather be living in a one bedroom, you know, here in Calisbell, driving some $3,000 truck, then it's the biggest house in Beverly Hills, you know, driving whatever, but not living that lifestyle and not living in the genuine way that I need to be living. Yeah. You know, once you've seen there and you've been around it and seen it, I know you've had an opportunity

to see a lot of it, it's not what you think it is, you know? It doesn't solve any problems. It doesn't, man. It doesn't. It's like, I remember it's like the first time I went to Vegas when I was in, I was like 20, 21 is I went to, I was like, oh, man, this is Vegas. Like I'm here. And I remember walking, I think we were in Caesars or something.

I walk up and there's a gold column. I'm looking at it. I'm like, this piece of shit plastic column is spray painted gold. You know, and I know that sounds stupid and it's a simple story, but it had such a profound impact on me. I'm like, this isn't real. Like, none of this is real. Like obviously, you know, the money and means and resources, those can be very real things.

But for the most part, once you have a very basic necessity list met, the rest of the stuff, I think if you're living in the right way for the right reasons, it doesn't get tied into that. It's just, it's more, you know, outside of that like we've been talking about. Yeah, it's, I don't know how we change that value system. And don't keep me wrong. I like nice shit. Everybody likes nice shit. I think you get lost in the pursuit of the nice stuff.

I think you lose who you are or you think that that thing is going to change who you are. And it just doesn't. I don't know how we change that. You know, I think a lot of it is you have to ask yourself, it's not what you do, but it's why you do it. And I think that that's a big thing. You know, to be honest, he's like, before we started this thing, I was like, oh, man, if I can set a couple world records, my life is going to be so different. I'll be a different person. I'll be, you know, this and that.

And I've been very fortunate enough to set a handful now. And it doesn't mean what I thought it would mean. It doesn't feel the way I thought it would feel. And that's the same thing, whether it's that, whether somebody went in the Super Bowl, whether it's getting a promotion, whether it's getting married, whether it's having the kid. It's all the same stuff. It's like, why are you doing what you're doing? I think that's the key is to examine that and to be earnest and honest with your motivation

rather than, you know, the motivation of the pursuit, you know, not. just the end, you know, of the pursuit, not just that end goal. Easier said than done, especially in the world that we live in. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, to tie that back to social media is, it's so much this stuff's in your face now. And I think just it's a basic kind of human instinct in a lot of ways to want to either join in or, you know, to feel like you're part of the group because we're pack animals, you know, by nature. Yeah.

Or to want to compete or, you know, things like that. So you kind of get wrapped up into this thing. I sometimes wonder if the social media, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, universe. I'll use the Kardashians as an example of a family that I know almost nothing about other than they have a TV show and a huge following and a massive level of influence. And I think for a lot of people, that's the end state. They want to be able to live like them, travel like them, dress like them, have their ability to do whatever it is. I think a lot of the times before there's a large course correction, it has to be taken a little bit too far. And I wonder if that desire

will ever be taken too far and then course correct back towards something that is a little bit more and achievable. And if it does, what does that end up doing to people like the Kardashians? When that the power that they wield, whether they think about it in those terms or not, it's just less powerful. I wonder if they'll be able to tolerate that. Yeah. Look, I think that's a good point.

And what I question is, has that always been there? And are we just now experiencing it in a different way at a different velocity? Probably. Yeah, when you think about back in- It just, I think, used to be more localized. Exactly. There would be somebody in your community, and by that I mean, depending on what era you lived in, where you could walk or ride your horse to.

I guarantee you there was always somebody who probably perceived to have more. Exactly. Now we're just doing that on a fucking global scale that is instantaneous. Exactly. That's what it is. So it's just the magnification, I think, of something that's always existed. Like if you look back at, you know, Greece or Rome or, you know, whatever, is that, certainly when you watch all the, you know, read stories about it's, it's just,

I think it's just magnification. And to your point is that it's just gotten so sped up. and it's just on such a grand scale now than we've ever dealt with before. And I don't think, you know, the question is, what are people, you know, capable or wired to deal with?

You know, are we wired to deal with being able to reach millions of people in an instant? I don't think so. And I, I question that. Yeah. I am not trained in that particular aspect.

I don't know. I'm not a sociologist, but I don't think so. Yeah. And we're certainly on board a train of an interesting experiment that is evolving at a rapid pace that nobody can seem to control. So I guess we'll see how it ends.

But to your point is, like, there's always an ebb and a flow. They talk about the pendulum, you know, going one way and going the other way and things like that. But the question is kind of what brings that pendulum back at this point? Because so many people now are making so much money off this magnification, acceleration of it. It's how do you start to bring that thing back? And I think maybe the only answer is like a grassroots thing where people start, you know, it's all the conversation we have today about.

doing these things on your own, where we start bringing it back because if somebody's making billions of dollars a year, why are they going to let it, you know, swing back in the other direction? I don't know. I mean, there are some people who are monetizing it well. I think the facade is that there are a lot of people. I think the few at the top are making the lion's share. I don't think it trickles down as far as those who are portraying that lifestyle would want you to believe. Yeah. But they're kind of caught in that system. Well, that I totally agree with. But it's the ones that are in control give you that illusion or help to facilitate and feed that illusion that so many people are in on it when to your point it probably is that top quarter percent, half percent,

you know, something like that. Yeah. But it's, you know, social media is something that I've struggled with is because it's a necessary tool and what we're doing. Yeah. But I personally don't like it. So it's tough to try to do it effectively when you don't, you know, when you don't like something.

But to use it as the tool that it could be. Hire a 20-year-old. They'll be an expert at it. It's tough, man. It's tough. Yeah. I try to use it. You know, I have some kind of guiding principles on there.

I try not to use it to ever knock people down. Occasionally, I will have a snarky comment or two. Michael is aware of this. But other than that, I think I use it to put stuff out there what I am up to. Generally, though, from a professional perspective, there's so much of my personal life that is not on there. Yeah. I try to use it and think of it as what it is, which is just a tool.

Yeah. And I try to make sure I'm using the tool and that the tool is not using me. Even though I do appreciate some of the ads that they send me because sometimes, you know, I do need special socks that have extra cushioning for, I'm like, fuck. I was thinking about getting those. This device can obviously read my mind. Is that a bad thing or a good thing? Because I did need those socks. I don't know.

Yeah, but look, you said it right. Is how, which person are you going to be? Are you going to be the person who uses it as a tool? Are you going to be the person that uses it as, hey, I went to get a cup of coffee and here you go. And the people that can't live their lives without posting so much of the stuff, you know, that's going on. I don't know how you actually live your life while you're trying to post it all. I don't know how those, because you have to put effort into documenting it and doing all of those things where you're not really getting, it'd be the same thing as doing the speed record in a fixed wing and not having any time to actually enjoy it.

Yeah. Because you're just hanging on to the ragged edge of consciousness the entire time to beat a clock. that is arbitrary instead of slowing it down and enjoying the journey along the way. Yeah. Like if you were going to do that, and let's say you're going over Iceland and you're, oh, like, holy shit, there's an amazing glacier slash volcano.

I'm going to hang out there for a couple hours. That to me is better. And maybe remembering that you saw a volcano at some point. Yeah, there's no question about it. What other adventures you have coming up? Well, most of my adventures involved getting through Monday through Friday. It's pretty, you can be sporty.

I have hunting coming up. So September, October is hunting season up here. I leave Friday with my wife. We'll be back early next week. We got a quick hunt in Wyoming. Then I have a hunt in Iowa, then a hunt in Texas. So a lot of my fall is still doing that type of stuff. I don't have anything, I don't have anything on the calendar, man, as far as an adventure, I would say.

I'm not against it. You know, the triple seven I was involved and that wasn't my idea. That was fun to watch. That was, that was really impressive. It was fun to do. Yeah. But it wasn't hard, though. The hard part of that was the logistics.

That's, yeah. And the fucking cost. Antarctica alone, I think, was $50,000 a guy. Yeah. And I get it because, first off, the camp there is ridiculously amazing. They do an amazing job down there. The logistics of getting there, the airline miles. I mean, we flew economy.

Whew, I got some videos of people, just huge dudes just stuffed into the seat on international travel. It was fun, but I'm not, I don't have a burning desire to try to put an expedition together. I'm not against it, but it's not like a fire that burns in me to keep doing those things. Did you tell me a while back, I think maybe last time when I was here with cats, you know, for 5-11 that you're looking to doing a motorcycle trip? I had thought about doing that with my old business partner from the coffee shop. I'm open to doing that trip, but then at the same time I'm trying to figure out, because the reality of that trip, it falls into the same category as the speed record circumnavigating. We wanted to get all the way up to Prudeau Bay and then drive tip to tip to tip down to the southern tip of Florida.

Well, the vast majority of the rugged beauty in wilderness is up in Alaska and Canada. And then you hit pavement flat in the flyover states, and you're going to be pinning. that thing at the highest freeway speed you can get to, wanting to stop and rest, but there's not a terrain feature for fucking three horizons. So you're just going to keep riding. So then what does that experience become? I'd almost rather start at Prudo Bay and figure out a way to enjoy the journey up there and then maybe just follow the Rockies all the way down to its southern terminus. Yeah. Something like that, right? But not, I don't want to, I'm not against putting a clock on things. but I'm not looking for reasons to put a clock on things.

To your point, it changes, yeah, it changes the dynamic. Well, the first thing that you get robbed of is your enjoyment. The Triple Seven was awesome. We hung out at the pyramids for maybe an hour. And we were so freaking tired by that point anyway that people were just ready to go. And I have a vague recollection of what it looked like to jump out over the fucking pyramids. You know, in Cairo and flying my parachute, I legitimately had the thought of my head. I'm going to land on top of this.

this fucking thing. I'm going to get arrested. This is going to be great. This would be great media for the expedition. This will trend for a little bit, which will probably help for fundraising. Then I didn't. We landed at an abandoned golf course, which for people who don't know, there's fast food restaurants and hotels and golf courses right around the pyramids. They don't show up in any of the... Isn't that funny? Yeah, this way? Pyramids. This way. Yeah, McDonald's. Yeah, you change. Yeah, you change the angle on that one. And the opportunity. 30 degrees. Yeah. And, you know, Antarctica was the place where we get to spend the most time and it was cool and we were rested and we knew going into it that that point right there

it was also it was the most logistically challenging because of the weather and just the location but beyond that it was going to be a blur and it absolutely was and it was enjoyable but there are vast sections of that that I have passing memories of and you know I think at this point of my life unless there's a compelling reason to do it like that well I do it like that yeah harder to raise attention awareness and funding though if you don't So that's the balance. Yeah, you got to have just a hook, whatever it is. Is it going to be speed?

It's going to be, you know, something. And that's the biggest part is like we're talking about is getting the attention of the sponsors and then breaking through and getting the attention of, you know, of the public. Yeah. You know, once you have the sponsors. Because, you know, it's a lot of people like, hey, I got the sponsor. Now, you know, the hard work. So I'm like, the hard work has begun.

Exactly. I mean, you, now you got to maintain that sponsorship. Yeah. And that's even more difficult in a lot of regards. And I don't blame the sponsors for having. shifts in their priorities, ships in their capital allocation, whatever it may be. I mean, the business world and ecosystem is real for them as well. And a lot of the stuff that they're doing, you know, from the fundraising, donation, supporting others in those perspective,

man, on the P&L, it becomes hard to justify, depending on how the business world is treating them. Yeah. But, you know, that ties back what we're talking about earlier is a lot of people are running us to believe once you get on that path, that it's just going to be a cakewalk at that point. It's just, you know what I mean? It's just sunshine and you're just, I mean, I'm just, you know, it's a yellow brick road. If somebody's ever figured that out and has become the yellow brick road for them, please hit me up with the A to Z of that because that has not been my experience. Finding it's one thing and staying on it day after day after day after day is a whole another ball game. And I think that it's just, you know, we have to be cognizant of that and we have to appreciate that and just to understand it's going to be difficult.

Yeah. And far too often, people are like, oh, maybe I'm not on the right path because it's so difficult or this or that. It's, you know, when Buddha talks about the four noble truths and the first truth is that life is suffering. And he didn't mean suffering in that regard. He means that just simply the life is difficult. There are difficulties no matter what you do. And it's to be truly appreciative of those difficulties and to expect them. And even when you're on that path, whether it's sponsorship, whether it's getting public attention on it, whether it's just successfully completing whatever you're trying to complete, it's going to be difficult.

You know, regardless, anything that's not sound cliche, but anything worth doing that's going to help you. grow is going to be difficult. And that's one of the reasons that we do it. Yeah, I agree, man. Yeah. I agree. What do you want to lead people with? We've been at it for damn near two and a half hours. Hey, first of all, is, is, is, is thank you for having me. Of course. Is, I can't tell how much I appreciate it. And just, uh, just sincerely thank you. And, you know, and thank you, Michael for, for, you know, for, you know, having me in. And, you know, I think the, the, the biggest thing is, you know, just to have them, just to understand, you know, that we're not alone in this stuff. And, you know, hopefully if, if they're interested is take a look at the book,

you know, strengthen surrender. I know it had a release date shift. Exactly. Yeah, I appreciate you mention that. Yeah. When's it going to come out? Because it was supposed to be yesterday. It's actually October 22nd was the original release date. Okay. But it's going to be available for pre-sale in just a few days. But January 7th is we're going to release the paperback, the audio book, and the e-book all at the same time. Okay. So January 7th. That's actually not too that. It's not bad. I know that you, uh, you, uh, you have, you, have a book that you're working on as well. It's getting released. That'll be on 26. 26. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. Yeah. So basically is the book is about,

you know, like we said, it has all the information about the expedition. So if you want to read about mountain climbing, ocean rowing and all the struggles and the training and all this stuff, all that's in there. But more importantly, it's what we've talked about, a lot of things we've talked about. It's about evolution. It's about, you know, my story from being in that, in that dark, lonely place to be in a better place and still trying to figure it out. but kind of being on that path and how it went about doing it. And what I found was is the most strength I've ever gained in my life was actually through surrender.

And, you know, Climmon Everest is, it was a hell of a lot easier than fully surrendering into my fears and pain and, you know, hesitation and trepidations and how to, how to face those and how to release them and how to go about meeting my needs in new and better ways. So, you know, all that's in there. But it's about, you know, the lessons I learned on daily basis. my main pillars, what I call meditations of things I learn through strength and surrender, but also there's sections

in there where people can take it and apply it directly to their lives. You know, ask yourself and prepare yourself sections, which is you can instantly take this and apply it there. So that'll be available January 7th. My Instagram is just at Dawson's Peak, P-E-A-K. And then lastly, is something that's

very important is that, as I mentioned earlier, 100% of the net proceeds from Project 7 for Soldiers benefit the Gary Snees Foundation, Hope for the War So I haven't made a dime on this since August 2018. And they can donate on the website on Dawsonspeak.com is my personal website. That links to our foundation website. You know, so please get involved there.

I'll put all that in the show notes too. And we'll send that out. But I think that's, you know, that's probably about it. Hell yeah, man. Well, thanks for making the trip up. Yeah. No, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Hell yeah. Awesome.