EverydaySpy Podcast - Life Lessons from a Navy Diver Turned Ocean Nomad

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/3HrF7fJ Learn more from Trevor: https://everydayspy.com/trevor Trevor Fortner, an accomplished Navy special warfare veteran and private military contractor, has never shied away from a challenge. Even going as far as spending 2 years on a sailboat with his wife raising 2 kids. If you are a fan of the ocean, a sailor yourself, or just curious about how a seaman views life after the sea, you'll love this conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Restrictions apply. When you're selling, ideally you are moving with the environment, the direction of the currents, the wind, the weight of the boat moving, the sound of the water on the hall. It's one of the most surreal, peaceful, yet. violent things that I've ever experienced. There's no calling 911. There's no pulling the car over and parking it.

Everything is real time. And if anything, and things will go wrong. When they go wrong, it's your fault. Is there a standout scary moment that happened in those two years on the boat? Something where you actually felt really tested or panicked? Not that I was panicked. I was concerned, like highly concerned. and it wasn't in a storm.

Trevor, I'm happy to have you back in the studio. I have so many questions for you, but the first thing I want to start with is a little bit of a story of my own. I've been reading Moby Dick. Have you read Moby Dick? Yes. So I have this funny story.

My dad tried to make me read it when I was a kid. I played along because I was like, I might as well start reading, and Moby Dick is a famous book. And then I read like the first page and I was like, what the fuck? I was maybe 12 years old, 10 years old, something young. And I shut the book and for the next 30 something years, I just shunned it.

I was like, not for me, not for me. For whatever reason, 44 years old, I feel like I feel compelled to pick up Moby Dick. I start reading Moby Dick and the book is blowing my mind. like the language, the story, the allegory, the insight into what our knowledge of whales was, like not just our knowledge of whales, what our understanding of the natural world was in the 1800s or whatever when it takes place. So I have a quote for you that I think you'll appreciate because it ties into what I want to talk to you about today. For those of you listening in who haven't met Trevor yet,

uh, and for everybody who has met Trevor, a little insight that you didn't know is that Trevor spent many years living on a sailboat. How many years did you spend on a sailboat? Two total. So two full years on a sailboat, not just you yourself. Yeah. Wife, an eight week old infant moved the board when she was eight weeks old.

And our eldest daughter was 10, uh, sorry, 13 at the time. So a newborn, a 13 year old, mom and dad how big was the boat 46 foot boat which anybody who understands sailboats 46 feet is a big boat anybody who understands a family of four 46 feet is not a big boat it was tight it was tight yeah so this comes from the 52nd chapter of moby dick just to give you guys some reference i'm on chapter like 123 right now and still not done so here's the quote round the world there is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings but where to does all that circumnavigation conduct only through numberless perils to the very point where we started where those we left behind secure

were all the time before us were this world an endless plain and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances and discover sites more sweet and strange than any sea clades or islands of king Solomon, then there were promised in this voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon that sometime or other swims before all human hearts, while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed. What are your thoughts on that passage? It's beautiful to begin with.

It's the story of selling, traveling, being on the ocean. When you're selling, ideally, you are moving with the environment, the direction of the currents, the wind. It's very self-sufficient. And there's a moment, one of my most favorite moments on a cellboat is after you pull up from Anchorage or a departed marina and the diesel engine is running, the moment that you turn the engine off and the sound. I know the moment you're talking about. You skydived before. Yeah, I sail. Okay.

I just haven't sailed for years on end. So you understand that moment. Yeah. And it is filling the wind, the weight of the boat moving, the sound of the water on the hall. It's one of the most surreal, peaceful yet violent things that I've ever experienced. So I learned how to fly when I was in the Air Force and I thought I wanted to be a pilot. And I'll never forget the first. time I took a flight, it was an incentive flight, what we call a sandbag flight, in an F-15.

Oh, goodness. And I was in Langley Air Force Base, Virginia with the first fighter wing. And is it not, it's not Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. I don't think, oh, maybe it is Virginia. It's in Southern Virginia. But I get in the front seat of an F-15, the pilot's in the back seat. I get in the front seat of an F-15B. We take off, we do a combat take-off.

everything seems like amazing, right? Like it's everything you thought a fighter jet ride would be. And then after all of our maneuvers, we do some dogfight maneuvers and it's maybe a 45 minute flight, we start to come into land. And as we start to come into land,

all the motion stops. And you start doing this corkscrew landing. And my whole body like caught up to me. And I've never been motion sick. I've never been prior to that. I've never had problems. with motion and then all of a sudden I felt horrible. And during this like slow corkscrew approach to the landing strip,

like I just, I feel terrible and I feel the heat in the cockpit and I feel trapped inside and there's no movement of air. The only thing you really have is the recycled heat that comes off of the engines that are being used to heat the cockpit. And luckily I don't throw up all over myself, but we land and then we do our little taxi, open the cockpit and I'm just assaulted by the smell of jet fuel and rubber and metal and I mean man like man-made infrastructure

and I thought to myself I don't know if I ever actually want to fly again I flew a few more times I got my private pilots license I went to pilot training and every time I got into a cockpit for anybody who's ever been in a military cockpit the seats are uncomfortable it's narrow it's narrow it's like a shotgun shape. It's terrible. And I just kept being reminded,

like, I don't think I like flying. I don't think I like flying. I got on a sailboat for the first time when I was 34 years old. And it was the exact opposite experience. Everything's open. Everything's natural. You don't smell anything but nature.

You smell the air. You smell the sea. The only time you smell diesel is if the diesel engine's running, which a good sailor doesn't need a diesel engine at all sometimes. and all of that to say that sailing is something I fell in love with immediately. It was just, it was liberating, it was natural,

it was the closest that man can be to nature. It's definitely one of the most beautiful things that you can do and taking a family out on a cellboat. There's a lot involved with like pre-planning logistics, thinking through problems, anticipating problems. sales break down rigging brakes engines die and you're being pushed to a rocky shoreline like there's no calling 911 there's no pulling the car over and parking it there's things you can drop the anchor potentially but everything is real time and if anything and things will go wrong

when they go wrong it's your fault like no matter what no matter what it's your fault it's your responsibility. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to take Jaden out there at 13 was to teach her self-sufficiency. Like, oh, you forgot to buy the chocolate and we're underway for a couple of weeks. No chocolate. You're not going to 7-Eleven kid. Like you should have listened to me and thought this through. Yeah. So it was an amazing experience. And that, I just can't. You said it. Like, the piece that you get out there is phenomenal. I've never felt it anywhere else. Can you try to describe for anybody who's who's listening. and not bored with us talking about boats and sailing.

Can you try to describe the first few minutes of going underway with nothing but the power of the wind? What does it sound like? What does it feel like on your body? What do you see? What do you smell, etc. So our boat was a monohol, a single hauled boat as opposed to a catamaran that has two halls. So when the cells are up, you will heal over, you will tilt over a certain degree. And you can manage the angle of that tilt.

So your entire environment shifts tilted. 15 degrees. Everything in the boat shifts. So you have to prepare to go to sea. And then once the boat starts to heal over, you're becoming in tune with the wind and the sound of the cells. You can hear them fluttering or making noise, which are telltale signals.

There are actually telltale yarns taped to them. So you're reading basically nonverbal communication. with what the boat is doing and what the ocean is doing. So pause there because that's such a powerful point. You are interpreting nonverbal signals from the boat. And the ocean. And the ocean, absolutely. And what's amazing is you can't even see the wind,

if not for the things on the boat that you've put in place to see the wind, like the yarn that's tied to the stays on the sides. So you're leaning over 15-ish degrees, which means your whole worldview tips. Everything tips. There's nothing flat to stand on anymore. So as long as you're underway, you can't stand on anything flat.

You've got to lean on things to keep yourself straight. And then I don't know how many times I've... You catch the wind, the boat leans, and then there's crashing that comes from under... Oh, what's it called, under the deck? I forget what it's called now. The water slapping. Well, not just that, but like if you didn't...

secure something. Oh, the literally crashing inside? Yeah. Oh, you'll hear glasses. You'll hear utensils. I think that was my laptop. Yeah. Like, you'll forget a hatch, like a forward hatch will be up.

Water spray will come over. And there goes, everything on the kitchen table is soaked. And it's salty water now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's no, there's no dryer. So the cabin is where you hear crashing sounds from the cabin. But it's too late now because you're underway. And now you're tipped and you're going to wherever you're going to go until you decide.

to release the sails. But you're interpreting all these nonverbal cues because you hear sounds, you see telltale yarn, you're watching the water on the surface or the wind making ripples on the surface of the water to try to chase the wind and find out where it's stronger. You hear the creaking of the boat. Absolutely.

The first week I slept on the boat by myself, before the kids got down there, I went down there and did some maintenance on it. Took it out of the dry dock and put it on. the out in the bay the first week of sleeping i pretty much didn't sleep at night because i'm at anchor i'd studied how to anchor and of course i'd been in the military i knew how to anchor but that is your emergency break so i'm listening to the winds to all the creaking i'm becoming familiar in tune of what the baseline of my boat is and then fast forward a year later i will have the best sleep on that boat

like completely knocked out. But the slightest of change of a sound, I'll wake up. And what would that, that's not normal. Is there a leak? Is there a this? So it's amazing how in tune you become with your surroundings, which I didn't really highlight until I moved back into a wood stick home. And I'm just like, oh, there's a crack in the wall.

Yeah, whatever. If that was on my boat. Yeah, you'd fix it right. I'm fixing it right now. Yeah. So that's, it's an interesting topic that I talk about in the disaster planning course. Absolutely. It reminds me a lot of parenthood.

You learn your kids so well that you can almost ignore most of their sounds and tune in to just the sound that isn't right. You see the mom at the park. That's my kid that just yelled and she's sprinting across. Like, how did you hear that? It's the one sound I'm familiar with. Yeah, it's the one sound outside of the ordinary. The one thing different than baseline. When you took off on your sale, but where did you purchase it?

Where was it first docked? It was in Pouquet, Thailand. The older couple had probably 20 years they had owned it. They had sailed around the world one and a half times from the UK. So he left the UK, circumnavigated back to the UK, started another voyage, got to Thailand. They retired, ended up buying property and we're living there until the old man had passed away. And she finally decided to sell the boat. Where were you in your career when you decided to buy the sailboat?

Avadavi. So that's 12 years military, and then how many years with Blackwater? On and off with two different companies, about four years. So 12 years, active duty, four years private military contracting, four years with the Abu Dhabi presidential guard. Before that, I did the DITRA agency thing for counterproliferation, and then four years in Avadani. So my wife and I found out that this is how we found out. going to have a second kid. I buy this cell boat.

She doesn't think I'm going to do it. I fly to Thailand. I come back. I'm like, I think I'm going to buy that boat. A couple of months later, I bought that boat. She's like, no, you didn't. I'm like, come on, get your passport. We're going to Thailand.

Now, Pouquet, Thailand is about a 24-hour transit from Lankawi, Malaysia. And normally when expats purchase boats over there, you'll do the exchange in Malaysia because the taxes is different from Thailand for expats. So we flew down to Lancawi Malaysia to pick up the boat, my wife and I. And the only time she'd been on a Selvo before was one week in the Mediterranean. I rented, I kind of had this planned out. I chartered DeSalvo just off the coast of Spain. And we went up there for a week and sailed around.

And she thoroughly loved it and enjoyed it. Never got nausea and never got sick. So we leave Lancai, Malaysia. We're doing a 24-hour transit back up to Bucquet. she goes downstairs we leave in the morning she goes downstairs to make some lunch comes back up i don't feel so good i'm like it is a flat ocean there's no wind so i've got the motor running maybe there's diesel fumes down there let me let me go down there there's nothing dinner time comes we're gonna make cocktails and watch the sunset on the ocean she goes down comes right

back up i don't feel so good oh no i'm like this isn't normal because she's sitting on the in the cockpit watching the sunset she's fine But as soon as she went down below, nausea. So we get into Thailand the next day. I'm like, we should go to a clinic and, you know, just get some blood tests or something. And that was the first time we heard Olivia's heartbeat. Wow. Yeah.

Your second daughter. The second daughter. So just days after buying the boat? Yeah. Like the day we got on the boat to take it to Thailand. Because I had the intention of hiring a crew to bring the boat to Avadavi. And I was going to stay in Avadabia for a couple more years. learn the boat sell around

Abadalu a little bit and when I decided to resign that was my ex-estrategie so now I had a decision to make of and I had done this selection interview back in the States for another project

selfishly I wanted to go do that but it involved a lot of deployments now that I know that I just had this kid or about to have another kid I don't want to spend months away from her again so my wife and I the next day were sitting on the beach looking out over the bay, there's our cellboat iris.

You have a 13-year-old. Not yet. Just my wife and I had flown over to collect the boat. Okay. Taking it back to Thailand. Just the two of us found out that she's pregnant. We're sitting on the beach. I'm looking out of the cellboat.

I'm drinking a cocktail. She's drinking a fresh coconut. And I said, well, she had made a comment earlier in the day that, and it wasn't a derogatory comment. It was just, I know, she said, I never imagined myself. raising a kid in the Middle East and I said oh that's interesting I never imagined myself having another kid like my daughter's about 12 right now like I just I didn't see this really happening completely excited for it I said well do you do you want to go

back to Abadabia and raise the kid there like she was a she worked for Eddie had the National Airline of Abadabadi she'd been there for like eight years like you've got a really good career going you're doing really well do you want to keep going because the kid's going to have to go to daycare. She's like, no way, I want to be with my kid. She goes, but I don't think I want to be like, you know, the other expat moms all get together because the husbands are at work. All the kids go out and play.

She goes, it looks fun, but they're all kind of stuck in a small community. They don't get to travel and adventure. And that's what she was doing at the time, a lot of travel. And so I'm looking at the cellboat and I kind of offhandedly said, well, we can go back and resign and live on that. okay and that was like can i get that in writing wow like are you serious and she goes if you think that's the way we get to spend time with our kids and you teach me a few things then yeah she goes i trust you let's go and so we did we went back to abdabadi resigned after four years uh went up to

the UK Olivia was born there and then when she was eight weeks old a mother for the first time Maybe she with my daughter that was 10. Now she has her own infant child. First time she's ever raised an infant. First time she's ever going to live on a cellboat. Second time she's only been on a cellboat. And let's go to Southeast Asia and sell around. Wow.

Yeah, so she took it well. That's incredible. So I don't even know where to start because your first child is incredibly difficult. It's hard to figure out. First of all, you're perpetually wrong. Every parent out there knows that for the first three years, you're wrong all the time. You think you know what's going on. You don't.

You try to troubleshoot. You're wrong. You try to get them to eat. They don't. It never stops. And it doesn't really ever stop. It gets better, but it never stops. So I can only imagine what your wife must have felt like for the first six, eight, ten months on that boat,

trying to wrestle with being a new mom, trying to wrestle with also mothering a teenager because your 12-year-old was going to turn 13, and then living on a boat. Dealing with a storm, there was one storm. We hadn't been on the boat very long. You have to look it up. It's called an Amel French Blue Water Cellboat,

a Santerren model. It's an inside cockpit, or a center cockpit. So it's fairly safe when you talk about, compare center to rear cockpits there's a hatch that slides up and a cover

to secure the inside I had that cracked open by like an inch I've got swim goggles on because the water's so sideways I take those off and I poke my head down there and go hey how are you girls doing

Jaden she's curled up in one of the set he's just cuddling a blanket like rocking back and forth the infant we took her car seat so we could strap her into a car seat and then strapped the car seat to the deck. Wow. In case I needed my wife's hands.

Right. So she's buckled up, strapped down to this mass pole. My wife is holding on to the car seat. Both the girls probably have a vomit bucket next to them. And she just looks at that crack like, I am going to murder you. She's like, get me off this boat. Wow. Sorry, love, you can't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there was times like that that were challenging. but overall, like when we first started to move in the boat, she was, how do we childproof it? Like your house? Like the wall outlets, the cupboards and all that. And I just looked at her. Keep asking, she's like, yeah, childproof it. Like, what if they fall off?

What if this? All good questions. Yeah. This cell boat, there are no sharp corners. Every corner on that boat has been rounded by design. There's handholds everywhere. Every hatch, every cupboard cannot fly open. They're all secured.

You have to activate a button to open them by design. I said, it is childproof. Because she's an infant, not mobile, once we put her downstairs in the cabin, that's where she's at. That's where she's at. She cannot crawl out and get to a hatch to get to the ocean. And when she's in the cockpit, she's with us. She can't crawl out of the cockpit. When she starts to turn about one, one and a half, there's going to be trouble.

So we had to due diligence on a research of, There was only like two companies at the time that made infant life fest that ensure they rotate head up out of the water. I ordered one from, I think it was from Canada. When I finally got it, I put this little kid like nine weeks old in it. I hold her over the side of the boat. Looked at my wife. Love you. Drop that kid in the water.

Wow. Because I got to see like she's going to fall from this distance, right? The other kid's in the water getting ready to get her. Right. But yeah, pops up, heads up, kids smiling. Like, okay, it works. Wow. So just before anybody thinks that that was an abusive thing to do,

my kids grew up in Florida where the number one cause of childhood death is drowning. Number one cause. Yeah, and now we live in Colorado. No, I mean, where were you living? We were living in Tampa. And the number one, people don't understand that. You live next to the coast? Yep.

Oceans and pools. Oceans and pools. We had two close calls with both of our kids. So meaning four close calls total. 100% of them was in the pool. Every single one of them was in the pool. They fall in the pool, they run in the pool, they jump in the pool, they trip in the pool, something. Pools at resorts, pools at friends' houses, pools at swim practice, right?

But they end up in the water. And that is like, for anybody who grew up anywhere near water, they know, like, that is a dangerous, dangerous thing. So for us, too, when my son was five, when my daughter was three, we put them both through, like a water survival experience type. of thing where literally they was just you know push them in the water push them in the water backwards push them in the water upside down fully dressed fully closed shoes on all yep and can they just get themselves up into the edge can they get themselves up and to a place where they can call for help right and even when they were when they were little they were doing exactly what we what you did with your daughter right put them in a life jacket knock them down let them come back

up let them have that that shock of like I was just underwater and now I'm above water and And they cry and they freak out, but they're alive. Yes. And the first time that they have that experience is in a controlled environment, not in an emergency. It should be. And that's what I explained to my wife, because obviously there was a conversation after I did that. But our second, our third daughter, she put her in swim lessons, survival swim lessons in Arizona right away. We didn't even have a pool.

But the first time cannot be the emergency situation. They have to be prepared for that. And yeah, you see your kids cry and you get emotional about seeing them in discomfort, but would you rather, yeah, it's sad. But it's so real. I mean, I've seen, ever since those kind of survival swim classes, I've seen my kid get pulled out by a strong wave in the ocean

and self-rescue, right? I've seen my daughter actually get knocked into a pool in full clothing by a dog at a party and self-rescue. And you freak out in the moment. Oh, of course. But they self-rescue. Like, I remember one of my youngest memories of being a kid. I remember I was in a pool.

I was in one of those, like, tube things that have like a little seat in it. I don't know, like a donut with a seat in it. I had to have been three years old, four years old. I don't even remember clearly, right? But I remember playing in the water and then rocking myself around. And then somehow I ended up rocking myself upside down. With your feet stuck through that. And I was fully upset.

down and in my mind's eye I still remember the blue of the water, the disorientation of being upside down, not breathing, and then seeing in the distance my mom's feet come down the stairs for the, for the pool, splashing and running towards me. And I had no idea what danger I was in. Like my memory isn't one of danger or fear. It's just of this, the strangeness of seeing these upside down feet coming towards me and then bring me right side up again and then taking a breath. being like, oh, I was just upside down in the water, right?

I remember that forever. So I have no doubt that my kids remember every frightful thing that happens to them in the water. Absolutely. And I don't want them to be afraid of the water. Like, you don't have to go be a Navy diver. You don't have to be an Olympic swimmer. But you have to be comfortable. You don't have to go to the beach if you don't want to.

But I want you to be comfortable if you find yourself in that situation. So two years on a sailboat, did you guys circumnavite? Did you guys circumnavitate, circumnavigate the globe? No, no, not at all. We stayed in Southeast Asia. We ended up joining a rally from Malaysia. You go down the straits of Malacca to Singapore. Wow.

Across the South China Sea over into Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful ocean out there. I mean, all that's incredibly tropical. I mean, you know, some people will say you can do a circumnavigation in three years, But that's basically point A to point B to point B. Like there's no enjoying it.

Yeah. We ended up spending two years in Asia and we're not done. So there's people that will set out to do a circumnavigation as a objective. Like I want to go this way. And season after season, they're taking their time because there is so much stuff to explore. And so I think probably about eight to 10 years would be a realistic. You can do it. You know, I mean, they race it.

They do it quite quick. But if you're actually going to stop and see the cultures go with the actual selling seasons, avoid the bad seasons, you could take easy eight to ten years and fully enjoy it. Is there a standout scary moment that happened in those two years on the boat, something where you actually felt really tested or panicked? Not that I was panicked. I was concerned, like highly concerned. And it wasn't in a storm. Thanksgiving Day. We had one of the other cell boats that we sold with a family with two young children.

We were talking the night before like, hey, it's Thanksgiving back in the U.S. They were from Australia. Like we should go to a small little island off of Phuket, anchor have sunset drinks, let the kids swim and play. And then Thanksgiving Day, let's go sell together island hop for a couple of hours. So that morning we got up. The island that we came around opened up to the wind and the ocean and the seas were probably like three or four feet aggressive waves just bashing into the bow. So the bow is kind of like keeps hitting and keeps hitting. We only had a transit like a mile.

As we were doing that, the forestay that connects the cell mast to the front of the boat, it's probably a 12-millimeter cable snaps. Most cell boats, when they lose their forestay, that mast falls down too. Comes down. It can either fall into the water. It can fall on your cockpit where you're at. It will penetrate and start bashing around, it will tear up a fiberglass yacht quickly. That line snapped. And that was the O poop moment of my life because my children are on board, right?

My wife and children. So immediately, Jaden the oldest grabs the infant, goes to the position that we've already prepared and practiced. Like, I told my wife, like, hey, we're going to be doing a lot of training and practice. And she was always on board. Like, hey, if you say we got to do this and rehearse it, then we'll do it. And so my daughter, Jaden, she took Olivia up to where she was supposed to do it, started getting life vests and such on. I started giving commands to Christy to drive the boat, put us in this direction, compass heading, because I wanted to put the wind on the back of the mass to help press it forward.

So I got the boat turned around. I was up on deck. I did make one mistake. I was up on deck getting other lanyards attached to the mass and wrenching them down to the cleats to try to bring the mass back forward. We had our four cell or our jib cell up. It's probably like 40 some square meters of cloth that went into the water. Wow. Because that's what it was attached to.

The connection that broke that went into the water, which now I'm concerned with getting sucked under the boat into the running gear. So probably for about three minutes, it was pure madness of very specific, from the outside, it would be madness. To me, there was very logical steps in order based off safety of boat that I had to contend to. I got all that done, wrapped up, got back around the lee side of an island so the wind and waves weren't on us. And then reverse anchored the boat so that the wind would be pushing on the back of that mask, climbed up the mask, attached some new lines, got everything sorted out.

And what I realized was at no point did I ever put a life vest on. Like I immediately looked up and saw that that's gone. That mask may fall down. It should like 90% of it. And it should, like, 90% percent of mass will fall. The design of this French, the reason I bought this particular boat was the design of it. The safety that they put into these boats is phenomenal.

In that, I say chaos of going objective, objective, objective, I never once stopped to put on a vest, which completely should have done. If I would have got hit by one of those poles or lines and went in the water, unconscious,

goodbye. Because my wife's not coming to get me. She's got a priority of the kids that was pre-planned and talked about. So I kick myself over that for not going and grabbing that for that simple reason. Wow.

That is a scary moment for sure. Yeah. I want to shift gears just a little bit because the original Moby Dick quote that I gave you had this reference that catches my attention in part because I understand the book and what the story is

getting to, right? But it's got this incredible quote within the passage that we talked about. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of or in tormented chase of that demon phenomenon, excuse me, or in tormented chase

of that demon phantom that sometime or other swims before all human hearts, right? This thing that drives us around the world. Sometimes it's a mystery and sometimes it's a tormented chase. I find that there's a certain, like, intimate embarrassment or humility when you really start

to think about what things have you put your energy into that are curiosity driven and what things have you put your energy into that are hate-driven, torment-driven, anger-driven. And I certainly sit back, and I look at my life and I don't think that the two are anywhere close to equal. I've driven more towards things that have tormented me than things that have made me curious. That's a profound reflection.

And it's such a powerful thing from this book because when you, what I think everybody understands about Moby Dick is there's a white whale, there's a mad captain, and then there's this guy named Dishmail who's telling the story. That's pretty much,

shit in a nutshell, right? But the mad captain and Ishmael, like, these are the two characters that you have to look at and ask yourself, how much of me is Ahab? How much of me is Ishmael? And I wonder if part of the reason this book is 6,000 pages long or whatever it is, it's ridiculous number of pages, is because it takes time for you to actually explore these characters and explore their challenges and explore their feelings before you start asking yourself like oh shit which does that does that does that oh my gosh I can relate to that and I can't relate to that and I can't relate to that

and I can't relate to that what are some of the things that have tormented you and driven you to the achievements that you've had sometimes when people tell you you can't do that watch this yeah out of spite yeah like I'm just going to do it to prove you wrong was that a good use of my efforts and skills Probably not. Like it was for the wrong reasons. Good outcome, but wrong reasons. That definitely has played a role into it. And then a lot of, man, that seems challenging and difficult. I wonder if I could do that. Like I don't know why I want to, but I just wonder if I could. And when I've reflected back, I've never really, until very recently, I've never really projected too far forward. word, which is so contradicting to executive protection and disaster planning and, you know,

how do I approach this device and potentially disarm it? You have to think and prepare. But personal life, I never really sat down and went like five years. I'm going to have a kid. I'm going to get married. I'm going to go live here. I never really thought about that. It was always just the mission of what's next. What's a little bit more challenging than the, it's almost like the, a drug person, a drug addict's high, it's that wasn't enough this time. Like that didn't have the same effect as before. I need something more.

What do you think it is that drives, I'm going to make a generalization and people can debate me in the comments, but why is it that high achievers seem to so often not think about their own future? They plan, they strategize, they do so much professionally and so little personally. They don't realize that they were absentee parents until their kids graduate high school.

They don't realize that they were a bad husband or a wife until after the divorce. Like, why? Why do people of ambition seem to miss the importance of planning their personal life? I'm really interested to see what the comments are going to be. Because there are some people way smarter than me about this that will. probably have some scientific evidence based data. Okay, cool, we have data. Personally, I've been reflecting on this a lot, trying to problem solve that,

looking into personality types. I think personally for me, and I don't say this as an escapegoat or as an cop-out answer, I say it because that's where my thought process is right now until I get more information to make a better determination. I think for myself, I was so busy solving other people's problems or assisting other people that I never took time to sit down and reflect on my own self. And I don't mean it in a hippie sort of sit down and meditate and reflect, but even sitting down like on a Sunday morning and going, what did I accomplish this week?

There's a few questions you should ask yourself. One of them is, was it a productive? depends on how you define productive. Did I spend time with loved ones? Did I add value to my life and to the people that I love? Normally it's that I add value to the company that's paying me to be away from those that I love. And so I've been spending probably the last couple of years reflecting more on my decisions. I've not come to a conclusion to say this is why we do that.

I'm very interested in what that is. Have you heard of a company? called or a website called self-authoring. No. I'll send you a link to it. The short story is a group of, I think, psychologists got together and they basically made baseball cards for employees. Huh.

So like, car salesmen, salesmen will do this. So I'll have certain color codes, personality types essentially. Like, oh, I know you're an E, not an I. Yeah. You are better suited for this role over here because you'll be happier and more productive. So they made baseball cards for a particular company that had hired them, and it was actually really fruitful work that they did. Fast forward a few years later, they've got a website called self-authoring.com that's about you. You can do it about past, present, and future, and it asks you question.

And it only works if you answer the questions, honestly. Of course. And you don't send the questions to anybody else. It's all for your, you can share it if you want. those questions they humble me they make you really like you made a decision about this why and you have to look deep to figure out like I don't know why I made that decision like that was a stupid the outcome might have been good yeah but the logic behind making it was dumb so that's I'm interested in the comments because I really want to understand that and it's it's interesting to me because

I've had the privilege now since leaving CIA to train, coach, guide all sorts of very successful people, people who are sent to millionaires, people who are lead executives, people who are active in government, people who are active in foreign governments. Like I've had this incredible opportunity to meet some very ambitious, high achieving people. And I'm always shocked when I find one of a few things. First, when high achieving people get fat. No high achieving person, no ambitious person starts fat, but they let their body go in pursuit of their ambition.

And then at some point, they wake up and realize, oh, shit. This happened. Yeah. And how do I get rid of this, especially now that they're at the peak of whatever they're trying to do, right? They're working 80-hour weeks. Now, how do I get rid of this, right?

Substance abuse. They become addicted. to anything from cocaine to wine, right? And then they find themselves unable to sleep without their substance, unable to focus without their substance, living from substance intake to substance intake. These aren't bad people. Like these are the champions of industry.

These are the people that we all wish we could be, like behind closed doors. And what we don't realize is that behind their closed doors, the way they make it off of three hours of sleep at night is because they take an upper in the morning and a downer at night. And it's because it takes a box of wine or a bottle of wine or it takes, you know, a couple hits of cocaine for them to get through the next moment, right? You've got the people who get divorces.

I don't know how many clients I have had who are on their second or third spouse. And all and once I swear to you, here it comes. I swear to you, after about age 55, all they talk about is their first spouse. And the person who married them before they were anything special. and how genuine that person was compared to, you know, spouse number two, spouse number three, etc. It's a bit of a stereotype, but it's pretty accurate. And it's fascinating because you learn as for me personally, working with those people, I've had a chance to work with people like this since I was about 40 years old.

I mean, I have my whole future shaped by the lessons they've learned. And it's incredible to me. I get to bring a lesson home that I worked on with a client. I get to bring it home to my wife and say, hey, I was just working with so-and-so, and here's what they said, and here's what they learned about themselves. And how do I make sure that doesn't happen to me?

Yeah. Right? And how do I make sure that doesn't happen to us? And it's just incredible. Anything from like parenting to, you know, wealth management, to personal health and fitness, it's just incredible.

I was on a run the other day. I'm training for my first half-iron man. And I was on a run the other day. I was in gold co-co. Coast Australia. Very beautiful. Beautiful place. Beautiful place.

It's their fall transitioning from their summer. And I had a four and a half mile run that morning along with a bike ride and a swim. And I was exhausted, right? I'm coming back the last mile, mile and a half of that four and a half mile run. And the weather kicks in off the coast. And the rain starts and it's a cold rain. And the wind starts. And it's a wind from north to south.

So it's blowing me backwards. And it's a strong. this strong in sustained gusts so you're just like this sucks I mean I like a parachute on your background and I've been exercising for like two and a half hours and I just want to be done

and I'm cold and I'm wet and my fucking shoes are soggy and like I've got chaffage in my thighs from like where the bike shorts created roughness and then the running shorts exacerbated it and now everything's wet and I'm just like this sucks and this is a training run

Not even a long one. This is just a training run. And I had this moment where my mind shifted, and I owe it all to some of these people that I've had a chance to coach. And I realized, wait a second, I don't have to do this. I get to do this. And I get to do this on the coast of Australia, in between training sessions,

and I get to do this with this incredible ocean. And then I started just turning on my senses instead of turning on my feelings. I started turning on my five senses, and then I could smell the salt water, and I could feel the droplets of the rain as it hit my soaking wet running shirt, and I could feel like the soft plunk

under the shirt against my skin. I could hear the tink of the rain as it hit the wet outside of the shirt. I could feel like the soginess in my feet. I could feel the cold wind on my knees, like I could hear, the seagulls and I could hear the crashing waves and just focusing on the senses instead of on my feelings got me through the rest of that run and made it so that when I finished that

run I was like just overwhelming gratitude and that's all I could feel thank you for this incredible planet thank you for this incredible opportunity thank you for whatever the fuck happened in my life that made it so that when I'm 44 years old at what is arguably the peak or the cresting peak of my career, I have the fitness to be training for a triathlon. Because if I didn't have that fitness, I wouldn't be out there running. I wouldn't be having those experiences. I wouldn't be having that moment of gratitude.

No. That's another really profound thing to recognize that you're operating off emotions and make the active conscious switch to my surroundings. Emotions are just emotions. Like, they don't make good decisions. Like, they call them emotional. decisions for a reason, right? They're normally not based on sound logic. Yeah. Whether they turn out true or not. So that was something in dive training that we focused on

was, you know, we never did a run or a swim that was pleasurable. And they would tell you it's not going to be pleasurable. They're preparing you mentally that this is going to be challenging. There's no secrets about it. And the people that were emotional about it, well, I don't want to do something that's challenging wet and cold, they'll leave the program. Those that go, yeah, we expect it to be uncomfortable. It is what it is. It's the chase of going, I just did this experience. What's next? I've yet to figure out how that separates people. Like the difference of myself and other family members, why do I feel this way or think this way? I'm very less like my mom might say that I'm a bit cold and emotionalist.

She knows I love my children and I love her with passion and that I'm present, but I'm also very able to make a quick decision and stand by that decision. Before we wrap up, I just want to give you a chance to share what life lesson did two years on a sailboat with everything you love and cherish at risk. on a 46 foot boat. What life lesson was given to you that you have taken to this day from that experience? This goes into why I'm passionate about emergency planning, particularly for families.

Even though by that point in my career, I'm well skilled in various tactics that I can defend my family. I'm quite competent that in this situation, I could physically defend my family. on the cell boat it made me realize like I'm not wearing body armor I'm not in a gunfight I'm not dealing with explosives I'm in foreign countries foreign fishing boats foreign everybody it's still my job to protect them but now I have to really plan forward like if my little girl wants chocolate or the infant needs milk and my wife is sick or something and can't feed her? Like, do I have stored milk for this little kid and water just set aside for her?

What if we have to ditch the lifeboat, right? What if your boat sinks and I have to get in a lifeboat? Do I have the right food and water and communication devices to reach assistance to save the people that I love most? That really highlighted to me that, yes, well, I can protect them by being patriotic and serving in a foreign country, my real mission is to be at home, be present with them, and teach them how to survive. Like we're talking about the swimming pool.

My job is to prepare my children to survive and function in life. That's pretty amazing, man. We have this saying at CIA that says when disaster strikes, you have 90 seconds to decide whether you're going to keep the rest of your life or lose the rest of your life. Because on average, when there's an assault, when there's an emergency, when there's a disaster, It's the first 90 seconds that dictate what happens after that. The decisions that you make or do not make in those first few seconds, absolutely. Trevor, what an awesome conversation.

Thank you so much for joining us again. If people want to find you, where can they look you up? Everydayspy.com forward slash Trevor. And I can't wait to have you back and talk more about your background, your skills, and how we can all use it to plan moving forward. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you check out Trevor's link below. I've got some other interesting stuff for you down in the comments. like, subscribe, share this episode with a friend

and anybody you think might get a kick out of this. This has been one of my favorite for a long time, Trevor, because it's not often I get to talk about sailboats and Moby Dick, two things that I honestly think about way too often when I'm off camera. Folks, thank you so much for joining. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures.

What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality, an elderly widow working at Nicole. Tova forms an unlikely friendship with their crumudgeonly, Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable moms this Mother's Day weekend, only on Netflix May 8th. We're coming us, and we will see you next time.