Founder's Story - Why the Most Remote Journeys Are the Ones We Need Most | Ep 271 with Monika Sundem CEO of Adventure Life

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

In this episode of Founder’s Story, Daniel Robbins sits down with Monika Sundem to explore how Adventure Life has built a reputation for journeys that go beyond sightseeing—offering connection, transformation, and purpose. From navigating the unpredictable waters of Antarctica to witnessing the wildlife of the Galapagos, Monika shares the magic of destinations that change travelers forever. She also reveals how her team survived the near-collapse of the travel industry during COVID, staying transparent with customers while holding onto integrity and trust. Key Discussion Points:Monika describes the awe of walking among curious wildlife in the Galapagos and the vast, untouched beauty of Antarctica’s big skies. She explains why Adventure Life travelers aren’t just tourists—they’re adventurers seeking movement, flexibility, and meaning in their journeys. The conversation dives into emotional stories, from a widow retracing the Antarctic crash site where her family died, to a cancer patient finding renewed purpose by traveling across South America. Monika also shares her perspective on the impact of social media on tourism, the future possibilities of space travel, and how transparency and integrity helped Adventure Life rebuild post-pandemic. Takeaways:Listeners will learn why travel can be deeply personal and even healing, why adaptability matters more than itineraries, and how responsible tourism can benefit local communities instead of harming them. Monika also highlights why integrity in business—especially during crises—is what builds long-term trust with customers and staff. Her stories remind us that travel is not just about seeing new places, but about making connections, experiencing humility, and finding meaning. Closing Thoughts:Travel can be life-changing—whether it’s honoring loved ones, exploring the farthest corners of the earth, or finding happiness in unexpected places. For Monika Sundem, leading Adventure Life isn’t just about booking trips; it’s about creating experiences that last a lifetime. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's episode is sponsored by Pipe Drive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. I am excited to share more about them later in the episode. So, Monica, two things I've always wanted to do in my life. One is travel to Antarctica, and two is to travel to the Galapagos Islands. I've been to pretty much every continent in the world. I just hit 50 countries travel last week. but those two things are things that I'm like, I need to go to those things. And that's what I love about adventure life and what you're doing. So let's get to it. You've been to Galapagos and you've

been to Antarctica. I think some people think like, holy calic, that's where it's like I'm going to go to France or go to South America. I take a plane. Like this requires a lot of stuff. Can you tell me exactly. What is the experience like if I was to go to those two places? Oh my goodness. It's second to none. I actually, a funny story, I didn't really want to go to the Galapagos when I first went. I more went out of obligation so that I would know what I was talking about with travelers on the phone. And I was so blown away that I just remember feeling like, oh my gosh, I didn't know a place like this existed. I think everyone should come here. Just a place where the wildlife truly are not scared of you. and in fact, curious, come up to you.

It felt like a living zoo or aquarium that you're walking around in and exploring. And so I really truly think everyone should go there at least once in their lifetime because it is so remote. So many of the islands don't have any people living on them. And so you truly feel like I just got plopped in the middle of the ocean to go explore this little island here by myself. So, yeah, I really think that an article. as well gives you that same feeling. You are, again, you're just at the furthest south feeling of the world. I mean, you're not South Pole South, but you're really darn close when you're around the peninsula. And it just feels like the sky is so big. I live out here in Montana where it's called,

we're big sky country, right? I never understood that. I grew up in Seattle area and I came out here and I'm like, oh, they call it big sky because the sky truly is so big because you can see. the horizon for days and days and days. And in Antarctica, it's the same exact thing. It's just like, oh my gosh, all around 360 views I can see so far, no civilization, nothing. I'm just in the middle of nothing. And it's gorgeous and pristine and feels very untouched. So I really do think you should get to both of those.

If you haven't been either of them, times ticking too, because, you know, there's climate change is happening and you will possibly not experience the same destination that you would otherwise. That's why I need adventure life because I've heard you Antarctica. I mean, it might be like beachfront property sadly in the future. And I even heard like penguins are leaving and I don't I don't know if they're migrating or they're dying off. I'm not sure. But so can you tell me about how it how it is to get to Antarctica? I've heard a lot of stories around this as well. And it sounds very fascinating. And everyone's told me it's not always the so easy getting there, but when you're there, it's totally like, oh my gosh, slap in the face worth it.

Can you share with me the process of how you were getting there? Yes. So for me, I actually traveled with one of our operators that we work with. We work with all the main operators who are doing expedition cruising down there. And so I went with Aurora. And how we worked it is you fly actually out of Punter Arenas in Chile. you board a two-hour flight to go fly down to King George Island, board your vessel there, and from there you sail.

And the reason I did that is I did not want to sail across the Drake Passage, which is that little spit of water between the southern tip of South America and the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. It's well known for many historic shipwrecks. The Wager book actually talks about one of them, which was a really fun read. So I didn't want to do the Drake because I don't like the sea. I get seasick very easily. And so I'm like, I'll skip it.

So I board a flight two hours down. I'm on the vessel for nine days. And then you're just sailing around the peninsula and getting off where you're able. It really is, huh, maybe we'll go here today. I mean, the ships do have an idea where they'd like to go, but the weather changes everything. So each day, it may be roughly mapped out, but then it might change depending on the weather, depending on the opportunities in the area we're at. For my voyage, we actually ended up spending some days trying to escape a little storm that was following a storm system that was following us around. So it's like, oh, maybe we'll just go over here. And we actually ended up tipping over into the east side on the wettle sea, which is not common on the sailing I was supposed to be on because

the weather was looking better out there. And so we got to explore an extra area that wasn't even supposed to be on our itinerary. And it is just really fun because you just never know what the day holds. it's like oh my gosh let's let's look and see what we can do today so it's a different kind of travel yeah some people love to map out everything some people in my family i can never travel with them because they need to go to this museum they need to do this tour and that's not me i like the adventure life really that's what i like i don't necessarily want to know everything i'm going to do up up front i want to kind of figure it out as i go along are you finding that it's a different type of traveler that comes to you for adventure life.

Yes, completely. I mean, they are people who are up for an adventure. That doesn't necessarily mean they're, you know, marathon runners. I'm not talking about physical stamina needs to be top notch, but they have a heart of adventure. They want to get out and do. They want to go move in some way. And so we help them get out and explore instead of just, I don't know, sit and eat or,

you know, sit and watch the beach. So we're trying to get them out and be a little more active. And most of those kinds of people are willing to be flexible. Like if the weather does this, this day, okay, then we're going to change the adventure to go do that. And people who are willing to be adaptable and turn any kind of day into a fun adventure are typically the kind of traveler we're attracting. What's the craziest request that somebody wanted you to do for their adventure? or what's the most out there thing that you guys have done? I can't.

I mean, we have done some very crazy things. We are custom travels. So people come to us with some very interesting requests. One example, I saw it. This was not my own, but one of our staff had a gal request to tour all these different, very remote battlefields in Vietnam where her husband fought specific. She wanted to go battlefield by battlefield. And some of them are, you know, a little more known to the tourist area, you know, but some of these

were very remote battlefields that are hardly even marked. And she just really wanted to walk in the footsteps of what her husband had experienced. So that's one example. I remember back in my early days, actually, I had a gal out of Australia come to me who had lost her husband and her brother and her father on a flight out of Australia. They used to do these flyover flights down to see Antarctica, and one of those historically crashed into a mountainside in a whiteout, and she lost all three of her family members. And she asked me to get her on an Antarctic ship that would sail right up to where that mountain is and even see if the operator would let her get off on shore there to go experience the actual landing site. And they were able to accommodate that.

I mean, it was a real feat that we all pulled off to get her to be able to go commemorate where she lost them. This was on, I think, the 25th anniversary of their passing that she wanted to do this. So we get some real heart-menshing stories like that sometimes. I have a recent gentleman. His name is Tom Barrett. Actually, I probably should plug his book. His living while dying is what he wrote as a result of his journey with us. We sent him all around South America.

And he is recently diagnosed with stage four cancer and just decided I need to get out and explore. That's going to bring purpose and meaning right now. And he went on this trip and it just completely changed his life. And he came back and decided to write a book about it. And then he ended up going on another adventure the next year as he's been battling it, battling cancer. He's still like, as long as I can get out and move, I'm going to keep getting out and moving. I've spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs and one of the biggest pain points they share is

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That's PipeDrive.com slash founders, and you can be up and running in minutes. So we just get some really neat travelers like that who come to us, I think because we're willing to try to make their dreams happen. Like a lot of travel companies will say, well, here's what we do or here's our group tours you can do. but they aren't willing to patch together this crazy custom thing that nobody's ever done. And that's really what makes us unique. Yeah. I mean, what I'm hearing, and that's incredible stories, by the way. It's, there's different reasons by people travel, obviously, right?

Like some people just want to get away. They want to go on vacation. Some people want to explore. My dad is trying to see every aqueduct in the world. I don't even know. So he wants to design these Lego aqueducts. That's, I don't even. even understand. But it's fascinating because some of them are ancient. So that's

like some of them are really fascinating. We're really well built. So he's a hydrogeologist. It kind of makes sense. But but I'll say like my point though is like we all have these different reasons to travel. And but travel for some can be very an emotional experience like you mentioned. Connections from people in the past. Connections to love ones. Connections to, I was just going to Romania to see where my family was before they moved to the U.S. My mom even gave me her address of where they used to be. So it's like a connection. I think humans for thousands of years have traveled for a variety of reasons.

And it's like connection to our ancestral selves. When you talk about the journey through COVID, because the travel industry was initially decimated. I mean, I was really scared for anyone who was in the travel space. That is something very hard. I was actually also in the travel space too. So it's hard to go through that. How was the journey like when you drop down to almost having no staff to then going back up to the staff that you had before? And these people that you work with all around the world.

How was that like? It was, I'll be honest, it was terrifying. because you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders in a sense of both wanting to do right by your travelers. Many of our travelers felt they had booked travel, you know, a year or two prior, and now they felt trapped in these trips. They felt unsafe to travel, and yet they had all this money tied up and this nonrefundable thing. And then our staff felt nervous that they were going to lose their jobs. And so there was a real pull there between doing right by our travelers,

but also retaining our top talent that was tricky to navigate, especially that first year. And we ended up deciding that if we don't do right by our travelers, we don't have a company anymore. We just plain and simple. We need to be transparent with them. We need to share their risk and their options. So we would take a very transparent approach of, okay, here's where we sit. Here's some of the options we can offer you in light of this.

Here's the risk. if you take this option, here's the risk if you take that option, and just try to lay out all the factors that we knew so that they could make an informed decision. I know a lot of companies were not doing that. They were not sharing risks, such as, you know, certain countries would lock you down on quarantine if you still wanted to travel, if you felt like I'm going to risk the COVID risk. But if you tested positive upon trying to leave the country, they could quarantine you. And some of them indefinitely. Some of them would have set amount of quarantine. Some of them would say, we just quarantine you until you test positive or test negative again, which for some people was a month. So we would have to

share very transparently. You know, if you choose to still do the trip, you could and will help you. But there is a risk if you test positive that you're stuck there for a month. And so just trying to be transparent with them about that. And then fighting really hard for rebooking options, for favorable credits. Like we shuffled a lot of things down and floated a lot of non-refundable credits that travelers who wanted refunds, but we would take their credit and apply it to and just hope that new travelers would book it in the future so that we could do right by our travelers. And I think in doing that, we managed to also retain our staff because more and more people kept coming to us. Our rebooking rate, because we were so transparent, was very high at upwards of 80% of our travelers who

were booked when COVID hit, still rebooked or ended up traveling at some point in the near future with us. And I think that's because we were so transparent. I know a lot of other travel companies did not experience the same thing, experienced lawsuits, things like that. We managed to navigate it without any of that. And I really do think that stems back from just a choice to be, to maintain our integrity. Like if our travelers aren't thrilled with our service, then what are we doing so yeah i mean if you can if you can get through those moments you really can get through anything it that's it's a tough part of business i was talking to someone before this conversation and they were like hey i want to i want to jump into business but i'm scared i'm scared and i'm like look the fear

doesn't stop even when you hit success because it can be taken away the next day the roller coasters right um how do i have a very controversial question and if you if you can't answer this i totally understand mo so some might say that social media for example like instagram specifically really helped create more tourism because i think a lot of people are chasing what they've seen like if i never saw the trips of antarctica i may never have wanted to go but i see people posting and i'm like oh i want to go right and then obviously everybody wants to also make content when they go somewhere most of the time. I'm just talking overall, nothing to do with like adventure life specifically. So tourism, I think, has been created based on social media, certain places,

but it's also in some of those places done damage because there's too many people. It's they're overrun. So you have this balance. And I think you have a love, hate relationship with a lot of people, whether they're physically there and it helps them or it hurts them. How do you feel just in general, in terms of what social media has done for the tourists, and specifically, I think trips that are more unique or different. Sure. You know, we're a member of the Adventure Travel Association, Trade Association. And they threw out a really interesting statement at our summit a couple years ago

that has really stuck with me, that we need to not promote what travelers want. We need to promote what destinations need. And that really sticks with me and our ethos of we want to impact positively the local community, the people who are visited as well as the visitors. And so to ensure that that's happening, you have to be visiting areas where it's welcome, where they're prepared. The structure is there. And it benefits the local community with education and economic opportunities and is not

something where you're being cursed if you hit the streets by the locals because they don't want you there. So we have, we've strived really hard to create and craft tours on our website that visit remote and off the beaten path areas, little lesser known gems that have just as much to offer as some of these larger, uh, tourism hubs, but are just have never gotten on the map in their marketing. And a lot of times our travelers come back, just raving, about these places because there's not as many tourists there. It felt more authentic. I really felt like I got to know the locals. They were all so friendly with us because they were glad we were there. I mean, that really heightens the experience. No one wants to go be a tourist in a place where

like everyone's scorning your presence when you're walking on the street. So I feel like in general, the adventure travel industry as a whole, for the most part, really does that well. We really want to try to offer the places in destinations that welcome people and are ready to receive them with open arms because that adds the experience. I want to go feel like I'm someone's new friend when I travel. I don't want to feel like I wasn't welcome. So that's what we start to do. That's a really good one. I've never heard that before, but it makes a little sense. I think most people will take advantage of the situation while it's there versus trying to make the place better. I'm thinking, This is, this is, I don't know. I'm not, you know, I'm not an expert. I'm thinking, though,

the future of travel could be to space. I know people are already doing it, but obviously it's very expensive and it can only be, you know, X amount of times per year. But I'm thinking space, maybe the moon, I don't know, maybe Mars at some point, would you go? We have considered, we have, we have had companies approach us seriously pitching space hotel options and things like that. And we have started to have internal conversations as to whether or not we will jump on that ship when it sails. I'm not sure yet. The jury is out. The liability and risk of it all is just, you know, cost for concern. But we tend to support things like that if they have, if they have some sort of positive impact. Like, I know that space exploration positively impacts

research. And so like likewise, like we know that there's also a tradeoff when it comes to, you know, carbon emissions of travel. I mean, it's the big ugly, no one wants to talk about that just getting on a plane is emitting carbon. And but I believe that travel is the tool and the mechanism by which we can learn and grow from each other and find solutions that impact everyone, not just your own one part of the world. So I also feel like travel is like the, the networking that needs to happen to make positive change. So if space exploration would positively impact, then we probably would consider promoting it.

We'll see. We'll have to see. I'm with you. Some of the best things that I've done in my life are traveling because I get to really experience, like if you want to learn about some, a culture or a place, you go there and you stay there and you really see what it's like. You talk to the people. For example, I was just in Finland because, you know, they

say Finland is the happiest country. I'm not even kidding. A hundred percent of people that I asked are not happy. And they said they are not happy there, which I found to be really not happy that they got labeled as the happiest country either. They're not happy about it and that they're actually not happy. And I found that super fast. I'm like, see, this is why I came here. Like I didn't come here to see a site. I came here literally because I wanted to talk to people and I wanted to understand like how they're so happy. It turns out they're not even happy. But then I went somewhere else.

That's definitely not on the list. And everyone there was really happy. I have learned, I've grown more and more pessimistic, the older I get, that almost everything has spin, unless you experience it yourself personally. And this reminds me of like, so this is a painting of my first international trip.

I went to Guatemala on a missions trip when I was a teenager. And we were going to a very poor area to help build a school. and I was expecting everyone to just be miserable. And what I encountered was some of the happiest, most grateful, kind people I've ever met. And it really turned something on the head for me internally of like, poor does not mean unhappy. And it's the same thing, like having great wealth and economic standing does not equate to happiness either, you know? So it's something else. There's something else to be said for our preconceived notions.

and then when you go and you see what reality is, you're like, oh, wow, I had that totally wrong. It's humbling, too, in a way. Like, it makes you realize how small you really are in the world. Like, oh, I really don't know anything about anything. There's some very small islands I like to visit in Southeast Asia. And like you said, they don't need a lot. They're happy with what they have because they also don't want a lot more things. Like, the more things that you can have, the more things that you seem to want.

Final question for you is this. I want to go back to space. If you're given tickets, you per se, nothing to do with adventure life. Everything in your life can be perfect in that moment. You don't have to worry about anything because all that will be taken care of. If you're giving tickets to Mars, would you go? I guide all of my decisions around prayer. So truthfully, I would pray.

And I would say, God, do you want me to get on that rocket and go to Mars or not? And that would be what would decide it for me. Just speaking off the, based on my own personal inklings, I probably would not. I am not a crazy jump off the cliff type person. I have never gone skydiving. I've watched my mother go with my husband because I thought, why would I jump out of a perfectly good plane? It doesn't make sense to me.

So I probably would not. But you never know. If it was for a good cause or something like that and I really felt like I was supposed to go, then I probably would. Maybe if he could bring the whole family. I find it fat. And who knows, in 20 years? I mean, I'm super excited for these.

I've heard that they're, you know, bringing back, like, faster airplanes like they used to have, you know, get you there in half the time. Other things, too, that can. I was just reading about, like, like, beam me up type travel. Like, it possibly could be something in the future. Who knows, right? But, I mean, we never know. We never know. The fact that maybe we could get places faster, easier.

We could do even more adventures. But I, I love what you said. around making sure that the place you're going to, though, actually benefits from it. And it's not hurt in the end along with the people. But if you want to get in touch with you, they want to go on the adventure of a lifetime. How can they do so? They can just go to our website, adventurelife.com, give us a call. We love people calling in.

We still staff everything with humans. We don't use those AI agents right now. So they can just reach out or go on our social media and reach out that way, too. It would be great to chat with them. Well, Monica, this has been amazing. I'm so grateful for your time today. And I can't wait to get to Antarctica. So I'm going to call you so I can go to Antarctica and the Galahvus.

Yes, we do. I'd love to send you. That will round out my travel, except for I do want to go to space one day. But this has been amazing. And thank you so much for joining me today. And thank you for all that you've done in one of the spaces I absolutely love. And I hope more people in their lifetime, if it allows get to do more travel. and thanks for joining us on Founder's Story.

It's been great. Thanks for having me on.