In Search Of Excellence - Colin O’Brady: They Said He’d Never Walk Again. Now He Holds 10 World Records | E42

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

Since he was a child, Colin O’Brady dreamt of becoming an Olympian, but when a terrible accident burned 22% of his body, doctors told him he would never walk normally again. Luckily for Colin, he didn’t believe in being “realistic”, so 18 months later he won the Chicago triathlon, and a year after that he represented Team USA at the 2010 World Triathlon Championships. Through intense focus, intuition, and a possibility-focused mindset, Colin has continued to shatter world records at groundbreaking speeds while proving there is no such thing as impossible.Colin O’Brady is an American professional endurance athlete, motivational speaker, author, and 10-time world record holder adventurer. He is the fastest person to complete the Explorer’s Grand Slam and the 50 Highest Points in all 50 states and the youngest person to row on the Southern Ocean. He has climbed Mount Everest twice, completed marathons in over 50 countries, and crossed Antarctica solo and unassisted in just 54 days. In this episode, Randall and Colin discuss:- Creating large goals while facing insurmountable challenges- The importance of being all-in on only one project at a time- Why being “realistic” can limit your success- The extreme preparation Colin endured for the Explorer’s Grand Slam- How Colin beat an ex-British Special Forces polar explorer across Antarctica- The concept of the “possible mindset” to unlock new opportunities- Colin’s new book and movement, The 12-Hour WalkColin O’Brady is an American professional endurance athlete, motivational speaker, author, and 10-time world record holder adventurer. He is the fastest person to complete what is known as the Explorer’s Grand Slam, which includes climbing the seven summits and skiing to both the North and South Poles. In addition to this, Colin was the first person on record to cross Antarctica solo and unassisted in just 54 days and has completed more than 50 marathons on six continents.Aside from scaling mountains and racing at unprecedented speeds, Colin has authored two books, the New York Times bestseller The Impossible First and his most recent release, The 12-Hour Walk. He is also a dedicated philanthropist and creator of Beyond 7/2, a registered non-profit with the mission of inspiring kids and communities to live active, healthy lives and pursue their dreams.Resources Mentioned:The 12-Hour Walk, by Colin O’BradyThe Impossible First, by Colin O’BradyThe 12-Hour WalkBeyond 7/2 non-profitSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

That moment in Thailand was a really, really difficult moment for me. Obviously, the physical pain of being severely burned. I was in a really negative downward spiral, the physical pain, but I think even more so the emotional pain when the Thai doctor walked in one day and he says to me, hey, look, Colin, you'll probably never walk again normally. When I look back on that experience now with 15 years of distance, I look back at myself and think, yeah, I set all my world records with my legs on those legs after being burnt in the fire. It made me stronger. It made me more resilient. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be, to learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest

potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings, and we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. My guest today is Colin O'Brady. Colin is an American professional endurance athlete, motivational speaker, and 10-time world record holder adventurer. He has completed more than 50 marathons in 25 countries on six continents. He has climbed Mount Everest twice and is the fastest person to complete what is known as the Explorer's Grand Slam, which is climbing the seven tallest mountains on each continent and skiing to both the North Pole

and the South Pole. Cullen also crossed Antarctica solo and unaided in just 54 days, and set a record for scaling the highest peaks in all 50 states in 21 days. He crossed the most dangerous ocean in the world, the 700-mile-long Drake Passage, which has claimed the lives of 20,000 sailors and caused at least 800 shipwrecks. And he did it in a rowboat. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Impossible. And he just released his new awesome book, The 12-Hour Walk, Invest One Day, Conquer Your Mind, and Unlock Your Best Life. Colin is also a dedicated philanthropist. With his wife, Jenna, he is a creator of Beyond 7-2,

a not-for-profit that inspires communities and kids to stay healthy. Colin, it's a true pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thanks for having me, Randall. Great to be here with you. I always start my podcast with our family because from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personality, our values, and the preparation for our future. You were raised in Portland, but were born in Olympia, Washington in a very untraditional way, at home, on a futon, on a hippie commune, in front of 130 of your mom's hippie friends who were there to hang out and celebrate your birth, and who were smoking marijuana as your mom played Bob Marley's Redemption song on repeat throughout your birth. Your parents were incredible influences

in your life. Your dad, Tim, was an organic farmer and a former Eagle Scout. And your mom, Eileen, was a businesswoman who co-founded the upscale homegrown grocery chain, New Seasons, and who once ran to be the mayor of Portland. Your parents were young when you were born. They had you in your early 20s. They didn't have a lot of money when you were growing up. They eventually got divorced. Can you tell us about the influence your parents had on you growing up and how the concept of Ohana impacted your future and how not having money led to free and fun activities? Yeah. My parents definitely had a really significantly positive influence on my life. As you mentioned, didn't have a lot of money growing up. But yeah, they always kind of surrounded me with love and positivity and

generosity. And I think that that definitely went a long way into being able to achieve some of the things that I've achieved in my life, certainly a family of big dreamers. And I think most importantly, really surrounded by love. You mentioned the word ohana. My parents did divorce when I was nine or 10 years old, and both got pretty quickly remarried. But it was in a most sort of amicable blended family circumstance that I can sort of imagine. We were raised eight blocks away from each other in terms of my mother and father's houses. And my parents maintained a really positive relationship as well as sort of my step siblings from each one of those marriages were in and out of each other's houses. And so like my step-sisters from my dad's marriage are very close with my mother and vice versa.

And so the Hawaiian, where two of my step-sisters were born in Hawaii, so we have some Hawaiian influence in our family and spent a lot of time there. My dad now lives on the North Shore of Kauai for the last 25 years. And that Hawaiian word, ohana, is really powerful and potent for us because it's sort of family, not in the just blood context, but family in the sense of who we choose to call our family. And so we really pride ourselves on just having a big, amicable, blended family. Of course, just like any family, we have our differences from time to time. But overall, it's been really, really positive and certainly has laid the foundation for my life for sure. When you were a kid around 13 years old, you were exposed to the life of an entrepreneur. Your parents were involved in the health food, natural foods movement. This was in the late 80s and early 90s before words like sustainable and organic were commonplace.

They worked at a grocery store starting as store clerks. And when you were a young teenager, they decided to open their own store, which ultimately turned into a very successful chain of natural foods grocery stores. They didn't have any of that success when you were a kid. But what you did have as a young teenager was a front row seat to Entrepreneurship 101 about how to bootstrap a small business, which took place at your dinner table, where they would talk about things like current and future sales and marketing plans. I'm an entrepreneur. I have three kids in college. I could tell you that when they were 13, they didn't have any interest in my businesses or what I was doing on the work front, which changed a little bit when my son started a very cool hack company called Shred On when he

was 13 and learned about things like cost of goods sold and gross margins. What impact did your dinner table conversations about entrepreneurship have on your future? And in search of excellence, is it valuable and motivating for kids to have their parents explain what they do for a living at a young age, regardless of their profession? Yeah, both questions there. One, I think it had a huge impact on my life. My family really talked about their hopes and dreams very openly. And just like any entrepreneurial venture, I guess some are more risky than others. But in this case, my parents

really put together all the money they had, which was not a lot to go all in on this dream. And so they weren't necessarily... Certainly, we felt some of the stress, but that wasn't the point. More importantly, there's like, hey, we have this dream, we have this vision, and we want to kind of help. We want you to be a part of us bringing that to life. Obviously not in any sort of tangible, it's like some 13 year old kid is going to provide any like great insights, but more so saying like, hey, here's the process of setting and achieving a big goal, right? Like our goal is to create this chain of natural foods, grocery stores that have significant impact in the Pacific Northwest. But we got to start with one small footprint store. What are the cost of goods? How do you bring in the inventory that you need for that? How do you build culture within that

business, et cetera? And having those conversations, I mean, some, of course, I was more paying attention to it. I'm sure at times there was plenty of times I was tuning it out, but it was around me. We were aware of that now. And I think that that definitely has definitely led a huge impact into who I am at this point in my life. You know, not only through my athletic pursuits, as you mentioned, but I've been quite successful as an entrepreneur. I founded and exited companies with great success and done other things, you know, using my name, image, and likeness and a lot of other sort of business avenues and venues. And I wouldn't think I would have had a blueprint for doing that had I not been sort of there with my parents as they were building New Seasons Market.

And additionally, your second question, just about parents in general, I certainly think it is valuable. I certainly think about this as I start to think about having a family, that it's important to have your kids be aware of what you're doing. I think too often, people are like, I'm going to work, right? And people spend generally a lot of their waking hours doing this thing called work. And again, that's not necessarily the nuts and bolts that have to, everything has to be understood as your kid, depending on what age you are. But I think that boils down into passion and purpose. I do think there's a lot of people out there working in jobs and careers that are pretty passionless for them. But I think that boils down into passion and purpose. I do think there's a lot of people out there working in jobs and careers that are pretty passionless for them. And I think that

as they help their kids navigate the world, at least for me, I have a bias towards people doing things that are purposeful and fulfilling, regardless of the sort of financial gain. And I think that when you can sort of understand people's intentions, or certainly people like your parents, why they're doing the things they're doing, even if it's, hey, I don't love this, but I'm doing this to help support the family, right? That might be, that's certainly a noble cause. But sort of understanding that and sort of understanding what goes into that, because you can also, when you make decisions as a young person, you know, choose maybe what you want to do, but it's also just as important to know what you don't want to do, right? As you're filtering and

making those decisions. Let's talk about education, which I think is one of the most important ingredients to our future success. You were an excellent athlete growing up in high school as a swimmer. You won multiple state championships, regional titles in the breaststroke. And as a soccer player, you were on a winning state championship team and finished the season ranked ninth in the country. You were recruited by colleges for both and accepted a swimming scholarship to Yale, where you competed in the 100 and 200 meter breaststroke. You spent the first semester of your junior year off campus, where you learned the basics of mountain climbing and trek through Patagonia, where you said that you've never seen the sky so blue and so big. You went back to

school and got a BA in economics. And when you graduated, many of your buddies went to work on Wall Street and went down the traditional career path of getting the big salaries and the secure future. Well before you graduated, you knew you didn't want to do that. You want to do something else first. You want to go backpacking around the world for a year. And you told yourself that if you wanted to go back and get a more traditional job, you could do that at a later point in time. During college, you painted houses every summer to help pay for books and to get by. And every year, you socked away a few thousand dollars so that when you graduated from college, you could travel. You knew you'd be traveling on a shoestring budget because a few thousand dollars wasn't

going to get you very far in the world. We're going to talk about your trip in a minute, but before we do, I want to freeze frame it here. Before COVID, taking a gap year after high school and before college was very uncommon. During that pandemic, when things shut down in the U.S., taking a gap year became more popular than ever. A lot of my daughter's friends who had money and those who didn't have money traveled to see the world instead of attending classes on Zoom and paying $70,000 in tuition and not experiencing the college life and said that the travel abroad was life-changing and the best experience they've

ever had. All of them are back in school now and taking a gap year is once again very rare. What's your advice to students who are considering it and maybe want to do it, but feel they may get left behind or not be with their friends who don't do it? And on a related note, should students drop out of college to pursue their passions, even if they don't see value in it, or if they want to go the entrepreneur route and start their own company? Yeah, first and foremost, I would recommend it for everyone. Whether that's, for me, it was right after college, whether that's right before college. I don't know that I know a single person who has taken that gap year who regrets it.

The fear of, oh, I might get left behind. I've never met the person that said, oh, I took a gap year and now I'm 30 years, and I am left behind in my career. Literally never have met that person. But I've met a thousand people who have said, oh, I took this trip, or I took this experience, or I invested in my own personal growth outside of a classroom, and it was one of the most rewarding things in my life. In fact, I'm a member of YPO, which I'm sure you're familiar with, for those listening. It's a group of presidents and CEOs and successful business folks, a professional organization. And I was at an event yesterday with my YPO chapter. And actually a question came up, which was, what advice would you give

to your younger self? What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self? And this is a room full of extremely successful people, people that are running companies, people that have made millions of dollars, people that are doing big, important things in the world. And in a room full of maybe 50 people, 20 of them, or at least half of them said, I would tell myself after college to not get the job right away, to take a gap year, to take some time, et cetera. And so if you want to take it from me, take it from a room full of extremely successful people who are also saying the same thing, which is that growth is valuable.

And I think that there is this prevailing belief that in your early 20s, you're going to miss your opportunity. You're going to miss your on-ramp, et cetera. And I don't think that's true at all. I think when you're in that time in your life, you have a lot more time than you think to develop and grow. And to be honest, I think having some perspective on the rest of the world to getting your hands and feet dirty, getting lost a little bit out in the world is probably going to make you even better at that career and really turn you on to what you really are passionate about. In terms of college and the current landscape of college, I certainly think that education is changing and it's changing fast. COVID, obviously, in a lot of ways, obviously changed a ton of things. And I don't think anyone

loved being in a Zoom classroom, but it also showed that you actually can learn remotely in a lot of different instances and contexts, right? So it's changed the landscape in a lot of ways for that. You know, dropping out of college, I think, is an individual choice. I do think that there is certainly some advantages to it. I also think there's some disadvantages, particularly the cost of college and the crippling debt that some people are graduating college with. I'm not sure that the cost-benefit analysis weighs out. One thing that I certainly did gain a lot from college outside of just the nuts and bolts of what I learned in the classroom was, you know, socialization. I was always a very social person. So it's not like I, you know, wasn't social, but to be out in the,

as a young person, kind of spreading your wings, meeting people, interacting, rubbing up against different ideas, different cultures, different perspective, et cetera, was certainly, you know, when I look back on my college years, and a lot of ways I look back at that as perhaps being the most valuable element of that education, rather than equation I learned in Calculus 105 or whatever. So have you ever in your lifetime ever met someone who uses calculus in their daily activity or ever after they graduated college? I mean, I'm sure that there's some engineers out there, things like that, that are doing that.

But no, I haven't been hanging out with anybody in the last 20 years who they say, you know, they pulled out their quadratic equation or, you know, their whatever, you know, we have these iPhones, right? They have the dates to every single, this general in World War, whatever, did, you know, and they memorize all these things in school, all this history, these dates and these facts and things like now, but I actually felt like I learned how to learn or I learned how to think more critically on things. And then you can apply that to others. So I don't know. I think education is shifting and I think it's going to continue to shift at a very, very rapid rate. I'm not sure exactly where higher education will be. It's certainly going to be important, but I think it'll just be, might look a lot different in the years to come. It's interesting because I went to law school after I went to college. I went to the greatest school on earth, University of Michigan, Go Blue. And I learned nothing in law school that was applicable to after I graduated law school. It's one of these weird professions, Colin, where you know nothing coming out of school

and some client somewhere is paying $500 for 60 minutes, these 60 minutes for you to learn on their dime. It's crazy. And when I think back to college, I took a statistics class, senior class my freshman year. And I remember the concept of p-value, which measures the statistical significance of something, which you need a large number. So when someone says, well, they said, who's they? If the pool is five, no one cares. But if the pool is a thousand and there's a poll and it says they say, then the p-value helps determine its relevance. So kind of a weird, nerdy thing. But if I look back in college, that p-value thing comes up once or twice a week. Let's talk about what you did once you

graduated college. You took a backpack and a surfboard and bought the world's cheapest ticket to New Zealand, which had a 10-day layover in Fiji, which was fortuitous because you met your wife Jenna there. You hitchhiked through New Zealand and other countries for five months, living on $10 a day, sleeping on floors, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and sleeping in youth hostels, just kind of scraping by. Then a few months later, halfway through your one-year trip, you found yourself in Thailand. On January 14th, 2008, you were sitting with your friend David Boyer at a beachside restaurant on a very small island called Koh Tao, which was off the southwest coast of Thailand. The two of you joined other tourists in a local beach custom of jump roping

over a 20-foot-long flaming rope that had been doused with kerosene. It was pretty obvious to you that it wasn't the safest thing in the world, but you did it regardless. That was a mistake. The rope made a few passes over your head before it swung down and caught you by the legs. Your friend David rolled away, but you tripped on the rope, which wrapped around your legs and splattered kerosene all over your body, which burst into flames. With flames reaching your neck, you pulled a burning tasso with your right hand and wrangled free and then sprinted into the nearby ocean. The island didn't have a hospital. It had only a basic nursing station, and your ambulance ride consisted of riding on the back of a moped on a dirt path to get there. Your skin was blackened and hung down in ribbons over your bloody legs as a woman pulled pieces of

skin off of them and cut them away with scissors. You suffered second and third degree burns primarily on your legs and feet and also on your right hand. In total, over 22% of your body was burned. You were in unbearable pain and were given penicillin and morphine and then you waited 12 hours before you could be transported by pickup truck to the morning boat which took you to the nearby Koh Samui, which had a very small, ill-equipped hospital where you endured eight straight days of surgery, where a cat was running around your bed in the ICU. And then after a week after that, you were moved to a third hospital, this one in Bangkok, for a month of recovery. This was the major turning point in your life.

I was saying that sometimes our biggest disappointments, our biggest mistakes, our biggest challenges turn into the biggest opportunities of our lives and lead to results that neither we nor anyone else could have predicted. Can you tell us what happened when your mom showed up? Why she yelled at your doctor to bring you some weights and what happened after that? And in search of excellence, how important is it to think positively and believe anything is possible? Man, who does your research? It's pretty very thorough. I'm impressed. I do all of my own research.

I spend 30 hours on this podcast alone doing it, but we're going to talk about preparation a little bit later in the podcast. I appreciate that. That's impressive. I love it. Yeah, that moment in Thailand was a really, really difficult moment for me. Obviously, the physical pain of being severely

burned, the fear of being in a place that was far from home. And not just because I was in Thailand, but I was actually just in such a rural part of Thailand that the medical facilities were few and far between. And a burn accident is not something to be taken lightly. People die from burn accidents because of infection, because your skin is the largest organ on your body. And basically, all the things can get in and out of there if your skin's not there, which it wasn't in my case in the lower half of my body. But as you mentioned, the heroine to the story certainly is my mother. I was in a really negative downward spiral, the physical pain, but I think even more so the emotional pain when the Thai doctor walked in one day and he says to me, hey, look, Colin, you'll probably never walk again normally.

And I just remember that moment, even though it's 15 or so years ago now, just how visceral of a downward spiral emotionally I was going into. And my mother came in and kind of encouraged me to set a goal. I know now that she was sort of crying in the hallways with the doctors pleading for good news, but she actually, much to my gratitude at this point in my life, I suppose, she didn't show me that fear. Because I think if she had shown me that fear, we would have both kind of gone into this sort of fear loop together. And instead, she came in with strength and positivity and love, really daring me to dream about the future. And, you know, she said to me, what do you want to do when you get out of here? And I was like, I just want to

get out of here. I want to, you know, walk again. She's like, no, no, no, let's be more concrete. Let's visualize more positive outcome. And so she kind of walks me through a visualization exercise, has me close my eyes. And she says, tell me the first thing that pops in your mind. What do you see? And I opened my eyes and I said, you know, it's going to sound crazy, but I saw myself crossing the finish line of a triathlon one day, not something I'd ever done before I said, you know, it's going to sound crazy, but I saw myself crossing the finish line of a triathlon one day. Not something I'd ever done before. I, you know, swam in college, but I never biked or run competitively. But for whatever reason that popped into my mind that day.

And she said to me, she was like, she could have easily looked at my legs and been like, yeah, I said, set a goal, but maybe something a little more realistic. Instead, she said, great, great. Well, that's your goal now. In fact, let's, let's start you training. And as you mentioned, she says to me to the Thai doc, she goes, great, great. Well, that's your goal now. In fact, let's start you training. And as you mentioned, she says to me, to the Thai doc, she goes, hey, doc, bring in some weights. And the doc's like, what are you talking about?

He goes, my son's training for a triathlon right now. So I'm literally, I have these ridiculous pictures, but I'm bandaged from the waist down in this rural Thai hospital. I'm lifting 10-pound dumbbells. And I'm saying to the doctor, hey, doc, I'm training for a triathlon. He's like shaking his head like someone just as smack, knock some sense in the stupid American kid. But that is such a pivotal moment in my life.

Obviously, the recovery from it, but really being able to reorient and reshift my mind around a positive outcome. Obviously, there was a lot of trials and tribulations and challenges. But ultimately, I was flown back to Portland, Oregon, where I'm from. I was in a wheelchair at the time, carried on and off the plane. But eventually, step by step, my mother taught me how to help me walk again. I worked with physical therapists, but still with that actual goal in mind of crossing the finish line of this triathlon. And fast forward 18 months, I had moved to Chicago to get a job as a commodities trader, signed up for the Chicago triathlon, raced the race just 18

months after being told I'd never walk again and didn't just finish the race, but I actually completed the entire, sorry, I actually won the entire Chicago triathlon placing first out of, you know, nearly 5,000 other participants on the day. And you asked, you know, what's the importance of sort of that mindset shift or believing anything is possible? I know we're going to talk about it later in this interview, this concept of a possible mindset, but that's exactly what my mom instilled in me in this moment, this belief in limitless possibilities, this belief in, as you said, you're going to learn some things the hard way, and this is certainly a young man learning a lesson really the hard way, but she chose to say, oh, but maybe this is an opportunity to grow, and maybe this is an opportunity to to develop even more grit, even more resilience, even more strength. And so when I look

back on that experience now with 15 years of distance, I look back at myself and think, yeah, I set all my world records with my legs on those legs after being burnt in the fire. It made me stronger. It made me more resilient, particularly because my mother's guidance coming out of that. And had I not had that guidance left up to my own devices, I'm not sure where I would be today. She came into your hospital room every day with a smile on your face. And I mentor a lot of kids, young professionals, and I have a summer intern program. Each summer, we have 35 kids.

We get about 1,000 applications now each summer, and it's become a thing. I love mentoring. And one of the things I noticed, not only with my interns and the people I coach, they don't smile a lot. And I want to get your advice on the difference between as a leader, how important is it to smile when you walk into a room at work every day as a leader versus walking in preoccupied, hitting it right when you walk in and not saying hello to everybody? I think it makes a huge difference. I think as humans, we're really attuned to the people around us. And we're certainly really attuned to body

language and facial expressions and things of that sort. In my life, a couple of instances, one, I do a lot of public speaking. So I'm on stages, you know, in front of people and realizing as I study the art and the craft of public speaking and communicating in that way, sure, it is about the words that I'm saying, but it's also about the affect. It's also about the tone. It's also about the facial expressions. Even in a room full of, you know, thousands of people, people are really keyed in on that in both conscious and subconscious ways. And then in terms of leadership, absolutely. You know, I think that any great leader will tell you, yes, it was about these KPIs and getting X and Y and Z done and making sure our modeling and our forecasting and our spreadsheets were dialed,

you know, all the things that go into building a big business. But you talk to people across all different verticals, all different categories, all type of businesses, and they're more often than not, in fact, maybe always, it comes down to people, it comes down to relationships. And it's incredible what a couple minutes even at the beginning of your day or walking into a room as a leader of smiling, of investing in the personhood and the humanity of the other people in the room with you can go towards the exponential benefit of the motivation to actually deliver said work product. I mean, I think it is such an important element for sure. And I think your mentorship is very wise in that regard. This episode of In Search of Excellence

is brought to you by Sandy.com. S-A-N-D-E-E.com. We are a Yelp for beaches and have created the world's most comprehensive beach resource by cataloging more than 100 categories of information for every beach in the world, more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries. Sandy.com provides beach goers around the world with detailed, comprehensive, and easy-to-use information to help them plan their perfect beach getaway at home and abroad and to make sure you're never disappointed by a beach visit again. Plan the perfect beach trip today by visiting sandy.com. That's www.sandee.com. The link is in our show notes. Stay sandy, my friends.

As I mentioned in your intro, you're a professional triathlete and competed in more than 50 races in 25 countries on six different continents in a span of a little over six years. You had a dream to become a professional athlete and you achieved it. You loved the travel and the competition, but it felt like something was missing and that was calling you to do something bigger. As you struggled with the decision to continue as a triathlete, you reflected on a birthday present you had given to Jenna, a book called Climbing the Seven Summits, that talked about something called the Explorer's Grand Slam, as we talked about climbing the seven tallest mountains on each continent, and then skiing to the North Pole and the South Pole. At the time, only around 30 people had ever done it, and only two out of the 30 did

it in under a year. You called it your Olympics, which was one of your dreams as a kid. And not only did you want to be among a small handful to have finished it, you want to be the fastest and wanted to complete it in six months. The time to beat was six months, 11 days, seven hours, and 53 minutes, 192 days, which was set by a British extreme endurance athlete named Richard Parks, who had set this benchmark in 2001. You beat the record, not by a little, by a lot. You finished in 132 days in less than five months, setting a new world record. Incredible. We're going to talk about the Beyond 7.2 Foundation as your motivation for doing the slam in a few minutes.

But before we do, in search of excellence, how important is it not to rest on our laurels when we achieve some level of success or incredible success? Should we stay motivated and continue striving for more? And what should we use to draw inspiration to keep going and striving for more when we lose part or all of our motivation after achieving success? And is there ever a time when we should say to ourselves, I'm good with what I have. I don't need any more. And if so, when is that moment?

That's a great question. First and foremost, I think it is important to continue to strive, but not maybe in the way that you mean. You know, I think that there is certainly a time and a place if whatever you set yourself a big goal and you sell your company for $100 million or something like that. We've all seen the entrepreneurial trap of like, you know, two weeks later, you know, someone sit in their house, their bank account's full, they work, you know, so much, sacrifice so much to get there.

And then before that, I'm starting the next company. You know, I'm a big believer in inflection points, for sure. And what I mean by that is I do think that sort of, at least for me, I have gained a lot by having really specific goals, pushing really, really hard. You know, I'll use my expeditions as an example. You know, when I'm focused on an expedition, whether that's, you know, my solo crossing of Antarctica or the Explorers Grand Slam, like you mentioned, or any of my other big projects, I'm focused on that project, right? I'm not saying, oh, first I'm going to do the Explorers Grand Slam, but here's my seven-year roadmap for the seven other expeditions that I'm going to do whatever, because I'm all in on this goal.

And I think that that allows me to focus and be very diligent and really emotionally invested in that because I'm not hedging. I'm not saying, oh, well, if this doesn't work out, I've got these 10 other things. Because I think that sort of dilutes your energy in some regard. That said, I also think that I believe that all experiences, you know, whether you take that in a business context, starting a business, whether it's successful, whether it fails, whether it's somewhere in the middle, whatever the beginning, middle and end of that journey is, that journey is going to change you. You're a different person five years on from starting

a business than when you were the day you started it because you've learned something, you've grown, your personal life has evolved, you've changed, you've shifted. And so your question about should you keep striving? Sure, you should keep striving for a purposeful and fulfilled life. But maybe it's not in the same way that your five years younger self thought it would go. So I always kind of leave myself this sort of open this opportunity to pivot, to shift, or more just like subtly evolve. And I think that, you know, gosh, I spent 20 years of my life really wanting to be an Olympian. I tried super hard as a swimmer, I tried again as a professional triathlete, and in both sports, definitely achieved a very high level of excellence, but also didn't quite achieve the top, top level of making it to the Olympics. But the thing is, is that those experiences are not, you know, you can easily say

in a binary sense, Colin, did you fail to make the Olympics? And the answer is yes. I mean, it's a very clear answer. I did not make the Olympics, period. I'm not an Olympian. I did not make the Olympics. So in that sense, I failed. But then you say, Colin, you now have 10 world records. Or just take the one I set right after that. As you mentioned, the Explorers Grand Slam and the Seven Summits, you know, world records. Could I have done that had I not strived to be an Olympian for the 20 years previous to that? And the answer to that's also no, which meaning you're stacking these experiences.

You're actually going, well, because I was a swimmer and I worked on my mindset and because I pushed my body as a professional triathlete and because my professional triathlon career took me to six continents, I could visualize the process of what it meant to climb the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents. I knew a thing or two about sponsorship and how to raise money for a project, narrative storytelling, marketing, brand partnerships, et cetera, all things, all ingredients that were important to me to have that success. And so it's one of those things where I love the Steve Jobs quote, which is, you can't connect the dots going forwards, but it's really easy

to connect them going backwards. I'm a big believer in that. You can jump from lily pad to lily pad, not knowing where you're going to end up necessarily, not being rigid about that, and being able to be fluid in that, I think is important. I had the CEO of ESPN on my podcast last week, and he said he also competed in baseball in college. He went to Cornell. At some point, he realized he wasn't good enough to continue, even though he was a star when he was younger. He said to me, through the power of sports, when you're winning or losing, he views it as winning or learning. It sounds like that was a big part of what you just said.

Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's been a mantra of mine for a long time. I think failure plus perseverance equals success. So it's just a matter of just continuing to try stuff and continue to pursue things and realizing that in that journey of, you could call it a failure, but more often than not, we learn so much. I mean, we just talked about the burn accident before that. That's obviously an out and out pretty significant failure in terms of that did not go well, nowhere near what I wanted it to go. But I also learned some of life's greatest lessons. I am who I am because of having that life experience and getting through it and overcoming it. Let's talk about the planning and logistics of an expedition like the Grand Slam, which takes a tremendous amount of planning

and costs boatloads of money. Like a lot of your other world record expeditions, this one started with a massive goal and a great idea. You're creating something from scratch. It's very similar to starting a company. And like so many of us, when we start new things or start new companies, most of us have no fucking clue what we're doing. In this case, and for starters, the goal of this expedition was to raise money for a great cause, which required you to create a new charity, something called a 501c3 nonprofit organization, which you also had absolutely no clue how to do. So you sit down and you put pen to paper and you realize it's going to cost between $500,000 and a million dollars.

At that time, you and Jenna are living in a one bedroom apartment and had around $10,000 in savings. You had no network and around 200 Instagram followers, and you had no reason for anyone to sponsor you or to invest in you. So what was the first thing you do? You type into Google, what is the difference between marketing and PR? Because you know that you're going to need them both to give somebody a reason to invest in you and to believe in you. And like so many entrepreneurs and dreamers, you went to hundreds of people and almost all of them turned you down. You're around a month away from your plan starting

and you're freaking out because you've only raised $50,000. And it looks like the big idea was going to be a big no-go. Can you tell us about your first SoulCycle class, your friend Kathy and Mark Parker, and in search of excellence, how important are creativity, innovation, persistence, and luck? I think that sometimes we think in entrepreneurship, you don't think of it as a creative pursuit because we think of sometimes people box creativity into fine art or music or dance or whatever. But truly, I think entrepreneurship is one of the most creative mediums possible because effectively, you're taking an idea that doesn't exist or a concept or a service or whatever and bringing it to life in the world. And that is a beautiful,

beautiful thing. I didn't even realize that necessarily at the time, even though I was embodying this in the phase that you just mentioned. And I think that it's very easy to have that moment sitting in front of my computer with Google with no money, no resources, no background, no network, and be like, oh, it's fun to have a big dream, but let's be realistic. I think that that's the limiting belief that comes up for most people. Let's be realistic. This isn't actually going to work. Let's do something that's a little bit more safe or a little more obvious or a little bit more clear. But again, instilled in me from a young age, from my parents, watching them and their entrepreneurial pursuits, as well as just their belief in me over time, I think was underlying this belief of like, let's dream big and then let's figure it out. Let's jump out of the airplane and then build the parachute on the way down. And I think that that is a fun part of the process. It's grueling, it's arduous, it's heartbreaking. Those 100 doors slamming in your face are not super fun. But as you mentioned, I was getting close to not having the money to begin my project, but I was still out there pounding the pavement. I was still out

there shaking hands, talking to any single person that would listen. And I end up in this spin class. And it's not something I normally do is go to a spin class, but a friend had invited me. My ego almost got the better of me. I'm a professional athlete. I shouldn't show up at a, you know, local spin class. He's like, come on, there's someone interesting for you to meet. And I walk in, he introduced me to this woman named Kathy. She shakes my hand and he says, oh, she was a world record holder. She set the world record for the 5k back in the college days, you know, 30 years prior or something like that. And she kind of brushed it off as a million years ago, ha ha ha, whatever. My friend says, tell her, Colin's trying to set a world record

of his own. And so I gave her this quick little 30 second before the spin class starts speech. I don't realize it's an elevator pitch at the time, but I've been saying the same thing to so many people and getting the door slammed in my face that I guess I had sort of polished my narrative. I'm doing this. This is why. This is why it's important. I want to have this impact in the world. I want to set these world records, have this impact with this nonprofit that I'm starting, et cetera. She's like, wow, that's great. Good luck with that. So spin class ends and I'm saying goodbye. I'm about to walk out the door and she waves me back over. She goes, I've been thinking about what you told me about for the spin class. That's amazing.

That's really interesting. And she goes, my husband loves stuff like this too. He's actually here. And she waves her husband over, waves this guy over, never seen him in my life, shakes hands. Hi, my name is Mark. And she says, tell him again, tell him what you told me. So again, I rattle off the same 30 seconds that I had said before. I said, well, it's great to meet you. And he goes, wow, I love this. He goes, are you looking for sponsorship by any chance? And of course my eyes light up because exactly what I'm looking for. I don't realize, I don't think I'm pitching somebody. I'm just like telling a guy in a spin class. And I said, well, yeah, I actually desperately need sponsorship. And he goes, well, the company I work for, I think might have some opportunities. And I said,

great, where do you work? And he says, oh, I work at Nike. I said, wow, amazing. It's a dream come true. I'm from Portland, Oregon. I'm the home of Nike. But I think no matter where you are on the planet, that's sort of like the dream sponsor as a professional athlete. He then takes it a step further and he pulls out a business card, hands it to me, goes, send me an email and we'll talk. And I look down and it says, Mark Parker, CEO, Nike. Unbeknownst to me, I'm at a local gym talking to the CEO of Nike about my project. And there's no doubt in my mind that that was such a massive turning point in my career. But the lesson in it, I mean, you mentioned luck. One of my mom's favorite phrases that I love is,

luck comes to those who are prepared, which is to say, was it lucky, was it fortunate to cross paths with Mark Parker in this moment? Absolutely. Did it change my life and the trajectory of my career? Absolutely. A deep gratitude for that. That said, the year plus before that, I spent every penny I had and built a website that looked professional. I knocked on

so many doors. I spent countless, countless hours working on this pitch, even though I didn't even realize it was a pitch that had the perfect pitch in the perfect moment when this fortuitous moment crossed my path. So in a sense, that's the preparation element of it. And look, I don't know, you know, how, you know, people have different levels of sort of spirituality, the universe, the secret, you know, the law of attraction, things like that. But I certainly do believe in some regard that when we put energy into something consistently over time, the world conspires to help you in some regard. And it might not be by dropping the CEO of Nike in your path, but it's the fact that I was talking to hundreds, if not thousands of people about this idea, meaning I was actually

generating some level of energy and momentum towards my end goal here. And in this case, that had a huge, huge impact. But I also am a believer. People say, wow, you got so lucky. You met this guy and it all worked out. And although I am deeply grateful for Mark, deeply grateful for the support Nike gave me in that phase of my career, I also, funny enough, do believe that if it hadn't been him, I was going to cross paths with somebody else or another opportunity that ultimately would have gotten me to this end goal,

because that's how focused I was on reaching this outcome. We're going to talk about preparation in a minute, but between creativity, innovation, persistence, and luck, what's the most important of those four? Persistence. Because? I think all the elements are hugely important, but gun to my head, I happen to pick one of them. I do think that there is something really important about just continuing to try stuff, you know, ultimately.

When I think about, you know, all the successful entrepreneurs or even creatives or people that I know that have had achieved great things in their life, more often than not, it's a story of, I was actually with an astronaut last night, a guy who's done four spacewalks in the late 90s and early 2000s. And it's easy to talk to him about, oh, space, you fixed the Hubble telescope, you know, those amazing things, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you go back to the trip, but how'd you get here? He's like, well, I dreamed of being an astronaut since I was a kid. I was like, oh, amazing. And she got into the astronaut program. He's like, no, I applied to NASA five times. And because of an early ailment he had in his life and several other things, got, no, no, no, no, no, literally letters from NASA. No,

you will never be an astronaut. And he continued to write them letters and continue to try to find proximity to jobs at NASA, not even as an astronaut, but in and around NASA. So we could meet a guy in a hallway. So we could like whatever. And so there's so many examples of that, of how persistence really, really can pay off in the long run. Thank you for listening to part one of my amazing conversation with colin brady a 10-time world record adventurer and incredible motivational speaker be sure to tune in next week to part two of my conversation with colin Bye.